Joan Pujol Garcia: The Ultimate Double Agent of WW2
A Long Story Short: Double Agent
Spain’s history has many colorful and heroic figures. There is one 20th century man who really stands out from the pack- his name was Joan Pujol Garcia. During World War 2 he was a spy for both the Allies and the Nazi’s. Now, originally he wanted to be a spy for the allies but they didn’t immediately accept him or his proposal. So what did he do?Joan Pujol Garcia became a spy for the Nazi’s instead. He created the identity of an ultra pro-nazi government official and began his self-imposed mission of saving the world.
He took it upon himself to seek out Nazi intelligence agent Friedrich Knappe-Ratey in Madrid. Friedrich gave him a course in espionage 101along with some spy-craft tools to help aid inJoan’s mission. The mission was to relocate to London and create spy cells filled with Nazi sympathizers. Joan convinced a local printer that he was actually a diplomat from the capital and that he needed a passport to travel. He never made it to the UK instead he set up shop in Lisbon, Portugal. Using the materials he could muster he generated fabricated reports of what it was like in London.
As time went on the Nazi’s trust in him grew giving him the codename Alaric Arabel. After he had gained their trust he went back (for the third time) to the Allies offering to be a double agent. This time they accepted the offer giving him the codename Garbo. His role was feeding the Nazi’s irrelevant information and giving the Allies pertinent facts. In order to not be found out he also had a habit of giving the Nazi’s true and very useful information. But by the time it had been received it was just a little too late to be used and acted upon. He was eventually commissioned by the Nazi’s to set up a spy ring inside of Great Britain. Joan Pujol Garcia created fake sub-agents that the Nazi’s paid a salary to. In total there were 27 fake characters in which the Nazi’s paid roughly $340,000.
Joan Pujol Garcia was considered so good at his job that the Nazi’s decided not to try to place more spies in England. Before the D-day invasion he, along with MI5 tricked the Nazi’s into thinking there was going to be a landing at Pas-de-Calais in the north of France. The Nazi’s believed the information and left a large number of tanks and troops there, thinking that the D-day landing was just a diversion. He is one of the only people to have lived that received the Iron Cross from Hitler and the an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) from King George VI. After the war MI5 helped him fake his death to escape reprisals from vengeful Nazi’s.
Elevated Beginnings
Joan Pujol Garcia was born in Barcelona,Spain on 14 February 1914 to Joan Pujol, a Catalan business owner, and Mercedes Guijarro García. He was the third of four children. He went to boarding school for his primary education and his father visited him weekly. Pujol’s spent his intermediate school years in Barcelona, but after finding the school disagreeable he took on the role of apprentice at a hardware store. Eventually, he served his compulsory time in the army in a cavalry unit before the Spanish war. Joan Pujol Garcia found that being a soldier was not an agreeable occupation for him. His father’s business continued after his death leaving behind plenty of money for the family to survive on. Later the dye factory his father had built up was taken over by the workers at the dawn of the Spanish Civil War.
The Spanish Civil War
Joan Pujol Garcia initially fled from having to serve in the war. His family was captured and maltreated by the Republican forces and treated as counter-revolutionaries. Police Captured Pujol hiding out in his girlfriends house and imprisoned. After a week he set free by the Soccoro Blanco (part of the counter revolution with links to the monarchy). He later joined the Republican forces using forged documents. At the conclusion of the war Joan Pujol Garcia had been on both sides and never fired a bullet. At the war’s conclusion he married and had one child.
After WW2
After the conclusion of the war Joan asked for help from MI5. He traveled to Angola (a country in Southern Africa) and they faked his death (citing malaria as the culprit). Pujol then relocated to Venezuela. Later he divorced and remarried. His story remained relatively secret until the 1970’s and 80’s when a politician ( Rupert Allason) became interested in GARBO. Joan Pujol Garcia later traveled to England meeting prince Phillip and then on to France to celebrate the 40th anniversary of D-Day. He passed away in 1988.
There’s a lot more to his story that is just far too long for our purposes. To learn more about Joan Pujol Garcia check out the following books and the youtube link below:
Be sure to check your local library or used book store first!(link for U.S. residents)
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