Dusko Popov grew up in Dubrovnik, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, in a wealthy and well-connected family. His privileged upbringing gave him confidence, friends, and a taste for fast cars and fast women. He was also a star pupil, fluent in Italian, German, and French.
His father insisted he attend the finest European schools, sending him first to local schools in Dubrovnik, then to an English boarding school, and later to a lycée in Paris. At 24 he went to Freiburg, Germany, to study for a PhD in law.
There he met Johann Jebsen, a young man from Hamburg. Popov called him Johnny. The two were similarly aristocratic, wealthy, and well-connected, and they became close friends. It was the beginning of a friendship that would lead them both down roads they could never have imagined.
1936 was a strange time to be a student in Germany. Stormtroopers were multiplying and hatred toward Jews was growing. In Freiburg, the liberal Popov was outraged by the public harassment of Jews by the Nazis. His years at university gave him his first experience of Hitler's Youth and the Nazi movement, and it gave him the drive to fight what was happening in Europe.
Popov and Jebsen often defied Nazi rules and drank coffee in Jewish-owned cafes. But the day after Popov obtained his PhD, he was betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo. Jebsen alerted Popov's father, who used his contacts in the Yugoslav government to secure his release. The Nazis freed Popov but ordered him to leave Germany. He got out just in time.
In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Two days later Britain declared war on Germany. If Hitler was to confront Britain, he needed information about this new enemy, and he turned to his intelligence organization, the Abwehr. It already had a small network of secret agents in Europe but needed more, and began a recruitment drive that would lead it to Dusko Popov.
In 1940 Popov was running a small private law firm back in Dubrovnik, in neutral Yugoslavia. On the 4th of February he received a telegram from his old friend Johnny Jebsen asking if they could meet urgently in Belgrade.
They met in a hotel, where Johnny revealed that he had joined the Abwehr. Popov was shocked, then incredulous when Jebsen asked him to join and become a spy for the Nazis. Jebsen told him something key: the best way to beat a team is to be part of it.
Popov spent the longest night of his life thinking about the strange offer. He was surprised but somehow excited. Jebsen was suggesting they become double agents, working for the Nazis while secretly undermining them. Popov knew that if he was caught he would pay with his life. He later wrote that there was no use going over the same ground 50 times, because facts don't change. But one piece was missing: would the British play?
The next morning he went to the British Embassy in Belgrade and offered his services. He was sent to the British passport office, which was in reality the headquarters for British Military Intelligence, MI6. MI6 spent two days vetting Popov and then accepted his offer. He called Johnny Jebsen and told him he was ready to play the game. Dusko Popov, double agent, was born: code name Ivan for the Germans, code name Tricycle for the British.
At his first meeting with the Abwehr, Popov lied that he had friends in high places in England. They provided him with a cover story: he was to head up an import-export business between Yugoslavia and England. The Abwehr made Johnny Jebsen his handler and supplied Popov with lengthy questionnaires concerning British military strength and morale. Popov gave them to MI6 for completion and then handed them back to the Abwehr.
He was getting on with his life, going here, there, and everywhere, and reporting both to the Abwehr and to the Allies. He was driven around by a longstanding family retainer called Bidar. Popov was amazed, because Bidar's laziness was legendary, and he was right to be suspicious. Jebsen discovered that the Abwehr had recruited Bidar to spy on Popov and might soon discover his links to MI6.
Popov was left with no choice. Two days later Bidar was found shot dead near railway warehouses in Belgrade. In the cold light of day it was a brutal, cold-blooded killing, and it did not fit well with what is known about Dusko, who was not an inherently violent individual and much preferred taking girls out to getting involved in fights. But it showed how dangerous those times were. The police concluded that Bidar had been killed in a bungled robbery, and Popov got away with it.
As Popov grew more confident and won the confidence of his German handlers, they became more interested in using him more extensively. They decided to send him to London, where they had a very small network of spies but thought somebody like Dusko could build up a larger network. The first step was a stop-off in Lisbon.
