Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story Timewatch

This programme contains some strong language

On a December night in 1942,

a lone German aircraft approached the coast of England.

Inside, an enemy spy waited for the signal to jump.

He carried a secret wireless, a gun, 12 detonators

and a suicide pill.

His mission on behalf of Nazi Germany

had been authorised at the highest levels of the Third Reich.

His codename was Agent Fritz.

But Fritz was not German.

He was British.

His real name was Eddie Chapman

and he landed in a field here in a remote corner of East Anglia.

He was a crook, a womaniser, a con man and a sort of hero.

He was perhaps the most extraordinary spy in British history.

Within hours of landing, he would defect to the British,

and become a double agent...

Agent Zigzag.

And he had to do something like that, he just didn't want to sit quiet.

It was the excitement and nobody else had done it and he would.

He was an extremely clever seducer.

He seduced the Germans and he also seduced lots of women as well,

so he's really quite a remarkable chap.

It was probably the love of her life.

She met the man she considered her dream prince, I guess.

If the Germans had found out about the story then both probably would have been dead.

TRANSLATION:

Of all London's pre-war gangsters, Eddie Chapman was in a league of his own.

He never used violence and he never carried a gun.

But he loved blowing things up.

Especially safes.

His speciality was robbing Odeon Cinemas.

There's the big one in Swiss Cottage. I did that one. I did them alone.

I looked around and I found a bag.

I knew that the cleaners came on at six in the morning.

I thought, "I've got to get out before they come in."

Chapman hit the Swiss Cottage Odeon in London in September 1938,

having spent the night hiding in the gents'.

He had just minutes to get out and get to safety.

This was the life Chapman loved - fast, furious and dangerous.

He was already wanted for safe breaking, embezzlement and burglary.

So far he hadn't been caught.

At that time, all the old dears are going for office cleaning. It was full of them.

And I had this bag on my knees.

And I saw them all looking at it and I thought, "What the hell are they looking at?"

And I turned the bag round

and in white letters that big it had "Odeon Cinema Ltd".

It was the longest journey I ever did.

In the great tradition of retired British crooks, Eddie Chapman

lived out his last years in Spanish-speaking sunny climes.

Even as an old man, he never lost his taste for fast cars,

fast women and fast living.

Before he died in 1997, he was interviewed by the BBC

in the Canary Islands about his life as a double agent.

But the Official Secrets Act prevented it from being broadcast.

MI5 has since declassified the Zigzag files,

allowing Chapman to tell his story for the first time.

I was actually spawned in the slums of the North East coast.

And my father drank quite heavily

and I decided I was going to get out of it completely.

I'd reached my 17th birthday and, er,

applied to join the Guards.

Chapman didn't last long.

He quickly deserted and headed for the bright lights of Soho...

home to London's criminal underworld.

By the age of 25, Chapman was one of the most wanted men in the country.

His forte was blowing safes.

There's the thrill and the excitement of it.

Are you going to strike a bonanza or strike nothing?

I mean, the one thing we had was money.

Whenever we ran out, we used to go and blow another one.

There were girls, fast cars and as much champagne as a man could drink.

Eddie was a very attractive looking man.

You know - six foot one or two, handsome, always well dressed.

And women used to throw themselves at Eddie.

He had something extra that women liked.

Wine, women and song - he certainly liked them all.

By the spring of 1939,

Chapman was wanted for more than 40 counts of burglary.

London was getting a little hot.

So, throwing a bag stuffed with gelignite into his car,

Chapman headed north.

His target was the Edinburgh Co-op.

But things didn't go to plan.

Squad cars came in from everywhere. Bang!

I opened the car door, jumped out, and ran out, a bloody great overcoat on,

and I tripped and the whole lot pounced, and we were done.

Despite facing 40 counts of burglary,

Chapman managed to get bail.

Which he promptly jumped.

Pausing only to pick up his latest girlfriend, Betty Farmer,

he caught a plane to the safety of Jersey in the Channel Islands.

