This is from FB. Very difficult to believe it. Whether true or not, it is a great story. So a film was made of it in 2009.
Uncovered History
"Britain rejected him three times. So he went to the Nazis instead, invented 27 people who never existed, and fooled Adolf Hitler into giving him Germany's highest military honor. Then he helped win World War II. This is the most unbelievable true story you've never heard."
Barcelona, 1939.
Juan Pujol García is a walking disaster.
Failed boarding school student. Failed chicken farmer. Failed cinema manager. Failed soldier who somehow managed to desert both sides of the Spanish Civil War—allegedly without firing a single shot for either.
At 27 years old, he has no skills, no prospects, and no reason to believe he'll ever amount to anything.
But he has something nobody recognizes: an imagination so vivid, so relentless, that it will eventually deceive Adolf Hitler himself and change the course of history.
The Man Nobody Wanted
When World War II erupts in 1939, Juan Pujol decides he wants to matter.
He's witnessed the horror of fascism during Spain's civil war. He's seen what totalitarianism does to human beings. Now, watching Nazi Germany devour Europe while Britain stands alone, he wants to help.
So he walks into the British Embassy in Madrid and offers to spy for them.
Britain says no.
He tries again in Lisbon.
No.
He tries a third time.
Still no.
The British see a failed chicken farmer with no intelligence training, no connections, no language skills, and a history of desertion from both sides of a civil war.
They want absolutely nothing to do with him.
Most people would give up.
Juan Pujol does something audacious instead.
He goes to the Nazis.
The Con Begins
Pujol creates a fake identity: a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official.
He forges documents. He talks his way into getting a fake diplomatic passport. He walks into German intelligence—the Abwehr—and sells them on a fiction so convincing they welcome him with open arms.
They give him £600 (about $42,000 today).
They train him in espionage basics.
They give him the codename "Arabel."
And they send him to London to recruit a spy network and report on British military operations.
There's just one problem:
Pujol never goes to London.
He doesn't even speak English.
The Spy Who Never Left His Hotel Room
Instead, Pujol sets up shop in a Lisbon hotel room.
He arms himself with a tourist guidebook to England, a train schedule, shipping timetables, British magazines, and newsreels.
And from that single room, he begins inventing an entire spy network.
He creates fictional agents with detailed backstories. He describes pubs they visit (found in his guidebook). He reports on troop movements (gleaned from newsreels). He sends weather reports. He describes military installations.
All of it is pure fiction.
His reports aren't perfect. He makes mistakes—telling the Germans that Glaswegians would "do anything for a litre of wine" when Scots famously prefer whisky. He messes up currency conversions. He confuses the metric system.
But whenever the Germans question him, Pujol blames one of his fictional sub-agents for the error.
And incredibly, the Germans keep believing him.
The British Finally Notice
By 1942, British intelligence realizes something strange is happening.
Someone is feeding German intelligence detailed reports from "London"—but no such spy exists in Britain.
They track the source to Lisbon.
And they're astonished to discover: this failed chicken farmer has single-handedly created an entire fake espionage operation so convincing that German intelligence believes it completely.
They recruit him immediately.
Enter Garbo
Pujol is brought to London and given a new codename: "Garbo"—named after actress Greta Garbo, "the best actor in the world."
He's paired with case officer Tomás Harris, a bilingual art dealer who speaks fluent Spanish.
Together, they become one of the greatest partnerships in espionage history.
From a modest two-story house in Hendon, Pujol and Harris write 315 letters—averaging 2,000 words each—to a German post office box in Lisbon.
They expand Pujol's fictional network to 27 imaginary agents. Each has a distinct personality, location, communication style. Some are enthusiastic. Others are cautious. One is an alcoholic. Another is greedy.
They flood German intelligence with so much information that the Germans decide they don't need to recruit any other spies in Britain.
Garbo's network has become their most valuable intelligence source.
The Masterful Deception
The information Pujol sends is brilliantly crafted:
A mix of complete fiction, genuine information of little military value, and valuable intelligence deliberately delayed to arrive too late.
Before Operation Torch—the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942—one of Garbo's "agents" reports that a convoy has left the River Clyde painted in Mediterranean camouflage.
The letter is postmarked before the landings.
But British intelligence deliberately delays its delivery.