Lisbon was the espionage capital of Europe during the war, a spy nest. The city was swarming with suspicious characters, deserters, conscientious objectors, refugees, and adventurers, all rubbing shoulders in bars, cafes, and restaurants infested with agents of all backgrounds. Although Portugal was officially neutral, the Germans had a significant presence there, so the British ensured they too had a strong covert delegation. It was in this atmosphere that Popov was sent to Lisbon by the Abwehr in November 1940.
When Popov arrived at Lisbon airport, his eye was taken by a pretty girl who kept winking at him. Her name was Elizabeth Sarbach, and she had been sent to collect him. He followed her to a waiting black limousine, got in, and together they sped off.
The car drove to a large villa where a tall, aristocratic man was waiting to greet them. It was Elizabeth's boss and Popov's Abwehr controller, Ludovico von Castoff, real name Ludwig Kramer von Auenrode. Popov instinctively liked von Castoff, who shared his fondness for the company of women and took him under his wing.
They got on fantastically well. Von Castoff gave Popov his instructions for London: what he had to do, what information he was supposed to find out, what contacts he was supposed to make. But as soon as he had the chance, Popov made sure he registered with the British passport office, which, as in Belgrade, was the cover operation for MI6.
Neutral Portugal and neighboring Spain were also safe places to meet his old friend Johnny Jebsen, whose job was to keep him informed of German progress in the war. Jebsen told Popov how the German people resented living hand to mouth while factories churned out thousands of planes and tanks, about disloyalty within the Abwehr ranks, and about a new technology German scientists called the microdot. Popov would come to be familiar with the microdot, but in the meantime he simply passed the information straight to MI6.
Popov was busy building his cover as a businessman representing import-export interests in Yugoslavia when the Abwehr delivered airline tickets to his hotel. His flight left Lisbon on the 20th of December 1940 for London.
Hitler's Luftwaffe were trying to bomb the British into submission, but while the Blitz was the most visible sign of the war, the Abwehr were secretly laying the foundations for occupation, and Popov was key to the strategy. They instructed him to find out if there were influential Nazi sympathizers in Britain who could be used to support an invasion. Popov realized this was the opportunity he had been waiting for: he would look the British in the eye and tell them how he could help them win the war.
As he was driven into the capital on the 20th of December 1940, Popov was confronted for the first time with the horror of war as he watched the city burn and the people bury their dead. It only reinforced his commitment to the cause. He wrote that if he had any moral or ethical doubts about what he was doing, they vanished when he experienced the Blitz at firsthand and saw how the British were standing up to it. He understood how the British were going to fight this war to the end, and he was going to participate and be part of the effort to beat Nazi Germany.
His car pulled up at the Savoy Hotel on the Strand, where he was greeted by a smartly dressed man whose job it would be to vet Popov and report whether he could be trusted. He was met by a marvelous individual called Tar Robertson, who was running something called the Double Cross Committee. They had arrested quite a number of German agents in Britain and given them a choice: they could either be executed or work for the British under very strict supervision.
MI6 in Lisbon and Belgrade had already briefed Robertson and the Double Cross Committee about Popov. Even so, there were many on the committee who did not trust him and thought he could be working for the Germans. The committee were not prepared to take any chances, and there were still some dissenters who said they must not trust this man. Eventually Tar Robertson said they should go with him and see how it worked out. It took a long time for Popov to really get everybody's confidence.
Popov had passed his first test. Tar Robertson knew he had the potential to become the Double Cross Committee's most valuable agent. He had neutral nationality, could travel freely all over Europe, and had the trust of the Abwehr. He threw himself body and soul into working with the British, who trained him in the arts of spycraft such as the use of invisible ink, tips and tricks on breaking and entering, and evasion techniques to avoid being followed. It was comical in a way, because it was long before the technology that made all those things much simpler, but it worked for the time.
He had to absorb enormous amounts of information and equally enormous amounts of disinformation. His job would be to provide the Germans with bogus intelligence about British military strength and planning.
