Elyesa Bazna ( Turkey: Ã, ['eljes?' b? zn?] ), rarely referred to as Iliaz and Ilyaz Bazna ( Albania: Ã, [iliaz bazna] ), (July 28, 1904 - December 21, 1970), was a secret agent for Nazi Germany during World War II, operating under the code name Cicero .
Born in Pristina, Bazna attended the military academy, and joined the French military unit at the age of 16. He was caught stealing cars and guns, which he served for three years in a forced labor camp in France. Bazna held a number of manual jobs in Turkish and French cities before getting a job for foreign diplomats and consulates as a doorman, driver, and guard. He spoke several languages ​​fluently, including French, which was the dominant diplomatic language at the time. In 1943, Bazna was hired as a valet by Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador in Ankara, Turkey. He photographed Knatchbull-Hugessen's British documents, and sold them to Germany through their attaché Ludwig Carl Moyzisch in what was known as the Cicero event.
Like Cicero, Bazna conveys important information about the many conferences of Allied leaders, including the Moscow, Tehran and Cairo Conferences. Details for the Tehran Conference are important for Long Leap Operation, unsuccessful plots to kill Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill. He has also submitted documents carrying the highest security restrictions (BIGOT list) of Operation Overlord (code name for the Normandy Invasion in June 1944). This includes intelligence that the British ambassador would request the use of a Turkish air base "to maintain threats against Germany from the eastern Mediterranean until the Overlord was launched." Information about the Norman Invasion was not known by the Germans until after the war. Had it been given on time, Operation Overlord (preparation for D-Day) could be compromised. He also provides intelligence that might make Germany believe that there is no danger of attacks on the Balkans. The information he leaked is believed to be among the more potentially destructive disclosures made by agents during the Second World War. The German Foreign Office questioned the intelligence provided by Cicero because of the large number of documents submitted, which meant that little, if any, were acted upon.
Once the British realized that there were spies operating at the Turkish Embassy, ​​they investigated Bazna, installed a new alarm system, and initiated an unsuccessful attack to arrest her selling intelligence. He stopped selling information to Germany in late February 1944 and left the embassy within a month or so. After the war, Bazna was interrogated for war crimes, but she was never charged with espionage. He tried to buy and operate a hotel in Ankara with the result of his career as a spy, but it is known that most of the money is fake. He was serving a short prison term for passing fake notes. Bazna lived in Ankara with her family for many years and got a job doing odd jobs. He moved to Munich in 1960 and worked as a night watchman before dying in 1970 due to kidney disease. Bazna published a memoir about Cicero's infidelity in 1962.
Video Elyesa Bazna
Early life and family
Bazna was born in 1904 in Pristina, Kosovo Vilayet from the Ottoman Empire (now Kosovo). His parents are Albanian heritage. His father was a teacher of Islamic doctrine and a landowner. He later stated that his father was a Muslim mullah named Hafiz Yazan Bazna, his uncle was Major General Kemal, and his grandfather was Tahir Pasha the Brave. Both his grandfather and his uncle were the Young Turks who served under Mustafa Kemal AtatÃÆ'¼rk.
When he was 14 Serb forces occupied the birthplace of Bazna and his family moved during the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire to Istanbul, which was later occupied by British Allied troops, Italian and American World War I. The Turkish Nationalist Nationalist movement opposed the occupying forces. The author of Jacob Kadri Karaosmano? Lu said that "the occupying forces in Istanbul consider all the cruelty and oppression committed by them against the [Istanbul] people as lawful."
According to Bazna, he attended the military academy in Fatih, Turkey, before 1919. At the age of 16 he joined the French military unit in Istanbul. He claims to have stolen British weapons and cars for the Turkish National Movement, led by AtatÃÆ'¼rk. Richard Wires, author of Cicero , states that Bazna is not motivated to steal for political or patriotic reasons. When he was caught stealing, he was sent to a forced labor camp in Marseille, France, for three years. He said that he worked for the Berliet motorcycle company after he left the labor camp. While there he learned the skills of a locksmith. In 1925 Bazna moved to Istanbul, where he worked for Istanbul Corp. in the transport department. He then worked as head of a fire brigade in Yozgat before returning to Istanbul to drive a taxi.
