Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov: World War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond

by Larry Loftis

  At universities throughout Germany the SD formed “Working Associations,” each having local leaders and an army of collaborators and informants. Those in associations included academics, judges, businessmen, and scientists. Some in academia served as “reporters.” When Dusko graduated in 1937, the SD surveillance network had grown to three thousand full-time employees, with another fifty thousand serving as informants. At major universities like Freiburg, SD collaborators would have long since infiltrated faculty and student clubs. Future Secret Service chief Walter Schellenberg started with the SD in this fashion, having been recruited by two professors while a student at the University of Bonn.

  The malediction of the system was significant and swift; once denounced by a Nazi collaborator, a victim was immediately arrested. And Dusko was mistaken in his belief that foreigners were exempt from prosecution and punishment. A thirty-one-year-old American physician, Joseph Schachno, was a prime example. One evening shortly after Hitler’s rise to power a team of uniformed men visited Dr. Schachno’s home in Berlin. They were responding to an anonymous tip that Schachno was a potential enemy of the state. Though the Gestapo found nothing incriminating in his home, the American was taken to headquarters, ordered to undress, and whipped mercilessly. His entire body was flayed, leaving a mass of raw, bleeding flesh.

  But the danger was just beginning.

  Two years after Hitler’s election, the Reichstag passed the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. When Freiburg stores were ordered to post signs forbidding the entrance of Jews, the owner of a favorite campus café—Mrs. Birlinger—refused. The Nazis responded by picketing the restaurant and posting soldiers to collect names of patrons. It was a less than subtle intimidation at which Dusko took umbrage. One day he and his two closest friends—Johann Jebsen and Alfred “Freddy” Graf von Kageneck—supported the recalcitrant café by giving their names to the guards and taking a table by the window for all to see.

  Dusko Popov, the foreign student, had caught the watchful eye of the Reich.

  As a handsome and charismatic doctoral student, he was also catching the eyes of co-eds. Women and trouble invariably commingled for Popov, and throughout his early years he was never far from either. Sunning with a girlfriend one afternoon, Dusko wrote in his memoirs, he was resting peacefully when another suitor—Karl Laub—approached to pester the girl for a date. A disagreement ensued and Laub challenged Dusko to Mensur—a saber duel sometimes called “academic fencing.” Practiced in German universities since the sixteenth century, Mensur was thought to instill mettle and courage in young men. Hitler encouraged the practice as a means of building up fearless soldiers. German traditionalists, men like Walter Schellenberg, joined university student groups specifically because they had “a code of honor and duelling.”

  The tradition was not favored by handsome foreigners, however, since the object of the bout was to disfigure the opponent’s face. Mensur contestants wore a protective vest, neck armor, and a small mask to protect the eyes and nose; the cheeks, forehead, and chin were the principal targets, and a quick flip of the wrist would lacerate anything the saber touched. The duel, which was officiated, allowed no ducking, flinching, or dodging of an opponent’s blows.

  Mark Twain described a bout he witnessed in Heidelberg:

  The instant the word was given, the two apparitions sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each other with such lightning rapidity that I could not quite tell whether I saw the swords or only flashes they made. . . . I saw a handful of hair skip into the air as if it had lain loose on the victim’s head and a breath of wind had suddenly puffed it away. . . . The surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound—and revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long. . . . The duelists took position again; a small stream of blood was flowing down the side of the injured man’s head, and over his shoulder and down his body to the floor, but he did not seem to mind this. The word was given, and they plunged at each other as fiercely as before; once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed. . . . The law is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes if the men can hold out. . . . At last it was decided that the men were too much wearied to do battle any longer. They were led away drenched with crimson from head to foot.

  Gruesome Mensur scars, Schmissen (“smite”) the Germans called them, adorned the faces of many World War II officers, including SA cofounder Ernst Röhm, head of the political police (later, Gestapo) Rudolf Diels, RSHA chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and legendary commando Otto Skorzeny. No less an authority than Otto von Bismarck was reported to have said that dueling scars were a sign of bravery, and that a man’s courage could be determined by the number on his cheeks.

