Erich Gimpel

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Erich Gimpel (born 25 March 1910) was a German spy during World War II. He was very professional, resisting interrogation. Indeed, his interrogators seem to have had high respect for his abilities and distrusted any information he gave up.

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[edit] German secret agent

Gimpel had been a radio operator for mining companies in Peru in the 1930s. When World War II began, he became a secret agent, reporting the movement of enemy ships to Germany. When the United States entered the war in December, 1941, Gimpel was deported back to Germany. He then served as an agent in Spain.

He was next chosen to attend 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. As unreliable as Colepaugh was, Gimpel felt he needed an American to help him succeed on his mission in the United States.

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 decided to abandon the mission, visiting an old schoolfriend and asking to turn himself in to the FBI, which was already searching for German agents following the sinking of a Canadian ship a few miles off the Maine coastline (indicating a U-boat had been nearby) and suspicious sightings reported by local residents. The FBI interrogated Colepaugh, who revealed everything, enabling them to track down Gimpel.

[edit] Prisoner of war

After Gimpel's capture, the spies 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, but this was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by the President of the United States due to the approaching end of the war.

Gimpel was sent to Alcatraz, where he played chess with Machine Gun Kelly. After ten years, Gimpel was released in 1955 and returned home to West Germany. He later would make his home in South America.

[edit] Post prison life

Gimpel was the last person to be tried before a U.S. military tribunal. His 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).

Gimpel 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".

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