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- [00:00]
A
Fellow ridiculous historians, welcome to our classic episode. For this week, we have been going through a bit of a phase with tradecraft and spying and World War II and all those off, off camera shenanigans backstage. Shenanigans that determined the course of history. Max, is it fair to. Am I like, am I alone in this? Between you, me and Noel? Am I the only guy who's obsessed with spies in World War II?
- [00:34]
B
No, it's awesome. I mean, especially, I mean, this is literally where the idea of James Bond came from. I mean, this is what. Fleming worked in intelligence in World War II. This is where our fictionalized, obsessive view of spies come from, is this era and the things they were doing.
- [00:54]
A
Yeah, yeah, well said. We're going to meet a guy named Juan Pujol. Originally volunteered to spy for the British during World War II and they didn't take him seriously. In today's classic episode, we are exploring the story of one of the most successful double agents in modern history. We can't wait for you to hear it. As a matter of fact, why Delay. Here it goes. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [01:28]
C
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- [01:35]
D
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- [01:35]
C
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- [02:01]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. So it's no secret that here on Ridiculous History, we often explore the stories of con artists. People who make their way through the world via subterfuge and deception. We often talk about this in a villainous sense. We talk about malicious con artists, you know, liars, fraudsters, things of that nature. But we're talking about a good sort of con. A con for the greater benefit of humanity. We're talking about one of the most well known and most successful spies of World War II. Oh, also, I'm Ben.
- [03:13]
E
Ben. You are Ben? That's your real name?
- [03:16]
A
I have many names.
- [03:19]
E
My name is Noel. The one and only Noel. Well, I'm gonna go by Noel the Firestarter Brown today in honor of. In honor of Keith Flint. RIP Yep, Keith Flint, the twisted fire starter. And that is Casey, that's our super producer Casey Peggo. That's the one.
- [03:37]
F
Little short aside, my first concert ever, 1998, the Tabernacle, Atlanta, Georgia. Prodigy with Meat Beat Manifesto is the opener.
- [03:47]
A
How was the show?
- [03:48]
F
It was great. You know, you never really know what to expect from like an electronic show. So sometimes it's just dudes standing behind a laptop. But they really, really put everything into that performance. They had the dancers, which was Keith's primary role, and there was like a pit and it was really intense and it was a little scary as like a 14 year old or whatever.
- [04:08]
E
Oh man, I bet you were almost afraid you were going to get like steamrolled.
- [04:11]
F
Yeah, exactly. There were a lot of big dudes there.
- [04:14]
E
Well, that's the thing too with, with Keith and the Prodigy and like his vocals were almost more like punk rock singing shouty kind of stuff. And that was a time in the 90s where techno, there was a pit. It was almost more of like a punk rock aesthetic where if you know the iconic Firestarter video where he's kind of like mugging into the camera and he's all pierced up and it was like we'd never seen a dude like that in the States at that point, short of like the Sex Pistols or something like that. And so he's a very iconic looking guy. And his vocal style was absolutely copied and even parodied because it became such an iconic part of like the sound of like 90s electronic music.
- [04:52]
A
It was percussive almost, you know, like his vocals were almost an instrument of punctuation or percussion. Speaking of iconic, before we get to today's show, we do have an announcement that will make. Will make rough sense, but will make even more sense if you are a member of our community page. Ridiculous historians. So in a previous episode, folks, Noel and I had kicked around the idea of a T shirt with Casey's face on it. And Casey will. You know, we're all actually friends even when we're not on the air. So we asked Casey if he was cool with it and we got a hard meh. Meh.
- [05:35]
E
It was a hard meh.
- [05:36]
A
It was a hard meh. And now we have an announcement. We had taken a break earlier today and Casey, you said that you would be comfortable with us having a photo of you on a T shirt, but only a very particular kind of photo. Now, I don't know if we should spoil the surprise just yet, but tune in later because we have something very special coming up for all our fans of Kayce on the case.
