A Plan to Be Captured: How Three American Commandos Deceived Their Nazi Captors Before D-Day

Sasha Ingber: Welcome to SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and each week, I take you into the shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations across the globe.

In the spring of 1944, three elite commandos parachuted into Hungary. The country was aligned with Nazi Germany, and these men were trying to be captured in what was meant to look like a failed operation. Their real mission was to help Hungary switch to the Allied side. But three days later, Germany launched a preemptive invasion. The three men were captured by the Nazis, imprisoned, and interrogated. They used it as a chance to fool Hitler into thinking an Allied invasion would come from southeastern Europe, drawing German troops away from Normandy ahead of D-Day.

Author Jason Bell unravels this daring and untold story in his new book, Operation Sparrow. 

Hey, Jason. Welcome to SpyCast. 

Jason Bell: Hey, thanks for having me on your show 

Sasha Ingber: So before this was Operation Sparrow, it was Operation Sandy. This was a British plan. Why did it ultimately fall to the Americans at the Office of Strategic Services?

Jason Bell: Well, Hungary had been approaching both the British and the Americans from 1942 to switch sides. They wanted to switch from the Axis to the Allies. They had a better relationship with the British at first. They knew more people there. And so Britain naturally took the lead, uh, on this mission of accepting, uh, three SOE, uh, Special Operations Executive commandos into their country to help arrange the switch.

Uh, the problem was that the Soviets found out about it. So the Soviets, the British, the Americans, the Canadians were all on the same team together, but the British were innocently thinking that they could do things that would help to win the war effort. Uh, the Soviets meanwhile had designs on Southeastern Europe, uh, and nixed the plan at, at Moscow, uh, late 1943.

They, uh, called in the, the British foreign minister, Anthony Eden, said, "You just need to stop what you're doing in, in Southeastern Europe." Uh, Anthony Eden had not known about the plan, uh, so he immediately told the, the Soviets that, that yeah, he would investigate this. Uh, the command came down, uh, from Britain that they had to, to nix the mission.

Uh, and that's where the Americans, uh, p- picked it up. 

Sasha Ingber: It really reminds me of Operation Mincemeat when the Brits planted fake documents on a corpse to essentially deceive Hitler and have troops diverted from Sicily ahead of an allied invasion. 

Jason Bell: This was essentially the same plan, so using three living people rather than a, than a corpse.

Sasha Ingber: Now, were the Brits sorry to lose this operation, and were the Americans glad to take it on? 

Jason Bell: Uh, the Brits were jealous. Uh, they did not like that the Americans took this over. They wanted, uh, they wanted the glory and the honor. Uh, and in fact, uh, they tried to slow down the mission at, at certain points.

Sasha Ingber: The basic architecture of this was thought through by Allen Dulles, who would go on to be the first civilian leader of the CIA in 1953. What exactly was the plan? 

Jason Bell: The plan was that these three Americans would go into Hungary, be airdropped in the middle of the night, surrender to the nearest military authorities, and then be handed over to Hungarian military intelligence who was in on the plan.

So the f- the frontline Hungarian soldiers did not know, uh, the Americans were the enemy. Uh, but the very top echelons of Hungarian military intelligence knew that Hungary wanted to, to get out of the war. So the Hungarians were going to bring these three Americans to meet the supreme Hungarian command, uh, arrange a surrender.

The three Sparrows were going to fly two top Hungarian politicians out of the country to Allied territory to sign the surrender secretly, uh, so that the Germans did not find out about it. And then meanwhile, the, uh, Sparrows would be briefly handed over to German intelligence, where they were going to strongly imply that there was an invasion coming through southeastern Europe, letting German intelligence put two and two together based on the kind of reports that they would give.

Then the Germans would hand over the Americans back to the Hungarians, who would hand them keys to a new intelligence headquarters just outside of Budapest, bought and paid for by Hungary, and then Hungary was going to fight Germany with Allied assistance. 

Sasha Ingber: And before we get into the ways that the plan fell apart, can you explain why these three men were called Sparrows?

Jason Bell: The obvious reason is that OSS loved bird names. The reason that I suppose they might have said this is because, uh, sparrows use singing to intimidate and deceive their enemies, and, uh, that was the mission, to fly into enemy territory and to sing for the Germans. 

Sasha Ingber: Huh. So let's talk about who these Sparrows were.

