![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ww1.hdnux.com\/photos\/07\/60\/65\/2035044\/9\/628x471.jpg\" "\\"garbo\\"")
Juan Pujol Garcia – his intelligence work as the double-agent “Garbo” convinced the Axis that the Normandy invasion would come at the Pas de Calais – so much so that the Germans never truly left their positions<\/p><\/div>\n
Juan Pujol Garcia was an unlikely hero. \u00a0Although he was born to a wealthy Barcelona family in 1912, Pujol’s life read as a series of failures and bad choices. \u00a0He dropped out of boarding school at 15, instead choosing an academy for poultry farmers. \u00a0After serving his six months of mandatory military service at 21, he bought a movie theater. \u00a0It flopped. \u00a0In an effort to financially recover, Pujol bought a smaller theater. \u00a0And it failed too. \u00a0By his mid-20s, Pujol was little more than a poor chicken farmer. \u00a0At best, Pujol could be called a raging mediocrity.<\/p>\n
If Pujol seemed on the sidelines of life, Spain was about to be cast onto center stage of world affairs. \u00a0In April of 1931, amid the parliamentary victories of the so-called republicans (in effect, socialists) King Alfonso XIII fled the country without formally abdicating, leaving Spain a political vacuum. \u00a0By the time the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Alfonso was trying to engineer his return. \u00a0But Nationalist General (and future dictator)\u00a0Francisco Franco made it clear that Alfonso would be not allowed back to govern the country, regardless of the outcome of the war.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/--oBPFOQE968\/T8Wax_XtiFI\/AAAAAAAAR-E\/Wr5jDhf7Uag\/s1600\/GARBO+I+Spy.jpg\")
A young Pujol serves in the Spanish military. Pujol was a noted pacifist and rejected going back into the army during the Spanish Civil War. For his views, he was sent to prison, only to escape and hide for years<\/p><\/div>\n
In July 1936, Pujol was supposed to report for military duty, but he fled instead. He was soon caught and thrown in prison. Then, after unwittingly joining a jailbreak, he bolted to a safe house in Barcelona. \u00a0More than a year passed, and in 1938, an emaciated Pujol emerged from hiding. The escapee looked so bad, he was able to forge a document saying he was too old for the army. \u00a0The move showcased what would become Pujol’s emerging major talents – forgery and lying.<\/p>\n
Now a free man, Pujol’s only thought was escaping the fascist regime in Spain. \u00a0The only question was where one could escape. \u00a0This was the fall of 1939 – Hitler was beginning to gobble up Europe, and word of Nazi war crimes had leaked past Spain\u2019s censors. Pujol felt trapped, but also outraged. \u201cMy humanist convictions would not allow me to turn a blind eye to the enormous suffering that was being unleashed by this psychopath,\u201d he wrote in\u00a0Operation Garbo<\/em>, a 1985 book co-authored by Nigel West. \u00a0Pujol’s focus quickly shifted. \u00a0Instead of trying to escape fascists, he would fight Fascism.<\/p>\n Generalissimo Franco – (center) visits with Adolf Hitler. Spanish under Franco managed to stay out of the war; a likely surprise for Hitler and Mussolini who had spent considerable resources helping him win the Spanish Civil War<\/p><\/div>\n Juan Pujol Garcia’s entrance into the world of espionage was hardly the stuff of James Bond movies. \u00a0In January of 1941, he literally walked into the British embassy in Spain and asked for a job as a spy. \u00a0His total lack of skill for the sort of “cloak and dagger” work required in such a field was apparent to anyone he approached, and Pujol was repeatedly rebuffed. \u00a0Some wondered if he was some sort of idiotic mole or double-agent. \u00a0His lack of skill, or of opportunities, didn’t faze Pujol. \u00a0Instead, he struck upon a new plan – if the Allies wouldn’t accept him as a spy, perhaps the Germans would.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n Pujol’s abrupt tactics worked better on the Germans and they arranged for him to meet one of their handlers in a cafe. \u00a0His code name was Federico, and he was specially trained to spot frauds. \u00a0Pujol sat and started professing a devout admiration for Hitler. \u00a0The rant was equal parts cunning and bombastic. \u00a0Off the top of his head, Pujol spun a rambling web of lies, rattling off names of nonexistent diplomats whom he claimed were friends. Impressed, Federico scheduled a second meeting.