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Talk:Simon Emil Koedel

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Adopted Daughter and Personal life to be added

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Williams 2016 seems to be a rich source for this biographical information

In the 1920s, Koedel and his [first] wife Anna took two orphaned siblings into their home, a five-year-old boy named Philip and a three-year-old girl, Marie. Koedel and his wife separated but did not divorce until 1933, when Koedel married Hulde Nelson.

Phillip, in 1935, was convicted of robbery.

Also fromGilbert 1985 Marie worked with him as a spy and was also convicted of (interestingly) peacetime espionage for their involvement before the US entered WWII. This work resulted in her breaking her engagement to John R. Walters, who, upon learning of her activities, subsequently reported her to the FBI as a spy. Marie's was involved with Duncan Scott-Ford and their actions lead to his execution by hanging in England in 1942.


His deportation to Germany (West or East?) and subsequent death as a vagrant is referenced but imprecise in Mickolus 2015 . --Lent (talk) 06:36, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Capture in 1944

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Most of the sources in the article reference the capture of Koedel in Harpers Ferry and the capture of Marie, his adoptive daughter. --Lent (talk) 06:36, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Conviction

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Simon Emil Koedel and adoptive daughter Marie Koedel were both convicted of peacetime espionage for their actions before the US entry into WWII. --Lent (talk) 06:36, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FDR Scrambler phone

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Also from Williams 2016

Another factor that made Koedel an effective spy was his ability to glean valuable intelligence from mundane sources. One of Nazi Germany’s greatest intelligence coups had its origin in an article Koedel clipped from the New York Times. The story explained that a “scrambler” phone had been set up in a soundproof room in the White House basement to protect President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s transatlantic conversations. Roosevelt had used the phone since September 1. The enterprising Nikolaus Bensmann, one of Koedel’s Abwehr handlers, passed this information on. By March 1942 the Germans had a system that produced transcripts of transatlantic calls hours after an intercept.

This apparently lead to German advance knowledge of the Allied campaign in Italy.--Lent (talk) 06:37, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]