Garbo: The Spy

This is the story about "the greatest actor in the world". On the stage that is life he made his unique contribution to the good of mankind.

He went by many names, yet never existed. He lived many lives, yet only one was real.

In the darkest time in the history of humanity he perpetrated the greatest fraud of the Second World War -fooling the German High Command into believing that the Normandy landings were just a diversionary feint, and that the real invasion would take place in the Pas de Calais.

Self-made farm manager and later hotel concierge, he had offered his services to the British to "help them out" -but his naïve plan had failed. Far from being discouraged, he turned to the Germans and managed to convince them that he could spy for the Nazi cause. Surprisingly, they took him on.

To the Nazis he was Codename: Alaric.

To the British he was simply Garbo.

To the world he was a mystery.

But 30 years after the facts and fiction, the cloak of mystery that kept him hidden and tied to Alaric and Garbo finally started to unravel. Nigel West, noted English Spy novelist, started out on a journey to expose the truth about the man born Juan Pujol and uncovered a story so amazing that it could only be true. The man who the world thought to be dead and buried in Angola in 1949, a man that died a hero to both the British and the Nazis, looked pretty spry when discovered in South America 35 years after his burial.

This is the story of Garbo.