All language subtitles for BBC.Double.Cross.The.True.Story.of.the.D-day.Spies.PDTV.Xvid.MP3.MVGroup.org,Doc-eng

On a spring morning in 1944,
a glamorous young woman,

dressed to kill
and wearing too much make-up,

cycled through the country lanes
of southern England

on a mission from
her German spymaster.

Her mission was to report on
the build up of Allied forces

for the coming invasion of Europe -
D-Day.

She was building a detailed picture

that, in the hands of the enemy,

could destroy the Allied chances
of a successful assault
on occupied France.

Her German spymaster
was delighted with her reports,

congratulating her on her
sterling work for the Third Reich.

In fact, this German spy
was not what she seemed.

Every word she sent was false.

ENIGMA MACHINE BEEPS AND WHIRRS

Her lies were part of a web
of espionage that drove

the biggest deception
in military history...

and helped ensure Allied victory
on the beaches of Normandy.

A complete web of military fiction
was created.

There were events
which never took place.

I went a few dozen times
to meet the Germans.

I never felt absolutely certain
that I shall come back.

He was really entering
the lion's den.

He could've been betrayed
at any time.

PLANE ENGINE DRONES

I think it was
overwhelmingly exciting,

because you were playing with fire.

On the morning of June 6, 1944,
150,000 Allied troops

stormed the beaches of Normandy
and broke into Nazi-occupied France.

Today, we think of D-Day
as a great military victory.

But it was not just the heroic
action of the brave soldiers
that won the day.

Alongside the Allied troops
that day, was another unseen force.

They fought not with guns, bombs
and bullets,

but with subterfuge and stealth,

and a web of espionage spun
from 1,000 little lies.

Five spies whose mission was to do
nothing less than invade and control

the mind of the man at the very top
of the Third Reich...

..Adolf Hitler.

Each of them had begun their careers
working for the Germans,

but their stories would culminate
in a tale of triumph and tragedy

that nobody would've believed
at the time,

and barely seems believable now.

Throughout the war, Hitler believed
he had a fully-functioning,

highly efficient network of spies
reporting on the British war effort.

In fact, every one of those spies
was acting as a double agent
under British control.

Not some, not most, but ALL of them.

Since the breaking of the
German Enigma code in 1940,

the British had been able
to decipher German radio traffic.

And that included spy traffic.

Information that would allow them
to know when and where every spy

sent by Hitler was due to arrive
in Britain.

The penalty for spying was death.

But there was another option.

The majority of agents
gave themselves up

or reported immediately,
because they wanted to work for us.

And so it seemed sensible
when we got an agent

to at least pretend that
he was operating freely.

And this opened the possibility
of using them for deception.

Those who chose to work against the
Fuhrer now came under the control

of department B1A -

the division of MI5 responsible
for running double agents.

The unit's presiding genius was
Lt Col Thomas Argyll Robertson,

known to his friends
by his initials - Tar.

His nickname was Passion Pants,
on account of his tartan trousers
and flirtatious manner.

He was a natural gambler
with a ruthless streak

and an uncanny knack for seeing into
darker corners of the human mind.

We were able to tell when an agent
was coming over

and was being prepared to be sent
to this country as a spy.

So that you could welcome him?
So that we could welcome him,

which we did in no uncertain terms,
I can assure you. We generally knew

when he was going to arrive
and where he was going to arrive.

He was a lovely man.
He was frightfully good-looking.

He sauntered into the office
in his tartan trews,

and was always very friendly
with everybody,

and had a great sparkle in his eye.

I don't think he was a scholar,
particularly,

but I think he had the certain sort
of special brain that was able to

see round corners and invent things

that would become believable if they
were put across in a certain way.

Tar Robertson planned espionage
with the top-secret
Twenty, or double-cross, Committee.

Churchill himself had assembled
this group of men who could see
around corners,

because he knew that Hitler
and his military tended to think
in straight lines.

The Germans' ruthless efficiency

made them more vulnerable
to deception.

They were so proud of the fact that
they'd got these agents
in this country.

Therefore,
they're sort of more gullible.

The Twenty Committee now planned
to gamble this pack of double agents
on one great deception.

Even if this meant they could never
be used again.

D-Day was that opportunity.

Hitler's war had become
the bloodiest in history.

The Holocaust was a raging and
millions were dying in Russia

and on the Eastern Front.

The Allied commanders knew
that the war could only be won

by invading France and driving the
Germans all the way back to Berlin.

But Hitler had constructed a zone
of death to defend the coast,

the Atlantic Wall.

And his forces greatly
outnumbered the Allies.

