A Chicken Farmer Spied On Hitler And Became WWII’s Greatest Double Agent

Juan Pujol Garcia wanted to do his part in taking down Hitler. At the start of World War II, Garcia easily determined Hitler was the real enemy and so he felt he had to do something about it.

Born February 14, 1912, the Barcelona-native bravely risked his life as he fought against the Nazi as a spy. The plot twist here, of course, is that Garcia wasn’t really a spy by profession. In fact, he never had any experience nor did he receive any kind of training.

He was merely a chicken farmer.

So how exactly did he manage to pull off such a dangerous job?

Juan Pujol Garcia, a chicken farmer, eventually went down in history as one of the best double agents during World War II.

Well Garcia’s story began when he made a personal visit to the British embassy located in Madrid. He offered them his “services” in the war against Nazis but, as can be expected for someone without proper qualifications, they refused his offer and didn’t pay him any attention.

He, however, did not let that dampen his desire of becoming a spy.

So what he did next was to approach the Germans. He introduced himself as a Nazi symphatizer and that he wanted to work for them as a spy in England. He went as far as claiming that he frequently traveled to London with the Spanish government and even backed his lies up with a fabricated diplomatic passport.

Pictured with his wife here, Garcia made fabricated documents to get the trust of Nazi Germans.

The Germans were impressed and Garcia was later sent to England for the purpose of recruiting additional Nazi agents. Because his passport was fake, he couldn’t go to London and so he instead went to Lisbon and then began making and sending fake intelligence reports to them. Since he couldn’t recruit agents, he created fictional agent names.

At that point, he got in touch with the British authorities and successfully convinced them that he could be a valuable asset as a double agent. He was then invited to England and was assigned to work with MI5 officer Thomas Harris. The two created 27 fictitious sub-agents and fed the Nazis with fabricated intelligence reports.

With his fake intelligence reports, Garcia managed to convince Hitler that the Allies will attack Calais – not Normandy – and the success of his mission helped save numerous lives.

Garcia later earned the code name “Garbo” after popular actress Greta Garbo and became known as arguably the greatest double agent of World War II.

H/T: TheVintageNews