Harold Cole was one of World War II’s most notorious British traitors. He betrayed not only his country, but also French Resistance members who fought bravely to free Europe from Nazi oppression. His story is one of duplicity, criminality, and cold opportunism. It was a nearly-cinematic tale of deceit and deception that ended violently, as such stories often do. From his beginnings as a petty criminal to his death in a Paris gunfight in 1946, Cole’s life charted a descent into treachery that shocked even hardened intelligence officers.
A British Jailbird in Nazi-Occupied France
Harold Cole was born in 1906 in London, England, into a working-class family. Although he demonstrated an early disregard for authority, little suggested the monstrous betrayals to come. By his twenties, Cole had already embarked on a life of petty crime – fraud, theft, and deception. He was intelligent, charming, and able to inspire trust. Unfortunately, he used those qualities to exploit others for personal gain. He did a number of prison stints in the interwar years for crimes such as burglary and forgery. When not behind bars, he drifted through various odd jobs, including work as a traveling salesman. His criminal record did not prevent him from joining the British Army, although it should have. It was either concealed or overlooked amidst the vast mobilization for war.
In his criminal career, Cole hones his lying, improvisation, and manipulation skills. They made him an unusually dangerous enemy agent once war came. When WWII broke out in 1939, Cole enlisted in the British Army and was assigned to the Royal Engineers. His military record began respectably enough, and by 1940, he had been promoted to sergeant. His ingrained opportunism soon reemerged, though: he was arrested for stealing money from the sergeants’ mess to splurge on prostitutes. Cole became a POW when the German blitzkrieg overran the guardhouse in which he was imprisoned. He managed to escape the Germans, though, and went on the lam amidst the chaos of France’s collapse. Many British soldiers found themselves stranded behind enemy lines, and tried to rejoin their comrades or make their way home. Not Cole: he used the situation to his advantage and deserted.
Harold Cole in the French Resistance
After his desertion, Harold Cole got in touch with the budding French Resistance, and convinced them that he was a British officer. That false identity proved pivotal in his later career as a traitor. He drifted throughout occupied France, and mixed with both genuine Resistance members and those simply seeking to survive German rule. His polished English manners and plausible military bearing convinced many that he was a genuine authority figure. By late 1940, Cole began to involve himself with the real networks helping downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war to reach safety through France to Spain or Switzerland.
Those escape lines, such as the Pat O’Leary Line, saved hundreds of Allied lives. Cole managed to convince those organizations’ members that he was a liaison officer working for British intelligence. In reality, he was still a deserter and fraudster looking for opportunities. For a time, his activities were even beneficial. He helped coordinate safe houses and contacts, and managed funds intended for escapees. However, his behavior soon aroused suspicion. He embezzled money intended for fugitives, lied about his credentials, and engaged in shady dealings with black marketeers. His self-interest endangered others, and began to attract the notice of both the Resistance and the Germans. The Resistance arrested him in 1941 for theft. Locked in a bathroom while his comrades were deciding what to do about him, Cole escaped through a window and fled.
Switching Sides to Work for the Gestapo
On the run from the Resistance, Harold Cole was captured by the Germans in Lille in late 1941. Faced with imprisonment – or worse – he made a fateful choice: he offered his services to the Gestapo, who eagerly accepted. They recognized the value of a fluent English speaker who knew the structure and members of the Allied escape networks. Cole quickly became one of the Gestapo’s best informants in occupied France. He actively worked for the Nazis under the code name “Paul Cole” or sometimes “Paul le Boche”, and betrayed the very Resistance fighters and Allied agents who had once trusted him. His treachery led to the arrest and execution of numerous members of escape lines. Victims of his betrayal included several prominent figures in the Pat O’Leary Line. The organization was badly damaged by Cole, and the Allies had to rebuild its networks from scratch.
In 1941, Cole had started a relationship with Suzanne Warren, a half-English nineteen-year-old Resistance member from Paris. Although warned of his character, she was blinded by love. She believed Cole was a British agent, and married him in 1942. When she discovered he was a traitor, she fled, alone, penniless, and pregnant to the Resistance in Marseille. Although her relationship to Cole made her suspect, they helped her. She gave birth in late 1943, but the child died a few months later. Later that year, Warren was arrested for helping a British agent, but escaped from prison along with a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent. After months on the lam evading the Gestapo, she was rowed to a motor torpedo boat off the French coast, and safely made it to Britain in April, 1944. She never saw Cole again.
