Meet Dushko Popov: The Real-Life James Bond Who Lived a Spy Thriller!"

Meet Dushko Popov: The Real-Life James Bond Who Lived a Spy Thriller!

This is the real-life James Bond, the inspiration behind most of the iconic character in his famous story. Dushko Popov...

One of the most intriguing agents in the history of espionage, not only because he was a womanizer and a skilled gambler, but also because he possessed a sharp intellect and audacity that allowed him to outwit the German intelligence services for years without being discovered.

Born into a wealthy Serbian family, Popov vehemently despised Nazism.

When the Germans (the Abruhr) recruited him, he went directly to the British Embassy in Belgrade and offered his services.

He then became a double agent...

To the Germans, he was known by the code name "Ivan."

To the British, he was nicknamed "Tricycle" because he led a team of three agents, or, as some satirical accounts suggest, because of his penchant for having relationships with two women simultaneously.

In 1941, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was observing Popoff in Portugal, then a neutral country teeming with spies.

At the Estoril Casino, Popoff placed a massive bet of $40,000 (a huge sum of British government money at the time) to confuse a German opponent who was trying to demonstrate his financial power.

The ruse worked, and the German withdrew. Fleming watched in amazement, and this is the moment when the character of Bond was born at the casino table, as seen in the film "Casino Royale."

One day, the Germans sent him on a secret mission to the United States to gather crucial intelligence on certain areas within the country. They gave him a questionnaire that focused exclusively and suspiciously on the defenses at Pearl Harbor.

Popoff realized at that moment that there was a plan to attack the port by the Japanese (Germany's allies).

He passed this information on to J. Edgar Hoover (then director of the FBI).

But Hoover, a staunch conservative, distrusted Popov because of his "liberal" lifestyle and considered him a mere undisciplined spy, so he ignored the warning.

A few months later, the famous attack occurred, just as Popov had predicted.

While Bond relies on technological gadgets in his films, Popov relied on subtle puzzles. He was an expert in using microdots (reducing messages to the size of a tiny dot).

He contributed significantly to the events of World War II, particularly to "Operation Steadfastness," the deception plan that convinced Hitler the Allied invasion would be in Pas-de-Calais, not Normandy, thus changing the course of the war.

Popov was a walking encyclopedia, fluent in several languages ​​like a native speaker. His native language was Serbian, and he also spoke German, English, French, and Russian. He was remarkably intelligent.

Ironically, when the James Bond film series was released, he did not like it, and he considered Bond to be "extravagant and unrealistic" in his behavior as a spy, even though he himself lived a life of extravagance!