Stephan Talty: "Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-07-16/stephan-talty-agent-garbo-brilliant-eccentric-secret-agent-who-tricked-hitler-and-s
Juan Pujol Garcia is an unfamiliar name today. Born in Barcelona in 1912, he dropped out of school at an early age and was a failed businessman. Yet he is considered one of the greatest spies of World War II. In 1941, Pujol became an informer for the German forces, but what no one knew was that he was working as a double agent for the British. In what a British spy called “the greatest double cross operation of the war,” Pujol helped divert Nazi forces from the beaches of Normandy, making an Allied victory possible. Author Stephan Talty talks about this in his new book, "Agent Garbo."
Guests
Stephan Talty
author and New York Times best-selling author of "Empire of Blue Water."
Photos Of Agent Garbo
Read An Excerpt
Excerpted from "Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day" by Stephan Talty. Copyright Stephan Talty © 2012. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
I can hardly wait to hear this show, let alone get and read the book. I heard about "Garbo" through other books about World War II, especially about "Operation Mincemeat" - the so-called "man who never was". Garbo played a key part in that deception too.
So much of his story is filled with humor. The British at first rejected his offer of help. They only learned about him because their agents were getting reports of crazy "intelligence" Hitler was receiving (and believing) from a guy in Portugal. The information in them was laughably wrong, but the inventiveness was intriguing. So they located the source (Garbo), realized what a genius he was, and brought him to Britain. The rest is truly history!
Well, maybe "truly" isn't always the best adjective to use where Garbo is concerned.
;-)
Garbo was an interesting character, and deserves the attention he'll get here...still, I can't help but wish someone would spend more time on the 'blue collar' spies who do unimaginative, usually uncomfortable and dangerous, work, whose deaths are little-known and who are the backbone of the the intelligence industry.
Then again, it's always easier to pay attention to stars than to the people who do the boring work that keeps the world going; for one thing, it helps those of us who don't do any of that stuff, or at least the majority worst of it, feel a little bit better about ourselves and keeps phrases like 'on the backs of the poor' at bay.
Gerald Fnord wrote: "I a permanent victim of the 99%"
Hilarious!
No, actually I'm in the 5%, or at least the 10%, so I'm at worst the victim of the 4% or 9%. Sometimes you get a better view of society from the top, at least if you're not so blinkered and defensive that you have to believe that you're there by right of ability, hard work, or God's favour alone.
Knowing that most people have it worse than you and understanding all the ways one could easily have wound up one of them is a great corrective to complacent, self-centred, irresponsibility...because the knowledge that you did not have to rise is the knowledge that you could well fall, so it is in your self-interest that even 'losers' get treated decently.
Gerald Fnord wrote: 'No, actually I'm in the 5%, or at least the 10%"
That's even worse, you are obviously condescending to large groups of people that you pigeonhole as a class of permanent social cripples that have no hope to achieve anything in life because of their social status. How insulting!
While he made a great contribution, the D-Day landings didnt make any difference as far as Hiltler is concerned. The war was won in the East by the Soviet Union by grinding the Nazi armies into the dirt at a cost of millions of lives.
On D-Day 70% of the German Army and 95% of its air force was in the east.
The Eastern Front was approaching the Polish border inbound to Berlin, captured May 1945. The turning point of the was was Stalingrad, a year and half before Normandy. The greatest battle was Kursk, July 43.
Hitler did not have the resources to win. Germany was a smaller essentially landlocked country with one North Sea access, with 70 million people when the war starts. Russia was a land of 11 time zones and 140-190 million people and vast resources, the main one was oil.
80% of the German army was killed by the Russian army.
The US lost in total 400,000, Europe and Pacific combined, Russia--12 million soldiers and another 10-12 million civilians.
We landed 150,000 troops along a 55 mile front in 24hrs at Normandy, 3 years earlier when Nazi Germany invaded Russia they crossed their borders with armies of 3 million men along a front 1000 miles long.
The true significance of the Normandy invasion was it kept Stalin from occupying western Europe.
Thank you for bringing Mr.Talty's book to my attention. My father was in the war and I have always been very interested in the details of WWII. Convincing the Germans that the invasion force would not be at Normandy was a monumental task and "Garbo" was instrumental in that deception. This book will be a look at the character that helped the war effort in a exciting and unique way and I look forward to reading it as soon as possible.
Once again Diane Rehm did a wonderful job with the interview and using her own knowledge and interest of the subject to create a real "conversation" rather than a dry interview when it is a Q&A with no personal insight. Thank You. Joseph W. aka WaterRabbit, Cape Cod, MA, USA
To Gerald Fnord, partisan politics, and BARNESACLE:
How sad that you are unable to put your partisan and/or ideological obsessions aside, and just enjoy this wonderful true story.
And BARNESACLE - if D-Day was so “unimportant”, why was Stalin constantly screaming for the Allies to open a “Western Front”? No one denies the important role Russia played in the War, or the tremendous sacrifice she made. But to diminish the role and importance of the “western powers” is just as dishonest as denying that of Russia.
I didnt say D-Day was unimportant, I was just putting it in proper perspective. In the US we are always inflating ourselves as the winner of WWII while ignoring the sacrifices of all those Ivans in the east who actually won the war.
I'm reluctant to ever read one of Talty's books again after having suffered through "Empire of Blue Water", a horrible and poorly researched mess. (It's mysteriously absent from his Amazon page).
Talty released this book just in time for the Pirates of the Caribbean movie craze. Judging by his comments regarding the hope for the purchase of Garbo's film rights, he comes off as a get rich-quick opportunist.
Alas, this story has already been made into a film. I wonder if Talty credits it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1344315/
Etaoin Shrdlu wrote:How sad
Blame the guy who started it.
BARNESACLE on July 16, 2012 @ 3:42 pm wrote: “I didnt say D-Day was unimportant, I was just putting it in proper perspective. In the US we are always inflating ourselves as the winner of WWII while ignoring the sacrifices of all those Ivans in the east who actually won the war.”
Really? Is that how you spin your earlier statement that “the D-Day landings didnt make any difference as far as Hiltler is concerned”? If it made no difference, then all the men who died that day died for nothing! Had they stayed in bed it also wouldn’t have made “any difference as far as Hiltler is concerned.”
Yes, there are far too many who thump their chests and shout “We’re number one!”, as if war is just a sports event. They are usually the same fools who babble about “American Exceptionalism” with no idea of what truly made the U.S. exceptional. (The Marshall Plan is one of my favorite examples of that. Fools tend to mention things like our economic or military might.)
But if they are guilty of inflating the importance of the U.S. (and Great Britain, the British Commonwealth, and the other Allies), you are guilty of denigrating it. “Ivan” couldn’t have won the war all on “his” own, any more than “Tommy” or “GI Joe” could. They all played critical roles, and they all deserve the credit and praise.
partisan politics on July 16, 2012 @ 7:48 pm wrote: “Blame the guy who started it.”
I did. I also blamed the guy (you) who continued it, as well as the guy (BARNSACLE) who engaged in a variant of it.
Oh, and let me point out, you were the one who introduced the latest political catchphrase about being “a victim of the 99%”.
Garbo started as a poor man (one of the 99%, I guess) who devoted his skills to defeating a great evil. There were plenty of rich men who did the same. We should honor their sacrifice, courage, and ingenuity, and give praise for the freedoms they preserved. Trying to “shoehorn” them into a contemporary political dispute does a disservice to them and the cause they fought for.
A plague on both your houses!
I totally agree with Mememill ........ I recently saw the film and Monday's interview sounded like a review of that documentary, which was based on the book by Nigel West.
One last reply to Etaoin Shrdlu
Was Hitler winning the war on June 6? NO
Was Hitler advancing his position on June 6? NO
The Nazis were running back from Russia as fast as they could since their defeat at Stalingrad a year and a half earlier.
If Normandy was so critical, then why was Hitler already in retreat?
The Allies liberated France which is about the size of California, the area from the Moscow-Stalingrad line back to Berlin is equal to the US from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi river.
Clearly you do not comprehend the scope of the war.
Yes, the Soviet Union would have defeated Nazi Germany on their own and would have occupied Western Europe had it not been for the Allies entering the continent (this is the importance of D-Day).
Interesting interview but felt the author's discussion of Garbo, his spy master & other agents used in MI5's Double-Cross System a bit superficial.
If you have the chance, watch Ben MacIntyree's BBC Two special Double Cross: The True Story of the D Day Spies. It provides a very good review of Garbo along other primary British double agents & their spy masters who were used in the operation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ktflc