Helen Fry
Garbo: D-Day and the Double Agent

Helen Fry - Garbo: D-Day and the Double Agent

- So today we’re going to be speaking about Agent Garbo. Garbo was a double agent. I’ve quoted there from historian Michael Smith, who’s written some fabulous books not only on Bletchley Park but also on MI6 and British intelligence. And he said that, “Garbo was the most valuable of the Double Cross agents, and the star of the show. And, in fact, the agent in whom the Abwehr, the German secret service, had its most faith.” So Double Cross, just by way of background, Double Cross was a system invented by British intelligence working closely, MI5 and MI6. MI5 works in the home country. MI6 operates largely abroad, but they had joint operations of running double agents in what they called the Double Cross system to try and double cross, to deceive the Germans in passing false intelligence. We’ll look at some of the things later. Next slide, please. And, of course, from the very outset of war, there was a concern. And particularly when we get into 1940, one of the ways that Germany succeeded in its Blitzkrieg, in its successful overrunning of Netherlands, Belgium, and eventually into France, was because it parachuted in agents beforehand. And Britain was really concerned, not only ahead of any invasion threat, but particularly throughout the war and particularly in the early part of the war, about any possible German agents who might parachute into the country. And we were going to be prepared. We were going to try to turn them to work as double agents. And, in our own history, we have a number of double agents.

Kim Philby, Cambridge spy, being a notable one later. And his colleagues, they were double agents, spies working for the other side. In the Second World War, there were a number of agents that landed in Britain and it’s claimed, and I think it’s true, I’m not quite sure how I can verify it, but 17 of them landed and were all picked up by British intelligence ‘cause we knew they were coming. We’d intercepted their messages via Bletchley Park. And this site that you can see in front of you is the secret place where they were taken. So wherever they were captured in the UK, they were brought to this house called Latchmere House. It’s just near Richmond, sort of southwest of London, right near the Thames. And this was a secret interrogation centre that was run by MI5. And in the early part of the war, it wasn’t just German spies that could be brought here, but also, just incidentally, members of the British Union of Fascists. So the likes of Oswald Mosley that were pro-Nazi, pro Fascist. A founder of one of the Fascist parties in Britain, they could end up, their followers could end up here in 1940. So this camp was top secret. The public didn’t know about it. It has, in recent years, just in the last two to three years, been turned into luxury flats. So there you go. But it was known as Camp 020. And here the interrogation reports survive in our National Archives in London.

Not all of them have been declassified from what we can tell, but enough of them for us to understand what was going on here. And this was the primary site where German spies would be taken, men and women. And there were some female spies captured. They could be taken here and they were interrogated and we tried to convince them to work for us. Next slide, please. And the main commanding officer was this chap. Looks a bit kind of like a Nazi. It was intentional. He wore a monocle. He was a pretty fearsome chap. He worked for British intelligence. He was Lieutenant Colonel Robin Stephens, nicknamed Tin Eye Stephens. And he did have quite a reputation, although I’ve not seen any evidence of any malpractice at this particular site. Although later in the post-war period at a place in Germany, he would be investigated for potentially breaching the rules. But that’s a different story. So before we get back to Garbo. That was his code name. What happens… Next slide, please. If you capture a German agent and he or she refuses to be turned? Well, nine of them actually refused to work for us, refused to go back to Germany pretending still to work for the Germans. And one of them, this chap here, Josef Jakobs. His name’s spelled variously, but the German way with the K. Josef Jakobs was, indeed, a German spy. He was captured in 1941, where, nearly up to the anniversary, end of January '41, he left Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands.

Holland, of course at that time, was occupied by the Germans and he parachuted into England, north of London. Next slide, please. Not far from Baldock in a place called Ramsey. And so he landed in this sort of field, farmland. He was picked up. We knew he was coming. When he was captured, he was still wearing his flying suit. He had a rather large sum of money, 500 pound in British currency. It’s roughly about 8,000 pound in today’s money. Of course he had his forged identity papers and he had his radio transmitter. Interestingly, I have worked on his files in the National Archives, and what survives are all kinds of little sort of spy gadgets. So you can actually order them and have a look at them at the Archives. So the real artefacts that came when he parachuted in, but he was picked up. But unfortunately on landing he actually broke his ankle. Next slide, please. He was transferred to Latchmere House. There we go. See Latchmere House again. He was interrogated by Captain Robinson. He was interrogated working for MI5. And he was also interrogated by our man, Tin Eye Stephens. And they failed actually to turn him, to convince him to work for us. And on humanitarian grounds, he was transferred to Dulwich Hospital where he was, for two months, trying to heal his broken ankle where he received treatment. Next slide, please. But he did face a military tribunal.

