Synopsis

In Chapter 1 (KTB #148) ERICH begins his career as a spy, and he lets us know of his love of beautiful women. In Chapter 2 (KTB #149), he was transferred home to Germany and his shipboard romance with Karen ended. In Chapter 3 (KTB #151) he began his training as a spy – and he learned that a spy who falls in love with an enemy spy – gets shot!

Chapter 4: Spain and My First Mission

I was sitting in the train on my way to Spain. It was there I was to carry out my first real mission. An absurdly simple one.

My papers showed me as a Dutchman. They had been expertly forged in the S.S.'s own workshops in Oranienburg concentration camp. Beside me on the seat lay a small brown parcel. It weighed about two pounds and measured about sixteen inches by eight. It contained money. Real money. Swiss francs, 250,000 Swiss francs. The money had to be taken to Spain and was destined for some very important people, for the run-of-the-mill agents were paid with so-called Himmler bank notes, that is to say, counterfeit money.

On the international agents' market at that time Swiss francs were the accepted currency; they were easier to place than dollars. I had to deliver the money to a cover firm in Madrid-Item Number One. I had entrained in Berlin. Needless to say, I had no one to see me off Not only because it is not the usual practice on missions of this kind to be seen off at the station, but because there was simply no one who could have seen me off. The day of my departure had seen the end of an affair between Ingrid and me. It was a strange end, an end at which time had stood god-father.

I had gotten to know her at the theatre. She had been sitting next to me and had smiled at me. Tickets were scarce and one got them only if one had the right connections. I had them. Seemingly Ingrid had them too. I only knew that her strange unselfconscious smile had captivated me. Ingrid had no moods, no cares, no work. She wrote no letters to some absent soldier. She never mentioned the war. She always wore silk stockings. I never saw her with a shopping bag. She was a luxury article in a time of need.

When we had already known each other for three weeks, we knew no more about each other than that we were in love. I was getting the strangest ideas into my head. I wanted to give up my job with M.I., enlist in the Army and get married. Everything which pressed me on towards my career as a spy, everything which had lured and intrigued me, paled by the side of Ingrid.

"What do you do actually?" she asked me one day.

"Armaments," I replied. "I don't know whether I ought to enjoy my work or not. "

"There are worse things," she said. She looked at me and stroked my hand. Her hands were soft and delicate. It was not often during the war that one saw soft and delicate hands.

After that we often came to talk about my activities. Quite spontaneously. Naturally I kept quiet about what I was really doing. I had already got that far, but perhaps one day 1 may have told her one small thing too many.

I was ordered to report to Jurgensen. He was in a bad mood. There was a rumor circulating that he was going to be sent to the front. (He did, however, keep his post until the end of the war.)

"Don't spend so much of your time with women," he said. "Women are poison for agents. You should know that by now. "

"I don't know what you mean," I replied.

"Then I'll jog your memory," he continued. "Where were you yesterday evening?"

"I had dinner at Horchers. "

"With whom?"

I hesitated.

"Come on, man," he prodded me. "I haven't got all day for you. You were with a woman, weren't you?" 'Yes," I admitted.

'Right," he said. "And you told her that you were shortly going to Spain. Or am I mistaken?"

`No, you're right."

It was like a blow between the eyes. How could he have known? There had been no other diners in the room. No one could have overheard what I was saying. There could be no other explanation: he had got it from Ingrid. I confronted her with it, and she smiled, as always. There was no wavering of her self-assurance.

"You are a funny, sentimental old thing. Fancy getting so hey up about a little thing like that."

`It's not a little thing,”" I replied.

This was not the last time ERICH let his heart lead him almost into a fatal situation.

"But this is a war. " Ingrid stood up and lit a cigarette. She put it into a long holder and walked up and down the room.

"We are all in its service, one way or another. Everyone in his place. You doing your job and I doing mine. It's wartime, that's all. Or haven't you noticed it?"

`Yes," I replied. "So if I understand you correctly, your kisses and your love were all part of the war effort. "

"That's putting it very crudely," said Ingrid. She was still smiling. Just as she always smile, but it was the last time she was to smile at me. What I had taken for love had been nothing but M.I.'s final test of my reliability as a spy. The lesson was Silence, always and everywhere Silence. And secrecy.

I forced myself to think no more of Ingrid. That was finished. Now I had to fulfill my mission. We were all working for the war in our own way. I was on the train for Spain and had to concentrate on the job in hand. According to the teaching of the Hamburg school for agents I had to break four barriers. First, our own police. Secondly, the German frontier control. Thirdly, the foreign frontier controls. And fourthly, the enemy secret service.

