Listen to the episode here.

What a week. If you needed something to lift your spirits, we have just the thing.

Today, Theresa kicks things off by telling the story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman. This Cheyanne woman was forgotten by many Western historians as a response from her people in hopes of protecting her. After she clubs Colonel Custer off his horse, leading to his immediate death, the elders banned telling her story to outsiders for 100 summers. The tribe maintained this silence for 129 years.

Angie heads right into her comfort zone, WWII, and shares the story of the triple agent – Dusko Popov. This filthy rich playboy, turned spy for Germany, Britain, and Yugoslavia, warned Hoover about Pearl Harbor, and no action was taken. This is only one of the exploits Angie regales us with.

Transcript

Angie: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast where two compulsive nut jobs are going to mainline history stories because it’s exactly what we do. We’re going to do it between every meeting break and opportunity as we scroll through. Read one random thing in a Facebook post. Hold on.

I have got to reschedule my entire life, figure out what this means. I’m host one. I’m Teresa.

That over there is host two. I’m Angie. And Angie, I I get to tell you I get to go first. You went only last time. Rude. I know. I it was rude that you know you went for I made you go first. And I was just like, you know what? Um I don’t have my life together, so I if you if you have the opportunity to take a whole episode, God speed.

Angie: You know, sometimes you have the entire mess-up story of Winnie the Poo Jud.

Theresa: Exactly. Exactly that. So I am going to tell you the story, and it was suggested, but I didn’t put who it was suggested by of Buffalo Calf Road. Calf Road? Correct.

Like the baby of Buffalo. Um, Oh, okay. got it.

Also, this person is known as Buffalo Calf Road Woman. Both seem to be acceptable. Um, okay, my sources. There’s a JSTOR article, the Journal of Woman Studies, volume six, number three, autumn of nineteen eighty-one, titled Resurrecting History’s Forgotten Woman, a case study from the Cheyenne Indians by Rosemary Agonito and Joseph Agonito.

Okay. And then Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, so close to National Parks. Titled Rosebud Battledfield State Park.

There’s a history.com article titled Native American Score Victory at Battle of Rosebud by Annette McDermott. And then I also went through the Wikipedia page. And that is purely because the articles for one of the pieces I wanted to definitely hit on behind a paywall for a very specific small town Montana newspaper, and I couldn’t justify the membership that I would inevitably forget about, read one article and pay hundreds of dollars over the course of my lifetime.

Angie: My newspaper is like that as well, and I’ll just go buy the actual newspaper tonight after that paywall. Yeah.

Theresa: Um, so for Buffalo Calf Road, we don’t have a lot of her story for reasons I’m gonna get into. Okay. But for all intents and purposes, she enters the historical narrative in around 1876, 1877.

She’s roughly in her mid-20s. Okay. Okay. Now, the U.S. is locked in an incredibly bitter dispute with the indigenous people. Peoples.

Right. Now, previously in episode 90, I covered the death of Sitting Bull and the Mascara at Wounded Me. So this pocket of chaos culminates in 1890. But the lead up to it, kind of in the same time period.

There’s a lot of overlapping things that I get into. Okay. Okay.

So this story links to that one for that reason. The the the TLDR is there’s a series of treaties that are made. The U.S.

renegs on all of them. Um, and then there’s this incredibly major slight of the U.S. government seizing the black hills. This is a sa a sacred site to the native peoples. But because there’s gold.

Angie: There’s gold in them our hills.

Theresa: Yes, exactly. And then the powers that be go on to further deface the sacred site by carving the faces of the presidents into the mountainside. Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s Mount Rushmore. I hate it. I it’s yeah, I mean, we’re gonna be consistent. We’re just gonna double down on our bullshit the entire way. But anyhow.

Angie: We are nothing if not consistent.

Theresa: This isn’t about any of that. This is just the backdrop. This is happening in the background. We’re focusing on Buffalo Calf Road, aka Buffalo Calf Road Woman. And then later there’s another moniker she picks up, but I’m gonna get into that. Okay. What we know, she’s married to a man named Black Coyote.

They have a four-year-old daughter, and both of them hate the idea of reservation life. It is and Athens Anthent… anthesis.

Kind of. And it’s it’s a different version of that word. So spin off of that word. Anthetical Anthony.

And it’s the antithesis of who they are. Forget it. We’re just going with it. Um Now, we’re gonna fast forward to what is known as the Battle of Rosebud River.

This is June 17th, 1876. There’s a large band of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, and they’re under the direction of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, several other chiefs that have congregated, and this is in absolute defiance of the U.S.’s demands to take all of the Native peoples and confine them to reservations. So this refusal is viewed as an opportunity to dispatch a massive three-prong attack. Oh, okay, okay. I like it. Let’s go.

Yeah. Now we have a man named Brigadier General George Crook. He has a group of Crow and Shoshone scouts. They’ve come up north from Wyoming. This is they have approximately a thousand troops with them, and they’re looking for this group of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne villages from Chief Sitting Bowl. And then on the morning of June 17th, 1876, near the headwaters of Rosebud Creek, Crook ends up uh finding himself a little bit unprepared because there is an organized attack that is equal or greater number of warriors that are led by the Sioux chief Crazy Horse and the Cheyenne Chiefs Two Moon, Young Two Moon, and Spotted Wolf. There are thousands of warriors and soldiers on the rolling hills of southeastern Montana. This is an eight hour engagement. It’s one of the longest or sorry, largest battles of the Indian wars.

