The following story is so mind-boggling, so incredible that it almost defies belief. That the story actually happened is documented by historians, but it reveals the naivete of the nascent Jewish state, which accepted many people with dubious identities, even allowing them to serve in the IDF.

In the winter of 1955, a man named Ulrich Schnaft sat down for lunch in a modest Frankfurt restaurant with someone he believed to be an Iraqi military officer. The stranger, dressed in a pressed uniform and polished shoes, introduced himself as Captain Adnan bin Adnan. The meeting appeared ordinary, but it would mark the closing act in one of Israel’s strangest espionage stories, a tale of deception so implausible that even seasoned intelligence officers doubted it when they first heard it.

The polite German pharmacist across the table was not who he claimed to be. He had once worn the black uniform of the Waffen-SS, then passed himself off as a Jewish refugee, became an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and later offered his services to Egyptian intelligence.