- [06:06]
F
Yeah, we can just say that we're gonna tie up a loose end from earlier in the show's history. If you've been listening for a while, there were certain things that were promised early, early on and that will maybe come to fruition now.
- [06:18]
A
I love it. I love how this feels like subterfuge. It feels like we're talking in spycraft, right?
- [06:24]
E
It really does, Ben. And way to bring around to the actual topic of today's show, which you set up. A very famous gentleman who wasn't at the time famous for much of anything. He was kind of waffling in his life, in his career, in his prospects. I think he ran kind of a third rate motel in Spain. A man whose last name you may know. Pujol.
- [06:46]
A
Juan Pujol Garcia. Yeah. Born in 1912 on Valentine's Day. Fun fact. He was one of those people who's sort of like a compass swinging and searching for true north, as you said, Noel. He ran a motel. I believe he ran a movie theater as well. For a while he was going job to job. He didn't feel like the academy or higher education was his particular bag of beans. But he lived in Spain and in 1931, he did his six months of compulsory military service in Spain. And he hated working for the military, which would come in handy later. He hated everything about it. He specifically said. Did you see this quote? He specifically said that he lacked the essential qualities of loyalty, generosity and honor necessary to be a good member of the military.
- [07:48]
E
Yeah. But something that he did have in spades was a vibrant imagination and an ability to kind of almost just sink into the background and be simultaneously able to convince people of things and also be completely innocuous and unnoticed, which is a super important skill to have if you are to be a spy, let alone what Pujol became just one of the most famous double agents in the history of military affairs.
- [08:17]
A
Right, right. But how. How did this guy, who was a relatively unhappy manager of things and a relatively dissatisfied member of society, how did he move from mediocrity to excellence? Also, I want to say, do we mention, I think we mentioned this earlier on the show in a previous episode. You hit on the crucial definition of an effective spy, Noel. An effective spy is not James Bond. In fact, if you think about it, James Bond is a terrible, terrible, terrible spy. He's drunk all the time.
- [08:53]
E
That's right.
- [08:54]
A
He uses his real name. He's super flashy. You know what I mean? A real spy is the guy who's in the corner or the lady who's in the corner like 10 meters away from James Bond. Taking notes, you know, this guy was not James Bond. This guy was not James Bond. And let's look at how he became so successful. Let's go back to the 1930s. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War begins. He is managing a poultry farm. His sister's fiance is captured by the Republican forces and. And then his sister and his mother are arrested. They're charged with being counter revolutionaries. And he gets called up for service on the Republican side of the war. But because the Republican government treated his family so poorly, he says, I'm going to skip out. And he hides at his girlfriend's house. And then he's discovered in a police raid. He goes to jail for a week. He's freed via a resistance group. And then he hides with them until he can make some false IDs, really that show him to be too old to be in the army. And so he goes back to managing another poultry farm, but this one's under control of the Republican government. And the inefficiency of the farm and the inefficiency of the government, according to his life story, makes him hate communism even more than he already hated it.
- [10:24]
E
That's right, that's right. And then he ends up in said third rate motel in Madrid, which was ever so ironically named the Majestic Fantastic Mental Floss article goes through some of this history of this fascinating man. So he hates communism. At this point he is not living his best life. He's depressed. He is just kind of, you know, Spain is just crumbling around him with this civil war. They were going so far as to like turning Bull R into theaters, I guess, for public executions. It was not a happy place to be. So he's already learned to kind of keep his head down and blend into the background and be as innocuous as possible as not to catch a bullet. Because he also, he doesn't sympathize with either side of this conflict. He hates the communists and he also hates the fascists.
- [11:15]
A
Right. Cause he rejoined that Republican side using these false papers and he intended to get out of the area they controlled to desert the. And he deserts to the nationalist side of the conflict. And then they treat him like garbage too. So he says, you know what? I hate it. I hate the communists, I hate the fascists. And then he is learning increasingly to try to keep his head down.
