February 21, 2026 • 40 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 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous historians. Welcome to our classic episode. For this week,
we have been going through a bit of a phase
with tradecraft and spying and World War Two and all
those off off camera shenanigans, backstage shenanigans that determined the
(00:20):
course of history. Max, Is it fair to am I like?
Am I alone in this between you, me and Nola?
Am I the only guy who's obsessed with spies in
World War Two?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No? It's awesome. I mean, especially the story.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I mean this is literally where the idea James Bond
came from. I mean, this is what fleming. Fleming worked
in intelligence in World War Two. This is where our fictionalized,
you know, obsessive view of spies come from. Is this
era and the things they were doing?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah? Yeah, well said, We're going to meet a guy
named Juan Pougeot originally volunteered to spy for the British
during World War Two and they didn't take him seriously.
In today's classic episode, we are exploring the story of
one of the most successful double agents in modern history.
(01:17):
We can't wait for you to hear it. As a
matter of fact, why delay here?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It goes?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So it's no.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Secret that here on Ridiculous History we often explore the
stories of con artists who make their way through the
world via subterfuge and deception. We often talk about this
in a villainous sense. We talked about malicious con artists,
you know, liars, fraudsters, things of that nature. But today
(02:17):
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. Oh also, I'm Ben Ben.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
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 Firestarter
Brown today in honor of Keith Flint harp, Yeah, Keith Flint,
the Twisted Firestarter, And that is Casey as our super producer,
(02:59):
Casey Pegrin. In the fact, that's the.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
One A little short aside my first concert ever nineteen
ninety eight, the Tabernacle Atlanta, Georgia Prodigy Meat Beat Manifesto.
As the opener was.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
How was the show?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
It was great. You know, you never really know what
to expect from like an electronics show. Sometimes it's just
dudes stand behind a laptop, but they really really put
everything into that performance. They had the dancers, which was
Keith's primary role, and there was like a pit and
it was really intense, and it was a little scary
as like a fourteen year old or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Oh man, I bet you were almost afraid you were
gonna get like steamrolled.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there were a lot of big
dudes there.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well that's the thing too with Keith and the Prodigy,
and like his vocals were almost more like punk rock,
shouty kind of stuff, and that was a 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,
(03:58):
and it was like, we'd never seen a dude like
that in the States at that point, short of like
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.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
It was percussive, almost so like his vocals were in
almost an instrument of punctuation or percussion. Speaking of iconic.
Before we get today's show, we do have an announcement
that will make will make rough sense, but will make
even more sense if you are a member of our
community page Ridiculous Historians. So, in a previous episode, folks,
(04:40):
Nolan and I had kicked around the idea of a
T shirt with Casey's face audit and Casey, will you
know we're all actually friends even when we're not on
the air. So we asked Casey. He was cool with it,
and we got a hard man man.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It was a hard man.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It was a hard man. And now we have an announcement.
We had taken 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
(05:24):
tune in later because we have we have something very
special coming up for all our fans of Casey on
the Case.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Yeah, we can just say that we're going to tie
up a loose end from earlier in the show's history.
If you've been listening for a while, there were certain
things that were promised earlierly on and that will maybe
come to fruition now.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I love how this this feels like subterfuge. It feels
like we're talking in spycraft, right, it really does.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Ben And way to bring it back around to 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 waff
lay 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 you may know
poujol One poujol Garcia. Yeah, born in nineteen twelve on
(06:15):
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, Noel, he he ran a motel.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I believe he ran a movie theater as well. For
a while, it was going job to job. He didn't
feel like the academy or higher education was his particular
bag of beans. But he lived in Spain, and in
nineteen thirty one he did his six months of compulsory
(06:49):
military service in Spain, and he hated working for the military,
which would come in handy later. 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.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, but something that he did have in spades was
a 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 innocuous and unnoticed.
Just a super important skill to have if you are
(07:32):
to be a spy. Let alone, what Pougeol became just
one of the most famous double agents in the history
of military affairs, right right?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
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, do we ment I think we mentioned
this earlier on the show in a previous episode. You
(08:04):
hit on the crucial definition of an effective spy. Nol
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 super flashy, you know what I mean.
A real spy is the guy who's in the corner
(08:26):
or the lady who's in the corner like ten meters
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 to the nineteen thirties. In nineteen thirty six,
the Spanish Civil War begins. He is managing a poultry farm.
(08:52):
His sister's fiance is captured by the Republican forces, and
then his sister and his mother are arrested their charge
with being counter revolutionaries, and he gets called up for
service on the Republican side of the war. But because
the Republican government treated his family so poorly, he says,
(09:12):
I'm going to skip out, and he hides at his
girlfriend's house and then he's discovered and a police raid.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
He goes to jail for a week.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
He's freed via a resistance group, and then he hides
with them until he can make some false ideas 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
(09:42):
the government, according to his life story, makes him hate
Communism even more than you already hated it.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
That's right, that's right. And then he ends up in
said third rate motel in Madrid, which was ever so
ironically named The Majestic Fantastic Mental Floss. Article goes through
some of this history of this fascinating man. So he
hates Communism. At this point, he is not living his
(10:10):
best life. He is depressed. He is just kind of
you know, Spain is just crumbling around him with this
civil war that they were doing. They were going so
far as to like turning bull rings into 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 down and blend into the background and
(10:30):
be as innocuous 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.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
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 treat him like garbage too,
so he says, you know what, I hate it hate
the communists, I hate the fascist And then he is
(11:02):
learning increasingly to try to keep his head down.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
So through his post at this hotel and through the
just the ramshackle nature of Spain during the Civil War,
he ends up becoming kind of successful at helping people
procure things. He meets two pro Franco princesses who are
aging and they really want to get their hands on
(11:26):
some scotch, so he decides, 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 have a passport
at the time, and does this job for these princesses
and that gives him the papers that he needs to
then leave the country.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So he leaves the country. But there's terrible timing involved,
because just a few weeks earlier, in September of nineteen
thirty nine, England had declared war on Germany and German
forces led by Adolf Hitler were starting to eat up Europe.
