Erich Gimpel
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Erich Gimpel (born 25 March 1910) was a German spy of World War II. He seems to have been an excellent and very professional spy, who resisted interrogation - indeed, his interrogators seem to have had a high degree of respect for his abilities, and distrusted what information he gave up. He spent the early part of the war as a German agent in Spain. He then moved on to a spy-school in German-occupied The Hague where he first met the American malcontent and traitor William Colepaugh, an unstable drifter who would ultimately betray him.
The pair were transported to the USA by the U-boat U-1230, landing at Hancock Point in the Gulf of Maine on 29 November 1944. Their mission was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort, especially the Manhattan Project, and transmit it back to Germany using an 80-watt radio Gimpel was expected to build. Together they made their way to Boston and then by train to New York. Before long Colepaugh abandoned the mission, visiting an old schoolfriend and asking to turn himself in to the FBI, which was already searching for two German agents following the sinking of a Canadian ship only a few miles from the Maine coastline (indicating that a U-boat had been nearby) and suspicious sightings by local residents. The FBI interrogated Colepaugh, which enabled them to track down Gimpel.
After their capture, they were handed over to US military authorities on the instructions of the Attorney General. In February 1945 they stood trial before a Military commission, accused of conspiracy and violating the 82nd Article of War. They were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, although this was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by the President of the United States due to the sudden death of Franklin Roosevelt and the end of the war. He was sentenced to Alcatraz where he played chess with Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. Gimpel was released in 1955 and returned to West Germany as he said that he had no love for Communists.
He was the last person to be tried before a U.S. military tribunal.
Gimpel's autobiographical account of his undercover work, Spy For Germany, was first published in English in 1957, in Great Britain. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, several books about Nazi spies in America were published, and his book finally appeared in the U.S. under the title Agent 146 (2003).
He was interviewed by Oliver North for his Fox News Channel program War Stories with Oliver North in the episode "Agent 146: Spying for the Third Reich".
[edit] External links
- Article on Colepaugh and Gimpel at fas.org
- Allied report on the interrogation of Colepaugh and Gimpel at ibiblio.org
- Contains a report on Colepaugh and Gimpel at navy.mil
- 1944: When spies came to Maine at mainetoday.com
- On Gimpel and Colepaugh, an interview with former CIA agent Richard Gay, book author on foreign spies on US soil
