Hello everyone! I'm Xiao Wu, welcome back to brain hole utopia.
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Spying has always been a mysterious profession that can trigger countless reverie. Since ancient times, whether it is war or economic activity, it is inseparable from this special group. It is no exaggeration to say that a good spy can single-handedly turn the tide of war and even change the course of history. Therefore, for a long time, countries around the world have attached great importance to the development of their own spy organizations. Spare no expense to recruit competent spies. The characters I share with you today can be called the king of spies during World War II. At that time, he not only provided intelligence to Germany and Britain at the same time, but also played 28 corners alone. All the information was compiled, but it managed to deceive Hitler and eventually influenced the trend of World War II. He was also awarded the Iron Cross with Hitler's personal authorization, as well as the Order of the British Empire by Britain. You must know that Germany and Britain in World War II are two opposing camps, and the double-sided spies have done this job, and they are really unprecedented. And that man was Juan Puyol Garcia.
• Juan Puyol Garcia
Garcia was born on February 14, 1912 in Barcelona, Spain. Family conditions are not bad. His father was the owner of a dye factory, and there were 4 children in the family, and Garcia was the third oldest. My mother was a very strict Catholic, holding Catholic communion ceremonies at home every day, and my father's way of education was relatively enlightened. Garcia has been very good at melon since childhood, has a good memory, and her observation and association ability are beyond ordinary people. But Garcia didn't spend her clever brains on her studies, and after an argument with her teacher, Garcia dropped out of school and began an apprenticeship at a hardware store. The job didn't last long and I didn't do it, and I studied animal husbandry for a while at poultry school. Because the family is more solid, they toss and turn with him. It was not until 1931 that Garcia's father died. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the brother-in-law was captured by the IRA. Soon after, the mother and sister were also arrested on charges of counter-revolution. During this period, Garcia served in the army for 6 months, but because of the change of family, Garcia developed a dislike for all aspects of the civil war, and even more hated Nazi Germany, which instigated Spain to start a civil war. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Galsi found his place. He thought I wasn't fit for military life, but I could be a spy. Garcia's original idea was to become a spy for MI5 and help Britain, which was the only country at the time to confront German fascism.
So, one day in April 1941, a diminutive bald man knocked on the door of MI5. He volunteered to become an MI5 agent. Garcia talked passionately about his own whimsy, but the MI5 officers looked at such an ordinary-looking young man and thought he had no talent for spying. He said, "Man, don't make a fuss, let's go." But Garcia was not reconciled, and he clamored to see the top michiren.D. But how could the supreme leader say he could see it, so a few strong staff members drove the skinny Garcia and threw him out of the MI5 gate.
Since then, Garcia has tried to contact the British three times, but the British have no interest in recruiting him as a spy. At this moment, Garcia had an epiphany, and he felt, Well, since you British don't want me, I want you to see how powerful I am.
Garcia forged a Spanish official passport by convincing a printing house that he was an official at the Spanish Embassy. Then, with this official passport, he went to the German Embassy in Britain, and made himself a Spanish government official who was a fanatical supporter of the Nazis, claiming that he could often visit London on the grounds of official business trips. Garcia, who was scorned by MI5, was treated as a feast for the Germans. German intelligence quickly recruited him as a spy and sent him to the largest spy agency in Munich, Germany--- military intelligence bureau for training. At the end of the training, Garcia received a set of espionage equipment, including cipher laws, a bottle of invisible ink, a codebook, and £600 funding, and was ordered to travel to Britain, where he would recruit and build a spy network. From then on, Garcia's espionage career officially began, and the German side gave him the code name "Arabel". However, Garcia was the standard in Cao Yingxin, and after receiving the order, he did not go to England at all, but to Portugal, a neutral country that did not fight at that time. In Lisbon, a British tourist map and a British train timetable were used to carry out a one-man espionage work with 28 corners.
Some people may wonder how there is still such a way to play. It's actually quite simple. Garcia found a variety of reference books and magazines in the Lisbon Public Library, and combined some of the news and newspapers he saw to make up reports that seemed to be of high credibility. He also claimed to be active throughout the UK, and also claimed travel expenses based on train information and fares in train schedules and railway guides, and submitted them to the Germans. Garcia's fabricated information covers a wide range of areas, from the military, to the deployment of materials, to minerals, and other fields, and the content is very detailed.
The Germans were surprised to get the report at first, and thought it was incredible that so much intelligence could be gathered in such a short period of time. There was indeed suspicion in the middle. Some special personnel were sent to verify the information given by Garcia one by one. However, the main source of information for the personnel responsible for verification is also local newspapers and news, so the results of the verification are mostly consistent with the information provided by Garcia, and some are even exactly the same.
During this period, Garcia also claimed in the report that he had continuously developed the downline in the United Kingdom and formed a meticulous spy network of 28 people, including himself. His own downlines from RAF officers, communist-hating transferees, university students, German mixed-race businessmen, can be described as a variety of people recruited by themselves. But all this was made up by Garcia's imagination. As the saying goes, a writer who doesn't want to be a liar can't be a good spy. In this way, Garcia alone received a salary of 28 people, in a rental house in Lisbon, and provided a steady stream of information he had made up to Germany. When he saw from the train schedule that a certain section of the train was particularly busy, he went out to check whether there had been a large number of new immigrants along the railway route recently. If anything, there are fortifications in that area, and some of the trains must be transporting arms and supplies. To put it bluntly, everything depends on Monty, but the strange thing is that Garcia is still quite accurate.