And the 4th, 5th August, there’s a lot more we can say about his case, but just in brief, so you get an idea of what could happen and what did happen if you landed as a German spy in England and refused to work for the British. So he was tried at the headquarters in Chelsea, the Duke of York’s Headquarters. He, of course, pleaded not guilty for espionage. You know, he wasn’t a German spy according to him. The photograph you see is one that I took. So his statement. It’s not a confession because, of course, he didn’t confess to being guilty, but his statement survives in the National Archives. It’s quite something to see a document, what is it? Over 80 years old. But just the original document with the original signature. This is not digitised. It’s quite incredible. So I photographed that and that’s his actual signature. I’ve got a thing about signatures. They’re quite interesting when you come across original signatures in the Archives. Next slide, please. So he was charged and he was charged with committing treachery. Not treason, of course, 'cause he’s German. But committing treachery. Quote, “In that you landed at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire on the night of the 31st of January, 1st of February, descended by parachute with intent to help the enemy.” So his intention was to send, by his wireless transmitter, to send messages back to Nazi Germany on what he could see of any troop movements, installations.

So he would be sort of hiding deep in the countryside. But, of course, he was captured. And what happened to him? Next slide, please. He ended up, yeah, in the Tower of London. And the British, being very humane, actually decided because he was still limping and in quite a lot of pain from his fractured ankle, sat him on a chair when they shot him. And at various points, the chair is brought out at the Tower of London. You can actually see it on display. I’m not sure that it’s always permanently on display. But when you go next, if you do, to the Tower of London, see if you can find. I have seen it myself. This is a photograph I took. So now and again, it is on display. But yeah, how, you know, that artefact tells such a tale and you can just see where it’s broken, where the bullet went through and hit him kind of in the back, sort of just by the heart there. Next slide, please. So what about Garbo then? Why was he considered one of the most? Well, Michael Smith says the most valuable. Since he wrote his book, there are new files coming out on other double agents. But I think it is still true to say he was certainly one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable of the agents. But he did not land in England. He did not parachute into England. He was a very, very unusual story. And a number of… Next slide, please. A number of books have been written about him, which I highly recommend that you read if you can get hold of them.

These are just some of them. Nigel West, well-known British intelligence historian, has written a raft of intelligence books on MI5, MI6, double operations. Absolutely brilliant. I love his stuff. So if you can get hold of any of that, that’s really worth reading. And a book by Stephen there on Agent Garbo too. Any of these books on Agent Garbo, really, really worth reading. And, of course, Ben Macintyre famously did one on Agent Zigzag, which was Eddie Chapman. So he was one of the colleagues of Garbo. Next slide, please. So what do we know about Agent Garbo? Well, of course Garbo isn’t his real name. That’s his code name. He was born in Spain in 1912 Joan Pujol Garcia. He was technically a double agent in that he worked for the Germans and the British. The British gave him the code name Garbo, as I said earlier. But the Germans, of course, didn’t know him as Garbo. Never found out his code name, but they called him Arabel. Now he’s interesting because he wants to become a spy for political reasons. He’s in Spain during the Civil War. Civil war rages in Spain between 1936 and 1938. Franco’s Fascist forces look as though they’re going to win at various points. And so it’s like a civil war. He becomes disillusioned with both sides, actually, with the Communist regime, ideology, but also with the Fascist regime in Spain at the time. So he does something which is really unusual, and this is even before war has broken out in Europe. So even before 1939, he offers himself, he goes into the British Embassy in Madrid and offers himself as a spy. And in his words, “For the good of humanity.” Kim Philby, of course, I’m not going to go off on a track on Kim Philby, but of course he was in Spain at this time covering the Civil War. So there were spies working before the Second World War in Spain, covering aspects of intelligence in the Spanish Civil War. Now, Garbo wanted to work for the Allies for the good of humanity. Next slide, please.

But he has a bit of trouble actually becoming a British spy as we’ll see. So in 1936 when war breaks out, when civil war breaks out in Spain, he’s actually the manager of a poultry farm. He’s lived quite a simple life in many respects, but he is called up by the Republicans to fight in the army. He’s actually hidden at the time, but he is discovered and actually is imprisoned for a week. But he’s broken out by a resistance group known as Socorro Blanco. And they, of course, hide him again. And they’ve got something in mind for him. They produce fake papers. His age is given far too old for any military service. And it thinks that this will protect him during the Civil War, but also when war breaks out, because the situation in Europe, certainly as we get to 1938, it seems that war is inevitable. It’s just a question of when. So he goes back to his poultry farming, but this isn’t really very viable. He’s not making a living. It’s pretty tough. And so, although he’s got everything he wants, he’s got his fake papers, he doesn’t have to serve. Next slide, please. He doesn’t have to serve in the Spanish Civil War. He makes a really interesting move. He decides to join or rejoin, if you like, the Republican side. I mean they asked him, they tried to conscript him and he refused. But so he actually joins them with his false papers and they don’t actually realise who he is.