Bazna speaks in Albanian, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian and French, the latter being the standard language of diplomacy at that time. He also knew a little German from singing Lieder and said that he could read basic English but had difficulty speaking. He was trained as an opera singer.
Bazna got married twice; with his first wife, whom he divorced, he had four children. He has several hostesses, one of whom, Mara, is a nanny of David Busk's children, an English ambassador. Mara lives with her in the hills of Kavakl? Dere in a small house he calls "Cicero Villa". Their relationship is tumultuous and Bazna ends the affair because of their battles and jealousy. However, he was loyal to him and gave him important information twice, once about the arrival of British security guys at the embassy and a second time when he said he had heard rumors that Germany had a good source of intelligence. As soon as she starts to see a new lover, Esra, her relationship with Mara ends up permanently. After Esra he took a woman named Aika as her lover and set her up in an apartment. He left after the pound money was falsely assured. She later married a second time to a woman named Duriet and has four more children.
Maps Elyesa Bazna
Career espionage
Background: Turkey during World War II
Turkey was neutral for much of World War II, although in October 1939 Britain signed an agreement to protect Turkey if Germany attacked it. Turkey maintained its neutrality by preventing German troops from crossing its border into Syria or the Soviet Union. During this time Turkey has profitable trade relations with Germany and the UK. Germany has significant business interests in Turkey, including banks, and from 1941 it relied on chrome ore from Turkey for its armaments production. In 1943, all iron ore imported by Germany for its armaments came from Turkey. Throughout the war, the Turkish economy depended and prospered because of its affiliation with both the Allies and the Axis powers. As a result, the country's gold reserves increased to 216 tonnes by the end of 1945, from 27 tonnes at the start of the war.
Beginning in 1942 the Allies provided military aid, and then began imposing economic sanctions in 1943 to force Turkey into war. Allied forces want Turkey to engage in war against the eastern wing of Germany; However, the Turks fear being controlled by Russian and German soldiers, both of whom are led by dictators.
The Allied Forces and Axis became increasingly involved in espionage in Turkey to protect their own strategic interests beginning in 1943. There were two factions of the Allies, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Germany is the third entity involved in intelligence gathering. Germany was able to fund their espionage, propaganda and diplomacy efforts from the profits of its banks in Turkey.
In August 1944, Turkey severed ties with Germany, as its defeat began to seem inevitable. In February 1945 it declared war on Germany and Japan, a symbolic move that allowed Turkey to join the emerging United Nations.
Jobs by diplomat
Bazna works for foreign diplomats and consulates as a doorman, driver and guard after returning to Turkey. Assisted by his ability to speak French, he serves as a kavass or valet, first to the Yugoslav ambassador to Turkey. In 1942, he worked as a valet for Albert Jenke, a German businessman and later a member of the embassy staff, who came to fire Bazna for reading his letter.
Before he worked for Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen in 1943, Bazna was hired to undertake some household and vehicle repairs for Douglas Busk, First Secretary of the British Embassy. Due to poor English Bazna, she answered all the interview questions in French. Although he provided some written biographical information, excluding having been employed and fired by Jenke, no biographical information was examined. The Turkish secret service apparently warned the embassy at some point about Bazna. For several months he worked for Busk, Bazna secretly photographed several documents and, with the help of Mrs. Busk's caregiver, Mara, he tried to gain access to more valuable forms of intelligence.
Busk agreed to recommend Bazna to open a valet position to Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador to Turkey, who hired him in 1943 on the assumption that a background check had been conducted. Knatchbull-Hugessen had been England's ambassador in Riga, Latvia, until 1935.
Anthony Cave Brown, author of Bodyguard of Lies, writes, "Soon, Bazna had bloat herself to the point that Sir Hughe lifted her from pure household duties to positions of strength in residency and embassy. dressing her in an impressive blue uniform, giving her a peaked hat, and using her as a guard to the door of her study, Bazna excludes visitors when Sir Hughe is thinking or taking a nap. For ceremonial events, Sir Hughe dresses her with very fancy embroidery. , shoes with raised toes, a fez with fringe, gave him a very large sword, and placed it at the main door Sir Hughe also paid him over 100 Turkish lira which is the standard for a valet , and quietly turn a blind eye to the fact that Bazna was having an affair with Lady Knatchbull-Hugessen's waitress in the servants' room. "Bazna often sings German Lieder had lunch, while Knatchbull-Hugessen played the piano, much to the ambassador's pleasure.