And this battle is so significant because the Native Americans banded together, bodies this incredible army with such an intensity because they are trying to defend tribal land. Good for them. This stops Crook dead in his tracks. Well, not literally dead. Um it emboldens mostly dead.

Angie: I mean dead to rights for sure. Uh the na the indigenous humans are just this rallies them. This gets them all around this this cause. Now what we need to see is during this battle, there is only one woman who rides out and fights during it. And it is Buffalo Cafe. Road.

Angie: I would have thought there would have been like a whole contingent of them.

Theresa: Well, okay, so yeah, we’ll get into that. We’ll get into that, right? But there’s really only one woman who fights. Now there’s two other women that are present, but they are crow women who would serve as army scouts.

Okay. Okay, so two opposing, and then we have our our woman, Buffalo Calf Road. Now, during this fight, her brother, whose name’s comes in sight, he gets trapped. He’s penned down, there’s enemy fire.

The male warriors are watching helplessly. Buffalo Calf Road gets on a horse, rides directly through the hail of bullets, rescues him, gets out. That girl.

These actions of hers cause immediate renown. The Cheyenne, they don’t call it the Battle of Rosebud River. They call it the battle where the girl saved her brother. Very literal, I like it. And it’s just like we don’t it’s we’re thinking about the actual thing that happened as opposed to the headwaters of Rosebud Creek.

Angie: Now then the location in this particular moment doesn’t feel as substantial as what happened. Right.

Theresa: You know, it’s like naming Normandy, Hitler’s downfall. Oh. We had an opportunity.

Angie: We did not take it.

Theresa: Eight days later, after the battle where the girl saves her brother, Crook’s troops. Okay, so basically, so all right, uh, Crook’s troops had withdrawn or they from the war zone to resupply. And because of that, they’re not able to support Colonel Custer and his troops at Little Big Horn. Oh, okay.

So you’re seeing where some through lines are coming through. The Lakota and the Northern Cheyenne Warriors, they overtake General George Custer. He’s got a group of 263 soldiers at Little Bighorn. And this sh this shocking defeat is like happening while the nation is celebrating its centennial. And this would cause the U.S.

to launch a counterattack and the Lakota would in ensuing and they would lose the Black Hills right after this. Okay. Okay. Now that ends up happening.

Okay, so I said that eight days later, da-da-da. Here’s what we need to think about because that parts of that story, most of that story I knew. Right.

Okay. Custer Custer’s downfall kind of deal. Like we know that.

Here’s where things get interesting. In the public recounting of Cheyenne oral history, the bat the battle, tribal storytellers spoke of how it was Buffalo Calf Road Woman who struck the blow that knocked Custard off his horse before he died in battle at Little Bighorn. Ooh, okay. And this is something we don’t hear.

Now we’re gonna get into it. In 2017, Wallace Bear Turn, the director of tribal services for the Northern Cheyenne, notes that Buffalo Calf Woman was an excellent marksman. Yeah, it’s this. But it was a club like object that she used and not a gun to knock him off his horse.

Angie: So she is multi-trained.

Theresa: Yes. And our girl got up close and personal to deliver this. Her bravery during this battle earns her an honorary title from the Cheyenne. Brave woman. Okay. Now, because she’s a woman, because Custer’s the historical figure, etc., etc. etc., tribal elders place a ban on saying her name and her part of stories to outsider. The okay. They’re like, we don’t speak her name because we are seeing the U.S. government come through and go after and prosecute not only those humans, but their descendants.

Angie: So we’re gonna ask you to Yeah, we heard nothing.

Theresa: You can tell your children, but we don’t tell the whites. This checks. Now, here’s where things continue to amp up. November 25th, 1876. This is after Custer’s defeat. The Cheyenne moved to the Bighorn Mountains. We have a dude named Colonel Ronald McKenzie. He attacks their village, and this would end up causing uh the deaths of 45 people, and then the colonel also burns their camp to the ground. Oh here’s here’s what we need to remember because Buffalo Calf Road, she’s expecting her second child during this brutal assault. Oh. It’s the middle of the winter. Because she’s mad.

Mm-hmm. The survivors flee into sub-zero snowstorms. They’ve got almost no food or blankets. During that first night, 11 babies freeze to death. So the decimated Cheyenne are forced to beg crazy horses people for aid. Okay. Now we’re in the early parts of 1877.

Following a skirmish in January of that year, most of the Cheyenne decide to surrender because of starvation. Right. Okay. So there’s a small group of them. There’s about 34 holdouts, ten of them are children. And among them are Buffalo Calf Road and her husband Black Coyote, who refused to go in. Okay.

So they’re hiding in severe cold, and it’s in this setting that Buffalo Calf Road gave birth to her second child, a boy. Okay. Now we we get kind of a little bit of a break here. There’s um we’re gonna fast forward to August of 77. And it’s here we kind of get another little bit of moment where we learn from them. They’re suffering, there’s a you know, obviously heat, there’s diseases, so there’s flare-ups of measles, malaria, they’re struggling with food, and they’re being denied hunting rights.

Oh And so about three hundred of the northern Cheyenne decide to break out of the reservation. Okay. Because this is untenable. They literally cannot live in these conditions.

Yeah. So September, uh, Buffalo Cafro and her family, they slip out under the cover of night, and actually, I did kind of I did kind of skip over the fact that at some point they, in between her giving birth and um August or September, they end up getting captured and moved to a reservation. But it’s in September that they end up breaking out and under the cover of night begin a 1,500 mile journey from see back to Yellowstone. They’re in Oklahoma. They’re in Indian territory.