- [11:42]
E
So through his post at this hotel and through the just the ramshackled nature of Spain during the civil war, he ends up becoming kind of successful at helping people procure things. He meets two pro Franco princesses who are aging, and they really want to get their hands on some scotch. So he decides, okay, I'm going to smuggle in some scotch from over the border in Portugal. And he's able to get papers. He doesn't have a passport at the time and does this job for these princesses, and that gives him the papers that he needs to then leave the country.
- [12:20]
A
Mm. So he leaves the country. But there's terrible timing involved because just a few weeks earlier, In September of 1939, England had declared war on Germany, and German forces led by Adolf Hitler were starting to eat up Europe. The word about the concentration camps had leaked to the public, and Pujol found himself trapped. He found himself trapped, and he found himself incensed. Livid. He wrote about this later in a book called Operation Garbo, which came out in 1985, and we have a quote. Yeah.
- [13:03]
E
And this is from that mental floss article that we highly recommend you checking out. He says, my humanist convictions would not allow me to turn a blind eye to the enormous suffering that was being unleashed by this psychopath Hitler. And he decided he wanted to do something about it.
- [13:18]
F
This is so.
- [13:19]
E
This is so great. Because he had limited military training, he wasn't very good at it, and he hated it. He hated it. He basically defected. And then now he's, like, running booze for aged, you know, princesses.
- [13:29]
A
Yeah.
- [13:30]
E
And all of a sudden, he, like, he hears his calling.
- [13:34]
A
Yeah. His compass that was swinging wildly finds its true north. And this is the part that always cracks me up. In January of 1941, he strolls into the British Embassy. He Moses in, and he says, hey, you guys want a spy or something? I'm interested in contributing to the effort, but I don't think the military's for me. And they say, you can't just walk in here and say, make me a spy. What are your qualifications? Do you know anything about spying? Do you hold an important government position? Can you do anything? What do you bring to the table other than your desire to be sneaky?
- [14:18]
E
Yeah. The Brits aren't exactly known for their, like, willingness to just kind of, like, riff and just go with it and roll with it.
- [14:25]
A
Right?
- [14:26]
E
No. They want some bonafides from this guy. They want to be able to vet him and prove that he actually is what he says he is and can do what he says he can do. So they send him a pack in. So he's like, okay, okay. I know what my end game is. My end game is to Help out the Brits. But they don't need me right now because I am nothing to them. What am I? So he decides to do the most insane thing, the most insane turnabout. I am going to make myself indispensable and an asset to the Germans, the enemy of my friend or my perceived friend, the folks who I wanna be aligned with. So he goes to the Germans. They're a little bit more willing to kind of like, take what they can get and install various spies of various pedigrees. And so they more or less take him at his word. And what's his cover story, Ben?
- [15:16]
A
Oh, so he literally calls the German embassy and his cover story is a list of absolute bs. He is winging it. He's improvising. You know, I love good improvisation. And he meets a guy with a code name, Federico. So he meets this guy and this is total. This is total straight out of the movies kind of spy stuff, right? He's told there will be this guy Federico in a light suit holding a raincoat in the back of a cafe. This guy's trained to spot frauds. And brujol says, first off, let me tell you this. And he starts talking about how much he loves Hitler. He's very, very pro Nazi. He loves their whole thing. And then he starts saying that he is friends with a ton of diplomats, a ton of VIPs, very influential people. This impresses his contact that he meets. And he gets his callback. As you would phrase it in the world of auditions, he gets his callback. But there's one problem with these diplomats, isn't there, Noel?
- [16:39]
E
Well, they're all bogus.
- [16:41]
F
It's true.
- [16:41]
E
They're not real. And neither are the reports that he is giving them what he refers to as chicken feed. Little bits and bobs of military supposed military intelligence, like the movement of troops and battalions throughout England, et cetera. And he cobbles together these facts that I guess he did he just make them up off the top of his head?
- [17:04]
A
Yes.
