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- [00:00]
Mary Kay McBrayer
You're listening to an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
California Psychics
At California Psychics. We know some people can't read the career warning signs like your boss. Still not knowing your name.
- [00:12]
Carrie
You, Tina, Lisa, Sheila, whatever. Get that report to me by lunch, okay? It's Carrie, ma' am. Just get it done, Terry.
- [00:20]
California Psychics
So talk to California Psychics and receive the career guidance you need. We only connect you with the very best. So guarantee if your reading isn't life changing, it's free. California psychics. Call 1-800-PREDICT today and get 20 minutes for just $20.
- [00:36]
Ameca Insurance
Every day, our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.
- [00:49]
Carrie
Thank you for calling Ameca Insurance.
- [00:51]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Hey, I was just in an accident. Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of.
- [00:55]
Ameca Insurance
At Ameca, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking. It's human. Amika. Empathy is our best policy.
- [01:05]
Cindy Crawford
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Javon
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- [02:12]
Cindy Crawford
Diversion audio.
- [02:24]
Mary Kay McBrayer
On Macy's. 1941. Paris was under Nazi occupation. Charles de Gaulle had been exiled from his own country and Philippe Petain had set up a proxy government called the Vichy Administration. They instated the Aryan laws, very similar to the Nuremberg laws that limited and dispossessed Jewish citizens almost completely. One important aspect of these racist laws was that Jewish people could not hold businesses. Said businesses were forfeited to the government. Here is part of one very notable letter of request from a partial business owner to the new Nazi party that now governed France. Parfum Chanel is still the property of Jews and it has been legally abandoned by the owners. I have an indisputable right of priority. The profits that I have received from my creations since the founding of this business are disproportionate. What you just heard is part of an English translation of the letter that Coco Chanel wrote the Nazi administration to try to take full control of her company and take it away from her Jewish business partners. Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode we're calling Coco Chanel and the Aryan Laws. It's the story of the famous French fashion designer. But maybe not as you've heard it before. You're probably at least somewhat aware of how Coco's designs influenced women's fashion in the 1920s through the present. And if you're not, I'll fill you in on that history as well. But you may not be as familiar with the more shocking parts of her life. The parts that deal with Nazi collaboration, the parts to do with invoking the Aryan laws against her Jewish business partners. Not to worry, I'll tell you everything I could find about these topics after the break. I started watching the show the New look as soon as it premiered this year. The plot follows two still famous Parisian designers, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, as they both navigate Nazi occupied France. I'll confess, at the time I didn't know very much about either of them besides how to pronounce their names. And I knew that only based on when they were name dropped in rap lyrics. So I not a hardcore apologist for either of them to be honest. The show is basically a high fashion espionage period piece. It was visually stunning and it stars Ben Mendelsohn and Juliette Binoche. So I was sold. And I do recommend the show for sure. What got my attention to cover the story on our show though was not the gray area in which both designers had to operate Chanel more so than Dior according to the series. But what got my attention was the reviews I read about the series afterward. So many of them said the new look went super easy on Coco Chanel. The most generous critique said it was quote, too easy to call Coco Chanel a Nazi. Others cited newspapers of her time which called her a quote, vicious anti Semite. And some of them were like, I mean, when the Allies came to liberate France, she fled to Switzerland. You do the math. So this episode is me doing the math. There's this bit of dialogue in the opening scenes that I Think sort of sums up where we live when it comes to writing nonfiction. Is it true that during the German occupation of Paris, Coco Chanel closed atelier and refused to design dresses for the wives of Nazis while you kept designing.
- [07:04]
California Psychics
And making money for those who lived through the chaos of war? Four years, Nazi occupation, darkest days of our lives. And yes, we did sell our designs to Nazi wives and girlfriends. There is the truth, but there's always another truth that lives behind it.
