Spies and Traitors Knowledge Centers

The thrilling true story of the daring double agents who thwarted Hitler's spy machine in Britain and turned the tide of World War II. After the fall of France in the mid-1940s, Adolf Hitler faced a British Empire that refused to negotiate for peace. With total war looming, he ordered the Abwehr, Germany's defense and intelligence organization, to carry out Operation Lena—a program to place information-gathering spies within Britain. Quickly, a network of secret agents spread within the United Kingdom and across the British Empire. A master of disguises, a professional safecracker, a scrubwoman, a diplomat's daughter—they all reported news of the Allied defenses and strategies back to their German spymasters. One Yugoslav playboy codenamed “Tricycle” infiltrated the highest echelon of British society and is said to have been one of Ian Fleming's models for James Bond. The stunning truth, though, was that every last one of these German spies had been captured and turned by the British. As double agents, they sent a canny mix of truth and misinformation back to Hitler, all carefully controlled by the Allies.

August 1941. Serbian playboy Dusko Popov created a stir at Casino Estoril in Portugal by throwing down an outrageously large baccarat bet to humiliate his opponent. The Serbian was a British double agent, and the money-- which he had just stolen from the Germans-- belonged to the British. Watching at the sideline was none other than Ian Fleming. An operative for the Abwehr, SD, MI5, MI6, and FBI during World War II, Popov seduced countless women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot. While MI5 desperately needed Popov to deceive the Abwehr about the D-Day invasion, they assured him that a return to the German Secret Service Headquarters in Lisbon would result in torture and execution. He went anyway.

The author recalls the adventure and danger of his espionage activities during the Second World War as a British agent posing as a Nazi supporter.