  Dusko had neither the need for distorted courage nor the desire for a deformed face. When the time for the duel arrived, he demanded a different weapon.

  Pistols.

  Laub and his second objected. Pistols had never been used in student dueling, they complained to the referee. Johnny Jebsen, who was Dusko’s second, countered that the one being challenged traditionally had choice of weapons, and that Dusko was duty bound by his Yugoslav cavalry regiment to duel only with pistols. Laub appealed to the student honor court, which found a middle ground: Dusko was allowed a choice of weapons, but pistols had never been used in a university duel.

  The bout was canceled and Laub lived on.

  »

  On June 9, 1937, Dusko turned in his dissertation—“The Vivovdan and the September Constitution of Yugoslavia”—and began wrapping up his doctoral studies. By late summer he had finished his exams and made preparations for a celebratory excursion to Paris. He had been to the French capital many times and loved all that the city offered: endless cafés, exquisite wines and cuisine, and—most importantly—adventurous popsies. A few days before leaving he gave a pro-democracy speech at the foreign-student club.

  He never made it to Paris.

  2

  EXITING FEET FIRST

  A day or so after the speech Dusko was awakened by pounding at his door. A team of Gestapo guards, looming in the hall like black-and-gray gargoyles, ordered him to get dressed and follow them to an awaiting car.

  He knew why.

  From the day he stepped onto the Freiburg campus in the fall of 1935, he had either ignored or ridiculed the Nazis. Birlinger café. Articles for the Politika. Speeches at the foreign-student club. Naively, he had assumed the social setting would allow free speech. He also believed that his status as a foreigner would exempt him from Kadavergehorsam—the zombie-like obedience Hitler demanded. Dusko despised Nazism, and since he wasn’t German, he believed he owed no allegiance to Hitler or the state.

  He was wrong.

  By 1937 Hitler had been Reich chancellor for four years and had spread Nazi doctrine and terror across Germany with fanatical resolve. Heinrich Himmler, as de facto head of the Gestapo in 1934 and as Reichsführer-SS in 1936, had begun implementing many reforms: Jewish professors were fired from university posts, church leaders were forced to embrace National Socialism or lose their parishes, and Konzentrationslagers—concentration camps—were ordered to full development.

  Dusko Popov, a nonconformist foreigner, was another perfect target. As a Polish jurist later wrote, the Nazi scheme was a coordinated plan to pass laws “that attacked the political and social institutions of culture, language, national feelings, religion and the economic existence of national groups, and [that tended to] the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of individuals belonging to such groups.”

  Virtually around the clock, Gestapo agents interrogated him. The first agent charged him with an unthinkable crime—dating a girl who worked in a factory. Surely this was proof that Popov was a Communist. Another agent followed. And another. Eight days. The Gestapo questioned everyone he knew—students, professors, merchants—and only von Kageneck and Jebsen defended him.

  Like Dusko, Freddy and Johnny
had come from aristocratic backgrounds. The von Kagenecks were one of the oldest and most influential Catholic families in Germany; the Jebsens, one of the richest. Freddy’s noble heritage could be traced back to the twelfth century, and Johnny’s wealth, although invested largely in ships, was almost beyond measure.

  Johnny’s family was originally from Denmark, and his grandfather, Michael Jebsen, Jr., had established a shipping company there in 1871. To open an Asia trade route, he moved his operations to Hamburg, and the eldest son, Johnny’s uncle Jacob, cofounded Jebsen & Co. in 1895 in Hong Kong. It appears that the youngest son, Michael III, was Johnny’s father and had continued the Hamburg business after Johnny’s grandfather died in 1899. The date of Michael III’s death is unknown, but by the time Johnny enrolled at Freiburg in 1935, both of his parents were dead. By then Johnny had inherited not only a sizeable part of the shipping empire, but other assets as well. Part of Jebsen’s loyalty to Germany, he would later say, was because he owned so much of it.