The next stop would be France and a boat to South America.

Comfortably settled at the Hotel de la Plage,

Chapman and Betty sat down to a leisurely Sunday lunch.

The couple were tucking into dessert when Chapman looked up

to see two burly policemen approaching the table.

He rose from his sherry trifle, kissed Betty one last time

and jumped through the window...

Which was closed.

He pounded off down the beach, with the police in hot pursuit.

But his luck finally ran out.

The judge showed no mercy.

Chapman was sentenced to two years.

After that, he faced another 20 years back on the mainland.

I was in the punishment wing. Alone.

Sometimes I only got the bread and water, and this went on for weeks.

My weight shot down from about 12 stone to about nine.

But outside the prison walls, Europe was falling apart.

Chapman was still serving his sentence, when the world went to war.

In June 1940, the Germans invaded the Channel Islands -

the only part of Britain to find itself under Nazi occupation.

One of the warders said to me, "The Germans have invaded."

Christ, you know, I didn't even know there was a war on.

To an opportunist like Chapman, the invasion offered an opening.

He wrote a letter to the German commandant in Jersey,

and made him an offer.

I didn't fancy doing 20 years. That was what worried me, basically.

I thought, "I've got to do something."

So without any set scheme, I volunteered to work for the Germans.

I did this because I had this crazy idea I could pull this off.

Months passed. Chapman was moved from one prison to another

and from Jersey to mainland France.

And still there was no response to his offer.

Then he was suddenly taken from his cell

and found himself face to face with two German officers.

They said, "We've come to see you about your application to join us."

I stank like a fucking polecat!

They had their interview, I answered all their questions

and explained why I wanted to join them, that if the British ever

invaded I'd be doing 20 years and I'd much prefer to work for them.

So that was my freedom from prison.

Within hours of his interview, Chapman found himself on a train,

sitting in a First Class compartment.

But what was he thinking?

Had he really thrown his lot in with the Germans?

Or did he always intend to double-cross them, as he later claimed?

Or was this simply a way to get out of jail

and perhaps make some cash on the side?

His destination was a charming French manor house

near Nantes in western France.

This was to be his home for the next three months.

Chapman was met at the door by a distinguished figure wearing a pinstriped suit,

who welcomed him warmly in perfect English.

He looked like a prosperous city banker.

In fact, Stephan von Groening was a decorated First World War veteran

who now ran the most important spy school in Nazi-occupied Europe.

He had personally selected Chapman for training as a German agent

because Chapman was exactly what the Germans now needed.

Up until this time, German intelligence operations in Britain had been a spectacular failure.

Every one of their spies had been caught.

The Germans HAD to find a spy - any spy -

who could actually do some spying.

Chapman was the perfect choice. He was English and therefore invisible.

He had good reason to loathe the British authorities.

And he was rather good at blowing things up.

Von Groening said, "You're going on a course now of espionage,

"code-work and sabotage."

But before his training began, Chapman needed a codename.

Stephan von Groening knew that the British routinely referred to all Germans as "Fritz".

And so Eddie Chapman duly became Agent Fritz.

For the next three months, Fritz's life followed a set routine.

Four hours of Morse code practice in the morning,

followed by an excellent lunch and an afternoon siesta.

Later in the day, there were lessons in sabotage

and the opportunity to practice his speciality...

I was taught about seven different formulas.

If you'd done it wrong, you blew your fucking self to pieces.

There was also parachute instruction...

the best way to get an agent into England.

On Chapman's second jump, his parachute failed to open properly.

He landed on the airport tarmac face-first, smashing his teeth.

The Germans generously replaced them...

at a cost of 9,500 francs.

He now had some rather natty gold teeth, courtesy of the Third Reich.

Chapman's instructors did everything possible

to make life comfortable for their new secret agent.

Chapman purchased a pet pig, which he called Bobby,

in honour of the Metropolitan Police.

He took Bobby on long walks through the French countryside

and taught him to perform tricks, like a dog.