Angie: Okay, so like forget this. I’m going home. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Theresa: Now she would end up leading, you remember how you said that you thought that there’d be a group of women fighting?

Angie: Oh, I did, yeah. Okay.

Theresa: So she ends up organizing and leading a group of women in battle against the pursuing U.S. Army. These women are digging their own rifle pits to defend against attacks.

Angie: Get it to this rifle pits, because I Googled it, is basically digging a trench so that you can be pretty much entrenched to deliver your blows and mostly so you know, mostly safe. So they would end up getting all the way to Nebraska. And it’s around this time that there’s a rift that forms in the group. There’s one faction, they want to go to Red Clouds Reservation while Buffalo Caf Road and her husband Black Coyote, they insist on remaining free. Kind of don’t blame them.

Right? So the group that’s heading to the reservation, they get captured and taken to Fort Robinson. Oh.

So this is like reinforcing. Like, yeah, of course we don’t want to do that. That didn’t work. You guys wanted to go to the reservation, and now you’re in jail.

Good job. Um that group is starved and ultimately massacred during the January 8th, 1879 escape attempt. So it is bad news bears their entire end of the road. Better go, yeah. Yeah.

Buffalo Calf Road, their small band remains hidden in Nebraska sand hills all winter long. Okay. Which, yes, now tensions grow because there’s something that happens between Black Coyote and another Cheyenne, and during an argument, this guy ends up dying. And so Black Coyote gets exiled by the chief. And so Buffalo Calf Road, her children, and four others go with him. So it sounds like this argument caused quite the schism.

Yeah. So around like as this happens, there’s these this group of eight with half of them, or two of them children. Um black coyote ends up killing a U.S. soldier, and again, because they’re being pursued the whole time, right? Like this is the cowboys and Indians of black and white movie. Right. This is kind of that whole setting.

And I hate saying that because I know that was very stereotypical and not based wholeheartedly in reality, but here we are. Um so Black Coyote kills a U.S. soldier, and this whole group gets cap the group of eight gets captured in April of 1879, and they go to Fort McC uh Fort Keogh and are imprisoned there. While they’re imprisoned there, Buffalo Calf Road would fall ill with diphtheria and die in June of 1879. So not the way you want to go, particularly when you are such a badass who has done so so many great things. When he hears about her death, Black Coyote takes his own life. Which I was just like, no, no.

And I told Hubs about this, and he’s like, What about the children? Yeah. We kind of see the sun drop off the senses. We don’t know what happened. And so the lack of insight leads people to believe that he just was one of the babies that doesn’t make it.

I hate that. But daughter Jenny, who was about four during the Battle of Rosebud in 76, she’s later identified on a tribal census role under the name Jenny, but which I just named name dropped her. Um, but she gets married to a northern Cheyenne man named Ruff Wolf Rhodes. Um and then the record seem to indicate that she died in 1928 with no surviving children. 1928. Yeah, yeah. So she made it to be I mean, in her, what that would be in her 40s.

Angie: She sees some kind of peace at any point in her life.

Theresa: I didn’t do a deep dive on her. I tried to, you know, because there’s some stuff I I haven’t brought up yet that I think is pretty compelling. But so when it comes to what we know of Buffalo Calf Road, she is recognized, and we kind of tatted a little bit about this as an exceptional shot who handled a pistol with high skill. She’s an expert horseback rider and capable of navigate or capable horseback rider or negative, an expert horseback rider capable of navigating dense fire.

So he’d a battle. She can still ride a horse with the best of them. Now when I was reading this, one of the things that was really called out is how she defied stereotypes. Because during this time, there was a big belief with the 19th century whites that said that native women are basically these passive drudges or silent observers.

They not to worry about, they’re just gonna stand in the in the background kind of deal. Cheyenne culture wo ends up allowing women to act in self-defense and warfare and even maintain a secret military society for female combatants. That’s cool. Which I was like, hell yes, that is neat.

Now in that one big article that I got from J Store, most of the Northern Cheyenne male warriors who give interviews after the wars, including two moons, white bull, and tall bull, completely omitted Buffalo Cafro’s role role in the Battle of Little Bighorn and Rosebud in their narrative. That’s weird. This is likely because of the gag order the elders place on her name.

Angie: Oh yeah, because right, if she can’t say her story, why would anybody else be able to? Yeah, that makes sense.

Theresa: Right? So June of 2005. The Northern Cheyenne break their silence after more than a hundred summers after the battle.

Angie: That’s crazy.

Theresa: Her name had been hidden from the dominant culture for a hundred and twenty-nine years.

Angie: I think we can tell their story now. Right.

Theresa: Now, despite all of that, we do have key supporting sources from contemporaries of her. Okay. So there’s a uh source named Wooden Leg. This is a Cheyenne warrior. He provided an extensive account validating her role at Rosebud and the birth of her second child, but he admit he omits her her part at Little Bighorn.

So he holds true to that vow of silence about Custer. Okay. Then there’s uh Kate Bighead and Iron Teeth. First off, I don’t want to be big head. Call me anything.

Angie: Um, Now, these two Northern Cheyenne women, they provided crucial autobiograph autobiographical accounts, and this confirms her combat actions at Little Bighorn. And then we have Kill Eagle, a Sioux warrior who confirmed that a Cheyenne woman with a revolver fought at Little Bighorn.