There's Colonel Florimond Duke. There's, uh, Captain Guy Nunn, and then there's Major Alfred Suarez. They undertook major risks. Can you explain who they were for them to be chosen for this mission, and then what in particular each of them was set to do? 

Jason Bell: Yeah. So Florimond Duke was, uh, the kind of American equivalent of aristocracy. So a Dartmouth grad, wealthy.

He had flown fighter planes for America during World War I. He had played for the New York Giants in the National Football League. Then he went to Madison Avenue and became a millionaire as the advertising director for the Time, uh, publishing empires and Newsweek and Fortune, uh, magazines. Uh, 1939, he volunteered for military service.

He had a diplomatic background. He saw that World War II was coming. Uh, this was, of course, a couple of years before America's involvement, uh, so he got in to the war effort at the ground floor. When, uh, the OSS was founded, he was quickly recruited into the organization, uh, and rose quickly to become the head of Southeastern Intelligence.

So he was in charge of everything from Greece, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, getting agents in, getting supplies in, air drops, uh, running spies. Uh, he was, uh, a, a born leader, and he was a man of action, so he was very frustrated to have the job that he had. He did not wanna be behind a desk in Washington, DC, uh, issuing orders.

He wanted to be on the ground fighting the Nazis. Uh, so in 1943, he began requesting permission to be airdropped behind enemy lines. Uh, at first OSS, uh, flatly refused, but by, uh, early 1944 circumstances had changed enough, uh, that they let him go into the country Uh, so his job really was to take his advertising skills, uh, and to be selling an illusion to Hitler.

So k- keeping his Madison Avenue job, but in a wartime context. I should also say he and the rest of the Sparrows were, uh, physically imposing, good-looking guys. They were picked for the mission in, in part because, uh, of their, you know, courage and their previous leadership and their athleticism. 

Uh, you know, big tough guys, and I think a lot of that had to do with creating the right image for Hungary, to show Hungary what Americans looked like, and that the Hungarians could look at these people and really be confident that, uh, you know, the, the 25 or 30,000 American troops that they hoped to have air drop in, uh, would look something like these Sparrows did.

Sasha Ingber: Duke had been a case officer to an incredibly important German during the war. 

Jason Bell: Yeah. Well, Florimond Duke was the case officer to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was the most important, uh, spy in Germany during World War II. So he was the chief of the, of Germany's military intelligence. He despised Hitler. He approached the United States early on, uh, and offered to help, uh, help the Allies win, at least in the West.

And the Allies were understandably extremely suspicious. Uh, they thought this could be a, a trick or a trap. Uh, so Duke and, and, uh, Canaris both spoke French, so this was a natural language they could communicate in. Uh, but by February of 1944, Hitler fired Canaris, uh, which freed up Duke for other kinds of duties, like going behind enemy lines.

The other two Sparrows, so, uh, Guy Nunn was an Occidental College graduate from Los Angeles. He spoke nine languages. Uh, he was a 200-pound former starter, a captain of his football team, trained in psychological warfare, and he was recruited by the OSS because of his connections to European labor. So these were people behind enemy lines, uh, factory foremen, uh, et cetera, who hated Hitler.

And early in the war, before the Allies could fly planes over enemy territory, this was an easy way to activate resistance networks. These were people who, by pushing the wrong button or by misplacing a tool, could severely damage wartime German logistics. 

Sasha Ingber: And how about Suarez? 

Jason Bell: So Suarez was a New York City born, raised, trained operative, so he was an expert in demolitions and radio work.

So he had fought Hitler and Franco in the 1930s in Spain. He was a guy with a short temper. Uh, he loved to fight and avenge his honor. So OSS had a list of targets, bridges to be blown up to destroy German logistics. Uh, and Suarez was gonna be the guy who would lead that demolition effort along with using, uh, utilizing the Allies new sp- uh, new-fangled spy tech to be able to communicate back with headquarters, uh, to let them know about what kind of supplies and advisors were needed to help, uh, the Hungarians fight the Germans.

Sasha Ingber: So they all had a key role to play in terms of the negotiations, in terms of, uh, sabotage. But if we think about the Geneva Convention, these are men who are not operating as soldiers, they're spies. So how high are the stakes for them as they're about to parachute into Hungary? 

Jason Bell: Well, Hitler had a couple of years earlier signed the commando order.

