The Sparrows | Author Jason Bell Tells The Incredible True Story of The Spies That Tricked Hitler and Won the War

Before I read your book, um, I wasn't aware of Operation Sparrow.

And I've been covering stories of espionage on my channel for a while now, and the well-known campaigns are like Fortitude and the Double Cross system.

Everybody, well, a lot of people will be more familiar with those.

So I'm just wondering why h- is Operation Sparrow been not, uh, known about until, until now?

Sure.

Well, s- so Sparrow was actually part of the same grand campaign, so it wa- it was part of Bodyguard.

Uh, and I should say B- Bodyguard when, you know, when you, when you read these things in their initial format, they're really, you know, dry and bureaucratic and quickly stated.

So, so the, the initial Allied plan for Bodyguard, uh, was basically spring of 1944, uh, we're going to make it look like the invasion's gonna happen, uh, in Southeastern Europe and, and some other places.

And then as we move forward closer to actual D-Day, when, uh, German intelligence is going to pick up on these signs that something is happening on, on the Southeastern coast of England, then we'll admit, well, sure, there's some kind of invasion happening, but it's going to be, uh, near France's, uh, border with Belgium, so, so to the north of where Normandy would actually happen.

All of these different deception plots, so, so Double Cross and Fortitude, uh, and Sparrow were all part of this.

They were being sponsored by different bureaus with some communication between them, not a- not always perfect communication.

But the reason, uh, we haven't heard about Sparrow is because it happened in what became Soviet territory.

Not, not literally Soviet territory, uh, Hung- Hungary had nominal in- independence, but it was politically controlled by the Soviets and there was a lot of bickering going on between the Western Democratic Allies and the Soviet bloc, who, who had broken, broken the rules.

So, so the rules of en- of engagement during World War II was that there were supposed to be no political agreements being reached until everybody got together and, and reached agreements by consensus after the war.

But the Soviets apparently s- mo- moved first to begin breaking these rules, uh, by trying to get, uh, pro-Soviet Communist agents installed in Italy, and, uh, things turned pretty nasty pretty quickly.

So really the Cold War was already going on in 1943.

And then Sparrow was, uh, you know, dealing with high-ranking political figures and pro-democratic figures.

Allied, Western Allied agents were getting killed in that part of, uh, of the world by the Soviets, and so it was be- just better to shut up about it.

And so the, the, the more, uh, the more famous ones, uh, that we have heard about, Double Cross and Fortitude, were easier to talk about when, when the secrets were eventually opened up.

So in the, in the 1970s when this became public- There was no particular reason to keep these secret any longer.

The, uh, the ordinary kind of time, uh, ticked by.

They opened it up.

They celebrated it.

Whereas in the 1970s, the Soviets were still in control of Hungary, and so a lot of this just remained secret.

And so I was still having files declassified as of last year.