The Double-Cross System or XX System was a World War II counter-espionage and deception operation of the British Security Service. Nazi agents in Britain – real and false – were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves, and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi controllers. Its operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman; the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: "XX".
Juan Pujol García, also known as Joan Pujol i García, was a Spanish spy who acted as a double agent loyal to Great Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, when he relocated to Britain to carry out fictitious spying activities for the Germans. He was given the codename Garbo by the British; their German counterparts codenamed him Alaric and referred to his non-existent spy network as "Arabal".
Operation Fortitude was a military deception operation by the Allied nations as part of Operation Bodyguard, an overall deception strategy during the buildup to the 1944 Normandy landings. Fortitude was divided into two subplans, North and South, and had the aim of misleading the German High Command as to the location of the invasion.
Kenneth Martin Follett, is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels who has sold more than 160 million copies of his works.
The Security Service, also known as MI5, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Defence Intelligence (DI). MI5 is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and the service is bound by the Security Service Act 1989. The service is directed to protect British parliamentary democracy and economic interests and to counter terrorism and espionage within the United Kingdom (UK).
Operation Bodyguard was the code name for a World War II deception strategy employed by the Allied states before the 1944 invasion of northwest Europe. Bodyguard set out an overall stratagem for misleading the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht as to the time and place of the invasion. Planning for Bodyguard was started in 1943 by the London Controlling Section, a department of the war cabinet. They produced a draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael, which was presented to leaders at the Tehran Conference in late November and, despite skepticism due to the failure of earlier deception strategy, approved on 6 December 1943.
Roman Garby-Czerniawski was a Polish Air Force captain and Allied double agent during World War II who used the code name Brutus.
The Blomberg–Fritsch affair, also known as the Blomberg–Fritsch crisis, was the name given to two related scandals in early 1938 that resulted in the subjugation of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) to Adolf Hitler. As documented in the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler had been dissatisfied with the two high-ranking military officials concerned, Werner von Blomberg and Werner von Fritsch, regarding them as too hesitant with the war preparations he demanded. As a result, a marriage scandal and a manufactured accusation of homosexuality were used to remove Blomberg and Fritsch, respectively.
The Battle of Rostov (1941) was a battle of the Eastern Front of World War II, fought around Rostov-on-Don between the Army Group South of Nazi Germany and the Southern Front of the Soviet Union.
Jan Willem Ter Braak was a Dutch espionage agent working for Germany who operated for five months in the United Kingdom. Ter Braak, whose original name was Engelbertus Fukken, is believed to have been the German agent who was at large for the longest time in Britain during the Second World War, despite his short period of activity. When he ran out of money, Ter Braak committed suicide in a public air raid shelter.
Eye of the Needle is a 1981 British spy film directed by Richard Marquand and starring Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan. Written by Stanley Mann, it is based on the 1978 novel of the same title by Ken Follett.
First United States Army Group was a fictitious Allied Army Group in World War II prior to D-Day, part of Operation Quicksilver, created to deceive the Germans about where the Allies would land in France. To attract Axis attention, prominent US general George S. Patton was placed in command of the fabricated formation.
The 80th Infantry (Reserve) Division was an infantry division of the British Army formed at the beginning of 1943, during the Second World War. For the twenty months that the division existed, it was a training formation. It was made responsible for providing final tactical and field training to soldiers who had already passed their initial training. After five additional weeks of training, the soldiers would be posted to fighting formations overseas. Notably, the division was used as a source of reinforcements for the 21st Army Group, which was fighting in Normandy. After all available troops left the United Kingdom for France, the division was disbanded.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
The Key to Rebecca is a novel by the British author Ken Follett. Published in 1980 by Pan Books (ISBN 0792715381), it was a best-seller that achieved popularity in the United Kingdom and worldwide. The code mentioned in the title is an intended throwback from Follett to Daphne du Maurier's famed suspense novel Rebecca.
Johannes Eppler (1914–1999), also known as Hans Eppler, John Eppler, and Hussein Gaafer, was a World War II Abwehr spy, a German who had been raised in Egypt by his Egyptian stepfather. One of Rommel's spies during the North African campaign in World War II, Operation Salaam led by László Almásy spirited Eppler and Hans-Gerd Sandstede into Cairo although they were both arrested soon after arrival in July 1942. Eppler is the subject of MI5 file KV 2/1467.
Duško Popov was a Serbian double agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II. He passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System while working as an agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.
Ops (B) was an Allied military deception planning department, based in the United Kingdom, during the Second World War. It was set up under Colonel Jervis-Read in April 1943 as a department of Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), an operational planning department with a focus on western Europe. That year, Allied high command had decided that the main Allied thrust would be in southern Europe, and Ops (B) was tasked with tying down German forces on the west coast in general, and drawing out the Luftwaffe in particular.
A Column of Fire is a 2017 novel by British author Ken Follett, first published on 12 September 2017. It is the third book in the Kingsbridge Series, and serves as a sequel to 1989's The Pillars of the Earth and 2007's World Without End.