Could life possibly be better?

MORSE CODE SIGNALS BLEEP

Chapman's instructors were not the only ones monitoring his progress.

From deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside,

others were following his every move.

For months, the secret code-breakers at Bletchley Park

had been eavesdropping on Agent Fritz's practice transmissions.

They knew this German spy was being trained at Nantes,

they knew how many teeth he'd knocked out...

and how much they'd cost to replace. And they knew he spoke English.

A lot of the messages would be from his handler, back to Berlin.

And we had what were called Y stations all over the UK

at strategic points,

where they could pick up these messages clearly.

They would have ended up here in one of the huts,

and he would have been compiled, recorded, so we knew exactly

what was going on and we would have been watching very closely.

Some of Fritz's transmissions were quite baffling.

"Your friend Bobby the Pig grows fatter every day.

"He is gorging like a king, roars like a lion

"and shits like an elephant. Fritz."

But who was this mysterious Bobby the Pig?

And when would Fritz arrive?

Von Groening took me out for dinner,

he said, "Now, you're probably wondering what this is all about.

"Are you willing to go to England to attack a target for us in England?

So I said "Yeah, for money. How much?"

The money was 150,000 Reichsmarks... set down in a formal contract.

But there was an additional clause.

In the event that this agent betraying the German Reich,

he would be summarily executed.

He said you could fully understand the purpose,

so I said yeah and signed it.

Chapman's mission was to blow up a major aircraft factory

at Hatfield, just north of London.

Here Britain's most advanced bomber was being built...

..the famous De Havilland Mosquito.

The very thought of the plane sent Goering, chief of the Luftwaffe, into a towering rage.

"It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito," he said, "There is nothing the British do not have.

"They have the geniuses and we get the nincompoops.

"After the war, I'm going to get a British radio set.

"That way, at least I'll have something that works."

This is a thing of beauty in the skies of Britain.

Above Germany, her sights are trained.

No doubt Goering and Goebbels have bad dreams about it every time they're due to broadcast.

On the night of December 16 1942, Chapman was ready to go.

Everything he would need was packed into a British canvas rucksack...

wireless, detonators, fake identity cards and £990 in used notes.

Nothing was left to chance.

Except for one small, but rather crucial, detail.

In an act of stupendous incompetence,

the wads of money were held together with bands labelled "Reichsbank, Berlin".

After an excellent dinner in Paris,

Chapman boarded the plane for England.

His hands were shaking so much he could hardly strap himself in.

They were flying relatively low,

which, of course, made the mission more dangerous,

because they could have easily been shot down.

I think my father said, "No way this guy's going to survive this."

It was really mission impossible.

Somewhere over East Anglia, at quarter past two in the morning, Chapman jumped.

I was about seven or eight minutes coming down.

And at night-time you think you're fucking going up!

You know, all you can see is cloud.

I floated over a house and then landed a few hundred yards away.

And I did everything... I buried my parachute.

And I did everything right.

But from that moment on, Chapman broke all the rules.

His orders were to wait until dawn, then make his way to Norwich,

catch a train to London, and begin his mission.

Instead, he went to the nearest house and telephoned the police.

When I got to the police station,

I was trying to keep my identity secret.

"Who are you, what?"

I said, "I'm not answering you, I want to talk with British Intelligence."

I told them that I was here on a mission.

I told them what the mission was about.

They said, "Well, save that, because they're waiting to interrogate you."

Within hours, Chapman was on his way to London.

For months, British Intelligence had been planning to catch Agent Fritz.

But what nobody expected was that Fritz would turn up on their doorstep.

I thought I was being taken some place comfortable to sleep...

and I woke up in a cell!

Fucking nice, I'm back in the nick.

Chapman was locked up in Camp 020, a prison for captured enemy agents.

Here he was immediately photographed.

A face drained by stress and exhaustion

stares out of the pictures.

But there is something else in Chapman's expression -

the hint of a smile.

