Elyesa Bazna

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Elyesa Bazna (Albanian: Iljaz Bazna born July 28, 1904 in Priştine, Kosovo - December 21, 1970 in Munich, Germany) was an Albanian from Kosovo who spied for the Germans during the WWII. Principally motivated by monetary gain, he sold information to the Germans through their attaché Ludwig Carl Moyzisch (and then through ambassador Franz von Papen), in Ankara, Turkey.

Codenamed "Cicero", the information that Bazna leaked is believed to have potentially been the most damaging of WWII, but conflicts inside the highest echelons of the German government meant that little if any of it was actually acted upon.

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[edit] Life

Of Albanian origin, Elyesa Bazna was born to Moslem Albanian parents in Kosovo (then Ottoman Empire) and moved to Turkey at a very young age. Bazna served as a valet first to the Yugoslav ambassador to Turkey and then to a German counsellor who fired him for reading his mail.

From 1942 Bazna was the valet of the British ambassador Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen in Ankara. Bazna began photographing secret British documents on October 21, 1943. He approached Ludwig Moyzisch, an attaché at the German Embassy in Ankara, indicating that he wanted £20,000 for fifty-six documents he had initially photographed. He became a paid German agent in 1943 and was given the codename "Cicero".

He claimed that his hatred of the British was because his father had been killed by a Briton. In fact this was just an excuse to cover his desire for money, his father having died peacefully in his bed [1].

[edit] Spying for the Germans

He leaked important information about many of the international conferences and bombing raids such as Ploieşti but only fuzzy information about "Operation Overlord", the codename for the Invasion of Normandy. British intelligence believed that Bazna could not speak English and furthermore was "too stupid" to be a spy. Moyzisch, in his book published after the war, asserts that the information had been good enough to make preparations against the Allied landings in Normandy, but that the German Foreign Office did not believe in the veracity of the documents because of personal antipathy between the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Ambassador Franz von Papen.

Furthermore, the Abwehr, when asked to evaluate the material, pronounced it unreliable. Until the fall of Wilhelm Canaris, the Abwehr worked secretly against Hitler and was prepared to make the German government swallow any type of deception, such as Operation Mincemeat and Operation Fortitude.

During the first three months of 1944, Cicero continued to supply the Germans with copies of documents taken from his employer's dispatch box or his safe. The money continued to flow in and dreams of future wealth seemed assured.

When the Cicero documents predicted an allied air raid on Sofia, Bulgaria, the authenticity of the information was confirmed. Indeed, Moyzisch told Cicero that at the end of the war Hitler intended to give him a villa.

[edit] End of spying career

In the meantime, Bazna found it increasingly difficult to carry out his spying activities. A new alarm system in the British Embassy required him to very carefully remove a fuse whenever he wanted access to the ambassador's safe. In addition, Moyzisch hired a new, shapely secretary named Nele Kapp (known in the book as Elizabeth or shortly Elsa), the daughter of a top German diplomat who had spent most of her early life in English-speaking parts of the world.

Nele was neurotic and difficult to work with and Moyzisch decided that she had to go. What he did not know was that this was actually an act. Nele hated the Nazis and had been supplying information to the British and the American OSS. She eventually defected to America in early 1944. Fearing Miss Kapp would pinpoint his operation, Bazna left Sir Hughe's service.

By April 1944, Nazi forces in the Crimea were in full retreat. Worried they might face advancing Russian forces alone if they did not reach some accommodation with the Allies, the Turks replaced their pro-German army chief Fevzi Çakmak with Kazım Orbay who was pro-British.

In August 1944 Turkey severed diplomatic relations with Germany and by February 1945 declared war on Germany, when Cicero's usefulness had already ended.

[edit] After the War

Bazna was paid £300,000 by the Abwehr which he kept hidden. After the war he tried to go into business, but when his money was paid into the bank it was found to be counterfeit British Pounds (see Operation Bernhard). Bazna later tried unsuccessfully to sue the German government for outstanding pay.[2]

[edit] In popular culture

The attache Cicero was in constant with, Ludwig Moyzich, published his memoirs in 1950 with a book named Who was Cicero?. 12 years later, in 1962, I was Cicero was published by Cicero himself.

A film of these events, based on the book Operation Cicero by L.C. Moyzisch was made by 20th Century Fox in 1951. It was entitled 5 Fingers, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Bazna, renamed Ulysses Diello, was played by James Mason.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Take Nine Spies by Fitzroy Maclean, published in 1965
  2. ^ [1]
  • François Kersaudy: L’affaire Cicéron (ISBN 2-262-01921-5)
  • L. C. Moyzisch: Der Fall Cicero (Palladium Verlag, Heidelberg, 1952)
  • Ian Colvin: Chief of Intelligence (Gollancz, 1951)

[edit] External links