Karl Spindler (1887-1951) was an Imperial German Navy officer who was involved in an arms smuggling operation intended to equip the Irish nationalists planning the Easter Rising of 1916.

At an early age Spindler decided to go to sea rather than to join the family business, serving for a period as a watch officer on a Lloyd Line steamship.

On 20 March 1916, Spindler was given command of a merchant ship named the Libau,[2] falsely renamed Aud, a Norwegian freighter of similar appearance, and selected a crew of 5 officers and 22 men.

The Libau was to smuggle a cargo of captured Russian weapons and a passenger, Roger Casement, a former British government official, as part of a plan to assist Irish republicans in staging what would later become known as the Easter Rising.

[3] In 1931, in commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Spindler was asked by the president of the Irish committee in New York to give a lecture tour in several major US cities.