The word about the concentration camps had had leaked to
(12:10):
the public, and Pujol found himself trapped. He found himself trapped,
and he found himself incensed, livid. He wrote about this
later in a book called Operation Garbo, which came out
in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And we have a quote, yeah, and this is from
that Mental Floss article that we highly recommend you checking out.
He says, my humanist convictions would not allow me to
turn a blind eye to the enormous suffering that was
being unleashed by this psychopath Hitler, and he 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 it. He
(12:48):
basically defected. And then now he's like running booze for
aged you know, princesses, and all of a sudden, he
like he hears his calling.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, his compass that was swinging wildly finds it's true
North and this is the part that always cracks me up.
In January of nineteen forty one, he strolls into the
British embassy. He mosy's in and he's he says, hey,
you guys.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Want to like a do you want like a spy
or something like?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Can? I I'm interested in contributing to the effort, but
I don't think the militaries 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 you do anything? What do you bring to the
table other than your desire to be sneaky?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, the Brits aren't exactly known for their like willingness
to just 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 packing. So he's like, okay, okay, I know what
(14:03):
my endgame has. My endgame is to help out the Brits,
but they don't need me right now because I am
nothing to them. 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
(14:23):
perceived friend, and the folks who I want to be
aligned with. So he goes to the Germans. They're a
little bit more willing to kind of like take what
they can get and install various spies of various pedigrees,
and so they more or less take him at his word.
And what's his cover story? Ben Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
So he literally calls the German embassy and his cover
story is a list of absolute bs. He is winging it,
he's improvising, you know, I love good improvisation. And he
meets a guy with a.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Code name Federico.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So he meets this guy and this is total, this
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 Prujol says,
first off, let me tell you this, and he starts
(15:37):
talking about how much he loves Hitler. He's very, very
pro Nazi, he loves their whole thing. And then he
starts saying that he is friends with a ton of diplomats,
a ton of VIPs, 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
(15:58):
gets his He gets his call back. But there's one
problem with these diplomats, isn't there No.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
We'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 bobs of
military supposed military intelligence, like the movement of troops and
battalions throughout England, et cetera. And he cobbles together these
(16:24):
facts that I guess he did. He just make them
up off the top of his head. Yes, 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 even though they're vague and
not real. How did he do that? Ben I'm a
little I'm a little foggy on how this happened, because
apparently the Brits caught wind of some of this intelligence
(16:46):
that was being leaked to the Germans, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
We've got to put a cap on this leak that
we have, right, Okay, So here's how it happens.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
The contact that he meets says, look, we don't need
any more Nazi spies in Spain. We need someone to
go abroad. And the guy's 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,
(17:23):
but he befriends a guy in Portugal who is able
to help him get this visa. Well, he steals 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 his contact Federico,
(17:46):
and the guy is impressed, so he says, all right,
I'll give you this stuff you need. I'll give you
invisible ink. I'll give you the codes we use. Here's
three grand and here's your code name. Arabell so ben
I was looking desperate.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I'm like, surely he had some real intel that he
was using to 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 intel that even the Brits were concerned
that they had somebody funneling information to the Germans. And
(18:21):
there's an amazing interview with author Stephen Talti, who wrote
a book entitled Agent Garbo with a brilliant, eccentric secret
agent who tricked Hitler and saved D Day, And he
describes the British response to what they perceived as a
very real threat in terms of information being funneled to
the Germans. He says the British were terrified. They were like,
(18:41):
someone is sneak past our lines and someone is in
the heart of the beast reporting on us. Because Poujol's
reports were so believable, even to the people in the
country that he was supposed to be spying on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, there's a great article in Big Think Dot com
about this story as well. The article is Juan Poujol
gar the WW two double agent who secretly controlled the war.
I know it sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but here's
what happened.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
He did fool everybody.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
He said, okay, I will go to London, so his
German spymasters think he is in London. But as as
we mentioned, he has 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
(19:33):
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 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
(19:54):
hunt to find this mysterious arabell. Yeah, they've given him
his name the Germans. The Germans answered Prairie right, yes,
and what a wily fox this poujol was. Now, he
didn't get everything right. The reports weren't perfect, but at
(20:15):
the time the British were panicking because there 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 fictional armada,
a British armada in Malta, and based on the reports
(20:36):
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 his information.
So finally, finally, finally, finally, in nineteen forty two, based
(20:58):
primarily on that story of the armada, he was able
to convince the British to hire him.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Do you think he was like, Hey, remember me, I'm back.
I've got something for you. I think it will make
you want me. Please want me the British. No, but
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 the British is answered prayers, and he is handed
(21:25):
over to the Security Service for handling. Let's say there
he is. He's assigned an officer by the name of
tama Are Tommy Harris who speaks Spanish, because again this
is mind blowing to me. He doesn't speak English. No,
he does not speak English. And then what followed was
a partnership between the two men who were very well matched.