And his intention actually is, as I’ve put there, to desert. But to desert, eventually which he does during the Battle of the Ebro. And you can Google the Battle of the Ebro, which takes place in September, 1938. He actually deserts to the other side, to the Fascist side, which is bizarre. Next slide, please. But he has a reason for doing that, as we’ll see. So it’s quite kind of double crossing even before he’s become a Double Cross agent. So deep down, he dislikes, he hates fascism. He’s also got this deep loathing for the Soviet Union, for Communism. And the struggle in Europe at that time, in Germany, in Austria, and in other parts of Europe, there is really no choice. There’s no middle ground in the 1930s between Communism on the left and Fascism, Nazi Germany, on the right. And which is why so many in Europe, and particularly many Jewish families, align themselves with socialists, some even Communists. But for our man, Garbo, he’s not happy to sit in either of those. Next slide, please. So he contacts, again, this is during the Second World War now. We’re into the Second World War. He makes contact first with British intelligence, which he does in Madrid through the embassy because he knows or he suspects that the embassy will pass him on to any British spies that will be working in Spain. Spain during the Second World War is neutral and there are any number of attempts to keep Spain out of the war. It was thought that… Well, Spain was leaning quite heavily and it was thought that Franco, the Fascist leader, would actually, well, he was not only pro-Nazi, but would actually join Hitler in the fight. And we managed to sort of successfully kind of keep him neutral. It was rather hard work, actually, but he did largely stay neutral.

So Spain isn’t in the war per se. But as a neutral country, just like Portugal and other neutral countries in Europe, Sweden being one, Switzerland, they were hotbeds for spies of all nationalities. British, American, of course, French spies, German enemy spies move in and out. And you would have quite concentrated levels of enemy spies or our spies working in these neutral countries, quite often out of the capitals of these neutral countries. But you see, Garbo… I’ll just call him Garbo, rather than his full name. Garbo believed, you know, he’s handing himself on a plate to British and American intelligence. And he really thinks that he’s actually going to be accepted. But because he’s rejected by them, he goes one step further and he now creates another false identity. He gets false papers as a Spanish government official, and he acquires a fake diplomatic passport. And he’s making lots of noises about being a fanatical Nazi, pro-German. And, of course, in everyone’s eyes, he is an official with a diplomatic passport. So he thinks… Next slide, please. That this is going to open doors for him. And he does something quite unusual that we might not logically think that he would do. Don’t forget his ultimate aim, his long-term aim, is to join the British as a double agent. But they’ve rejected him and so have the Americans. But he comes to the attention of German agents working in Spain and they recruit him. He’s now a German agent. Spanish nationality, but he is officially working for German intelligence for the Abwehr. And they transfer him to Lisbon.

Lisbon in the Second World War is arguably the capital of espionage. In the First World War, it was certainly Paris. In the 1930s, 20s and 30s, it was Vienna. But that shift, I think the capital of espionage, if you like, in the Second World War was certainly Lisbon. That neutral capital was absolutely ideal. And the gateway, really, into the Mediterranean. It’s close to Gibraltar. And his long-term aim. Don’t forget, he has to do what his German handler’s asking him to do as Arabel. His long-term aim is to travel to England to recruit other agents. Next slide, please. That’s what the Germans think he’s going to do, that he’s going to recruit agents for German intelligence. So they give him a crash course in espionage. And this is one of the items. This kind of… It’s like… What would you call it? Like a mini telescope. Yeah. So he gets a course on invisible ink and secret writing. He’s actually given a bottle of invisible ink. He’s also given a code book and 600 pounds in cash. That’s a lot of money. Before this session, I did an exchange thing to see roughly how much that will be. And it’s around 10,000 pound. So what are we talking about? $12,000, roughly? Heck of a lot of money in those days to be carrying around, considering how much things cost. So this is a lot of money. The Germans always paid their agents. They paid them well. Next slide, please. Again, I’m not sure if people are aware that Germans paid their agents very, very well. On that jacket cover you can see on your screen on the right, that’s the codes. In fact, Jacob Jakobs, who we talked about at the very beginning, he had a code, a circular code like that. Very, very similar.

