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The Ace of Spies and Other Significant Espionage Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 20, 2019 33 min

Detective - Mystery — Throughout history, spies have aroused mixed feelings of fear, loathing, and admiration. Mixed Matches

19. Foiling Hitler’s Vengeance Weapons

Eddie Chapman next to his Rolls Royce after the war, and one of his decorations. War History Online

Eddie Chapman 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 V1 and V2 rocket strikes on London. Under British control, Chapman sent the Germans inflated figures about deaths from their rockets, while deceiving them about their actual impact points. That led the Germans to shift their aim points, with the result that they tended to fall on lower population density parts of London, with correspondingly fewer casualties.

After the war, Chapman continued his colorful life. He went into smuggling, moved to the colonies, started a farm, and in violation of the Official Secrets Act, got his exploits published 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, Triple Cross.

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.