<\/p>\n Rendezvousing at a beerhouse, Federico told Pujol that the Nazi spy ring – the Abwehr -didn\u2019t need more agents in Spain. \u00a0Rather, they needed moles who could snoop abroad. \u00a0Federico informed Pujol if he really was as talented as he professed, he should go to Lisbon and charm the embassy into awarding him an exit visa. \u00a0Pujol, who had developed quite the gift of gab while managing a hotel after his escape from prison, believed he could easily accomplish his mission. \u00a0Yet after Pujol arrived in Portugal, the embassy refused his exit visa. \u00a0Pujol’s career as a spy seemed to be over before it started.<\/p>\n First success: Garbo steals his first documents – a diplomatic visa – from Jamie Souza<\/p><\/div>\n Pujol hadn’t let earlier failures discourage him, and he wouldn’t let this one either. \u00a0At his hotel in Lisbon, he befriended an affable Galician man named Jaime Souza from the embassy. On a night out together, Souza unveiled a document that made Pujol\u2019s heart leap – a diplomatic visa. For the next week, Pujol accompanied Souza everywhere – amusement parks, nightclubs, cabarets, and, eventually, a casino. One evening, as the duo played roulette, Pujol pretended to double over with stomach cramps. He told Souza to keep playing while he ran back to the hotel. He raced to their room, opened Souza\u2019s suitcase, pilfered the visa, and snapped a few photographs. Then, he returned to the casino floor as if nothing had happened.<\/p>\n Within days, Pujol had forged the document. Upon returning to Spain, he showed it to Federico. \u00a0The agent was so impressed, he took Pujol under his wing, stocking him with invisible ink, ciphers, $3,000 in cash, and a code name: Arabel\u2014Latin for \u201canswered prayer.\u201d \u00a0His first assignment was to move to England, pose as a BBC radio producer, and crib British intelligence.<\/p>\n Pujol was now confident the Allies would accept him since he had access to German secrets, and he dashed to the British embassy and showed them the ink, the ciphers, and the cash. \u00a0But the British reply was clear: \u201cNo.\u201d Pujol was heartbroken. \u201cWhy,\u201d he wondered, \u201cwas the enemy proving to be so helpful, while those whom I wanted to be my friends were being so implacable?\u201d<\/p>\n British “Intelligence” – while Bletchley Park made British intelligence look like James Bond, the real intel services acted more like Inspector Clouseau. Here is one of their many bad ideas, a bomb inside a rat<\/p><\/div>\n The decision to reject Pujol was a matter of politics. The Allies wanted to keep Spain out of the war, assuming that if they did enter, it would threaten Gibraltar, so a Spanish double-agent seemed a recipe to create more problems than it might solve. \u00a0Plus there was the minor detail that Pujol didn\u2019t know a thing about England. \u00a0He had never been there. He knew nothing about its military. He barely spoke the language. And now, in order not to blow his cover with the Abwehr, he had to convince the Nazis he was living there…without British help.<\/p>\n While still in Portugal,\u00a0Pujol bought a map of England, a tourist guidebook, and a list of railway timetables – and began lying through his teeth. \u00a0The Abwehr had told him to recruit sub-agents for help. \u00a0Pujol had a better idea: he\u2019d make them up. \u00a0If something went sour, he could blame it on his imaginary employees. \u00a0When something went right, he\u2019d take the credit. \u00a0With that, Arabel started fabricating sources, spies, and stories. Using newspapers and telephone books as inspiration, Pujol wrote sprawling letters to the Abwehr that contained practically no useful information at all – they were just meant to waste the agency\u2019s time.<\/p>\n Pujol knew he couldn\u2019t keep up the ruse forever. \u00a0He had manged to string along German intelligence for months, with no one’s assistance but his own. \u00a0But if he wanted the Abwehr\u2019s trust, he\u2019d need to start sending some legitimate information. \u00a0He again asked for Britain\u2019s help, but the embassy rejected him a fourth and fifth time.