March 7, 2019 • 39 mins
When Juan Pujol first volunteered to spy for the British during World War II, they didn’t take him seriously. That all changed when he got a gig spying for the German government. Listen to learn the story of one of World War II’s most successful double agents.
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
So it's no secret that here on Ridiculous History we
often explore the stories of con artists, people who make
their way through the world via subterfuge and deception. We
often talk about this uh in in uh in a
villainous sense. We talked about malicious con artists, you know, liars, fraudsters,
(00:46):
things of that nature. But today we're talking about a
good sort of con, a con for the greater benefit
of humanity. We're talking about one of the most well
known and most successful spies of World War Two. Also,
(01:07):
I'm Ben Ben. You are Ben, If that's your real name,
I have many names. My name is Noel with the
one and only Noel Well, I'm gonna go by Noel
the fire Starter Brown today in honor of Keith Flint r.
I p. Keith Flint the Twisted fire Starter. And that
(01:28):
is Casey. That's our super producer, Casey Pegro. That's the one.
A little short aside my first concert ever Tabernacle Atlanta,
Georgia Prodigy with Meat Beat Manifesto as the opener. How
was How was the show? It was great? You know,
you never really know what to expect from like an
electronic show. Sometimes it's just dude standing behind a laptop.
(01:51):
But they really really put everything into that performance. They
had the dancers, which which was Keith's primary role, and uh,
there was like a pit and it was really intense,
and it was a little scary as like a fourteen
year old or whatever. Oh man, I bet you were
almost afraid you were gonna get like steamrolled. Yeah, exactly.
Then there were a lot of big dudes there. Well
that's the thing too with with Keith and the Prodigy,
(02:12):
and like his vocals were almost more like punk rocks,
shouty kind of stuff, and that was the time in
the nineties where techno there was a pit. It was
almost more of like a punk rock aesthetic where if
you know the iconic fire Starter video where he's kind
of like mugging into the camera and he's all pierced up,
and it was like, we've never seen a dude like
that in the States at that point, short of like
(02:34):
the sex Pistols or something like that. And so he's
a very iconic looking guy, and his vocal style was
absolutely copied and even parodied because it became such an
iconic part of like the sound of like nineties electronic
It was percussive, almost until like his vocals were in
almost an instrument of punctuation and percussion. Speaking of iconic.
(02:55):
Before we get today's show, we do have an announcement
that will make uh, well, we'll make rough sense, but
we'll make even more sense if you are a member
of our community page Ridiculous Historians. So in a previous episode, folks,
Nolan I had kicked around the the idea of a
(03:15):
T shirt with Casey's face on it, and Casey will, uh,
you know, we're we're all actually friends even when we're
not on the air. So we asked Casey if it
was cool with it, and we got a hard man. Man.
It was a hard man. It was a hard man.
And uh, now we have an announcement. We had taken
(03:36):
a break earlier today and Casey, you you said that
you would be comfortable with us having having a photo
of you on a T shirt, but only a very
particular kind of photo. Now, I don't know if we
should spoil the surprise just yet, but but tune in
later because we have we have something very special coming
(03:59):
up for all our fans of Casey on the Case. Yeah,
we can just say that we're going to tie up
a loosen from earlier in the show's history. If you've
been listening for a while, Uh, there were certain things
that are promised earli early on and that will maybe
come to fruition now. I love it. I love how
this This feels like subterfuge. It feels like we're talking
(04:19):
in spycraft, right, it really does, Ben And way to
bring it back around at the actual topic of today's show,
a well, which you set up a very famous gentleman
who wasn't at the time famous for much of anything.
He was kind of waffling in his life, in his career,
in his prospects. I think he ran kind of a
third rate motel in Spain. A man whose last name
(04:39):
you may know, uh, pougeol One, poujol Garcia. Yeah, born
in nineteen twelve on Valentine's Day. Fun fact, he was
one of those people who's sort of like a compass
swinging and searching for true north. As you said, no,
he ran a ran a motel. I believe he ran
(05:00):
in a movie theater as well. For a while, it
was going job to job. Um. He didn't feel like
the academy or higher education was his particular bag of beings.
But he lived in Spain and in n one he
did his six months of compulsory military service in Spain. Uh.
(05:24):
And he hated working for the military, which would come
in handy later. Uh. He hated everything about it. He
specifically said, did you see this quote? He specifically said
that he lacked the essential qualities of loyalty, generosity, and
honor necessary to be a good member of the military. Yeah,
but something that he did have in spades was a
(05:47):
vibrant imagination and an ability to kind of almost just
sink into the background and be simultaneously able to convince
people of things and also be completely a non quous
and unnoticed. Just a super important skill to have if
you are to be a spy. Let alone, what Peugal
became just one of the most famous double agents in
(06:09):
the history of military affairs? Right right? But how how
did this guy who was a relatively unhappy manager of
things and a relatively dissatisfied member of society, how did
he move from mediocrity to excellence? Also, I want to say,
(06:30):
did we mention I think we mentioned this earlier on
the show in a previous episode. You hit on the
crucial definition of an effective spynal. An effective spy is
not James Bond. In fact, if you think about it,
James Bond is a terrible, terrible, terrible spy. He's drunk
all the time, he uses his real name. He is
(06:52):
super flashy, you know what I mean. A real A
real spy is the guy who's in the corner or
the ladies in the corner, like ten ms away from
James Bond taking notes. You know, this guy was not
James Bond. This guy was not James Bond. And let's
look at how he became so successful. Let's go back
(07:12):
to the nineteen thirties. In ninety six, the Spanish Civil
War begins. He is managing a poultry farm. His sister's
fiance is captured by the Republican forces and then his
sister and his mother are arrested, their charged with being
counter revolutionaries, and he gets called up for service on
(07:36):
the Republican side of the war. But because the Republican
government treated his family so poorly, he says, I'm going
to skip out, and he hides at his girlfriend's house
and then he's discovered and the police raid. He goes
to jail for a week. He's freed via a resistance group,
and then he hides with them until he can make
(07:57):
some false I D s really that show him to
be too old to be in the army. And so
he goes back to managing another poultry farm, but this
one's under control of the Republican government, and the inefficiency
of the farm and the inefficiency of the government, according
to his life story, makes him hate Communism even more
(08:19):
than you already hated it, that's right. Uh. And then
he ends up in said third rate motel in Madrid,
which was ever so ironically named the Majestic Fantastic Mental
philoss article goes through some of this history of this
fascinating man um. So he hates Communism at this point,
(08:39):
he is not living his best life. He is depressed.
He is just kind of you know, Spain is just
crumbling around him with the civil war, uh that they
were doing. They were going so far as to like
turning bull rings into um theaters, I guess for like
public executions. It was not a happy place to be.
So he's already learned to kind of keep his head
(09:00):
down and blend into the background and be as onoxious
as possible as not to you know, catch a bullet
because he also he doesn't sympathize with either either side
of this conflict. He hates the communists and he also
hates the fascists right because he rejoined that Republican side
using these false papers and he intended to get out
of the area they controlled to Dessert and he deserts
to the nationalist side of the conflict, and then they
(09:24):
treat him like garbage too, So he says, you know what,
I hate it. I hate the communist, I hate the fascist.