(21:48):
And there's a really great article on the history of
m I five m I five dot gov dot UK
slash Agentcarbos, the whole, the whole deal there, and they
really compliment 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.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Absolutely, And it's strange to look back, with the benefit
of all this stuff being declassified later and see just
how extraordinarily ambitious and ballsy this stuff was. He eventually
he invented twenty seven fictional subagents, and he would assign
various reports to these people, so it would rarely be
(22:34):
him finding out something directly, would rarely be Arabell. Arabell
became a spymaster as far as the Nazis were concerned,
but his reports were 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,
they're paving some road in London or whatever. Sometimes it
(22:57):
would be incredibly false stuff. Something is wrong, or it's
in a different location or the numbers are different. Sometimes
it would be real stuff that was very valuable, and
that stuff just never made it to Germany on time,
and it's say like, oh, okay, a two week old
report says in a week this will happen.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Well, because of having real access to I five into
all of this information obviously upped his game in terms
of double agent nests. 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.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So here's a cool example of that. He gave Germany
accurate intel on Allied forces landing in North Africa. And
the letter is poostmarked before the landing, but timed to
arrive after the landing. And so instead of getting irritated
with the guy, the Nazis up apologize. They say this
(24:02):
is great information and it's our bad that we didn't act.
Curse the post office.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Use stamps dot com instead.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yes, Stamps dot com. That's our commercial for Stamps dot com.
So what happens next, Like, how is he able to
successfully keep this rigorm role going?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
That's a really good question. Man. Before we go there,
I want to backtrack, ever so slightly, just to show
the Kahones, the true cohones of our boy Pujol. When
he 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
(24:43):
Portugal or 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 like you know, doing kind of a upclose 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,
(25:05):
how do they maintain this subterfuge? Ben? As he has
now been gifted with the assistance of the Brits, he
they are still they are like upping their game. They've
got three hundred 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
(25:26):
they're actually getting some help. How does this kind of
come to critical mass?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Ben Well, he 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 OCD, a radio mechanic. These folks
(25:55):
filed expense reports and some earned salaries. They were their
expenses were paid, and their salaries were paid by the
Nazi Party. By nineteen forty three, he has become one
of their favorite people, one of Germany's favorite people as
far as spycraft is concerned. The spy ring that Abwer
sends him new cipher's new vials of disappearing inc. And
(26:19):
this just makes it easier for MI five to crack codes.
The Nazis in one memo, compare him to an army
of forty five thousand men. He's that valuable, and he
decides to cook up his biggest lie yet is this
Operation Fortitude?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Ben that you're talking about this is this is Operation
Fortitude lay it honestly. Yeah, so we've got January nineteen
forty four. The Germans believed that the Allies were getting
ready for a large scale European invasion, and they passed
this information on to Poujol and they asked him to
help keep them abreast of any developments in the new information.
(27:00):
So this gave Poujol what he needed to really turn
the tables and give the Allies the upper hand big time.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Right, So, under the code name Overlord, British and American
forces planned to invade occupied Europe.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yeah, so the Germans were right. They thought they knew
what was going on, and they were absolutely correct. So
how is Pujol 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?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Oh, we have to mention his code name was Arabelle
to the Nazis, but he add a code name to
the British once they hired him. Mister It was Agent Garbo,
named after Greta Garbo because they thought he was such
a good actor.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, and I will tell you if you see he's
got some pictures that are really funny. Headshot They always
look like headshots. 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 preparing to
go into a role.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
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 and the Allied intelligence networks. He has
a crucial role to play. The German high command needs
to be misled about the location of the landings. They
(28:30):
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 right,
confirming what Hitler had originally thought was going to be
the most likely point of contact. Garbo's agents would report
(28:51):
authoritatively that the Normandy landings were themselves a ruse and
there was a much bigger attack to come. So on
June ninth, he sends a key memo.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, and it just happened to be on a super
crucial day when Hitler and his cronies, his toadies, his
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.
(29:23):
They had some in Belgium, they had some in France,
and they were trying to decide whether they should divert
them down to Normandy and completely head off this invasion.
Pujol sent this telegram saying, no, this is fake. Seriously,
you are wasting your time. Don't use those resources at Normandy.
Send them elsewhere, because this is what's really happening. And
(29:45):
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 right time. If
it had been a little later would have been too late,
right they would they would not have rediverted the I imagine,
because it would have been taken too long. Time was
of the essence. They made their bed, they were going
(30:05):
to lie in it. But it was this crucial time
where a change of plan.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Was possible, right m H and the Panzer divisions were
already moving toward Normandy, but Adolf Hitler sent in order
based on this telegram and turned them around, sending them
instead to the northern point of contact, Pas de Calais.
In this lie was so effective that through July and
(30:32):
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. So you would think after
(30:53):
D Day, you would imagine that after all this stuff
goes down and this house of cards collapses, that arabelaka
Garbo's reputation would be ruined amongst the German intelligence circles. However,
that was not the case. In fact, he won a
very prestigious award, prestigious, if we would say it in
(31:14):
the British way from the Germans, but from the Germans. Yeah, yeah,
oh was it? He got the Iron Cross. The Iron
Cross was rendered for his extraordinary services to Germany. And
the thing is this had to be approved by Adolf
Hitler himself, so he was notified he had been awarded
the Iron Cross. And then he and Harris said, you know,
(31:39):
thank you so much. It's such an honor. Truly unworthy,
but I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And this is such a like, oh, it's like a
total fu type thing where they collaborated on this message
together Pugel and Harris. Harris was not known to the
Germans office. Pujel was exclusively their point of contact, and
they talked about offering humble thanks, humble thanks, such an honor.