For the next 48 hours, Chapman was interrogated.

Facing him across the table was a man who wore a glinting monocle

and had a fearsome reputation for breaking his victims.

This was Colonel Robin "Tin Eye" Stephens.

And it was his job to find out whether Chapman was telling the truth.

Eddie Chapman was interrogated not at Bletchley Park -

this would have had nothing to do with Bletchley Park -

but of course the interrogators are looking for

information to corroborate what is being said.

Chapman told Tin Eye everything...

a complete picture of the workings of a Nazi spy school.

But he also made an offer...

to spy for Britain against Germany as a double agent.

The pressure was now on Tin Eye to decide if Chapman could be trusted.

What he didn't know was that we were able to corroborate

much of what he said,

which enabled the people who were doing the interrogations

to feel more and more comfortable that, actually, he was an honest player, in terms of being an agent.

After three days, Tin Eye decided to take the gamble.

Chapman already had a contract with the Germans.

Now he cut a deal with the British.

What conditions did you place on your working for MI5?

That all monies I earned with the Germans I kept.

I was granted a pardon for all my past peccadilloes.

And they agreed to both.

A young MI5 officer was assigned to handle his case.

A former BBC sound engineer, Ronnie Reed was an expert in Morse Code.

My father was needed because, as with all these double agents,

when they're transmitting back to Germany, you've got to make sure

they send back the message that we want them to say,

and we have to make sure they don't send a message saying,

"Don't believe a word, I've just been caught."

The next morning, Chapman tapped out his first message

to his German spy masters.

I just led the antenna round, plugged in.

I gave two calls and I got the answer immediately.

Within hours, Bletchley picked up a German signal.

It indicated that the enemy believed Chapman's message was genuine.

This was definitely Fritz... the deception was up and running.

Only one thing remained before Chapman could begin his new career as a double agent...

a codename. MI5 came up with one that fitted him perfectly...

Agent Zigzag.

The name carried a hint of anxiety, because a man who could zig,

could also zag.

But if Chapman thought his new job was going to be glamorous,

he was in for a shock.

The Germans had installed him in a comfortable manor house in Brittany.

The British installed him in this quiet, anonymous street in the London suburb of Hendon...

the last place anyone would think to look for a double agent.

But he would not be living alone.

A man who'd spent a lifetime avoiding the police

now found two of them sharing the house with him - and watching his every move.

They also took the only photographs that exist of Chapman enjoying life as a double agent in Hendon.

They set up a radio transmitter in a top room and, from that point,

Eddie could broadcast to Germany with my father supervising him.

To start with, transmission was quite difficult - the Germans didn't seem to hear him.

Then Eddie got the poker from the fire and heated it up and tried to re-solder it,

which wasn't very effective, so my father took his transmitter home

and did it with a proper soldering iron and after that it worked fine and the Germans heard every word.

The only other obstacle to Chapman's transmissions was Mrs West,

the house-keeper, whose vacuum cleaning had to be interrupted

every time a message needed to be sent to Nazi Germany.

Chapman had now been in Britain for a month,

but had not yet carried out his mission to blow up the De Havilland factory.

It was time for a most ingenious deception.

If they were going to convince the Germans that Chapman had blown up the factory,

he first of all had to see exactly what it looked like,

and indeed work out a way - a convincing way - of blowing up an important part of it.

We walked through with the morning shift.

We just went in in overalls like everybody else.

Nobody challenged us, we just went straight through.

We went up, I opened the powerhouse door...nobody there.

So I went inside, had a look around, came out,

I said, "Well, this is obviously where I would place the explosives.

"I know exactly what to tell the Germans." And it was from that my cover story was patched up.

To reinforce his cover story,

Chapman drew up a secret map of the factory.

With his handler, Ronnie Reed, he now planned how to fake its destruction.

And so we agreed with him that we would camouflage...

a large part...

..of the De Havilland factory,

to make it look as if they had blown up the transformers there.

The transformers were the power centre of the factory.