Okay. And last we have Mary Sandoz, a Western historian who researched papers incorporating interviews with elder Cheyenne women that would keep Buffalo Cafro’s legacy alive. That’s so cool. I love that. But it was knowing that her people hid her name for a hundred like and the vow is a hundred summers. And they did a hundred and twenty-nine instead. Just to be cautious. Yeah. Just an extra, uh, an extra turn. Yes. Just on the safe side.

Angie: Generational, it’s fine. Yeah. That’s so cool. I love it.

Theresa: So I I feel like I covered a lot, but I there was there was so much I didn’t get into because there’s so much politics and like I could have just rabbit holed on various bits. And I was just like, we’re gonna focus on her, we’re gonna focus on what we know.

Angie: Focus on the the stuff we can confirm. Right. Yeah. Sometimes I think that’s what you have to do, despite how big a story is. You have to find the through line that works. Yeah.

Theresa: But I I love knowing that it was a woman who ended Custer. And that her people protected and shielded her.

Angie: Yeah, I’m I’m curious if it would have gone the same if it would have been a man. Unclear.

Theresa: Unclear. I think because it was

Angie: like I think it’s expected to be a man, right? So maybe we just wouldn’t have known which man.

Theresa: Right, right. But I think it was like, ooh. If they find out it was a chick, heads will roll.

Angie: If the whites find out. Yeah.

Theresa: The fragile masculinity over there.

Angie: Oh man. I love it. That’s awesome. Thank you for that. My pleasure. I have a completely different story for you today. It’s surprise. Shot. Uh let me get to the top of my notes. And uh if you’re ready, I’ll hit you with it. Uh always. Okay. I am gonna tell you the story of Dusko Popoff. Does this name ring a bell?

Theresa: Um, No, I feel like it should like it’s okay, it’s ringing bells, but they are vague and they are in the back annals of my brain, and so they could yeah.

Angie: it’ll make a it’ll make an appearance in the front of your brain very soon. After last week’s story, uh, because that was absolutely intense for me. I needed a palate cleanser for my own brain. Uh so I’m I’m going back to our happy place, which is World War II. It’s Which is a strange thing to say is our happy place, but

Theresa: you’re you know, yeah, I’m not surprised. Wait, is this gonna be a spy? A triple agent. I get to go to my list and take them off.

Angie: This is the first time I’ve done one of yours, I think.

Theresa: This is the first time I’ve owned it out loud.

Angie: I’m sorry. Uh but in my defense, I did it because he’s a billionaire playboy philanthropist, and so um that’s right up my alley of the city.

Theresa: Yeah, it’s like over oh, you’re a race.

Angie: Let’s go. so my sources are history on the net dot com, Dusko Paul, the triple agent, real life, James Bond, who warned us about Pearl Harbor, an all that’s interesting article by Wyatt Re Red Uh from July of 2026. There is a warfare history article that warfare history network dot com article titled World War II Spies, Double Agent, Boosco Popoff, aka Tricycle. Just a hell of a code name.

Right. The National World War II Museum has a article titled Secret Agent Secret Armies, The D-Day Misfit Spies, uh, June of 20. His Wikipedia, of course. Because I love that spies have a Wikipedia. That makes me laugh.

Theresa: Isn’t that great? Like, just the D Day Misfit Spies sounds like a children’s book that ought not to be.

Angie: And is probably like a prize-winning novel, you know? Right. It’s got all the great art artwork and stuff in it. There are two really great books, uh, Double Cross, The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben McIntyre from 2013. Unfortunately, I should have picked that book first.

Uh, but it that’s neither here nor there. Into the Lion’s Mouth, the true story of Dusko Popoff, World War II Spy Patriot, and the real life inspiration for James Bond by Larry Loftus from 2016.

Theresa: Oh, Larry. My man.

Angie: Hilarious your dude. Um, there is an amazing YouTube documentary called Secret War Double Agent Tri-School from a place called Free Documentary. I think this is a source that like collects history network and discovery channel documentaries from like 20 years ago and puts them on the internet. This this documentary was done in the 90s. And I watched it like three times. I was like, oh, okay. This is impressive.

Theresa: I can already hear the difference in the sound, like in the visual of the footage. Yes. You know what I mean?

Angie: Yes. Ian walked in and he saw it, and I was like, when do you think this was recorded? And he goes, Oh, the nineties for sure. Right. Like, cool.

Theresa: There is a video quality, there is an audio quality. Mm-hmm.

Angie: Yeah. For sure. So that said, Dusan Dusko Popov was born to an incredibly wealthy family in an area called Titel, which is modern day in modern day Serbia. But in 1912, it’s part of the Austri Austria-Hungarian Empire. So the political world he’s born into is fraught to say the least, but his family and by like extension, his world are protected from this due to their wealth. So like they see what’s happening in the outside world, but they’re just like, you know what? We’re gonna just gonna go yachting on the Adriatic. Like we’re good. It’s you know, it must be so bad to be poor.

Theresa: Have they tried not?

Angie: Not perhaps. Exactly. His parents are Millerad and Zora Popoff. He’s the middle son of three. He’s got an older brother named Um Ivan, who is also gonna become an agent in his circle called Dreadnought, and then a younger brother named Lauden. The family can thank their incredible lifestyle. They can thank their paternal grandfather, Omar, who was a banker and an industrialist who most definitely knew how to diversify his assets.