- [07:36]
Mary Kay McBrayer
The line has definitely been dramatized. The real man is not on record. Having said that, so much of this is drama, and I do love drama. But today we're going to try to get to the bottom of the story of Coco Chanel and the Aryan laws. Or at least as deep as I can go. A couple warnings. Number one, Coco Chanel was notoriously deceptive. She was very secretive and many biographers gave up on her as a subject because they couldn't get the straight facts from her. So just keep that in mind as we proceed. Second, we're a true crime podcast and technically at the time, collaborating with the Nazis in Nazi occupied France was not a crime. Don't misunderstand though. It was exactly wrong. It was just also legal. So this episode is a bit of a branch out. I hope you like it, and I definitely think it's fascinating. Third, there are a lot of French and German names in these two episodes. I'm doing my best to pronounce them accurately, but I want to thank you in advance for your patience when I mess it up. Seriously, when I went to Paris a couple years ago, I tried so hard just to read the words off a menu. And because your girl studied Spanish in school, I got asked more than once, oh, are you Catalan? To which I said, oui. I am not an incompetent American tourist. I'm definitely Catalan. Anyway, I appreciate your grace as we go forward with the many vowels and silent consonants of the French language. Let's start at the beginning. I won't spend too much time on her early life because, well, that's not really what our show is about. I do think it's relevant to know some of her background, though. So, Gabrielle Chanel, that's Coco. Later. She grew up in rural western France and in poverty. Her mother died when she was 11 and her father abandoned the family. She and her sister went to the Catholic Aubazine convent orphanage until they moved into a Catholic boarding house. Later. I didn't realize this, but at the time the Catholic Church was largely anti Semitic. That certainly does not mean that all Catholics were or are anti Semitic, and the Catholic Church would later officially oppose the Nazi party. Still, the catechism that Koko would have learned taught that it was the Jews who crucified Jesus. And hearing that in school doesn't necessarily mean that Koko was anti Semitic either, but it's relevant information. Plus, at the time the French were debating the Dreyfus Affair, in which a young French artillery officer of Jewish descent was unfairly accused of passing secrets to the German Embassy and convicted for high treason. He was not guilty, but even if he had been, I'm not sure how this one instance spoke for all Jewish people everywhere. I feel like listeners of this podcast know enough to know that overgeneralizations are how racism perpetuates itself, so I think we can leave this topic alone for now. Just suffice it to say that anti Semitic views were all around Koko during her formative years when she was 20 years old, Coco Gabrielle had two jobs. First, she worked as a seamstress. Second, she sang and danced at a cabaret cafe. That's where she got her nickname, Coco, from a popular song she performed at the time. During France's Belle Epoque, cabarets bloomed from small clubs where men could eat and drink and be entertained by song and dance into the full blown venues whose names we still know today, like the Chat Noir and the Moulin Rouge. Most of the performances were risque, if not outright scandalous. Even with the new standards of glamour that were becoming vogue, dancing for entertainment had always been looked down on by high society. It was not ladylike to perform the cancan or be paid for attracting attention in that way at all. And even if the performers were not actually prostitutes, they still had the stigma about them. Coco wasn't a great singer or dancer, though she was very charming. For many performers, especially if they were sex workers, the best case scenario was to leverage their position in the cabaret into status as a kept woman. I'm not sure exactly where Coco drew the line regarding sex work, but she did become a kept woman and after a while she turned that status into a full on patronage. Her first patron's name was Etienne Balsan. Their relationship was certainly intimate, if not romantic, but it wasn't long after that when Coco fell in love with one of Etienne's. In 1908, Coco fell in with her second big money patron, Arthur Edward Boy Capel. He put her in a Paris apartment and helped her open her first hat shop. Her method was pretty cool. She went pretty simplistic. Well simplistic compared to European pre war fashions, which were layers and layers of corsets and frills and feathers and such. She bought cheap hat bases already made from a wholesaler, and then she decorated them with minimal accents. It was a big success. Boy Capel also helped Koko with a more personal matter. After her elder sister completed suicide, Coco wanted her nephew Andre Palas to be her ward. She and Boy unofficially adopted him and Boy arranged for Andre to attend an English boarding school school. Boy was very good to Koko. He was a great love of her life for 11 years. His station in life required him to marry inside his class in 1918. But he and Coco