Oh stop, let's keep going now, No, yeah, totally. And
(32:08):
yet Pujol remained unexposed to the Germans. But by September
of forty four, there have been a few close calls
that you know of Pujehl potentially being exposed unmasked to
the Nazis. Didn't happen, but the British security services like,
we're going to take extra care to make sure that
you are guarded against any potential retribution from the Germans.
(32:29):
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 into post war Nazi
Germany and continue to do some good work.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
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 fifth of November nineteen forty four,
the most Excellent Order of the British Empire. So he
(33:05):
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 rate. What do
you do when you're the spy's pulled off everything? When
you do one last one last con, one big job,
one last one big job, one last ice. With the
(33:29):
help of m I five, Prujol travels to Angola and
fakes his death in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah for the ultimate cover. He died the ultimate protection
against the Germans. He dies of malaria.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
He also moves to Venezuela and he starts managing a
story again. He runs a bookstore and gift shop.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
That's all he ever wan and it's quiet life of
a shopkeeper.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Eventually, though, Thomas Harris is remember him his friend Anthony Blunt,
who turned out to be a Soviet spy right who
penetrated in My five. Eventually, this Anthony Blunt guy says
that he met Garbo and knew him as either Joan
or Jose Garcia, and people started searching for this guy.
(34:14):
And a British politician named Rupert Allison was interested in
the case of Garbo, and everyone he talked to did
not know Garbo's real name. That's how high the secrecy was.
The Soviet spy Blunt gives him that lead on a
Jose Garcia, and the guy is still searching. He eventually
(34:35):
hires a research assistant to get this call every j
Garcia in the Barcelona phone book, and eventually they get
in contact with Pajol's nephew, and then Rupert Allison finally
meets Pajol in New Orleans in nineteen eighty four, and
then Alison's like, dude, you're awesome. Thanks by the way,
(34:58):
thanks for d Day, thanks for all the cool stuff
he did. Will you go hang out with Prince Philip
because he'd love.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
To meet you. He goes, okay, yeah, we'll go. What
do they do? Where do they hang? They have some tea?
Speaker 1 (35:10):
We don't know, We just knew it was a quote
unusually long audience. Oh wow, So if you know Prince Philip,
who was probably like, tell me your wall stories.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yes, please, I want to hear those.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
And then he died in Caracas in nineteen eighty eight,
where he lived pretty anonymously, like I said, the quiet
life of a ShopKeep who happened to be one of
the most badass and outlandish and effective double asians in
the history of spycraft. It's certainly the one we know about, right,
(35:42):
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
can't just you can't be reckless, right, He had to
like kind of have a system and stick to it
(36:04):
and have some discipline, you know, I mean, really really
interesting character.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Some of his fictional subagents also met their end. Agent
one retired in nineteen forty three, Agent six died, so
he followed up on their lives as well.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Dude, some of these fictional agents had richer lives than
I have had. So, I mean, this is very very precise,
detail oriented stuff with this guy who's building these fictional Universes.
I mean, it's world building. It his finest what this
guy's doing.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
And if you'd like to read more about Juan Prujol Garcia,
there is the book we mentioned Garbo. There's also a
great article on Badass of Theweek dot com, which I
think 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
(36:55):
can find out about some historic good guys on Badass
of the Week dot com.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
And it's funny you think of this guy as a badass,
and he certainly was. But a good spy probably doesn't
have to kill very often, right, a good spy 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 a poisoned dart or something like that, or a
little no no no.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
He's a way better spy than James Bond.
Speaker 5 (37:24):
I agree. I agree, James Bond is kind 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.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I do, and they're all on Netflix now, by the way,
or 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 streaming? Now?
What's that? This is a recommendation, I guess if we're
doing that, I think we wrapped up with the show.
On Amazon Prime, you can find this insane cash of
terrible eighties B movies. Oh yeah, and all of these
(37:59):
genres like sword and sorcery, kind of slasher type genre movies, thrillers,
spy thrillers. But they're like the C level ones. They're
the ones that were like, so you had your Cone
in the Barbarian, which is a big hit. Then you
have this whole pile of like kind of copycat movies
that are very entertaining and they do not age well,
but they're a lot of fun if you want to
dig in on Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I have a comic book recommendation. Hoay, I may have
said this before. As a matter of fact, I bet
I have, But I want to put the word out
there because I just reread it.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
There is a.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Comic series called Uber and its follow up is Uber Invasion.
It's an historical account of World War Two if a
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.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
You should.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
You should check it out if 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. You could
tell us about this. You could 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
(39:12):
your fellow listener's opinions on our community page Ridiculous Historians.
You can follow us to believe we're a ridiculous history
show on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
That's right, Ridiculous History show on Instagram. And I am
personally at Embryonic Insider if you feel like hanging out with.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Me, and I am at Ben Bolin if you feel
like seeing some weird stuff, no spoilers.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Wow, you're really that's a good teas man. That's a
good teas I don't think you'll be let down either
Ben gets up to some shenanigans. Let me tell you.
If you don't wan to see that stuff, he can
send us an email ridiculous at HowStuffWorks 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. Me. If that's his real name,
(39:55):
I think it possibly might not be, but I am
going to respect his privacy.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yes, yes, what if his real name is just a
clever switcheroo of the letters. What if his real name
is like pacey Kegrim.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
That's pretty fun And thanks to our research associate Gabe.