He’s founded several factories, mines, and other retail businesses, and this just like keeps pouring money into the family, and then dad is like, gotcha. We we know what to do. So like they’re they don’t want for anything, right? Right. Now they um records of dating back as far as 1773 describe the family as one of the most affluent families around, even in the 1700s. So like old money. Now the uh when Popoff is just a baby, the family leaves their where he was born, and they move to their summer home in Dubrovnik, Croatia, which is where they’re gonna spend the bulk of their time yachting.

I’m so sorry. This is gonna serve as the family seat for most of the year, but the winners are gonna be spent in Belgrade, they have a home there as well. All three boys spend their youth on the coast, they’re avid athletes, big outdoorsmen, and they are even given a delightful villa just for their use to host parties and entertain friends.

Theresa: I’m oh I love this for them. for them. Terrible child, Right? Um, all of them are incredibly popular, they easily make friends.

Angie: It’s like kind of the beginning of a movie. Like you just want to be friends with these guys, and oh, by the way, they’re filthy rich and come to the come to the the palace with me this weekend. Like, dad’s dad’s having a barbecue. Like it’s insane. Um, Now, despite the fact that like Pop has no qualms with spoiling them whatsoever, and I love that for them.

It’s nice to see a dad who’s like, you know what, I like you. Let’s do the thing, you know? Yeah. Um, because a lot of our stories don’t seem to have that.

Theresa: Truly talking. It’s it’s honestly, I feel like one of the catalysts as to why these people uh go the way they do and end up on a history podcast. Yeah. Um, despite all that, he insists that they have the best education money can buy. So that’s what they’re getting. And uh for Popoff, on top of his mother language, which is Serbian, by his teen years, he is fluent in Italian, German, and French.

Oh, my guy, he’s he’s getting it. From the ages of twelve to sixteen, he attends school at the Lyce in Paris, and then in 1929, he’s enrolled at Yule Castle, which is this very posh, prestigious prep school in Surrey, England. But his time is short-lived there because about four months into it, there’s a bit of a situation with the teacher. The teacher had caught him and caned him after seeing him with a cigarette.

Theresa: That’s a pretty harsh punishment.

Angie: Yeah, I feel like a conversation that first time probably could have just been fine. But anyway, he catches him again and he is about to re I don’t know what he caught him for the second time, but he’s about to receive another caning when he’s like, absolutely not. Oh, it was I he missed detention. And instead of receiving the other caning, he grabs the cane from the teacher and breaks it in half in front of everybody.

Theresa: You know, honestly fair place.

Angie: Right. Dad at this point’s like, you know what? Maybe France is a better place for you. So he sends them to the Lyce Holch in Versailles, where he attends for the next few years. By 18, he’s enrolled in the University of Belgrade for his undergraduate in law. He spends four years there being an absolute stud, the nightclubs, the cafes, like Belgrade and him, they’ll live they’re living their best life with each other. When he’s 24, he moves on to Friedberg, Germany, for his PhD in law. This is where he’s gonna meet Johann Jepsen, who he’s gonna call Johnny, and their friendship is eventually gonna help save the world, sort of in a roundabout way. Okay, Jeffson is also the son of an incredibly wealthy family, and the two get on like right off the bat, thick as thieves.

Popoff would later write about his bond with him, saying, quote, we both had some intellectual pretensions, but we were addicted to sports cars and sporting girls and had enough money to keep them both running. Oh my god. Wow. Love this for you, buddy.

Love this for you. Ben McIntyre describes them in his 2013 book ab as quote, Popoff was noisily gregarious, Jebson was watchful. He also says that Popoff had bedroom eyes that the ladies just loved. I mean, so do that with what you will.

Theresa: I mean, okay, so first off, can we acknowledge that is such a very like to describe your this for a dude clarify to describe his dude friend in a way that positively like that shows just a level of comfortability with their own masculinity.

Angie: Uh yeah, these two fellows are made to be each other’s best friend, and I think Ben McIntyre was like, I know exactly how the story goes. Uh, you are each other’s best wingmans.

So, uh Popoff, you’re the one all the girls want to meet, and uh Jephson, you’re the one that’s like, oh ladies, talk to me first. Right. Um anyway, he’s the the problem that they have though is that it’s 1936 in Germany, and things are heating up. Uh for example, you have all this hatred of of the Jewish community roaming around, and they are both outraged at the treatment of this community. And so they’re doing things like purposely going out of their way to dine and hang out in cafes that are run by Jewish people. Like they hate the Hitler youth, they are just that money just protects them to no end as far as like I do what I want.

Like, forget you, I’m gonna go to this cafe on such and such street. Um, but the day after he gets his PhD, he gets arrested by the Gestapo because he’s been noticed, right? Now, Jeffson obviously knowing this, freaks out and lets Mr. Popoff know. Hey, uh dad does Dusko’s been been arrested, and Dad uses his substantial contacts in government to get him out. But Deusco is then ordered to leave Germany. And honestly, good for him because we are we’re approaching World War II, right?

Right. Because it’s September 39, Germany’s gonna invade Poland a couple days later, Brid declares a war on Germany, like we know all that. But um Popoff decides, well, you know, I’ve I’ve got my degree, I’m good to go. So he sets up law practice in Yugoslavia and he gets to work. Meanwhile, he is carrying on at least four different affairs with some of the lovely ladies of his area. Because of course he is.

Theresa: I mean, honestly, like it’s easy for me to forget that there are people being people during war.

Angie: Yeah, right. Um yeah, this is very much that story, because I was like, Wow, it’s wartime, what do you guys doing? Um getting busy off, you know, we might die tomorrow, so he better have a good time tonight.