remained lovers until his later death by a car crash. One thing Coco had learned while riding horses with Etienne and Boy was that none of the women's clothes were practical to ride horses in. So Coco wore men's clothes. It's pretty interesting to me that even back in the 1920s, pockets were a big feature in all the photos where she's modeling her outfits. She has her hands in her pockets. Pockets were and are very feminist accents for clothes because that's where you keep money and keys, which are essentially the markers of liberation after the First World War. She pioneered the 1920s flapper silhouette, the tomboy one with the shapeless torso and the drop waist. That was also very successful. It's at this point, at the end of 1923 with Boy, that Coco met the Duke of Westminster, Edward, Prince of Wales, who was in line to inherit the throne of England. From what I can gather, they had a romance. At the very least, they had a 10 year long relationship of some sort. I'm not sure how far it went, but I do know that it was through Prince Edward that she met Winston Churchill. This is huge later on, so hang on to this information. It also seems like Winston Churchill kind of seems sabotaged their whole thing. He's the one who told Prince Edward straight up that English society would never accept Coco as one of their own because of her past. Remember, not only was Coco working class, she had done sex work, or at least was associated with it. This is also interesting to note because, as fans of the Crown will remember, Prince Edward is known as the abdicator. He was actually on the throne for less than a year because he proposed marriage. And to a married American woman who had already been divorced once. And he couldn't remain the king if he was married to a divorcee. Times have clearly changed, but we don't have to go there, at least not yet. We will get to it. Though. But back to the story. The breakup with the crown prince doesn't seem to have affected Coco all that much, at least not for long. They stayed acquaintances, and she had many lovers. Here are a few names you might recognize. Igor Stravinsky. Pablo Picasso. Pierre Riverdi. Sergey Diaghilev. To recap, that's Igor Stravinsky, the composer Pablo Picasso. The painter Pierre Rivardi. The poet Sergei Diaghilev of the Russian Ballet. They're all artists. By the mid-1920s, she was known as a big patron of the arts, too. Even costuming for some of the stage performances. The ballet parade was a success because of her. And Rite of Spring would have run out of funding if she hadn't come to the rescue. Which makes her next alignment very interesting. During the fallout of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, class systems were changing in Europe. But Coco was not down with the Bolsheviks. Even as an artist herself, she might have been a lover of artists, but she was also a lover of a Grand Duke Romanov. My true crime, people, let me tell you, I was so incredibly intrigued to learn that this duke was one of the guys responsible for murdering Rasputin. Still, many working class people thought socialism would work in their favor. In theory, it should. But Coco, though nouveau riche from the working class, thought it would wreck her business. Her seamstresses did strike against her for better wages. And even though the business recovered well from the strike, once the workers demands were met, it must have left her with a sour taste. She did, however, employ several of the White Russians who sought refuge from their own country in France. One documentary called this a quote, social revenge, the former aristocracy now having to work for her. But it also could have been sympathy. I know you've been patiently waiting for me to get to the point about Coco's potential crimes, so thank you for your patience. And here we are. We have arrived at the inciting incident. In 1924. At the horse track, Coco met Pierre and Paul Wertimer. The brothers were French Jewish businessmen. They wanted to distribute all her creations, from her hats to her clothing. But more specifically, the Wertimers wanted to distribute her famous perfume, Chanel no. 5. And there's no way you've gotten through this much of your life without hearing about Chanel no. 5. It was Coco's first perfume, but it was the fifth one that the perfumer let her sample. And it was the one she didn't want to smell like a rose. She didn't want to smell like Lily of the Valley. She wanted her smell to be as complex as a woman, a whole bouquet of flowers and a sexy animal musk that lingered. And this scent needed to be practical. It needed to persist all day. No fading around noon. Number five is not my personal favorite fragrance, but for all the reasons listed above, I think it might have been if I'd been around when it debuted. Flappers at the time certainly loved it, and it had been growing in popularity and scarcity since its release in 1921. Coco's friend Theophile Bader introduced her to the wertimers at the horse track. She asked them straight up, you want to produce and distribute perfumes for me? Pierre said, why not? But if you want the perfume to be made under the name of Chanel, we've got to incorporate. I'll tell you all about the deal they struck after the break.