Thanks to Thanks to you, Noel. This has been an
absolute pleasure. And now I'm going to spend the afternoon
figuring out what our core 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.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous historians. Welcome to our classic episode. For this week,
we have been going through a bit of a phase
with tradecraft and spying and World War Two and all
those off off camera shenanigans, backstage shenanigans that determined the
(00:20):
course of history. Max, Is it fair to am I like?
Am I alone in this between you, me and Nola?
Am I the only guy who's obsessed with spies in
World War Two?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No? It's awesome. I mean, especially the story.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I mean this is literally where the idea James Bond
came from. I mean, this is what fleming. Fleming worked
in intelligence in World War Two. This is where our fictionalized,
you know, obsessive view of spies come from. Is this
era and the things they were doing?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah? Yeah, well said, We're going to meet a guy
named Juan Pougeot originally volunteered to spy for the British
during World War Two and they didn't take him seriously.
In today's classic episode, we are exploring the story of
one of the most successful double agents in modern history.
(01:17):
We can't wait for you to hear it. As a
matter of fact, why delay here?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It goes?
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So it's no.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Secret that here on Ridiculous History we often explore the
stories of con artists who make their way through the
world via subterfuge and deception. We often talk about this
in a villainous sense. We talked about malicious con artists,
you know, liars, fraudsters, things of that nature. But today
(02:17):
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. Oh also, I'm Ben Ben.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
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 Firestarter
Brown today in honor of Keith Flint harp, Yeah, Keith Flint,
the Twisted Firestarter, And that is Casey as our super producer,
(02:59):
Casey Pegrin. In the fact, that's the.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
One A little short aside my first concert ever nineteen
ninety eight, the Tabernacle Atlanta, Georgia Prodigy Meat Beat Manifesto.
As the opener was.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
How was the show?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
It was great. You know, you never really know what
to expect from like an electronics show. Sometimes it's just
dudes stand behind a laptop, but they really really put
everything into that performance. They had the dancers, which was
Keith's primary role, and there was like a pit and
it was really intense, and it was a little scary
as like a fourteen year old or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Oh man, I bet you were almost afraid you were
gonna get like steamrolled.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there were a lot of big
dudes there.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well that's the thing too with Keith and the Prodigy,
and like his vocals were almost more like punk rock,
shouty kind of stuff, and that was a 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,
(03:58):
and it was like, we'd never seen a dude like
that in the States at that point, short of like
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.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
It was percussive, almost so like his vocals were in
almost an instrument of punctuation or percussion. Speaking of iconic.
Before we get today's show, we do have an announcement
that will make will make rough sense, but will make
even more sense if you are a member of our
community page Ridiculous Historians. So, in a previous episode, folks,
(04:40):
Nolan and I had kicked around the idea of a
T shirt with Casey's face audit and Casey, will you
know we're all actually friends even when we're not on
the air. So we asked Casey. He was cool with it,
and we got a hard man man.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It was a hard man.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
It was a hard man. And now we have an announcement.
We had taken 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
(05:24):
tune in later because we have we have something very
special coming up for all our fans of Casey on
the Case.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Yeah, we can just say that we're going to tie
up a loose end from earlier in the show's history.
If you've been listening for a while, there were certain
things that were promised earlierly on and that will maybe
come to fruition now.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I love how this this feels like subterfuge. It feels
like we're talking in spycraft, right, it really does.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Ben And way to bring it back around to 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 waff
lay 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 you may know
poujol One poujol Garcia. Yeah, born in nineteen twelve on
(06:15):
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, Noel, he he ran a motel.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I believe he ran a movie theater as well. For
a while, it was going job to job. He didn't
feel like the academy or higher education was his particular
bag of beans. But he lived in Spain, and in
nineteen thirty one he did his six months of compulsory
(06:49):
military service in Spain, and he hated working for the military,
which would come in handy later. 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.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, but something that he did have in spades was
a 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 innocuous and unnoticed.
Just a super important skill to have if you are
(07:32):
to be a spy. Let alone, what Pougeol became just
one of the most famous double agents in the history
of military affairs, right right?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
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, do we ment I think we mentioned
this earlier on the show in a previous episode. You
(08:04):
hit on the crucial definition of an effective spy. Nol
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 super flashy, you know what I mean.
A real spy is the guy who's in the corner
(08:26):
or the lady who's in the corner like ten meters
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 to the nineteen thirties. In nineteen thirty six,
the Spanish Civil War begins. He is managing a poultry farm.
(08:52):
His sister's fiance is captured by the Republican forces, and
then his sister and his mother are arrested their charge
with being counter revolutionaries, and he gets called up for
service on the Republican side of the war. But because
the Republican government treated his family so poorly, he says,
(09:12):
I'm going to skip out, and he hides at his
girlfriend's house and then he's discovered and a police raid.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
He goes to jail for a week.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
He's freed via a resistance group, and then he hides
with them until he can make some false ideas 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
(09:42):
the government, according to his life story, makes him hate
Communism even more than you already hated it.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
That's right, that's right. And then he ends up in
said third rate motel in Madrid, which was ever so
ironically named The Majestic Fantastic Mental Floss. Article goes through
some of this history of this fascinating man. So he
hates Communism. At this point, he is not living his
(10:10):
best life. He is depressed. He is just kind of
you know, Spain is just crumbling around him with this
civil war that they were doing. They were going so
far as to like turning bull rings into 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 down and blend into the background and
(10:30):
be as innocuous 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.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
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 treat him like garbage too,
so he says, you know what, I hate it hate
the communists, I hate the fascist And then he is
(11:02):
learning increasingly to try to keep his head down.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
So through his post at this hotel and through the
just the ramshackle nature of Spain during the Civil War,
he ends up becoming kind of successful at helping people
procure things. He meets two pro Franco princesses who are
aging and they really want to get their hands on
(11:26):
some scotch, so he decides, 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 have a passport
at the time, and does this job for these princesses
and that gives him the papers that he needs to
then leave the country.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So he leaves the country. But there's terrible timing involved,
because just a few weeks earlier, in September of nineteen
thirty nine, England had declared war on Germany and German
forces led by Adolf Hitler were starting to eat up Europe.
