Juan Pujol GarcÃa, also known by his code name “Garbo,” was a Spanish double agent during World War II. Initially, he approached the Allies offering his services against the Axis powers, and after being rejected, he created a fictional network of spies to convince the Germans that he was a valuable asset. Eventually, he gained the trust of both the Germans and the British, working for the latter under MI5.
Pujol played a critical role in Operation Fortitude, where he fed the Nazis false information, convincing them that the D-Day invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy. His deceptive intelligence helped mislead the Germans and contributed significantly to the success of the Allied invasion of Europe. For his efforts, he was one of the few people to receive decorations from both sides—Germany’s Iron Cross and the British MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire).
AlanithSBR on
The story is absolutely hilarious. He hated Fascists, so he went to the British embassy and said “Hey I wanna be a spy”. They turned him down. So he went to the German embassy and said “Hey I wanna be a spy”. They said “Sure”, gave him some wacky gadgets and a bag of cash, and told him to buy a plane ticket to England and recruit more agents. He instead moved to Lisbon and he and his wife provided false reports about England based entirely off a tourist guide, newsreels, advertisements, and a train timetable they picked up somewhere. He even created a entire conspiracy web of false agents he supposedly recruited with personalities and their own fictious lives who were ‘feeding’ him reports and who he could blame if the germans ever caught on that a particular report wasn’t accurate, because as we all know, “Agent P” is a good source in the British quartermasters, but every so often he goes on a bender. Around the summer of 1942, he goes to the US embassy in Lisbon and says “Hey I’m running this massive scam on the Germans and I want to be a double agent” and this time the Americans say “Sure”, though the fact that the Germans had just spent a massive amount of time and resources trying to find a convoy Garcia had invented that didn’t exist, and the Allies knew they were looking for a convoy that didn’t exist due to breaking the Enigma code probably didn’t hurt his case.
To make it even better, while he was still a freelance spy, the British picked up on these reports he was completely making up, and thought they were so credible, that MI5 launched a full scale manhunt for him!
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Juan Pujol GarcÃa, also known by his code name “Garbo,” was a Spanish double agent during World War II. Initially, he approached the Allies offering his services against the Axis powers, and after being rejected, he created a fictional network of spies to convince the Germans that he was a valuable asset. Eventually, he gained the trust of both the Germans and the British, working for the latter under MI5.
Pujol played a critical role in Operation Fortitude, where he fed the Nazis false information, convincing them that the D-Day invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy. His deceptive intelligence helped mislead the Germans and contributed significantly to the success of the Allied invasion of Europe. For his efforts, he was one of the few people to receive decorations from both sides—Germany’s Iron Cross and the British MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire).
The story is absolutely hilarious. He hated Fascists, so he went to the British embassy and said “Hey I wanna be a spy”. They turned him down. So he went to the German embassy and said “Hey I wanna be a spy”. They said “Sure”, gave him some wacky gadgets and a bag of cash, and told him to buy a plane ticket to England and recruit more agents. He instead moved to Lisbon and he and his wife provided false reports about England based entirely off a tourist guide, newsreels, advertisements, and a train timetable they picked up somewhere. He even created a entire conspiracy web of false agents he supposedly recruited with personalities and their own fictious lives who were ‘feeding’ him reports and who he could blame if the germans ever caught on that a particular report wasn’t accurate, because as we all know, “Agent P” is a good source in the British quartermasters, but every so often he goes on a bender. Around the summer of 1942, he goes to the US embassy in Lisbon and says “Hey I’m running this massive scam on the Germans and I want to be a double agent” and this time the Americans say “Sure”, though the fact that the Germans had just spent a massive amount of time and resources trying to find a convoy Garcia had invented that didn’t exist, and the Allies knew they were looking for a convoy that didn’t exist due to breaking the Enigma code probably didn’t hurt his case.
To make it even better, while he was still a freelance spy, the British picked up on these reports he was completely making up, and thought they were so credible, that MI5 launched a full scale manhunt for him!