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The Ace of Spies and Other Significant Espionage Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 20, 2019 33 min

Detective - Mystery — Throughout history, spies have aroused mixed feelings of fear, loathing, and admiration. Mixed Matches

13. WWII’s Most Important Spy

Juan Pujol Garcia as a conscript in 1931. Wikimedia

No spy had a greater impact on WWII than Juan Pujol Garcia (1912 – 1988). An eccentric Spaniard, Juan Pujol hoaxed the Germans with fictional spying out of a sheer desire for adventure and excitement. That hoax grew into the greatest double-cross operation of the conflict, and played a significant role in ensuring Allied victory on D-Day and in the subsequent Normandy Campaign.

Juan Pujol hated fascists, so when WWII began, he decided to help the Allies “for the good of humanity”. However, when he offered his services to British intelligence, he was rejected. Undeterred, he posed as a Nazi-sympathizing Spanish government official and offered his services to Germany’s military intelligence service, the Abwehr. The Nazis accepted, and ordered him to Britain, where he was to recruit a spy network. Pujol had neither the means nor the desire to do any such thing, so he simply faked it.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.