The word about the concentration camps had had leaked to
(12:10):
the public, and Pujol found himself trapped. He found himself trapped,
and he found himself incensed, livid. He wrote about this
later in a book called Operation Garbo, which came out
in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And we have a quote, yeah, and this is from
that Mental Floss article that we highly recommend you checking out.
He says, my humanist convictions would not allow me to
turn a blind eye to the enormous suffering that was
being unleashed by this psychopath Hitler, and he 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 it. He
(12:48):
basically defected. And then now he's like running booze for
aged you know, princesses, and all of a sudden, he
like he hears his calling.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, his compass that was swinging wildly finds it's true
North and this is the part that always cracks me up.
In January of nineteen forty one, he strolls into the
British embassy. He mosy's in and he's he says, hey,
you guys.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Want to like a do you want like a spy
or something like?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Can? I I'm interested in contributing to the effort, but
I don't think the militaries 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 you do anything? What do you bring to the
table other than your desire to be sneaky?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, the Brits aren't exactly known for their like willingness
to just 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 packing. So he's like, okay, okay, I know what
(14:03):
my endgame has. My endgame is to help out the Brits,
but they don't need me right now because I am
nothing to them. 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
(14:23):
perceived friend, and the folks who I want to be
aligned with. So he goes to the Germans. They're a
little bit more willing to kind of like take what
they can get and install various spies of various pedigrees,
and so they more or less take him at his word.
And what's his cover story? Ben Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
So he literally calls the German embassy and his cover
story is a list of absolute bs. He is winging it,
he's improvising, you know, I love good improvisation. And he
meets a guy with a.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Code name Federico.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So he meets this guy and this is total, this
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 Prujol says,
first off, let me tell you this, and he starts
(15:37):
talking about how much he loves Hitler. He's very, very
pro Nazi, he loves their whole thing. And then he
starts saying that he is friends with a ton of diplomats,
a ton of VIPs, 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
(15:58):
gets his He gets his call back. But there's one
problem with these diplomats, isn't there No.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
We'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 bobs of
military supposed military intelligence, like the movement of troops and
battalions throughout England, et cetera. And he cobbles together these
(16:24):
facts that I guess he did. He just make them
up off the top of his head. Yes, 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 even though they're vague and
not real. How did he do that? Ben I'm a
little I'm a little foggy on how this happened, because
apparently the Brits caught wind of some of this intelligence
(16:46):
that was being leaked to the Germans, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
We've got to put a cap on this leak that
we have, right, Okay, So here's how it happens.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
The contact that he meets says, look, we don't need
any more Nazi spies in Spain. We need someone to
go abroad. And the guy's 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,
(17:23):
but he befriends a guy in Portugal who is able
to help him get this visa. Well, he steals 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 his contact Federico,
(17:46):
and the guy is impressed, so he says, all right,
I'll give you this stuff you need. I'll give you
invisible ink. I'll give you the codes we use. Here's
three grand and here's your code name. Arabell so ben
I was looking desperate.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I'm like, surely he had some real intel that he
was using to 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 intel that even the Brits were concerned
that they had somebody funneling information to the Germans. And
(18:21):
there's an amazing interview with author Stephen Talti, who wrote
a book entitled Agent Garbo with a brilliant, eccentric secret
agent who tricked Hitler and saved D Day, And he
describes the British response to what they perceived as a
very real threat in terms of information being funneled to
the Germans. He says the British were terrified. They were like,
(18:41):
someone is sneak past our lines and someone is in
the heart of the beast reporting on us. Because Poujol's
reports were so believable, even to the people in the
country that he was supposed to be spying on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, there's a great article in Big Think Dot com
about this story as well. The article is Juan Poujol
gar the WW two double agent who secretly controlled the war.
I know it sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but here's
what happened.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
He did fool everybody.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
He said, okay, I will go to London, so his
German spymasters think he is in London. But as as
we mentioned, he has 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
(19:33):
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 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
(19:54):
hunt to find this mysterious arabell. Yeah, they've given him
his name the Germans. The Germans answered Prairie right, yes,
and what a wily fox this poujol was. Now, he
didn't get everything right. The reports weren't perfect, but at
(20:15):
the time the British were panicking because there 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 fictional armada,
a British armada in Malta, and based on the reports
(20:36):
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 his information.
So finally, finally, finally, finally, in nineteen forty two, based
(20:58):
primarily on that story of the armada, he was able
to convince the British to hire him.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Do you think he was like, Hey, remember me, I'm back.
I've got something for you. I think it will make
you want me. Please want me the British. No, but
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 the British is answered prayers, and he is handed
(21:25):
over to the Security Service for handling. Let's say there
he is. He's assigned an officer by the name of
tama Are Tommy Harris who speaks Spanish, because again this
is mind blowing to me. He doesn't speak English. No,
he does not speak English. And then what followed was
a partnership between the two men who were very well matched.
