This is, of course, Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day — and it’s making a credible case for the latter part of it. I ordered the book when I first heard the tale of Juan Pujol Garcia, and it came today; I started reading it while my kids were playing in the pool. It is, so far, compelling reading; apparently Juan Garcia was placed on this earth solely to lie to Nazi spies in ways that almost defy human understanding. It was a gift, and thank God that the man used his powers for good.
Moe Lane
PS: Apparently he was getting paid so well by the Abwehr that the British Double Cross operating budget ended up being significantly subsidized by their greatest enemy. …That’s art, man. They should put that up on the wall in a museum, somewhere.
And…spoiler?…he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class (personal Fuhrer approval BTW) AND an MBE from the British Crown.
I knew about this guy and the things he did before (at least in general), but when you said Abwehr in this and the previous post about the book, something clicked.
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Admiral Canaris, his deputy, and presumably as many other Abwehr officers as they could manage, were anti-Nazis who worked to undermine Hitler. In one example, Canaris got tapped by Hitler to serve as a personal envoy to Franco, which he used to tell Franco how high a price he had to charge Hitler if he wanted to bring Spain into the war that it wasn’t worth it to Hitler. (Speaking of Spain, Canaris also ran an operation that was supposedly charged with capturing Gibraltar, but really served as a way to get all-expenses-paid vacations in Spain for practically any Abwehr officer who could justify the connection.) There was also a mysterious package that got delivered the British Embassy in Norway that I read about years ago that Canaris could have been involved in.
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Anyway, given how Abwehr leadership was stacked with anti-Nazis, and how the British were able to neutralize every German spy that got sent to Great Britain, it stands to reason that the agents selected to go would be willing to turn. It also stands to reason that Canaris and his anti-Nazi people that connected Pujol Garcia’s intelligence to Hitler figured out the game he was playing, and went along with it because it fit perfectly into the game *they* were playing, and that his objective (bringing down Hitler and the Nazis) was also their objective.