Wohl was born in Berlin to a poor Catholic family, with a Hungarian father and Austrian mother of Jewish descent.

He was recruited initially by Sir Charles Hambro, then running the Special Operations Executive, to devise black propaganda for use against Germany, and allegedly as an informant because he was casting horoscopes for people of interest to MI5.

Sefton Delmer, a notable purveyor of black propaganda, arranged a fake document certifying de Wohl as a Captain in the British Army, and he took to wearing the uniform (though he refrained when he realized the position was untenable).

His main value to Delmer was his contact with Karl Ernst Krafft, the German astrologer working in Berlin for Dr Goebbels.

During the war, Wohl became increasingly religious, and he had a successful postwar career writing novels regarding Roman Catholic Church history and the lives of the saints.

Writing as Ludwig von Wohl, he became quite a successful novelist during his youth in Germany, where sixteen[2] of his novels were turned into films.