Transcript
Aaron Manke (0:00)
This is an iHeart podcast.
IBM Representative (0:05)
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Aaron Manke (0:38)
Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild.
Aaron Manke (0:47)
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Narrator (1:10)
A lot has been made of the brave soldiers who proved themselves in epic battles to defeat Hitler and the Nazis in World War II. And rightfully so. But just as important were the people working behind the scenes to undermine the German army. You may have heard of the English codebreakers at Bletchley park who cracked the Enigma code and saved England from German U boats. But there was another behind the scenes agent who completely deceived the Nazis, working with the English to trick the Germans into thinking that the Allied invasion would land somewhere other than Normandy. And curiously enough, he wasn't even an Englishman. Juan Puyo Garcia was never cut out to be a soldier. He was skinny and awkward with pointy ears that stuck out from both sides of his head. He was always a handful as a child. His mother sent him to boarding school when he was just 6. As an adult, he became a poultry farmer right before he was caught up with the rest of the country in the Spanish Civil War between the Liberal Republicans and the Fascist Nationalists. And although Juan began as a Republican and defected to the Nationalists, who were ultimately victorious, he regretted it almost immediately. Especially when he saw how they supported the Nazi regime in Germany, which quickly began to spread authoritarianism across Europe in the late 1930s. Juan wanted to do his part to stop the rise of the Nazis, but again, he wasn't really a soldier. But he felt like he was also pretty sneaky. He had successfully defected from one army to the other during the Spanish Civil War, after all. Maybe he could bring those stealthy skills to the war in Europe. He decided that he would act as a spy on behalf of the British, but when he reached out to them, they rejected his offer for help. He didn't really have anything to offer them. He needed to make Himself an asset first. And so this time he reached out to the Germans and claimed that he was traveling to London on business and was willing to spy for them. They accepted, but of course, he had no business in London. Instead, he worked from Spain and Portugal, where he concocted elaborate stories about the contacts he was supposedly making in London and the information he was learning from them. He conveyed all of this to the Germans and convinced them that he was legitimately sending them information from within England. Now he had something to show the English. When he reached back out to MI5, they were interested in talking with him. They flew him to London, where he relocated his family. At least that part of Juan's story was now actually true. The English, impressed with his ability to act as different fictional informants, gave him the codename Garbo, after the famous actress. They worked with Juan to help him deepen his list of fictional contacts. And soon his contacts had contacts. There was an entire imaginary web of fake people, soldiers and civilians alike, who Wan was reporting on to the Nazis. Soon he transitioned from letters to radio communication, sending multiple messages with fake intel every single day. It would have been exhausting keeping it all straight in his head. And soon the stakes got as high as they possibly could get. The Allies wanted Juan to start telling the Nazis that there was a planned Allied invasion of France, which was true, but they planned to land at Normandy, and they wanted Juan to tell the Nazis they were going to land farther north instead. It was a plan that played to Hitler's ego, as he had suspected that this was their plan all along. Juan spent days spinning stories over the radio about how his fictional contacts were seeing all kinds of information and movement toward a more northern landing in France. The Nazis were utterly convinced that this is where the Allies would be headed. They placed the majority of their forces in the north and so were blindsided when the Allies attacked Normandy farther south. It was still a fierce battle, and had the Nazis not been deceived by wanna, they might have actually been able to win. After the war, Juan kept up his covert lifestyle by having MI5 fake his death. He then went to live in South America, abandoning his wife and children. His reasons for doing so were unclear, although he was discovered by a journalist in the 1980s and reunited with his family then. Clearly, Juan was a curious and enigmatic man from the start. It may have hurt him in his personal life, but but the entire free world is fortunate that he loved to play spy games.