At Hendaye I crossed the French frontier. At Irun I crossed the Spanish frontier. I spoke fluent Spanish. So far so good.

"Have you anything to declare?" asked the Spanish customs official. Barrier number three!

'No," I replied.

He pointed to the parcel containing the 250,000 Swiss francs. "What have you there, Senor?"

"Prospectuses," I replied. "For my Spanish clients. Shall I open the parcel?" He hesitated. Spaniards always have plenty of time.

I remained calm. Too calm perhaps. I watched him as he thought the matter over. If he should decide to have the parcel opened, I should be arrested. Nothing was more certain than that I had considered it advisable to carry the parcel quite openly in my hand. That might have been a good idea; or it might equally well have been a bad one. A hundred yards from where I stood the frontier agent of the German M.I. would be waiting.

He would witness my arrest, and I should have tripped up on my first mission. Perhaps after long drawn out negotiations, the German Embassy would succeed in getting the money out again, but the career of Erich Gimpel, the German spy, would certainly have come to an end. I should have failed and that would mean that I would be transferred to the eastern front...........

"That's all right, Senor, "he said. "Buen viaje!"

I did not of course know our frontier agent personally and we had agreed upon a sign of recognition. Everything immediately fell into place and we traveled to Madrid together. There I had to telephone a certain number.

"We'll send a car at three o'clock," I was told. An English motor-car with a liveried chauffeur arrived punctually to the second.

"Are you Senor Carlos?" he asked me.

'No," I answered, "I am Mario. "

Now I had to ask him: "Are you Senor Juan?"

'No," he replied, "I am Fillippo. "

The right password have been given. I got into the car. I delivered the money. Naturally I did not get a receipt; it was a matter of trust. Hundreds of German agents later made off abroad with the foreign currency which had been entrusted to them.

I was taken to an elegant villa about six miles outside Madrid, the home of the German manager of a cover firm. Actually he was S. S. General Bernhard. Short, thick-set and corpulent, with a round head and rather sparse hair, he looked more like a retired bus conductor than the head of a branch of the Secret Service. He greeted me warmly.

He was one of our best men, and for years directed the entire Spanish side of our work with great skill. I was dismissed. My next destination was Seville. There my luck was out. For the tubes I was after were not in the machine in question, and the armatures, which I dismantled with the greatest caution, also did not explode. It was to be months before we eventually got hold of these tubes. They were important for radar development. We needed them above all to enable us to evolve suitable countermeasures.

I made several journeys to Spain. It was my knowledge of the language that singled me out for these not unpopular missions. It was very easy for us in Spain, of course, as the sympathies, if nothing more, of the authorities there were on the side of the Germans.

It was in a bar in Barcelona that I first heard of an incredible plan. Although it seemed like a figment of the imagination I pursued the matter and found that the incredible was true. I at once reported it to Berlin and received by return instructions to investigate further but not to become involved.

I was to see a good deal more of him. As part of the camouflage, General Bernhard had his whole family with him, including the children's nurse. He ran a large household and was on excellent terms with the Spanish Government. At that time Spain was swarming with secret agents and if you came across four foreigners playing cards you could wager that one was working for England, one for America, one for Soviet Russia and one for Germany.

"What can I do for you?" asked the general.

Gibraltar was to be blown up. Incredible! Fantastic! But true. And it almost came. off!

Gibraltar ......... For us the fortress was more than a nuisance. It commanded the entrance to the Mediterranean and our U-boats had to submerge as they passed this stronghold in order to avoid bombardment. In the narrows between the Spanish mainland and North Africa there was a dangerous underwater current. The German U-boats had therefore to suffer repeated losses at this spot.

"Technical information, " I replied.

"For example?"

"In Spanish Morocco British agents are operating secret transmitters. They are quite novel affairs. We should like to get hold of one intact."

"I'm sure that can be done," replied General Bernhard. "And what else do you want?"

"They've been installing magnetron and klystron tubes in electric armatures in British aircraft recently. So far we haven't been able to get hold of one. They are coupled with explosive charges, and if you try to dismantle them they explode. You often get allied aircraft making emergency landings here, don't you?"

'Yes," replied the general. "Yesterday a four-engined aircraft came down near Seville. I will arrange an opportunity for you to have a look at the engine." He smiled. "Well, if there is nothing else I can do for you"

Then Eisenhower opened his headquarters in Gibraltar to direct the war in North Africa. The Spaniards looked with hungry eyes at the rock fortress. The fall of Gibraltar! This was the dream of Germans, Italians and Spaniards alike. A direct attack was hopeless and was not even attempted but a daredevil plot was hatched out.

