Elyesa Bazna (1904 - 1970) was a spy employed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. He hated the British and offered secret information to the Germans through the German ambassador, Franz von Papen.

Albanian by birth, Bazna was 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 Istanbul. Bazna began photographing secret British documents. He approached the German Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, indicating that he wanted £20,000 for fifty-six documents he had photographed initially. He became a paid German agent in 1943 and was given the codename "Cicero". He leaked important information about "Operation Overlord", the codename for Battle of Normandy. Sir Hughe believed that Bazna could not speak English and furthermore was "too stupid" to be a spy.

Bazna left the service of the ambassador when he feared betrayal as a result of the efforts of Allen Dulles. He was paid by the Abwehr with counterfeit British Pounds (see Operation Bernhard). After the war he unsuccessfully tried to sue the German government for outstanding pay.

His memoirs were entitled I was Cicero. The book was later made into the 1951 movie 5 Fingers, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, in which Bazna was recast as a British valet played by James Mason.

See also

• Fritz Kolbe

External links

• Envoy's singing valet was Nazi spy (telegraph.co.uk, 22 May 2003)
• Secret plot to catch out Nazi spy (BBC News, 1 April 2005)