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. Gimpel was next chosen to attend a spy-school in Hamburg. His final exam was to infiltrate German-occupied The Hague, where he first met the American malcontent and traitor William Colepaugh, an unstable drifter who would ultimately betray him.
Operation Elster
Gimpel and Colepaugh were transported from Kiel to the U.S. by the, landing at Frenchman Bay in the Gulf of Maine on 29 November 1944. Their mission was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort and transmit it back to Germany using an 80 wattradio transmitter 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, taking US$48,000 of the currency they had brought and spending a month partying and carousing with local women. After spending $1,500 in less than a month, Colepaugh visited an old schoolfriend and asked for help to turn himself in to the FBI, hoping for immunity. The FBI was already searching for German agents following the sinking of a Canadian ship a few miles off the Maine coastline and suspicious sightings reported by local residents. The FBI interrogated Colepaugh, who revealed everything, enabling them to track down Gimpel.
Prisoner of war
After Gimpel's capture, the spies were handed over to U.S. 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 delayed by the unexpected death of the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt due to a custom not to hold any executions during a period of state mourning. After the war ended, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Gimpel was sent to Alcatraz, where he played chess with Machine Gun Kelly. Gimpel was paroled in 1955, after serving 10 years in prison and returned home to West Germany. He would later make his home in South America.
Post prison life
Gimpel was the last person to be tried before a U.S. military tribunal in the 2nd World War. 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. 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". The 100-year-old Gimpel died in São Paulo, Brazil on 3 September 2010.
Film
Erich Gimpel's career as a spy was dramatized in the 1956 filmSpy for Germany. The actor Martin Held played the leading role.
