Holocaust Remembrance Day – Joan Pujol Garcia

The Story of The Greatest Lier In History

Joan Pujol Garcia, was born on February 14th, 1912 in Barcelona. He was a Spaniard who acted as a double agent with loyalty to Great Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II. His mother came from a strict Roman Catholic family and took communion every day, but his father was much more secular and had liberal political beliefs. There is no information about his economic class.

At the beginning of the war, Pujol decided that he must make a contribution “for the good of humanity” by helping Britain (which, with its empire, was Germany’s only adversary at the time).  He initially approached the British three different times, including through his wife, but they showed no interest in employing him as a spy. Therefore, he resolved to establish himself as a German agent before approaching the British again to offer his services as a double-agent. When [the British] didn’t pay any attention to him, his plans veered toward espionage. He knew that he had to go to the Germans first, establish himself as a German operative, and then turn double agent. But of course, he didn’t have the ability to get to London, so he just went back to Lisbon. He pretended he was in London, a place he’d never been to. He didn’t even speak the English language. And he started on this self-made, imaginary espionage career.

The British were terrified. They were like, ‘Someone has sneaked past our lines and someone is in the heart of the beast, reporting on us!’ because his reports were so believable, even to people in the country he was supposed to be spying on.

He fooled them by reporting movements of different battalions in England. Increasing confidence in himself and giving (the Germans) what he considers chicken feed, little bits of military information that, in the beginning, were completely true. These were nonessential facts the British felt that they could pass on. And slowly, over time, they begin to mix that chicken feet with imaginary information they wanted Germans to believe. So the ration of true to false declined over time and in the end, he was giving them 100 percent fantasies.

The key memo he sent was on June 9th. This was the day Hitler and the high command were debating whether the Normandy invasion was the real one and whether to send all those reserves from Belgium and France down into Normandy and basically destroy the incoming divisions. And Pujol sent a very long detailed telegram saying “This is fake, you have to believe me” and those panzer divisions were actually on the road, those troops were on the move, and Hitler sent an order turning them around. This was the key moment in the future of Normandy, in the future of that battle, and Garbo is really the author of that moment.