- [20:44]
Cindy Crawford
Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of meaningful beauty. When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty. Which means each and every product is meaningful. It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious, you're going to get results, and then you just go out and live your life. Meaningful beauty Confidence is beautiful. Learn more@meaningfulbeauty.com.
- [21:17]
LifeLock
Not everyone who handles your personal information is going to be as careful as you are. And it only takes one mistake to expose it to hackers and identity theft. Maybe that's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed or your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning Lifelock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan. If you lose money due to identity theft, you can't control how diligent others are with your personal information. But with Lifelock, you can help protect it. Act now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40%.
- [22:10]
California Psychics
Off terms apply at California Psychics. We know some people can't read the career warning signs like your boss. Still not knowing your name.
- [22:18]
Carrie
You, Tina, Lisa, Sheila, whatever. Get that report to me by lunch, okay? It's Carrie, ma' am. Just get it Done, Terry.
- [22:26]
California Psychics
So talk to California psychics and receive the career guidance you need. We only connect you with the very best. So guarantee if your reading isn't life changing, it's free. California psychics call 1-800-PREDICT today and get 20 minutes for just $20.
- [22:43]
Javon
Hi, this is Javon, your blinds.com design consultant.
- [22:46]
Carrie
Oh, wow, a real person.
- [22:48]
Cindy Crawford
Yep.
- [22:48]
Javon
I'm here to help with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to.
- [22:52]
Carrie
Well, I've got a complicated project.
- [22:55]
Javon
No problem. We make the complex simple. I can even help schedule a professional measuring install.
- [23:00]
Carrie
I didn't realize you did that.
- [23:02]
Javon
We can also send you samples fast and free.
- [23:04]
Carrie
Wow. I mean, I always thought I needed a designer to come to my home, but scheduling is always a nightmare.
- [23:11]
Javon
Notwithblinds.com, we're on your schedule. And there's no haggling pressure or hidden fees either.
- [23:16]
Mary Kay McBrayer
Hmm.
- [23:17]
Carrie
I just might have to do more.
- [23:19]
Javon
Whatever you need. How about you tell me what you had in mind?
- [23:22]
Carrie
Okay then. So the first room we're looking at is for guests coming over. And I'm thinking of something. Blinds.com has covered over 25 million windows, all backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Shopblinds.com now and get up to 50% off with minimum purchase rules and restrictions may apply.
- [23:48]
Mary Kay McBrayer
It's awesome when a creative person can find the business mind to monetize their creations. It's truly a magnificent connection. Each party doing what they do best, working together to help each other. You've heard of that happening a thousand times, right? Of course not. You've heard of Britney Spears not being in control of her own life and money? Or Taylor Swift getting screwed in a contract by some intentionally deceptive wording. Elvis and his manager ripping off artists of color. Or of artists getting very greedy and wanting much more than their contract entitled. One biographer, Hal Vaughan, said that Chanel's quote, nonchalance in reaching a deal and agreeing to use the same lawyer as the wertimers to draw up contracts borders on commercial recklessness. Another biographer even said it was her idea to relinquish all business control. She told them they could start a company if they wanted, but she wanted to be in charge of the designs. Naturally, the businessmen agreed. In 1924, Chanel turned into a new French company, Le Parfums Chanel. She turned over the ownership and rights to manufacture her perfumes as well as the formula and methods to produce them. For her part, she was the new company's president. She held 200 fully paid shares which represented 10% of the capital. And she got 10% of the capital of all companies that manufactured her creations. And outside of France, 70% of the outstanding shares went to the Wertimers for their production and distribution. And 20% of the shares went to Theophil Bader's guys. Kind of like a finder's fee. Now that would have pissed me off if the guy who hooked us up made