- [17:04]
E
Yeah, but he makes them up so they sound so convincing that even the Brits start thinking they have a mole because someone is, like, leaking this even though they're vague and not real. How did he do that, Ben? I'm a little foggy on how this happened because apparently the Brits caught wind of some of this intelligence that was being leaked to the Germans and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've got to put a cap on this leak that we have.
- [17:28]
A
Right
- [17:31]
G
in the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever.
- [17:44]
H
I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately the mask came off.
- [17:54]
I
You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.
- [17:59]
G
To keep this secret for so many years, he's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark.
- [18:15]
H
You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. You're a creditor. Michael Evangod.
- [18:21]
G
Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:33]
A
Okay, so here's how it happens. The contact that he meets says, look, we don't need any more Nazi spies in Spain. We need someone to go abroad. And the guy's like, cool, I've got a passport. He says, go to Lisbon. Get an exit visa. And he goes to Lisbon. Looks like a dead end. Looks like he can't get the document. He needs a diplomatic visa, but he befriends a guy in Portugal who is able to help him get this visa. Well, he steals the visa. Essentially, I help him get the visa, he befriends the guy and steals it. And then he forges this document. He comes back to Spain, he shows his contact, Federico, and the guy is impressed. So he says, all right, I'll give you the stuff you need. I'll give you invisible ink. I'll give you the codes we use. Here's three grand, and here's your codename, Arabell.
- [19:33]
E
So, Ben, I was looking desperately. I'm like, surely he had some real intel that he was using to make these reports that he was delivering to the Germans seem more believable. But no, it just turns out he was just so good at crafting what sounded like realistic intel that even the Brits were concerned that they had somebody funneling information to the Germans. And there's an amazing interview with author Stephen Talty, who wrote a book entitled Agent Garbo, the Brilliant Eccentric Secret Agent who Tricked Hitler and Saved D Day. And he describes the British response to what they perceived as a very real threat in terms of information being funneled to the Germans. He says 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 Pujol's reports were so believable, even to the people in the country that he was Supposed to be spying on.
- [20:28]
A
Yeah, yeah. There's a Great article in BigThink.com about this story as well. The article is Juan pujol Garcia, the WW2 double agent who secretly controlled the war. I know it sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but here's what happened. He did fool everybody. He said, okay, I will go to London. So his German spymasters think he is in London, but as, as we mentioned, he has never been to London, he doesn't speak English and he just starts making stuff up using a tour guide, using publicly available information from newsreels. And then he also starts making a spy network in London again. He's still in Portugal. He's making a spy network in London with people who do not exist. And these reports sound so realistic that they fool the British. They fool the British intelligence services. And the British launch a manhunt to find this mysterious Arabel.
- [21:34]
E
Yeah, they've given him this name.
- [21:36]
A
The Germans given him.
- [21:37]
E
The Germans have given this name Answered prayer. Yeah, that's right, that's right. What a wily fox this is. This Pujol was.
- [21:44]
A
Now he didn't get everything right. The reports weren't perfect, but at the time the British were panicking because there were supposed to be no Axis spies in Britain. And there was one huge trick that made the British believe in his value as a spy. He invented an entirely fictional armada, a British armada in Malta. And, and based on the reports of this, again, fictitious armada, the Axis powers spent a ton of time and money trying to find them. They responded in full force. They got there, there was nothing there, of course, and they continued to still trust his information. So finally, finally, finally, finally, in 1942, based primarily on that story of the armada, he was able to convince the British to hire him.
- [22:40]
E
Do you think he was like, hey, remember me? I'm back. I've got something for you that I think will make you want me. Please want me. The British, No. But they do want him. Boy, do they ever want him. He is the. Not only is he the German's answered prayers, he's actually their worst nightmare. It turns out he is the British's answered prayers and he is handed over to the security service for handling, let's say there, he's assigned an officer by the name of Tomah or Tommy Harris who speaks Spanish. Cause again, this is mind blowing to me. He doesn't speak English. No, he does not speak English. And then what followed was a partnership between the two men who were very well matched. And there's a really great Article on the history of MI5. MI5.gov UK Agent Garbo. It's the whole deal there. And they really complimented each other and they had this give and take relationship that allowed them to be synergistically effective. I mean, really an incredible pairing of these two guys.