A man on the English Governor's staff was bribed. At incredible risk to his own skin, the man hid a time bomb beneath the coachwork of his Chief's Rolls Royce and got it past the sentry undetected. From this moment the assailants had six hours.

They acted with lightning speed. I would never have thought it possible that the attempt could have succeeded even so far. I watched with my hands metaphorically in my trouser pockets, as I had been told to, but I felt uneasy. If it succeeded it would be just as well for me not to have taken part in it. If it went wrong, I would have it on my conscience that I had not restrained the men involved. But the conscience of a spy was controlled from Berlin.

Vast quantities of munitions and supplies of explosive were stored in the underground caves of Gibraltar. If there should be an explosion there the entire fortress would, according to the experts, be blown sky high. The would-be assassins had now four hours. And they were lucky again. They broke through the second barrier. How they did it -:mains unknown to this day. Another hundred yards. Another hour. Above General Eisenhower was dealing with the day's affairs. Below the time bomb ticked steadily on.

Betrayed! It was all over! The bomb was found and rendered harmless. General Eisenhower went on with his deliberations. One man was hanged. Three men were condemned to life imprisonment. Otherwise all was quiet at Gibraltar.

Four weeks later I approached my superiors with a Gibraltar plan of my own. My project was not quite so desperate but it had greater chances of success. The matter was taken up and I was set to work an it. They were beginning to take notice of me. Suddenly 1 had a name and was not only a number. I was no longer an apprentice. I was being taken seriously. At that period in Berlin they were prepared to take any risk. Nothing was too crazy for them. Nothing was too foolhardy or too chancy not to be given serious consideration.

We were going around, so to speak, with hand-grenades in our pockets. If there was only a one per cent chance of success, we went ahead, investing our lives, our blood and our money in these wild projects. The war was going badly, and it was up to us, a few hundred men in M.I. to stop the rot with any means at our command. M.I. was also in a bad way. Gradually at first and then with one final stroke it was taken over by Amt VI - the Central Office of Reich Security, a secret department of the S.S., immediately under Hitler and furnished with unlimited powers. I received orders to report to Amt VI.

My leave-taking from M.I. was short and casual. I was asked one day to report at the Reich Security office in Tauentzienstrasse. During the same night bombs hailed down on West Berlin, and the building at the rear was destroyed. In this house a mouse-breeder had set up his menagerie; the animals made for freedom and rushed in the offices of Amt VI. On the following morning I had three dozen mice to greet me in my new official quarters.

I introduced myself to the Deputy Head of the Department, Dr. S., a man of medium build and nondescript appearance.

The offices of Amt VI were in a great barrack-like building on the Berkaer Strasse which had begun its career as a home of aged Jews. The front of the building faced some allotments; behind you could see straight inside a tenement building. In the yard was a bombproof bunker for the exclusive use of the officers of the Amt VI.

"Please sit down," said Dr. S. "We already know you, or rather, we know your work. You were in Spain ......... Ah well, we'll talk about that later."

He looked me over with fastidious distaste. I came from M.I. and for Amt VI that was no recommendation. This natural rivalry, which later developed also into a political rivalry between the two authorities - they both had exactly the same function - had even at this time assumed grotesque proportions. The agents were devoting more energy to watching, shadowing and bringing the other side into disrepute than to their own duties. The two departmental heads were Admiral Canaris (M.I.) and Brigadier Walter Schellenberg (Reich Security). After the attempted Putsch of July 20th, 1944, Canaris was arrested and later executed. The victor, Schellenberg, was imprisoned after the war in Landsberg, went later to Italy, embraced Catholicism and died a year ago in a monastery. I worked for both departments and knew their methods and their respective degrees of success. Canaris was a head with a fist and Schellenberg was a fist without a head.

"I think we'll send you straight off to Spain again," Dr. S. said. "We haven't many people with your experience...... You were a fair time there, weren't you? Have you any suggestions to make?"

I thought about my Gibraltar.

”Yes," I answered. "I can perhaps see a possibility that without too great expenditure of money and blood, the harbour of Gibraltar could be blown up."

He stood, offered me a cigarette, and paced up and down the room. "You must explain that to me in greater detail, my friend," he said.

"Very well," I replied. "In the bay of Algeciras there are, as a general rule, forty cargo ships lying at anchor. The mainland side of the bay belongs to Spain, and from that side we could start our men."

"What men?" Dr. S. interrupted

'I am thinking of frogmen like they're using in Italy at present. Half a dozen would be enough. 1 could smuggle them across the frontier disguised as entertainers. There's no difficulty about that at all. After all we can count on the Spaniards' cooperation in anything directed against Gibraltar."

"And how do you think your men can get to the ships unnoticed?" Dr. S. asked me.