<\/p>\n It’s actually a still from a movie on Garbo, but the point is the same – the German’s war planning trusted every word from Garbo. One memo referred to him as worth the weight of a 45,000 man army<\/p><\/div>\n Pujol finally caught the attention of British Intelligence – for all the wrong reasons. \u00a0In one letter, he told the Germans that a convoy of five Allied ships had left Liverpool for Malta. The letter was entirely fictitious, but the contents proved accurate. \u00a0When Britain’s MI5 intercepted the message, agents panicked. \u00a0Somehow a Nazi spy had managed to land in England. \u00a0Pujol was now being actively pursued, albeit within England as British spies believed he must be operating in country to have the level of detail that he reported.<\/p>\n Equal parts astonished and cocky, Pujol attempted to repeat his magic, telling the Axis that a major armada was departing Wales. \u00a0U-boats and Italian fighter planes scrambled to ambush it, wasting tons of fuel and thousands of man-hours. \u00a0The move impressed the Allies, who were starting to catch on to Pujol’s routine. \u00a0By April of 1942, MI5 had contacted Pujol, drafting him to service as a double-agent. \u00a0Pujol’s talent for inventive lying had at last served him well. \u00a0MI5 was so taken with his commitment to his role, they code-named the amateur spy “Garbo”, after famed actress Greta Garbo, because, in their opinion, he was the best actor in the world.<\/p>\n As a bona-fide double-agent, Garbo\u2019s network of imaginary spies ballooned into a cast of characters Ian Fleming would envy. \u00a0A traveling salesman, a cave-dwelling Gibraltarian waiter, a retired Welsh seaman turned fascist mercenary, an Indian poet nicknamed Rags, an obsessive-compulsive code-named Moonbeam, and even an employee at Britain\u2019s Ministry of War were all supposedly spying for the Third Reich. \u00a0The bogus spies filed expense reports; some earned real salaries, all funded by the Nazis. By war\u2019s end, Garbo had invented 27 personas.<\/p>\n The Garbo Network – in the end, the Germans would pay Garbo and his “agents” over $1 million in today’s value for his intelligence work<\/p><\/div>\n Working for the MI5 also meant that Pujol finally had real military information at his fingertips. So to build the Abwehr\u2019s trust, he began giving away legitimate Allied secrets, peppering the reports with enough disinformaton to throw off the Nazis.<\/p>\n The first real test of Garbo’s credibility would come during Operation Torch – the campaign to invade North Africa. \u00a0In preparation, Garbo reported that three of his agents had seen seeing troops in Scotland, preparing for an invasion. \u00a0These phantom agents spread rumors that Norway might be attacked, while others claimed that Dakar, Senegal, was next. \u00a0The news confused the Nazis and kept them ill-prepared. \u00a0To save face, Garbo wrote the Abwehr a letter one week before the true African invasion, detailing exactly when and where the Allies would attack. \u00a0The gamble was massive – if the Germans believed Garbo, they could meet the Allied troops on the beaches. \u00a0In order to protect lives, and Garbo’s credibility with his German handlers, MI5 intentionally delayed the letter so it arrived one day late. \u00a0From that point on, whatever doubts the Abwehr might have had with Garbo disappeared.<\/p>\n Operation Torch – American troops land in Algiers. Torch demonstrated, to the Germans, that Garbo was a genuine spy and that he had accurate information as to Allied intentions<\/p><\/div>\n Other stunts boosted his legitimacy. \u00a0When the Nazis wanted to bomb civilian trains in England, they asked Garbo for a train timetable. He sent an outdated one. \u00a0When they wanted a book containing Royal Air Force secrets, Garbo mailed it in a cake with all the up-to-date pages deviously torn out. \u00a0When Germans shot down a civilian plane between Portugal and London, killing everybody aboard – including Hollywood actor Leslie Howard – Garbo lambasted the Abwehr. \u00a0One of his make-believe agents, a pilot, could have been onboard! \u00a0Embarrassed, the Germans never attacked another civilian aircraft on that route again.<\/p>\n By June 1943, Pujol had become Germany\u2019s most prized spy. The Abwehr sent him new ciphers and vials of invisible ink – which made it easier for the MI5 to crack enemy codes. Meanwhile, the Nazis circulated a memo comparing him to a 45,000-man army. \u00a0Pujol, who\u2019d failed at school, at military service, and at business, was a virtuoso con artist. \u00a0And now, he had all of the ingredients he needed to cook up his biggest lie yet.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n Hiding the impending invasion of France was somewhat of an impossibility.<\/p>\n The endless series of potential invasions the Allies presented to the Germans via Garbo (and other intelligence assets).