more than I did. But it didn't seem to bother Coco, at least not yet. She had agreed to the contract, signed it in front of lawyers. But by 1930, after a stint designing costumes in Hollywood, Coco got more and more unhappy with their deal. She was not a businesswoman, she said so many times. But now she was sure that the Wertimer brothers were cheating her out of the profits they agreed on. And she resented the deal they had agreed on seven years earlier. She said, quote, I let myself be swindled. But those were the terms she agreed on when she hired French American attorney Rene de Chambrun to sue the Wertimers in 1930. The trial dragged on for years before she finally lost. Turns out a contract is a contract. That is, it was a contract until the outbreak of the Second World War. Between the time she incorporated with the Wertimers in 1924 and the mobilization of French troops to war in 1938, a lot happened. Fourteen years happened. But I'm going to condense them into a few key points for the sake of telling this thread of the story. Earlier I mentioned that Coco had tried to sue her business partners in 1930 and she failed. In 1934, Coco moved into a suite at the Ritz Hotel. Based on the photos, I can tell you this move was exactly as glamorous and decadent as it sounds. Her apartment overlooked the Place Vendome. It was just around the corner from her second apartment, which was on top of her workspace. From the back entrance of the Ritz, she had a very short across the street commute to her salon. And she ate in the dining room regularly even throughout the later War. In 1935, the Nazis approved the Nuremberg Laws in Germany. To recap, that set of laws was aimed at disenfranchising the Jewish people. They deprived Jews of German citizenship, deprived them of the right to vote, forbade marriage between Jews and non Jewish Germans, forbade Jews to employ German domestic help, among many other limitations. It was terrible. Obviously not everyone thought so. Remember Koko's old friend Edward, the Prince of Wales? He ascended the throne in January of 1936 while still uncrowned. He was determined to marry Wallis Simpson, who was an American divorcee. Parliament was going to block this marriage, so on December 11th of the same year, he announced on a BBC broadcast that he was abdicating the throne. His friend Winston Churchill had hoped to talk him out of marrying Wallace, but he failed. He helped him write the abdication speech. Eight months later, the exiled Edward, now Duke of Windsor, and his new wife Wallis, visited Coco at the Ritz. They were on their way back from vacationing with Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian retreat. The open secret that is only somewhat confirmed even now is that the Nazis had promised Edward to reinstate him should Britain unite with Germany. In 1938, most of France believed war could still be avoided. Adolf Hitler had signed an agreement with Neville Chamberlain in Munich, and business was booming for Coco, and French authorities cracked down on anti French propaganda. In 1939, France mobilized for war. Nazi agents like Baron Hans Gunther von Dinkelage, also known as Spatz, fled to Switzerland. Koko's beloved nephew Andre went to war fighting with the French troops. His wife and two daughters stayed in southern France while he served on the front, and Coco took care of the family's needs. There were 120,000 refugees in France at the time, and most of them were Jewish. In 1940, Coco evacuated Paris with almost everyone else who could afford to. She went to her family in Colbert. Seven weeks after the Nazis entered France, they flew the swastika from the Eiffel Tower. Coco and her family waited for news from Andre. They had nothing for weeks. In mid June, the World War I hero, Marshal Petain, had asked the Germans for an armistice. France was now officially occupied by the Nazis. Finally, Coco and her family got news of Andre via the Red Cross. Andre was alive, but he had been captured. He was in a German prisoner of war camp, and he had contracted tuberculosis. Coco went to Vichy. That's where their new leader, Paton, has set up his headquarters. She thought that she might use some of her influence to get more information about Andre. What she found there was that the Nazis forced Patain to appoint their puppet as a deputy prime minister, and just three months later, he approved a new statute on Jews. He also added his own restrictions on Jews in unoccupied parts of France, banning them from high