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The Spy Who Led an Army to its Doom With Fake Newspapers and Letters

Khalid Elhassan December 5, 2021 37 min

The execution of captured American spy Nathan Hale. Painting and Frame

9. One of Fortune’s Favorites, With an Ear for Languages

Dusko Popov was one of fortune’s favorites, and such favor began with his birth in 1912 into a wealthy Serbian family that had been affluent for centuries. His grandfather had been a rich banker and businessman who owned factories, mines, and retail establishments, and his father made the family richer still when he added real estate to its investment portfolio. Popov, an avid outdoorsman and athlete since childhood, thus grew up in the lap of luxury, attended by servants in the family’s numerous villas or while he sailed the seas in one of the family’s numerous yachts.

The future spy 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. Although indulgent, Popov’s father did not simply spoil his kids rotten. He made sure that they got as great 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. Such linguistic skills came in handy down the road.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.