Roman Garby-Czerniawski (6 February 1910 – 26 April 1985) was a

Polish Air Force The Polish Air Force () is the aerial warfare Military branch, branch of the Polish Armed Forces. Until July 2004 it was officially known as ''Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Powietrznej'' (). In 2014 it consisted of roughly 26,000 military personnel an ...

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

and Allied

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

who used the code name Brutus.

Early life

Czerniawski graduated in the late 1930s from the Wyższa Szkoła Wojenna (WSWoj), a military academy at

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

World War II

As a former officer of the

, he volunteered to create an Allied

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

network in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

in 1940. He set it up with

Mathilde Carré Mathilde Carré (30 June 1908 in Le Creusot, France – 30 May 2007), née Mathilde Lucie Bélard and known as "La Chatte" ("The Cat"), was a French Resistance agent during World War II who betrayed the Franco-Polish resistance organization ...

who recruited the agents since some French declined to work for a Pole. The network was codenamed '' Interallie''. Czerniawski was evacuated to Britain to be examined by Polish intelligence, and met General

Władysław Sikorski Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski (; 20 May 18814 July 1943) was a Polish military and political leader. Before World War I, Sikorski established and participated in several underground organizations that promoted the cause of Polish independenc ...

and was presented with the

Virtuti Militari The War Order of Virtuti Militari (Latin: ''"For Military Virtue"'', ) is Poland's highest military decoration for heroism and courage in the face of the enemy at war. It was established in 1792 by the last King of Poland Stanislaus II of Poland, ...

. He was returned to France by parachute in November 1941. On 17 November 1941, the

Abwehr The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

group of Hugo Bleicher arrested Czerniawski and then Carré. The network had been uncovered because of the lack of proper operational security within the organisation, and many other members of the Interallie were picked up after Carré had agreed to co-operate with the Germans in return for her life. Czerniawski and others were imprisoned. He was sent to England as an agent after the Germans offered him safety, but he revealed himself to the British authorities. He was debriefed by the British

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

and Polish authorities about the security lapses of his organisation in France. He was then employed as a

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

and used the codename "Brutus" (after

Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger Marcus Junius Brutus (; ; 85 BC – 23 October 42 BC) was a Roman politician, orator, and the most famous of assassination of Julius Caesar, the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by Quintus Servilius Caepio (adoptive father of B ...

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

's friend and assassin) under their Double Cross System. His strong anti-Soviet attitude, manifested in his denouncing in a pamphlet that he authored of a Polish officer who attended an official reception at the Soviet embassy, led to doubts about his suitability. For that act of mutiny against the Polish authorities, he was arrested and imprisoned. MI5 produced a cover story that he had been detained in a sweep of "anti-Bolshevik" Poles. A Polish court-martial found him guilty of gross insubordination, but to keep the matter quiet, it sentenced him to only two months imprisonment. After his release from prison, Czerniawski was unrepentant to his handlers. MI5 doubted his reliability and thought him to be fickle and liable to meddle, and MI5 also harboured concerns that the Germans would be suspicious about his arrest and swift release. He was no longer permitted to operate the radio himself, and he was used only for the distribution of low-grade information ("chicken feed"). Initial German suspicions faded, and in December 1943, the British decided to use Brutus for distribution of important deception information. Therefore, he played a major part in the Allied deception prior to the

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

landings in

Normandy Normandy (; or ) is a geographical and cultural region in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy comprises Normandy (administrative region), mainland Normandy (a part of France) and insular N ...

in 1944 as one of the primary agents passing false information as part of

Fortitude South Operation Fortitude was a military deception operation by the Allied nations as part of Operation Bodyguard, an overall deception strategy during the buildup to the 1944 Normandy landings. Fortitude was divided into two subplans, North and So ...

, the deception plan aimed at convincing Germany that the Allies would invade Europe in the

Pas-de-Calais The Pas-de-Calais (, ' strait of Calais'; ; ) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments of France, with 890, and is the ...

area across the English Channel from southeast England.

Postwar

After the war, he stayed in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and wrote ''The Big Network'', which was published in 1961. Czerniawski died in London on 26 April 1985 at the age of 75. He was buried in

Newark-on-Trent Newark-on-Trent () or Newark is a market town and civil parish in the Newark and Sherwood district in Nottinghamshire, England. It is on the River Trent, and was historically a major inland port. The A1 road (Great Britain), A1 road bypasses th ...

in the area of Newark Cemetery for RAF burials.

References

Sources

* Andrzej Pepłoński, ''Wywiad Polskich Sił Zbrojnych na Zachodzie, 1939–1945'' (Polish Armed Forces Intelligence in the West, 1939–1945),

, 1995. * Stanisław Żochowski, ''Wywiad polski we Francji 1940–1945'' (Polish Intelligence in France, 1940–1945),

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

, 1994, . *

John Cecil Masterman Sir John Cecil Masterman OBE (12 January 1891 – 6 June 1977) was a British academic, sportsman and author. His highest-profile role was as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, but he was also well known as chairman of the Twenty ...

, ''The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939–1945'',

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

, 1972. * *

External links

Biografia na stronie www.polishairforce.pl
{{DEFAULTSORT:Czerniawski, Roman 1910 births 1985 deaths Polish Army officers Polish anti-communists Polish spies Double agents Double-Cross System World War II spies for the United Kingdom World War II spies for Poland Polish emigrants to the United Kingdom Military personnel who were court-martialed Prisoners and detainees of Poland