Beginning career espionage
While in Riga, Knatchbull-Hugessen has developed the habit of taking secret documents to his home from the British embassy, ​​and continues the practice in Ankara. Bazna gained access to documents in the ambassador's document box and securely used the skills of a locksmith, including creating impressions and then a copy of the key for the document box. He began photographing confidential documents about war strategies, troop movements, and negotiations with Turkey to enter the war. He took photographs when the ambassador slept, showered or played the piano.
Bazna approached the German Embassy in Ankara on October 26, 1943, indicating that she wanted a Ã, Â £ 20,000 to two rolls of film from the ambassador's document. He became a spy through a relationship with his former employer, Albert Jenke. Jenke is brother-in-law Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Germany. Although Bazna was fired by Jenke, his wife contacted German intelligence officer Ludwig Carl Moyzisch, serving as an elementary school attached to the German embassy in Ankara, and informed him of the photographs Bazna had extracted from classified information at the British Embassy. He became a paid German agent under Moyzisch and codenamed Sicherheitsdienst (SD) "Cicero" by German Ambassador Franz von Papen for the "amazing eloquence" of Bazna. His Nazi paymasters made about one and half his payments in counterfeit banknotes under Operation Bernhard.
According to Mummer Kaylan, author of The Kemalist: Islamic Awakening and the Secular Turkey Fate , Bazna says that she started spying for Germany because she needed money and, although she was not a Nazi, she liked Germans and liked the English. He also alludes to the involvement of Milli Emniyet Hizmeti, who became Turkish National Security Service in 1965. The English historian Richard Wires writes that Bazna was motivated entirely by greed, for he dreamed of becoming rich by selling secrets to Germany. Wires describes Bazna as a typical small villain of the Balkans, a man of low intelligence without values ​​except for apolitical and opportunistic greed, taking advantage of whatever opportunities he finds to try to become rich but easily deceived by Germany.
Intelligence
During the first three months of 1944, Cicero gave Germany copies of documents taken from his employer's mailbox or safe. Photographs of classified documents were generally handed over to Moyzisch's car, which was parked unattractively on the Ankara street. On one occasion, this led to a high-speed pursuit around Ankara, because someone had been interested in submission. Bazna, who may have been tailed, fled. Ultra, the British codebreaking system based in Bletchley Park, routinely reads German messages, encoded by Enigma machines. From that information, the code-breaker knew that there was an intelligence offense, but did not know that its source was the British Embassy in Turkey.
Guy Liddell, who works for MI5, notes that there was a security breach at the embassy on October 17, 1943, which was later reported by ISOS, Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey. The leak involves a bag of embassy diplomats and two agents. On 3 November Liddell speaks with Stewart Menzies, head of the British Secret Intelligence Service. From that discussion, Liddell learned that the leak of a diplomatic case occurred during or after the aircraft took him back from Cairo, which put the reassignment table in place at risk and required the abandonment of the table. There are also missing blueprints for weapons in military attache offices. Menzies stated that there was an investigation done at the embassy, ​​but nothing more was said about the leak for several months.
Like Cicero, Bazna conveys important information about the many conferences of Allied leaders, including the Moscow, Tehran and Cairo Conferences. Fortunately for the English, Knatchbull-Hugessen has only one record document from the conference.
Intelligence provided by Cicero included a document instructing Knatchbull-Hugessen to request the use of a Turkish air base "to maintain threats against Germany from the eastern Mediterranean until the Overlord was launched." Documents carry the highest security restrictions (BIGOT list). Cicero conveyed limited information about Operation Overlord (code name for the Normandy Invasion of June 1944), which was not correlated by Germany until after the war when the film about Cicero was released. According to a British post-government assessment of Cicero's potential impact, "This [Bazna intelligence] provides information to Germans with information from the ambassador's table on British and Allied intentions in the Near East and the Middle East and to conduct wars in general, and perhaps easily endangering the Operations Authority (preparation for D-Day). "
When the Cicero documents predicted the Allied bombing mission in the Balkans, which occurred on the expected date, the authenticity of the information was supported and his reputation enhanced. Moyzisch told Cicero that at the end of the war, Hitler intended to give him a villa.