- [23:45]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And it's strange to look back with the benefit of all this stuff being declassified later and see just how extraordinarily ambitious and ballsy this stuff was. He eventually he invented 27 fictional sub agents and he would assign various reports to these people. So it would rarely be him finding out something directly. It would rarely be Arabel. Arabell became a spymaster as far as the Nazis were concerned, but his reports were mixed up in a very clever way. Sometimes it would be stuff that was true but didn't matter at all, you know what I mean? Like, oh, they're paving some road in London or whatever. Sometimes it would be incredibly false stuff. Right? Something is wrong or it's in a different location or the numbers are different. Sometimes it would be real stuff that was very valuable and that stuff just never made it to Germany on time. And say like, oh, okay, a two week old report says in a week this will happen.
- [24:54]
E
Well, because having real access to MI5 and to all of this information obviously upped his game in terms of double agent ness right before he was succeeding just by his own, you know, moxie, right now he's actually got the real goods to weave in some of those real true facts and make the Germans really believe he was still on their side.
- [25:14]
A
So here's a cool example of that. He gave Germany accurate intel on Allied forces landing in North Africa. And the letter is postmarked before the landing, but timed to arrive after the landing. And so instead of getting irritated with the guy, the Nazis apologize. They say this is great information and it's our bad that we didn't act. Curse the post office.
- [25:44]
E
Use stamps.com instead.
- [25:47]
A
Yes, stamps.com. that's our commercial for stamps.com. so what happens next? How is he able to successfully keep this rigmarole going?
- [25:58]
E
That's a really good question, Ben. Before we go there, I want to backtrack ever so slightly just to show the cojones, the true cojones of our boy Pujol. When he went to the Germans and gave them this BS cover story, it was all stuff they totally could have verified or shot down. They just didn't do their homework, basically. Right. Because they had access to Portugal or to Lisbon and they just didn't do it for whatever reason, because they were so thirsty for what he had to offer, because he did such a good job of doing kind of an up close magic kind of misdirection. Right. So that is incredible. He could have died instantly. They would have put him in a concentration camp lickety split if they had found out that he was trying to play them. So, yes. How do they maintain this subterfuge bin? As he has now been gifted with the assistance of the Brits. They are still. They are, like, upping their game. They've got 315 documents they've sent back to the Germans, some of which are peppered with real information, but too late. Fake information that makes them think that they're actually getting some help. How does this kind of come to critical mass, Ben?
- [27:08]
A
Well, he kept escalating his stunts, his cons. We mentioned his imaginary spies. They include a traveling salesman, a waiter who lives in a cave, a retired Welsh seaman, an Indian poetry, someone with
- [27:27]
E
ocd, a radio mechanic.
- [27:29]
A
These folks filed expense reports and some earned salaries. Their expenses were paid and their salaries were paid by the Nazi party. By 1943, he has become one of their favorite people, one of Germany's favorite people as far as spycraft is concerned. The spy ring. The aboard sends him new ciphers, new vials of disappearing ink, and this just makes it easier for MI5 to crack code. The Nazis in one memo, compare him to an army of 45,000 men. He's that valuable. And he decides to cook up his biggest lie yet.
- [28:11]
E
Is this Operation Fortitude, Ben, that you're talking about?
- [28:14]
A
This is. This is Operation Fortitude. Lay it on us.
- [28:16]
E
Yeah. So we've got January 1944. The Germans believed that the Allies were getting ready for a large scale European invasion, and they passed this information on to Putin and they asked him to help keep them abreast of any developments, any new information. So this gave Pujol what he needed to really turn the tables and give the Allies the upper hand big time.
- [28:46]
A
Right, so under the code name Overlord, British and American forces planned to invade occupied Europe.
