The account of a fight between husband and wife who nearly changed the outcome of World War Two has gone viral this week, after the national archives finally released covert intelligence files to the public. The story is a prime example of the butterfly effect in action. Crucially this married couple weren’t regular folks. They were deeply embedded in the world of international espionage.
Double agent Juan Pujol Garcia, codenamed Agent Garbo, managed to feed German spies a wealth of misinformation regarding the timing and location of the D-Day landings. Garbo convinced his commanding officers in Berlin that he was the leader of a tight-knit network of agents in the UK and that the June 6, 1944, landings would take place at Pas de Calais, not Normandy.
But a row with his wife Araceli Gonzalez de Pujol almost changed all that. Gonzalez allegedly hated having to live in England for the sake of her husband’s machinations, loathing the cold weather, food and isolation she experienced in the UK. Because she couldn’t speak any English, she was almost totally isolated from other people, and the nature of her spouse’s work meant that she wasn’t allowed to meet or talk with other Spaniards living in London.
But it was she who helped convince Garbo’s German masters that he was spying in England – while the couple were actually living in Portugal. It was also Gonzalez who established links with the American secret services after unimpressed British embassy officials turned down Garbo’s offer of his services.
The secrecy and subversion that controlled their lives began to have a terrible effect on Gonzalez’s mental health. She became frantically anxious, desperate to return to her homeland at any cost. One row between the two became particularly vicious. Gonzalez began screaming at Garbo that she didn’t want to live five minutes longer with her him, and announced her intention to march all the way to the Spanish embassy herself. This would have almost immediately exposed them.
Luckily Garbo was able to think fast. He concocted a false story about being arrested and imprisoned in a detention camp as a consequence of her outburst. Duped into believing this story, Gonzalez was even taken to visit him in detention. After meeting him she signed a statement saying she’d stop asking for permission to return to Spain.
It’s amazing to think that if this argument had intensified, and Garbo been interrogated, that the German army could have been more prepared for the D-Day landings, and the war could have dragged on beyond the Allies’ capacity to wage it.