Appraisal by German
The copies of the developed film or a summary prepared by Moyzisch are immediately forwarded to senior German leaders. Ribbentrop shows sets of early photos for Hitler as soon as received. Hitler entered the conference with some Cicero material in December 1943 and stated that the invasion of the west would come in the spring of 1944. He concluded, that there were also attacks in other locations, such as Norway or the Balkans.
According to Moyzisch, the German Foreign Office did not make much use of the documents, because officials there were divided about their reliability for several reasons. There is a steady stream of documents, which is very unusual. Cicero seems to have used sophisticated photography techniques to create a very clear image, which raises the question of whether he is acting on his own. Antipathics between von Papen and Ribbentrop are added to ineffective intelligence analysis. Aware of the efforts of Allied forces to bring Turkey into war, however, von Papen can thwart their efforts for the time being by threatening to destroy? Zmir and Istanbul if Turkey declares war against Germany. Able to postpone Turkish alliances with Allied forces and use of their airfield, von Papen told Ribbentrop that the way it is now clear is to take the Balkans.
Double agent hypothesis
Abwehr was rightly worried about the presence of a double British agent in their secret service. They were at that time running "Garbo" (Juan Pujol), "Zig-Zag" (Eddie Chapman) and "Tricycle" (Germans), alleged German agents for them paying huge sums of money but in reality working for the UK and supplying Germans with fake information.
The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Stewart Menzies, stated that Cicero was indeed a double agent and that among the documents submitted to Germany was an error document of information. The author James Srodes states in the biography of Allen Dulles that some British historians believe that Cicero "'turned' into a double agent to send misunderstood information through von Papen." Malcolm Gladwell, author of Pandora's Briefcase, said that an interviewer had questioned Menzies before he died about whether he was telling the truth. Menzies told the interviewer, "Of course, Cicero is under our control," but the truth is questionable. Gladwell stated in an article in The New Yorker, "If you were the wartime leader of M.I.6, giving an interview shortly before your death, you might say that Cicero is one of you." Gladwell also mentions that while Ribbentrop is wary of Bazna, which limits the spread of some of Bazna's intelligences, most German intelligence officials are not wary of him.
Anthony Cave Brown stated in his book Bodyguard of Lies that the head of the Asian continent's secret service, Lt. Col. Montague Reaney Chidson, in charge of embassy security, would not dismiss Bazna as a potential threat. and may have fed the documents that Bazna found in ambassadorial positions or directly led Cicero as a double agent. Brown stated that "Bazna was indeed under British control shortly after she began photographing the document", and she was a participant in Plan Jael and Operation Bodyguard.
Mummer Kaylan states that through his personal knowledge of Bazna, he thinks that Bazna supports Turkish interests and is not guided by British Intelligence. Further, he says that Bazna has inherited the "original", "essential" intelligence and the preface to Overlord Operations to Germany supports his theory that Bazna is not a double agent. If he is a double agent, Kaylan believes he is the agent for the Turkish Security Service, Milli Emniyet Hizmeti. Walter Schellenberg, too, was wondering if Bazna handed over intelligence to the Turkish Secret Service.
Discovery of intelligence leaks
Fritz Kolbe, assistant German diplomat Karl Ritter, filtered German cable messages for information to summarize and supply to Allen Dulles, who is the head of the Strategic Services (OSS) representative in Bern. At the end of December 1943 Kolbe reported that there were spies operating from the British Embassy codenamed Cicero. Dulles forwarded this information to Frederick Vanden Heuvel's MI6 agent on January 1, 1944. Cave Brown argued that Dulles was passing information to London in December. Because Bazna will commit espionage in December, Brown concludes that Bazna is probably a double agent.
American agents in Ankara investigate Cicero's identity based on Dulles intelligence. British intelligence, requested by Dulles to interrogate Cicero, gave the impression that it was believed Bazna could not speak English and, furthermore, was "too stupid" to be a spy. The British Foreign Office workers, though, were worried about Operation Overlord leaking and thinking that Bazna might be Cicero. They applied a sting in January 1944 using a fake Cabinet Office document composed by the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, and signed with Foreign Minister Anthony Eden. The document was planted at the embassy, ​​but the sting failed to catch Bazna.