- [28:55]
E
Yeah. So the Germans were right. They thought they knew what was going on. And they were absolutely correct. So how is Pujol able to give what would seem like the upper hand to Germany for Germany, and flip it back around and make D day a guaranteed success?
- [29:10]
A
Right. Oh, we have to mention his code name was Arabelle to the Nazis, but he had a code name to the British once they hired him.
- [29:18]
E
That's right.
- [29:19]
A
It was Agent Garbo, named after Greta Garbody. Because they thought he was such a good actor.
- [29:25]
E
Yeah. And I will tell you, if you see, he's got some pictures that are really funny headshot, they almost look like headshots where he's dressed in, like, a German military garb and he's just doing this real actors type grin, and it really looks like somebody wearing a costume, preparing to go into a role.
- [29:42]
A
And then you see his passport pictures and he looks almost like a different person.
- [29:46]
E
Exactly.
- [29:46]
A
He's a little disheveled, but. But yes. So Agent Garbo, as he is known in the Allied forces, in the Allied intelligence networks, he has a crucial role to play. The German High Command needs to be misled about the location of the landings. They decide on the actual point of attack, the beaches at Normandy. And their next move is to persuade German forces that the invasion force would be much, much further north.
- [30:17]
E
Right.
- [30:18]
A
Confirming what Hitler had originally thought was gonna be the most likely point of contact. Garbo's agents would report authoritatively that the Normandy landings were themselves a ruse and there was a much bigger attack to come. So on June 9, he sends a key memo.
- [30:38]
E
Yeah. And it just happened to be on a super crucial day when Hitler and his cronies, his toadies, his military high command, were trying to decide whether Normandy was the real deal or whether it was some kind of subterfuge. And they were trying to plan the movement of their troops and where they wanted to send the bulk of them. They had some in Belgium, they had some in France, and they were trying to decide whether they should divert them down to Normandy and completely head off this invasion. Pujol sent this telegram saying, no, this is fake. Seriously, you are wasting your time. You don't use those resources at Normandy, send them elsewhere, because this is what's really happening. And at the time, those forces were already on the move. So this was a clutch decision on the Germans. And a telegram received right at the exact right time. If it had been a little later, would have been too late. Right. They would not have rediverted the troops, I imagine, because it would have been taken too long. Time was of the essence. They made their bed, they were gonna lie in it. But it was this crucial time where a change of plan was possible. Right.
- [31:47]
A
And the Panzer divisions were already moving toward Normandy. But Adolf Hitler sent an order based on this telegram and turned them around, sending them instead to the northern point of contact, Pas de Calais. This lie was so effective that through July and August of that year, the Nazi forces kept two armored divisions and 19th infantry divisions in that northern point in anticipation of an imminent invasion.
- [32:23]
G
In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever.
- [32:36]
H
I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately the mask came off.
- [32:47]
I
You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.
- [32:52]
G
To keep this secret for so many years. He's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of of one woman who was done living in the dark.
- [33:08]
H
You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. You're a predator. Michael Levengood.
- [33:14]
G
Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:23]
D
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- [33:56]
A
So you would think after D day, you would imagine that after all this stuff goes down and this house of cards collapses that Arabel AKA Garfield Barbot's reputation would be ruined amongst the German intelligence circles. However, that was not the case. In fact, he won a very prestigious award. Prestigious if we would say it in the British way.
- [34:21]
E
From the Germans.
- [34:22]
A
But from the Germans. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:23]
E
What was it?
- [34:24]
A
He got the Iron Cross. The Iron Cross was rendered for his extraordinary services to Germany. And the thing is, this had to be approved by Adolf Hitler himself. So he was notified he had been awarded the Iron Cross. And then he and Harris said, thank you so much. It's such an honor and truly unworthy, but I'll take it.
- [34:51]
E
And this is such a, like, oh, this is like a total fu type thing where they collaborated on this message together, Pujol and Harris. Harris was not known to the Germans, obviously. Pujol was exclusively their point of contact and they talked about offer. Yeah, humble thanks. Humble thanks. Such an honor.