The key was to make them look from the air as if they had been destroyed.

MI5 now set about building replicas out of papier-mache.

Two would be rolled over, as if slammed sideways by a blast.

A team of set designers from London's Old Vic theatre

were secretly enrolled to paint fake holes on the walls

as if they'd been shattered by an explosion.

I mean, they did a wonderful job on the camouflage.

It was as near as possible as to what the Germans had instructed me.

To back up the deception,

a fake news story would appear in the next day's papers.

They first approached The Times... the newspaper of record.

The editor, Robert Barrington-Ward, rejected the idea out of hand,

pointing out that nothing untrue had ever been published in this newspaper,

and he wasn't about to start now.

The Daily Express, on the other hand, was only too happy to oblige.

At dusk on January 29th 1943, the Old Vic's designers

entered the factory one last time

to put the final touches to their work.

Meanwhile, ballistics experts carefully laid

the charges for a set of spectacular pyrotechnics.

At midnight, the residents of Hatfield were woken by a massive explosion.

We were there when the flare came up.

It looked as though a bomb had exploded there.

Anybody looking at the photograph would think it had really been

totally blitzed, it looked as if it had been bombed.

Chapman immediately sent a triumphant wireless message

to his German spy masters,

using the codename "Walter" for the Mosquito factory.

But would the Germans fall for it?

They sent over aircraft to photograph it,

which we let through, and they saw the sabotage.

The next day, the Daily Express

duly ran a story about a mysterious explosion north of London.

That same evening,

Bletchley Park intercepted a signal from Chapman's German spy master.

It was the message everybody had been waiting for.

The gamble had paid off.

Absolutely marvellous.

At the spy school in France, it was champagne all round.

At last the Germans had a spy who could outwit the British.

And the British, equally delighted,

had a spy who could outwit the Germans.

A spy who now volunteered to do what no other double agent had done...

to go back into Nazi-occupied Europe.

Why do you think Eddie went back into occupied Europe?

Excitement.

MI5 now drew up a wish list of information

they wanted Chapman to gather...

enemy codes, personnel, military units and battle plans.

Nobody ever thought that I was going to come back.

They did give me the opportunity to withdraw if I wanted to.

But I had the gut feeling I could do it.

I don't think they expected me back.

On May 15 1943, Chapman set sail for neutral Lisbon...

the entry point into occupied Europe.

But he did not travel under his own name.

He was now Hugh Anson,

a steward aboard the merchant ship the City of Lancaster.

My job was to wait at table, look after the skip and the first mates.

The skipper was tipped off that I'd be jumping the ship -

not to make too much fuss about it.

Once in Lisbon, Chapman headed directly to the German Embassy.

I asked to see the Ambassador.

I said, "Well, I happen to be a member of the German Army."

I said, "I've just finished a mission in England," and that I was an agent.

He was welcomed by the Chief of Intelligence,

and immediately asked to carry out a fresh sabotage mission -

to blow up his own ship.

And I said, "Well, what about money?"

He said, "Well, how much do you want?"

I said, "For that, £20,000."

"Oh, yes", he said, "we'd pay that." So I said, "Good."

The Germans now presented Chapman

with what looked like an ordinary lump of coal.

In fact, it was a new kind of bomb...

packed with high explosives.

Chapman's task was to return to the port

and slip the bomb into the City of Lancaster's coal bunker.

When the ship set sail again,

the coal would be shovelled into the furnace...

..and explode, sending her to the bottom.

All hell broke loose when Bletchley Park

intercepted German messages revealing that Chapman was about to sink his own ship.

Agent Zigzag was supposed to be spying for Britain.

Had he switched sides AGAIN?

Of course, we were horrified and we were a bit worried that Eddie

might have turned and was now carrying out the German instructions,

so we had to send somebody to tell him not to do that.

Ronnie Reed flew to Lisbon armed with a revolver.

His orders were to find out if Chapman was betraying them...

and if he was, to stop him.