On New Year's Eve 1940 Popov was invited to a society party given at the home of Major General Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, known as C. There he was introduced to the cabaret artist Friedl Gardner, the most beautiful woman he had seen since arriving in England. But as their conversation got interesting, Menzies interrupted and asked Popov to his study. Menzies told him in no uncertain terms that he did not like him, but that he had the makings of a very good spy, and that he had better learn to take orders or he would become a very dead spy. Popov left the party contemplating Menzies's words but dreaming about Friedl Gardner's eyes. He would meet her again very soon.
Popov was almost ready to return to Portugal, but first he was introduced to Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu. It was his job to assemble a cover story that would convince the Germans that Popov had used his time in England well. Montagu made sure Popov met several military officers and high-ranking civil servants that would show the Abwehr he was plugged into the highest-quality sources, to enhance his credibility still further. He also gave him the names of three lords whom the British already knew were sympathetic to the Nazis. Then, on the 2nd of January 1941, Popov boarded a KLM flight back to Lisbon. It was the beginning of the deadliest of spy games.
Back in Lisbon he met von Castoff's assistant Elizabeth at the Hotel Palácio. He checked in, dressed for dinner, then made his way to the casino and in particular the roulette table. There he waited for Elizabeth to play three numbers. The numbers revealed the date and time of his next meeting with von Castoff.
At that meeting von Castoff questioned Popov thoroughly about his trip to England. Popov told him about his high-level political contacts and began supplying false information, such as bogus details of a new RAF attack aircraft called the Bow fighter. He was given this information, which he ostensibly collected in his role as a spy for the Abwehr, went back to Lisbon, and handed it all over to von Castoff, who was delighted. Von Castoff sent it up to Berlin, and they were thrilled to get all this information. That became the pattern.
Popov worked the Lisbon-London route immaculately for two months. The Abwehr were keen to know as much as possible about the Bow fighter, and equally he was able to pass them more and more fake intelligence, such as the incorrect location of British minefields. He was given a chart showing where there were minefields in the English Channel, which were in the wrong place. Anything that would confuse the Germans or make them confused about what was happening in Britain was part of an extraordinarily complicated game of bluff and double bluff. They were trying to create a picture in the minds of the Germans of what was happening in Britain, but it was not precisely what was happening.
To alleviate the unquestionable stress, Popov also made sure he made time to let his hair down. When in Lisbon he had the companionship of a shapely Brazilian blonde called Maria Alera. When in London he was on everyone's A-list. An extract from his diary from one week in February 1941 reads: evening cocktails at the American Bar, Savoy; dinner at Mirabelle; met at Mayfair Lounge; dinner at Claridge's; dined in and out. His hectic social life alarmed his superiors, so they arranged for an old flame to make contact. He did not know that Friedl Gardner was also working for MI6, but they knew this agent, whom they called Gelatine, would be perfect at keeping Dusko occupied. Popov would find her company stimulating.
As he got used to the London-Lisbon routine, the casino of the Hotel Palácio became his headquarters, and it was here that the James Bond legend was born. A British agent ordered to keep an eye on Popov witnessed much of his behavior at the casino bar and at the baccarat table. The agent was Ian Fleming.
But in March 1941, as Popov arrived yet again at the Hotel Palácio, he was instructed to report immediately to von Castoff. Had he been discovered? He arrived at von Castoff's villa and was standing looking out to the French windows when von Castoff entered the room silently and said to him: don't move, don't turn around. Popov thought this was it, that he was done, and he leaned up and into his pocket to take his gun out. Then he saw in the reflection of the French windows that von Castoff was standing behind him with a pet monkey on his shoulder. Popov had not been rumbled after all.
Von Castoff gave him some terrible news: neutral Yugoslavia had been bombed and then invaded by Germany. Coming from Dubrovnik, Popov was officially on the German side and could continue to work for them, but back home his entire family were now at risk. He was in little doubt that if he was exposed, the Gestapo would have no pity on them.