(21:48):
And there's a really great article on the history of
m I five m I five dot gov dot UK
slash Agentcarbos, the whole, the whole deal there, and they
really compliment 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.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Absolutely, And it's strange to look back, with the benefit
of all this stuff being declassified later and see just
how extraordinarily ambitious and ballsy this stuff was. He eventually
he invented twenty seven fictional subagents, and he would assign
various reports to these people, so it would rarely be
(22:34):
him finding out something directly, would rarely be Arabell. Arabell
became a spymaster as far as the Nazis were concerned,
but his reports were 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,
they're paving some road in London or whatever. Sometimes it
(22:57):
would be incredibly false stuff. Something is wrong, or it's
in a different location or the numbers are different. Sometimes
it would be real stuff that was very valuable, and
that stuff just never made it to Germany on time,
and it's say like, oh, okay, a two week old
report says in a week this will happen.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Well, because of having real access to I five into
all of this information obviously upped his game in terms
of double agent nests. 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.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So here's a cool example of that. He gave Germany
accurate intel on Allied forces landing in North Africa. And
the letter is poostmarked before the landing, but timed to
arrive after the landing. And so instead of getting irritated
with the guy, the Nazis up apologize. They say this
(24:02):
is great information and it's our bad that we didn't act.
Curse the post office.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Use stamps dot com instead.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yes, Stamps dot com. That's our commercial for Stamps dot com.
So what happens next, Like, how is he able to
successfully keep this rigorm role going?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
That's a really good question. Man. Before we go there,
I want to backtrack, ever so slightly, just to show
the Kahones, the true cohones of our boy Pujol. When
he 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
(24:43):
Portugal or 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 like you know, doing kind of a upclose 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,
(25:05):
how do they maintain this subterfuge? Ben? As he has
now been gifted with the assistance of the Brits, he
they are still they are like upping their game. They've
got three hundred 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
(25:26):
they're actually getting some help. How does this kind of
come to critical mass?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Ben Well, he 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 OCD, a radio mechanic. These folks
(25:55):
filed expense reports and some earned salaries. They were their
expenses were paid, and their salaries were paid by the
Nazi Party. By nineteen forty three, he has become one
of their favorite people, one of Germany's favorite people as
far as spycraft is concerned. The spy ring that Abwer
sends him new cipher's new vials of disappearing inc. And
(26:19):
this just makes it easier for MI five to crack codes.
The Nazis in one memo, compare him to an army
of forty five thousand men. He's that valuable, and he
decides to cook up his biggest lie yet is this
Operation Fortitude?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Ben that you're talking about this is this is Operation
Fortitude lay it honestly. Yeah, so we've got January nineteen
forty four. The Germans believed that the Allies were getting
ready for a large scale European invasion, and they passed
this information on to Poujol and they asked him to
help keep them abreast of any developments in the new information.
(27:00):
So this gave Poujol what he needed to really turn
the tables and give the Allies the upper hand big time.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Right, So, under the code name Overlord, British and American
forces planned to invade occupied Europe.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yeah, so the Germans were right. They thought they knew
what was going on, and they were absolutely correct. So
how is Pujol 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?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Oh, we have to mention his code name was Arabelle
to the Nazis, but he add a code name to
the British once they hired him. Mister It was Agent Garbo,
named after Greta Garbo because they thought he was such
a good actor.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, and I will tell you if you see he's
got some pictures that are really funny. Headshot They always
look like headshots. 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 preparing to
go into a role.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
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 and the Allied intelligence networks. He has
a crucial role to play. The German high command needs
to be misled about the location of the landings. They
(28:30):
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 right,
confirming what Hitler had originally thought was going to be
the most likely point of contact. Garbo's agents would report
(28:51):
authoritatively that the Normandy landings were themselves a ruse and
there was a much bigger attack to come. So on
June ninth, he sends a key memo.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, and it just happened to be on a super
crucial day when Hitler and his cronies, his toadies, his
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.
(29:23):
They had some in Belgium, they had some in France,
and they were trying to decide whether they should divert
them down to Normandy and completely head off this invasion.
Pujol sent this telegram saying, no, this is fake. Seriously,
you are wasting your time. Don't use those resources at Normandy.
Send them elsewhere, because this is what's really happening. And
(29:45):
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 right time. If
it had been a little later would have been too late,
right they would they would not have rediverted the I imagine,
because it would have been taken too long. Time was
of the essence. They made their bed, they were going
(30:05):
to lie in it. But it was this crucial time
where a change of plan.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Was possible, right m H and the Panzer divisions were
already moving toward Normandy, but Adolf Hitler sent in order
based on this telegram and turned them around, sending them
instead to the northern point of contact, Pas de Calais.
In this lie was so effective that through July and
(30:32):
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. So you would think after
(30:53):
D Day, you would imagine that after all this stuff
goes down and this house of cards collapses, that arabelaka
Garbo's reputation would be ruined amongst the German intelligence circles. However,
that was not the case. In fact, he won a
very prestigious award, prestigious, if we would say it in
(31:14):
the British way from the Germans, but from the Germans. Yeah, yeah,
oh was it? He got the Iron Cross. The Iron
Cross was rendered for his extraordinary services to Germany. And
the thing is this had to be approved by Adolf
Hitler himself, so he was notified he had been awarded
the Iron Cross. And then he and Harris said, you know,
(31:39):
thank you so much. It's such an honor. Truly unworthy,
but I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And this is such a like, oh, it's like a
total fu type thing where they collaborated on this message
together Pugel and Harris. Harris was not known to the
Germans office. Pujel was exclusively their point of contact, and
they talked about offering humble thanks, humble thanks, such an honor.
