Johannes Eppler

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Johannes Willi Eppler (* 1914 in Alexandria ; † August 15, 1999 in Hövelhof , North Rhine-Westphalia ; also: Hans Eppler , John W. Eppler or Hussein Gaafar , Hussein Gaafer , Hussein Jafaar or Hussein Dschaffar ) was a German officer in the service the defense made famous by the secret service operations Salaam and Kondor during the Africa campaign in World War II .

Life

Eppler was born in Egypt to German-Jewish parents . After his father's death, his mother married a wealthy Egyptian lawyer . Eppler grew up with his stepfather in Cairo under the name Hussein Gaafar . During this time he converted to Islam and took part in the Hajj . Eppler studied law and economics for a few semesters , but without attaining a degree.

Eppler is said to have been recruited in Beirut for the German defense in 1938. Since that time he has used his father's name again.

After training in Germany and secret missions in Turkey , Iran and Afghanistan , Eppler took part as a captain in the German secret service operations Salaam and Kondor during the Africa campaign in the summer of 1942 and was soon arrested in Cairo in July 1942 by the British secret service MI5 .

In 1946 Eppler was released from British captivity . In the post-war period, Eppler wrote two books about his life as an intelligence service . He lived as a bookseller in Saarland in the late 1950s . From 1957 he lived in France as an entrepreneur .

The Salaam and Condor operations

Operation Salaam was led by the Hungarian officer Ladislaus Almásy . Those involved were subordinate to the Abwehr Division Brandenburg . Almásy led his special command over 3,000 km through the Libyan desert from the Jalu oasis via the Kufra oases and the Gilf el-Kebir plateau to Asyut in Egypt . At the end of May 1942, Almásy dropped Eppler and his radio operator , Hans-Gerd Sandstede from Hamburg, from there. They traveled on to Cairo by rail.

The operation in Cairo ran from June 1942 under the name Operation Condor . Eppler and Sandstede provided information from Cairo to the German Africa Corps for a few weeks . The novel " Rebecca " by Daphne du Maurier was used to encode radio communications . In September 1942 the agents and some of their local contacts were arrested, including a. also the then Egyptian captain and later President Anwar as-Sadat . The British secret service tried in vain to use the existing coding documents to disinformation the German troops in North Africa: since the German counterpart for accepting the Condor radio messages had already fallen into British hands in July 1942, the radio messages from Cairo were no longer considered a reliable source .

Works

  • Rommel calls Cairo: from a spy's diary. Designed by Heinz Görz. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1959 ( filmed in 1959 by Wolfgang Schleif with Adrian Hoven as Eppler).
  • Secret agent in World War II. Between Berlin, Kabul and Cairo. Schütz, Preußisch Oldendorf 1974. ISBN 3-877-25059-9 .

reception

Eppler's role in Operation Condor is the subject of Leonard Mosley's novel The Cat and the Mice (1958; filmed in 1960 as Foxhole in Cairo) . In this film, too, Eppler is played by Adrian Hoven. Elements from Eppler's books are also taken up in Ken Follett's novel The Key to Rebecca (1980, German 1982; filmed in 1985) and in Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient (1992, German 1993; filmed in 1996).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Terry Crowdy: Deceiving Hitler: double cross and deception in World War II. Osprey, Oxford 2008, p. 171, ISBN 978-1-846-03135-9 ( digital copy ).
  2. ^ John W. Gordon: The other desert war: British Special Forces in North Africa, 1940-1943. Greenwood, Westport 1987, pp. 101 ff., ISBN 978-0-313-25240-2 ( digitized version ).
  3. ↑ National Archives. KV 2 / 1467-1468. Accessed April 3, 2010.
  4. ↑ Pamela Andriotakis: The Real Spy's Story Reads Like Fiction and 40 Years Later Inspires a Best-Seller. In: People (December 15, 1980). Accessed April 3, 2010.
  5. ↑ Anja Stehmeyer: Rommel's spy - Saddam's hostage. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . October 17, 1990, archived from the original on December 4, 2014 ; Retrieved April 4, 2010 .
  6. ↑ Anwar as-Sadat: Revolt on the Nile. Day, New York 1957 ( excerpts in German translation in Der Spiegel of April 3, 1978).
  7. ↑ drum Cairo calls in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  8. ↑ Kinowelt.de: Rommel calls Cairo. Accessed April 3, 2010.
  9. ^ Leonard Mosley: The Cat and the Mice. Harper, London 1958.
  10. ↑ Foxhole in Cairo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  11. ^ Carlos Ramet: Ken Follett: The Transformation of a Writer. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green 1999, p. 68, ISBN 0-879-72798-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Eppler, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eppler, Hans; Eppler, Johannes Willi; Eppler, John W .; Eppler, John; Gaafer, Hussein; Gaafar, Hussein; Jafaar, Hussein; Dschaffar, Hussein
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German intelligence agent in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandria
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1999
Place of death Hövelhof , North Rhine-Westphalia