Dark, muscular Sydney Robey Leib-brandt, German-descended South African, might have won the light-middleweight championship at Berlin's 1936 Olympics if he had not been too fascinated sightseeing to show up for the title bout.
Back in South Africa, he joined the anti-British Ossewa Brandwag. In 1937 he returned to Germany, learned to speak excellent German, grew a mustache like Hitler's, took the Nazi "leadership-training" course, became a Reichswehr parachutist.
In July 1941, a U-boat took Leibbrandt to a point off desolate Namaqualand, South Africa. With $10,000 and radio equipment he rowed ashore in a rubber dinghy. For three days he walked across the...
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