And his code, which is quite flimsy, is a kind of combination, not quite paper, not quite cardboard, actually survives in the National Archive. So I was able to hold this, almost like it felt a bit like a jigsaw. But yeah, quite incredible. So they came with these sort of codes. So what does Garbo do? Because he doesn’t really want to work for the Germans. He does not support the Nazi regime. His long-term goal, as soon as he can, is to work for the British. And he hasn’t quite figured out exactly how he’s going to do that now. But he’s got to hold his cover with the Germans, otherwise they’re going to certainly arrest him, shoot him, execute him, send him to a concentration camp. So he takes a number of public sources. So he acquires, for example, train time tables for England, tourist guides of England, magazine advertisements that he’s seen. And he kind of puts together… He’s really clever. He’d have made a great fiction writer. He was really good at holding his cover, but also good at creating fake reports for the Germans, which the Germans believed because he made them incredibly believable. But he went one step further. And this I find just extraordinary. Next slide, please. He creates a whole network of agents who are working for the Germans, but, in fact, they don’t exist. They are fictional sort of sub-agents of him. So he tells the Germans, his German handler, he’s the main agent, but a lot of these reports are coming. he tells the German agent, his handler, they’re coming from his network of agents. And they are so impressed. But not a single one.

How can you pull it off? Just mind blowing, isn’t it how you can pull this off? He actually creates this network of agents that don’t even exist, but the Germans believe it does. But it’s clever on his point of view because the longer he goes on, somewhere along the line, he could get tripped up. Something might happen, which the Germans might think, oh, hang on a minute, he’s not quite right. But he could blame his agents if something went wrong. It’s so clever. And he became one of the most highly-trusted agents by the Germans themselves. And he went on to create this fictional convoy of British ships. He told the Germans, there’s this convoy of ships and I think it’s kind of, sort of around this area and et cetera. And it’s a bit vague, but the agents are telling me there is this big convoy of ships that’s leaving England with supplies. And incredibly. So he’s doing the job of British intelligence without even working for them at this point. As I’ve put there, the Germans then spent considerable time and resources, all kinds of resources available to them, trying to hunt down this convoy of ships that doesn’t even exist. It seems almost unbelievable. Next slide, please. His intelligence was so good that they believed him. And this was just one of the many things that he did. But yes, why have we got a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey on the screen? Yeah, he did make mistakes. And this is where you’ve got to be really careful with your cover story. But fortunately, the Germans didn’t notice his mistake. He claimed in one of the messages that he transmitted to his German handler, his alleged contact in Glasgow. He had an agent in Glasgow, obviously fake.

He, quote unquote, in his message, “Would do anything for a litre of wine.” Well, as I put there, he’s unaware that the Scottish people primarily, well, they drink whiskey. Certainly it was the main habit then. If he’d been smart or if he’d known, he would’ve said, would do anything for a litre of whiskey. But the Germans didn’t pick it up. But who did? Bletchley Park. Bletchley Park were listening in. Or should I say, listening is not quite the right word. They were decoding the messages that he was sending to the Abwehr handler. So Bletchley Park, of course, being the code breaking and cryptoanalysis site in Buckinghamshire, famous for cracking the naval Enigma codes, the other codes, and also famously breaking into the messages between Hitler and his secret service, the Abwehr. But it also meant that Bletchley Park could read other messages to and from the Abwehr. It was quite, quite brilliant. And they were picking up Garbo’s messages. And they’re thinking, hang on a minute, something’s not quite right. We’ve got a spy in our midst. He’s got this wrong. There’s a spy in our midst. And MI6 believed that Garbo was actually operating in Britain. And they launched this hunt for this spy. Next slide, please. They didn’t find him, but Garbo was getting a bit fed up actually and wanted to try again. And so he contacted this time American intelligence in Lisbon. See, Americans had their agents working in and out of Lisbon as well, often in close cooperation with MI6. And so the U.S. intelligence services in Lisbon contacted MI6. And, of course, MI6 suddenly realised, hang on a minute, the guy who’s sending these messages isn’t based in Britain.

He’s actually this chap in Spain. Next slide, please. So MI6 have realised, they call it chicken feed when they’re giving primarily false intelligence to the other side, although it could be mixed up with a bit of real intelligence. That’s not too important from our perspective. So they realised, particularly after the Germans, they were tracking the fact that the Germans were trying to find this convoy of English ships that didn’t exist. And Garbo was doing their job for them because he was causing the Germans to waste time and resources. And if the Germans are wasting time and resources here looking for the convoy, they’re not doing other stuff in the war, which is really, really important and part of the deception in the Second World War. But now MI6 is really concerned because, as I’ve put here, this maverick, as they saw it, he was an uncontrolled agent. They realised that he had no handler, that he was inventing this all on his own. He was reporting nonsense, but actually the danger, the greater danger, is that he might inadvertently upset MI6’s own deception operations. Could even upset the American deception operations in the region. So they’re going to have to pull him in. So finally, Garbo, as he becomes. Next slide, please. Garbo is taken on by the British intelligence services and they transfer him to England in April, 1942. But not before he’s vetted by MI5. They’ve done huge background checks on him. They know a fair bit about him. In fact, his file has been declassified in the National Archives in London. So it is possible for anyone to order them up and go and have a look.

