The John Parke Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy, The Office of the President, as well as Media Arts and Culture, History and DWA departments welcome historian Jason Bell for a talk and signing of his new book, Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War (Hanover Square Press, 2026).
Event Date: Sep. 24, 2026
Oxy welcomes historian Jason Bell for a talk and signing of his new book, Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War (Hanover Square Press, 2026).
In March 1944, Occidental's own Guy Nunn — class of 1934, football team captain, and a Rhodes Scholar fluent in eight languages — parachuted into Nazi-occupied Hungary with two fellow agents on a covert mission to negotiate Hungary's surrender. Captured within three days, the agents used their interrogations to feed their captors false intelligence about the Allied invasion, diverting attention from the true D-Day target of Normandy.
Bell, a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick and author of Cracking the Nazi Code, tells the story of the mission and the Oxy alumnus who played a key role in it.
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Diplomacy & World Affairs, History, and Media Arts & Culture, and the Office of the President.
Free and open to the Occidental community.
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