Customer Reviews

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Over and over through the years as I've read books about real life spies ("Comrade" Kim Philby and Sidney Reilly among others) I've been struck by how much more amazing these non-fiction stories were than those concocted as would-be pulp fiction thrillers. I've also been struck at how all the best spies were anything but good people, and they shared traits of cruelty and self-love that bordered on sociopathic narcissism. Ben Macintyre's biography of Eddie Chapman gives us a man who continues that dubious tradition. This page-turner is fact-filled and well-written and the life it tells of outdoes anything fiction has cranked out in quite a while. It's a very enjoyable read that presented the history of someone I personally had never heard of before I was introduced to him in this book.

Eddie Chapman was no James Bond or even a Sidney Reilly, but he was one of the boldest, most brazen con men ever to serve a nation or a cause, and in so doing he found some redemption from the wrongs of his earlier life. From his days as a roguish charmer who infiltrated high society and first infatuated and later blackmailed rich women in the most callous and base ways imaginable, this safecracker, thief and extortionist found himself sprung by the Germans early in the war when he was then serving a fifteen-year sentence in an English prison in the Channel Islands.

The charismatic Chapman, as liked by his German liberators as by those who'd known him back home, was then recruited by the Nazis as a spy who agreed to do their bidding and sabotage a British aircraft factory in Hertfordshire. He parachuted back onto his native soil during the busy Christmas season of 1942, only to prove his ultimate loyalty by going to the British and offering to in turn spy on the Germans. Ultimately faking the attack in Hertfordshire and returning to Germany through neutral Portugal, Chapman concocted a plan in which he would assassinate Adolph Hitler at a political rally. Although this plan obviously never came to fruition, Chapman bravely continued his double agency thru to the war's conclusion, an astounding feat of skill, luck and sheer courage all the more amazing considering the short lifespan of most other double agents.

So skilled was he at his falsehoods that Chapman was befriended by a number of well-placed Nazi personnel, and was decorated for his service to the Third Reich. Eventually after a posting in German-held Norway, late in the war Chapman was again smuggled into the United Kingdom where in his most noble deed he saved countless lives by concocting false reports to the Germans on the accuracy of their V1 and V2 rockets. In his communiqués Chapman claimed these flying bombs were landing beyond their intended targets, causing the Luftwaffe to re-adjust them to locations the British deemed less populated and therefore safer.

Incredibly after this the gifted liar and actor Chapman returned yet again to Nazi-controlled Norway, where he continued to be of service to his government in London, this time by turning over misleading information to the by-then moribund German military.

Chapman's life was one of amazing luck, daring, and amorality, but his story is also one of a man who betrayed nearly every friend who ever trusted him, and who ruined many lives, even as his service record shows he saved many others. He went on to not only survive the Second World War but live to old age, profiting from an MI5 pension and from the proceeds of the book and film royalties to his remarkable story. Macintyre skillfully takes us into the deeds and era of this confidence man turned double agent, and in doing so has given his readers a fine work of non-fiction that is a pleasure to complete.

This highly entertaining and utterly gripping book is the true story of Eddie Chapman, a British petty criminal who ended up serving as an spy for both England and Germany during World War 2, and who was hailed as a hero by both sides. "Agent Zigzag" is the name that he was given by the British authorities who were aware of his status as a double agent and used him to feed misinformation to the Germans.

Chapman's story is so full of adventure and ripe with coincidence that would be unbelievable if it were a novel. The story of how he comes to be an agent for the Germans is in itself worthy of a movie, taking us from a bank robbery in Scotland to prison - and eventual freedom - on the island of Jersey and then incarceration in the worst of Parisian prisons.

Chapman emerges as a kind of James Bond character: a handsome and charming rogue with a penchant for adventure, for gambling, fine food and fast women. He is a fascinating mass of contradictions: utterly loyal to his friends even as he betrays them, a hopeless criminal who develops into a resourceful spy. But even the minor characters leap off the pages in this tale. The photographs are also well chosen and add to the story.

Ben MacIntyre has amassed a vast amount of detail about not only Chapman, but his associates in both the German and English secret services. There is lots of interesting information about how those secret services functioned and what they achieved during the war. I was particularly riveted by the details about his training in spy techniques by the Nazis. However the book never gets bogged down in historical facts. Like the best biographies, it reads almost like fiction. I highly recommend this book.