It was a secret order. He did not want the Allies to find out because he didn't want German officers to begin getting killed. Uh, but the commando officer said that all of these commandos had to be u- executed immediately. The only exception was if they had intelligence that, uh, torture would reveal, and then they could be kept alive until they had spilled their secrets, and then they needed to be executed immediately.

So what they volunteered for was about as close to a suicide mission as you can imagine 

Sasha Ingber: Very brave men to agree to this mission. And as you had mentioned, the plan was to help Hungary switch from the Axis side to the Allied powers, and its prime minister, Miklós Kállay, he knew of this plan, and he was doing what I learned was called the Kállay double step, where he was trying to appease the Nazis while also secretly working with the Americans and trying to protect Hungarian Jews.

He had been appointed by Hungary's regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, who was deliberately kept in the dark. 

Jason Bell: That's exactly right. So, uh, so Horthy had authorized the switch in the most general, vague terms, but he wanted to be kept, uh, in the dark about all the details so that if Hitler ever confronted him, which happened on numerous occasions, uh, he would be able to plausibly deny everything.

Sasha Ingber: Now, when the operation begins, it very quickly falls apart because as these men have parachuted into Hungary, three days later, there is an invasion by the Nazis, and Hitler had preemptively assembled this force. He had summoned Horthy. Where did he get the intelligence that maybe something was afoot, and, and what happened next?

Jason Bell: Well, Hitler had thousands of spies in Hungary, and we can tell based on what happened that the spies that he had were not at the, at the very inner circle of Hungarian planning. So Hitler knew that an American mission was coming in, but he didn't know where it was landing. He didn't know what their names were.

He didn't know exactly what date it was coming in. Uh, and things had been garbled enough that he mistook three Americans coming in for three American airborne divisions coming in. So he-  

Sasha Ingber: Just a small mistake. 

Jason Bell: The, so he, he thought he was de- defeating a, a, a force, or he was planning to defeat a, a, a force of maybe 25,000 Americans, so he sends in this overwhelming invasion force.

Over 100,000 troops go into Hungary with all kinds of air power and armor power, uh, because he thinks that this is gonna be a, a, a major battle. Strangely enough, uh, the American OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, knew in the abstract that Hitler knew about the mission because they suspected a Hungarian officer named Ottó von Hatts of being, uh, a spy.

It turns out they were wrong about this. H- Otto von Hatts was loyal. Uh, but their mistake really helped save, uh, the underlying mission, uh, because they began planning for this eventuality that the Germans knew that the sparrows were coming. 

Sasha Ingber: So now there are thousands of German troops in Hungary. How are things starting to change in terms of what Hungary is going to do and what the Sparrows need to do?

Jason Bell: So Hungarian intelligence hid the Sparrows from the Nazis for nine days so they could get their stories straight. And so this was a story that would both be internally consistent with the Sparrows, but also consistent with what the Hungarians would tell the Germans. Uh, so the story was the Americans were going to be air-dropped into Yugoslavia to help Tito, who had just launched a major offensive operation in mid-March, which was also supposed to convince the Germans that that's where D-Day was coming from, that, uh, T- Tito was covering for this mission.

So the idea was to say, "Well, we Hungarians had nothing to do with this. This was an accidental, uh, airdrop into our territory. We arrested these guys," and the Americans would say the same things. So for these nine days, the Hungarians were giving the Americans the safe space to conduct extensive rehearsals.

They turned it into, like, theatrical rehearsals. Two of these guys would pretend to be Gestapo tough guys, threatening the other guy, who would pretend to be the one being interrogated, uh, so they could figure out what they would be sta- saying at each stage of the interrogations. They could pretend to break, uh, and begin slowly to reveal more and more information.

Sasha Ingber: So they have nine days to figure out their story, and then they are eventually handed over to the Germans by the Hungarians, who have now surrendered. And there are internal arguments over who gets to hold these men in custody, who gets to interrogate them. Can you talk about that? 

Jason Bell: The Hungarians, of course, they'd been working with the German intelligence over the years, and so they had a v- pretty good psychological profile of what people were like.

Uh, and so they found an officer in the German military to hand the Sparrows over to who was not a Nazi. So his name was, was Major Horst Krüger. Uh, he was somebody who respected the Geneva Conventions. He did not like Hitler. He, uh, did not like the Nazis. And so, uh, it looked like, as one of the Sparrows said, they'd gotten away with it.

