History

The Chicken Farmer Who Became WWII’s Greatest Double Agent

The unassuming Spaniard resolved to fight fascism and Nazism in the most elaborate scheme ever, with a significant impact on the D-Day landings.
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The Chicken Farmer Who Became WWII’s Greatest Double Agent
Juan Pujol Garcia, operating as a spy with code name Garbo, misdirects the Germans, allowing the Allied forces to gain a foothold on French soil during the D-Day landings. Public Domain
Walker Larson
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On a January day in 1941, a small, unassuming Spaniard entered the British embassy in Madrid, cast a glance around the room filled with the click of typewriters, and asked to speak to a diplomat because he had something he wished to reveal.

The man at the reception desk pressed the visitor for details. The Spaniard’s answers were evasive. So the receptionist passed him off to a secretary. She passed him to a clerk, who passed him to a minor official, and so on. It was a bureaucratic merry-go-round.

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Walker Larson
Walker Larson
Author
Before becoming a freelance journalist and culture writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy in Wisconsin, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He holds a master’s in English literature and language, and his writing has appeared in The Hemingway Review, Intellectual Takeout, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, “Hologram” and “Song of Spheres.”