And the files are just fascinating and will quite often include some of the intercepts from Bletchley Park. So he was assigned to Tommie Harris, that was his British handler. Harris was a very close friend of Philby and the other Cambridge spies. It was a very close world. In 1942, Kim Philby is in Lisbon at this time. Harris was actually the only Spanish-speaking officer in MI5. So he had to be the handler, the British handler for Garbo. There was no one else, but they, they got on pretty well, actually. And as I’ve put there, ironically, of all the double agents, and we can do more on double agents another time. They are just absolutely fascinating. They each have their own roles interlinked to each other. They don’t always know about each other. So the whole double agent network wouldn’t necessarily, some knew each other, but some didn’t. You have to try and protect that. But they were being run by MI5 and MI6 with specific tasks in mind. And of all of them. And we don’t know exactly how many there were because not all of their files have been declassified. Not all of their names have been released, but he was the only double agent who deliberately set out to become a double agent. So that was his aim all along, I’m going to become a double agent, and that’s what he succeeded in doing. But all the other double agents that worked for us were turned at Latchmere House, the house that we started out at the beginning. And so their roles would become absolutely vital in wartime because, ahead of various operations, you’re going to need to feed some deception, to have deception operations to enable, particularly if your forces are going to land in certain parts of Europe, you want to fool the Germans into where the landings are going to be. Next slide, please.

And so what did he do? He actually fed some brilliant, brilliant intelligence and he did it, he deceived the Germans by communicating with his agents. So he would send messages. It was actually Garbo corresponding with his handler, Harris, but the Germans didn’t realise that he wasn’t really contacting his fake network of agents. Of course, they didn’t know it was fake. So they’re communicating by letter. So they’re writing letters. Some of the messages are written in invisible link. He’s also transmitting by radio. And the result, extraordinarily, is the Germans were funding this whole network of 27 fictional agents. You find people like Garbo and I mentioned Eddie Chapman earlier, Agent Zigzag, they actually became quite wealthy because they were not paid by British intelligence, but they were paid by the Germans. And the Germans were paying Garbo for his 27 fictional agents as well as his own work because he’s got to support the network. He has to bribe people, that kind of thing. And they’re paying for it. They’re quite happy. And at one point, he’s now sent around 315 letters. All complete nonsense. Well, it doesn’t look like nonsense, but from his point of view they’re fake. And he sends them. He’s given a dead letter box, an address in Lisbon, happens to be a post office in Lisbon, where he’s supposed to send the letters. And the letters will be picked up.

He wouldn’t necessarily know who was going to pick them up from the German side, but a German intelligence officer would go into the post office and pick up letters. And the letters with their invisible ink would have all kinds of intelligence, which could be enhanced. You could read the invisible ink or later sent by radio, but 315 letters. And the Germans were so overwhelmed by the amount of intelligence where they thought, well, this is sufficient. We’ve got the British covered. We don’t need to send any more German agents into Britain. But it’s extraordinary that because of Garbo’s work, I mean Jacob Jakobs was the last German spy, enemy spy, ever to be executed in Britain in the Tower of London. As far as I know… Yeah, I dunno if there were any in the Cold War. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. I dunno, I haven’t seen anything declassified. Certainly in the Second World War. So no more German agents are being sent into Britain, which is a huge relief. So the Germans are getting, the only intelligence they’re getting is what Garbo is feeding to them via his 27 brilliant agents. Next slide, please. Yeah, it’s amazing that he managed to pull it off. He was a pretty good conman. But what was the brilliance of his deception? So it’s not only that we’ve got this, and a huge, really, network for one person to be handling. 27 agents is quite unusual. But he’s able to pull off some really important information. And the Germans believe him. He becomes their most trusted agent. That’s important. It’s no good running fake agents, supplying the Germans with information if the Germans think, well, okay, this is not bad, you know, okay, we need a bit more on this. But his stuff was so brilliant that they trusted him completely. So as I’ve put there, so the intelligence that he would give to the Germans was sometimes complete fiction.

Sometimes that was mixed with, or he was giving them genuine information. Of course, the British were giving him this, they were okaying it, but they were feeding, the British were giving him the information to pass onto the Germans. That could be true, but of little military value. And then sometimes, because they really had to drop in some valuable intelligence, they would put in some valuable military intelligence. But it was delayed. So the Germans didn’t realise it was a delay in them getting it. But of course they soon realised that the intelligence was accurate. There was just a slight delay in them getting it. Next slide, please. So that reinforces the brilliance of Garbo, doesn’t it? So Operation Torch. When the British and Americans landed in North Africa in November, 1942, in fact, some historians, well, many historians would say that’s, in a way, the beginning of the end. Those first landings in North Africa. But if we hadn’t managed to land in North Africa, we certainly couldn’t have done the later landings, Sicily the following year, Italy, and the D-Day landings in 1944. That we had to go into North Africa. And that area, of course, controls the passages through the Mediterranean. It was really important. Codenamed Operation Torch. But ahead of this, Garbo’s sending the German intelligence services a number of pieces of intelligence. So he passes them real details of troop movements, but on those reports, he actually puts a false date. I mean, the Germans think he’s posted it on such and such a date, but of course it’s a real date close to the landings. But the reports arrive when it’s far too late for the Germans to do anything about it.