They were interrogated by a really gentle officer who wrote down what they said, and then arranged the best ticket they were gonna get in the war, which was to go to a POW camp run by the, uh, the Luftwaffe, the, the German Air Force, in, near Frankfurt. Uh, the commandant there had been a POW himself. He respected the Geneva Convention rules.

Uh, so the three Sparrows were on the bus to go to Frankfurt, uh, when the Gestapo came, having, uh, tortured by this point Hungarians and figured out who these Americans actually were, uh, and what they were involved in. And they pulled the Americans off the bus, uh, and brought them to Belgrade to begin, uh, uh, a more intensive form, uh, and a less sympathetic form of interrogation.

Sasha Ingber: So at this point, how are they faring, and is the story evolving? Because as you mentioned, it is no longer in this friendly environment amongst a person who actually is aligned with them. 

Jason Bell: So yeah, the three Americans are brought to Belgrade. They're, uh, into one of the most horrific, uh, Gestapo prisons there were, and they were separated into solitary confinement.

People were executed in front of them, uh, really trying to scare these Americans into, into delivering what they knew. The Americans all independently stuck to the same script, so they were delivering the information in the, in the same sequence. Uh, and it turns out the Gestapo decided, "Okay, you've, you've told us everything. Everything lines up. You're not telling us anything new." 

They had the order to execute the Sparrows the next day. So this was, uh, April 1st, 1944. The German major who had previously interrogated them found out that the Gestapo housed them, rushed to Belgrade, uh, talked to the Gestapo guys, who told them that the Americans were gonna be executed the next day.

And Major Horst Kruger then went to Duke, started screaming at Duke, saying, "You've withheld information from us. How dare you? I need to get information from you. You're gonna tell me right now, or else," brought Duke over to a map. Duke was confused about what was happening. Uh, Horst Kruger whispered that the Sparrows were going to be shot tomorrow, and gave them a plan for how to save themselves, and the plan amounted to ramping up the deception.

So moving it from, uh, letting the Gestapo interrogators put two and two together into thinking that an invasion could come from this direction, to really suggesting that they knew details about how the invasion was going to happen. And that was exploiting the only loophole there was under Hitler's commando order, uh, that people could be kept alive if they had intelligence.

So meanwhile, the Luftwaffe was making the argument, "We need these guys alive in order to defeat D-Day." Uh, and then the German army eventually got involved in this as well, saying, "We need this information in order to stop D-Day," uh, while the Gestapo kept on claiming, "There are prisoners. We need to shoot them under, uh, under the commando order."

Sasha Ingber: When we come back, how the Sparrows, from behind bars, fooled the Germans, and what effect their lies had on the Allied victory.

Now what exactly were they saying? What was the strategy that they used that allowed their stories to appease the Nazis who were so desperate to learn what the Allies were planning? 

And there was also a little bit of trickery around a New York Times report 

Jason Bell: They agreed that they would only be revealing information that they had read from The New York Times just before they had, uh, taken off on the mission.

They were all up on the news, and the idea was, uh, that the German interrogators wouldn't have access to these newspapers at all. They'd just be writing down everything that the sparrow said. Meanwhile, reports would slowly be trickling in from German agents abroad, and Duke's hope was that these would line up, uh, without the Germans noticing, uh, the mismatch in time.

The top echelons of German intelligence would say, "Wow, these guys, everything that they're telling us is true, therefore we can trust them, uh, on the invasion plans as well." 

Sasha Ingber: Right. Now we see it. It's been confirmed. So Duke is able to slowly share details which convince the Germans about where the invasion will take place, and they're moving from prison to prison over a period of about 13 months.

Uh, what is it like for them in, in this very grim moment? Do they start to question whether or not this is working and where it's all headed for them? 

Jason Bell: Yeah. So Duke knew when D-Day was supposed to happen, which initially was in, uh, May. At least initially, there was this idea among the sparrows that we need to basically keep this together for about two months.

Uh, that, uh, w- it was made more psychologically bearable for them knowing that eventually D- Day was gonna happen. Uh, but the conditions were really horrific, so, uh, they were, uh, in, in prisons. They were being kept in perpetual solitary confinement for weeks at a time, no access to sunlight, to human conversation.