It arrives in German hands too late for them to act.
The Germans apologize to Garbo for not acting on his "magnificent" intelligence quickly enough.
When Pujol's fictional Liverpool agent fails to report on major fleet movements, Pujol tells the Germans the agent has fallen ill and died.
He provides a fake obituary published in British newspapers.
The Germans, genuinely saddened, send money to pay a pension to the fictional widow.
Over the course of the war, the Germans pay Garbo $340,000—nearly $6 million in today's money—to support his nonexistent spy network.
D-Day
But Garbo's masterpiece comes in 1944.
As part of Operation Fortitude—the massive deception campaign designed to hide the true target of the Allied invasion—Pujol sends over 500 radio messages between January and June 6th.
Sometimes more than twenty messages per day.
His mission: convince the Germans that the Allied invasion will come at Pas de Calais, not Normandy.
Just hours before the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, Garbo sends an urgent message warning that Allied forces are heading toward Normandy beaches.
The message arrives too late for the Germans to respond.
But it massively enhances Garbo's credibility—he tried to warn them, they just didn't act in time.
Then, after D-Day, Garbo sends his most important message:
The Normandy landings are a diversion.
The real invasion is still coming at Pas de Calais.
The Germans believe him completely.
They keep two Panzer tank divisions and nineteen infantry divisions waiting at Pas de Calais for weeks.
Waiting for an invasion that will never come.
Those reinforcements never reach Normandy.
That delay proves catastrophic for German defense and allows the Allies to establish the beachhead that will liberate Europe.
The failed chicken farmer who was rejected three times by British intelligence has just helped win World War II.
Two Awards
On July 29, 1944, the Germans inform Garbo that Adolf Hitler himself has awarded him the Iron Cross Second Class for his "extraordinary services" to Germany.
It's an honor normally reserved for front-line combat soldiers and requires Hitler's personal authorization.
Pujol and Harris radio back expressing Garbo's "humble thanks" for an honor he is truly "unworthy" of.
They're not lying.
Four months later, on November 25, 1944, King George VI awards Pujol the MBE—Member of the Order of the British Empire—for his service to Britain.
Juan Pujol García becomes one of the only people in World War II to receive military honors from both sides.
The Disappearing Act
After the war, Pujol fears Nazi revenge.
So with MI5's help, he fakes his own death from malaria in 1949—complete with death certificate and burial in Angola.
Then he quietly disappears to Venezuela.
For decades, he lives in peaceful obscurity. He teaches languages for Shell Oil. He runs a bookstore and gift shop.
The man who fooled Hitler vanishes into ordinary life.
Rediscovered
In 1984—35 years after "dying"—journalist Nigel West tracks Pujol down and convinces him to tell his story.
That same year, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Pujol travels to Omaha Beach in Normandy.
Veterans who landed on those beaches line up to personally thank the man whose deception kept German reinforcements away while they fought for their lives.
Juan Pujol García dies on October 10, 1988, at age 76, in Caracas, Venezuela.
The Impossible Truth
A man who couldn't hold a job.
A man rejected by Britain three times.
A failed chicken farmer with no training, no connections, no qualifications, and no reason to believe he could change anything.
He invented twenty-seven people who never existed.
He fooled Adolf Hitler into giving him Germany's highest military honor.
He kept two Panzer divisions and nineteen infantry divisions away from Normandy on D-Day.
He helped secure the Allied landings that turned the tide of World War II.
He saved tens of thousands of lives.
All from a hotel room in Lisbon and a suburban house in Hendon.
Armed with nothing but a guidebook, a train schedule, and an imagination nobody believed in.
The Lesson
If someone had written Garbo's story as fiction, publishers would have rejected it as too implausible.
But history recorded it.
Because sometimes the most unlikely people change everything.
Sometimes the failures matter more than the successes.
Sometimes getting rejected is just the beginning of the story.
And sometimes a failed chicken farmer with an overactive imagination can fool the most powerful dictator in the world and help save civilization.
Britain rejected him three times.
So he went to the enemy, invented an army of ghosts, and fooled Hitler himself.
Then he disappeared for 35 years.
Juan Pujol García.
The failed chicken farmer who won World War II.
The greatest spy you've never heard of.
Until now. |