The landings have already happened. But they sent the message back. German intelligences are working out of North Africa and out of Portugal and Spain, the whole kind of network. And our intelligence offices are, British and American, are tracking the German agents. There was a lot of them in this area. But the Germans, picking up the reports, the Germans coded a message back to Garbo, which, of course, Bletchley Park decoded it said, “We’re sorry that the reports, they arrived too late, the reports arrived too late, but your last reports were magnificent.” So that was one example of real intelligence on troop movements that was accurate and true. It’s just that they timed it for the Germans to receive it too late. Next slide, please. But because Garbo wanted to track his, cover his tracks a bit further, he wasn’t really sure whether the Germans would begin to cotton on that something. You know, they could find another piece of intelligence which could actually negate what he’d done for them and blow his cover. So he invented this story that one of his agents had fallen ill. And this was just before, again, another movement of a fleet carrying troops towards North Africa. This movement from Liverpool. So to ensure, because that report had been delayed, you know, it’s how we’re going to, the agent died. So British intelligence actually printed this agent’s obituary in the local newspaper in Liverpool. Actually, one thing I haven’t done is to check the British newspaper library at the British Library to see whether it was actually printed in all editions or whether they just printed one edition of the paper with the obituary in it. But very clever.

But again, the twist, Garbo convinced the Germans to pay a pension to the dead agent’s widow. This money, of course, was coming through Garbo. Just extraordinary. Next slide, please. Garbo, of course, had to send regular radio reports to Berlin. His encrypted radio reports were received in Madrid from Bletchley Park. So Bletchley Park was intercepting the encrypted messages that needed decoding, received for Garbo in Spain. Garbo would decrypt them himself manually. He was very good at doing that. And then for his message back, he would send it back to Bletchley Park and Bletchley Park would re-encrypt it with the Enigma machine they’d captured for onward transmission to Berlin to check it was correct. Because if you remember, the Enigma settings were always changing. And so you couldn’t send it back by yesterday’s settings because the Germans would realise, you know, this would be… So again, the level of detail to actually cover their tracks is quite extraordinary. And we’ve got a picture there above of Bletchley Park. Not sure how many of you have been, but it’s a fascinating site to go and visit. Next slide, please. So, Garbo’s greatest role. I mean, he’s done enough, hasn’t he, already for the war effort. Planning fake intelligence ahead of Operation Torch, fake agents, wasting German time when they’re not focusing on real things, they’re focusing too much on him and his network. But ahead of D-Day, D-Day was being planned. Of course, eventually it happened on the 6th of June, 1944, a day later than planned because of the weather.

But Operation Fortitude, that kind of planning for D-Day, Garbo would be one of the agents, one of many actually, that would have an absolutely vital role in deceiving the Germans. If you are going to land 150,000 troops on the beaches of Normandy, you don’t want the Germans heavily. Well, the whole of that Atlantic coast was heavily fortified and along the English Channel, but you certainly don’t want all of their crack forces in the area you’re going to land, because you’re going to have even more casualties. You might even not succeed in a landing. So six months, so before the landings, the Germans, of course, they’re not stupid. They knew all along and they knew with Sicily and Italy that the Allies would try a landing. They’d succeeded in North Africa. In fact, a couple of double agents fed deception, which made the Germans believe that the landings in Sicily and Italy in July '43 was actually going to be more along into Greece. But, you know, having succeeded in Operation Torch and in the invasion of, the deception for the invasion of Sicily and Italy, could they pull it off again for D-Day? But they managed it. And six months beforehand, and the Germans really are thinking, okay, they’re on the high alert because the Allies are going to invade Europe. It’s imminent. It could be at any point. And between January '44 and D-Day, Garbo sent over 500 radio messages. Next slide, please. And his will be amongst some of the most crucial intelligence that the Allies would put together as part of this deception plan.