That’s kind of my my thought process here. So early 1940, everything’s gonna change from him. He gets a telegram from Jepsen, which he hasn’t seen in a couple of years because right he’s been kicked out of Germany. Um, and Jephson’s like, hey, we need to talk, I need to speak to you urgently, let’s make it happen. So they meet, and Jeffson tells Popov that he’s joined the Abwehr, which is the German military intelligence. Now, Jeffson is a staunch anti-Nazi, but working with the Abwear ensures he will never see combat. And so he’s not gonna get pressed into the military, he’s not gonna have to actually like don a uniform. He doesn’t have to be in agreement with the Nazis to work for military intelligence.

Right. And he’s thinking perhaps he can use this as a way to undermine them at any chance he gets. The other part of the problem is even if he didn’t want to join the Abwear, he doesn’t think his body can take soldiering anyway. Apparently, he’s been dealing with incredibly painful varicose veins his whole life. Oh.

And so which I didn’t think were painful, but I don’t know enough about varicose veins to anyway, he’s been uncomfortable for a long time. So his whole thought process is like, I’ll take this desk job, I’ll subvert the Nazis whenever I can, and also I think Popov should join, right? Because he agrees with me on all this stuff, so like maybe we can be useful together. Right. And Popoff’s like, I don’t know about all that. But he goes home and he thinks things through, and then the very next day he does just that. He tells Jephson, Yep, you know what, I’ll go ahead and join.

And then he immediately goes to the British and turns double agent. Like immediately, like the same day. So I’m like, cool, okay. Hey, you see this fresh ink? Guess what it says? I’ll tell ya.

Pretty much, yeah. Um, it’s February 1940, and this begins his time as the most useful Playboy spy of Germany, Britain, and Yugoslavia, because he’s also working for them. Now he this is his nationality, this is where his business interests lie, so he’s often going to be using that like diplomatic ability that he has with Yugoslavia to get him where he needs to go while also helping Yugoslavia.

So like it’s a really mutual benef mutually beneficial relationship that he’s got with them. Um Now, for the sake of time, his story is like super convoluted because he’s a triple agent. So I’m just gonna tell you about a couple of his off operations because I think it would only compound my confusion in trying to tell you the story if I told you all A through Z. So by the end of the war, what you need to know is he is leading like five or six different lives. He is a German spy, a British spy, a Yugoslavian diplomat, an American informant, he is also running an import export business, and he has to keep up that international playboy lifestyle.

Theresa: An executive assistant.

Angie: I not I I feel like he would need that like a color coded dictionary diary of things of you know, the way to do his day.

Angie: I yeah, there’s uh both books talk about how he was incredibly good at memorizing information, like he would see the sheet, commit it to memory, and then move on. And I’m like, bro, I am one person living one life, and I can’t tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning. I’m cooked. There is no way I could live this man’s life. Um, right off the bat, he is doing his thing. He is going from place to place, he is collecting information and distributing misinformation, and as soon as he begins doing this, the family driver offers to be his man. Like, I got you, I’ll take you anywhere you need to go, anytime you need to go.

And right off the bat, Pop Off is sus because this guy has been lazy as hell since day one. Why do you all of a sudden care to drive me around? Like, we keep him as a family retainer, he’s been with the family for a thousand years, but I can’t get him to take me down to the Chevron. Why do you think you’re gonna take me everywhere else? Right. So he uses them, but not for very long because Popoff figures out that he is reporting directly to the Germans, so Popoff has to kill him. Local.

Theresa: It’s so hard to find good help.

Angie: I my visual is him pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket, just like. up his hands and saying that. Like, that’s exactly the mentality I have. He’s upset. He very much doesn’t want to be this kind of man. Like, he would much rather love you to death than have to shoot you in the street. But the local police rule the driver’s death as a robbery gone bad. And Popoff gets away with it For like life.

Um, but again, he didn’t enjoy doing it, doesn’t want to make this a a part of his regular routine. Couple things to note here. I’m sure you know this, but I was like, hold on a second, because spies have not been something that I’ve covered a ton of, but you have. Um, the British have a double cross committee. Mm-hmm.

I’m like, ooh, this is so badass. For those of you playing at home, the double cross committee is um their whole job is to collect double agents. Like you collect and turn agents to their cause, and then they run them, which is such an amazing idea.

I love it. Pop off is obviously gonna be a part of this double cross committee, and he’s gonna be getting his questions from Nazi command via this new technology called microdots. And this is gonna be like pages of information shrunk down to the size of a of a period on an otherwise bland letter. So he’s gonna get these long questionnaires from the Germans to the British that MI6 are gonna take and falsify the answers to and then give it back to Pop Off to return to the Nazis. They want information on like military installations, ammo dumps, weather, whatever you can think of that an emini an enemy might need when planning an invasion. Like, that’s the information they’re looking for, and MI6 is giving just enough of the right information and a whole lot of the wrong information back.

Right. Like, it’s pretty impressive the um Larry Locks’ book goes into this in great detail, and I was like, oh dang, okay. Um but to like summarize his espionage career, I’m gonna start with a bang.

It’s early August 1941. Both Pop Off and Ian Fleming happened to be in the same casino in Lisbon, Portugal. And I’ll have to tell you this, but again, for those playing at home, Portugal, and particularly Lisbon at this time is an absolute hotbed of espionage. It is a nest of all sorts of international spies, a playground for them, if you will. So Popoff is here uh attending to something called Operation Midas, which the whole point is to filter money out of Germany on the pretense of running aspiring and moving all that money into Britain’s MI6.

