Mick Hartley

This is a remarkable story whichever way you look at it:

A British secret agent who offered to blow up Adolf Hitler at the height of the Second World War was dissuaded from carrying out the assassination by MI5, according to newly released wartime archives.

The offer to kill Hitler in a suicide mission was made by Eddie Chapman, a professional criminal and safe-breaker who was trained by the Nazis as a spy and went on to become one of Britain’s most successful double agents, codenamed Agent Zigzag.

Chapman was serving a sentence in Jersey prison for burglary when the Nazis invaded the Channel Islands in June 1940. He was recruited by the Abwehr, German military intelligence, and parachuted into Britain in December 1941. He immediately defected to MI5, the British security service.

Under interrogation by MI5, the 27-year-old Chapman said that he wanted to return to Germany as a double agent, and then kill the Führer by exploding a bomb at a Nazi rally.

Files recently declassified by MI5 reveal an extraordinary conversation between Chapman and Ronnie Reed, his case officer. Reed pointed out that any attempt to kill Hitler would be suicidal: “Whether or not you succeeded, you would be liquidated immediately,” he said.

“Ah, but what a way out,” Chapman replied.

Chapman explained that his German spymaster, an Abwehr officer he knew only as “Dr Graumann”, had promised to take him to a Nazi rally if he completed his mission in Britain successfully, and place him “in the first or second row”, near Hitler’s podium, if necessary by dressing him in the uniform of a senior German officer.

“He believes I am pro-Nazi,” Chapman told Reed. “I believe Dr Graumann will keep his promise. Then I will assassinate Hitler . . . with my knowledge of explosives and incendiary material, it should be possible.”

Reed was convinced that Chapman’s offer was serious, and reported back to his MI5 superiors: “He can think of no better way of leaving this life than to have his name prominently featured throughout the world’s press, and to be immortalised in history books for all time.” Reed believed Chapman was also motivated by an intense patriotism, and a desire to make amends for his criminal past.

The offer would certainly have been brought to the attention of Winston Churchill — the Prime Minister took a personal interest in the Zigzag case and asked to kept informed of developments — but for reasons that have never been fully explained, the opportunity to kill Hitler was rejected.

Was the idea rejected because Chapman was considered unreliable? The word spiv does come to mind when you look at his portrait. Or maybe the idea of a suicide bomber seemed so outlandish that they couldn’t take it seriously. If only they knew….

Update: Extracts from Ben Macintyre’s forthcoming book “Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman, Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy” in today’s (Wednesday) Times – plus this letter from Peter Kinsley:

The revelation from MI5 files that Eddie Chapman offered to blow himself up with Adolf Hitler is a good story (report, Jan 9). Eddie would have loved the publicity. His old friends said he should have worn a T-shirt emblazoned: “I am a Spy for MI5”.
As a journalist, I knew Chapman. The last time I met him he described how he had missed a fortune in ermine (to be used in Coronation robes) during a furs robbery, because he thought it was rabbit. He also said he successfully convinced a German au pair girl that he was a Post Office telephone engineer, and robbed the wall safe. He had also been visited by an income tax inspector, and produced a doctor’s certificate that he had a weak heart and could not be “caused stress”. Ten minutes later, he drove, in a Rolls-Royce, past the inspector waiting in the rain at a bus stop, and gave him a little wave.