Ah, the story of Eddie Chapman; long awaited and finally produced (actually two of them on the same day, but the thrust of "Zigzag" by Booth ruled it out for me.) I had read Masterman's "The Double-Cross System in the War from 1939 to 1945" which gave Chapman six pages, seen the movie "Triple-Cross", and wondered what the story really was. The movie bore no resemblance to the truth as usual, but finding out the truth in spy stories is always a realm where educated guess and conjecture must fill in the frustrating blanks. Chapman's story rings true in every respect and well worth the read over the 2-4 nights it provides.

Earlier reviewers have exalted or condemned Chapman, so allow me to state that essentially all spies/agents have a screw loose and a yen for danger, excitement and feeling special. They operate with governmental assistance well above the law -- a heady role that must in itself be its own reward. Few if any spies for western democracies have been justly rewarded for their endeavors, as such rewards are generally denied under the rubric of maintaining security. Most ex-agents are relegated to obscurity and penury while some are "terminated with extreme prejudice" (killed) if they are considered as security risks. In this respect, working for a totalitarian government like that in the old USSR has its rewards, as they tend to resettle ex-agents in government positions. There is something about a democracy that makes a spy untrustworthy to the public and unworthy of its respect. As such, Chapman was no exception.

Agent handlers or case officers are usually like Ryde, Chapman's last British handler -- bureaucrats playing it safe and willing to sacrifice their agents. The agents themselves are often despised for their courage and exciting lives -- things well beyond the capabilities of their handlers. In order to be successful, an agent must outwit the enemy and fend off bungled, misguided and often hostile actions by his "friendly" handlers. In Chapman's case he was under suspicion from both sides and faced dangerous situations that would have been insurmountable for a man with less larceny in his heart. That's what makes his case so extraordinary and improbable. But true.

Yes, Chapman was a cad and a career criminal, but many agents feature a dark side. So do many heroes. The difference is that the agent operates outside the law to be successful, and the best training for such activity is survival in a criminal world. Ask any under-cover police officer.

Other reviewers have made an issue about what Chapman accomplished. Few spies other than Burgess, Philby, Hollis, Alger Hiss, Ted Hall, the Rosenbergs, or Penkovskiy make a lasting difference -- even Richard Sorge's impact is disputed from the Soviet archives. Intelligence is made up from a number of small fragments or information, often obtained at great personal cost by unknown sources. And I'm not talking about a case officer like Valerie Plame who becomes a media darling without taking risks. Chapman was an real agent who risked his life repeatedly, made some contributions, and that should be enough. If the reader wants a story with great successes, he will have to look to stories of those traitors listed above who had unusual positions of access to information of particular value to another country. Not every agent saves the world, but many taken together just might. FYI, I was disappointed to see the author use the trendy term "mole", coined by John Le Carre, instead of the proper term "resident agent" that was in use until the 1970s.

With respect to the danger Chapman faced in Germany, it should be remembered that a number of individuals were constantly seeking to discredit or expose him, and if any single one of them had been successful, his life would have been forfeit after a period of torture. I suspect that none of the complaining reviewers would be willing to undertake such risks. Perhaps this is the "Mission Impossible" syndrome whereby we have become conditioned to expect truly impossible feats as requirements to hold our attention.

The author takes great pains to limit his presentation to facts that are confirmed through multiple sources rather than relying on Chapman. No doubt we all would have wanted more of the story, but with the available sources exhausted by this book, we will have to fall back on our own educated guesses and conjecture.

Read the book -- you'll learn a lot about how human intelligence is obtained or not obtained. The author does a good job of research and writing, and if the outcomes are not what we would want -- well, then, that is our problem.

What a pleasure to sit down with 'Agent Zigzag'. It makes you never want to pick up another spy novel in your life, so extraordinary and particular are the experiences of Zigzag, aka, Eddie Chapman. It's the little things that convince. Without giving anything away, who knew that the British Intelligence services wasted time looking for 'Bobby the Pig' when Bobby the pig was simply Chapman's pet pig mentioned when he was learning to send coded messages? Mcintyre's account occasionally slips towards mocking German Intelligence who certainly had their fair share of successes, but that takes little away from the sheer thrill of following Chapman back and forth between England, France and Germany. Certainly to this reader, it was an intriguing mixture of psychological study and page turning adventure.