That evening, as Reed was racing to Lisbon, Chapman returned to the City of Lancaster.

With the coal bomb carefully concealed on his person,

he made his way below decks, deep into the ship.

But he didn't go down to the coal bunker.

Instead he went straight to the Captain.

I said, "Look, I want you to take charge of this,"

and I undid my trousers and took this fucking bomb out.

I said, "That is a bomb."

Take it back to Liverpool. And report to Liverpool.

I said, If you don't do it, my life will be forfeit."

Everyone was delighted.

The Germans believed Chapman had planted the bomb.

The British were fully reassured of his loyalty.

And Chapman was £20,000 richer.

And German generosity didn't stop there.

A grateful Third Reich now rewarded Chapman with a luxury holiday

in Nazi-occupied Norway...

..despite the minor detail that the City of Lancaster never blew up.

At Oslo Station, he was greeted by his German spy master,

Stephan Von Groening.

The two men embraced as old friends.

As the man who'd discovered him, von Groening needed Chapman

to succeed and Chapman needed von Groening to believe in him.

They were now in it together.

For the next two weeks, von Groening proceeded to grill Chapman...

very lightly.

Over brandy and cigars,

the German spy master came to the unsurprising conclusion

that his protege was utterly reliable, and Germany's star spy.

What happened next was one of the oddest scenes in the entire saga.

Von Groening stood up and presented to Chapman a small black box,

and he duly opened it

and took out from it the German highest honour of merit -

the Iron Cross, complete with its ribbon -

and handed it over to Chapman and said that Hitler had awarded

Chapman this cross for his services to the Reich.

So tucked in here... is a little black box

and inside it is the Iron Cross that Von Groening handed to Eddie.

There it is! How extraordinary.

So it's a medal awarded to Chapman

for two operations carried out on behalf of the Third Reich that never actually took place?

Quite right, that's it.

The bombing of the De Havilland plant and the Lancaster - neither of which happened.

Yes. They were both complete deceptions by our side.

And that is the original cross that your father was given by Chapman at the end of the war?

When he stopped running him and my father went to France, that's right,

er, before they separated, Chapman handed it over to my father.

And do we know what Chapman's reaction was to being given an Iron Cross?

I think he was absolutely delighted.

And probably rather chuffed that having hoodwinked them so successfully,

he was now being given an award for hoodwinking them.

It's quite remarkable what he succeeded... I mean, it's supposed to be almost MI5's finest hour.

And he was the only Briton ever to receive the Iron Cross.

The war brought misery to millions, but not to Chapman.

In occupied Norway he was living the life of Riley.

While armies fought and people perished, Chapman partied.

Chapman's life was a world away from that of ordinary Norwegians.

Bankrolled by the Third Reich,

he had everything he could possibly want.

There was a beautiful restaurant, purely for the Gestapo

and their intelligence people and the higher-ups in the German Army.

The food was superb.

You could get all kinds of English cigarettes, chocolate.

You could buy stockings for your girlfriend.

You only had to mention it, it was there.

In a bizarre parallel with the MI5 set-up in Hendon,

the Germans installed Chapman here...

in this safe house in a comfortable suburb of Oslo.

Leife Myhre was a boy of 17 living next door.

He's lived here ever since.

TRANSLATION:

Chapman like to drink at the Ritz.

One evening he spotted two young women at a table.

Posing as a French journalist, he went over, bought them drinks, and made them laugh.

Chapman was in his element.

One of the women was an 18-year-old model called Dagmar.

Chapman was smitten.

I met a lovely little Norwegian girl.

And I persuaded her to come up and she was petrified, you know,

saw all these Gestapo people in uniform.

And they were a bit tough looking.

SHE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN

TRANSLATION:

They met at a restaurant in Oslo, and that's one of the...

..mysterious parts of the story.

It was a restaurant in which many were Germans were, er,

"entertained".

And so, and so, I think from the start when she first met him,

she obviously believed he was a German officer.

