Mary Kay McBrayer (20:08)
After the liberation of Paris, one French writer calculated that there were between 30 and and 40,000 collaborators executed. First of all, that's a huge number. And secondly, that is a huge range. From what I've read, the reason why the number of possible executions span a difference of 10,000 lives is because it was drumhead justice. Not everyone got a trial, not at first. Collaborators risked being shot in the street on sight. General Charles de Gaulle ended that hunt by establishing special courts to deal with collaborators. And he labeled them with the crime, national unworthiness. I feel like I have to reiterate here. At the time when people collaborated with the Nazis during the war, that wasn't illegal. It wasn't technically a crime. I mean, it was exactly wrong and evil, but it wasn't illegal. So when we talk about collaborators as criminals, it's just something to keep in mind. Even though Paris had been occupied by Nazis for years, the French Resistance still existed. And now that the city had been liberated from the Germans, those Resistance fighters, most of whom used their own weapons and wore civilian clothing, had collected into a unit called the French Forces of the Interior. Kovo had been on the FFI's blacklist for years. She called them the Fifis. A handful of these young resistance fighters came to arraign her at the Ritz in September of 1944. By all accounts, she was more insulted by the bad manners and rude dress of the FFI than her actual arrest. I just have to say, of course, they weren't polite. Arresting officers don't do that. They might be decent, but they're not. Considering your feelings, lady, that's not the priority. They were there to arrest her, and they themselves had been hunted down by Nazis for years. Granted, I wasn't there for the arrest, and I don't know how rude they were. Coco was interrogated for a few hours, but the FFIs had no record of her secret work. They didn't know about her collaboration on the mission to Madrid, and they didn't know about her involvement in the Model Hat mission earlier this same year. And so, just like that, she was released. Back to her second apartment she went. Coco told her niece Gabrielle that her friend Winston Churchill had her freed. That point has never been proven, although one theory claims that Chanel knew Winston had violated his own Trading with the Enemy Act. The act criminalized conducting business with the enemy during wartime, and the rumor was that Winston paid the Germans to protect the Duke of Windsor's properties in Paris. To support that theory, the Duke's property never was touched, not even after he was exiled and became a governor of the Bahamas. Another theory, and in my opinion, an equally likely one, is that they hadn't yet compiled a full case against Koko. So many of these documents were swirled away or destroyed or classified until the 2010s that she passed the first battery of questions simply on lack of evidence. But speaking of Edward, Duke of Windsor, when Coco made it back to her apartment from that initial investigation, she got a message from her longtime friend. He said, don't lose a minute. Get out of France. So she left. Her chauffeur took her and her Cadillac limousine to Switzerland. This in itself implies some level of guilt to me, but again, I wasn't there, and I don't know how bad it was. The wild purge was still happening, and I'm sure that was a terrifying crossfire to find oneself in, regardless of actual guilt. But people in Paris did know about her past, Even if they didn't have the documents in hand to prove it. They wondered if her luck could hold out. Two years later, in May of 1946, officials opened a case against her. In the decades since, that dossier has disappeared from the French Justice Department's National Archives. The index card labeled with her name and penal code, though, signifies that the investigation dealt with espionage. Coco was summoned many times before she finally appeared before Judge Fernand Paul Leclerc. Now they had the records. Louis de Vofferlund had testified Louis was the guy who had helped Coco free her nephew Andre from that prisoner of war camp. And Louis had testified that Coco was collaborating through intelligence. But by this time, Coco had been carefully coached by her lawyers. She denied that the trip to Madrid had to do with anything other than opening new boutiques. She claimed that she never asked Louis for help to free Andre. The judge brought up that she was on record registered as a Nazi intelligence agent. Coco said she was never aware of that registration. The judge did not ask about Operation Model Hut, which was her trip to speak with the Nazi chief of intelligence, Walter Schellenberg. And he did not ask about her wartime relationship with the SS officer Baron Hans Gunther von Dinklage either. Biographers state that it is possible U.S. intelligence sources may have never shared the facts of Koko's involvement with Model Hut. Plus, the details of her collaboration were hidden in French, German, Italian, Soviet and US archives. German authorities even purged French