public service positions. And it would only grow worse. Coco stayed at a friend's hotel room. Since he had just been ordered to leave the country, the Vichy administration had discovered that he'd helped Jews obtain visas to evacuate to America. Among the Jewish refugees from France were Pierre and Paul Wertimer. When they arrived in New York by way of Spain and then Brazil, they sent an emissary back to France to tidy up their business. First, the emissary, H. Gregory Thomas, needed to secure the formula for number five and its main ingredients. By the way, if you're wondering why companies like Coca Cola are so protective of their recipes to this day, it's because formula for inventions like perfumes and sodas are not covered by intellectual property laws. So Gregory had to be stealthy about it. Gregory also helped Pierre's son Jacques escape to New York. And he did one more clandestine maneuver. Let me remind you that Coco had tried to sue the Werdimers with no real basis for argument for years. She had already betrayed them. Even while they were honoring the contract that she suggested. So it's been four or five years since the Nuremberg Laws. And the Wertimers saw how that worked out for Jewish companies. So what they did was have Gregory arbitrate a deal with a French engineer named Felix Amio. They sold their shares of the company to Felix under the table. Felix sold arms to the Nazi Luftwaffe. No Germans were coming anywhere close to him. Let me pause here and reflect for a moment though. So to recap, these Jewish businessmen fled their home country for physical safety. And they essentially brokered a deal with an Aryan weapons maker to hold onto their company for them until they were allowed to come back home. On the one hand, that is a real business person. What incredible foresight. Strong will, cool headedness in the face of literal decimation. And on the other hand, even if I'd had the presence of mind to reach the option of doing that, I'm not sure I would have had the strength of spirit to actually do it. I think I might actually rather go down with the ship. On principle, of course. If I survived, I'd certainly live to regret it. But regardless of my lack of self preservation skills, the Wertimers pulled it off. And it's a good thing they did. Because you're not going to believe what Koko tried to get away with next. I'll tell you all about it after the break.
- [35:09]
Cindy Crawford
Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of meaningful beauty. When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we. We are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty. Which means each and every product is meaningful. It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious. You're going to get results and then you Just go out and live your life. Meaningful beauty. Confidence is beautiful. Learn more@meaningful beauty.com.
- [35:42]
California Psychics
At California Psychics, we know some people can't read the career warning signs like your boss still not knowing your name.
- [35:48]
Carrie
You, Tina, Lisa, Sheila, whatever. Get that report to me by lunch, okay? It's Carrie, ma' am. Just get it done, Terry.
- [35:56]
California Psychics
So talk to California Psychics and receive the career guidance you need. We only connect you with the very best, so guarantee if your reading isn't life changing, it's free. California psychics call 1-800-PREDICT today and get 20 minutes for just $20.
- [36:12]
LifeLock
Not everyone who handles your personal information is going to be as careful as you are. And it only takes one mistake to expose it to hackers and identity theft. Maybe that's why there's a new victim of identity theft every five seconds in the United States. Fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf. Guaranteed or your money back. Plus, all Lifelock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. Meaning Lifelock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan. If you lose money due to identity theft. You can't control how diligent others are with your personal information. But with Lifelock, you can help protect it. Act now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply at Ameca Insurance.
- [37:09]
Ameca Insurance
We know it's more than just a house. It's your home. The place that filled with memories. The early days of figuring it out. To the later years of still figuring it out. For the place you've put down roots. Trust Amica Home Insurance. Amica empathy is our best policy.
