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History’s Greatest Crime Sprees

Khalid Elhassan April 15, 2021 36 min

Italian mafiosi rounded up by the Fascists. Okruchy Historii

3. The English Jailbird Who Went on a WWII Crime Spree

Career criminal Harold Cole (1906 – 1946) was an English jailbird who served during WWII in the British Army, the French Resistance – and double-crossed both by working for the Germans. Then he betrayed the Germans by working for the Americans at war’s end to hunt down Nazis. During his extraordinary wartime career, which combined espionage with crime, Cole lied and conned his way across France, joined the Nazis, and snitched on the Resistance, resulting in the arrest and execution of many.

By the time he was a teenager, Cole was already a burglar, check forger and embezzler. By 1939, he had served multiple stints behind bars in various prisons. When WWII began, he lied about his criminal history to enlist in the British Army and was sent to France. Promoted to sergeant, he was arrested for stealing money from the Sergeants’ Mess to spend on hookers. He became a POW in May 1940, when the Germans captured the guardhouse where he was jailed.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.