And then he is learning increasingly to try to keep
his head down. So through his post at this hotel
and through the just the ramshackled nature of Spain during
(09:44):
the Civil War, he ends up becoming kind of successful
at helping people procure things. He meets too pro Franco
princesses who are aging and they really want to get
their hands on some scotch. So he decided, okay, I'm
going to smuggle in some scotch from over the border
in Portugal, and he's able to get papers. He doesn't
(10:07):
have a passport at the time, um and does this
job for these princesses and that gives him the papers
that he needs to then leave the country. So he
leaves the country, but there's terrible timing involved, because just
a few weeks earlier, in September of nineteen thirty nine,
(10:27):
England had declared war on Germany and German forces led
by Adolf Hitler. We're starting to eat up Europe. The
word about the concentration camps had had leaked to the public,
and Peujole found himself trapped. He found himself trapped, and
(10:48):
he found himself incensed, livid. He wrote about this later
in a book called Operation Garbo, which came out in
and we have a quote, yeah, and this is from
that mental flow, this article that we highly recommend you
checking out. He says, my humanist convictions would not allow
me to turn a blind dive of the enormous suffering
that was being unleashed by this psychopath Hitler, and he
(11:10):
um decided he wanted to do something about it. This
is so, this is so great because he had limited
military training, he wasn't very good at it, and he
hated he hated it. He basically defected and then now
he's like running booze for aged you know, princesses Um,
And all of a sudden he like he hears his calling. Yeah,
his his compass that was swinging wildly finds its true north.
(11:35):
And this is the part that always cracks me up.
In January of n he was he strolls into the
British embassy, he moses in and he's he says, hey, um,
do you guys do you guys want to like a
do you want like a spy or something like? You know,
I I'm interested in contributing to the effort, but I
(11:56):
don't think the military is for me. And then they
say you can't just walk in here and say make
me a spy. What are your qualifications? Do you know
anything about spying? Do you hold an important government position?
Can't you do anything? What do you bring to the
table other than your desire to be sneaking? Yeah. The
Brits aren't exactly known for their like willingness to just
(12:17):
kind of like riff and just go with it and
roll with it right now. They want some They want
some bona fides from this guy. They want to be
able to vet him and prove that he actually is
what he says he is and can do what he
says he can do. So they send him a pack
in so He's like, okay, okay, I know what my
end game has. My end game is to help out
the Brits. But they don't need me right now because
(12:39):
I am nothing to them. What what am I? So
he decides to do the most insane thing, the most
insane turn about. I am going to make myself indispensable
and an asset to the Germans, the enemy of my friend,
or my perceived friend, the folks who I want to
be aligned with. So he goes to the Germans. They
(13:00):
are a little bit more willing to kind of like
take what they can get and installed various spies of
various pedigrees, and so they more or less take him
at his word. And what's his cover story? Ben Oh?
So he he literally calls the German embassy and his
cover story is a list of absolute bs. He is
(13:27):
winging it, he's improvising, you know, I love good improvisation.
And he meets a guy with a code name Federico.
So he meets this guy and this is total, this
(13:50):
is total, straight out of the movies kind of spy stuff. Right,
He's told this, there will be this guy Federico in
a light suit holding a raincoat in the back of
a cafe. This guy's trained to spot frauds, and Brujole says,
first off, let me tell you this, and he starts
talking about how much he loves Hitler. He's very, very
(14:11):
pro Nazi, he loves their whole thing. And then he
starts saying that he is friends with a ton of diplomats,
a ton of v I p s, very influential people.
This impresses his contact that he meets and he gets
his callback, as you would phrase it in the world
of auditions. He gets his he gets his call back.
(14:31):
But there's one problem with these diplomats, isn't there No,
they're all bogus. That's true. They're not real, and neither
are the reports that he is giving them what he
refers to as chicken feed, little bits and bob's of
military supposed military intelligence, like the movement of troops and
battalions throughout England, et cetera. And he cobbles together these
(14:55):
facts that I guess he did. He make them up
off the top of his head. Yeah, but he makes
them up so they sound so convincing that even the
Brits start thinking they have a mole because someone is
like leaking this uh, even though they're vague and not real.
How how did he do that? Man? I'm I'm a
little kind I'm a little foggy on how this happened,
because apparently the Brits caught wind of some of this
(15:17):
intelligence that was being leaked to the Germans, and they're like, whoa, whoa,
We've got to put a cap on this league that
we have, right, Okay, So here's how it happens. The
contact that he meets says, look, we we don't need
any more Nazi spice in Spain. We need someone to
(15:41):
go abroad. And the guys like, cool, I've got a passport,
he says, go to Lisbon, get an exit visa. And
he goes to Lisbon. Looks like a dead end, looks
like he can't get the document he needs a diplomatic visa.
But he befriends a guy in Portugal who is is
able to help him get this visa. Well, he steals
(16:04):
the visa essentially by help him get the visa. He
befriends the guy and steals it, and then he forges
this document. He comes back to Spain, he shows he
shows his contact Federico, and the guy is impressed. So
he says, all right, I'll give you this stuff you need.
I'll give you invisible ink. Let'll give you the codes
(16:24):
we use. Here's three grand and here's your code name, Arabelle.
So ben I was looking desperately. I'm like, surely he
had some real intel that he was using to, you know,
make these reports that he was delivering to the Germans
seem more believable. But no, it just turns out he
was just so good at crafting what sounded like realistic
(16:45):
intel that even the Brits were concerned that they had
somebody funneling information to the Germans. And there's an amazing
interview with author Stephen Talti, who wrote a book entitled
Agent Garbo, The Brilliant, eccentric secret Agent who Rick Hitler
and Save D Day, and he describes the British response
to what they perceived as a very real threat in
(17:07):
terms of information being funneled to the Germans. He says
the British were terrified. They were like, someone has sneaked
past our lines and someone is in the heart of
the beast reporting on us. Because Pugel's reports were so
believable even to the people in the country that he
was supposed to be spying on. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
great article in big think dot com about this story
(17:28):
as well. The article is Juan pougeol Garcia, the w
W two double agent who secretly controlled the war. I
know it sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but here's here's
what happened. He did fool everybody. He said, okay, I
will go to London. So his German spymasters think he
is in London. But as as we mentioned, he has
(17:52):
never been to London. He doesn't speak English, and he
just starts making stuff up using a tour guide, using
publicly available information from newsreels, and then he also starts
making a spy network in London. Again, he's still in Portugal.
He's making a spy network in London with people who
(18:14):
do not exist. And these reports sound so realistic that
they fool the British. They fool the British intelligence services,
and the British launch a man hunt to find this
mysterious Arabelle. Yeah, they've given him this name the Germans.
Germans answered Prairie and what a wiley fox this this was? Now,
(18:40):
he he didn't get everything right. The reports weren't perfect.
But at the time the British were panicking because they
were supposed to be no Axis spies in Britain. And
there was one huge trick that made the British believe
in his value as a spy. He invented an entirely
(19:02):
fictional armada of British armada in Malta, and based on
the reports of this again fictitious armada, the Axis powers
spent a ton of time and money trying to find them.
They responded in full force. They got there. There was
nothing there, of course, and they continued to still trust
(19:23):
his information. So finally, finally, finally, finally, in ninety two,
based primarily on that story of the armada, he was
able to convince the British to hire him. Do you
think he was like, Hey, remember me, I'm back. I've
got something for you that I think he'll make you
want me. Please want me? The British, Um, No, but
(19:45):
he They do want him, Boy, do they ever want him?