Uh, they were basically being slowly starved to death, so, so their food each day was, uh, a piece of, small piece of bread, uh, that was high in sawdust, uh, and a thin bowl of, uh, vegetable soup. This, uh, was a couple hundred calories a day. Uh, they're being systematically starved to death. Uh, they're being, uh, subject to mock executions.

People or, uh, fellow prisoners are executed in front of them to scare them. Uh, so it was really horrible. Uh, but because of the, the time, the nine days that they had together to prepare, uh, during this whole period, they all stayed on the same script, even without knowing whether the other two guys in their team were alive or dead.

Sasha Ingber: So eventually, they get transferred to the Colditz Castle in Leipzig, Germany. This is a Renaissance palace where prisoners of war are kept essentially as bargaining chips for Hitler. Can you tell us more about what their existence is like once they get into this castle? 

Jason Bell: Well, it was a, a huge shift, uh, to the positive for them.

So the, the other prisoners, they were mostly British, and they were, you know, deeply depressed to be POWs. But meanwhile, the Sparrows were just as happy as could be, uh, in that situation because, uh, suddenly they were protected by the Geneva Convention. For a while, they had adequate food. They could write letters home.

Uh, they were able to play chess and do sports and have outside time. But meanwhile, they knew that their situation was precarious, that the SS was interested in massacring prisoners, uh, sending people on death marches. Uh, and so this whole time in prison, they just kept on doing their intelligence work.

Uh, so they were, uh, setting up intelligence networks with anti-Nazi German civilians in the town below to find out if the SS was planning on coming in to, to massacre them, and then they were game planning what to do, how to fight. Uh, so they were active both in, uh, leisure and recreation, but also in, uh, continuing to, uh, prepare a, a literal fight against the Nazis.

Sasha Ingber: They were able to leave the castle grounds and talk to people in the town? 

Jason Bell: The prisoners would fake medical problems or dental problems. That was where they got their, uh, their key agent, uh, a young w- German woman who worked in a dentist's office, uh, who despised the Nazis. Worked to set up the, uh, the Colditz intelligence outfit with a sympathetic group of civilians, uh, in the town below who, using codes, uh, where they would hang their clothes and things like this, would let the prisoners know if the SS was on their way to massacre them.

Sasha Ingber: So the intelligence work continues, and there are informants on the ground. Do these guys have any clue if they're being effective? 

Jason Bell: During that period, uh, Florimond Duke was able to talk to an Austrian guard, uh, who told them, this was just before D-Day started, uh, that the Germans were expecting an invasion in the southeast any day now.

They needed every little bit of morale boost they could get at that time 

Sasha Ingber: So now it's April of 1945, and a battle breaks out at the castle that lasts two days. Take us into that moment. 

Jason Bell: Yeah, so the, the US First Army did not know that Colditz was a POW camp. Uh, the SS had set up, uh, heavy artillery behind the castle, and it was about to turn ugly.

So, uh, the American artillery had begun hitting the castle. A guard was killed. At that moment, the prisoners unfurled homemade flags, British, American, and French. An artillery officer, just before issuing the command to level the castle, looked through his binoculars, saw these flags, and decided, largely because they were so crudely designed, that they were probably or at least possibly real.

He said that, you know, if they had been, you know, p- you know, real flags, he would've thought it was a Nazi trick and fired anyway. Uh, so, uh, you know, they, they were, you know, c- you know, crayon drawings. Uh, and so the officer, this was as, as evening was approaching, uh, told his, uh, artillery men to stand down and to wait for further intelligence.

Sasha Ingber: And this is when one of the Sparrows, Guy Nunn, gets sent outside to talk to the Americans. 

Jason Bell: Yeah, so Guy Nunn was selected to go meet the Americans, so this is through an active battle zone. The Germans are firing at the Americans and vice versa. There's machine gun fire. There's howitzer fire. Uh, Guy Nunn was not, uh, sensitive to danger.

Uh, he, he was a comfortable, uh, guy who felt invincible. And, uh, his primary, uh, recommendation for the job was that he was a fluent German speaker, and he could speak American slang. So this was at a point in the war where the Germans had many American and British uniforms. They had people who could speak English, so they routinely led Allied soldiers into traps.

Uh, and so, uh, the GIs had become suspicious of this, and so the strategy was that Guy Nunn would speak slang, s- so slang he learned from the streets, to convince the GIs that he met that he was, uh, a real American. 

Sasha Ingber: So he steps out of the castle. Uh, he walks over to the [00:28:00] Americans. Do they immediately believe him?

