Items related to Agent 146 Lib/E: The True Story of a Nazi Spy in America
"A spy has feelings like any other man. As you will see from my story, he falls in love, gives way to the same passions, has moments of black despair and great jubilation. But, unlike other men, he walks hand in hand with fear...one error of judgment can lead him to the scaffold."--from the book
September 1944. Germany is burning at both ends, and the Third Reich is crumbling. Word has drifted back to Berlin that the Americans are testing a secret weapon of unbelievable destruction, a weapon that will win the war. The Fuhrer himself calls upon agent 146 in a last-ditch effort to sabotage America's atomic program. Two months later, a German U-boat surfaces off the coast of Maine, and a fascinating game of cat and mouse ensues as the FBI attempts to close in on the elusive Nazi spy.
Never before published in the United States, Agent 146 is a spellbinding memoir of espionage under the Third Reich. With fascinating accounts of the Nazi's plans to sabotage the Allies--from sending in commandos to capture Gibraltar to blowing up the Panama Canal--this is a must-read for any World War II history buff.
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About the Author:
From Publishers Weekly:
Erich Gimpel was recruited by the Third Reich to spy on America. He was caught in New York in January 1945 and sentenced to hang but was given a last-minute reprieve. He served ten years in the Fort Leavenworth and Alcatraz prisons then returned home to Germany where he wrote his memoir.
What is it like to pass yourself off as an ordinary citizen in an enemy state for nefarious purposes? After September 11, the problem of "sleepers" has made this question all too urgent, which may be why Thomas Dunne is issuing the first U.S. edition of this riveting 1957 memoir. Gimpel's WWII mission in the U.S.-to learn about the Manhattan Project and, if necessary, destroy factories related to it-took place late in the war, when Germany's defeat looked increasingly inevitable. His co-infiltrator was an untrustworthy American Germanophile, William Colepaugh. Gimpel's "deliberately unsentimental" narrative is exemplary in its unfussy clarity (while also mirroring the amoral, cipherlike personality that permitted him to succeed so well at espionage). Much of the book makes for breathless reading-his plan to destroy the Panama Canal,his 46-day U-boat voyage across the Atlantic, his clandestine entry into the U.S., his suspicion-fraught dealings with the unreliable Colepaugh in New York, his furtive love affair with an American woman unaware of his true identity, right up to his arrest by the FBI. His account of interrogation, trial and incarceration is no less compelling. The passages describing his scheduled execution read like something out of Poe, and the most remarkable aspect of the book is perhaps the improbable deferral of his execution with only hours to go. His sentence commuted to life imprisonment, Gimpel was paroled in the 1950s and died in Germany in 1996. Anyone with the remotest interest in WWII or espionage should find this memoir exciting reading.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBlackstone Publishing
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0786184906
- ISBN 13 9780786184903
- BindingAudio CD
- Rating
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