Garcia's report to Germany soon caught the attention of British Radio X (Bletchley Park). Bletchley Gardens was the main place where the British government interpreted codes during World War II. After intercepting Garcia's report, they were surprised to find that many of the contents were very consistent with the facts. Suddenly a bad premonition came to mind, "Shouldn't we be closely monitored by a spy network system?" the matter was quickly reported to MI5, which launched a large-scale arrest of a German spy code-named "Arabel". However, Garcia was not in England at all, and the family was in Portugal.
In February 1942, after the United States formally entered World War II against Germany, Garcia tried to contact Patrick Demorest, a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in Portugal. Patrick then recommended Garcia to his colleagues in England. The Englishman looked at it, "Hey, isn't this the boy who introduced himself and was thrown out by us?" ”
When Garcia told him how he had long coaxed the Germans around with fictitious intelligence, the British agents realized that powerful counter-espionage measures were almost vulnerable to Garcia's rich imagination, so they decided to plot against Garcia. In fact, Garcia already hated the Nazis, and with the kind invitation of the British, in 1942, Garcia moved to England. At the behest of the Allies, he became a high-ranking spy who specialized in compiling false information for the Germans, code-named "Garbo" in the British side. Since then, Garcia has officially begun his career as a double-sided spy.
Historically, many double-sided spies were discovered by the enemy during missions, and later rebelled by the enemy before starting their careers as double-sided spies. In this way, the army that actually carried out the rebellion was extremely distrustful of the spies who were plotted against at first. Then most of the time, they all need to be under special care to work. Garcia was an exception, first of all, he had the intention of joining MI5 at the beginning, and was kicked out before finding the German Nazis. Not to mention whether he was sincere when he worked for the German army, the information he provided was all his own conjecture. Since the beginning of the British work in 1942, for some information of little significance, Garcia will send it to Germany in the first place, and some key information, he always deliberately gives it half a beat later. In November 1942, the United States and British allies launched Operation Torch against French North Africa. Garcia used a fictional downline to send intelligence to the Germans, saying that "warships and ships had been painted in the Mediterranean and left the port". This information was deliberately sent out a few days late, and the postmark of the intelligence was deliberately made to be the date before the landing. When the Germans received the information, they could only say with regret, 'It is a pity, the information is very accurate, but it is too late.'"
In this way, Garcia gained the trust of Britain on the one hand, and on the other hand, his excellent work and his "downliners" were also recognized by Germany. Within a few years, the Germans had given Garcia millions of dollars, believing that as long as Garcia's spy network was there, Germany would no longer need to send spies to Britain.
During Garcia's career as a double-agent, his most prominent contribution was to turn the tide of World War II during the Normandy landings.
● Operation Perseverance and the Normandy landings
In January 1944, the Germans assigned Garcia an important task. The Germans learned that the Allies were preparing for a large-scale European landing and asked Garcia to gather relevant intelligence and report it at any time. This large-scale European landing was the Battle of Normandy, and it was also an important military operation during World War II when the Allies successfully recaptured Western Europe occupied by Germany. At this time, then, the British side asked Garcia to cooperate in the implementation of "stoic action". The so-called "Operation Stoicism" was actually a pre-war preparation plan that was planned to mislead the Germans. Garcia played a crucial role in this plan. He used misinformation to mislead the Germans into believing that the Allies would land in other areas outside Normandy, preventing the Germans from placing large numbers of troops in Normandy.
From January 1944 to the Battle of Normandy, Garcia sent more than 500 pieces of information to Berlin by radio. In order to establish the credibility of the intelligence, the British side deliberately asked Garcia to reveal some specific time and details of the landing to the Germans. But under Garcia's description, the landing site has changed from Normandy to Calais. In order to make the scam work smoothly, the Allies also installed fake aircraft and inflatable tanks in Calais. The Germans thus left their best troops in Calais.
In order to be able to retreat after Operation Perseverance, on June 5, the day before the Allied landings, Garcia carefully prepared a story for the Germans. He claimed that one of his downline intelligence officers had brought an urgent piece of intelligence, and of course the downline was also fictitious. The Germans were asked to receive information from the evening of June 5 to the early hours of June 6. However, when Garcia sent out the intelligence at 3 a.m. on June 6, the German side did not respond, and the German operators did not respond until 8 a.m. The intelligence was to inform the German Allies that the real landing site was Normandy, not Calais. It was actually too late to send out the information at three o'clock in the morning, plus the German side did not reply until 8 a.m. Garcia seized on this, added fuel to the fire, pushed his responsibility to the end, and even accused the German operators of saying, "I do not accept any apologies or excuses, it is your dereliction of duty that has made our efforts in vain!" If it wasn't for my ideals, I wouldn't have done it a long time ago! ”
After the Normandy landings, the German army was gradually defeated, and the situation in World War II was fundamentally reversed. Most importantly, the Germans did not suspect Garcia at all, but increased their trust in him.
After the Normandy landings, the German side, in order to reward the spy code-named "Arabel", on July 29, 1944, Hitler personally signed garcia with the Second Class Of the Iron Cross.
In Britain, George VI also awarded the Order of the British Empire to spy agents code-named "Garbo".
But since the mission, Garcia has received too much attention and it is difficult to make another punch. Then, in 1949, with the help of MI5, Garcia traveled to Angola, where he faked the illusion that he had died of malaria.
After that, Garcia disappeared completely in the rivers and lakes like evaporation in the world.
It wasn't until June 6, 1984, the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings, that Garcia told his son the truth about that year. Later, Garcia's diary was made public, and it turned out that since he became anonymous, all his money had been donated to British intelligence agencies, who had traveled to many countries and later settled in Venezuela to run a bookstore and gift shop for a living.
Garcia died in Caracas in 1988 and was buried in a small town on the Caribbean Sea. His legendary life only made me think that if Garcia had been born in peacetime, he would have become a particularly good screenwriter. His story was later adapted into the movie "Spy Garbo", if you are interested in friends can find it.