Today in History - April 24: Germany believed they had a widespread spy network all over the UK. It was just this guy
Germany's top spy against the British in World War II moved to Britain on April 24, 1942.
Juan Pujol Garcia provided vital details about Allied military movements and strategies to Berlin, including their planned invasion of France.
Along the way he built up a network of secret agents operating across the UK, all paid through him.
But the Germans did not realise Pujol was concocting complete fictions to undermine the Nazis.
The Spaniard had offered himself as a double-agent to the British at the start of 1941, but was rejected.
Still wanting to help, he signed up to help the Germans and was given espionage training.
But for more than a year he pretended to be in the UK, a country he had never been to.
Instead he was filing false reports from Lisbon, using tourist guides and magazines in an attempt to pass himself off as a British resident.
By 1942, the British tracked Pujol down again after realising somebody was feeding the Germans false information.
As a consequence, the Germans concentrated their forces in the province, at the expense of nearby Normandy.
When the Allies did land at Normandy, German High Command had such faith in Pujol's intelligence that they not only refused to relocate troops, but actually reinforced the Pas-de-Calais.
They relocated him to Britain because Pujol's struggles to understand non-decimal currency and imperial measurements were apparent in his communiques to Germany.
Once in London and collaborating with MI5, Pujol was critical in convincing the Germans the Allies were about to invade the Pas-de-Calais in France.
When World War II ended, Pujol faked his death and moved to Venezuela to avoid potential Nazi reprisals.
He was only tracked down in 1984, after a British researcher called every J. Garcia in the Barcelona phone book.
He had gone 40 years with the rest of the world believing he had died.
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