- [35:10]
A
Oh, stop.
- [35:11]
E
Oh, keep going. But yeah, totally. And yet, Pujol remained unexposed to the Germans. But By September of 44, there had been a few close calls of Pujol potentially being exposed, unmasked to the Nazis didn't happen. But the British Security Service was like, we're gonna take extra care to make sure that you are guarded against any potential retribution from the Germans. But that didn't even ultimately prov. Proved to be necessary because the war ended and they even were hoping that his background would allow him to get into post war Nazi Germany and continue to do some good work.
- [35:49]
A
As you said, he feared reprisal from Nazi survivors. The Nazis never realized at this point that they had been fooled. And as Agent Garbo, he received an MBE from the King on 25 November 1944. The most excellent order of the British Empire. So he is one of the few, if not the only person to receive prestigious awards from both Germany and the Allies.
- [36:19]
E
That is most excellent.
- [36:20]
A
Here's an even cooler thing. I feel like this is the ultimate bragging, right? What do you do when you're the spy who's pulled off everything? When you do one last. One last con, one big job, One big job, one last heist. But with the help of MI5, Pujol travels to Angola and fakes his death in 1949.
- [36:42]
E
Yeah, for the ultimate cover.
- [36:43]
A
He dies.
- [36:44]
E
The ultimate protection against the Germans.
- [36:45]
A
He dies of malaria. He also moves to Venezuela and he starts managing a store again. He runs a bookstore and gift shop.
- [36:54]
E
That's all he ever wanted. Just a quiet life of a shopkeeper.
- [37:00]
A
Eventually, though, Thomas Harris', Remember him? His friend Anthony Blunt, who turned out to be a Soviet spy, right, who had penetrated MI5. Eventually, this Anthony Blunt guy says that he met Garbo and knew him as either Joan or Jose Garcia. And people started searching for this guy and a British politician named Rupert. Allison was interested in the case of Garbo, and everyone he talked to did not know Garbo's real name. That's how high the secrecy was. The Soviet spy Blunt gives him that lead on a Jose Garcia. And the guy is still searching. He eventually hires a research assistant to get this call every J. Garcia in the Barcelona phone book. And eventually they get in contact with Pujol's nephew. And then Rupert Allison finally meets Pujol in New Orleans in 1984. And then Allison's like, dude, you're awesome. Thanks. By the way, thanks for D Day. Thanks for all the cool stuff you did. Will you go hang out with Prince Philip? Because he'd love to meet you. And he goes, okay, yeah, I'll go.
- [38:15]
E
What do they do? Where do they hang? They have some tea we don't know.
- [38:18]
A
We just knew it was a quote. Unusually long audience.
- [38:21]
E
Oh, wow.
- [38:22]
A
So if you know Prince Philip, he was probably like, like, tell me your war stories.
- [38:26]
E
Yes, please. I want to hear those. Yeah. And then he died in Caracas in 1988, where he lived pretty anonymously. Like I said, the quiet life of a shopkeep who happened to be one of the most badass and outlandish and effective double agents in the history of spycraft. Certainly the one we know about, right? Definitely no James Bond bravado in this guy. He was simultaneously brazen and perfectly measured in the way he, he pulled this stuff off. Cause you have to have some kind of throwing caution to the wind kind of attitude to even attempt some of this stuff. But you can't just, you can't be reckless. Right. He had to like kind of have a system and stick to it and have some discipline, you know, I mean, really, really interesting character.
- [39:14]
A
Some of his fictional sub agents also met their end. Agent one retired in 1943. Agent six died. So he followed up on their lives as well.
- [39:26]
E
Dude, some of these fictional agents had richer lives than I have had. So, I mean, this is very, very precise, detail oriented stuff with this guy was building these fictional universes. I mean, it's world building at its finest, what this guy's doing.