"That's quite simple. We must start a mock U-boat attack at exactly the same time to divert the attention of the men in the harbour. Our frogmen would need to cover a stretch of only 200 yards in the water and they will manage that all right. After all, they'll be men with plenty of experience."

Dr. S. warmed to my plan, and later became positively fired with the idea. The whole of Amt VI was for it - except for one man and as he was so influential his full co-operations had to be enlisted before we could go ahead.

Unfortunately he disapproved of the plan for some reason unknown to me. It was just his department that would have been responsible for carrying out my project. He opposed it and later persuaded Schellenberg to drop it. I am still absolutely convinced that the assault on the bay of Algeciras would have succeeded.

"I will explain in detail. You can have everything you need, money, men, ships, aircraft. You will have every support. Operation Pelican has absolute priority. It must come before everything else. You are responsible for it to me alone, and 1 request that from this moment you work on it exclusively. It must be put in hand at the earliest possible moment."

This was typical of the inter-departmental confusion that existed throughout the war. Operation Gibraltar did not take place, but I hadn't got time to feel sore about it, as other more daring, more fantastic projects claimed my attention. We worked day and night. We received four times the normal rations and as many cigarettes and as much Schnapps as we could consume. Money was no object, but we didn't get anything for nothing.

I had quickly settled down in my new department, and the initial mistrust of me disappeared. One day I was summoned to the presence of the head of Department VIF, Sturmbannfuhrer L. While on my way to his office I was told that it was a very special and highly confidential affair. Everything of course was confidential. The death penalty for betrayal stood - even for betrayal through negligence.

"Are you pushed for time?" L. greeted me. "It's a long story I've got to discuss with you."

He gave instructions that no one was to be admitted to his office, "You have sailed through the Panama Canal, haven't you?" "

Yes," I replied. "Half a dozen times."

"And you can still picture it to yourself?" I still did not know what he wanted me to do.

"Now listen, " he said. "The American and British fleet can, as you know, change its dispositions at a moment's notice. That is to say, if the Americans on the Japanese front need reinforcing, they can throw in all their weight in the Pacific, but if we start something here in Europe they can call off the ships from there and fling them in against us."

"That's quite logical," I replied. "And there's nothing much to be done about it."

"But something can be done about it," he said. "Why is it that they can so quickly change their theatres of war? Why? 1 will tell you. It is because of the Panama Canal. If it weren't for the Panama Canal they'd have to sail round Cape Horn and lose valuable time. As things are they can do in days what would otherwise take weeks. Therefore, if we can blow up the Panama Canal, the Americans will put off their stroke for quite a time. You see what I am getting at?"

"Yes, of course. Every detail."

"Splendid!" replied L. "You must turn your knowledge to good account. You are my man. From now on you are in charge of Operation Pelican, which is something the world has never seen before, you can depend on that!"

EDITOR NOTE - Operation PELICAN will be explained in detail later on, but the gist of it is quite clear.

At least if ERICH is trying to blow up the Panama Canal, he can't get too involved with lady spies - or can he? More in KTB #153 next month. This is great history, first person from a Member who was part of this history - helped write it actually.

"And how do you propose to blow up the Panama Canal?" I asked.

"That's your affair," he said. "You can have anything you need from us. Just see that you get on with it. It must succeed!"

Spy for Germany

Chapter 3: Training as a Spy in Germany (KTB # 151)
Chapter 4: Spain and My First Mission (KTB # 152)
Chapter 7: To America by Submarine (KTB # 156)
Chapter 8: The Landing in America (KTB # 157)
Chapter 9: Tricked by Billy in NYC (KTB # 158)
Chapter 10 (I): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 159)
Chapter 10 (II): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 160)
Chapter 11 (I): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 161)
Chapter 11 (II): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 162)
Chapter 12 (I): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 163)
Chapter 12 (II): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 164)
Chapter 13 (I): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 165)
Chapter 13 (II): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 166)
Chapter 13 (III): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 167)
Chapter 14 (I): In the Shadow of the Hangman (KTB # 168)
Chapter 14 (II): In the Shadow of the Hangman (KTB # 169)
Chapter 15 (I): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 170)
Chapter 15 (II): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 172)
Chapter 15 (III): Sentenced to Death (KTB # 173)
Chapter 16 (I): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 174)
Chapter 16 (II): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 175)
Chapter 16 (III): Sized Up by the Hangman (KTB # 176)
Chapter 17 (I): Germany's Capitulation Saves My Life (KTB # 177)
Chapter 17 (II): Germany's Capitulation Saves My Life (KTB # 178)
Chapter 18: The Final Chapter (KTB # 179)