Churchill knew he couldn't win
by brute strength alone.

Everyone knew
the invasion was coming.

The vital question was where.

Hitler believed an attack
would come in Calais,

the nearest French port to Britain.

And here,
he massed a huge defensive force.

It was the obvious target

and therefore the British
decided not to attack it.

Normandy was further away,
but it had gently sloping beaches,

ideal for landing
thousands of troops.

It was also less heavily
defended than Calais.

But for the invasion to succeed,

the Allies had to ensure that
the huge numbers of German troops

around Calais
stayed where they were.

Because if they moved south
and reinforced Normandy,

the breakthrough would not happen.

And D-Day might end in a bloodbath.

At Tehran in November 1943,
the Allied leaders secretly agreed

that Normandy would be
the invasion target.

Churchill turned to Stalin
and remarked,

"The truth is so precious,

"she must be protected
by a bodyguard of lies."

Thus was born the codename

for the great D-Day deception,
Operation Bodyguard.

And Tar's spies would form
the bodyguard of lies

to protect the Normandy invasion.

It did occur to me we could
give them true information

laced with a certain amount
of false information

and we were also able to
build that up and introduce

a certain amount
of strategic deception.

With his team of double agents,

Tar Robertson
now went on the offensive.

He realised he could take
Hitler's prized espionage weapons

and use them against him.

From his stable of double agents,
Tar had selected the five spies

he knew were most trusted
by the Germans.

They would each deliver to Hitler
separate pieces of the jigsaw

to create the picture
they wanted him to see,

an imminent attack
on Calais of epic proportions.

If Robertson's gamble paid off,
the prize was victory.

But if it failed and the plot was
rumbled, then disaster loomed.

If just one of his double agents
should prove a triple agent then,

instead of deceiving the Germans,

Robertson would be leading
the enemy to the truth

and sending thousands
of Allied troops to their deaths.

In February 1944, the arch gambler
Churchill gave the go-ahead.

With three months to go until D-Day,
the quintet went to war.

One of Tar Robertson's
intelligence officers observed,

"I can't believe we'll
ever get away with it."

First out on the road
was Agent Treasure.

Her job was to cycle from town
to town, collecting chickenfeed,

a mixture of truths, half-truths
and downright lies

delivered piecemeal
to her German spymaster.

I transmit a hodgepodge of badges,
vehicles, tanks, planes

and airfields, garnished
with conversations overheard,

from which the Germans cannot fail
to derive the correct conclusions.

Her name was Lily Sergeyev.
A Frenchwoman of Russian origin,

her story begins two years
earlier in a Paris cafe.

As always, she was
beautifully dressed

and accompanied by her beloved pet,
a terrier called Babs.

Facing her was Major Emil Kliemann,

a senior officer in German
military intelligence.

Vain and excitable,
Kliemann was enchanted by Lily.

She told him she wanted
to spy for Germany

and when he asked her why,
her answer was enigmatic.

"I could tell you that I love
Germany or I hate the British,

"but if I was here to spy on you,

"do you think my answer
would be any different?"

Kliemann was intrigued
and gave her the job.

He would send her to spy in Britain,
travelling via neutral Spain.

But if he had read the diary
she was secretly keeping,

Kliemann would have discovered
that she was an unstable woman

whose only loyalty
was to her pet dog.

LILY: Babs lifts up his shaggy
truffle-like nose and
looks at me enquiringly.

And I say in his pink ear,

"It's a grand game but if we lose,
we lose our lives."

Once in Madrid, Lily knocked on
the door of the British Embassy

and immediately offered her
services to the Allies as a spy.

She claimed her hold over Kliemann
would make her an ideal double agent

once she got to Britain.

But there was a catch. Treasure
insisted that Babs must come too.

LILY: You probably think I'm
ridiculous. To you, it's just a dog.

But to me, it's Babs.
And worth more than �1 million.

The demand ran slap into one of
the most cherished institutions

of British bureaucracy,
the quarantine laws.

Babs would have to stay behind.

Lily threw a tantrum, but in
the end, a compromise was reached.

Babs would be held in quarantine
in British Gibraltar,

with the promise that the dog
would join Lily later in England.

She handed him over to a British
official, said her goodbyes,

and boarded the plane for England.

Robertson knew that Lily
might be a recipe for trouble,

but an agent with a direct link to
a senior German intelligence officer

could be priceless.

But what was Lily up to?

Had she always intended
to work for the British

when she became a German spy?
Where did her true allegiance lie?

And might she switch sides again?

LILY: Tar Robertson said to me,
"I think there is no doubt

"that the German intelligence people
have complete confidence in you."

"We can pull off what is known
in the trade as an intoxication."

It's the sort of
thing intelligence men dream about.

Lily had expected life as a spy
to be glamorous and exciting.

Tar Robertson
quickly put her straight.

He installed her here in a quiet
block of flats in West London.

He appointed MI5's only woman
case officer to keep an eye on her.

Mary Sherer was solid,
unromantic and resolutely English.

Everything that Lily was not.

Mary always had
a rather stern expression

and she would stare at you

in a very meaningful way.

One of her favourite expressions
was, "Stupid man"!

Mary always had a dog.

So she would very much have been
sympathetic to Lily's position,

but I would say
otherwise they were probably

fairly diametrically opposed.

LILY: I still cannot quite place her.

Is she my jailer
or nursery governess or what?

I don't even know
what she feels about me,

though I suppose
this doesn't matter very much.

If only I could have my Babs here.

I have a feeling that everything
will turn out all right.

I think it's disgraceful
the way they have behaved.

Agent Treasure was just one element
in the grand deception

now been laid out
across the country.

The Germans needed to be convinced
that the Allied spearhead

was pointing at Calais.

In order to create the deception,

a vast American army
was assembled in Kent,

poised to attack Calais
across the Straits of Dover.

Had any spy planes
been watching Kent,

they would have seen a formidable
invasion force gathering.

From a distance,
it would look strong enough

to break through the Atlantic Wall.

But close up,
it was a different story.

To bolster the illusion of strength,
large numbers of inflatable tanks

and dummy aircraft were
assembled in the Kent countryside,

which would look like the real thing
to German reconnaissance planes.

We'd created an imaginary army
and we gave the Germans

the impression that we had available
almost twice the number of troops

that were, in fact, in existence.

To lead this bogus army,
a real general was appointed,

the legendary pistol-toting
victor of the Sicilian campaign,
George Patton.

An inspired choice because Hitler
regarded the American general

as his most formidable adversary.

One of the lessons one learns in
putting over a deception plans

is not to explain it to the Germans,

not to detail it, but to give them
a mass of information

from apparently
different sources which enables them

to put the jigsaw puzzle together
and draw their own conclusions.

MORSE CODE

One of Tar's agents was a
Spaniard, a master of invention

with an army of spies
at his command.

Juan Pujol had a diploma in chicken
farming, an overactive imagination

and a deep-seated
hatred for Hitler.

A natural performer
and a man of many guises,

Tar Robertson codenamed him Garbo.

He launched his campaign from
an anonymous semi-detached house

in the northern suburbs of London.

Astonishingly,
he had convinced the Germans

that he was a committed Nazi

with access to high level
British intelligence.

And he did not act alone.

Garbo recruited no less
than 27 sub agents.

These included an Army sergeant,

an English secretary,

a waiter from Gibraltar,

a travelling salesman,

two Venezuelan students

and a disgruntled seaman
from Swansea.

But perhaps the most extraordinary
part of the Garbo network

was the
Brothers of the Aryan World Order,

a group of fanatical Welsh fascists.

Needless to say,
none of these people existed.

All 27 had been invented by Garbo.

Garbo, on behalf
of his 27 fake subagents,

sent more than
500 wireless messages,

each one reinforcing the fiction

of a vast American army
assembling in Kent.

His imaginary network
spanned the country.

The lies from each agent reinforcing
the lies from the others.

An illusion made all the more
convincing after one agent

who knew too much was suddenly
eliminated from the spy ring.

It was a massive undertaking and the
stakes could not have been higher.

One slip and the entire network

would be revealed
for the sham that it was.

Unknown to Garbo or any
of Robertson's double agents,

the German response to every message
sent was being monitored

by the Allies biggest secret,
the codebreakers of Bletchley Park.

German signals decoded at Bletchley

word for word,
all the way to Berlin.

In German minds, the Welsh fascists
and the rest of Garbo's network

were entirely reliable and
their reports were swallowed whole.

German reinforcements poured into
Calais to prepare for an invasion.

The ruins of Hitler's Atlantic Wall

still litter the landscape
around Calais.

A system of almost impregnable
concrete casements

that once bristled with guns.

They were built by forced labour

for a regime that believed
it would last 1,000 years.

The bunkers were a warren,
lived in by hundreds of men.

And deep inside these fortresses
can be found a testament

to the Nazi's belief
in their invulnerability.

Down here in the bunker,
there's lots of graffiti showing

just how confident the Germans were.

There's one here that's
addressed to WC, Winston Churchill,

"Whoever is bad must be
punished and now you must pay for
the bad thing you have started."

And there's another one over here,
a sort of two-faced caricature

of Churchill himself.
On the left, he's looking very smug

and out of his mouth
is coming the word victory.

On the right, he's looking terrified

and the cigar has dropped out
of his mouth and he is saying SOS,

the international distress signal.

Several hundred miles
to the north of Calais,

another deception was under way.

While Garbo was busy
inventing one army,

another was being created up
on the east coast of Scotland.

This was the work of the third of
Robertson's spies, Agent Brutus.

Roman Czerniawski was a deeply
patriotic Polish fighter pilot,

a professional soldier
who had devoted himself

to becoming an expert spy.

A complete world
of literary fiction was created.

There were events
which never took place.

Whole units, all kinds,
starting from regiments

to divisions in armies
were created.

People who never were born,

the generals, English or American,
never existed.

Thousands of signposts were
put all around, but really,

there were no troops here, no units,

in this beautiful, quiet
countryside, like it is today.

His espionage career began
when Poland was invaded.

He then fled to France and began
working for the Resistance

and spying for the British.

My father would casually
walk down the street,

wearing his French beret,
an overcoat,

clutching
a stick of French bread,

and in his right-hand pocket,
he had a little stubby pencil

and a notepad and he was
very, very carefully

noting down the insignia

on German uniforms and he would
scurry home to his flat

and then radio back to London
what he was seeing.

But he and his network
were betrayed and captured.

The Germans then offered
Czerniawski a stark choice,

spy for them on the British
or see his comrades executed.

There was a very powerful moral code

that drove what he considered
to be right or wrong conduct.

In those crucial few months
when he was negotiating

and bargaining for his own freedom
and the freedom of his agents,

he believed overwhelmingly
that what he was doing was right

and good and in the interests
of the country that he loved.

To save the other members
of his network,

Czerniawski agreed to become a
double agent against the British.

But he had another
trick up his sleeve.

When the Germans faked his
escape and sent him to Britain,

he immediately turned himself in
and began working as a triple agent.

Tar named him after the ancient
Roman turncoat, Brutus,

and appointed Hugh Astor
as his case officer.

We decided that Brutus could be
a principal channel for deception.

As a cover, he took a job

working with the Polish Army
exiled in Britain.

Occasionally, I'd send him out
on an espionage mission

to see what he could pick up.
In the space of two or three days,

he'd come back with the most
extraordinary amount of information.

He had drawn a map showing
where all the different units

were stationed, identification signs,

very often the commanding officer's
name and then I would use that

as the basis of a report
to send to the Germans,

but changing the identity of
various units which he identified.

As a professional soldier, Brutus's
reports carried weight in Berlin.

The army he now invented in Scotland
was intended to do

precisely the same thing
as the fake army in Kent.

By threatening
an invasion of Norway,

it might keep the occupying troops
bottled up there

and away from the real
battlefields in Normandy.

Brutus did not always send
the messages himself.

He had his own Polish operator
who would transmit for him.

Radio operators are always known as
pianists and so his radio operator

was codenamed Chopin, which seemed
appropriate for a Polish pianist.

Transmitting telegraphese is
very much like handwriting,

it can be identified.

I would follow,
as far as possible, his procedures

but substituting imaginary units
for the real ones.

So now, two fake armies
had been conjured into existence.

One in Scotland
and the other in Kent.

Meanwhile, the real invasion
army was beginning to mobilise

in southern England for the biggest
amphibious assault in history.

150,000 Allied troops were secretly
heading south towards Southampton.

The entire Allied Force was to be
risked in one all-out assault
on France,

to be led by the supreme commander,
General Dwight Eisenhower.

The stage is being set for the
beginning of a great and crucial test

all over the world.

I am completely confident
that the soldiers, sailors and airmen

will demonstrate once and for all
that an aroused democracy

is the most formidable fighting
machine that can be devised.

I don't think we had a mental image
of an enemy, we had a mental image

of the Nazi party
and what they were doing.

They were the enemy.
They were terribly bad people.

And somebody'd got to stop them.

As part of Operation Bodyguard,

Lady Dundas worked at
General Eisenhower's headquarters.

The goal was clear,
but the D-Day secret

was so precious, not even
those risking their lives

knew where the invasion
would take place.

Only the top brass
could know the whole truth.

To provide Hitler with convincing
information apparently gleaned
from the highest quarters,

Robertson played the most unlikely
card in his hand -

a bisexual Peruvian playgirl

with the unimprovable name
of Elvira Concepcion Josefina
de la Fuente Chaudoir -

the daughter of a guano magnate
from Lima.

An international party girl
with a penchant for gambling
and the high life,

Elvira was slow to make her mark

when recruited by
British intelligence,

who had sent her on a mission
to charm her way into the German
Secret Service.

She ended up on her natural
playground, the south of France,

and then felt rather embarrassed
and guilty

that she hadn't done more work

and she was rather enjoying
sunning herself.

And she was a great gambler
and a very good card player.

She was a great poker player.

She was approached by a German
who she'd befriended, I think,
in the casinos,

and he asked whether she'd be willing
to work for him in England.

And after a good deal of thought,
she said, yes, she would.

Back in Britain, her task was
to haunt the cocktail parties

and casinos of high society London,

and send back to Germany
an intoxicating mixture

of invented secrets and gossip,

reporting conversations
she had never had

with people she had never met.

Churchill had ordered that no
code name should give a hint
at an agent's true identity -

a rule that the XX team cheerfully
and consistently ignored.

Treasure was valuable,
Garbo, a great actor.

And Elvira, the good-time girl,
was given the codename "Bronx" -

the name of a particularly
lethal cocktail.

Bronx sent her messages
not by wireless, but by post -

writing to her German spymaster

between the lines
of ordinary letters

using a matchstick impregnated
with secret ink.

Using the impregnated match,
secret, invisible messages

could be written over
ordinary correspondence.

Once in enemy hands, the ink
would be chemically developed

to reveal the key information.

Samples of Bronx's letters have been
released to the National Archives
in Kew.

Tell me what we have here
in this file.

Well, this is the file of Bronx,

one of the double agents,

and it includes a whole range
of documents relating to the way

she was controlled
in the United Kingdom,

but also some of the texts
of some of the secret messages

that she sent to her
German controllers.

What is this, Mark? This is a photo
taken by MI5 of the secret message

which was written underneath
a cover message.

In capital letters, she's written,

"Last week, I saw a man unload
a lorry full of foodstuffs

"into an old empty house next
to the church at Roehampton."

It's not exactly going to
change the war, is it?

No. I mean, you're not going to give
all your best stuff at once, either.

And it's a way of
stringing people along.

There's a bit of a Boy's Own Paper
ring to the idea of secret ink.

Was it important
in the Second World War?

Yeah, and it had been since
the First World War.

But, I mean, the point about this
sort of means of communication is
it just took an awfully long time,

cos it's going to take the best part
of two weeks to get there, probably.

So it's a kind of cumulative effect,
her traffic?

Yeah, and it's also making the best
of what you have.

If you don't have wireless
communications, how do you do it?
No mobile phones in that time.

As the days counted down to D-Day,
Bronx would need a way

to get messages to her
German spymaster much faster.

We intercepted a movement order
to a German Panzer division -

which at that time were stationed
near Bordeaux -

to move to the Normandy area.

Which was exactly
what we didn't want.

And, really,
without very much hope of success,

I said that I'd try and use Bronx
to prevent the division moving.

The tanks would be in Normandy
within days,

unless Bronx could convince her
spymasters that they were needed
more urgently elsewhere.

Now...

secret ink was not Bronx's only way
of communicating with her handler,
was it?

Oh, no, there were sort of
crash messages, if you like,

that were conveying an innocuous...
A telegram, for example,
conveying an innocuous message

had a prearranged significance
to her controller.

And therefore, you could get
a certain degree of immediacy to it,

but again, you had to be very careful
about what you did and didn't say.

Because it says,
"Envoyez vite cinquante livres.
Besoin pour mon dentiste."

"Send quickly �50,
I need it for my dentist."

But that actually meant...

It actually warns there's going to be
an invasion in the Bay of Biscay.

I must confess, I was astonished,
within hours,

seeing this message relayed
to Berlin.

Within 24 hours, an order cancelling
the movement order for the...

I think it was the Panzer division.

I think it was the 13th
Panzer Division, but I'm not sure.

And so, nobody was more surprised
than myself, I must confess.

Back in England, Allied troops
were making final preparations
for the invasion.

To further convince the Germans
that Calais was the target,

bombing raids on the area
were stepped up.

And Tar Robertson was feeling
a deep satisfaction

with the work of his spies.

The elaborate hoax
seemed to be working.

Operation Bodyguard was on course.

He now felt confident enough
to send a message to Churchill,

pointing out, "My double agents
have, at a critical moment,

"acquired a value it is scarcely
possible to overestimate."

PLANE ENGINE DRONES

But the drive home the D-Day lie,
Robertson needed an agent

brave enough to make direct,
personal contact with the enemy.

Anybody who goes into the field
is courageous,

and the Germans were very rough on
these people when they caught them.

The risk of being caught
was quite high.

Lisbon, in neutral Portugal,
was a hotbed of wartime espionage

and a regular haunt of Dusko Popov -

a flamboyant international dealmaker
from Dubrovnik.

But his business was simply a cover.
He was a British double agent,

codenamed Tricycle,
working directly for Tar Robertson.

Tricycle was just the man to inject
the great deception into the heart
of German intelligence.

When I was with the Germans,

I tried to play the part
that I am a real German spy.

Cos, in that kind of work,
you're allowed one mistake,

and that's the last one
you ever make.

He was really entering
the lion's den

on every occasion that he
travelled back to Lisbon.

He could've been betrayed
at any time.

Since he had to deliver information
first-hand

rather than use the wireless, he...
I mean, charm came into this.

He had a lot of self-confidence and
he was a very charismatic person.

He had trust in his ability
to convince the Germans

that he was loyal to them.

He was taking a huge gamble,
but it was a calculated one,

because his German spymaster
was also a British double agent.

Johnny Jebsen was a senior German
intelligence officer,

and at the start of the war,
he had recruited his friend Popov
to spy on the British.

They shared a taste for parties
and women,

and indulged this to the full
whenever they met up in Lisbon.

But secretly, Jebsen also shared
Popov's hatred for the Nazis.

Jebsen was probably very similar
to Dusko in his way to gamble
with life.

They were best of friends
since university days,

so I think that friendship
was really key.

But the close friendship between
Popov and his German controller,
Jebsen,

was starting to worry MI5.

It became apparent
that his German controller

knew that he was working for us,
and this created a new dimension.

I was rather gung ho at that time

and felt that we ought to eliminate
his controller,

but wiser counsel prevailed
and we didn't.

Instead, Popov told MI5
that Jebsen was anti-Nazi

and should be brought in
as another double agent.

Jebsen was recruited as
Agent Artist.

Johnny was their best source
of information

in the German Secret Service.

He was also able to protect Dusko.

At one point,
they became so important

that if either of them was uncovered

it could mean the whole
deception plan would be lost.

As Popov flew back and forth
between London and Lisbon,

Jebsen was able to provide him
and the British with a wealth
of information,

secured from his position
deep within the German war machine.

Secret weapons, military production,

and the innermost workings
of German intelligence.

And he did more.

He also revealed the identities
of Germany's top spies operating
in Britain -

information that would enable
the British to catch them.

The problem was these were the very
spies under Robertson's command,

each responsible for a part
of the deception.

Only a small number of people
knew the whole detail.

I mean, some would know the place,
others would know the date,

others would know the composition
of the invading force.

But very few people
knew the whole story.

Since Robertson's spies continued
to report to their German spymasters
without being arrested,

Jebsen came to
the obvious conclusion -

they were all double agents,

and the Germans were being deceived
on a MASSIVE scale.

Jebsen was now in on the secret,
and MI5 knew it.

They were very much
worried about Jebsen.

Jebsen could have betrayed
the whole deception plan.

If he had been caught,
all the others would have fallen.

Bletchley Park intercepts also
revealed that Berlin was suspicious.

Jebsen was asking too many questions
and was now under investigation.

MI5 had every reason to be alarmed.

Agent Artist knew
the D-Day secret, and now,

the Gestapo were closing in on him.

Which left Tar Robertson
with an appalling dilemma.

If he extracted Jebsen from Lisbon
and brought him to the safety
of Britain,

the Germans might realise
their messages were being read.

The secret of the Bletchley Park
codebreakers had to be protected
at all costs.

But if Robertson left Agent Artist
to his fate,

there was a real risk the Gestapo
would arrest him.

Once he was in their hands, how long
would he hold out before he cracked,

and expose the entire
D-Day deception?

But then,
another problem appeared...

in the shape of a small dog.

For months,
Agent Treasure had badgered MI5

to fulfil their promise
and bring her pet dog to Britain.

But Babs remained in quarantine
in Gibraltar.

Increasingly angry, Treasure
demanded that the Royal Navy

send a submarine to pick up her dog.

'I admired them. I trusted them.

'I had faith in British fair play.

'So they promised me in Madrid,

'but when they got me to London,
they refused!'

And then, just when it seemed that
relations between MI5 and Treasure
couldn't get any worse,

news arrived that Babs
had been run over by a truck.

TYRES SCREECH AND HORN BEEPS

CLATTERING

Treasure was heartbroken
and furious.

She immediately accused Robertson
and MI5 of murdering her pet dog,

and perhaps she was right.

A clue may lie
in her MI5 case files.

LILY: Losing Babs I find very hard
to accept.

I am alone. Absolutely alone.

The index contains no less than nine
separate items relating to Babs.

"Letter to Treasure from Gibraltar
about the welfare of her dog."

"Note on quarantine regulations
with regard to Treasure's dog."

Every single one has been removed
from the files and destroyed.

The mystery of Babs' death
may never be solved,

but its consequences
were potentially catastrophic.

LILY: I can destroy the work
of three years.

Just a double dash and the Germans
will know that I work

under the control
of the Intelligence Service.

Treasure had kept one vital secret
from her British handlers.

Emile Kliemann,
her German spymaster,

had instructed her to insert a coded
warning into her radio messages
if she was caught,

to alert him that she was
being controlled by the British.

LILY: This is my revenge.

They made me a promise.

And they didn't keep it.

Now, I shall have them
in my power.

In Lisbon, meanwhile, events were
moving with terrifying speed.

Johnny Jebsen, Agent Artist,
was summoned to the offices

of German counter-intelligence
in Lisbon to receive a medal

for his services to the Third Reich.

But there, his luck ran out.

He was ambushed, drugged

and smuggled out of Portugal.

Jebsen was driven across the border
to France and then on to Berlin.

He was held at the Gestapo
torture chambers

and interrogated there.

I wouldn't have wanted to be
captured by the Germans.

I think they were very rough.

The number of agents who died
in German hands...

and tortured.

Back in London, Tar received
a three-word message from Lisbon.

It was the message
he had been dreading.

"Johnny has disappeared."

MI5 was swept by near-panic.

Tar Robertson called
a crisis meeting -

should they shut down the entire
XX operation,

or could they continue
as if nothing had happened?

It was no longer safe for Popov
to act as a double agent.

I don't think, at that point,

he was wondering or worrying about
the deception plan at all.

I think, here was his best friend
being abducted by the Gestapo.

Most people didn't think Johnny would
be able to resist interrogation.

They all thought that he would crack
under physical torture.

People would have thought, you know,
"That's it. The game is ended."

The fate of Johnny Jebsen

and the destiny of thousands
of Allied soldiers

weighed heavily
on Tar's shoulders,

and then the ghost of Babs the dog
came back to haunt him.

And now,
at the worst possible moment,

Agent Treasure threatened to blow
the entire double agent system.

Treasure finally admitted
that she HAD agreed

a secret signal
with her German spymaster,

to be inserted into her messages
should she ever be caught.

She confessed that her motive
was revenge for the death of Babs.

But she refused to say
what the secret signal was

or whether she'd already sent it.

Robertson confronted Lily and
demanded to know what was going on.

He made it very clear
that if she had betrayed the cause,

he would take
the most severe action.

Agent Treasure
was shut down immediately,

but it was too late
to stop the invasion.

The troops were ready to go.

The date was set.
The target was fixed.

All Tar and his team could do
was continue to drive home
the deception,

and pray that Jebsen
didn't crack too soon.

Day and night, Bletchley Park's
codebreakers anxiously scanned

hundreds of intercepted signals
for any scrap of information

that might reveal whether
the Germans had found out the truth.

The other agents flooded the Nazis

with messages confirming
an imminent attack on Calais.

The days leading up to Overlord
were very, very tense.

We were all working
a sort of 24-hour day,

and wondering what questions

the Germans were going to ask next,
how we would answer them.

Would they be believed?
Would our agents become discredited?

It was quite tense.

But was Hitler listening?

Hitler's absolute control
over his armed forces

meant that his was the only
decision that really mattered.

Whether or not he believed
the D-Day lie

would make or break
the Allied invasion.

Just before D-Day,

Hitler met the Japanese ambassador,
Baron Hiroshi Oshima.

The Fuhrer was keen to talk about
the invasion and his knowledge
of Allied plans.

Impressed, Oshima immediately
radioed back a report
of his conversation to Tokyo.

Two days later, the report,
decoded and translated,

landed on Robertson's desk.

Hitler was adamant.

"They will come forward, all out,
across the Straits of Dover."

The target was Calais.

HEAVY GUNFIRE

On June 6, 1944, the Allied troops,

under the command
of General Eisenhower,

stormed the Normandy beaches

and took the Germans
completely by surprise.

Over 10,000 Allied troops fell
on the first day of the invasion.

It was a high and bloody price
to pay,

but a fraction of the casualties
there would have been
had the Germans been ready.

By the end of the day, the Allies
had their first foothold in France.

But the job was not yet over.

As the Allies pushed on into France,

the unseen force of the D-Day spies
fought alongside them.

We were able, up to a point,

to persuade them that
the Normandy landings,

when they started,
were a diversionary attack.

That the main force
was still in East Anglia

waiting to go across the Channel
to Calais.

We rather assumed that by D plus 10

the Germans would have realised that
they were having their leg pulled.

In the event, things went much better
than we'd expected.

23 days after D-Day, Garbo received
a startling message.

The Fuhrer had decided that
in recognition of his heroic efforts

in the service of the Third Reich,

Garbo should be awarded
the Iron Cross -

Germany's highest military honour.

Unbelievably,
the D-Day lie was still holding.

As late as July,
more than a month after D-Day,

no fewer than 22 German divisions,

almost a quarter of a million men,

were still held back
in the Calais area.

In Norway, German sentries
anxiously scanned the horizon

waiting for the attack
from Scotland

that also never came.

The hoax had been more successful
than anyone would've dared predict.

The liberation would be slow
and costly.

But after the landings of June 6,
victory was in sight.

CHEERING

Amid the celebrations on VE Day
in May 1945,

few people raised a glass to Tar
Robertson and the spies of B1A.

The work of the XX team would remain
secret for years after the war.

But recently declassified files
reveal the full impact
of the deception operation.

This captured German map showed
where the Nazis believed

Allied forces were positioned
immediately before D-Day.

The map corresponds precisely with
the lies fed to German intelligence

by the D-Day spies.

The deception saved
many thousands of lives,

and was the equivalent to quite
a large additional army force.

Their counterparts in German
intelligence never guessed

the massive hoax Tar and his team
had pulled off.

Or maybe some of them did,
and just chose to ignore it.

Let us put ourselves in the position
of a German controller
with an agent in England.

Would you go to Hitler and say,

"I've been spending millions
of Deutschmarks maintaining this

"organisation in England,
and they're all a lot of dummies."

I mean, very difficult for him to do.

Hugh Astor carried on his work
for MI5 in the Middle East.

But Tar Robertson left in 1949
and became a sheep farmer.

Some of the D-Day spies were
recognised for their contribution,

and awarded medals
in strictest secrecy.

Garbo was awarded an MBE -

an unusual honour for a man who had
already received the Iron Cross.

Long after his fake agents
had been laid to rest,

Garbo visited
the Normandy war graves.

I did all the things that I could...

..to save men,
but I couldn't save these men here.

It is very sad for me
to see this now.

Thousands more would lie
in cemeteries like this,

had it not been for the work
of Garbo and the other D-Day spies.

Agent Treasure had not gone through
with her threat to expose
the deception plan.

Perhaps, she had only ever intended
to torment MI5 at a critical moment,

and that was a revenge for Babs.

She lived out her days
in the suburbs of Detroit,

surrounded by dogs.

Bronx,
the bisexual Peruvian party girl,

opened a souvenir shop
in the south of France.

Brutus remained in England, but
his love for Poland never dimmed.

He became active in Polish politics,
but it was not until old age

that he spoke openly about
his wartime activities.

I grew up with the stories of him
skiing and him being a pilot,

and anecdotes of him being
parachuted into occupied France.

It's exciting to know that
the stories that I grew up with
were actually true,

and that those stories were part of a
bigger story in which he was central.

And that does make me proud.

Dusko Popov, Agent Tricycle,
returned to business,

eventually retiring to a house
in the south of France,

where he wrote his memoirs.

I went...

a few dozen times
to meet the Germans.

I never felt absolutely certain
that I shall come back.

And it would be lying now
to tell you that I wasn't afraid.

I was actually terrorised
from the first day to the last.

His house is still the family home.

Popov died in 1981,
wondering to the end

just what had happened
to his friend Johnny Jebsen.

These men did extraordinary
things during the war,

and I think the war called for them
to rise to that event.

And they took chances probably people
wouldn't take during peacetime,

but the times called for it.
It was war.

The fate of Johnny Jebsen, Agent
Artist, is shrouded in mystery.

In early 1945, he was moved
to one of the most notorious
concentration camps in Germany.

And two months before that camp
was liberated,

the Gestapo came to collect him.

He was never seen again.

Johnny Jebsen could have turned
history in a different direction
and survived,

but he chose not to.

Like many ordinary, flawed people,
he didn't know his own courage

until war revealed it.

Agent Artist, Johnny Jebsen,
was not a conventional D-Day hero,

but he was a hero nonetheless.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd