Ignatz T. Griebl
Dr. Ignatz Theodor Griebl (born 1899) was a German-American physician and spymaster based in Yorkville, New York. Griebl was born in Bavaria in 1899 and served as a first lieutenant artillery officer during the First World War. He was wounded on the Italian front where he met his future wife, Austrian nurse Maria Ganz.[1]
He studied medicine at the University of Munich and arrived in the United States in 1925 where the new doctor and his wife started a practice in Bangor, Maine. In 1928 they moved their practice to the German-American community of Yorkville, New York specializing in obstetrics.[2] He took American citizenship and became an officer in US Army medical reserve.
Spying for Germany
On March 3, 1934 he contacted Joseph Goebbels by letter offering his services to spy for Germany.[3] Goebbels forwarded the information to the Gestapo who at the time was assembling an international group of police spies and informants.[4] The Gestapo turned the lead over to its Maritime Bureau which had a network of couriers aboard German ocean liners.
Dr. Griebl began his spy ring by recruiting from the pro-Hitler group Friends of New Germany which he had joined in 1933. Here he first recruited Axel Wheeler-Hill and Oskar Karl Pfaus who on their own would become involved in larger spy rings. Back in Bangor, Maine, Dr. Griebl recruited an old friend who worked as a engineer at the Bath Iron Works obtaining a blueprint copy of a newly designed warship.[5]
In October 1934 William Lonkowski who had been spying for the Abwehr in American since 1927 called upon Dr. Griebl and both agreed to combine their resources.[6]
Pseudonymous author
In 1935 he self-published a book under the name William Hamilton titled Salute the Jew![7]
Escape
Eventually the spy ring he developed in America was compromised and Dr. Griebl was brought in by the FBI and given a polygraph examination. The FBI was satisfied with his polygraph results and he was released. On May 10, 1938 Dr. Griebl escaped to Germany aboard the ship liner Bremen.[8]
He later became a gynecologist in Vienna.
Trivia
Hollywood would base the 1939 film Confessions of a Nazi Spy upon the Griebl-Lonkowski spy ring.
Notes
- โ The Game of the Foxes, by Ladislas Farago, page 20
- โ The Game of the Foxes, by Ladislas Farago, page 20
- โ Insidious Foes: the Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front, By Francis MacDonnell, page 51
- โ The Game of the Foxes, by Ladislas Farago, page 21
- โ The Game of the Foxes, by Ladislas Farago, page 22
- โ The Game of the Foxes, by Ladislas Farago, page 23
- โ Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring, by Peter Duffy, page 304
- โ The FBI: a History, By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, page 102
See also
External links
- "U. S. JURY INDICTS 18 AS SPIES IN REICH GOVERNMENTโS PAY; SECRET SERVICE HEAD NAMED" The New York Times, June 21, 1938
- FBI documents relating to Ignatz T. Griebl
- A Byte Out of History Spies Caught, Spies Lost, Lessons Learned (FBI website)
- Chapter One from โThe Origins of FBI Counterintelligenceโ by Raymond J. Batvinis