Collaborators were despised and shunned

by the rest of the population - especially women.

Chapman appeared to be German.

Dagmar was therefore sleeping with the enemy.

What Chapman did not know was that Dagmar was linked to the Norwegian resistance.

And Dagmar did not know that Chapman was a British agent.

They were both on the same side and neither of them knew it.

The relationship swiftly blossomed.

Chapman wanted to sail with his new love in Norway's famous fjords,

and so he asked von Groening for a yacht.

And got one.

The two lovers spent an idyllic summer, growing closer every day.

But the truth remained hidden.

Instant love, I think. Romance.

It was a meeting between two rather young human beings in a very dramatic context.

For Dagmar, it was probably the love of her life.

I'd usually meet Dagmar in the morning and we'd sail to other end of the fjord,

bathe, and it was absolutely delightful.

I mean, we had a great love match and, er...

I had the intention, at one period, of going back and marrying her.

One evening, after a glorious day's sailing,

Chapman opened a bottle of Cognac and took an enormous risk.

He told Dagmar that he was a British agent

and asked her to help him spy on the Germans.

Dagmar was thrilled by the revelation

and moved into the safe house with Chapman.

Secretly, they began gathering material for MI5.

And they were perfectly placed for doing so.

Oslo was a centre of Nazi spy traffic

and much of it passed through Chapman's safe house.

And so Chapman asked von Groening for another favour.

They gave me a camera. You had to have permission to carry cameras.

They took photographs of themselves relaxing at home.

But they also photographed the safe house itself,

as well as the spies, informers and collaborators who came to visit.

Gradually we built up a hell of a dossier.

We had photographs of 20, 25 agents there.

If the Germans had found out about the story,

then they both probably would have been dead.

So it was definitely a game in which you were risking your life.

Soon they had filled several rolls of film.

Now they needed somewhere to hide them.

Chapman discovered that by bending back this metal sheet,

he could stash the rolls of film behind - where no-one would think to look.

A treasure trove of secrets, for which the British might one day pay handsomely.

But after almost a year in Norway, Chapman's holiday was coming to an end.

By the Spring of 1944, the Germans were losing the war.

The Allies were punching through Italy

and would soon invade occupied France.

The Germans now needed the services of their super-spy back in Britain.

Hitler was ready to launch a new and terrifying secret weapon...

a weapon he was convinced would destroy London

and batter Britain into submission - the V1 rocket.

Fired from sites across the Channel, these were weapons of awesome power.

But their navigation systems were crude.

The Germans had little idea if they were hitting or missing their targets.

Chapman's mission was to go back to London

and report where they were landing.

That way, the Germans could adjust their aim and hit the most vital targets.

They gave me a chronometer and said,

"The moment you hear an explosion in London,

"you note the time down and you find out where it's landed.

"And if possible, a description of the destruction."

So I said, "Great, fine." And I was to be paid £100,000.

In March 1944, Chapman said farewell to von Groening...

the spy master and friend he had comprehensively betrayed.

His parting from Dagmar was more painful.

They spent the together making plans for after the war.

The nightclub they would run in Paris,

the places they'd travel to, the children they would have.

He would not see her again for half a century.

In June 1944, Chapman landed back in Britain.

Once again, the first thing he did was telephone the police.

He explained to the duty officer that he was a British double agent

who'd just been dropped by parachute.

The constable on the other end told him not to be silly

and to go to bed.

Agent Zigzag was back.

AIR-RAID SIRENS WAIL

By the time Chapman arrived, more than 600 V1 rockets had already slammed into London.

Casualties were rapidly mounting.

The Germans were aiming for central London.

Chapman's task was to fool them into thinking

they were overshooting the capital...here.

That way they would reduce the range and the missiles would fall short.

Instead of destroying St Paul's Cathedral,

they would land in the empty fields of Kent.

Chapman began sending messages back to Germany,

pinpointing where the rockets were falling.

Every one was a lie.

They altered the places, slightly, they altered the times.

