The Greatest Double Agent Ever: How a Spanish Chicken Farmer Became the Most Important Double Agent in WWII

Juan Pujol García was one of the rare individuals whose participation in World War II made him a Member of the Order of the British Empire and earned him the Iron Cross. He gained that unlikely distinction in perhaps the riskiest of all roles in espionage, that of a double agent. Despite ultimately working for the Allied cause, he created an elaborate fictional persona — complete with an invented spy network operating across Great Britain — who professed loyalty to the Nazi cause. Not only did Pujol get this character plugged into the real German intelligence system, he also got him on its payroll, receiving what came to the equivalent of more than $6 million in today’s U.S. dollars for supplying information — information that ultimately contributed to the Axis’ loss of the war.

The story of how this chicken farmer from Barcelona became the most important double agent of World War II is told in the animated Primal Space video above. Unlike many of the spies history has remembered more clearly, Pujol didn’t begin his espionage career in the employ of any government in particular.

Radicalized, if that be the word, by the experience of having been drafted into the Spanish Civil War, he vowed to dedicate his life to “the good of humanity.” Turned away by the British embassy, to which he’d offered his services because Britain opposed Nazi Germany, he went freelance, re-inventing himself as a Third Reich-loyal Spanish military man seeking an assignment in the U.K. Taken on by Germany, he instead decamped to Lisbon, where he began manufacturing ersatz intelligence reports using newsreel footage and tourist brochures.

However makeshift, Pujol’s craft proved impressive to both Germany and Britain, which launched an international spy hunt for him. He thus accomplished his goal of becoming an official British double agent, in which capacity he arrived at his finest hour: misleading the Germans as to the 1944 “D‑Day” invasion of Normandy in an effort called Operation Fortitude. In Spanish, that would be Fortaleza, which became the title of an RTVE documentary about Pujol’s long-untold story a few years ago. But if any single word reflects Pujol’s contribution to history, that word must be Garbo, the code name assigned him by his first British case officer. After all, what other name — at least in 1942 — could quite so evocatively befit an agent whose skills of crafting and inhabiting invented characters made his handlers regard him as “the best actor in the world”?

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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.