  Johnny was Dusko’s best friend and, as Popov would later reveal, the person who most affected his life. They had many things in common, including an addiction to “sports cars and sporting girls.” Dusko drove a BMW and Johnny drove a supercharged Mercedes 540. Both were confident, well-spoken, and popular. Dusko, who himself had a short-term photographic memory and spoke five languages, wrote that Johnny’s knowledge was “encyclopedic,” his recall infallible. MI5 files repeatedly mention Jebsen as exceptionally intelligent, clever, and highly cultured. His English was also quite good.

  Both men were complex, often aloof, and invariably charismatic. Popov’s account that everyone was under Johnny’s spell mirrored MI5’s depiction of Dusko himself: “He is courageous, discreet, and has great charm of manner,” Popov’s case officer wrote. “In more senses than one he is rather an adventurer.”

  Hedonists and spendthrifts, the restless friends were also loyal to a fault; either, time would tell, was more than ready to give his life for the other. Not surprisingly, they shared a worldly wisdom—a Weltanschauung that espoused capitalism over socialism, liberty over safety, gumption over discipline, and rebellion over indoctrination. They were no men’s fools and would little suffer ideologues.

  Dusko Popov.

  National Archives and Records Administration

  In other ways, they could not have been more different. While Dusko had boyish good looks, Johnny was pale, weak of eyes, and had black, tobacco-stained teeth. Dusko was athletic and skilled at numerous sports: water polo, horsemanship, sailing, skiing, tennis, and marksmanship. As belligerents would later discover, he was also good with his hands.

  Jebsen, conversely, played no sports and was thin and frail. Like Orwell’s poor Winston, Johnny suffered from varicose veins and walked with a limp. Perhaps to compensate for his less than ideal features, he dressed impeccably. On one occasion, he told Dusko he was willing to pay $600—an exorbitant amount at the time—for a suit of English cloth. With intimidating intellect, wealth, and an enviable savoir faire, Jebsen conveyed unusual power and confidence.

  Johnny idolized Dusko, who was five years older and seemed to excel at everything, especially women. Dusko, in turn, admired Johnny’s independence and savvy worldliness. They also shared a common passion: hatred of the Nazis.

  »

  After the Gestapo investigation, Popov was transferred to Freiburg prison. It was a rude awakening, to say the least. Life in Nazi incarceration was largely the same across Germany—ghastly. No visitors. No correspondence. Minutes in the exercise yard once a day. Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer would later write: “The blankets . . . had such a foul smell that in spite of the cold it was impossible to use them. Next morning a piece of bread was thrown into my cell; I had to pick it up from the floor. . . . For the next twelve days the cell door was opened only for bringing food in and putting the bucket out. I was told nothing about the reason for my detention, or how long it would last.”

  Johnny Jebsen.

  The National Archives of the UK

  An SOE operative captured in Vichy France had a similar tale: “In a very few weeks I lost over forty pounds. My jailer came three times a day: in the morning with a mug of hot water which he assured me was coffee, at noon with a slightly larger mug of so-called soup in which floated three or four beans . . . at night, another cup of soup and a lump of dark brown bread.” On Wednesdays, he went on, “there was a small piece of meat—sometimes only a bone.” One mug of cold water to drink each day. For weeks he did not wash or shave.

  After some time in his new home Popov met another prisoner who explained that the Nazis would not pursue formal adjudication; Hitler’s Schutzhaft allowed the Gestapo to imprison without proceedings. Courts were not allowed to investigate or intervene. Dusko would be secretly shipped to a concentration camp, the other prisoner said, listed as missing, and never heard from again. And the usual exit from these camps, he added—was “feet first.”

  Little did Dusko know then that the Nazis had already perfected their ideological cleansing; a dissident’s mere existence was a palimpsest, neatly erased by an efficient concentration or forced-labor camp. By 1937 such camps had been established at Oranienburg, Esterwegen, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Lichtenburg. More disturbingly, the Gestapo had official and unilateral authority for Sonderbehandlung (“special treatment”)—execution. Because he had been snatched before dawn, Dusko’s university friends would assume he had left for Paris. Within days he was scheduled for transfer to a camp and eventual extermination.

