Juan Pujol Garcia was fed up with the Communist and Fascist regimes vying for control over Spain and the rest of the world during the Spanish Civil War. Determined to try to do something about it, Garcia and his wife reached out to U. Sadly, despite Garcia reaching out a total of three times over a few years, all offers were declined. Undeterred, Garcia decided that there were other ways he could help the Allies. Namely — be the best double agent of all time. The Con Garcia meticulously crafted an identity as a Nazi fanatic, and worked his way up the Spanish government. He made every effort to ensure that his persona would be exactly what the Germans wanted — he pretended he would regularly travel to London for business, he conned his way into a Spanish diplomatic passport by convincing someone in Lisbon that he was the Spanish ambassador to Lisbon, and he praised fascism whenever he could. Once his new persona was appropriately established, Garcia found a German intelligence agent in Madrid, and convinced the agent that he wanted to become a spy for the Germans. Convinced, this chump gave Garcia extensive espionage training, as well as various other spy goods, and ordered Garcia to move to London and recruit a network of agents. Instead of moving to London, though, Garcia decided to move to Portugal, where he convincingly faked reports to the Germans that looked like they came from England: Armed with a copy of the Blue Guide to England, reference books including one on the Royal Navy and a few magazines he had found in his local library, he concocted impressive-looking reports written in such a way that they appeared to have been sent from London. Of course, no one is perfect, and Garcia, having never lived in England, Scotland, or any nearby countries, made a few mistakes. In other cases, Garcia would blame mistakes he made on his fake agents. And in some cases, Garcia would truly just YOLO. As a result, he would always only sent itemized expense reports, and would always say that he could send the total later. The Allies Get Interested Now that Garcia had achieved legendary status as giving the Nazis the ultimate okey-doke, he decided it was time to reach out to the Allies again. Garcia was just getting started The Allies had been aware that someone was wasting immense numbers of German resources with fake information, and so once they realized who Garcia was, they were all in. Garbo and his British handler, a man named Tomas Harris, invented 27 different German agents who supposedly worked for Garbo. Over this time, Garbo and Harris sent a total of 315 letters to the Germans, averaging 2,000 words, and each containing plenty of proclamations of the glory of fascism in addition to plenty of bullshit intelligence. So, Garbo and his MI-6 counterparts had to be very crafty about how they shared intelligence. Garbo knew the Germans would be suspicious if he did not report it. So, he wrote a report that one of his agents reported a massive troop and ship movement towards Africa which was 100% factually correct , but timed it so that it arrived just too late to be useful. So, he pretended that one of his agents watching that area of England had fallen very sick. In late 1944, the Germans were convinced that the Allies were planning to invade occupied Europe they were. To help with this deception, Garbo and his team sent over 500 messages between January 1944 and D-Day, at first mostly containing intelligence that the Allies did intend to attack, and then containing intelligence that the Allies would attack at Pas de Calais, the location Hitler had thought they would attack all along. Huge battalions of inflatable tanks and other fake military equipment, plus intentionally intercepted radio communications from the Allies, supported this as well, and led the Germans to leave 2 armored divisions and 19 infantry divisions stationed at Pas De Calais for months after D-Day. For his efforts over this time frame, Garbo was actually awarded a German Iron Cross, which was one of the absolute highest military honors awarded to German soldiers, and had to be directly authorized by Hitler to be granted. Garbo you mastermind In addition to the above, Garbo also managed to convince the Germans to give him their strongest hand encryption system, so he could communicate securely with them. This intel was handed over to Bletchley Park, and played a critical role in helping Alan Turing and his team break the Enigma machine as was captured in The Imitation Game. And best of all? He moved to Venezuela, where he had MI-6 help fake his death, so that he could live the rest of his life out peacefully.