Then von Castoff told him of new orders from Berlin. Hitler was making plans to go to war with America, and he instructed the Abwehr to gather information about the United States and was keen to establish a new network of spies. Von Castoff told Popov that he had been selected to lead that mission.
This was greeted with dismay by the Double Cross Committee in London, because Popov was a very valuable asset: he was the only agent who had direct face-to-face contact with the Germans. But Popov had an idea. The next time he was in London he explained to the Double Cross Committee how he could turn the trip to the United States to their advantage.
Popov had already convinced the Abwehr that he had a bogus network of agents operating in Britain, and he told them he had been paying them out of his own pocket. At the Double Cross Committee's HQ he told them he would convince the Abwehr to take on the costs themselves. Popov would then launder the money in the United States and re-route it to MI6. The Abwehr would be paying cash straight into MI6 coffers. The Double Cross Committee were amazed at the simplicity of the idea. They called it Plan Midas.
Popov returned to Lisbon to sell the idea to von Castoff. It worked, and von Castoff agreed to have the cash before Popov's departure for America. In return he handed Popov a single sheet of typewritten paper. Popov looked at it and saw it was just an ordinary letter. He asked what von Castoff meant and where the information was. It was the first anyone had ever heard of the microdot, secret microdot technology visible only with a microscope. The microdot hid a dossier with a huge number of questions about the American military beneath a full stop. The Germans had developed a technique of photographing documents and reducing them so small that they could be hidden under a full stop in a typewriter.
Von Castoff asked Elizabeth to fetch a bottle of champagne, and together they toasted Popov's new assignment.
Before leaving for the USA, Popov contacted his old friend Johnny Jebsen one last time. Jebsen told him something intriguing: he had been asked by the Abwehr, on behalf of their allies the Japanese, to go to the port of Taranto in Italy and find out why a recent British air strike had been such a success. It turned out that this was the first ever attack launched entirely from aircraft carriers. Popov was puzzled and wondered why the Japanese were so interested in an operation launched in this way.
He took another look at his United States mission questionnaire. It requested detailed information about a US naval base in the Pacific Ocean called Pearl Harbor. Why would the Japanese want to know about the base, and why would they want to know about attacks from aircraft carriers? Popov put two and two together and realized the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor. There was now real urgency about his trip to America.
On the 10th of August 1941 he took the equivalent of $40,000 from von Castoff for Plan Midas and boarded a plane for the USA. When he landed he went straight to the headquarters of the FBI. They had been told by the British that Popov was on his way, but they were not at all welcoming.
At the time the FBI was headed by the formidable J. Edgar Hoover, who considered himself to be above the law and trusted few people, particularly foreigners. Hoover believed that being a double agent made Popov doubly untrustworthy. He had no intention of granting Popov an audience and instead sent a team of agents to question him. The agents were fascinated by the microdot technology but not at all by Pearl Harbor. Popov was treated with mistrust and ordered to leave. From then on he was followed and watched everywhere he went. It went on for weeks.
It was an impossible position for Popov. He could not warn the FBI about Pearl Harbor, nor could he conduct his fake spying activities on behalf of the Abwehr. To take his mind off the FBI he got on a plane and headed for the fashionable ski slopes of Sun Valley. He skied from early morning to dark, but it did not work. His nights passed in a blur of alcohol and sex, but it was easier to grin in company than to be alone in New York. He knew he could not drown his sorrows forever.
He headed back to New York City, and there he bumped into an old friend at a party, a Hollywood star he had befriended before the war in Paris: Simone Simon. He resurrected their pre-war relationship and they began a passionate affair. He and Simone were seen at all the big New York parties, and since Popov was running out of money, she was someone who could fund his champagne lifestyle.
Then out of the blue the FBI contacted Popov. Hoover wanted to see him. Had his message about Pearl Harbor got through after all? On the 24th of September Dusko Popov walked back into the FBI offices in New York City. He was escorted to a small back office. Hoover was seated at a desk. He did not get up. There were no introductions and no preliminaries. Hoover ordered Popov to sit down and began to rant, pounding the desk with his fist as he attacked Popov's reputation.
