Who was Duško Popov, the man who warned about the attack on Perl Harbor and significantly inspired Ian Fleming to create the character of the legendary secret agent James Bond?
The mystery of James Bond, the legendary secret agent “007”, was additionally enhanced by the statement of his creator Ian Fleming, when he revealed to the media that the double agent from the World War II, known as “Tricycle”, served him as an inspiration. And after “Tricycle” himself described the mysterious life of spies in his memoirs, the controversy re-merged. Who was that man? He was born in 1912 in a well-off Serbian family in Titel, a small town in what today is Banat, and at that time a part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His name was Duško Popov.
He spent his childhood in Dubrovnik, and finished law school in Belgrade. The real-life James Bond has shown his gallantry and passion for women and expensive cars early, but had no ambition of becoming a spy.
The turning point in his life was his friendship with Johan Jebsen at postgraduate studies in Germany. In his memoirs he wrote: “When Jebsen (the officer of German secret service), my best friend, started shrewdly leading me on becoming a German spy, pretty soon I realized what was going on, and then I accepted it. Well, it was in accordance with my plans”.
He informed the British on this suggestion and they instantly recruited him as a double agent to slip false information to Germans. This is where the James Bond legend is rooted. Duško Popov became agent “Tricycle” and began developing his network. He knew that he wasn’t completely trusted by either of the sides, thus making his position even more difficult. In order to gain Nazis’ trust, he risked of being tortured and even murdered on several occasions. However, for years he managed to balance between both sides and achieve his goal – The Allies’ victory.
In order to succeed, Duško Popov had to become master of disguise, to blend in and live with a mask. That is why he presented himself as a Yugoslav businessman.
However, he couldn’t fight his true nature. His hedonism and adventurist lifestyle, like James Bond’s, didn’t fit the cliche of the profession, and he often attracted attention. That is why his British employers decided to follow him and control him.
But who could have been capable enough to spy on a man today considered to be the most significant agent of the entire World War II? Surely someone equally ingenious and shrewd – Ian Fleming, British naval officer at that time. Was the famous author the perfect choice for that role? We’ll probably never know. But the one thing we know is that this “job” created the character of James Bond.
Fleming witnessed numerous occasions in which Duško Popov left people open-mouthed One of those occasions later served as the inspiration for “Casino Royal”, the first of James Bond novels. In a casino Duško, like Fleming’s character did many times, raised the stakes to staggering amount of money and beat the opponent with a lot more powerful cards with this bluff.
However, one of the most scandalous and least solved situations from his carrier is the warning that Perl Harbor would be bombed three months before it actually happened. The reasons that led the legendary director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover to ignore Duško Popov and his allegations after their meeting have never been determined. It was speculated that he didn’t believe double agents, he even despised the “Hollywood” lifestyle of the rich British agent-playboy.
And the James Bond character captures such image of Duško Popov in so many ways. Especially on the movie screens! Charismatic and handsome actors play Bond in already legendary films, and they even look like Duško.
What stuns us most about Duško Popov, even more than any fiction, is the reality. His life directed numerous surprising twists, but the last one was probably least expected – double spy and womanizer settled down, got married and had children.
And that is the key of his success in what many alike failed – to survive, write Memoirs and not let anyone else tell the history he had created himself.