Around January 1944 Moyzisch hired a new secretary named Cornelia Kapp, also known as Nele Kapp, who had spied for Britain and America in exchange for permission to emigrate to the US. He worked at the German embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, beginning July 1943 and within a month has been a spy. In January 1944 he moved to Ankara to work at the German embassy under Moyzisch. Kapp was asked by OSS to study the spies Moyzisch encountered. He is adept at collecting intelligence in the office. He flirted with Cicero when he called the office to schedule a meeting with Moyzisch. When he can, he also follows the two men to try to see what the spy looks like, but does not manage to get a good view of him. Kapp has been collecting and sharing a lot of information with OSS for months that he works at the embassy, ​​including everything he thinks he can learn about Cicero.
Once the embassy informed that there were spies operating at the facility in early 1944, Bazna found it increasingly difficult to gather intelligence. The UK Field Office has alerted the embassy over a security leak. Bazna forwarded the document to Germany. The warning came to Churchill from Roosevelt, who obtained information provided by a defector to the United States. The new alarm system at the British Embassy now requires Bazna to remove the fuse whenever she wants to see a secure ambassador.
Bazna gave notice of the third week of January 1944 that she would leave the ambassador's job. He stopped selling information to Germany at the end of February 1944 and left the embassy at the end of the month or about April 20 without any problems. Bazna was identified as Cicero after the war ended.
Potential consequences
In March 2005, British Foreign Office and British Commonwealth historians published The Cicero Papers, an analysis of the potential consequences of the 'Cicero Event'. In it they identified four important ways in which Cicero's intelligence could harm Allied forces during World War II.
One of the major potential consequences is the possibility of alerting the German regime to the scope of Project Overlord. Fortunately, the location and date of the planned invasion were not submitted. The Allies want Turkey to declare war and join them in their bid against Germany, especially after they take the Dodecanese Islands and have secured Italy as a counterpart against Germany. Turkish airfields are important to maintain their strategic advantage in the area, especially to support Operation Accolade, British attacks on Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands. With Cicero's intelligence, von Papen can delay Turkey's entry into war.
Bazna presented the details for the Tehran Conference plan.
Once the British learned of the leak, they feared Cicero had leaked information that might help break British passwords, but that did not happen. Lastly, intelligence may have made Germany believe that there is no danger of attacks in the Balkans, which may be the most damaging information collected by Cicero for Germany.
After the war
After the war ended, OSS conducted an investigation into Cicero, interviewing key German players including Moyzisch. It is postulated that from the intelligence delivered by Cicero to Germany, the most important information comes from Knatchbull-Hugessen's notes, especially regarding diplomatic efforts with the Turkish government. Many of the other documents are considered by Ostuf Schuddekoft, the head of Britain's Amt VI [one of 11 departments of Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle], too old to be of great value to Germany. Moyzisch was aggressively interviewed by the Allies and testified in Nuremberg court, after which he wrote a book to discuss rumors and explain his role during the war. He was never charged with war crimes.
Knatchbull-Hugessen's reputation is heavily influenced by the Cicero Affair, largely because he had previously been warned to leave his keys and boxes unattended. On 28 August 1945, Knatchbull-Hugessen receives an official reprimand, but is not tried in court.
Abwehr paid Bazna Ã, £ 300,000, which he hid. After the war, he tried to build a hotel with a colleague, but when his sterling money was checked by the Bank of England, they were found mostly fake (see Operation Bernhard). The spy said that the record was "not worth the price of the Turkish fabric from which they were produced." Bazna is serving a prison sentence for using fake money.
Bazna lived in an apartment in the European Aksaray neighborhood in Istanbul with her family in the 1950s. He teaches singing and works as a used car salesman and night watchman. Most of the money he earned went to creditors who had been paid for with counterfeit money. He contacted the West German government to get the fake money he received. Although he tried many times and in many ways to get paid, he never received any money.
In 1960 Bazna moved to Germany and worked in Munich as a night watchman. Bazna and Hans Nogly wrote I Was Cicero published in 1962. It tells the story of Affair Cicero from the perspective of Bazna following the book Moyzisch Operation Cicero published in 1950. Bazna died in Munich kidney disease in December 1970.
In popular culture
According to the British Foreign Office: "The tale has become a popular (and often misstated) story of war."
Moyzisch published his memoir entitled Operation Cicero in 1950. Franz von Papen and Allen Dulles suggested that there were more stories than published in the book, but did not give any details. Twelve years later, in 1962, I Was Cicero was published by Cicero himself.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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