Does he need to sell the fact that this really is a POW camp? 

Jason Bell: Well, the, the two American lead guards, they meet Guy Nunn in the dark when he whistles to them and begins talking to them. And in fact, they accuse him of being a Nazi. They say, "There's, you know, nobody in front of us. Uh, we know that there's only Germans in front of us."

And there's this really tense negotiation after Nunn has just been shot at. And again, howitzer explosions are going on around them. Uh, so this is an extremely high tension situation. Guy Nunn says, "Why don't you just work your way around the wall and see me?" And then, uh, he has his hands up in the air and a big grin on his face.

So the, these two Americans remain extremely skeptical. Uh, they went into the castle, were immediately greeted by over 1,000 prisoners who were slapping them on the back, uh, cheering and crying. Uh, and these two Amer- two American guys, uh, remained in a state of severe cognitive dissonance. Uh, so they, uh, had their, kept their fingers on the trigger finger, uh, and really came close to shooting people.

Uh, but eventually became convinced that this could not be a trick. The Nazis could not pull off something that, uh, that complicated 

Sasha Ingber: To think that Americans themselves were so close to killing the Sparrows and other prisoners of war, it really is something. And eventually the Soviets are able to establish control over the castle.

It's the Soviets, not the Americans. What happens to them once they leave, not just in those first days, but as time passes by? 

Jason Bell: For a few precious days, the Americans were in charge. Uh, the American commander who came in, uh, Dobson, uh, demanded, uh, that the Germans produce a breakfast feast for, uh, for the Americans and for the British prisoners and for the Fr- French prisoners who were there.

This was the first time the prisoners had eaten well, uh, in a long time. So then the Sparrows were, uh, flown to Oxford, uh, in England to recuperate, uh, to, to get some pounds back on them. Uh, they had, they were severely malnourished at this point. Uh, and then they went back to DC to continue their OSS work.

So, uh, Florimond Duke, uh, was appointed, uh, to head the Greek War Relief. Uh, and so the idea here was that, uh, millions of Greeks were, were in danger of starving to death. Uh, but Duque, because of his connections to the, uh, Greek underground, these were people he was getting explosives and arms to, he helped save as part of Bodyguard in World War II.

Uh, he also helped save at least hundreds of thousands of lives in the, in the post-war period. Uh, Guy Nunn joined the, uh, prosecution team for the Nuremberg, uh, trials, uh, where he constructed visible, uh, proof of the Nazis' crimes. Uh, and Alfred Suarez, uh, fairly quickly got a medical discharge. He was suffering from, uh, a severe case of what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder.

The whole time he was under Nazi captivity, he just desperately wanted to be fighting these guys, and it wasn't because he was worried about his own safety, but it was because he didn't want to get his two colleagues killed. Uh, so the Army agreed to release him with an honorable discharge, and then he became an engineer once again.

Uh, I've talked to his, uh, daughter. Beforehand, he'd been, you know, very outgoing. Uh, he kept to himself. Uh, he chain-smoked. It certainly turned him into a different man than he would have been if, if, uh, he'd never been captured. 

Sasha Ingber: You had mentioned that you spoke to one of the children. Did you speak to other family members of the Sparrows?

What did they say about these men, knowing that you had uncovered this story? This would be new information to them. 

Jason Bell: Yeah. So, uh, the, the only living child, uh, of any of the Sparrows that I know of at least is Alfred Suarez's daughter. And, um, she said that he never talked about it, so he didn't talk about his wartime experiences.

Um, you know, she wa- he was, uh, you know, very keen that she get a good education Uh, and that she learned foreign languages. So I think, uh, you know, what had helped save his own life, uh, during Nazi captivity was something he wanted to be able to gift his daughter so she could be resilient, uh, and be able to interact with other cultures.

Uh, but yeah, like many World War II veterans, he didn't talk about it. Uh, Guy Nunn and Florimond Duke were a bit more forthcoming. Uh, certain aspects of their mission remain classified, so they couldn't tell, tell everything. Uh, but, uh, you know, Guy Nunn became a labor activist, uh, after the war. This was in a, in a period when, uh, you know, the, you know, McCarthyism and the rest of it.