He is the Not only is he the Germans answered prayers,
he's actually their worst nightmare. It turns out he is
the British is answered prayers. Um. And he is handed
over to the Security Service for handling. Let's say, Um,
there he is. He's assigned an officer by the name
of Tama or Tommy Harris, who speaks Spanish. Because again
(20:07):
this is mind blowing to me. He doesn't speak English,
you know, he does not speak English. Um. And then
what followed was a partnership between the two men, um,
who were very well matched. Um. And there's a really
great article on the history of m I five m
I five dot gov dot UK slash Agent Garbos, the whole,
(20:27):
the whole deal there, um. And they really complimented each other,
and they had this give and take relationship that allowed
them to be synergistically effective. I mean, really, really an
incredible pairing of these two guys. Yeah. Absolutely, And it's
strange to look back, with the benefit of all this
stuff being declassified later and see just how extraordinarily ambitious
(20:52):
and ballsy this stuff was. He eventually he invented twenty
seven fictional sub agents, and he would assign various reports
to these people, so it would rarely be him finding
out something directly, would rarely be Arabel. Arabel became a
spy master as far as the Nazis were concerned, but
(21:14):
his reports were We're mixed up in a very clever way.
Sometimes it would be stuff that was true but didn't
matter at all, you know what I mean, like oh,
the um they're paving some road in London or whatever.
Sometimes it would be incredibly false stuff, right, something is wrong,
or it's in a different location, or the numbers are different.
(21:35):
Sometimes it would be real stuff that was very valuable,
and that stuff just never made it to Germany on time,
and say like oh okay, a two week old report
says in a week this will happen. Well, because having
real access to m I five and to all of
this information obviously upped his game in terms of double
(21:56):
agent nous. Right before he was succeeding just by his
own you know, moxie. Right now he's actually got the
real goods to weave in some of those real true
facts and make the Germans really believe he was still
on their side. So here's a cool example of that.
He gave Germany accurate intel on Allied forces landing in
(22:17):
North Africa. And the letter is postmarked before the landing,
but timed to arrive after the landing. And so instead
of getting irritated with the guy, the Nazis apologize. They say,
this is great information and it's are bad that we
didn't act. Curse the post office, you stamps dot com
(22:41):
and stand yes, stamps dot com. That's our commercial for
stamps dot com. So so what what happens next? Like,
how is he able to successfully keep this rigamarole going?
That's a really good question, Ben. Before we go there,
I want to backtrack ever socialized to show the Cohon
asked the true kahone of our boy Peugeol when he
(23:01):
went to the Germans and gave them this BS cover story.
It was all stuff they totally could have verified or
or you know, shot down. They just didn't do their
homework basically right because they had access to Portugal or
to to Lisbon, and they just didn't do it. For
whatever reason. They were so thirsty for what he had
to offer, because he did such a good job of
(23:22):
like you know, doing kind of uh up close magic
kind of misdirection right, So that is incredible. He could
have died instantly. They would have put him in a
concentration camp lickety split if they had found out that
he was he was trying to play them. So, yes,
how do they maintain this subterfuge ben as he has
now been gifted with the uh, the assistance of the Brits.
(23:44):
Um he they are still they are like upping their game.
They've got three D and fifteen documents they've sent back
to the Germans, some of which are peppered with real information,
but too late, fake information that makes them think that
they're actually getting some help. How does this kind of
come to critical mass? Ben ah well uh he he
(24:06):
kept escalating his stunts his cons. We mentioned his imaginary spies.
They included traveling salesman, a waiter who lives in a cave,
a retired Welsh seamen, an Indian poet, someone with O
C D radio mechanic. Uh. These folks filed expense reports
(24:28):
and some earned salaries. They were their expenses were paid,
and their salaries were paid by the Nazi Party. Bye.
He has become one of their favorite people, one of
Germany's favorite people. As far as Bycraft is concerned. The
spy ring that Abo sends him new cipher's new vials
of disappearing inc And this just makes it easier for
(24:51):
m I five to crack codes. The Nazis in one
memo compare him to an army of forty thousand in.
He's that valuable, and he decides to cook up his
biggest lie yet. Is this Operation Fortitude, man that you're
talking about, Is this is Operation Fortitude? Lay it on us? Yeah?
(25:12):
So we've got January Nino. The Germans um believed that
the Allies were getting ready for a large scale European invasion,
and they passed this information on to Pougeol and they
asked him to help keep them abreast of any developments,
any new information. So, uh, this gave Pougeol what he
(25:34):
needed to really turn the tables and give the Allies
the upper hand big time. Right, So, under the code
name Overlord, British and American forces planned to invade occupied Europe. Yeah,
so the Germans were right. They they they thought they
knew what was going on, and they were absolutely correct.
(25:55):
So how is Pougeol able to give what would seem
like the upper handed Germany for Germany and flip it
back around and make D Day a guaranteed success? Right?
We have to mention his code name was Arabelle to
the Nazis, but he had a code name to the
British once they hired him. It was Agent Garbo, named
(26:16):
after Greta Garbow because they thought he was such a
good actor. And I will tell you if you see,
he's got some pictures better, really funny head shot there
like head shots. He's dressed in like a German military
garb and he's just doing this real actors type grin
and it really looks like somebody wearing a costume, uh,
(26:37):
preparing to go into a role. And then you see
his passport pictures and he looks almost like a different
person exactly. He's a little disheveled. But yes, so Agent Garbo,
as he is known in the Allied Forces, in the
Allied intelligence networks, he has a crucial role to play.
The German high command needs to be misled about the
(26:58):
location of the landings. They decide on the actual point
of attack the beaches at Normandy, and their next move
is to persuade German forces that the invasion force would
be much much further north, confirming what Hitler had originally
thought was going to be the most likely point of contact.
(27:20):
Garbo's agents would report authoritatively that the Normandy landings were
themselves a ruse and there was a much bigger attack
to come. So on June nine, he sends a key
memo and it just happened to be on a super
crucial day when Hitler and his cronies, his toady's, his
(27:40):
military high command, were trying to decide whether Normandy was
the real deal or whether it was some kind of subterfuge,
and they were trying to plan the movement of their
troops and where they wanted to send the bulk of them. Um,
they had some in in Belgium, and they had some
in France, and they what we're trying to decide whether
they should dive them down to Normandy and completely head
(28:03):
off this invasion. Pugil sent this telegram saying, no, this
is fake. Seriously, you're wasting your time. Don't use those
resources at Normandy. Send them elsewhere, because this is what's
really happening. And at the time those forces were already
on the move. So this was a clutch decision on
the Germans. And a telegram received right at the exact
(28:26):
right time. If it had been a little later would
have been too late, right, they would they they would
not have rediverted the troops, I imagine, because it would
have been taken too long. Time was of the essence,
they made their bed, they were gonna lie in it.
But it was this crucial time where a change of
plan was possible, and the Panzer divisions were already moving
toward Normandy, but Adolf Hitler sent in order based on
(28:50):
this telegram and turned them around uh sending them instead
to the northern point of contacts. In this sly was
so effective that through July and August of that year,
the Nazi forces kept two armored divisions and nineteenth infantry
divisions in that northern point in anticipation of an imminent invasion.
(29:21):
So you would think after D Day, you would you
would imagine that after all this stuff goes down and
this house of cards collapses, that arabel A k. Garbo's
reputation would be ruined amongst the German intelligence circles. However,
that was not the case. In fact, he won a
(29:42):
very prestigious award, prestigious, if we would say it in
the British way, from the Germans, but from the Germans
they got the Iron Cross. The Iron Cross was rendered
for his extraordinary services to Germany. And the thing is
this had to be a proved by Adolf Hitler himself,
(30:02):
so he was notified he had been awarded the Iron Cross,
and then he and Harris said, you know, thank you
so much. It's such an honor, truly unworthy, but I'll
take it. And this is such a like, oh, it's
like a total f you type thing where they collaborated
on this message together Pugel and Harris. Harris was not
(30:25):
known to the Germans, obviously, Pugeol was exclusively their point
of contact, and they talked about offering you humble, thanks,
humble thanks, such an honor. Stop keep going, but yeah, totally.
And yet Pugel remained unexposed to the Germans. But by
September forty four, there have been a few close calls
(30:47):
that uh, you know of of Pugel potentially being exposed
unmasked to the Nazis. Um didn't happen, but the British
Security Service was like, we're going to take extra care
to make sure that you are guarded against any potential
retribution from the Germans. But that didn't even ultimately prove
to be necessary because the war ended, and they even
were hoping that his background would allow him to get
(31:09):
into postwar Nazi Germany and continue to do some good work.
As you said, he feared reprisal from Nazi survivors. The
Nazis never realized at this point that they had been fooled,
and as Agent Garbo, he received an MBE from the
King on the twenty November, the most Excellent Order of
(31:35):
the British Empire. So he is one of the few,
if not the only, person to receive prestigious awards from
both Germany and the Allies. That is most excellent. Here's
an even cooler thing. I feel like this is the
ultimate bragging, right, What do you do when you're the
spies pulled off everything? When you do one last one,
last con, one big job on, one last one big job,
(31:58):
one last ice uh. With the help of him, I
five Brugol travels to Angola and fakes his death in
for the ultimate cover against the Germans. He dies of malaria.
He also moves to Venezuela and he starts managing his
story again. He runs a bookstory and gift shop. That's
(32:19):
all I ever wanted, Quiet life of a shopkeeper m HM. Eventually,
though Thomas Harris is remember him his friend Anthony Blunt,
who turned out to be a Soviet spy right, who
had penetrated in my five. Eventually, this Anthony Blunt guy
says that he met Garbo and knew him as either
(32:39):
Joan or Jose Garcia, and people started searching for this
guy in. A British politician named Rupert Allison was interested
in the case of Garbow and everyone he talked to
did not know Garbo's real name. That's how that's how
high the secrecy was the Soviets. By Blunt gives him
(33:01):
that lead on a Jose Garcia, and the guy is
still searching. He eventually hires research assistant to get this
call every j Garcia in the Barcelona Foam book, and
eventually they get in contact with Pejol's nephew, and then
Rupert Allison finally meets Pejole in New Orleans in nineteen
(33:24):
four and then Allison's like, dude, you're awesome. Thanks by
the way, thanks for thanks for d Day, thanks for
all the cool stuff you did. Will you go hang
out with Prince Philip because he'd loved to meet you.
He goes, Okay, yeah, I'll go. What do they do
where they hang They have some tea? We don't know,
We just knew it was a quote. Unusually long audience,
(33:47):
so if you know, Prince Philippo is probably like, tell
me a wall stories, yes please, I want to hear those. Yeah,
and then he he died in Caracas, where he lived
pretty anonymously, like I said, quiet life of a shop keep.
Um who happened to be one of the most badass
and outlandish and uh effective double agents. And I'm telling
(34:10):
the history of spycraft is certainly the one we know about, right,
Definitely no James Bond, Bravado and this guy. He was
simultaneously brazen and perfectly measured in the way he did.
He pulled this stuff off because you have to have
some kind of throwing caution to the wind kind of
attitude to even attempt some of this stuff. But you
(34:31):
can't just you can't be reckless, right, He had to
like kind of have a system and stick to it
and have some discipline, you know, I mean, really really
interesting character. Some of his fictional sub agents also met.
They're in Agent one retired, in Agent six died, so
he he followed up on their lives as well. Dude,
(34:51):
some of these fictional agents had richer lives than than
I have had. So I mean, this is very very precise,
detail oriented stuff. With this guy's building these fictional universes,
I mean, his world building and his finest what this
guy is doing. And if you'd like to read more
about one Crugal Garcia, there is the book we mentioned Garbo.
(35:13):
There's also a great article on Badass of the Week
dot com, which I think is is cool. If you're
ever listening to one of our pure podcasts, Behind the Bastards,
which is an excellent show, and you're feeling down about
life in general, then you can find out about some
historic good guys on Badass of the Week dot com.
And it's funny you think of this guy is a badass,
and he certainly was. But a good spy probably doesn't
(35:36):
have to kill very often, right, a good spot. You
only have to kill if you're either an assassin or
your cover is blown right, right, and he didn't kill it. Well,
he is responsible for death, absolutely, but you don't hear
any stories of him having to have you know, slipped
someone on poison dart or something like that or a
little no no. He's a way better spy than James Bond.
I agree. I agree, James Bond uh is is kind
(35:59):
of a hack. Yeah, when you think about it, so
hopefully we don't get too much hate mail about that.
I will admit I do enjoy the films. I do,
and they're all on Netflix now, by the way, even
even like the Timothy Dalton ones and like the Roger
all of them, I don't really want to dig back in.
You know what else is on on streaming? Now? What's that?
It's a recommendation, I guess. Um. If we're doing that,
(36:20):
I think wrapped up with the show. Um. On Amazon
Prime you can find this insane cash of terrible eighties
B movies in all of these genres like sword and sorcery,
kind of slasher type genre movies, spy thrillers. But they're
like the Sea Level ones. They're the ones that were like,
so you had your Cone in the Barbarian, which is
(36:41):
a big hit. Then you have this whole pile of
like kind of copycat movies that are very entertaining and
very They do not age well, but there are a
lot of fun if you want to dig in. On
Amazon Prime. I have a comic book recommendation. I may
have said this before a matter of fact, that bet
I have, but I want to put the word out
there because I just reread it. There is a comic
(37:01):
series called Uber and it's follow up is Uber Invasion.
It's an historical account of World War Two if specific
type of superpower were discovered. I don't want to say
any more than that. I don't want to spoil it.
It's amazing. You should You should check it out if
(37:21):
you are at all interested in good graphic novels. It
is ongoing, so at this point, I don't know how
it ends either. I would love to hear your opinion
about it. Uh, you can tell us about this. You
can tell us about some of your favorite spy stories
on our Instagram, on our Facebook, on Twitter, on Facebook,
we highly recommend you check out your fellow listeners opinions
(37:45):
on our community page Ridiculous Historians. You can follow us
and believe we're Ridiculous History Show on Instagram. That's right,
Ridiculous History Show on Instagram. And I am personally at
Embryonic Insider. You feel like hanging out with me and
I am at ben Boland if you feel like seeing
some weird stuff. No spoilers here. Really, that's a good tease, man,
(38:08):
that's a good tease. I don't think you'll be let
down either. Then gets up to some shenanigans. I'll tell you.
