Becoming Agent Zigzag
Eddie Chapman was arrested soon after he landed in Britain. He immediately accepted an offer from British intelligence to become a double agent. It was an easy choice, since the alternative would have been a hangman’s noose. Given the code name “Agent Zigzag”, a plan was concocted to fake the bomber factory’s destruction. It convinced the Germans of Chapman’s effectiveness, and raised him high in their esteem. From then on, Chapman’s radio reports, carefully fed him by British intelligence, were treated as gospel by the Germans. He was recalled and given a hero’s welcome by the Germans. Soon after D-Day, he was awarded an Iron Cross and sent back to Britain to report on the effectiveness of the German V-1 and V-2 rocket strikes on London.
Under British control, Chapman sent the Germans inflated figures about deaths from their rockets, and deceived them about their actual impact points. That led the Germans to shift their aim points. As a result, they tended to fall on lower population density parts of London, with correspondingly fewer casualties. After the war, Chapman continued his colorful life. He became a smuggler, moved to the colonies, and started a farm. In violation of the Official Secrets Act, he published his exploits in The Eddie Chapman Story (1953), Free Agent: Further Adventures of Eddie Chapman (1955), and The Real Eddie Chapman Story (1966). Collectively, those books formed the basis of a 1967 movie about WWII espionage, Triple Cross.
