11. From Playboy to Spy
Dusan “Dusko” Popov (1912 – 1981) was born into a wealthy Serbian family. His grandfather was a rich banker and businessman, and his father made the family richer still by adding real estate to its investment portfolio. Popov was set on the playboy path from an early age by an indulgent father, who built his kids a huge seaside villa, and gave them generous allowances that allowed them to host lavish parties there. However, while Popov’s father was indulgent, he did not simply spoil his kids rotten. He insisted that they get as good a top notch education as his considerable wealth could afford. Thus, by the time Popov was a teenager he was fluent in French, German, and Italian, in addition to his native Serbian. At age twenty two, he went to Germany to pursue a doctorate at a university there, not long after the Nazis came to power.
Popov befriended a rich German student named Johnny Jebsen, who had anti-Nazi views. While in Germany, Popov came to loathe the Nazis. When WWII broke out, his friend Jebsen, whose family’s business needed favors from Popov’s, informed him in 1940 that he had joined Germany’s military intelligence, the Abwehr. Popov passed that information to a contact in the British embassy. Jebsen sought to recruit him as an Abwehr agent, and the British urged Popov to play along, recruiting him as an MI6. He eventually turned Jebsen, and recruited his German recruiter into British intelligence as a double agent. Popov also fed information to his native Yugoslavia’s intelligence, making him a triple agent. In 1941, the Abwehr sent Popov to the United States, furnishing him with a small fortune and tasking him with gathering intelligence on American defensive measures.
