Agent Garbo : the brilliant, eccentric secret agent who tricked Hitler and saved D-Day / Stephan Talty

Includes bibliographical references and index

Pt. I. The Making of a Spy -- 1. Tom Mix in Barcelona -- 2. The Training Ground -- 3. Araceli -- 4. The white city 5. The Game -- 6. The Snakepit -- Pt. II. Garbo's Rise -- 7. A Fresh Riot of Ideas -- 8. The System -- 9. The Debut -- 10. The Blacks and the Santa Clauses -- 11. The Rehearsal -- Pt. III. The Far Shore -- 12. The Dry Run -- 13. An Intimate Deception -- 14. Haywire -- 15. The Interloper -- 16. The Ghost Army -- 17. The Backdrop -- 18. The Build-Up -- 19. The Prisoner -- 20. The Hours -- 21. The Weapon -- Pt. IV. Breakoff -- 22. The End -- 23. The Return.

The Atlantic Before he remade himself as the master spy known as Garbo, Juan Pujol was nothing more than a Barcelona poultry farmer. But as Garbo, he turned in a masterpiece of deception that changed the course of World War II. Posing as the Nazis' only reliable spy inside England, he created an imaginary million-man army, invented armadas out of thin air, and brought a vast network of fictional subagents to life. The scheme culminated on June 6, 1944, when Garbo convinced the Germans that the Allied forces approaching Normandy were just a feint--the real invasion would come at Calais. Because of his brilliant trickery, the Allies were able to land with much less opposition and eventually push on to Berlin. As incredible as it sounds, everything in Agent Garbo is true, based on years of archival research and interviews with Pujol's family. This pulse-pounding thriller set in the shadow world of espionage and deception reveals the shocking reality of spycraft that occurs just below the surface of history.