If you don't want to do that stuff, he can
send us an email ridiculous at how stuff works dot com.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Yeah, thanks
to Casey Pegram who composed our hearts. The theme of
our Hearts, that's what he composed. If that's his real name,
well I think it possibly might not be, but I
(38:28):
am going to respect his privacy. Yes, yes, what if
his what if his real name is just a clever
switcheroo of the letters? What if his real name is
like pac? I like that? That's pretty fun? And thanks
to our research associate Gabe. Thanks to thanks to you know,
this has been an absolute pleasure. And now I'm going
to spend the afternoon figuring out what what our cool
(38:50):
spy nicknames would be. Will you be sure and let
me know? Ben, you let me know if you've got one. Hey,
let us know if you've got one. We'll see you
next time, folks. O
So it's no secret that here on Ridiculous History we
often explore the stories of con artists, people who make
their way through the world via subterfuge and deception. We
often talk about this uh in in uh in a
villainous sense. We talked about malicious con artists, you know, liars, fraudsters,
(00:46):
things of that nature. But today we're talking about a
good sort of con, a con for the greater benefit
of humanity. We're talking about one of the most well
known and most successful spies of World War Two. Also,
(01:07):
I'm Ben Ben. You are Ben, If that's your real name,
I have many names. My name is Noel with the
one and only Noel Well, I'm gonna go by Noel
the fire Starter Brown today in honor of Keith Flint r.
I p. Keith Flint the Twisted fire Starter. And that
(01:28):
is Casey. That's our super producer, Casey Pegro. That's the one.
A little short aside my first concert ever Tabernacle Atlanta,
Georgia Prodigy with Meat Beat Manifesto as the opener. How
was How was the show? It was great? You know,
you never really know what to expect from like an
electronic show. Sometimes it's just dude standing behind a laptop.
(01:51):
But they really really put everything into that performance. They
had the dancers, which which was Keith's primary role, and uh,
there was like a pit and it was really intense,
and it was a little scary as like a fourteen
year old or whatever. Oh man, I bet you were
almost afraid you were gonna get like steamrolled. Yeah, exactly.
Then there were a lot of big dudes there. Well
that's the thing too with with Keith and the Prodigy,
(02:12):
and like his vocals were almost more like punk rocks,
shouty kind of stuff, and that was the time in
the nineties where techno there was a pit. It was
almost more of like a punk rock aesthetic where if
you know the iconic fire Starter video where he's kind
of like mugging into the camera and he's all pierced up,
and it was like, we've never seen a dude like
that in the States at that point, short of like
(02:34):
the sex Pistols or something like that. And so he's
a very iconic looking guy, and his vocal style was
absolutely copied and even parodied because it became such an
iconic part of like the sound of like nineties electronic
It was percussive, almost until like his vocals were in
almost an instrument of punctuation and percussion. Speaking of iconic.
(02:55):
Before we get today's show, we do have an announcement
that will make uh, well, we'll make rough sense, but
we'll make even more sense if you are a member
of our community page Ridiculous Historians. So in a previous episode, folks,
Nolan I had kicked around the the idea of a
(03:15):
T shirt with Casey's face on it, and Casey will, uh,
you know, we're we're all actually friends even when we're
not on the air. So we asked Casey if it
was cool with it, and we got a hard man. Man.
It was a hard man. It was a hard man.
And uh, now we have an announcement. We had taken
(03:36):
a break earlier today and Casey, you you said that
you would be comfortable with us having having a photo
of you on a T shirt, but only a very
particular kind of photo. Now, I don't know if we
should spoil the surprise just yet, but but tune in
later because we have we have something very special coming
(03:59):
up for all our fans of Casey on the Case. Yeah,
we can just say that we're going to tie up
a loosen from earlier in the show's history. If you've
been listening for a while, Uh, there were certain things
that are promised earli early on and that will maybe
come to fruition now. I love it. I love how
this This feels like subterfuge. It feels like we're talking
(04:19):
in spycraft, right, it really does, Ben And way to
bring it back around at the actual topic of today's show,
a well, which you set up a very famous gentleman
who wasn't at the time famous for much of anything.
He was kind of waffling in his life, in his career,
in his prospects. I think he ran kind of a
third rate motel in Spain. A man whose last name
(04:39):
you may know, uh, pougeol One, poujol Garcia. Yeah, born
in nineteen twelve on Valentine's Day. Fun fact, he was
one of those people who's sort of like a compass
swinging and searching for true north. As you said, no,
he ran a ran a motel. I believe he ran
(05:00):
in a movie theater as well. For a while, it
was going job to job. Um. He didn't feel like
the academy or higher education was his particular bag of beings.
But he lived in Spain and in n one he
did his six months of compulsory military service in Spain. Uh.
(05:24):
And he hated working for the military, which would come
in handy later. Uh. He hated everything about it. He
specifically said, did you see this quote? He specifically said
that he lacked the essential qualities of loyalty, generosity, and
honor necessary to be a good member of the military. Yeah,
but something that he did have in spades was a
(05:47):
vibrant imagination and an ability to kind of almost just
sink into the background and be simultaneously able to convince
people of things and also be completely a non quous
and unnoticed. Just a super important skill to have if
you are to be a spy. Let alone, what Peugal
became just one of the most famous double agents in
(06:09):
the history of military affairs? Right right? But how how
did this guy who was a relatively unhappy manager of
things and a relatively dissatisfied member of society, how did
he move from mediocrity to excellence? Also, I want to say,
(06:30):
did we mention I think we mentioned this earlier on
the show in a previous episode. You hit on the
crucial definition of an effective spynal. An effective spy is
not James Bond. In fact, if you think about it,
James Bond is a terrible, terrible, terrible spy. He's drunk
all the time, he uses his real name. He is
(06:52):
super flashy, you know what I mean. A real A
real spy is the guy who's in the corner or
the ladies in the corner, like ten ms away from
James Bond taking notes. You know, this guy was not
James Bond. This guy was not James Bond. And let's
look at how he became so successful. Let's go back
(07:12):
to the nineteen thirties. In ninety six, the Spanish Civil
War begins. He is managing a poultry farm. His sister's
fiance is captured by the Republican forces and then his
sister and his mother are arrested, their charged with being
counter revolutionaries, and he gets called up for service on
(07:36):
the Republican side of the war. But because the Republican
government treated his family so poorly, he says, I'm going
to skip out, and he hides at his girlfriend's house
and then he's discovered and the police raid. He goes
to jail for a week. He's freed via a resistance group,
and then he hides with them until he can make
(07:57):
some false I D s really that show him to
be too old to be in the army. And so
he goes back to managing another poultry farm, but this
one's under control of the Republican government, and the inefficiency
of the farm and the inefficiency of the government, according
to his life story, makes him hate Communism even more
(08:19):
than you already hated it, that's right. Uh. And then
he ends up in said third rate motel in Madrid,
which was ever so ironically named the Majestic Fantastic Mental
philoss article goes through some of this history of this
fascinating man um. So he hates Communism at this point,
(08:39):
he is not living his best life. He is depressed.
He is just kind of you know, Spain is just
crumbling around him with the civil war, uh that they
were doing. They were going so far as to like
turning bull rings into um theaters, I guess for like
public executions. It was not a happy place to be.
So he's already learned to kind of keep his head
(09:00):
down and blend into the background and be as onoxious
as possible as not to you know, catch a bullet
because he also he doesn't sympathize with either either side
of this conflict. He hates the communists and he also
hates the fascists right because he rejoined that Republican side
using these false papers and he intended to get out
of the area they controlled to Dessert and he deserts
to the nationalist side of the conflict, and then they
(09:24):
treat him like garbage too, So he says, you know what,
I hate it. I hate the communist, I hate the fascist.
