Rogue History

- D-Day.

Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.

The German military intelligence service received an encrypted message from one of their top spies, code named Alaric.

The agent reported that the Normandy attacks were a diversion.

Based on this intel, the Nazis redirected their forces over 200 miles away to Calais to intercept what they thought would be the main Allied attack.

But it never came.

You see, Alaric wasn't spying for the Nazis.

The man who would come to be known as one of the greatest double agents of all time was actually a chicken farmer named Juan Pujol Garcia.

I'm Joel Cook, and this is Rogue History.

[dramatic music] At the height of World War II, the Abwehr, AKA the German military intelligence service, considered Alaric an indispensable asset.

Reporting from the heart of enemy territory in London, he built a network of 27 secret agents.

Agent number one was a Dutch airline worker who agreed to smuggle letters overland with invisible ink.

Number four was a Gibraltarian waiter who could eavesdrop on the diplomats who frequented his restaurant.

They each had a vital role to play and would pass along useful information and stolen military documents through the mail.

But all of it was completely fake.

In fact, Juan wasn't even in London.

He was chilling in a hotel in Lisbon.

So where did this ultra skilled conman come from?

As a young boy, Juan would watch the trains go by his home and fantasize about traveling to far off countries and unknown lands.

He quit school at age 15, completed training at the Royal Poultry School, and was drafted into the Spanish Republican Army where he went on to be really bad at soldiering.

He bought his way out after just six months.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out between the Republican Army and Francisco Franco's Nationalist troops, backed by the Nazis, Juan, a pacifist, refused to pick a side.

He managed to survive the war without ever firing a shot.

In 1939, Juan returned to civilian life in Madrid, which was overrun with Nazi propaganda.

He was infuriated by Adolf Hitler and his supremacist rhetoric.

He later stated, "I wanted to start a personal war with Hitler and I wanted to fight with my imagination."

So he and his wife, Araceli, plotted ways they might be able to help stop Hitler's reign of terror.

First, with Araceli's help, he attempted to volunteer himself as a spy for the British, but was turned down.

They weren't deterred though.

To become useful to the Allies, they decided that they needed to get close to the Germans first.

So Juan called the Nazi German embassy.

Yeah, he just called 'em.

He praised Hitler and his vision for a new Europe, then offered to serve as a spy, claiming he had access to people in high places.

Somehow, his amateur acting skills secured a meeting with a high-ranking German official at a coffee shop in Madrid.

Juan put forth a shot-in-the-dark idea.

If the Germans could provide resources, he could use his connections to build a spy network in London where they desperately wanted intel.

Emilio initially hesitated, noting that the Abwehr was cautious because they had recently been fooled by another volunteer who turned out to be a fake.

So they were definitely not going to make the same mistake twice.

Juan decided to prove his value by obtaining a Spanish diplomatic passport.

As a regular citizen, he couldn't just walk into the embassy and ask for one because international travel was restricted during the war.

While staying at a hotel in Lisbon, Juan covertly snapped photos of a diplomat's visa.

He then tricked a printing shop into forging the document using his photo as a reference and claiming to be an employee of the Spanish Embassy.

Once back in Madrid, he flashed the visa at another German agent named Federico, earning his confidence.

Weeks later, Federico finally approved his mission.

Juan later wrote, "Why he had such blind faith in me, I do not know."

Whatever Federico was thinking, he provided a bottle of invisible ink, some secret codes, and a wad of cash.

Juan was given the code named Alaric and requested that his network be called Arabel, short for Araceli Bella, a shout out to his wife who was vital to him getting this far.

In the summer of 1941, Federico received his first letter from Alaric, confirming he had arrived in London.

But in reality, he was just really good at redirecting the mail.

Juan concocted his reports to the Germans using resources primarily from the Lisbon Library.

He read through reference books and magazines to find the names and addresses of real British landmarks and people.

He even used news reels and newspaper reports, combined with his imagination, to type out reports that sounded like eyewitness accounts.

If proven wrong, he could always blame one of his imaginary agents.

It didn't take long before MI5, the British intelligence service, intercepted Juan's reports.

One British officer demanded of their colleagues, "Who is this Arabel and why is he so obviously lying?"

The existence of a German spy in England could prove extremely destructive.

Finally, Juan's name was revealed through an intelligence agency across the pond.

Without his knowledge, Araceli told the U.S. Embassy about Juan's work for the Germans and his desire to collaborate with the Allies.

So the British arranged to meet Juan at a Lisbon cafe.

Apparently, a lotta history-changing events take place over coffee.

By the end of 1941, Juan was at last in the Allies' inner circle.

Leaving his family behind, he flew to London.

For real this time.

Where he officially became a double agent.

He was dubbed Agent Garbo because his acting rivaled that of Hollywood actress Greta Garbo.

He worked closely with MI5 case officer Tomas Harris to coordinate elaborate disinformation campaigns.

Real documents would back up fake ones and accurate information will be mixed in with disinformation to keep the Nazis one step behind without them realizing it.

During Operation Torch, the Allies' victorious campaign in North Africa, Alaric's agents reported that a convoy of warships had been seen heading for the Mediterranean Sea.

The message, sent by air mail, was postmarked well before the landings, but was intentionally scheduled to arrive too late to be useful.

The Germans were nonetheless delighted, stating that, "We are sorry they arrived too late, but your last reports were magnificent."

Juan and the Allies had the Germans right where they wanted them for their biggest mission yet.

As the war reached its peak, Agent Garbo and Agent Harris prepared for Operation Fortitude, a disinformation campaign meant to give the planned invasion of Normandy the best chance of success.

If the Allies could gain footing there, they could launch a ground defensive towards Berlin and make serious progress towards defeating the Nazis.

All they had to do was persuade them to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Nazis were all too familiar with the military tactic of feint attacks, smaller invasions that were intended to distract from a future larger attack.

They predicted that the Allies were either going to be at Calais or Normandy because of their strategic locations.

Using a German-built wireless radio, Alaric sent over 500 encrypted messages hinting that Calais was the primary target, not Normandy.

Alaric's agent number four, the Gibraltarian waiter based just across the channel from Calais, reported that he'd seen Canadian troops preparing for an assault.

To sell the illusion, the Allies lined the coast of Southeast England with a ghost army.

Inflatable tanks, empty naval ships, and speakers blasting recordings of military exercises.

All the pieces came together for this perfect con.

When the Allied troops invaded Normandy, Alaric's diversionary message made it through the Abwehr, all the way to Adolf Hitler's desk.

His decision to send reinforcements away from Normandy, informed directly by Juan's disinformation, left only one armored division between the Allies and their shot at victory.

Within a week, the Allies defeated the weakened shore defenses.

Less than a year later, they ended World War II by marching into Berlin.

Even after the D-Day mishap, the Nazis still trusted Alaric, even giving him an Iron Cross, the highest award in the German military at the time.

Ironically, he would also receive a similarly prestigious award from the British for his contribution to their side of the fight.

To retire his career as Alaric without alarming the Nazis that they had been duped, Juan staged an arrest by the British authorities and returned home to Spain.

After the war, Juan and Araceli moved to Venezuela with their two boys, but Araceli eventually left him and took their children back to Spain.

In 1949, she received the devastating news that her ex-husband had died of malaria in Angola.

[somber music] But he wasn't dead.

He was alive and well, living with a second wife and watching soccer on TV in Venezuela, his final act of deception.

[curious music]