Is performance art lying? Yes, performance art is a method of lying. Lies have no boundaries between good or bad, right and wrong, and in certain cases, lies can even undo a great historical achievement.
February 14, 1912 in Barcelona, Spain, Juan was born into a wealthy family, he was intelligent and rebellious. At the age of 13 he dropped out of school because of a disagreement with his teacher, and became an apprentice in a hardware store, but was dismissed due to poor work efficiency. Juan then tried to set up a farm, but mistakenly feeding all the poultry to death, and other following entrepreneurial attempts failed.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1931, Juan was drafted into the army. It is reported that during his six-month service in the army, he felt that he lacked loyalty, generosity, honor, and other necessary qualities of a soldier, and was unfit to go to the battlefield. However, the civil war then intensified, and the national army had to issue another conscription order against Juan due to the lack of troops.
The second time Juan enlisted in the army, he became a deserter and took refuge in all directions. However, his family did not escape the effects of the civil war, and suffered a series of misadventures, such as the capture of Juan's brother-in-law by the Republican Army and the conviction of his sister and mother for counter-revolution. This chain of events aroused great disgust in Juan, who especially hated the German Nazi Party, which had provoked the outbreak of civil war in Spain.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Juan's hatred finally found an outlet. At that time, Britain was the only party to confront Germany, so Juan planned to go to the British consulate and propose himself as a spy. Unexpectedly, the British side did not take Juan, who dropped out of junior high school and was a deserter, into account, and refused to train him to become a spy three times in a row.
In desperation, Juan had no choice but to switch to the enemy German camp. He first portrayed himself as a pro-Nazi Spanish government official, deceived an official of the Spanish Embassy in Portugal into assisting in the forgery of a Spanish civil service passport under the pretext of frequent business trips to London, and then used this identity to gain the trust of the German consul in Spain and was hired as a spy for the country.
The Germans later sent Juan to the capital Munich for special training, allowing him to become an elite spy in the shortest possible time. After training, Juan received the spy code name "Arabel" and was given a set of spy equipment, including a bottle of invisible ink, a codebook, cipherography, and £600.
The first task given to Juan by the German side was to recruit and build a spy intelligence network in London, England. However, after receiving the order, Juan did not go to England at all, but hid in Portugal, which did not fight and was a neutral country. In order to not be exposed, Juan found a lot of reference books, magazines and newspapers in the library of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and then pieced together some seemingly highly credible false information to the German side, such as the British military deployment, material allocation, navy location, etc.
At the same time, Juan used a British tourist map and a British railway timetable to declare transportation expenses to the German army, so as to create the illusion that he was running around in England. The German leaders initially did not believe that Juan could gather so much useful information in such a tight time, so they secretly investigated Juan and verified all information.
Unexpectedly, the results of the verification coincided with a lot of false information from Juan. It turned out that the German method of investigating the falsity of intelligence at that time was to start with the enemy's newspapers, magazines or broadcast news, and the information channel happened to be similar to Juan's false intelligence sources (he was possibly a journalist), so Juan was able to get away with it.
In order to further prove the lie, Juan came up with the idea of using one person to play 28 roles, creating a number of "ghost informants" of different professions under his command, and pretending that he had established a "huge" intelligence network in the UK. He also asked the German side to provide these "informants" with intelligence fees, so that he could sit back and receive 28 people for his work.
Soon after, Juan's specious false intelligence reports attracted the attention of "Radio X"- the intelligence department of decoding in the British side. After receiving the report, the British MI5 once thought that there was a very harmful German spy in the country, and launched a search and arrest of him, but of course returned in vain.
By February 1942, the United States had joined the British anti-Axis camp, and Juan's spy career had taken a new turn. Juan took the initiative to contact the staff of the US consulate in Portugal, and under the latter's introduction, he revealed to the British side that he had been providing false intelligence for Germany. It was only then that the British realized that the German spy, who had not been able to catch earlier, was not in the country at all, but far away in Portugal, and that it was a Spanish boy who had come to recruit spies in the first place.
The British were determined to "rebel" against Juan, and Juan, who hated the German Nazis at heart, agreed to become a British spy with the code name "Garbo", and moved to London in the same year to start a career as a "double spy". With the permission of the British side, Juan would send some truthful information of little significance to Germany at the first time, while some crucial reports would always be sent out after half a beat.
Contribution of the Normandy Landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it is the largest seaborne/beach invasion in history.
The Germans were more convinced that Juan's intelligence network was very useful, and that he would not have to rely on other British spies after Juan became a British spy. It is alleged that the German General Administration at the time provided Juan with millions of dollars as funds for his spy network, which shows the extent of his heavy use. Juan used this to cover up the Anglo-American counteroffensive again and again, including Operation Torch in November 1942 when the Allied forces attacked French North Africa.
However, Juan's most relevant role was the Battle of Normandy in 1944. At that time, Hitler realized that Britain and the United States were about to counterattack Europe, so he instructed Juan to investigate the movements of the Allied forces and the details of the counteroffensive; The British wanted Juan to convince Hitler that the Allies would land at Calais instead of Normandy.
Receiving the instructions, Juan began to create a number of "fake intelligence" reports, and sent more than 500 telegrams to Berlin. In order to establish the credibility of the intelligence, the British allowed Juan to reveal some specific details and timing of the Allied landing, and at the same time asked the Allies to cooperate with Juan's "false intelligence" and deploy some inflatable tanks and fake planes in Calais to allow Hitler to transfer heavy troops to Calais to garrison.
To protect himself, Juan came up with the idea of using the jet lag as a cover. He deliberately sent a message to Germany at 3 a.m. on June 5, the night before the Allied landings in Normandy, claiming to remind the Allied landings to be Normandy, not Callai. At that time, he calculated that no one on the German side would receive the news immediately, and no one would answer until after 8 a.m. the next day, June 6, but by the time Hitler received the "true information", it was already too late.
As a result, Juan succeeded in shifting the responsibility for the delay in reporting to the German intelligence department, and even accused them: "I don't accept any apologies or excuses, it was your dereliction of duty that wasted our hard work!" Such a backbite eventually won greater trust from the German side, and even made Hitler recognize Juan's "outstanding performance" during the war and personally signed an executive order awarding him the second-class "Iron Cross".
On the other hand, King George VI awarded Juan the "Order of the British Empire" in the same year, making him a person who received honour from both belligerents during World War II. However, after this battle, Juan received more and more attention, and let him can't become spy again.
At the end of World War II in 1949, Juan decided to remain anonymous to avoid German revenge. With the help of MI5, Juan was sent to Angra, Africa, where he created the illusion that he had died of "malaise", and then moved to Venezuela to escape the world, while returning to his original entrepreneurial path, opening a bookstore, and enjoying his old age with his family.
On June 6, 1984, the 40th anniversary of Normandy Landings, Juan informed his son of his previous occupation, and a diary of his spy career was made public. The world has only just woken up from a historian's dream and learned of the key role of this double spy in World War II - Juan Pujol García.
Identity can always and historically lie!
History is always strikingly similar and repeated. If there was an organization that investigated the sources of public information/news during the wartime, maybe history would change the world as it exists.
Beatriz Pereira
Lisbon, Portugal
Co-edited by Artpendix Team
02:41 PM Monday
08 July 2024
Artpendix Press
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