The Double Agent Who Made D-Day Possible

On this episode of Our American Stories, the Allied invasion of Normandy depended on more than military force. It required convincing Germany that the real attack would land somewhere else, and that task fell to one man working deep inside a world of fragile alliances and invented identities.

Juan Pujol García, known to British intelligence as Agent Garbo, built an entire network of fictitious sources and delivered reports so convincing that German command relied on them without question. His work became one of the most striking examples of double-agent strategy in modern espionage, shaping the deception that shielded D-Day from German defenses. The late, great Stephen Ambrose tells Agent Garbo’s story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American Stories. Stephen Ambrose is
one of America's leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed in
two thousand and two, but his epic storytelling accounts can
now be heard here at Our American Stories, thanks to
those who run his estate. On June sixth, nineteen forty four,
the largest invasion in military history occurred. It was D Day,

(00:32):
in some one hundred and fifty six thousand Allied soldiers
landed in Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe.
Here Stephen Ambrose with a story about the spies who
set the stage for Operation Overlord.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
The Allies knew that the Germans regarded Patent as the
best officer in the Allied camp, and if they were
certain Patent would lead the attack on France, that was
a judgment with which George S. Patton Junior heartily agreed.
He certainly thought of himself as the best general the
Allies had. In some ways he was, but not at all.

(01:13):
And Eisenawer thought for the set piece battle that was
going to be D Day, Bradley was superior, and Eisenower
put Bradley in command of the American forces for D
Day but he used the German perception of patent to
put Patent in command of this fictitious army group. Now,
how do you build a fictitious army group. One way

(01:34):
was to assign divisions to it that wouldn't be coming
into France until later. They weren't scheduled for the first
day or even the first week. Another way was to
just invent divisions for the Germans edification. Germany had a
string of spies in England who they thought were the

(01:54):
best spies in the world. They did not realize that
every single one of those spies had been turned by
the British Secret Service, and that they were now working
as they poundered away on their Morris code tap tap
tap to send the messages over to their controller in Hamburg,
that there was a British officer sitting beside him, literally
with a gun at their head, sending the messages that

(02:17):
the British told them to send. The most important of
these agents, there were a couple of dozen of them.
The most important was his code name was Garbo. Garbo
was not an ideolog. He wasn't in this because he
hated Nazism or anything like that. Garbo was after the money,
and when he was parachuted into England, as he was

(02:37):
a Spaniard to work for the Germans, he was picked up.
Thanks to the Enigma, the British always knew when these
guys were arriving, picked up and given a choice, and
he took the obvious choice rather than die sure, I'll
work for you guys. Garbo became the German's favorite spy.

(03:00):
He sent messages out for three and a half years
and he never lied. Every single piece of information that
Garbo sent to Hamburg was authentic. This was a very delicate,
very tricky game the British would send on information. It
had to have a number of qualities to it. It
had to impress the Germans giez, he must be a

(03:21):
hell of a spy to have found that out. It
always absolutely had to be accurate. It always had to
arrive just a little bit too late to make any difference.
And for three and a half years these messages went
out and Garbo's reputation went up and up and up
with the ab there to the point that the British

(03:41):
Secret Service in the Second World War paid its bills
with German gold. Because Garbo had convinced his controllers that
he had dozens of sub agents working for him, and
they were all in it for the money, and they
were always asking for more money. So Garbo was always
asking for more more money, and the Germans would arrange

(04:02):
the ship gold bars via Spain into Portugal and from
Portugal to England. And that's how the British Secret Service
paid their bills during the war with German gold. Now
as the bridge displayed remarkable patients here. That was a
bad first three and a half years of war for them,

(04:23):
But they never utilized this asset of these turned spies,
the double cross system they called it, until the spring
of forty four, and then they sprang the trap. Garbo
and the other agents England started sending messages to the
Adverta saying things like I saw a softball game yesterday
outside Dover between men who were wearing the patch of

(04:44):
a new division, the one hundred and thirty first Infantry Division,
and men from another new division, one hundred and twenty ninth.
There were any such divisions, they were entirely fictitious. Through
that method, the Allies and Operation Fortitude were able to
build up in the German mind. A reading of Eisenhower's

(05:06):
Order of battle the credited ike with twice as many
divisions as he actually had, three times as much landing
craft as he actually had. And they reinforced this with
again utilizing the movie set people to have these paper
mache tanks and these rubber tanks and wooden airplanes all

(05:26):
around Dover and Patten very much in the spotlight. Patten
dashed around southern England and eastern England, making speeches, talking
to troops, getting his name in the paper. And they
remember in Berlin they got the London papers that night,
because they went down to Portugal and they went over
to Ireland and from there they got back over to Germany.

(05:49):
So it was known that Patten was there, was known
that this great force was building up, and the best
part of the deception of all the Allies that convinced
the Germans that they were twice as strong as they
actually were. Eisenhower, by way of contrast, had an almost
exact reading on Ronmeld's order of battle thanks to the
Ultra assessment and thanks to Allied control of the air,

(06:12):
which meant that the Allies could fly thousands and thousands
of reconnaissance missions and take tens of thousands of photographs
while the Germans could sneak a plane through every once
in a while to take photographs of the build up
in England. The deception plan was fabulously successful. The Germans
kept building up their forces across from Dover and the

(06:34):
PoTA Calae, and in a relative sense, neglecting their defenses
down in Normandy.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
And a terrific job on the editing by our own
Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Stephen Ambrose, whose
stories are here on account of the marvelous people who
run his estate. He passed in two thousand and two,
that his storytelling is still with us, and what a
story he told about the importance of spycraft, and my goodness,

(07:00):
the patience it required to develop confidence in this spy.
Over three and a half years, this Germans favored spy,
as Ambrose put at Garbo, always providing accurate intelligence, but
just a little too late, until finally, finally, the great
deception could be had. The story of American spycraft in

(07:23):
World War Two one great example here on our American
stories lehabib Here, as we approach our nation's two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like to remind you that all
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(07:45):
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