Uh, scare tactics were being used. Goons were being hired to, uh, break apart, uh, unions. You can find video, uh, of Nunn, uh, talking about the fight, uh, for organized labor. And, uh, once you know that he's somebody who survived the Gestapo and stood up to the Gestapo, you could see the same fire in his eyes, that there was no amount of intimidation that was gonna make him back down from his cause of supporting l- American labor.

Sasha Ingber: Hmm. Now, to what extent did The Sparrows' lies divert Hitler's forces away from Normandy before D-Day invasion? How were you able to piece that together? 

Jason Bell: So when D-Day hit, the Germans had nearly a million troops in southeastern Europe. There were millions more of their ax- Axis partners there. Meanwhile, there were only 50,000 German troops guarding Normandy.

Uh, that was on D-Day. But after D-Day, The Sparrow deception kept working. So for months afterwards, Hitler was convinced and remained convinced that Normandy was the diversion attack and that the real attack was gonna be happening somewhere else, so he kept his troops in southeastern Europe. Uh, and this was crucial not only for D-Day's success, but for winning the overall war.

Uh, so as late as August of 1944, uh, German generals were saying, "We could still defeat this Western invasion if we could be moving troops to fight, but Hitler keeps overruling us." Hitler remained privately convinced, uh, that the, the northwestern attack through Normandy was a feint and that the real attack was coming somewhere else.

He finally only permitted these troops to be redistributed from the southeastern theater, uh, in the fall of 1944, and that was b- because of m- military necessity. They were worried about the, the Soviet and the army linking up and cutting the, the German army into two. Uh, and this was the only reason that he permitted, uh, the withdrawal of those troops.

Even then, he remained convinced that the Allies were planning an attack in, in southeastern Europe. 

Sasha Ingber: And this was the direct result of what the three Sparrows were saying when they were imprisoned. 

Jason Bell: Absolutely. And, and I, I should say that, that this was a combined arms operation. So Sparrow was the human element.

This was three men delivering the story up close. But at the same time, Tito was fighting an offensive in the southeast. There were heavy Allied bombing raids going on, and there were further commando missions going on, uh, led by British and Canadian commandos who were going into Hungary, uh, to keep up the pressure.

So everything that the Sparrows were telling them, uh, was lining up with the explosions, with the troop movements on the ground. 

Sasha Ingber: Their interrogation did have a purpose in the end. How did you come across this operation, which hadn't ever been brought to light? 

Jason Bell: I was researching my previous book, Cracking the Nazi Code, about the first British secret agent who warned against Hitler's plans for the Holocaust in 1939.

I was tracing where his warnings went to. One of them went in, uh, the spring of 1939 to Francis Dayak, an American intelligence officer who was involved in Hungary. Uh, so Dayak was involved in these negotiations with Hungary that helped Sparrow happen. And that's when I first found about this mission that was designed to be captured by the Germans.

Uh, and without even knowing any of the details y- yet about this, this was, was, uh, probably about a decade ago. I thought, "Gee, that needs a , that needs a book. Uh, to go in and, and be intentionally captured by the Germans, this is, uh, this is a remarkable story." 

Sasha Ingber: Why do you think that this mission, which ultimately was a success, why has it been kept secret for so long?

Jason Bell: Well, it was because Hungary fell into the Soviet sphere. So, uh, even before World War II ended, uh, Allied intelligence agents began getting captured and executed by the Soviets, uh, in Southeastern Europe. And, uh, the same intelligence networks in Europe that were the anti-Nazi organizations, that became the anti-Soviet operations.

Uh, and so really, uh, that was the, the reason for secrecy. So, so the other part of this, uh, massive deception operation, the part that focused on France, that finally became declassified in the '70s, and it was celebrated. Uh, but, uh, when that, when, when these things began to be declassified in the 1970s, of course, the Cold War was still going on.

Hungarian pro-democracy activists were still struggling against the Soviets. Uh, and so it became more convenient just to sweep it under the rug. Uh, and by the time these things finally did become declassified, the principal people were dead. Uh, and so there was no longer that living memory that made it, uh, into a public event

Sasha Ingber: Well, you've really shown how a very small group of people can have an outsized impact. This is a fascinating story. Thank you so much for your time, Jason. 

Jason Bell: Thank you, Sasha. It was a pleasure to be on your show. 

Sasha Ingber: Thanks for listening to this episode of SpyCast. If you like the episode, give us a follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating or review.

It really helps. If you have any feedback or you wanna hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org. I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and this show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC.