Garbo: El espía

"Garbo, The Spy" is the story of Juan Pujol Garcia, probably the most successful double agent in World War II. Garcia's job with British intelligence was to earn Germany's trust and feed their military all kinds of incorrect information. This included his insistence that D-Day would take place in the Pas des Calais rather than Normandy.

Garbo had a network of subagents, all fake people. Before going to London, he told the Germans that he was there - he was really in Lisbon, getting information from the library to send them.

The deception of Pas des Calais/Normandy was remarkable and is beautifully covered in a documentary called Ghost Army, which tells the story of fake units with fake tanks and fake radio calls that were set up to throw off the Germans.

"Garbo, The Spy," as you perhaps discern from the other posts, is somewhat unusual in its format. Personally I liked it. They used movies, real footage, cartoons, and interviews to tell Pujol's story.

Possibly the closest to Garcia's story was the Alec Guinness film, "Our Man in Havana," from which several scenes were shown. Classic film buffs will also recognize Leslie Howard, Margaret Lindsay, and others.

Interestingly, Germany bought everything this guy was peddling and gave him the Iron Cross, and he was also brought to Buckingham Palace and given the Medal of Honor.

I say don't miss this, and the documentary footage of the Allies coming into Paris, the look on peoples' faces, and the liberated concentration camp survivors smiling and eating.

One person interviewed was Aline Griffith, the Countess de Romanones, who was an American model who became a spy in the OSS in Spain, eventually marrying Count Romanones. Her books - The Spy Wore Red, etc., make for fun reading.

I absolutely loved the movie. It was entertaining and mixing Hollywood spy movies with the real narrative was brilliant. Prior to viewing this movie, I had no idea this man existed and the role he played in making the D-day landings a success. He acted solely out of the motivation to save civilization from the horrors that a Nazi victory would have brought. Had it not been for him the D Day landings would likely have been a disaster and the war would have dragged on for perhaps two more years and maybe Hitler would have had time to make more rockets or even atomic bombs. This man single handedly fooled the Germans so many times and even had them believe that the D-day landings were only a diversion but were so successful that the allies cancelled the real invasion at Calais. After the war he still received money from the grateful Germans for his invaluable service. He never speaks in the movie but befittingly does visit the graves at Normandy. An informative and well presented documentary about a man who sought little glory for himself and yet was responsible for saving so many lives and turning the course of the war.

A compelling account of Juan Pujol, an extraordinary Spanish double agent during WWII and the only spy to be decorated by both sides . ¨Garbo: The Spy¨ , also known as Garbo, the Man Who Saved the World and Garbo: El Espia , is a Spanish documentary about Juan Pujol Garcia's role in the Second World War, well directed by Edmon Roch. It contains interviews , stock footage and fragments of films as ¨The longest day¨ with Curd Jürgens , ¨Patto¨n with George C. Scott , ¨Our Man in Havana¨ with Alec Guinnes, ¨Mata Hari¨ with Greta Garbo , ¨Appointment in Berlin¨ with George Sanders and ¨cartoon movies¨.The documentary reconstructs the career of "Garbo," who formed the centerpiece of Allied deception and counter-information to have the Nazis believe that D-Day landing would occur in Pas-de-Calais and not in Normandy , called Operation Fortitude . This documentary Garbo premiered at the Rome Film Festival on October 20, 2009, opened in Spain on December 4, 2009 and opened at the Village East Cinema in New York 2010.

It deals with his moving life , as in 1939, during the early days of World War ll, Pujol decided that he must make a contribution "for the good of humanity" (and to oppose the Franco regime) by helping Poland, Britain - which, with some of its Commonwealth realms and France, were Germany's only adversaries at the time.He initially approached the British three different times including through his wife , but they showed no interest in employing him as a spy. Therefore, he resolved to establish himself as a German agent before approaching the British again to offer his services as a double-agent.Pujol created an identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official who could travel to London on official business; he also obtained a fake Spanish diplomatic passport by fooling a printer into thinking Pujol worked for the Spanish embassy in Lisbon.He contacted an Abwehr agent in Madrid. The Abwehr accepted Pujol and gave him a crash course in espionage (including secret writing), a bottle of invisible ink, a codebook, and £600 for expenses. His instructions were to move to Britain and recruit a network of British agents.He moved instead to Lisbon, and - using a tourist's guide to Britain, reference books, and magazines from the Lisbon Public Library, and newsreel reports he saw in cinemas - created seemingly credible reports that appeared to come from London .During his time in Portugal, he stayed in Estoril .He claimed to be travelling around Britain and submitted his travel expenses based on fares listed in a British railway guide. Pujol's unfamiliarity with the non-decimal system of currency used in Britain at the time was a slight difficulty. At this time Great Britain's unit of currency, the pound sterling, was subdivided into 20 shillings, each having twelve pence. Garbo was unable to total his expenses in this complex system, so simply itemised them, and said that he would send the total later.During this time he created an extensive network of fictitious sub-agents living in different parts of Britain. Because he had never actually visited the UK, he made several mistakes, such as claiming that his alleged contact in Glasgow "would do anything for a litre of wine", unaware of Scottish drinking habits or that the UK did not use the metric system.His reports were intercepted by the British Ultra communications interceptions programme, and seemed so credible that the British counter-intelligence service MI5 launched a full-scale spy hunt. In February 1942, either he or his wife approached the United States after it had entered the war, contacting U.S. Navy Lieutenant Patrick Demorest in the naval attache's office in Lisbon, who recognised Pujol's potential. After he passed the security check conducted by MI6 Officer Desmond Bristow, Bristow suggested that he be accompanied by MI5 officer Tomás Harris to brief Pujol on how he and Harris should work together. Pujol's wife and child were later moved to Britain. Pujol operated as a double agent under the XX Committee's aegis; Cyril Mills was initially Bovril's case officer; but he spoke no Spanish and quickly dropped out of the picture. His main contribution was to suggest, after the truly extraordinary dimensions of Pujol's imagination and accomplishments had become apparent, that his code name should be changed as befitted 'the best actor in the world'; and Bovril became "Garbo", after Greta Garbo. During planning for the Normandy beach invasion, the Allies decided that it was vitally important that the German leaders be misled into believing that the landing would happen at the Strait of Dover by means of Operation Furtitude . In order to maintain his credibility, it was decided that Garbo should forewarn the Germans of the timing and some details of the actual invasion of Normandy, although sending it too late for them to take effective action. Special arrangements were made with the German radio operators to be listening to Garbo through the night of 5/6 June 1944, using the story that a sub-agent was about to arrive with important information. However, when the call was made at 3 AM, no reply was received from the German operators until 8 AM. This enabled Garbo to add more, genuine but now out-of-date, operational details to the message when finally received, and thus increase his standing with the Germans. Garbo told his German contacts that he was disgusted that his first message was missed, saying "I cannot accept excuses or negligence. Were it not for my ideals I would abandon the work. Part of the "Fortitude" plan was to convince the Germans that a fictitious formation-First U.S. Army Group, comprising 11 divisions , commanded by General George Patton-was stationed in southeast Britain.

This was a disappointing film for me to watch. I had viewed other films about Garbo that I enjoyed more. It started out as a 1940s newsreel so that fooled me and my wife if this was a film or newsreel history or what. Then they rattle off a bunch of partial clips of 2 or 3 interviews with people only saying much later who they are. Nigel West appears and sheds light on how he found Garbo after the war. The WW2 cartoons of Private Snafu with the German spy woman are pretty cheap to get off the public domain and repetitive to watch. Why American cartoons? No German cartoons of English spy woman footage around? I liked how they talked about how stupid the German's were from a rational sense, believing many superstitious things, feuling Garbo's imagination to make agents. They do joke about an English sense of humor (and lack of German humor) that may offer deep insight on why Garbo was so successful so I will credit it for that, 6 of 10 stars. I would recommend watching this as a supplementary film to the other productions about Garbo, they are more coherent and entertaining.

As a WW2 buff I am reasonably au fait with the deceptions around the Normandy landings. However that was not really relevant as the film provides enough information for any viewer.

In a quirky film that teases you along it is a little gem and a great story - but true story. The director manges to in a sense bamboozle the viewer so what is true and what is mirage is not really explicit until one is gripped by the tale. The inter-cutting of news reels and fictional spy movies provides atmosphere and refreshes the memory on what a confused arena Europe was in the thirties and forties.

I defy anyone not to be better informed and amused by this excellent film.