Eric Chapman is a young career criminal. He's sitting in a jail in Jersey when the Nazis take over in World War II. Eric gets the Germans interested in his proposal to become a spy for them, and is whisked off to an Abwehr training camp in occupied France. The Germans question his loyalty to their cause, but after a long period of testing and interrogation they decide to trust him. What they don't know is that Mr. Chapman is a sociopath who is using them to keep out of jail. He is parachuted back into England where he immediately tells British intelligence that he has been sent over as a German spy. So now he becomes a double agent.

Eric is a charming fellow, and develops friendships in both countries' intelligence services. It never bothers him that he is betraying people. It also doesn't bother him that he is involved in serious romances with women in England and Norway. He manages to convince his German minders that he has blown up a British airplane factory, and then makes his way back to France where he joins his German friends and has a great time before being sent to Norway.

While in retrospect Mr. Chapman doesn't achieve an awful lot as a spy, he does enjoy his new life. The Germans are fond of him as are most of his British minders. He has a fiancé in England, but thinks nothing of carrying on another romance in Norway. He even engages in a few criminal activities while spying. When he finally is dismissed from the intelligence service he happily goes back to his life of crime. He found himself in court from time to time, but never was convicted of anything. As an honorary crime correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph he warned readers to steer clear of people like him.

You can read this book as history, but I think you will find it even more interesting as entertainment. In real life people warmed to this engaging crook, and you develop some affection for him while reading this book. Just don't buy a used car from him.

I've just literally finished this book 5 minutes ago and my first thought was to put a rave review on amazon.com.

What's amazing to me is that having read many books on WWII, this is the first time I've ever read about this double agent. I suppose the Military Secrets act had something to do with it, but surely that's run out after all this time. Possibility the "notoriety" of the subject had something to do with it too.

Here's my rundown of it:

1) The story. The exploits of this man is just absolutely amazing. Not amazing in the derring do exploits a la James Bond, but just amazing in how he pulled it off and his experiences as a whole. I mean that he never had to punch out 5 sentries, stick a bomb under a general's car and then jump off a bridge to escape, but just what he did in the war. Sitting in a comfy chair it's hard to realize in those days how dangerous all of it was. He could have been hauled off for a little fingernail pulling from both sides. I won't summarize the story, which you can get from wiki, but it read like a well written novel.

2) The writing. I think Ben MacIntyre did a great job. The book was easy to read, easy to follow and kept my interest. For a few hours this week, he brought me back into 40's Britain. And I think he did a good job of presenting Chapman, more than that I think he did a fair and unbiased job of presenting Chapman, which was more important. He didn't idolize Chapman, nor did he throw him to the dogs. You got the good with the bad and no punches pulled.

3) Summary. If you are a WWII buff at all, or any kind of WWII spy buff, you need to read this book. Here and there I'd read about the hapless German agents in Britain, but this is really the first British agent I'd read about. A must buy for me, a 10/10. Tom Hanks is supposed to do a film on it, I look forward to it.

