Joan Pujol Garcia aka Garbo aka Arabel (1912 – 1988)
Double agent during World War II.
Known by the British as Garbo and by the Germans as Arabel, Pujol had the distinction of being one of the few people – if not the only one – to receive decorations from both sides during World War II, gaining both an Iron Cross from the Germans and an MBE from the British.
Pujol was born in the Catalan city of Barcelona, Spain. Pujol engaged in a variety of occupations prior to and after the Spanish Civil War, such as studying animal husbandry and managing various businesses, including a cinema.
After developing a loathing of both the Communist and Fascist regimes in Europe during the Spanish Civil War, Pujol decided to become a spy for the Allies as a way to do something “for the good of humanity”. His experience with both sides during the war left him with a deep loathing of both fascism and communism, and by extension Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He was proud that he had managed to serve both sides without firing a single bullet for either.
Pujol and his wifecontacted the British and American intelligence agencies, but each rejected his offer. Undeterred, he created a false identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official and successfully became a German agent. He was instructed to travel to Britain and recruit additional agents; instead he moved to Lisbon and created bogus reports from a variety of public sources, including a tourist guide to England, train timetables, cinema newsreels, and magazine advertisements. Although the information would not have withstood close examination, Pujol soon established himself as a trustworthy agent. He began inventing fictional sub-agents who could be blamed for false information and mistakes.
"When [the British] didn’t pay any attention to him, his plans veered toward espionage. He knew that he had to go to the Germans first, establish himself as a German operative, and then turn double agent. But of course, he didn’t have the ability to get to London, so he just went back to Lisbon. He pretended he was in London, a place he’d never been to. He didn’t even speak the English language. And he started on this self-made, imaginary espionage career.
“The British were terrified. They were like, ‘Someone has sneaked past our lines and someone is in the heart of the beast, reporting on us!’ because his reports were so believable, even to people in the country he was supposed to be spying on.” [x]
The Allies finally accepted Pujol when the Germans spent considerable resources attempting to hunt down a fictional convoy.The family was moved to Britain and Pujol was given the code name Garbo. Pujol and his handler spent the rest of the war expanding the fictional network, communicating at first by letter, later by radio. Eventually the Germans were funding a network of twenty-seven fictional agents.
Pujol had a key role in the success of Operation Fortitude, the deception operation intended to mislead the Germans about the timing and location of the invasion of Normandy near the end of the war. The false information Pujol supplied helped persuade German intelligence that the main attack would be in the Pas de Calais, keeping two armoured divisions and 19 infantry divisions there for two months after the Normandy invasion. [x]
The key memo he sent was on June 9th. This was the day Hitler and the high command were debating whether the Normandy invasion was the real one and whether to send all those reserves from Belgium and France down into Normandy and basically destroy the incoming divisions. And Pujol sent a very long detailed telegram saying “This is the fake, you have to believe me” and those panzer divisions were actually on the road, those troops were on the move, and Hitler sent an order turning them around. This was the key moment in the future of Normandy, in the future of that battle, and Garbo is really the author of that moment. [x]
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