I couldn’t put this book down on a long road trip: Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben Macintyre. Although I don’t enjoy military history, I picked it up from the library on a whim because it sounded interesting enough to keep me occupied. It is a fascinating spy story, a cross between James Bond and Oceans 11. The book discusses British spies and counter agents attempting to deceive Germany about the location of the D-Day invasion. The truth is stranger than fiction.
Yes, definitely a good read. Ben Macintyre knows how to tell a story (and the history is pretty good!).
You might also like *Operation Mincemeat *by Macintyre, the story of the “man who never was” used to plant the fiction that the Allies would invade Sardinia rather than Scilly in 1943.
I’m a big fan of Juan Pujol, aka GARBO aaka the greatest bullshit artist who ever lived. Does it cover Pujol and Tomas Harris’ contributions?
Garbo, yes, quite a bit. Tomas Harris doesn’t sound familiar, but do keep in mind I speed read it in the car. The cast of characters is rich and large.
Harris was his Spanish speaking MI5 handler.
Second the plug for Mincemeat. I read Montegu’s “The Man Who Never Was,” and enjoyed it, but Macintyre follows up with additions and corrections, filling in details that Montegu was forced to omit or to distort.
Picked it up and am reading it right now. Thanks for the recommendation!
There’s a pretty good documentary about Garbo that I saw a few years ago: Amazon.com
Also, check out Ken Follett’s gripping novel Eye of the Needle, about a Nazi spy undercover in Great Britain who figures out what the Allies are up to and must be stopped before he tells Hitler.
For a long time, I was working on the Wikipedia article on Garbo - mostly because I really want his story to be made as a movie. Someone like Guillermo del Toro would do an exceptional job of it. I haven’t done anything on Wikipedia for a year after some jerk of an admin when on a tear and deleted a lot of stuff I had built on another article.
Yes, there’s a lot of good stuff to Garbo’s story. I particularly like that he was decorated by both King George VI and Adolf Hitler, and that by the end of the war the Germans were funding virtually the entire British counterintelligence program!
I was mentally casting and looking forward to the Steven Spielberg or Ron Howard movie or miniseries while I read this book. Jude Law (Tricycle), Tom Hanks. Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman (Jensen), Gael Garcia Bernal (Garbo). Anna Kendrick (spy with the dog).
It would make an excellent HBO series. I’ve been giggling out loud at some of the bits. Very enjoyable writer.
I came in specifically to mention him, although I figured someone must already have done so. If I had to point to one person as a personal hero of mine, it would be Joan Pujol Garcia.
Here’s Ebert’s review of the excellent documentary Garbo the Spy, mentioned above. This film should not be missed.
No doubt about it, the guy was simply a class act.
And then after the war, he was content to disappear into even further obscurity, if that were possible. He let everyone think he was dead when in reality he had emigrated to Venezuela and ran a small bookstore/gift shop (according to the Wikipedia link) or cinema (which I think the documentary claims).
I’ve wondered a bit about how thoroughly British counter-intelligence compromised German networks in the UK - basically completely, and not just via Garbo by any means - and yet how they were so compromised themselves by the Soviets.
The Nazis thought he was a loyal Nazi. MI5 confirmed everything about what he did during the war, but I always wondered if he did anything after the war in terms of finding the ones who went to South America. He was totally obscure until 1982, when he was ID’d. I love that he traveled to Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day to pay his respects. As horrific and difficult as that was, I can only imagine how much worse it would have been with the full might of the German military machine had been there, if Rommel hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs in Calais.