I first became aware of Eddie Chapman when I saw the movie Triple Cross in 1967 when I was a teenager anda James Bond fan. I saw the film as Terence Young, the director of the first two Bond films, helmed this movie about a true-life spy in World War II.
Although Christopher Plummer portrayed Chapman as a crook and Bond-like character, the real Chapman, I would later discover, was a bit more complicated.
Chapman was imprisoned by the Nazis after they captured the Channel Island of Jersey in 1939. A safecracker and con man, he convinced his captors that he would spy for them against the British.
He was trained in spy tradecraft and then dropped by parachute into England, where he promptly contacted British Intelligence. His double game began.
Chapman would go on to be awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans and pardoned for his past crimes by the British.
Ben Macintyre’s Agent ZigZag: The True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal (Harmony Books), is a well- written and researched book that shines a light on Chapman’s character and his incredible actions during the war.
I contacted Macintyre, a writer-at-large and associate editor of the London Times, and interviewed him about his book.
Davis: Why did you write a book about Eddie Chapman?
Macintyre: I wrote the book for, essentially, three reasons: the obituary we published in The Times when Chapman died in 1996 intrigued me: it seemed that the obituary writer really did not believe all the things Chapman had claimed about his life, and that if I could find out the truth, it would be fascinating. I began collecting material on Chapman from that point on. Then, in 2002, there was a change of philosophy in MI5 about the release of secret material, and gradually the files on Agent Zigzag began to be released to the National Archives. The final reason was that I became utterly obsessed by Chapman, who seemed to me to be a character unlike any I had come across before: entirely dishonest, resolutely selfish, opportunistic and manipulative, but also charming, generous and astonishingly brave.
Davis: What did he accomplish as a double agent? Did his spying greatly aid the war effort?
Macintyre: In practical terms, Chapman’s main achievement was in diverting the pilotless V1 bombs that Hitler unleashed on London in the last stages of the war, by sending messages indicating false positions for the impact of the bombs. By convincing the Germans that the bombs were overshooting, the plan was to persuade them to shorten the range, thus ensuring that the bombs fell in under- or unpopulated areas. It was extraordinarily successful. He also extracted a great deal of money from the Abwehr, provided MI5 with a complete picture of how the enemy espionage machine worked and general helped to convince the Abwehr that it had a fully functioning spy network in Britain, when it had nothing of the sort.
More of the interview with Ben Macintyre in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog for GreatHistory.com.
Paul Davis’ web site can be accessed here He can reached at pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net.
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