And then he is learning increasingly to try to keep
his head down. So through his post at this hotel
and through the just the ramshackled nature of Spain during
(09:44):
the Civil War, he ends up becoming kind of successful
at helping people procure things. He meets too pro Franco
princesses who are aging and they really want to get
their hands on some scotch. So he decided, okay, I'm
going to smuggle in some scotch from over the border
in Portugal, and he's able to get papers. He doesn't
(10:07):
have a passport at the time, um and does this
job for these princesses and that gives him the papers
that he needs to then leave the country. So he
leaves the country, but there's terrible timing involved, because just
a few weeks earlier, in September of nineteen thirty nine,
(10:27):
England had declared war on Germany and German forces led
by Adolf Hitler. We're starting to eat up Europe. The
word about the concentration camps had had leaked to the public,
and Peujole found himself trapped. He found himself trapped, and
(10:48):
he found himself incensed, livid. He wrote about this later
in a book called Operation Garbo, which came out in
and we have a quote, yeah, and this is from
that mental flow, this article that we highly recommend you
checking out. He says, my humanist convictions would not allow
me to turn a blind dive of the enormous suffering
that was being unleashed by this psychopath Hitler, and he
(11:10):
um decided he wanted to do something about it. This
is so, this is so great because he had limited
military training, he wasn't very good at it, and he
hated he hated it. He basically defected and then now
he's like running booze for aged you know, princesses Um,
And all of a sudden he like he hears his calling. Yeah,
his his compass that was swinging wildly finds its true north.
(11:35):
And this is the part that always cracks me up.
In January of n he was he strolls into the
British embassy, he moses in and he's he says, hey, um,
do you guys do you guys want to like a
do you want like a spy or something like? You know,
I I'm interested in contributing to the effort, but I
(11:56):
don't think the military is for me. And then they
say you can't just walk in here and say make
me a spy. What are your qualifications? Do you know
anything about spying? Do you hold an important government position?
Can't you do anything? What do you bring to the
table other than your desire to be sneaking? Yeah. The
Brits aren't exactly known for their like willingness to just
(12:17):
kind of like riff and just go with it and
roll with it right now. They want some They want
some bona fides from this guy. They want to be
able to vet him and prove that he actually is
what he says he is and can do what he
says he can do. So they send him a pack
in so He's like, okay, okay, I know what my
end game has. My end game is to help out
the Brits. But they don't need me right now because
(12:39):
I am nothing to them. What what am I? So
he decides to do the most insane thing, the most
insane turn about. I am going to make myself indispensable
and an asset to the Germans, the enemy of my friend,
or my perceived friend, the folks who I want to
be aligned with. So he goes to the Germans. They
(13:00):
are a little bit more willing to kind of like
take what they can get and installed various spies of
various pedigrees, and so they more or less take him
at his word. And what's his cover story? Ben Oh?
So he he literally calls the German embassy and his
cover story is a list of absolute bs. He is
(13:27):
winging it, he's improvising, you know, I love good improvisation.
And he meets a guy with a code name Federico.
So he meets this guy and this is total, this
(13:50):
is total, straight out of the movies kind of spy stuff. Right,
He's told this, there will be this guy Federico in
a light suit holding a raincoat in the back of
a cafe. This guy's trained to spot frauds, and Brujole says,
first off, let me tell you this, and he starts
talking about how much he loves Hitler. He's very, very
(14:11):
pro Nazi, he loves their whole thing. And then he
starts saying that he is friends with a ton of diplomats,
a ton of v I p s, very influential people.
This impresses his contact that he meets and he gets
his callback, as you would phrase it in the world
of auditions. He gets his he gets his call back.
(14:31):
But there's one problem with these diplomats, isn't there No,
they're all bogus. That's true. They're not real, and neither
are the reports that he is giving them what he
refers to as chicken feed, little bits and bob's of
military supposed military intelligence, like the movement of troops and
battalions throughout England, et cetera. And he cobbles together these
(14:55):
facts that I guess he did. He make them up
off the top of his head. Yeah, but he makes
them up so they sound so convincing that even the
Brits start thinking they have a mole because someone is
like leaking this uh, even though they're vague and not real.
How how did he do that? Man? I'm I'm a
little kind I'm a little foggy on how this happened,
because apparently the Brits caught wind of some of this
(15:17):
intelligence that was being leaked to the Germans, and they're like, whoa, whoa,
We've got to put a cap on this league that
we have, right, Okay, So here's how it happens. The
contact that he meets says, look, we we don't need
any more Nazi spice in Spain. We need someone to
(15:41):
go abroad. And the guys like, cool, I've got a passport,
he says, go to Lisbon, get an exit visa. And
he goes to Lisbon. Looks like a dead end, looks
like he can't get the document he needs a diplomatic visa.
But he befriends a guy in Portugal who is is
able to help him get this visa. Well, he steals
(16:04):
the visa essentially by help him get the visa. He
befriends the guy and steals it, and then he forges
this document. He comes back to Spain, he shows he
shows his contact Federico, and the guy is impressed. So
he says, all right, I'll give you this stuff you need.
I'll give you invisible ink. Let'll give you the codes
(16:24):
we use. Here's three grand and here's your code name, Arabelle.
So ben I was looking desperately. I'm like, surely he
had some real intel that he was using to, you know,
make these reports that he was delivering to the Germans
seem more believable. But no, it just turns out he
was just so good at crafting what sounded like realistic
(16:45):
intel that even the Brits were concerned that they had
somebody funneling information to the Germans. And there's an amazing
interview with author Stephen Talti, who wrote a book entitled
Agent Garbo, The Brilliant, eccentric secret Agent who Rick Hitler
and Save D Day, and he describes the British response
to what they perceived as a very real threat in
(17:07):
terms of information being funneled to the Germans. He says
the British were terrified. They were like, someone has sneaked
past our lines and someone is in the heart of
the beast reporting on us. Because Pugel's reports were so
believable even to the people in the country that he
was supposed to be spying on. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
great article in big think dot com about this story
(17:28):
as well. The article is Juan pougeol Garcia, the w
W two double agent who secretly controlled the war. I
know it sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but here's here's
what happened. He did fool everybody. He said, okay, I
will go to London. So his German spymasters think he
is in London. But as as we mentioned, he has
(17:52):
never been to London. He doesn't speak English, and he
just starts making stuff up using a tour guide, using
publicly available information from newsreels, and then he also starts
making a spy network in London. Again, he's still in Portugal.
He's making a spy network in London with people who
(18:14):
do not exist. And these reports sound so realistic that
they fool the British. They fool the British intelligence services,
and the British launch a man hunt to find this
mysterious Arabelle. Yeah, they've given him this name the Germans.
Germans answered Prairie and what a wiley fox this this was? Now,
(18:40):
he he didn't get everything right. The reports weren't perfect.
But at the time the British were panicking because they
were supposed to be no Axis spies in Britain. And
there was one huge trick that made the British believe
in his value as a spy. He invented an entirely
(19:02):
fictional armada of British armada in Malta, and based on
the reports of this again fictitious armada, the Axis powers
spent a ton of time and money trying to find them.
They responded in full force. They got there. There was
nothing there, of course, and they continued to still trust
(19:23):
his information. So finally, finally, finally, finally, in ninety two,
based primarily on that story of the armada, he was
able to convince the British to hire him. Do you
think he was like, Hey, remember me, I'm back. I've
got something for you that I think he'll make you
want me. Please want me? The British, Um, No, but
(19:45):
he They do want him, Boy, do they ever want him?