<\/p><\/div>\n Over three million American troops would eventually pass through the British Isles, bringing hundreds of thousands of jeeps, tanks and planes with them. \u00a0There was no obscuring the scale of the forces involved nor their target – liberating France. \u00a0Garbo\u2019s job wasn\u2019t to hide the invasion, but rather convince the Germans that it was going to happen in Calais, 200 miles north of Normandy. \u00a0If the rouse succeeded, most German soldiers would be waiting in the wrong place. \u00a0But few people believed the ploy could actually work.<\/p>\n To pull it off, Garbo had to convince the Nazis that a non-existent million-man army was assembling in southeastern England. \u00a0The imaginary army was given a real name: the First United States Army Group, or FUSAG. \u00a0The Allies spared no effort or expense to make the hoax look legit. Inflatable decoys – mock tanks and boats – dotted harbors and farms. \u00a0Fake hospitals were erected. \u00a0Bulldozers plowed faux airstrips, and soldiers built hundreds of phony wooden aircraft. \u00a0When a bogus oil plant was constructed near Dover, the Brits requisitioned wind machines from a movie studio to blow dust across the Channel to make the construction site more believable. \u00a0Newspapers showed King George VI inspecting the artificial plant. \u00a0Carrier pigeons were released in enemy territory with property of FUSAG IDs wrapped around their legs, and special machines stamped tank tracks along dusty roads. \u00a0Newspapers published fake letters complaining about the ruckus all the imaginary soldiers were causing. \u00a0And the fake army had a very real general “leading” it – George S. Patton, who the Germans believed was the logical choice to lead an invasion given his bold leadership and aggressive tank tactics.<\/p>\n Gen. George S. Patton – the commander of the Allies “Ghost Army”, Patton hated the assignment, which took him out of the initial fight for France. After two heavily publicized incidents of him hitting soldiers in Sicily, Patton was lucky to have any command, even a fictional one<\/p><\/div>\n Garbo \u201csent\u201d his best agents to southeast England to report on the activity. \u00a0Meanwhile, other phony agents reported seeing bombers in Scotland, which made an additional attack on Norway look imminent. \u00a0The reports made Hitler so nervous that he kept 250,000 much-needed troops stationed in Scandinavia. \u00a0By May 1944, German High Command was utterly confused. \u00a0Field Marshal\u00a0Erwin Rommel was convinced FUSAG was real. \u00a0Just before D-day, the Allies bombed 19 railroad junctions near Calais – and none in Normandy. Accompanied with Garbo\u2019s reports, the bombings led German Intelligence to agree: all signs pointed to Calais.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n At 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, the German Seventh Army was stationed in the Pas de Calais and sound asleep. \u00a0General Friedrich Dollmann was so convinced June 6 would be a slow day that he scheduled war games. \u00a0General Rommel had taken the day off to celebrate his wife\u2019s birthday. (The day before, as the Allies prepared history\u2019s biggest invasion, he was picking wildflowers.) \u00a0When Berlin learned that forces were landing in Normandy, the staff refused to even wake Hitler. \u00a0The ploy had worked – almost nobody took the invasion seriously. \u00a0Nazi brass thought it was a scheme to distract them from the real invasion – at Calais.<\/p>\n German Generals at Calais – even though the German General Staff begged Hitler to move troops from Calais to met the Allied invasion at Normandy, most stilled believed the major Allied push would be at Calais (after all, it was the shortest distance between England and France)<\/p><\/div>\n Two days went by. Tens of thousands more troops hit the beaches, and German generals still refused to send in serious reinforcements: They were still waiting for the fake army to attack. On June 9, a desperate General Gerd von Rundstedt begged Hitler to send the Panzers and crush the invasion force before it could get a toehold. \u00a0Hitler had believed in Garbo as much as his intelligence branches, but the evidence was starting to erode Garbo’s insistence that Normandy was a spoiling attack. \u00a0Even if it was, the news out of Normandy was troubling for the German army. \u00a0Hitler relented – the panzers would go to Normandy.