- [39:41]
A
And if you'd like to read more about Juan Pujol Garcia, there is the book we mentioned, Garbo. There's also a great article on badassoftheweek.com which I think is cool. If you're ever listening to one of our peer podcasts, behind the Bastards, which is an excellent show and you're feeling down about life in general, then you can find out about some historic good guys on badassoftheweek.com and it's funny you
- [40:07]
E
think of this guy as a badass, and he certainly was. But a good spy probably doesn't have to kill very often, right? A good spy, you only have to kill if you're either an assassin or your cover is blown.
- [40:17]
A
Right, right. And he didn't kill. Well, he is responsible for deaths, absolutely.
- [40:21]
E
But you don't hear any stories of him having to have you slip someone a poison dart or something like that, or a little.
- [40:26]
A
No, no, no. He's a way better spy than James Bond.
- [40:30]
E
I agree. I agree. James Bond is kind of a hack.
- [40:35]
A
Yeah. When you think about it. So hopefully we don't get too much hate mail about that. I will admit I, I do enjoy the films.
- [40:43]
E
I do. And they're all On Netflix now, by the way. Even, even like the Timothy Dalton ones and like the, the Roger. All of them. I really want to dig back in. You know what else is on on streaming now?
- [40:52]
A
What's that?
- [40:53]
E
This is a recommendation, I guess. If we're doing that, I think we're wrapped up with the show. On Amazon prime you can find this insane cache of terrible 80s B Movies in all of these genres, like sword and sorcery kind of slasher type genre movies.
- [41:10]
A
There's some spy thrillers.
- [41:11]
E
Spy thrillers, but they're like the C level ones. They're the ones that were like. So you had your Conan the Barbarian, which is a big hit. Then you have this whole pile of kind of copycat movies that are very entertaining and they do not age well, but they're lot of fun. If you want to dig in on
- [41:25]
A
Amazon Prime, I have a comic book recommendation.
- [41:29]
E
Hooray.
- [41:29]
A
I may have said this before, matter of fact, I bet I have. But I want to put the word out there because I just reread it. There is a comic series called Uber and its follow up is Uber Invasion. It's an historical account of World War II if a specific type of superpower were discovered. I don't want to say any more than that. I don't want to spoil it. It's amazing. You should check it out if you are at all interested in good graphic novels. It is ongoing, so at this point I don't know how it ends either. I would love to hear your opinion about it. You can tell us about this. You could tell us about some of your favorite spy stories on our Instagram, on our Facebook, on Twitter. On Facebook. We highly recommend you check out your fellow listeners opinions on our community page. Ridiculous Historians. You can follow us. I believe we're at Ridiculous History show on Instagram.
- [42:28]
E
That's right, Ridiculous History show on Instagram. And I am personally brionicinsider if you feel like hanging out with me.
- [42:33]
A
And I am Benbolan if you feel like seeing some weird stuff. No spoilers.
- [42:40]
E
Wow, you're really. That's a good tease, Ben. That's a good tease. I don't think you'll be let down either. Ben gets a up to some shenanigans. Let me tell you, if you don't want any of that stuff, you can send us an email. Ridiculousowstuffworks.com thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Yeah, thanks to Casey Pegram who composed our hearts. The theme of our hearts. That's what he composed.
- [43:00]
A
That's his real name?
- [43:01]
E
Well, I think it possibly might not be, but I am going to respect his privacy.
- [43:05]
A
Yes. Yes. What if his real name is just a clever switcheroo of the letters? What if his real name is, like, Pacey Kegram?
- [43:13]
E
I like that. That's pretty fun.
- [43:15]
A
And thanks to our research associate, Gabe. Thanks to you, Noel. This has been an absolute pleasure. And now I'm going to spend the afternoon figuring out what our cool spy nicknames would be.
- [43:27]
E
Will you be sure and let me know, Ben?
- [43:29]
A
You let me know if you've got one. Hey, let us know if you've got one.
- [43:32]
E
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [43:47]
A
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.