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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

11. Agent GARBO, the Nazis’ Favorite Spy

Juan Pujol Garcia and his wife were whisked to Britain after British intelligence belatedly accepted his offers of help. History

Juan Pujol Garcia was whisked to Britain, given the codename GARBO, and put to work building up his imaginary network to benefit his German handlers. The original hoax was transformed into an elaborate double cross operation that carefully fed the Germans a massive amount of often true but useless information, mixed in with half-truths and falsities.

The flood of reports from Pujol and his steadily growing network of fictional sub-agents transformed him, in German eyes, into their most successful spy in Britain. The moment for cashing in on that trust came during the buildup to D-Day and the subsequent Normandy campaign. The ultimate aim was to convince the Germans that the Normandy landings were just the first in a series of planned invasions, with an even bigger one planned against the Pas de Calais.

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.