Hoover was an extraordinary character in many ways. He probably hated foreigners, hated in particular Dusko, hated playboys, hated everything about Dusko. Hoover told him to leave his office, but Popov refused. He lit a cigarette and began a spirited defense of his position, describing the microdot questionnaire and warning him of the plot to attack Pearl Harbor. Hoover accused him of being a German agent, saying he was begging for information to sell to his German friends so he could make money and be a playboy. Popov, seething with rage, tried to defend himself, but Hoover had heard enough, telling Popov: are you trying to teach me my job? As Popov got to his feet he snapped that he did not think anyone could teach Hoover anything. He stormed out of the office and slammed the door.
Popov walked away from the FBI building with a knot in his stomach. Hoover acted as though it were his divine right to fabricate whatever tale he pleased.
Popov soon forgot about his detractors in the FBI when he received a telegram from Lisbon instructing him to meet von Castoff's assistant Elizabeth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Popov flew to Rio at the end of October and began many days of meetings with Elizabeth and Abwehr agents. They were not concerned that Popov had made no contact with his German handlers in Lisbon and no progress on the Pearl Harbor questionnaire. They simply gave him new instructions and a new questionnaire hidden beneath a microdot. His mission was to investigate why the Americans were so keen to find sources of uranium ore in South America. He had no idea that both the Americans and Germans were in a race to produce nuclear weapons.
Popov decided to return to New York by sea, but just three days from port, shocking news reached his ship: the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Japan is almost 4,000 miles from Hawaii, so the 353 Japanese aircraft that launched the surprise attack flew from aircraft carriers. Twelve US warships were sunk, 188 aircraft were destroyed, and almost two and a half thousand personnel were killed.
But Popov would have even more to worry about. In Bletchley Park, England, British intelligence had cracked the top-secret code the Germans were using to communicate. This Enigma code was cracked by a team assembled by Stewart Menzies from MI6 and provided them with an insight into the inner workings of Hitler's military machinery. Now codebreakers received chatter about Popov from the Abwehr. Popov had not been in contact since the meeting in Rio weeks ago, and now they had grown suspicious. They were questioning his loyalty.
But the British could not alert Popov for risk of revealing their codebreaking operation, so they allowed him to return to Portugal and face the music. When he returned to Lisbon he was surprised to find that von Castoff had been joined by another Abwehr controller. Together they questioned him on his mission and why he had not carried out any of the tasks they had requested. But he kept supremely calm, telling them all manner of stories to explain his inactivity in the United States. Had the Germans believed him?
Three days later a message was sent to Berlin. It was intercepted by the British at Bletchley Park. The message stated that Popov could still be trusted. The British were astonished as well as jubilant. Best of all, the Abwehr allowed Popov to resume the Lisbon-to-London shuttle.
He had not been back for two years, but London was a vastly different place from the one he had known in the winter of 1940. Despite the battering the city had endured at the hands of the Luftwaffe, Londoners were cheerful and optimistic. The tide of the war was turning. By October 1942 Germany was in trouble, and defeat seemed only a matter of time.
The Allies were planning a counterattack, the beginning of the end of Hitler. It was to be called Operation Overlord, or D-Day. Key to D-Day preparations was Operation Fortitude, prepared by the Double Cross Committee, in which Popov played a central role.
Operation Fortitude was a plan for mass deception. The Allies did not want Hitler to know that the invasion would take place on the Normandy beaches, so they built hundreds of decoy tanks and aircraft, knowing they would be visible from German spotter planes. They placed them in strategic locations to convince Hitler that the invasion would start in places like Calais and even Norway, anywhere except Normandy. This sophisticated operation also relied on Popov feeding the Germans information. His role was significant because it was essential that this whole jigsaw was put together in the minds of the Germans, so that once they got that entire picture they were not looking in the right place when D-Day actually happened.
