{"id":75529,"date":"2016-11-24T03:37:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-24T03:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/11\/24\/profmeowmers-my-bros-i-have-been-doing-a-lot\/"},"modified":"2016-11-24T03:37:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T03:37:51","slug":"profmeowmers-my-bros-i-have-been-doing-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/11\/24\/profmeowmers-my-bros-i-have-been-doing-a-lot\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

profmeowmers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

My bros I have been doing a lot of
\nreading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a
\nstory because I love it okay<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

once upon a time there was a dude in
\nSpain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol
\nhated him some goddamn fascists.\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

See Spain had recently ended its civil
\nwar, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in
\nEurope, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy
\nbuddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty
\nbullshit<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

so soon after war breaks out Pujol
\ntravels to his local British embassy and goes \u201chey I wanna spy on
\nthe Nazis for you\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cwho the fuck are you?\u201d say the
\nBritish, and kick him out<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

but Pujol is not deterred! He still
\nwants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German
\n<\/i>embassy instead. \u201chey\u201d he
\nsays, \u201cI wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cyeah
\nokay\u201d say the Germans \u201cthat seems pretty legit\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

and
\njust like that Pujol now officially works for the Abwehr, the German
\nintelligence agency. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and
\nsuch) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his
\nway into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later
\nwrites to his German handlers telling them he\u2019s made it to England<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pujol
\nhad not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon
\npublic library, where he checked out a number of English guide books
\nand set about just wholesale making shit up<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

this
\nis slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely
\ndid not understand British currency and all his expense reports were
\nbasically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen,
\nbecause the people of Glasgow would \u201cdo anything for a litre of
\nwine\u201d (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so
\nthat\u2019s probably the same right?\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here
\nis where it starts to get really crazy, because the Abwehr loves
\nthis<\/i>. \u201cwow this dude is a
\ngreat spy\u201d they say, because apparently none of them had ever been
\nthe England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new
\nawesome spy that the British start to get worried<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

you
\nsee, by this time the British had cracked German\u2019s supposedly
\nunbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by
\nreading basically all of their ~super top secret~ radio
\ntransmissions. And, crucially, they\u2019d become so good at breaking and
\nreading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England.
\nThe Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by
\nparachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept
\nthe message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed
\nin a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

so
\nthere are no German spies in the UK because they\u2019re all sitting in a
\nprison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as
\ndouble agents, feeding Germany bullshit). But suddenly MI5 is picking
\nup all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great
\nspy- a spy the British do not have in their jail<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201coh
\nshit\u201d says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they
\nhave to and from this mysterious super spy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201chey
\nwait\u201d says MI5, upon actually reading the shit the spy was sending.
\n\u201csomeone is playing silly buggers, pip pip cheerio\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At
\nthis point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the
\nBritish embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently \u201cI am literally
\nan Abwehr agent and would like to offer you my services\u201d wasn\u2019t
\ninteresting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again.
\n<\/i>It wasn\u2019t until MI5 started
\nasking around that one of the embassy staff was like \u201coh yeah we
\nknow that guy\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

so in
\n1942 the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially
\nbecomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case
\nofficer so he can start making up even better bullshit<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

and he
\ndoes. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he\u2019d
\nrecruited a whole slew of informants- from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to
\ndisaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+
\nsub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

none of these people actually exist<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pujol
\njust straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of
\ntheir fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of
\nMI5, the information he sends becomes even better- a mix of true but
\nultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive
\nin Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his \u201cspy
\nnetwork\u201d become the Abwehr\u2019s most trusted agents<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pujol,
\nnow codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a
\nhuge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge
\nintelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of
\nattack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation
\nFortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more Wacky WWII
\nAdventures). Obviously you know how this ended<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

crazily
\nenough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent.
\nAfter the war he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which
\nrequire personal authorization from Hitler), and <\/i>a
\nMember of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

unable
\nto resist being totally fucking ridiculous,<\/i>
\nPujol turned down MI5\u2019s post-war offer to continue spying, but this
\ntime against the USSR. \u201cno,\u201d he said \u201cjust help me fake my own
\ndeath and then I\u2019m moving to Venezuela\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

and
\nthat\u2019s exactly what he did. Juan Pujol Garcia died in 1988, at the
\nage of 76<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

edit: I\u2019ve had a few people asking for sources so here\u2019s a little writeup on Garbo from MI5 itself!
https:\/\/www.mi5.gov.uk\/agent-garbo<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

profmeowmers: My bros I have been doing a lot of reading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a story because I love it okay once upon a time there was a dude in Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol hated him some goddamn fascists. See … <\/p>\n

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