He is the Not only is he the Germans answered prayers,
he's actually their worst nightmare. It turns out he is
the British is answered prayers. Um. And he is handed
over to the Security Service for handling. Let's say, Um,
there he is. He's assigned an officer by the name
of Tama or Tommy Harris, who speaks Spanish. Because again
(20:07):
this is mind blowing to me. He doesn't speak English,
you know, he does not speak English. Um. And then
what followed was a partnership between the two men, um,
who were very well matched. Um. And there's a really
great article on the history of m I five m
I five dot gov dot UK slash Agent Garbos, the whole,
(20:27):
the whole deal there, um. And they really complimented each other,
and they had this give and take relationship that allowed
them to be synergistically effective. I mean, really, really an
incredible pairing of these two guys. Yeah. Absolutely, And it's
strange to look back, with the benefit of all this
stuff being declassified later and see just how extraordinarily ambitious
(20:52):
and ballsy this stuff was. He eventually he invented twenty
seven fictional sub agents, and he would assign various reports
to these people, so it would rarely be him finding
out something directly, would rarely be Arabel. Arabel became a
spy master as far as the Nazis were concerned, but
(21:14):
his reports were We're mixed up in a very clever way.
Sometimes it would be stuff that was true but didn't
matter at all, you know what I mean, like oh,
the um they're paving some road in London or whatever.
Sometimes it would be incredibly false stuff, right, something is wrong,
or it's in a different location, or the numbers are different.
(21:35):
Sometimes it would be real stuff that was very valuable,
and that stuff just never made it to Germany on time,
and say like oh okay, a two week old report
says in a week this will happen. Well, because having
real access to m I five and to all of
this information obviously upped his game in terms of double
(21:56):
agent nous. Right before he was succeeding just by his
own you know, moxie. Right now he's actually got the
real goods to weave in some of those real true
facts and make the Germans really believe he was still
on their side. So here's a cool example of that.
He gave Germany accurate intel on Allied forces landing in
(22:17):
North Africa. And the letter is postmarked before the landing,
but timed to arrive after the landing. And so instead
of getting irritated with the guy, the Nazis apologize. They say,
this is great information and it's are bad that we
didn't act. Curse the post office, you stamps dot com
(22:41):
and stand yes, stamps dot com. That's our commercial for
stamps dot com. So so what what happens next? Like,
how is he able to successfully keep this rigamarole going?
That's a really good question, Ben. Before we go there,
I want to backtrack ever socialized to show the Cohon
asked the true kahone of our boy Peugeol when he
(23:01):
went to the Germans and gave them this BS cover story.
It was all stuff they totally could have verified or
or you know, shot down. They just didn't do their
homework basically right because they had access to Portugal or
to to Lisbon, and they just didn't do it. For
whatever reason. They were so thirsty for what he had
to offer, because he did such a good job of
(23:22):
like you know, doing kind of uh up close magic
kind of misdirection right, So that is incredible. He could
have died instantly. They would have put him in a
concentration camp lickety split if they had found out that
he was he was trying to play them. So, yes,
how do they maintain this subterfuge ben as he has
now been gifted with the uh, the assistance of the Brits.
(23:44):
Um he they are still they are like upping their game.
They've got three D and fifteen documents they've sent back
to the Germans, some of which are peppered with real information,
but too late, fake information that makes them think that
they're actually getting some help. How does this kind of
come to critical mass? Ben ah well uh he he
(24:06):
kept escalating his stunts his cons. We mentioned his imaginary spies.
They included traveling salesman, a waiter who lives in a cave,
a retired Welsh seamen, an Indian poet, someone with O
C D radio mechanic. Uh. These folks filed expense reports
(24:28):
and some earned salaries. They were their expenses were paid,
and their salaries were paid by the Nazi Party. Bye.
He has become one of their favorite people, one of
Germany's favorite people. As far as Bycraft is concerned. The
spy ring that Abo sends him new cipher's new vials
of disappearing inc And this just makes it easier for
(24:51):
m I five to crack codes. The Nazis in one
memo compare him to an army of forty thousand in.
He's that valuable, and he decides to cook up his
biggest lie yet. Is this Operation Fortitude, man that you're
talking about, Is this is Operation Fortitude? Lay it on us? Yeah?
(25:12):
So we've got January Nino. The Germans um believed that
the Allies were getting ready for a large scale European invasion,
and they passed this information on to Pougeol and they
asked him to help keep them abreast of any developments,
any new information. So, uh, this gave Pougeol what he
(25:34):
needed to really turn the tables and give the Allies
the upper hand big time. Right, So, under the code
name Overlord, British and American forces planned to invade occupied Europe. Yeah,
so the Germans were right. They they they thought they
knew what was going on, and they were absolutely correct.
(25:55):
So how is Pougeol able to give what would seem
like the upper handed Germany for Germany and flip it
back around and make D Day a guaranteed success? Right?
We have to mention his code name was Arabelle to
the Nazis, but he had a code name to the
British once they hired him. It was Agent Garbo, named
(26:16):
after Greta Garbow because they thought he was such a
good actor. And I will tell you if you see,
he's got some pictures better, really funny head shot there
like head shots. He's dressed in like a German military
garb and he's just doing this real actors type grin
and it really looks like somebody wearing a costume, uh,
(26:37):
preparing to go into a role. And then you see
his passport pictures and he looks almost like a different
person exactly. He's a little disheveled. But yes, so Agent Garbo,
as he is known in the Allied Forces, in the
Allied intelligence networks, he has a crucial role to play.
The German high command needs to be misled about the
(26:58):
location of the landings. They decide on the actual point
of attack the beaches at Normandy, and their next move
is to persuade German forces that the invasion force would
be much much further north, confirming what Hitler had originally
thought was going to be the most likely point of contact.
(27:20):
Garbo's agents would report authoritatively that the Normandy landings were
themselves a ruse and there was a much bigger attack
to come. So on June nine, he sends a key
memo and it just happened to be on a super
crucial day when Hitler and his cronies, his toady's, his
(27:40):
military high command, were trying to decide whether Normandy was
the real deal or whether it was some kind of subterfuge,
and they were trying to plan the movement of their
troops and where they wanted to send the bulk of them. Um,
they had some in in Belgium, and they had some
in France, and they what we're trying to decide whether
they should dive them down to Normandy and completely head
(28:03):
off this invasion. Pugil sent this telegram saying, no, this
is fake. Seriously, you're wasting your time. Don't use those
resources at Normandy. Send them elsewhere, because this is what's
really happening. And at the time those forces were already
on the move. So this was a clutch decision on
the Germans. And a telegram received right at the exact
(28:26):
right time. If it had been a little later would
have been too late, right, they would they they would
not have rediverted the troops, I imagine, because it would
have been taken too long. Time was of the essence,
they made their bed, they were gonna lie in it.
But it was this crucial time where a change of
plan was possible, and the Panzer divisions were already moving
toward Normandy, but Adolf Hitler sent in order based on
(28:50):
this telegram and turned them around uh sending them instead
to the northern point of contacts. In this sly was
so effective that through July and August of that year,
the Nazi forces kept two armored divisions and nineteenth infantry
divisions in that northern point in anticipation of an imminent invasion.
(29:21):
So you would think after D Day, you would you
would imagine that after all this stuff goes down and
this house of cards collapses, that arabel A k. Garbo's
reputation would be ruined amongst the German intelligence circles. However,
that was not the case. In fact, he won a
(29:42):
very prestigious award, prestigious, if we would say it in
the British way, from the Germans, but from the Germans
they got the Iron Cross. The Iron Cross was rendered
for his extraordinary services to Germany. And the thing is
this had to be a proved by Adolf Hitler himself,
(30:02):
so he was notified he had been awarded the Iron Cross,
and then he and Harris said, you know, thank you
so much. It's such an honor, truly unworthy, but I'll
take it. And this is such a like, oh, it's
like a total f you type thing where they collaborated
on this message together Pugel and Harris. Harris was not
(30:25):
known to the Germans, obviously, Pugeol was exclusively their point
of contact, and they talked about offering you humble, thanks,
humble thanks, such an honor. Stop keep going, but yeah, totally.
