Profiles
Joan Pujol, alias ‘Garbo’ was one of the most important agents in the British MI5, and he convinced the Germans to not to disembark in Normandy but in another place.
The Nazi regime never discovered his trickery and even gave the spy from Barcelona the Iron Cross, almost at the same time he was being decorated in the United Kingdom.
Sep 28, 2016 - 1:58 PM
New documents have magnified the legend of the Spanish spy who tricked Hitler
Joan Pujol, alias ‘Garbo’ was one of the most important agents in the British MI5, and he convinced the Germans to not to disembark in Normandy but in another place.
The Nazi regime never discovered his trickery and even gave the spy from Barcelona the Iron Cross, almost at the same time he was being decorated in the United Kingdom.
Sep 28, 2016 - 1:58 PM
New declassified documents released by the British Government today, underline the importance of the Spanish double-agent, Joan Pujol, alias ‘Garbo'. He was the leading spy in British intelligence and based in Berlin he established a network of spies across the United Kingdom which only existed in his imagination.
‘Garbo’ convinced the Germans that the landing in Normandy on June 6 1944 was a manoeuvre of distraction and the British troops had decided to land in Europe close to Calais, in the far NW of France. Pujol told Berlin that ‘the present attack was an operation of large scale distraction with the proposal to establish a solid landing and to attract the largest number of German reserves to retain them and then a second landing would be sure of success’ narrated Tomas Harris, an agent who assessed Garbo in an official report from June 13 1944 ‘He pointed them in the wrong direction’ he noted.
The importance of Pujol was known by the testimonies of Harris and other protagonists of the time, but the official documents declassified today confirm this and makes him a grander figure.
Pujol – animated by his hate of fascists and communists acquired in the Spanish Guardia Civil, started his career of transmitting false information about Britain to the Germans from his invented home in Lisbon, although the Germans were eager to contract him when he was visiting the embassy in Madrid, because he told them he was living in London.
This information on this network of invented spies has been compiled ‘in a tourism guide, with a map of England and incorrect times for the trains’ according to a MI5 report dated July 12 1943. ‘Fortunately he had a simple and sensationalist style, great ingenuity, and a passionate quixotic fervour for his work’ adds the report.
Pujol was born in Barcelona in 1912 into a middle class family. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) he lived his first experience of conflict. The conflict surprised him on the republican side but he ended up deserting Franco. Despite initially declining the British interest, the British MI5 thought he was an ideal candidate for a double-agent, employed him and he arrived in London in April 1942. But his wife, Araceli González, did not adapt to the British lifestyle.
On June 21 1943, a woman called Harris threatening to abandon Pujol and go to the Spanish embassy in London to reveal her husband’s secrets, at least be allowed back to Spain.
Her anger resulted in her husband denied to take her to dinner and used diplomatic staff instead. The day after her threats, an MI5 agent went to the family home and found the woman ‘sitting in the kitchen with all the gas taps open’.
Describing the woman as ‘highly sensitive and neurotic’, Harris described in a report how Pujol arranged a plan to convince her he was under arrest for her conduct. The idea calmed her and saved new arguments. To add to this ruse; Araceli was taken to an interrogation centre where he husband was supposedly a prisoner, but two days later he apologised promising ‘I would never do anything’ which could jeopardise my work as a spy.
After the war, Pujol moved to Angola and there faked his own death, a traditional procedure in intelligence services. He then went to Venezuela to start a new life and died in 1988, after returning to Spain and gave talks on his story in several interviews.
The British historian Christopher Andrew, who wrote the official biography of the MI5, discovered after the declassification of the document Pujol was ‘the most important double-agent during the Second World War and probably in all of the XX century’.
Joan Pujol - archive photo
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‘Garbo’ convinced the Germans that the landing in Normandy on June 6 1944 was a manoeuvre of distraction and the British troops had decided to land in Europe close to Calais, in the far NW of France. Pujol told Berlin that ‘the present attack was an operation of large scale distraction with the proposal to establish a solid landing and to attract the largest number of German reserves to retain them and then a second landing would be sure of success’ narrated Tomas Harris, an agent who assessed Garbo in an official report from June 13 1944 ‘He pointed them in the wrong direction’ he noted.
The importance of Pujol was known by the testimonies of Harris and other protagonists of the time, but the official documents declassified today confirm this and makes him a grander figure.
Pujol – animated by his hate of fascists and communists acquired in the Spanish Guardia Civil, started his career of transmitting false information about Britain to the Germans from his invented home in Lisbon, although the Germans were eager to contract him when he was visiting the embassy in Madrid, because he told them he was living in London.
This information on this network of invented spies has been compiled ‘in a tourism guide, with a map of England and incorrect times for the trains’ according to a MI5 report dated July 12 1943. ‘Fortunately he had a simple and sensationalist style, great ingenuity, and a passionate quixotic fervour for his work’ adds the report.
Pujol was born in Barcelona in 1912 into a middle class family. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) he lived his first experience of conflict. The conflict surprised him on the republican side but he ended up deserting Franco. Despite initially declining the British interest, the British MI5 thought he was an ideal candidate for a double-agent, employed him and he arrived in London in April 1942. But his wife, Araceli González, did not adapt to the British lifestyle.
On June 21 1943, a woman called Harris threatening to abandon Pujol and go to the Spanish embassy in London to reveal her husband’s secrets, at least be allowed back to Spain.
Her anger resulted in her husband denied to take her to dinner and used diplomatic staff instead. The day after her threats, an MI5 agent went to the family home and found the woman ‘sitting in the kitchen with all the gas taps open’.
Describing the woman as ‘highly sensitive and neurotic’, Harris described in a report how Pujol arranged a plan to convince her he was under arrest for her conduct. The idea calmed her and saved new arguments. To add to this ruse; Araceli was taken to an interrogation centre where he husband was supposedly a prisoner, but two days later he apologised promising ‘I would never do anything’ which could jeopardise my work as a spy.
After the war, Pujol moved to Angola and there faked his own death, a traditional procedure in intelligence services. He then went to Venezuela to start a new life and died in 1988, after returning to Spain and gave talks on his story in several interviews.
The British historian Christopher Andrew, who wrote the official biography of the MI5, discovered after the declassification of the document Pujol was ‘the most important double-agent during the Second World War and probably in all of the XX century’.
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