Essentially, Germany’s paying for their upkeep for the for Britain’s intelligence upkeep network for quite a long time because he’s laundering this money out. And I’m like, that’s so fun. I love it.

Um anyway. Fleming, it seems, has been tasked with ensuring that Pop Off gets like 50,000 great British pounds where it needs to go. And yes, Teresa, because I know you need the math here, that’s roughly 132,000 today. I appreciate your efforts.

You’re welcome. So Pop off is in the casino, and Fleming is also in the casino because he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on Pop Off. Pop off clocks Fleming and is he now knows he’s there, and he’s at the back rack table, uh, Pop off is and there’s this wealthy, arrogant gambler, also at the back of back rack table called Bulk, and he is a Jewish refugee.

He is either from wait for it, Lithuania or Liechtenstein. There we go. Which is awesome. When I heard that in the book, I was like, wait, what? Rewind. I’m sorry.

Theresa: Liechtenstein has hindered the chat again.

Angie: Daymade. Anyway, he’s a refugee, he’s there to get away from the Nazis, but he is being obnoxious, he’s being loud, and he is demanding unlimited stakes over and over again. And this just pisses Popoff off. So he’s like, We gotta do something about this. And he is fully aware that Fleming is watching him. So Popoff drops all 50k on a bet, puts his money on the table, starts counting it out, and he says in his his own memoir, which I have not had a chance to read yet, but uh Ben McIntyre quotes it. He says in his own memoir, um, later that Fleming’s face was the color of vial.

He’s like, oh my god. But the whole point was to just call this other guy out, right? Like, you’re not gonna you’re not gonna do anything. So the other guy can’t cover the bet, at which point Popoff asks if the house is gonna bet for him. Like, you gonna cover his bet if he can’t make it? Now they obviously refuse because of course that’s not what they’re gonna do.

Right. And Popoff sweeps the money back into his pocket, feigns absolute irritation, and says it is an as a disgrace and an absolute annoyance to serious players that the casino allowed such irresponsible play. He left with the cash intact. Fleming, having seen totally through his performance, even though he was initially the color of Bile, recovers and is so amused that he is later gonna write that into a scene in Casino Royale.

Theresa: I was about to say that sounds extremely familiar.

Angie: Doesn’t it? And I was thinking about how um I feel like Ian Fleming must have taken so many of his encounters with the people that he met and saw and turned them into chapters in his book. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Theresa: Well, I mean, because he had such a treasure trove of humans he was with. I mean, Colin Gubbins is one of them, and Gubbins himself is just unhinged.

Angie: Right. And so I’m thinking, well, Ian Fleming had so much like material to work with. Of course, James Bond is gonna be amazing. And of course, there’s gonna be twelve different versions of James Bond, right? Now, to zoom out for a second and rewind, it’s the night of 11 to 12 November 1940. The British Royal Navy has launched Operation Judgment. In short, this is the British sending 21 obsolete fairy swordfish biplanes from the carrier HMS Illustrious in two waves against the Italian fleet that’s anchored at Tart Toronto, Italy. Okay. This is the first successful all aircraft ship to ship attack on a fleet in a harbor, and it demonstrated that carriers could neutralize battleships.

So this is a big deal. These slow off fleet aircraft attack the Italian fleet, which include all six of Italy’s battleships, plus cruisers and destroyers, and they’re using torpedoes that are modified for a shallow harbor and bombs, while other planes are dropping flares for illumination. These low level torpedoes and bomb attacks do some serious damage in roughly sixty to ninety minutes.

Like they seem to Wow. minutes, right? The Royal Navy only loses two aircraft. But the raid demonstrated that carrier based air power could cripple a fleet in harbor.

And it temporarily shifted the naval balance in the Mediterranean, and you can imagine the Japanese are watching this. Yeah. Right?

Okay, so this is gonna lead me to like late summer of the following year. Pop off has seen some ins interesting questions that the Germans are asking. They have all sorts of questions about the raid on Toronto and Hyri and Hawaii’s military might.

Like what they got going over there. And Popoff, being the freaking genius that he is, he puts two and two together and he’s like, Holy crap, the Japanese are gonna go after after Hawaii. Everybody’s been saying it’s the Philippines. It’s Hawaii. Why else do they care about this air raid that happened in Italy and these military installations in Hawaii?

It’s the only thing that makes sense, right? So he puts two and two together, and he fortunately for him is already in Washington DC. He happens to be there to set up a US false spy network for the ABWare. Now he takes his information to the FBI and his warning now, obviously he does not know when the day or the time of the attack is, but he knows it’s eminent.

Like I have put two and two together. The Japanese are gonna go for Hawaii. We should probably look into this. Right. I but I this is the information I have. Do something with it. This falls on deaf ears. Hoover can’t stand pop off. Shocking. He doesn’t like his Playboy lifestyle, he doesn’t like anything about him, so he doesn’t listen to anything Pop says. And he completely muffs the punt. That is an understatement, actually, because it would be forty years before anybody actually saw Popoff’s information that he gave to the FBI. Yeah. FDR never saw it. Nobody else ever saw it. It was filed away in Hoover’s personal filing system and ignored for 40 plus years.

Theresa: You know that hit Hoover like just a ton of bricks. And he’s like, I can’t let this piece of paper out. Right.

Angie: Now for Pop Off, he’s given the warning, he’s done all that he thinks he can do, and as far as he’s concerned, the Americans now know it’s in their court, hopefully something gets done. So he is in South America when December 7th happens. And when he hears news that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, he’s like, Oh, thank God, I figured it out in time. I gave him enough time to do something.

