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| Double Cross Ben Macintyre |
Organized into military units, they included a bisexual Peruvian play-girl, a Polish fighter pilot, a mercurial French woman, a Serbian seducer and an eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming. One had an obsession with a pet dog that nearly derailed the entire D-day invasion, two were of dubious character, one was a triple, possibly a quadruple agent, and one suffered torture, imprisonment and death. All were courageous, treacherous, capricious, greedy and inspired. The book tells stories about each of them, and how they interacted to help achieve the great deception of D-day.
For this report, I've selected one of them: Juan Pujol Garcia3.
Juan Pujol Garcia, was a Spaniard that had once been a cinema proprietor, business man and soldier. He had a diploma from the Royal Poultry School and ran a chicken farm outside Barcelona. He had no talent for figures and the farm failed. When WWII broke out he decided to spy for the British. He said, "I wanted to do something practical that would do something toward the good of humanity". He believed Hitler was a psychopath and that he "must support the Allies by supplying information that might be of interest to the Allied cause politically or militarily". He had no idea where or how to get such information. In his memoirs written many years later, he admitted to being fairly confused.
In January, 1941, this 29 year old Catalan approached the British embassy in Madrid with an offer to spy. The British politely, but firmly told him to go away. The British didn't want anybody in their club that wanted to join. Pujol then went to the Germans, pretending to be a keen fascist willing to spy against the British. The Germans also told him they were busy and to go away. This Catalan continued badgering the Germans while at the same time schooling himself in National Socialism in order to appear a staunch Nazi. Finally, the Germans, as a way to get rid of him, said that if he could get to Britain by the way of Lisbon, he would be considered for intelligence work. From that point on, he wormed his way into German confidences, specifically, Major Karl-Erich Kuhlenthal4 at the abwehr5 station in Madrid. Pujol was given secret ink, cash and a code name, Alaric Arabel6.
On his arrival in Lisbon, he once more contacted the British, and was again rejected. At this point Pujol was stumped. He realized that the Germans would be expecting news and he had to tell them something. On July 19, 1941 he sent a telegram to Kuhlenthal announcing his safe arrival in Britain, but he was not in Britain, but still in Portugal. Having been denied the opportunity to gather real intelligence, he decided to invent it.
Using Lisbon's public library, second had book shops, items from newsreels, names and addresses of real munitions companies, the Blue Guide to England7 for place names, and using the Portuguese publication The British Fleet as a primer about naval affairs, Pujol, never having been in Britain, sent imaginary reports to Germany. The reports were verbose details about things he imagined that he would see if he had actually been there. The messages were exhaustingly long, a jumble of clauses and sub-clauses with too many adjectives that were not always grammatically correct. He later explained that it was a way of filling a page without saying much.
He liked to play with words, but he never got the hang of British military nomenclature or the British culture. He described Scotland's drinking habits like those in Spain, saying, "the men here would do almost anything for a liter of wine". His German controllers failed to spot his errors but praised him especially when he claimed to have recruited two sub-agents in Britain. Of course these were fictional agents, since he remained in Lisbon. For 9 months he worked at inventing what he thought his spymasters wanted to hear.
In the winter of 1941, the decoding team at Bletchley Park made an alarming discovery of a German spy by the name of Arabel with 2 sub-agents that Berlin was highly pleased with. The BIB section of MI5 began studying the messages of Arabel which were strange and hilarious as well as misleading and wrong. One message told how the total diplomatic corps in London decamped to Brighton to avoid the hot days of summer. Another message described naval maneuvers on Lake Windermere, a landlocked lake, testing an American amphibious tank that had yet to be invented. Another report gave details of an unreal army regiment attempting to intercept a convoy sailing from Malta that did not exist. The Germans were extremely pleased and sent praises. Pujol, or Arabel as the Germans called him, send monthly records of expenses to Berlin.
During all these months in Lisbon, Pujol kept contacting the British in Lisbon and was always rejected. Finally, his wife Aracelli went to the American Naval Attaché in Lisbon, who contacted his opposite number at the British Embassy, who in turn got around to telling someone in London. When MI6 realized that it was Juan Pujol Garcia, they still didn't want him, but MI5 prevailed and added him to the Double Cross D-day8 team.