Oh stop, let's keep going now, No, yeah, totally. And
(32:08):
yet Pujol remained unexposed to the Germans. But by September
of forty four, there have been a few close calls
that you know of Pujehl potentially being exposed unmasked to
the Nazis. Didn't happen, but the British security services like,
we're going to take extra care to make sure that
you are guarded against any potential retribution from the Germans.
(32:29):
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 into post war Nazi
Germany and continue to do some good work.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
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 fifth of November nineteen forty four,
the most Excellent Order of the British Empire. So he
(33:05):
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 rate. What do
you do when you're the spy's pulled off everything? When
you do one last one last con, one big job,
one last one big job, one last ice. With the
(33:29):
help of m I five, Prujol travels to Angola and
fakes his death in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah for the ultimate cover. He died the ultimate protection
against the Germans. He dies of malaria.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
He also moves to Venezuela and he starts managing a
story again. He runs a bookstore and gift shop.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
That's all he ever wan and it's quiet life of
a shopkeeper.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Eventually, though, Thomas Harris is remember him his friend Anthony Blunt,
who turned out to be a Soviet spy right who
penetrated in My five. Eventually, this Anthony Blunt guy says
that he met Garbo and knew him as either Joan
or Jose Garcia, and people started searching for this guy.
(34:14):
And a British politician named Rupert Allison was interested in
the case of Garbo, and everyone he talked to did
not know Garbo's real name. That's how high the secrecy was.
The Soviet spy Blunt gives him that lead on a
Jose Garcia, and the guy is still searching. He eventually
(34:35):
hires a research assistant to get this call every j
Garcia in the Barcelona phone book, and eventually they get
in contact with Pajol's nephew, and then Rupert Allison finally
meets Pajol in New Orleans in nineteen eighty four, and
then Alison's like, dude, you're awesome. Thanks by the way,
(34:58):
thanks for d Day, thanks for all the cool stuff
he did. Will you go hang out with Prince Philip
because he'd love.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
To meet you. He goes, okay, yeah, we'll go. What
do they do? Where do they hang? They have some tea?
Speaker 1 (35:10):
We don't know, We just knew it was a quote
unusually long audience. Oh wow, So if you know Prince Philip,
who was probably like, tell me your wall stories.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yes, please, I want to hear those.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
And then he died in Caracas in nineteen eighty eight,
where he lived pretty anonymously, like I said, the quiet
life of a ShopKeep who happened to be one of
the most badass and outlandish and effective double asians in
the history of spycraft. It's certainly the one we know about, right,
(35:42):
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
can't just you can't be reckless, right, He had to
like kind of have a system and stick to it
(36:04):
and have some discipline, you know, I mean, really really
interesting character.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Some of his fictional subagents also met their end. Agent
one retired in nineteen forty three, Agent six died, so
he followed up on their lives as well.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Dude, some of these fictional agents had richer lives than
I have had. So, I mean, this is very very precise,
detail oriented stuff with this guy who's building these fictional Universes.
I mean, it's world building. It his finest what this
guy's doing.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
And if you'd like to read more about Juan Prujol Garcia,
there is the book we mentioned Garbo. There's also a
great article on Badass of Theweek dot com, which I
think 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
(36:55):
can find out about some historic good guys on Badass
of the Week dot com.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
And it's funny you think of this guy as a badass,
and he certainly was. But a good spy probably doesn't
have to kill very often, right, a good spy 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 a poisoned dart or something like that, or a
little no no no.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
He's a way better spy than James Bond.
Speaker 5 (37:24):
I agree. I agree, James Bond is kind 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.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I do, and they're all on Netflix now, by the way,
or 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 streaming? Now?
What's that? This is a recommendation, I guess if we're
doing that, I think we wrapped up with the show.
On Amazon Prime, you can find this insane cash of
terrible eighties B movies. Oh yeah, and all of these
(37:59):
genres like sword and sorcery, kind of slasher type genre movies, thrillers,
spy thrillers. But they're like the C level ones. They're
the ones that were like, so you had your Cone
in the Barbarian, which is a big hit. Then you
have this whole pile of like kind of copycat movies
that are very entertaining and they do not age well,
but they're a lot of fun if you want to
dig in on Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I have a comic book recommendation. Hoay, I may have
said this before. As a matter of fact, I bet
I have, But I want to put the word out
there because I just reread it.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
There is a.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Comic series called Uber and its follow up is Uber Invasion.
It's an historical account of World War Two if a
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.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
You should.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
You should check it out if 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. You could
tell us about this. You could 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
(39:12):
your fellow listener's opinions on our community page Ridiculous Historians.
You can follow us to believe we're a ridiculous history
show on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
That's right, Ridiculous History show on Instagram. And I am
personally at Embryonic Insider if you feel like hanging out with.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Me, and I am at Ben Bolin if you feel
like seeing some weird stuff, no spoilers.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Wow, you're really that's a good teas man. That's a
good teas I don't think you'll be let down either
Ben gets up to some shenanigans. Let me tell you.
If you don't wan to see that stuff, he can
send us an email ridiculous at HowStuffWorks 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. Me. If that's his real name,
(39:55):
I think it possibly might not be, but I am
going to respect his privacy.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yes, yes, what if his real name is just a
clever switcheroo of the letters. What if his real name
is like pacey Kegrim.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
That's pretty fun And thanks to our research associate Gabe.
Thanks to Thanks to you, Noel. This has been an
absolute pleasure. And now I'm going to spend the afternoon
figuring out what our core 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.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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