Operation Elster

William Colepaugh (L) and Erich Gimpel (R), following their arrest in December 1944.

Operation Elster ("Magpie" in English) was a German espionage mission intended to gather intelligence on U.S. military and technology facilities during World War II. The mission commenced in September 1944 with two Nazi agents sailing from Kiel, Germany on the U-1230 and coming ashore in Maine on November 29, 1944.[1] The agents were William Colepaugh, an American-born defector to Germany, and Erich Gimpel, an experienced German intelligence operative. They spent nearly a month living in New York City, expending large amounts of cash on entertainment, but accomplishing none of their mission goals.

Colepaugh quickly lost his commitment to espionage, and hoping to avoid the death penalty for treason, turned himself in to the FBI and betrayed his partner Gimpel, effectively ending the operation in late December 1944. In February 1945, the two agents were convicted of espionage by a military court and sentenced to death. At the time, the military tribunal which named American citizens in a conspiracy to commit treason was only the third of its kind ever held in the history of the US.[2] When the war ended, their sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by President Harry S. Truman. Gimpel was paroled in 1955, and Colepaugh in 1960.

Operation Elster was one of only two times the Germans landed agents on American shores by submarine during the war.[3] Despite a number of claims and speculations that the mission was intended to sabotage the Manhattan Project, no supportive evidence exists in the official investigative records.[4][1][5]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference KAHN2000 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gronlund2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Francis MacDonnell (2 November 1995). Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front. Oxford University Press. pp. 153–. ISBN 978-0-19-987991-5.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Miller2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Adams2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).