Johann-Nielsen Jebsen, nicknamed "Johnny", was an anti-Nazi German intelligence officer and British double agent (code name ARTIST) during World War II.
Kidnapped from Lisbon by the Germans shortly before the 1944 Normandy landings, Jebsen was tortured in prison and spent time in a concentration camp before disappearing; he was presumed killed at the end of the war.
In a 2012 reassessment of the Allies' use of double agents in World War II, historian Ben Macintyre called Jebsen a hero.
His parents, who both died while Jebsen was still a child, were of Danish origin, but held German citizenship after they had moved the company to the country.
[2] At the outset of World War II, Jebsen joined the German military intelligence agency, the Abwehr, largely to avoid compulsory service in the army.
In 1940, Jebsen arranged an introduction between a senior Abwehr officer in Belgrade and Duško Popov, whom the Germans hoped to recruit as an agent.
Aloys Schreiber, the head of German counter-intelligence in Lisbon,[7] had invited Jebsen to his office on the pretext of discussing his pending War Merit Medal.
He told Allied soldiers, also held in the camp, that he had been accused of helping the British and when he had refused to talk, his financial fraud had been investigated.
Eventually, he got a message to London via British Commando Jack Churchill, but the War Office had no record of Jebsen's name and so the plea for help was ignored.