And on the very eve of D-Day, Garbo even told his German handler, advance warning, one of my agents has got some really important intelligence. I haven’t got it yet, but it’s coming. Something’s happening. So he sent that message at 3:00 AM. Now, on the eve of D-Day, of course some of the early gliders and parachutists were already in, preparing the landing zones. And then some of the forces were already just off the beach and started to land around 4:00, 4:30. So he sends a message at 3:00 AM. The Germans don’t reply to him until 8:00 AM. It’s already too late. And I dunno if you know this, but in another story, when General Ramcke, who was in charge of all the sea defences along the Normandy coast, he was a German commander, looked up and through his binoculars on the horizon, saw the invasion force, said to his colleagues, his senior officers, “It’s over.” You know, I saw the sheer force that was heading. But they were told not to disturb Hitler. So they didn’t message Hitler 'til around half past 10:00 that day. So these commanders were scared to wake up Hitler and tell him the invasion’s happening. But the cleverness of Garbo was that the Germans thought this wasn’t the real invasion. Next slide, please. He’d fed them enough intelligence and false information for them to believe that the invasion, this was just a practise. Not a practise, but a mini invasion. And Garbo cleverly sends back a message. He hears that the message has been delayed, that the Germans don’t actually read his message 'til 8:00 AM in the morning. He sends back a message, really quite cross, saying, “I cannot accept excuses or negligence. Were it not from my ideals, I would abandon the work.”

So of course, now this is even more assurance that they believe him because he’s now giving them a telling off for not taking his intelligence seriously, because he knew it was going to be delayed. And that’s what he’d wanted. And the Germans believed. You can see the red marks there at the Normandy beaches. And then further up the coast, Pas-de-Calais, south of Calais, it’s the closest, you can see, across the English Channel to Kent, only about 20 miles. The Germans really believed that we were going to do the shortest distance. So although this massive force of 150,000 troops, American, British, and Canadian troops, land on the beaches of Normandy successfully, the Germans hold back troops. They do not send all of their troops to Normandy. Next slide, please. And by the 9th of June, Garbo is still, three days after D-Day, passing intelligence. And it’s not until the 9th of June actually that Garbo’s message reaches Hitler. The only message that’s reaches Hitler was from General Ramcke. General Ramcke didn’t have access to Garbo’s messages. But Garbo’s messages gets to Adolf Hitler on the 9th of June. And as a result, that message was incredibly important because now Adolf Hitler is reading one of Garbo’s fake messages, which says, this is the Allied battle plan. This is their order of battle. It’s been received too late. Of course it has. We are making some advances into Normandy. It would be slow, but we are making those advances. And as part of this intelligence, he shows them there are 75 divisions in England.

There’s this huge force that still hasn’t left England. And from the force that’s left, Hitler will be able to work out the order of battle. Of course, it’s all fake. And he says, well, there’s 11 divisions of the First U.S. Army Group. The intelligence is quite specific. 150,000 men, he tells in his message. And he says, they are all stationed in the south and east of England. He doesn’t even need to say that the invasion is the Pas-de-Calais near Calais. The real invasion’s already happened. But in their mind, the Germans think, oh, there’s this huge force of troops in Southern England or southeast of England, primarily in Kent. That’s the real landing, isn’t it? Next slide, please. So what’s unusual about the next photograph I’m showing you? Looks perfectly legitimate, doesn’t it? This is an airfield in Kent, but those aircraft are all fake. So this photograph was sent and this was the intelligence that was sent to Berlin that this is evidence in Kent of an invasion imminent. And it’s going to be near Calais. It’s got to be. Next slide, please. So Garbo’s messages at this time were supported by imagery of fake planes. And look at this. I love these! Inflatable tanks! From the air, you know, if the Germans were to fly over, this looks like a real airfield. This looks like a real tank, but it’s an inflatable. It’s just like a hot air balloon, but the shape of a tank. It’s so, so clever. But to reinforce it, in the areas around Kent, you would have kind of special vans transmitting, you know, radio chatter. The Germans were picking it up and they’re thinking, there’s all this chatter, there’s the military operation, it’s happening. You know, the invasion. You know, we’ve successfully dealt with or we’re dealing with Normandy, but the Allies are about to invade. But you can see just how important this was, and it was complete nonsense. We had no intention of landing any troops at Calais. Next slide, please.

So the biggest deception that Garbo managed to pull off for D-Day, you know, it saved the war, it liberated France. Garbo’s message then. D-Day was a diversion. And look at the photograph I’ve shown you there, they’re all fake tanks, they’re all inflatable tanks. They look so real. I just love this story. So the message that got through to Hitler was, look, D-day, 6th of June, three days ago. It was a diversion. And of course the Germans believed it. Of course it’s a diversion. That’s the kind of thing they would do. And that the formations that he’d given them, the divisions and the 150,000 troops, American troops in Kent, oh, that was the real invasion force. So things are starting to happen, except, of course, they don’t. Next slide, please. But militarily, this is hugely significant because this saves lives. This ensures that the landings on the beaches of Normandy is successful. And the Germans send a coded message to Madrid, which, of course, is picked up by Bletchley Park. And it said, “All reports received in the last week from Arabel,” German codename for Garbo, “have been confirmed without exception and are to be described as exceptionally valuable.” So Garbo is still feeding them some real intelligence. Okay, it’s being delayed by a number of mishaps. But the Germans really believe that his intelligence is real and believable, and that’s what we need them to do. Next slide, please. So he’s supplied them with a number of false information. He successfully persuades the Germans, and that’s quite a feat, to successfully persuade the Germans that the main invasion is around Calais. And what did that actually mean?