intelligence files as they were fleeing Paris. And they shipped them first to Berlin and then to Moscow. And that's where they stayed until 1985, four decades later. The judge did ask about her attempt to, quote, get in touch with the Nazi authorities in charge of the aryanization of property or businesses owned by Jews. In particular, about the Wertimer ownership of 90% of the Chanel perfume business. Coco dodged the question. She said the Chanel establishments were never sequestrated. There was a temporary administrator for around three weeks and the business Aryanized thanks to a scheme of the Wertimer brothers with one of their friends. It is possible that Vofer Lund overheard a conversation on this subject, but I didn't ask anything of him. The questioning about that part of her collaboration ended there. Apparently, the judge did not know about the trust that the Wertimer set up with Felix amyo. From 1945 on, Coco had been buying the silence of people who knew about her collaboration. What surprises me, though, is that Pierre and Paul Wertimer didn't say a word. Pierre had even discovered that Chanel was manufacturing her perfume in Switzerland. It was a clear breach of their 1924 agreement which entitled them to sole rights of production and manufacturing. And they didn't push on that either. The fact that they said nothing is wild to me. I love having the last word. And to be frank, that is why I will never really be rich. I would rather be right. But being right is Not a long term win. And the Wertimers, as I continue to reiterate, were in it for the long haul. In 1947, Pierre and his lawyer met with Coco and hers in his offices in Paris. In a move that I can't really fathom without knowing the future, Pierre offered Coco $50,000 and a small additional percentage of sales. It was a negotiation, so Coco asked for more. By the end of the talk, they agreed on $350,000 cash for Coco and 2% of all sales. Not 2% of profits, 2% of sales. Coco left happy. She told a friend, now I'm rich. Coco felt like she had won. And honestly, looking at it from my point of view, if the story ended here, then I would have to agree. But Pierre knew what he was doing. To recap again, because if you're like me, his decision just doesn't track. Without more reflection, Pierre could have sued the shit out of Coco when she was on trial for trying to Aryanize the company. If he had done that, yes, all of her collaboration would have come out, and she would have likely been punished for her crimes. But the secret arrangement between the Wertimers and Felix Amyo might have come out as well. From what I can tell, it wasn't illegal, but it was just kind of icky. It might have also exposed their emissary, H. Gregory Thomas, for his part in the plot as well. And they ended up making Gregory the company's president for 37 years. So that wouldn't do. And even if all of that had been above board or at least grandfathered in, now that the Nazis were out, that negative press that would come with a court case would have damaged the company name. And the name Chanel was the whole point of the deal. The Wertimers were already established as perfume makers long before that first meeting with Coco at the horse track. But Chanel no. 5 was their real money maker. So to simplify, Pierre Wertimer peered into the future with the foresight of a true business person. And he chose generational wealth over being right in the moment. Even with the outcomes in clear, bold face like that, I'm still not sure I could make the smarter decision like he did. What truly incredible resolve. A lot of time passed between this new deal between Coco and the Wertimers and the next bullet point of our story. So we're skipping forward eight years. It's 1954. Coco Chanel wanted a comeback. So she came back to Paris and she debuted her first fashion line since before the war. Listeners, it did not go Well, a French reporter from a major daily magazine wrote, quote, everyone had come to the show hoping to find again the atmosphere of the collections that had bowled over Paris in the the years gone by. But there is nothing of that left, only mannequins who paraded before an audience that cannot bring itself to applaud. Yikes. By now, Coco's creations might have been very successful, but her business was in bad shape financially. This new collection to supply her comeback had cost 35 million francs, which is over 1 million and $100,000 today. And her show had flopped. So Pierre stepped in to help again. Coco sold the Wertimers her shares of the fashion company. She sold them her commercial real estate and all her holdings with the Chanel name. In exchange, the Wertimers paid all her expenses. That included her apartment at the Ritz, her domestic help, and all other costs of living. In exchange, she had to assist with the development of new perfumes and run her couture house again. Coco felt like she had won. But listeners, you know that's not where our story ends. I'll tell you all about the poetic justice of Coco Chanel and the Aryan laws right after this break. Foreigners I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told.