<\/p>\n Early that morning, Garbo sent a message about the fake army that would change history: \u201cI am of the opinion, in view of the strong troop concentrations in southeastern and eastern England, which are not taking part in the present operations, that these operations are a diversionary maneuver designed to draw off enemy reserves in order then to make a decisive attack in another place … it may very probably take place in the Pas-de-Calais area.\u201d<\/p>\n The message was forwarded immediately to Berlin. \u00a0Hitler\u2019s personal intelligence officer underlined the word\u00a0diversionary<\/em>\u00a0and handed it off to a higher official, who laid it on Hitler\u2019s desk. \u00a0The Abwehr chimed in confirming the information. \u00a0Later that night, Hitler read Garbo\u2019s message; shortly after, an order beamed from High Command: \u201cThe move of the 1st SS Panzer Division will therefore be halted.\u201d \u00a0Nine armored divisions – all bound for Normandy – stopped dead in their tracks and turned around to defend Calais. \u00a0The single greatest threat to the Allies establishing a beachhead in France had been defeated by a piece of paper.<\/p>\n Patton’s Ghost Army – Armored Division. The Allies spent considerable efforts to mock up an army for German intelligence, including these inflatable tanks.<\/p><\/div>\n Even by July, 22 German divisions were still waiting in Pas de Calais for George S. Patton’s phony army. \u00a0By August, as divisions were escaping the Pas de Calais due to the Allied advance – spearheaded by Patton – the German General Staff still felt FUSAG would land elsewhere. \u00a0The rouse had been so completely bought by Hitler and his commanders that in December of 1944<\/em>, long after the Allies had regained France, German commanders\u00a0still\u00a0believed FUSAG was real and would attack.<\/p>\n The utter lack of anything approaching operations by FUSAG did nothing to dampen Berlin’s opinion of Garbo. \u00a0Instead, Pujo was awarded an Iron Cross. \u00a0Months later, the King of England followed suit and made Pujol a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. \u00a0The self-made spy became the first and only person decorated by both sides in World War II.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n The lies didn’t stop with the end of the war.<\/p>\n Pujol fled to South America after the war, escaping with some of the money the Nazis had paid him. \u00a0Even MI5 lost track of him, passing along stories that Pujol had died of malaria while exploring Africa. \u00a0He was no longer of anyone’s interest. \u00a0Pujol had emerged from seemingly nowhere and disappeared back in that same fog just as quickly.<\/p>\n Pujol in 1984 – alive and well and back in London<\/p><\/div>\n But this too was another lie; one designed to discourage any former Nazis from asking too many questions or potentially hunting him down. \u00a0Like most of his life before the war, the truth of Juan Pujol Garcia’s life was incredibly dull. \u00a0Pujol, only in his mid-30s, settled in Venezuela. \u00a0He married, had two sons, opened a book store, and got a job with Shell Oil as a language teacher. \u00a0He even tried going back into the hotel business, where, again, he failed miserably. He lived off the radar until 1984 when a journalist, uncovering his stories from the war, was surprised to learn that Pujol was very much alive – and no longer really hiding his identity anymore. \u00a0That same year, a 72-year-old Pujol returned to London. \u00a0His former MI5 colleagues were in disbelief. \u201cIt can\u2019t be you,\u201d one of them exclaimed. \u201cYou\u2019re dead!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a solemn march to the\u00a0H\u00f4tel Meurice in Paris for German General\u00a0Dietrich von Choltitz on August 25, 1944. \u00a0The German Army in Normandy had been smashed. \u00a0The encircled Falasie pocket, containing 50,000 German troops – the last of the men who had defended Normandy – had given up. \u00a0American General George S. Patton’s Third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww2-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46670"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53159,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46670\/revisions\/53159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-oEm9JgaMwNw\/T4dF1JFTy9I\/AAAAAAAABK0\/NFuoH5kWnNc\/s1600\/hist_us_20_ww2_pic_franco_hitler_hendaye_1940.jpg\" "\\"franco\\"")
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