And yet Pugel remained unexposed to the Germans. But by
September forty four, there have been a few close calls
(30:47):
that uh, you know of of Pugel potentially being exposed
unmasked to the Nazis. Um didn't happen, but the British
Security Service was like, we're going to take extra care
to make sure that you are guarded against any potential
retribution from the Germans. But that didn't even ultimately prove
to be necessary because the war ended, and they even
were hoping that his background would allow him to get
(31:09):
into postwar Nazi Germany and continue to do some good work.
As you said, he feared reprisal from Nazi survivors. The
Nazis never realized at this point that they had been fooled,
and as Agent Garbo, he received an MBE from the
King on the twenty November, the most Excellent Order of
(31:35):
the British Empire. So he is one of the few,
if not the only, person to receive prestigious awards from
both Germany and the Allies. That is most excellent. Here's
an even cooler thing. I feel like this is the
ultimate bragging, right, What do you do when you're the
spies pulled off everything? When you do one last one,
last con, one big job on, one last one big job,
(31:58):
one last ice uh. With the help of him, I
five Brugol travels to Angola and fakes his death in
for the ultimate cover against the Germans. He dies of malaria.
He also moves to Venezuela and he starts managing his
story again. He runs a bookstory and gift shop. That's
(32:19):
all I ever wanted, Quiet life of a shopkeeper m HM. Eventually,
though Thomas Harris is remember him his friend Anthony Blunt,
who turned out to be a Soviet spy right, who
had penetrated in my five. Eventually, this Anthony Blunt guy
says that he met Garbo and knew him as either
(32:39):
Joan or Jose Garcia, and people started searching for this
guy in. A British politician named Rupert Allison was interested
in the case of Garbow and everyone he talked to
did not know Garbo's real name. That's how that's how
high the secrecy was the Soviets. By Blunt gives him
(33:01):
that lead on a Jose Garcia, and the guy is
still searching. He eventually hires research assistant to get this
call every j Garcia in the Barcelona Foam book, and
eventually they get in contact with Pejol's nephew, and then
Rupert Allison finally meets Pejole in New Orleans in nineteen
(33:24):
four and then Allison's like, dude, you're awesome. Thanks by
the way, thanks for thanks for d Day, thanks for
all the cool stuff you did. Will you go hang
out with Prince Philip because he'd loved to meet you.
He goes, Okay, yeah, I'll go. What do they do
where they hang They have some tea? We don't know,
We just knew it was a quote. Unusually long audience,
(33:47):
so if you know, Prince Philippo is probably like, tell
me a wall stories, yes please, I want to hear those. Yeah,
and then he he died in Caracas, where he lived
pretty anonymously, like I said, quiet life of a shop keep.
Um who happened to be one of the most badass
and outlandish and uh effective double agents. And I'm telling
(34:10):
the history of spycraft is certainly the one we know about, right,
Definitely no James Bond, Bravado and this guy. He was
simultaneously brazen and perfectly measured in the way he did.
He pulled this stuff off because you have to have
some kind of throwing caution to the wind kind of
attitude to even attempt some of this stuff. But you
(34:31):
can't just you can't be reckless, right, He had to
like kind of have a system and stick to it
and have some discipline, you know, I mean, really really
interesting character. Some of his fictional sub agents also met.
They're in Agent one retired, in Agent six died, so
he he followed up on their lives as well. Dude,
(34:51):
some of these fictional agents had richer lives than than
I have had. So I mean, this is very very precise,
detail oriented stuff. With this guy's building these fictional universes,
I mean, his world building and his finest what this
guy is doing. And if you'd like to read more
about one Crugal Garcia, there is the book we mentioned Garbo.
(35:13):
There's also a great article on Badass of the Week
dot com, which I think is is cool. If you're
ever listening to one of our pure podcasts, Behind the Bastards,
which is an excellent show, and you're feeling down about
life in general, then you can find out about some
historic good guys on Badass of the Week dot com.
And it's funny you think of this guy is a badass,
and he certainly was. But a good spy probably doesn't
(35:36):
have to kill very often, right, a good spot. You
only have to kill if you're either an assassin or
your cover is blown right, right, and he didn't kill it. Well,
he is responsible for death, absolutely, but you don't hear
any stories of him having to have you know, slipped
someone on poison dart or something like that or a
little no no. He's a way better spy than James Bond.
I agree. I agree, James Bond uh is is kind
(35:59):
of a hack. Yeah, when you think about it, so
hopefully we don't get too much hate mail about that.
I will admit I do enjoy the films. I do,
and they're all on Netflix now, by the way, even
even like the Timothy Dalton ones and like the Roger
all of them, I don't really want to dig back in.
You know what else is on on streaming? Now? What's that?
It's a recommendation, I guess. Um. If we're doing that,
(36:20):
I think wrapped up with the show. Um. On Amazon
Prime you can find this insane cash of terrible eighties
B movies in all of these genres like sword and sorcery,
kind of slasher type genre movies, spy thrillers. But they're
like the Sea Level ones. They're the ones that were like,
so you had your Cone in the Barbarian, which is
(36:41):
a big hit. Then you have this whole pile of
like kind of copycat movies that are very entertaining and
very They do not age well, but there are a
lot of fun if you want to dig in. On
Amazon Prime. I have a comic book recommendation. I may
have said this before a matter of fact, that bet
I have, but I want to put the word out
there because I just reread it. There is a comic
(37:01):
series called Uber and it's follow up is Uber Invasion.
It's an historical account of World War Two if specific
type of superpower were discovered. I don't want to say
any more than that. I don't want to spoil it.
It's amazing. You should You should check it out if
(37:21):
you are at all interested in good graphic novels. It
is ongoing, so at this point, I don't know how
it ends either. I would love to hear your opinion
about it. Uh, you can tell us about this. You
can tell us about some of your favorite spy stories
on our Instagram, on our Facebook, on Twitter, on Facebook,
we highly recommend you check out your fellow listeners opinions
(37:45):
on our community page Ridiculous Historians. You can follow us
and believe we're Ridiculous History Show on Instagram. That's right,
Ridiculous History Show on Instagram. And I am personally at
Embryonic Insider. You feel like hanging out with me and
I am at ben Boland if you feel like seeing
some weird stuff. No spoilers here. Really, that's a good tease, man,
(38:08):
that's a good tease. I don't think you'll be let
down either. Then gets up to some shenanigans. I'll tell you.
If you don't want to do that stuff, he can
send us an email ridiculous at how stuff works dot com.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Yeah, thanks
to Casey Pegram who composed our hearts. The theme of
our Hearts, that's what he composed. If that's his real name,
well I think it possibly might not be, but I
(38:28):
am going to respect his privacy. Yes, yes, what if
his what if his real name is just a clever
switcheroo of the letters? What if his real name is
like pac? I like that? That's pretty fun? And thanks
to our research associate Gabe. Thanks to thanks to you know,
this has been an absolute pleasure. And now I'm going
to spend the afternoon figuring out what what our cool
(38:50):
spy nicknames would be. Will you be sure and let
me know? Ben, you let me know if you've got one. Hey,
let us know if you've got one. We'll see you
next time, folks. O
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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