- [37:48]
Mary Kay McBrayer
So in 1940, Coco must have known that the Nazis would use French prisoners of war as bargaining chips like hostages. Because she pulled out all the stops to get her nephew Andre freed. It's not on record how Coco met Baron Hans Gunther von Dinklage, the Nazi espionage agent. But she did. She met him and Baron Louis de Vaufferlan in 1941. It was urgent that Andre be freed. Especially with his contraction of tuberculosis. And because she was inventive and opportunistic, Coco was sure that she could navigate through Nazi occupied Paris. Hans and Louis said they could help free her nephew for a price. Louis also implied that with these new Aryan Laws he could probably get her company back out of possession of the Wertimers. Coco had powerful connections in England, Spain and France. And in the spring of 1941, Coco Chanel was enrolled in the Berlin channel as Agent F, CK 7124, code name Westminster. Coco closed all her boutiques except her perfume shop because she explained people weren't concerned with fashion when there was a war of this magnitude. But the perfume stayed because quote, not all Germans were gangsters. And then interestingly, she stayed in Paris. Well, she didn't just stay in Nazi occupied Paris, she lived at the Ritz Hotel. You might be thinking, well she's rich, so how much of a stretch is that? It's a big stretch considering the Nazis had commandeered the Ritz as their headquarters in Paris. Actually only certain non Germans were allowed to stay there like collaborator Fern Bidot, the pro Nazi Dubonnet family and the Ritzes themselves. Everyone coming and going from the hotel had to be first invited and then identified as well. And any weapons were confiscated in a coat check like situation. So she's getting a lot of preferential treatment already. Chanel's first mission was to Spain. And while she was there she stayed at the Ritz in Madrid. It's impossible to reconstruct her activities while she was there because France's World War II archives have all been tragically destroyed. But British reports say she went to a dinner party while she was there. And there are some pretty anti Semitic remarks on the record. When she returned to France, so had Andre. He was free, but he was very sick. While he recuperated, Coco and Louis worked to convince the Nazis that Chanel's perfume business rightfully belonged in her hands. According to the Aryan laws, Jewish companies were all surrendered to the Vichy administration. She wrote to them on her own behalf saying Parfum Chanel is still the property of Jews and has been legally abandoned by the owners. I have an indisputable right of priority. The profits that I have received from my creations since the founding of this business are disproportionate Here I want to pause again because to me we're in a bit of a gray area. First, one might argue that the Madrid mission was a quid pro quo to save the life of her adoptive son. Whether that's factually true is somewhat ambiguous. Still, I think most people could equivocate that the means justified the ends there. Especially because we don't really know what she did on that mission. Second, to the best of Coco's knowledge, she and the Wertimers were getting screwed by the business's forfeiture. I can almost not blame her for appealing to the powers in charge to try to get her own business back under her control. On the other hand, how bad does it have to be to align yourself with the Nazis? I mean, we can't say for sure that she wouldn't have siphoned money back to Pierre and Paul or would have reinstated their contract after the war. Except unfortunately, we can say that. Remember, Coco didn't know that the Wertimers had protected their shares of Chanel Parfums. They'd sold them to the arms manufacturer, Felix Amyot. When the Vichy administration notified her of this fact, she didn't back off. She doubled down. She said it was a lie with no information. She said that Pierre was still in control and Felix was just a figurehead. That is a no. There is no equivocating for her here. And what's worse, the Nazi spy, Hans Gunther von Dinklage. He was Coco's lover. She knew he was a German spy and she still kept on with him for a long, long time. And there's no conceivable way that she didn't know what kind of man he was. Then she went on a second undercover mission, this time in 1943. Coco went to Berlin. While she was in town, guess where she stayed this time? She met with Adolf Hitler's chief of counterintelligence, Walter Schellenberg. She was supposed to get a message to Winston Churchill. They called it Operation Model Hat. It was a last ditch effort for the Nazis to make a deal with the British. And she was supposed to get the message to him. But because we're on the other side of this war, we know what happened. Thank God that mission failed. It was a matter of time before the war ended. The Allies came through and liberated Paris. All of France. Charles de Gaulle, who was the leader of France before Petain agreed to occupation, returned with the French Resistance and everything changed. Coco Chanel handed out free bottles of Chanel no. 5 to American GIs for their girlfriends back home. She hoped that she wouldn't be marched through town naked with her head shaved for being a horizontal collaborator. And in the meantime, she would have to figure out how to fly below the radar after not only having an ongoing affair with a Nazi officer, but actually working with the Nazis on several clandestine missions. Join me next week on the Greatest true crime stories ever told for our second of two episodes about the fashion designer and possible Nazi collaborator, Coco Chanel. I'd like to shout out a few key sources that made it possible for me to tell this week's story, especially the documentary the wars of Coco Chanel and the book by Hal Vaughn, Sleeping with the Enemy. There's also the Becoming Chanel documentary, although to be honest, our source list for this episode is pretty exhaustive. So do be sure to check out our show notes for everyone's expertise. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer and I hosted this episode. I also wrote this episode. Our show is Produced by Emma DeMuth and edited by Antonio Enriquez. Theme music by Tyler Cash Executive Producer Scott Waxman.
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