Betraying the Resistance
While his wife was on the lam from and dodging the Gestapo, Harold Cole was busy helping the Nazis. He continued to provide the Germans with detailed lists of names, safe houses, and routes. He also personally accompanied Gestapo officers during raids and interrogations, and helped them identify captured agents. Some witnesses later testified that he even participated in brutal interrogations himself. His motivation seems to have been purely self-serving: money, power, and survival. He had no ideological commitment to the Nazis, and his loyalties were to himself alone. The Germans rewarded Cole handsomely for his cooperation, and granted him privileges and a degree of freedom unusual for collaborators.
Cole lived comfortably in occupied France, and enjoyed fine food, nice clothes, and women while others suffered under the Germans. He continued to present himself to some as an Allied sympathizer, and used that cover to trap new victims for the Gestapo. However, even his German handlers found him unreliable, and his greed and arrogance made him difficult to control. By late 1943, some Gestapo officers suspected him of double-dealing. He was keeping money meant for informant payments, and secretly aided some escapees to maintain his cover. Despite such tensions, he remained employed by the Germans until the liberation of France in 1944.
Another Audacious Escape
Harold Cole’s web of lies began to collapse after the liberation of Paris. As Allied forces advanced, he was captured by American military police in December, 1944. Initially, the Allies did not realize the scale of his treachery. He convinced his captors that he had been working as a British agent within the Gestapo, feeding false information to the Germans. His smooth manner and forged documents almost carried the deception through. However, investigations by the British authorities soon uncovered the truth.
Cole was exposed as a traitor and collaborator responsible for the deaths of numerous agents and Resistance members. He was imprisoned in Paris while awaiting trial for treason – a charge that carried the death penalty. However, Cole’s audacity had not diminished, and he managed to escape his Paris military prison in November, 1945. He sawed through his cell’s bars, and walked out in a stolen uniform. He evaded capture for several months, and returned to his old habits of theft and deception to survive.
Death in a Shootout
Reports circulated that Harold Cole was once again impersonating British officers. He went back to swindling people, and even tried to rebuild a black-market network amid the postwar chaos. Cole’s luck finally ran out on January 8th, 1946. French police, tipped off about his whereabouts, surrounded a café in Paris’ Montmartre district, where he had been seen. When they attempted to arrest him, Cole pulled out a pistol and opened fire. A brief but violent gunfight ensued, and he was shot and killed in the exchange.
Cole death eliminated the possibility of a public trial that might have laid bare the full extent of his treachery. His betrayal was one of the worst acts of treason by a British subject during WWII. Other ideological traitors such as William Joyce (“Lord Haw-Haw”) or John Amery had supported the Nazi cause for political reasons. Cole’s treason sprang from pure selfishness. He had no interest in the triumph of fascism, but only in his own enrichment and survival. That made him, in some ways, even more despicable: he sold lives for profit and pleasure.
The Legacy of Harold Cole
Historians and intelligence officers who later studied the Harold Cole case described him as a pathological liar and manipulator. He possessed a criminal’s cunning, and lacked any conscience. Dozens of Allied agents and French Resistance members died because of his betrayals. His treachery destroyed entire networks that had taken years to build. In the war’s aftermath, his story served as a grim lesson for intelligence services about the dangers of recruiting or trusting individuals with unstable or criminal pasts. Cole was not driven by ideology, but by the same reckless greed and deceit that had marked his prewar criminal life.
Cole’s career demonstrated how personal ambition and moral bankruptcy could do as much damage as political conviction. His was one of the most sordid episodes in Britain’s wartime history. From petty criminal to Gestapo collaborator, he moved effortlessly between roles, always seeking the greatest personal advantage. His betrayals caused immense suffering, and undermined the courageous work of countless Resistance and Allied intelligence men and women. In the end, Harold Cole died as he had lived, alone, hunted, and despised, his name forever synonymous with treachery.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Young, Gordon – In Trust and Treason: The Strange Story of Suzanne Warren (1959)