Not only the successful landings on D-Day, but the Germans kept back two armoured divisions and 19 infantry divisions in July and August, even after the Normandy invasion. Now, the Germans believed that the Allies wouldn’t necessarily invade within days of D-Day. And because Garbo’s intelligence was so believable, they couldn’t take the risk of moving. Hitler couldn’t take the risk of moving his troops away from Calais, the Pas-de-Calais. So for a whole two months, July and August, those two armoured divisions and 19 infantry divisions are kept around the Pas-de-Calais while the Allies are able to advance through Normandy. Now, if those troops, those divisions and armoured divisions, had been over there towards Normandy, could we have succeeded? Next slide, please. Just coming to my last few slides. Might be just five minutes over. So the second invasion, as the Germans called it. Field Marshal von Rundstedt, he was in charge of all of the German forces in Western Europe. Because of Garbo’s intelligence, he refused to allow Rommel to move any divisions, more divisions to Normandy. Thankfully for us. And the Germans continue to pay Garbo, not only for his 27 fake agents, but his intelligence has been so valuable that it is officially recognised that the Germans paid, and this is then, this is not in today’s money, a total of $340,000. It’s astonishing. Next slide, please. So of course the Germans are going to repay and decorate one of their most valuable agents. On the 29th of July, 1944, Hitler authorised the award of an Iron Cross Second Class to Garbo. He’s the only double agent, I think, possibly with the exception of Eddie Chapman. I’d have to check. But I’m pretty sure that he’s the only double agent that was decorated by both sides.

So he’s decorated as a brave, courageous German agent, which, of course, he was nothing of the sort. So he’s given an Iron Cross. It was announced with quite glory on German radio. And he even met his German handler after hostilities were over and physically received his Iron Cross. I love it, love it. And then a few months later, the 29th of November, 25th of November, 1944, he received an MBE personally from King George VI. Next slide, please. I think it’s just a wonderful, wonderful story. But this is my last two or three slides. There were fears of reprisals. I just love this ending. What happens to Garbo? You know, there’s a fear that at the end of the war the Germans will work out what’s happened. He’s not a real Nazi. He’s not really, you know, going to help Germany. So there’s fear of reprisals. So MI5 smuggled him to Angola. And in 1949, they faked his death from malaria. Next slide. So Garbo’s dead. He’s given a new identity. Next slide. And he moved to Venezuela. But by the early 1970s, there is some interest by Nigel West, whose real name is Rupert Allason. Nigel West is his penname for writing. He was writing some of his intelligence books and former intelligence officers who were never named sort of said to him, well, you know, one of the double agents is still, he’s not dead. He’s actually in Venezuela. And Thomas Harris, at that point, he later died in suspicious circumstances in Spain. But he also said he knew this double agent, Juan or Jose Garcia. So that gave Rupert Allason, Nigel West. Next slide, please. A name to go and hunt.

And finally, in the 80s, D-Day’s greatest secret or one of its greatest secrets was revealed in the headline, Spy Who Came Back From the Dead. Next slide, please. 1984, former MI5 officer who’d served in Spain actually gave Nigel West the full name, real name and fake name of Garbo. And Nigel West successfully tracked down his nephew. And the nephew said, “Well, he is still alive.” Finally they met in New Orleans on the 20th of May, 1984. So Nigel West was able to interview Garbo, which was quite amazing. And then they managed to get him out. And he was received at Buckingham Palace by Prince Philip, the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh himself. And then he met old colleagues at the Special Forces Club. I mean, that must have been quite something. Next slide, please. Can you imagine your colleagues believing that you died of malaria and suddenly, there he is? And they have this reunion of double agents. And I think, my last slide now. Very moving, I think, that in June, 1984, the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Garbo travels back to Normandy and he pays his respects to the war dead. He visits those cemeteries, very moving places. And finally, I think that’s quite wonderful. For him, a sort of closure, but also that he could pay tribute to those who had had to sacrifice their lives on the beaches of Normandy. And he finally died in the Caribbean in 1988. So just four years after he made, for him, that personal historic journey. And he has been described by some as the spy who changed the course of history. So I hope you’ve enjoyed that and I look forward to seeing you next week for more on intelligence, spies, and Nazi superstructures. So see you next week at an earlier time.