Eric "Red" Erickson (1896 – January 1983) was a Swedish oil executive who worked as an operative for the Office of Strategic Services during World War 2.
[2] At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Erickson continued his oil business with Nazi Germany, making millions of dollars in the process.
[1] Pretending that he was a Nazi sympathizer interested in building a refinery in Sweden to process oil for Germany, Erickson visited Germany more than 30 times between 1939 and 1945[3][4] in order to spy on German synthetic oil plants for the OSS, which used his information to provide targeting data for Allied bombing raids.
[4] During his visits he fell in love with a German woman, Anne-Maria Freudenreich, who was shot by the Gestapo at Moabit Prison in 1945.
[1] Erickson himself appeared on "To Tell the Truth" June 3, 1958, to publicize the book, which also included some invented material such as his killing of a Gestapo agent.