"Agent Zig Zag" is a far better book than "Zig Zag," the other book about Eddie Chapman, the extraordinary WWII double agent with loyalties to the Brits. However, for all the hype about these two books, neither is a "thriller," per se, and both tell what is mostly an interesting (sometimes fascinating) "period piece" story about the unlikely thief-criminal-womanizer-sociopath who became a famous -- if barely trusted -- spy for Britain. "Agent Zig Zag" is more of a psychological accounting of Chapman than anything, and yet the story does give a very well crafted "insider" view of WWII, a perspective that few other novels or books about WWII espionage ever have done -- and I've read most of them! One is left with a (though possibly quite biased) clear insight into the workings of the Abwehr and also its counter part, the British Intelligence Service. How anything ever got done by either is a small miracle. Eddie Chapman, the spy in question, is thoroughly unlikeable and wholly unsympathetic. One can admire his heroics, his risk-taking, and his sheer "bon vivant" style of being a spy and of living his life in general. He was smart, that I can give him. My criticism of the other book ("Zig Zag") is tempered by this book. "Zig Zag's" author fawns over Eddie Chapman and makes you feel guilty if you don't agree with the author's over-wrought sense of how the Brits never honored Chapman's achievements -- in other words, those "ungrateful Brits." Here, in "Agent Zig Zag" with this author, you are free to decide that for yourself. Both books, however, are flawed from this standpoint: NEITHER book spells out in clear form EXACTLY what it is that Eddie Chapman actually DID -- over the course of his engagement by both the Germans and the Brits other than the fact that he did NOT GET CAUGHT by the Germans -- to really and truly help or assist in the outcome of the war!! The people who deserve credit for whatever it is Chapman accomplished are his team of British handlers (and to a lesser extent his German handlers), those very smart men who designed his activities, who created the deceptions and who protected him from his own self-destructive ways. Most of the time, as I understood the story, whether Eddie was in Madrid, Paris, Oslo, Berlin, Lisbon or London, he lived a high and rather easy life of booze, women, and debauchery. Very little of his character is admirable and almost none of his behavior stands the test of devotion to duty or to people. He really was a jerk. He betrayed nearly everyone he ever met. He made false promises to at least 3 women who loved him, whereupon he abandoned them for other women. He remained married to one of them, Betty Farmer, throughout his life, but that marriage lasted only because Farmer did not abandon him! Today, he would be diagnosed as a psychopath or sociopath, an angry and unpredictable abuser, and alcoholic, a man with little conscience and one who rarely learned from experience -- someone who relied on his charm and false social skills to get what he wanted -- usually money, women, booze and high risk adventures -- for the thrill of it. So, what you get with this book is clear insight into the espionage scene in WWII and an in-depth psychological profile of a thoroughly despicable man, who may have helped the allied cause as a result of his recruitment to play off both sides against each other for his own fanatical need for adventure. But the question remains in my mind: just what indeed did he do -- for either side? The answer is not found in this book, no matter how well-written it is. I truly liked the book.

AZ is non-fiction as Hollywood blockbuster: a bizarre but true tale of thievery, spycraft, and high adventure. Judging from the sources consulted BM gets the story right -- at least, as right as anyone is likely to get it. And what a story is! By book's end I was not sure how many parts (un)common criminal, how many parts patriot Chapman was. But whether Chapman is to be admired or reviled is beside the point. AZ, and others like him, are rightly subjects of fascination. BM does a terrific job of illuminating this obscure bit of history.

I bought the hardcover of this book several years ago, and for one reason or other, I got around to reading it only a couple of days ago. Once I had begun though, I couldn't stop reading, because this World War II tale about a minor London villain-turned-double-agent is utterly riveting.

Of all the books on espionage that I've read (and I am addicted to them), this one differs from the others in that instead of concentrating upon the highly-educated upper echelons of SIS and MI5, it focuses upon the running of a low-level but important cog in the intelligence wheel. By concentrating on the running of Eddie Chapman (self-educated behind bars), "Agent Zigzag" gives us a penetrating look into the workings of the British XX (double-cross) system of turning German agents into British agents, and covering their activities by means of ULTRA (the secret cracking of the German codes)--or using the double agents to cover ULTRA, depending on how one looks at the problem.

As with all spy narratives, that of "Agent Zigzag" is ambiguous. What were Eddie Chapman's motives? Purely mercenary? To save his own skin? Eventually patriotic? The ambiguity carries over to his handlers, both in MI5 and in the Abwehr. Were these organizations' agents who risked their lives merely pawns in a life-and-death chess game? Were they expendable? Did promises made to them become negotiable, depending upon which way the winds of war were blowing? What part did class play in decisions affecting their lives? For that matter, did either the British or German intelligence agencies concerned hold a monopoly on "goodness" or "badness"?

These are only a few of the questions that Mr. McIntyre raises in a book that not only kept me reading but also kept me thinking about it afterwards.

I have an acquaintance who kept nudging me to get this book, so I finally did. WOW! An enthralling read from cover to cover. We are fortunate to have this brilliantly written chronicle of Eddie Chapman's outrageous WW II wartime activities.

We get to know all the characters and follow as their lives intertwine in this thrilling, almost unbelievable tale of romance, bravado, larceny, more romance, deceit, courage, tactics, and dare I say.... even more romance (yes Eddie liked the ladies!).

This book brings into sharp focus just how both the British and German intelligence corps went about their business of espionage during WW II, and gives a newfound appreciation for the spy game and how it's played.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.