Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

EPPLER, JOHANNES• 175

networks in German-occupied Holland during World War II. Master-

minded by Major Herman Giskes of theAbwehr, and codenamed

nordpol(‘‘North Pole’’), more than 40 agents were ‘‘doubled’’

against SOE’s N Section and perished. After the war the disaster was

the subject of an inconclusive investigation conducted by the Dutch

Parliament.

ENIGMA.A German cipher machine, manufactured by Arthur Scher-
bius and widely used commercially, especially by Continental banks
to transact confidential business. The military version, with the en-
hanced security of an additional plugboard, was widely introduced
into the German army in 1931 and became the target for crypto-
graphic attack, principally by the French and Polish cipher bureaus.
TheGovernment Code and Cipher Schoolachieved some success
in breaking a few Enigma keys during the Spanish Civil War but the
real breakthroughs occurred in 1940. The Enigma machine was ex-
amined by the British Admiralty in 1932 and was adopted as the
model for the standard British variant, the Typex.

EOKA.The Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (National Organiza-
tion of Cypriot Combatants, EOKA) was a Greek nationalist move-
ment in Cyprus that conducted a terrorist campaign in support of its
objective of unification with Greece. Led by Colonel George Grivas,
EOKA was a significant target for British Intelligence, and bothMI5
and theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) attempted to undermine
the organization. Grivas himself was never caught, although SIS
came close to finding and shooting him (with the authority of the
prime minister,Anthony Eden). Nevertheless, Grivas was denied
most of his arms shipments from Greece, which were interdicted in
the Mediterranean by the Royal Navy, acting on excellent intelli-
gence acquired in Athens by the SIS station commander, Christopher
Phillpotts, who was made a CMG in recognition of what he had ac-
complished.

EPPLER, JOHANNES.A German spy codenamedkondor, Johannes
Eppler reached Cairo in July 1943, having crossed the desert in an
epic, three-week, 1,700-mile journey from Tripoli to Assyut, accom-
panied by Heinrich Sanstede and the Hungarian explorer Count Al-