On his final trip to Lisbon, Popov presented von Castoff with a dossier about the Allies' order of invasion. It contained misleading information about troop numbers in Britain, giving the false location for three armies, three army corps, and 23 divisions, over half a million men. On the 9th of March, Bletchley Park intercepted an Abwehr message describing Popov's intelligence as reliable. As a consequence, 15 divisions, or almost a quarter of a million German soldiers, were re-routed to Calais. The whole trick was to convince the Germans of his loyalty so that when the day for the big lie came, they would swallow the pill that much easier.
As Popov made his way back to London for the last time, he took with him intelligence about new German secret weapons. Von Castoff had warned him to stay out of London because in the coming weeks Hitler would unleash his new terror weapon on the British. Popov gave MI6 the dates of the first attacks by the V1 flying bomb.
But then, with Operation Overlord just five weeks away, some disturbing news reached Bletchley Park. Popov's friend Johnny Jebsen had been kidnapped in Lisbon by the Gestapo, who were investigating his finances. The Double Cross Committee were concerned that Jebsen might blow Popov's cover and jeopardize a deception plan for the Normandy landings, but it was too late to postpone D-Day.
On the 6th of June 1944, 175,000 Allied troops landed on the Normandy beaches. But were they entering a trap? Had Operation Fortitude worked, or had Johnny Jebsen cracked? Though he had been tortured by the Gestapo, Jebsen had not uttered a word about his true identity or Popov's. D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Nazis.
In London, Popov was invited to a celebratory dinner where he was given the seat of honor. It was announced that he was to be awarded the Order of the British Empire. But Popov was in no mood to celebrate. He learned that Johnny Jebsen had been shot dead while trying to escape, a common euphemism for murdered. Johnny's death was a big blow to Popov. His life changed afterward. They had been watching each other's back throughout the war and were able to achieve important things together. The double effort on both sides worked perfectly.
Cold, bitter, destructive hate rose in Popov like fury. He wanted vengeance.
After the war, as Europe rejoiced at victory and the Third Reich collapsed, Popov embarked on his quest. It would be his last mission. He got hold of a British officer's uniform and traveled to Germany. Once there he scoured the country, inspecting every prisoner-of-war camp, trying to track down the man responsible for the murder of his friend. He had the honorary role of lieutenant colonel, so he had some status within the Allied Army, and he set himself the role of finding out what had happened to his friend.
One name kept cropping up: Walter Salzer, a member of the German intelligence service, was the man most likely to know what had happened to Jebsen. Salzer had been commandant of the camp where Jebsen had been killed. In Popov's eyes he was Johnny's murderer. He tracked him down to the northern town of Minden. There was no one home at the address Popov had been given, so he broke into the house and waited. When Salzer came through the front door, Popov confronted him. He took him to nearby woods and forced the barrel of his pistol deep into his mouth. But Popov knew he would not, could not, kill him. He vomited his sins and his shame and his pain.
Dusko Popov started the war a wealthy playboy, an incorrigible womanizer, and a dedicated gambler. He ended it as one of Germany's most trusted spies and one of Britain's most successful double agents. He fed the Germans a constant stream of doctored military intelligence. His Midas plan drained the Abwehr of $85,000, over $2 million in today's money, and almost the entire cost of running the Double Cross Committee.
Popov's warning about Pearl Harbor may have fallen on deaf ears, but his deception skills were important to the success of D-Day. What Popov achieved during the war was to constantly befog the minds of German intelligence. He confused them, making them think things were happening that were not happening, and that things that were happening were not happening.
Could Popov really have been the inspiration behind Ian Fleming's James Bond? The comparison would downgrade his effort. What he did during the war with the rest of the Double Cross gang was quite amazing, and the James Bond association is practical but not very honest.
When he returned to Britain after his attempt to avenge Johnny Jebsen's murder, Dusko Popov was granted British citizenship and awarded his OBE. The presentation was made appropriately in the cocktail bar at the Ritz.