On April 24, 1942 Juan Pujol Garcia was smuggled out of Lisbon on a steamer to Gibraltar, then by military aircraft to Plymouth. He was given the code name, Garbo6 and given a case officer, Tomas Harris9 who was 34 years old, an artist with an imagination as vivid as Pujol's. They spoke the same language and together using artistry and imagination they spun an unsurpassed web of deception in a staggering network of 24 subagents10, of only one being real, Pujol himself.
The network included a new lover, an American sergeant, a Greek deserter, a commercial traveler, and a group of Welshmen committed to toppling the British government by assassination, led by a poet. 3 of them were subagents and one had a sister in the Wrens of the Naval Service. None of these characters actually existed. The Harris and Pujol network grew more elaborate. Fictitious spies were added to the roster while one was killed off and his widow took his place.
Secret ink messages were slow so the Germans provided a wireless link which MI5 Controlled. Pujol told the Germans a Gibraltarian waiter had a friend who would use his wireless on Pujol's behalf, but in reality, a member of MI5, a former Lloyds of London bank clerk was the operator. It was arranged that secret ink and wireless messages with enough truth in the reports to keep the Germans believing in Pujol were either sent a few hours late or a day late while continuing to send the long voluminous reports as usual.
Everyone was happy. MI5 was happy. Germans were happy. Berlin was happy. Everyone except Aracelli, Pujol's wife.
She was lonely, homesick and fractious. Every night there was yelling and broken dishes. She had been banned from association with the Spanish speaking community in London for fear she might let something slip. She had no friends and seldom left the house. She was expected to cook and clean and care for their son. Her husband got up at dawn and worked late. When he did come home he was irritable and exhausted. She first asked, then pleaded, and finally demanded that she be allowed to return to Spain. She threatened to leave but had no place to go.
Finally, on June 21, 942 she snapped. She phoned Harris threatening to destroy the entire network by revealing activities.
"I'm telling you for the last time, that if at this time tomorrow you haven't got my papers ready for me to leave the country immediately, I will have the satisfaction of spoiling everything. I don't want to live another 5 minutes longer with my husband. I don't want another day in England!"
Harris knew she had to be stopped. Even Churchill was told of the problem. They contemplated on locking her up, but Pujol, himself came up with a dramatic solution to subduing his wife. A special branch officer told Aracelli that Pujol was under arrest. He had come for Pujol's toothbrush and pajamas. Aracelli believed that she had caused the arrest and broke down in tears. She pleaded with the officer and said she was to blame; that Pujol was loyal to the country and would willing die for our cause. The officer explained that Pujol had tried to quit the DoubleCross team because she had threatened to give the deception away. Later that day she was found in kitchen filled with gas fumes. Again she promised never to interfere with Pujol's work again, Under the belief that she had caused the arrest, she promised not to misbehave or ask to return to Spain.
The network deception continued with great success. The Germans were so delighted with their spies work that even while the invasion of Normandy was happening11, Hitler awarded Arabel, (Pujol) the Iron Cross.12
The book goes on to tell how each of the Double Cross D-day spies made their contribution to the deceptions for the invasion and about their lives after the war.
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| GARBO-ARABEL Faked Spy Network |
References
- a) Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4088-1990-6.
b) https://www.amazon.com/Double-Cross-Ben-Macintyre/dp/1408819902/ref=sr_1_1/130-9422389-9626450 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Macintyre
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Erich_K%C3%BChlenthal
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abwehr
- Juan Pujol García MBE (14 February 1912 – 10 October 1988)
- British codenames: GARBO, BOVRIL
- German codename: Alaric Arabel
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Guides
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_Harris
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa#Pujol's_network_of_fictitious_agents
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude
- As Alaric Arabel on 29 July 1944, Pujol was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class for his services to the German war effort. The award required Hitler's personal authorization. The Iron Cross was presented via radio, and he received the physical medal from one of his German handlers after the war had ended.
- As GARBO, Pujol received an MBE from King George VI, on 25 November 1944.
- Pujol earned the distinction of being one of the few to receive decorations from both sides during World War II.
b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire
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