Rommel’s Operation Condor

This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 952 published on 19 April 1980.

General Rommel, by John Keay

It is hard to imagine how John Eppler would have spent World War Two had he not been a secret agent. He was certainly not the kind of man who would have been content to watch the conflict from the sidelines, and his upbringing had not fitted him for the role of an ordinary soldier with an obligation to take orders.

He was a lone wolf who made his own rules and had always taken it for granted that he was responsible to no-one but himself.

Eppler’s background was unusual. Born in 1914 of German parentage, he had grown up in Egypt, where his family had business interests. Eppler was still a child when his father died, and his mother’s second husband was a wealthy Arab. Young John found himself adopted into a Bedouin tribe and, although educated in Europe, he spent many of his early days on camel-back, living the life of a desert tribesman. By the time he was a young man, John Eppler was really two people. At will he could be either a well-educated, cosmopolitan European or a Bedouin warrior, well versed in the Muslim faith, who knew the desert intimately and spoke Arabic as if it were his mother tongue.

Eppler had so much money that he had no need to work, although his family hoped that he would become interested in law and eventually rise to be a judge, an acceptable post for a man in his position. But for someone with a taste for adventure, the law seemed very dull, and so Eppler devoted himself to flying his own plane, driving fast cars and prospecting for gold in Africa. Then, in 1937, he received an invitation to meet a German named Rodhe in a Cairo hotel.

Rodhe did not beat about the bush. He was a member of Hitler’s Abwehr, or secret service, and he was engaged in recruiting agents in the Middle East. Eppler was a German national. Would he be prepared to spy on the British for the sake of the fatherland?

Eppler was immediately interested. He cared little for the money involved, but he drove a hard bargain on principle and stipulated that in no circumstances should he be asked to act against the interests of Egypt, his adopted country, or against the homeland of his wife, a Danish ballet dancer. Rodhe agreed without hesitation, and Eppler travelled to Germany to take an intensive course of military training before being sent into the field.

During the period immediately before the outbreak of World War Two, Germany was keenly interested in the internal politics of the Middle East, where the British controlled vast tracts of land and millions of people. If war came, the Germans knew that this would be a strategic area of great importance. They also knew that in some Arab countries there were undercover groups of nationalists, who dreamed of the day when European powers such as Britain and France would leave the region, and they would be able to form their own governments.

In the event of a major conflict, it seemed likely that such organisations would willingly side with Britain’s enemies, and it was essential that they be contacted by a representative of Germany who could make plans for the future. With his fluent Arabic and his knowledge of the Middle East, Eppler was an obvious choice for the job.

He carried it out with extraordinary efficiency, travelling and plotting his way through such countries as Turkey, Iran, Arabia and Afghanistan with promises of arms, money and power. He altered his disguise to suit each situation, always uncomfortably aware that he was engaged on the Great Game that had been Britain’s speciality since Victorian times. At any moment, he could find himself face to face with an enemy agent who was just as adept at disguise as himself.

Eppler’s work was so outstanding that he rapidly became one of the Abwehr’s most valued agents, and on one of his visits to Germany he had the unprecedented honour of being presented to Hitler. When war finally broke out, the campaigns in North Africa made his knowledge of the desert even more invaluable. Finally no less a person than the commander of the Afrika Korps, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, decided that he needed Eppler in Cairo in order to ferret out information on Allied troop movements and battle plans.

As he was behind the German lines at the time, Eppler was faced with the immediate problem of how to get into the Egyptian capital, and so Operation Condor was launched. As a plan it was straightforward enough, but one that depended largely on Eppler’s Bedouin upbringing. He and his radio operator, “Sandy” Sandsetter, would simply drive straight across the limitless wastes of the desert until they got near enough to Cairo to assume their disguises and then travel into the city quite openly. To do this, they had not only to survive the appalling terrain, but also evade the British long range desert patrols that were manned by specially selected troops, who also knew the sand sea like the backs of their hands.

It was a desperate gamble but it succeeded, and Eppler and his companion reached Cairo with a suitcase full of money, apparently a wealthy Egyptian gentleman and his American friend. Once within the city, they lived quite openly on a luxurious houseboat, Eppler sending out his reports in a code based on the contents of Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca.

For a time Operation Condor was secure and successful. Eppler had so many contacts within the city that an extraordinary amount of valuable information came his way. On one occasion, he received news that some very strange objects were being delivered in military lorries to a secluded courtyard, and Eppler decided to investigate. Armed with a camera and a telephoto lens, he got into a building overlooking the courtyard and found himself looking down on a number of British soldiers, who were busy with a variety of shapeless objects that appeared to be made of rubber. A sergeant attached an air hose to one of them and before Eppler’s astonished eyes it expanded into an excellent replica of a British tank. Smaller objects blew up into British soldiers, who stood about their tank in lifelike attitudes, and Eppler realised that he was looking at the rudiments of a great British decoy system, a fake armoured unit designed to fool German spotting planes.

Operation Condor could have lasted indefinitely had it not been for sheer bad luck, for one of the radio units designed to receive Eppler’s messages was captured, and the operators were found to be in possession of no less than five copies of an English edition of Rebecca.

British intelligence officers had met “book codes” before and, unknown to Eppler, his messages were intercepted and decoded, and Eppler was run to earth on his houseboat. He made a brave attempt to scuttle the vessel and escape, but it was useless.

Happily John Eppler fared better than most spies caught in wartime. Because his family had been on good terms with the British, and perhaps because his adversaries had a certain respect for a brave enemy, Eppler escaped the firing squad and spent the rest of the war as a political prisoner. He now has his home in Paris, a brilliant agent who lost, but lived to tell the tale.