  Mysteriously, he was suddenly released and told to be out of the country within twenty-four hours. He caught the first train to Switzerland.

  He was followed.

  3

  SPYING FOR HITLER,

  KILLING FOR CHURCHILL

  The telegram that would forever change Dusko Popov’s life arrived February 4, 1940. Everything had been going so well. He had been practicing law in Dubrovnik with a business attorney, Dr. Jaksitch, since the fall of 1937 and had built an impressive stable of clients including Savska, a prominent Belgrade bank. Negotiating contracts for the import of machinery, he also conducted business with the German Embassy, meeting often with an undersecretary named von Stein.

  Secretary Stein, who was about Popov’s age, was much like the strident Nazis Dusko had gone to school with in Freiburg. In every respect he was Hitler’s prototype: well built, short blond hair, clean-shaven with a good complexion, overbearing, and boasting that all-important credential—a dueling scar. Von Stein wasted no time recruiting; upon hearing that Popov knew Bozo Banac, one of the wealthiest men in Yugoslavia, the secretary suggested that Dusko might do more and better work for Germany.

  When Popov visited the embassy again in January 1940, von Stein pursued the possibility: “You are well acquainted with Karlo Banac,” he said, “the brother of Bozo Banac, and through this channel can get an easy entry into British circles.” Dusko reminded the diplomat that Germany had expelled him from the country. Undeterred, von Stein said that they would forget the past.

  Popov sidestepped, suggesting that he wasn’t sure he could produce much from his contacts. Even if he could, he thought silently, Germany was hardly a client he would represent, and it had now been at war with Britain and France for four months. Besides, he had no need for additional business or money.

  Although Popov worked at a leisurely pace—usually out of the office by 11:00 a.m.—he brought in over £3,000 a year, a considerable sum in 1940. He lived in a large home—complete with housekeepers and grounds servants—on an Adriatic peninsula. MI5 recorded his address simply as “Lapad, Dubrovnik.”

  At twenty-nine he was well connected, mingled in society circles, and vacationed annually a month or more in Paris. He owned a yacht—Nina—and as a member of the Dubrovnik sailing club was fond of saying that he was “born in the sun, and would die in the sun.” Family, sailing, tennis, women
—life was good.

  »

  The cable from Berlin threatened to spoil everything:

  NEED TO MEET YOU URGENTLY. PROPOSE 8 FEBRUARY, HOTEL SERBIAN KING, BELGRADE.

  No greeting. No reminiscing. No reason. Johnny was in some sort of trouble.

  It had been two and a half years since the Gestapo expelled Dusko from Germany, and he was deeply indebted to his friend. Concerned about Dusko’s disappearance, Johnny had asked around and heard of the arrest. He called Dusko’s father, who contacted the Yugoslav prime minister, who in turn contacted Hermann Goering. By the time Johnny heard of the release, Dusko was at the Freiburg train station. Prohibited from entering the platform, Jebsen assumed the route and raced Dusko’s train to Basel. It was a rescue Popov would not soon forget.

  He drove to Belgrade.

  »

  Johnny looked like hell, Dusko remembered. Unkempt hair, ragged mustache, sullen and apprehensive eyes, he was chain-smoking—100 to 150 cigarettes a day—and drinking heavily. In just three short years Jebsen had aged considerably.

  After ranting about Hitler for a few minutes, Johnny came to the point of his visit. A number of German ships in the Norddeutche Lloyd fleet, he said, a company in which Jebsen was a director, were stranded in several neutral ports. He had obtained authorization to sell the lot—provided that they sailed under a neutral flag—but he needed help finding a buyer. The logical prospects were Britain and France, but if the SD got wind that he was selling war assets to an Allied country, he’d be executed. Popov would have to negotiate and consummate the deal without Jebsen’s participation, and a neutral third party would have to be the first sale.