Karel Richard Richter

Karel Richard Richter (29 January 1912 – 10 December 1941) was a German spy. Richter was captured on 14 May 1941 after parachuting into the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He was convicted of espionage at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1941, sentenced to death and hanged on 10 December 1941 at Wandsworth Prison.

Early life Richter was a Czechoslovak citizen born in 1912 in Kraslice (that time known as Graslitz) in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. His parents were Richard Richter, a metal worker, and Marie Burgert.

From 1918 to 1923, Richter attended the State School in Kraslice. When he was 11 years old, Richter attended the Staats-Oberreal-Gymnasium in the city of Most. Richter graduated in 1927 at the age of 16 years and spent the next two years working as an apprentice at the Citroën car workshop in Karlovy Vary. Upon completion of his apprenticeship, around 1930, Richter returned home and worked in his father's metal-work business. In 1932, with support from his father, Richter started a car-rental business, but by 1934 the business had failed. Unemployed for six months, Richter sought to join the Czechoslovak Army but was rejected three times on medical grounds. In 1935, Richter wrote to the American Consul in Prague, seeking an American visa, but was told he would have to wait two years. During his training in Hamburg and the Hague, Richter met another spy, Josef Jakobs, who was sent to Britain on 31 January 1941. Unlike Jakobs, who was to report on the weather in Britain, Richter had a very specific mission, to check on Wulf Schmidt, a German spy working in Britain. The Germans suspected that Schmidt (known as Agent LEONHARD) had been turned into a double-agent by the British, which in fact he had, being known to the British as agent TATE.

Richter parachuted into Britain on the early morning of 12 May 1941, landing near London Colney, north of London.

Trial and execution Richter was charged with espionage under the Treachery Act 1940. He was tried in camera at the Old Bailey and found guilty on 24 October 1941. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Richter filed an appeal which was, after much discussion in the Security Service, rejected. Faced with his imminent execution, Richter wrote a letter to one of the MI5 officers: "You can rely upon it that I shall not be less brave than Jakobs; I too will know how to die, yet not as a Nazi spy on your gallows, but as a man."