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A “Notorious Affair” Highlighted Special Collections Exhibition

Between October 1943 and March 1944 the German Embassy in Ankara had access to documents from the British Embassy. These included documents relating to the Teheran, Cairo and Casablanca conferences, at which Allied strategies were discussed, including Operation Overlord and the disposition of Europe after the war in the event of an Allied victory.

The German Embassy received this information from a very unlikely source: not a trained spy but an unscrupulous Albanian servant with a chip on his shoulder. This exhibit, “The Singing Spy,” examines some of resources at the University of Iowa relating to this incident, drawing from almost every department in the Library (Special Collections, Media Services, Maps, Government Documents, and online collections) and provides a glimpse into this “notorious affair.”