Smith Journal – January 2019

025 SMITH JOURNAL

ON JULY 29, 1944, GERMAN Y’S
MILITARY COMMAND SENT WORD
TO ONE OF THEIR TOP SPIES IN
ENGLAND – CODENAME: ALARIC
ARABEL – THAT HE’D BEEN AWARDED
THE IRON CROSS. THE TOP HONOUR
WAS SAID TO HAVE COME FROM
HITLER HIMSELF, AND FOLLOWED
ARABEL’S THREE-YEAR STINT
GATHERING INVALUABLE
INFORMATION ON THE ENEMY.

..........................................

“The extraordinary successes of Arabel have
been made possible by his constant, complete
and express confidence in the Führer and
our cause,” one military memo beamed.
But that was a lie. Arabel actually despised
both Hitler and his cause, and was in fact
a double agent – one of history’s finest.

The man behind Arabel, Juan Pujol García,
was in reality a Spanish national whom the
British intelligence community called Garbo.
By the end of that same year, 1944, Pujol was
appointed a Member of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire, making him one
of the most curiously decorated servicemen
of any war. (The Iron Cross and MBE weren’t
really designed to be worn on the same chest.)

Born in Barcelona on February 14, 1912,

Pujol was an unlikely spy. He was raised in

a decidedly non-political household, and

though he would later make a living as a

professional partisan, he eschewed formal

politics for the simple life of a chicken farmer.

This was a difficult position to hold in a

country fast heading towards civil war. When

that eventuality finally broke out in 1936, the

ardent pacifist held little regard for either the

leftist Republicans or Franco’s Nationalists.

As Pujol later wrote in Operation Garbo, a

memoir of sorts written with espionage writer

Nigel West, “I was appalled that once-civilised

men were now obsessed with spreading their

obnoxious ideas by fire and the sword.”

Pujol reluctantly joined the Republican side of

the conf lict in the hopes of deserting the war

from the frontline. His plan was successful,

though he was eventually pulled back into the

conf lict, this time serving the rival Nationalist

faction. He would later recount with pride the

fact he served both sides of a civil war without

firing a shot during battle. But the war had

a lasting effect on this soldier: he had seen

autocracy up close. And it was not pretty.

By the beginning of World War II, Pujol was

running a substandard hotel in Madrid, and

he saw in Hitler the same tyranny that drove

Franco’s Spain. Eager to help the British war

effort, he approached the British embassy in

Madrid and offered his services as a spy. Alas,

the proposal fell on deaf ears: Britain claimed

it wanted to keep Spain out of the war, and –

perhaps more to the point – had little need for

an untrained hotelier with no connections.

Rebuffed, the would-be spy approached

the German embassy and, posing as a

fanatical National Socialist with friends

in high places, offered to spy on the British.

Germany’s military intelligence agency, the

Abwehr, took to Pujol quickly enough, and

gave him the codename Alaric Arabel. The

fact the Abwehr was far more willing to take

on free agents than Britain’s MI5 wasn’t lost

on Pujol: “Why, I kept asking myself, was

the enemy proving to be so helpful, while

those who I wanted to be my friends

were proving to be so implacable?”

>>

codename: garbo

DURING WORLD WAR II, THE NAZIS BELIEVED THEY HAD AN ARMY

OF SPIES OPERATING THROUGHOUT BRITAIN. TWENTY-SEVEN OF

THEM TURNED OUT TO BE JUAN PUJOL GARCÍA – A FORMER CHICKEN

FARMER WITH AN ACTIVE IMAGINATION AND A HATRED OF FASCISTS.

Writer Will Ziebell