They gave me the reports they wanted sent back to Germany.

And I sent them back.

The flying bombs began to come over.

First in ones and twos, and then all day long.

Sometimes I sent two or three a day.

Flying bomb landed, Regent's Park, 12.30.

There were 9,000 bombs dropped on London.

But we succeeded, in the short time we were doing them,

in shifting them over the top.

Thousands of lives had been saved by Agent Zigzag's lies.

It was the high point of Eddie Chapman's career as a double agent.

But it was all about to come crashing down.

With the end of war in sight,

the allure of old instincts proved too much.

Chapman resumed his life of crime by fixing dog races.

Did Eddie teach you about dog doping?

Oh, yes, everything.

And what was the technique for dog doping?

Well, you dope five dogs in a race and go with the sixth.

MI5 was not impressed.

One of his handlers observed, "Zigzag himself is going to the dogs."

His boss, Sir John Masterman -

one of the most senior figures in British intelligence - took him to task.

He turned round to me one day and he said, "Stand to attention!"

And I knew I was getting under his skin and I said,

"I'd like to remind you of one thing only."

I said, "I'm not in your army, I'm in the fucking German Army."

They didn't like Eddie, he wasn't... He didn't go to Eton.

He wasn't one of them,

but he did a lot more than most of them did for, for his country.

On November 2nd, 1944, six months before the end of the war,

Chapman was fired.

But he didn't leave entirely empty-handed.

The Germans had given him a yacht, a medal and money.

The British gave him something more valuable...

they wiped his criminal slate clean.

Agent Zigzag never went straight. But also never went back to prison.

He would spend the rest of his life mixing with gamblers, gangsters and con artists.

He returned to his old haunts and resumed his old habits.

TV: 'Scotland Yard today revealed that it has details...'

And he became famous.

I'd rather live for Germany than die for England.

And if we wanted you to die for Germany?

Open up the door.

In 1966, his life was romanticised by Hollywood.

Eddie Chapman, you're under arrest.

Chapman revelled in his celebrity.

He was even, for a time,

occasional crime writer for the Sunday Telegraph,

whose readers he warned against the attentions of people like him.

And he married, too.

He'd last seen Betty as he leapt through the window in Jersey in 1939.

At the end of the war, he saw her by chance in a London bar,

and fell in love.

But in Oslo, Chapman's lover Dagmar

suffered a very different fate.

Arrested after the war for consorting with a man

everyone believed to be a German Officer,

she was sentenced to six months in prison.

No-one came forward to say that this German Officer was, in fact, a British agent.

He told her when he left during the war that he would return

after the war, as soon as possible, if he was alive.

So I guess it's probably a good guess that, for many years after the war, she believed he was dead.

She never found any other great love.

I believe she tried to leave it behind somehow,

to go on with life, but I do not believe she ever succeeded.

TRANSLATION:

Half a century after their parting, Chapman traced Dagmar's phone number and called her.

I said, "You don't remember me." I said, "You knew me as Fritz."

"Oh, Fritz", she said,

"I know your real name now - your real name is Eddie."

I said, "Yes, it is, I'm Eddie Chapman."

Ah! And she couldn't talk for a few minutes. "How are you?"

We've written to each other - letters -

but I'd love to go and see her again.

Soon after this interview, they finally met again.

You can only imagine how it must have been, to meet him again.

And reportedly he promised to visit Norway and tell the story about what happened,

which was probably important for her,

because she had a rumour for many years after the war for being the mistress of a German.

But then he died before he was able to visit Norway.

And that was probably the final knock-out in the life of Dagmar.

And she died herself two years later,

and the last years were very hard.

Eddie Chapman died in 1997, at the age of 83.

Chapman was a rascal and a romantic.

He was selfish, seductive, and staggeringly brave.

He had a most enjoyable war, but he also helped to win it.

In the final victory,

Britain owed an important debt to this most unlikely hero.

A common criminal, sitting in Hendon,

tapping out lies on a wireless.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk