Roman Czerniawski

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Roman Czerniawski (6 February 1910 - 26 April 1985 in London) was a Polish Air Force Captain and Allied double agent during World War II, using the codename BRUTUS.

Czerniawski graduated in the late 1930s from the Wyższa Szkoła Wojenna (WSWoj), a military academy at Warsaw. As a former officer of the Polish Air Force, he volunteered to create an allied espionage network in France in 1940. This network was code-named Interallie. Among the other members of the network was Mathilde Carré.

On November 17, 1941, the Abwehr group of Hugo Bleicher arrested Carré because of the lack of proper operational security within the organisation. Many other members of the Interallie and Carré revealed most of the members of the network. Czerniawski and others were imprisoned.

After having been offered safety by the Germans, he was sent as an agent to England. However, he briefed the British and Polish authorities about the security lapses of his organization in France. He was turned into a double agent using the covername Brutus with the Double Cross System. He thus played a major part in the allied deception prior to the D-Day landing in Normandy in 1944 as one of the primary agents in the execution of Fortitude South, the deceptive plan that the Allies would invade through the Pas de Calais across the Channel from South-East England.

[edit] References

Andrzej Pepłoński, "Wywiad Polskich Sił Zbrojnych na Zachodzie, 1939-1945", Warszawa 1995.
Stanisław Żochowski, "Wywiad polski we Francji 1940-1945", Lublin 1994. ISBN 83-902348-5-8.
John Masterman, "Brytyjski system podwójnych agentów 1939-1945", Warszawa 1974.