The Long History of the Knife in the Back

Betrayal is older than recorded history, and it has never really gone out of fashion. What makes these cases worth examining isn't the treachery itself but the trust that made it possible. Every person on this list was in a position of confidence, access, or loyalty, and used it to destroy the person who gave it to them. Here's 20 of the most documented cases in history.

José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior on Wikimedia

1. Marcus Junius Brutus

Caesar had pardoned Brutus after Pharsalus, elevated him to office, and reportedly named him in his will. When senators surrounded Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 BCE and stabbed him 23 times, it was Brutus among them that stunned him most. The assassination did not restore the Republic as Brutus hoped; it triggered the civil wars that ended it.

Hermann Vogel on Wikimedia

2. Judas Iscariot

Judas was one of the twelve apostles and had been trusted with the group's finances. According to the Gospels, he identified Jesus to the authorities in the Garden of Gethsemane by greeting him with a kiss, accepting 30 pieces of silver for the act. His name has been synonymous with betrayal for two thousand years.

James Tissot on Wikimedia

3. Benedict Arnold

Arnold was one of George Washington's most capable generals, the hero of Saratoga, and a man Washington publicly defended. Nursing grievances over missed promotions and mounting debt, he secretly negotiated to hand over West Point to the British for £20,000 and an army commission. When his contact was captured, Arnold fled. Washington's recorded response: "Arnold has betrayed me. Whom can we trust now?"

Thomas Hart on Wikimedia

4. Mir Jafar

Mir Jafar was the commander-in-chief of the Bengal army under Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah. At the Battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757, he held his forces back while the British East India Company's 3,000 men engaged the Nawab's army of 50,000. Siraj fled, was captured, and was executed on Mir Jafar's son's orders. His name remains a byword for traitor in India and Bangladesh today.

Francis Hayman on Wikimedia

5. Ephialtes of Trachis

At Thermopylae in 480 BCE, Ephialtes revealed to Xerxes a mountain path that allowed Persian forces to outflank the Greek defenders. Whether he acted for reward or grudge is debated, but the effect was decisive: the Persians encircled Leonidas and his Spartans, ending the stand. Ephialtes was later assassinated, and his name became the Greek word for nightmare.

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6. Sir John de Menteith

In August 1305, while William Wallace was hiding near Glasgow, he was captured by Sir John de Menteith, a Scottish knight who had switched allegiance to Edward I, and handed to the English. Wallace was taken to London and executed with extraordinary brutality. Menteith was rewarded with lands; in Scottish tradition he is remembered as "the False Menteith."

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7. Vidkun Quisling

Quisling was a Norwegian politician who collaborated with the Nazi invasion of his own country in April 1940, meeting with Hitler beforehand and attempting to declare himself head of government when German troops arrived. After the war he was tried and executed for treason. His surname entered the English language as a common noun meaning collaborator or traitor.

Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway on Wikimedia

8. Kim Philby

Philby rose to become one of the most senior officers in British intelligence while also being a Soviet agent since the 1930s, passing information to Moscow for decades. At least a dozen Western agents were executed because of him. When exposed in 1963 he defected to Moscow. The CIA's counterintelligence chief James Angleton, who considered Philby a close friend, reportedly never fully recovered.

USSR Post on Wikimedia

9. Aldrich Ames

Ames was a CIA case officer who in 1985 began selling the names of Soviet assets to the KGB to cover personal debt. At least ten agents were executed as a result. He continued working at the CIA for nine more years before his arrest in 1994, with access to some of the most sensitive intelligence the agency possessed.

staff, Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wikimedia

10. Robert Ford

Jesse James had taken Robert Ford into his inner circle. In April 1882, while James stood with his back turned adjusting a picture on the wall, Ford shot him in the back of the head to collect a reward and secure a pardon. The act made Ford infamous rather than celebrated, and he was murdered in 1892 at age 30.

Unknown authorUnknown author on Wikimedia

11. Wang Jingwei

Wang Jingwei was one of Sun Yat-sen's closest associates and a senior figure in the Chinese Nationalist movement for decades. In 1940, he established a collaborationist government in Japanese-occupied Nanjing, becoming the public face of Japan's puppet regime. He died in 1944 before the war ended, sparing him the reckoning his position warranted.

Unknown photographer on Wikimedia

12. David Greenglass

Greenglass was a machinist at Los Alamos who passed atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets, then testified against his own sister Ethel Rosenberg to reduce his sentence, claiming she had typed up spy notes. That testimony is now widely disputed. Greenglass served ten years. Ethel was executed in 1953.

Department of Justice, Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern Judicial District of New York (federal court). on Wikimedia

13. Robert Hanssen

Hanssen was an FBI counterintelligence agent who spent 22 years selling American secrets to the Soviet Union beginning in 1979, while ostensibly being the person responsible for finding exactly such moles. He revealed the identities of Soviet double agents working for the U.S., at least three of whom were executed, and was not caught until 2001.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Wikimedia

14. Mir Sadiq

Mir Sadiq was a trusted minister to Tipu Sultan of Mysore. During the British assault on Seringapatam on May 4, 1799, he reportedly diverted troops from key defensive posts at a critical moment after secretly passing the fortress's weaknesses to the British. Seringapatam fell and Tipu Sultan was killed at the breach. Mir Sadiq's name entered Indian history alongside Mir Jafar's as shorthand for betrayal.

Unknown authorUnknown author on Wikimedia

15. Alfred Redl

Redl was a senior officer in Austro-Hungarian intelligence, responsible for finding enemy spies, while also selling military secrets to Russia since at least 1907, including troop deployment schemes and the names of Austrian agents inside Russia. When exposed in 1913, he was given a revolver and left alone. The secrets he handed over contributed to catastrophic Austrian losses at the opening of World War I.

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16. Galeazzo Ciano

Ciano was Mussolini's son-in-law and Italy's foreign minister, embedded at the highest level of the Fascist government as both family and political ally. In July 1943, he voted with the Fascist Grand Council to remove Mussolini from power. When Germany reinstalled Mussolini, Ciano was arrested and executed for treason in January 1944 on his father-in-law's orders.

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17. John Walker

Walker was a U.S. Navy warrant officer who walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington in 1967 and offered to sell cryptographic secrets, then did so for nearly 18 years, eventually recruiting his brother, his son, and a friend. The information he provided allowed the Soviets to decrypt hundreds of thousands of classified naval messages. He was arrested in 1985 and died in prison in 2014.

US Government on Wikimedia

18. Jonathan Wild

Wild was an 18th-century London crime boss who presented himself publicly as a thief-taker who recovered stolen goods and turned in criminals for reward, while running the very criminal networks he claimed to fight. He sent dozens of people to the gallows while profiting from their crimes. He was hanged at Tyburn in 1725, cheered by the crowd.

Jossifresco on Wikimedia

19. The Duke of Buckingham

Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, was Richard III's closest ally and the man most responsible for helping him seize the throne in 1483. Within months he was in open rebellion, whether from conscience over the Princes in the Tower or personal ambition. Richard had him captured and beheaded in November 1483, just months after elevating him to the peak of his power.

Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt on Wikimedia

20. Casca

Publius Servilius Casca was one of Julius Caesar's own tribunes, appointed by Caesar and owing his office entirely to him. He was the first to strike on the Ides of March, stabbing Caesar in the neck from behind before the rest of the conspirators joined in. Brutus is the name history remembers, but Casca moved first.

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