Theresa: That they were able to allow it to get hit, but also move enough soldiers and Right.

Angie: And then he hears the death count and he’s like, they didn’t do a damn thing. They had I wasn’t the only person trying to tell them this. They had to have known. Oh my god. So he’s devastated.

But anyway. He is also one of the many cogs that are ensuring the false narratives surrounding the plans for Normandy and the Mediterranean in operations like Minsk Meat. Now, he’s not directly related to the placement of the body or the documents, but he was tasked with making sure that said false information from Operation Mince Meet falls on the right ears and make sure it’s believed and make sure it’s not forgotten. He also uses his skills and contacts in Operation Fortitude, which is part of the Allies’ deception of Operation Bodyguard, right? Like you have Fortitude North and Fortitude South South, which is convincing the Germans that the main invasion is gonna hit Paz de Calais, um, which is the shortest channel crossing rather than Normandy. Now, this is where the Allies are gonna build their largely fictional army group, the first U.S.

Army group group or Fusag commanded by General George Patton, they supported it with their inflatable tanks, dumb landing crap, big radio traffic, and double agents feeding false information and other visual and signal deceptions. Now, he’s gonna be involved in this. I think, isn’t this part of um Scarborough?

Theresa: Uh you’re asking if Christina Scarborough is involved in this.

Angie: I I feel like this was part of her um jam, but I could be wrong.

Theresa: I don’t think so, but you cover the ghost army in episode sixty-six titled The Algorithms Favor Syphilis.

Angie: We have such great names. That is hilarious. Uh yeah. So anyway, all that to say he is part of this deception. And the plan works extremely well, right? Even after the real landing is in Normandy take place, the Germans still keep major forces waiting in Calais for the attack. Um, so this significantly adds to the success of the invasion of Normandy.

Theresa: Wait a minute, so that part, um Yes, that was Christina’s Grand or Christine Granville, Christina Scarbeck.

Angie: I thought I thought that was part of her.

Theresa: Because he did mean she did leave that ruse. Thank you. Because I was too busy fixating on the ghost army.

Angie: You’re welcome. When I heard that the ghost army was something he knew about, I was like, the ghost army. My guys. Um now his work is gonna get questioned by the Germans more than once because for quite a while he doesn’t really turn in anything useful. Um, but in 1944, Jeffson is arrested by the Gestapo and Lisbon, and even the British are concerned thinking that even he’s been compromised.

So there’s like, oh, what do we do? So they put him on the back burner for a little bit. But eventually he’d be clear on both sides, but Jeffson would be dead, and it never sat well for Pop Off. Jeffson was held at Sackhausen concentration camp and tortured for months. He never pulled said any information.

Theresa: Peter Churchill was also at Sackhausen.

Angie: Okay, yeah, it’s it seems like we’ve mentioned them before. Yeah. Um, he never gives up any information. But in February of 1945, he disappears and he’s never seen again. Oh. After the war, Pop off would spend considerable time and money to track down his capture, his captors, and eventually he does, and he beats the man within inches of his life and almost kills him, but ultimately is like, no, and he lets him go. When the war ended in 1945, so did his spy work, but he never stopped loving the ladies, of course. And his globe trotting ways during the war and the love for the party girls, like actresses, Simone Simone. Um, that become legendary and part of his like lore. He would say, yeah, for sure he loved that part of the job, but it was also what got him into the circles in society that he needed to be into. Having these affairs and knowing these women got him where he needed to go. As if he wasn’t gonna do that anyway.

Theresa: I mean, it’s a perk, it’s a feature.

Angie: It yeah, exactly. He’s gonna receive the OBE, acquire British nationality, and but he’s gonna settle in France. He’s gonna marry twice and have four kids, of which had no idea about his prior life until 1974 when he published his own memoir, Spy Counter Spy, which has been described as quote, fundamentally accurate, if occasionally embellished.

Theresa: Okay. Could you imagine? You’re sitting down by this point. What year did he publish? 74. You’re grown. Maybe you’ve made this man a grandfather by having a couple offspring yourself. And suddenly the man your children call pop pop. Comes out with all of this juicy detail.

Angie: In a book that you previously had no knowledge of, right? Um crazy. I I looked up his book. The hard copy version of it, the cheapest I could find was $524 that day. At a boy.

Theresa: Well, I mean, it’s probably only been printed a handful of times. It’s now a collector’s item.

Angie: Right. Um he is gonna die in France in 1981. The years of chain smoking and heavy drinking took a toll on his body. He was codenamed Scoot and then tricycle, maybe because he was a triple agent, or maybe because of his proclivities with the ladies. Maybe little call A, maybe a little column B, but he was 69 years old when he died, and I am sure he loved knowing that. Actually, yes. So uh that’s the story of Codename Dusco, code name Ivan, code name trischool, code name Scoot.

Theresa: I that was delightful. I am thrilled that I now know it.

Angie: I had so much fun reading about this guy. Like he was such a wonderful palate cleanser after Winnie Ruth Judd. Yeah.

Theresa: If if you have enjoyed this, if you’re like, holy cow, I needed a palette cleanser. I think this episode’s hopefully done it for you, you know. We’ve had a warrior woman, we’ve had a dude who’s literally been everything else. Yes.

Angie: Absolutely insane.

Theresa: And send this to somebody who could just use the I’m sorry, what? And on that note, goodbye.

Speaker 3: Bye.