Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel, Nazi Agent

Oct 12, 2024 12:30 AM

Author:Hal Vaughan

Coco Chanel, high priestess of couture, created the look of the chic modern woman: her simple and elegant designs freed women from their corsets and inspired them to crop their hair. By the 1920s, Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, and had amassed a personal fortune. But at the start of the Second World War, Chanel closed down her couture house and went to live quietly at the Ritz, moving to Switzerland after the war. For more than half a century, Chanel's life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in rumour. Neither Chanel nor her biographers have told the full story, until now.

In this explosive narrative Hal Vaughan pieces together Chanel's hidden years, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of the Liberation. He uncovers the truth of Chanel's anti-Semitism and long-whispered collaboration with Hitler's officials. In particular, Chanel's long relationship with 'Spatz', Baron von Dincklage, previously described as a tennis-playing playboy and German diplomat, and finally exposed here as a Nazi master spy and agent who ran an intelligence ring in the Mediterranean and reported directly to Joseph Goebbels.

Sleeping with the Enemy tells in detail how Chanel became a German intelligence operative, Abwehr agent F-7124; how she was enlisted in spy missions, and why she evaded arrest in France after the war. It reveals the role played by Winston Churchill in her escape from retribution; and how, after a nine-year exile in Switzerland with Dincklage, and despite French investigations into her espionage activities, Coco was able to return to Paris and triumphantly reinvent herself - and rebuild the House of Chanel.

As Hal Vaughan shows, far from being a heroine of France, Chanel was in fact one of its most surprising traitors.

Reviews

It takes a spy to catch a spy...Hal Vaughan, a former newsman and CIA operative, has finally done what the legions of Coco Chanel's other biographers resolutely failed to do: uncover the French fashion queen's secret past as a Nazi agent...Vaughan, who writes with welcome economy and flair, deserves a lot of credit for finally unravelling the strands of Chanel's deeply deceptive personality.

—— Financial Times

His research is valuable, adding crucial pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of Chanel's war

—— Justine Picardie , Mail on Sunday

It's a fascinating story

—— Daisy Goodwin , Sunday Times

Not for the first time, the ghosts of the holocaust are returning to haunt the industry. Sleeping with the Enemy reveals that Coco Chanel, the 'high priestess of couture' had a long affair with a German Nazi agent and collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War...if the truth about Chanel had been revealed at the time, her reputation would have been utterly destroyed

—— Aoife Drew , Irish Independent

Sleeping with the Enemy claims that not only was the designer the lover of a German officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, but they were spies who went on missions to Madrid and Berlin

—— Christine Kearney , Evening Herald Dublin

This is the final volume in A.N. Wilson's trilogy tracing the course of Britain from the accession of Queen Victoria to the present day. The whole work, finished in just six years, is a monument to its author's industry, erudition and skill. It is hard to think of a professional scholar who could have accomplished this grand feat, let alone spiced the narrative with such pungent wit and piquant anecdotes

—— Piers Brendon , Sunday Times

Now that the trilogy is complete, it can be said with satisfaction that the verve, erudition and wit that distinguished the earlier books are undimmed in this latest work... He has written a fine work of popular history, and the fact that it is consistently entertaining in no way obscures the underlying seriousness

—— Literary Review

Wilson accurately skewers the follies of all and sundry

—— Will Self , Evening Standard

A brilliant panorama of the past 55 years... Where Wilson excels is in the mixture of fact, gossip and waspish thumbnail character sketches... Overall, Wilson's analysis of our age is inspired

—— Piers Paul Read , Standpoint

Wilson has produced a scintillating, coruscating indictment of British national collapse since the 19th century ... Under Wilson's pen, such a history is richly told

—— Tristram Hunt , Guardian

Gives a wonderful sense of Macmillan's complexity and stature

—— Blair Worden , Spectator, Christmas round up

A spellbinding insight into the fascinating character of one of the most remarkable politicians of the 20th century.

—— Archie Norman , Evening Standard, Christmas round up

A solidly buttressed biography that parallels his earlier works... Supermac is crammed full with interesting facts, germane and diverting by turns

—— Peter Clarke , TLS

Thorpe's superb biography leaves no primary source untapped, and bountiful anecdotes make this account of a truly three-dimensional character a joy to read.

—— Telegraph

Bringing together 35 years of research this biography of Harold Macmillan looks at both his personal and political achievements, conflicts, and events that defined his time. From Eton to prime minister, this is a compelling read.

—— Charlotte Vowden , Daily Express

He is an Aston Martin DB6 kind of writer, who is very English, very stately

—— Anthony Seldon , The Browser

Scholarly, and thoroughly researched, Supermac should nevertheless appeal to the general reader through the accessibility of its proce and the assistance offered by placing events in historical context... Humane, benevolent, and considerable; much like its subject

—— Dr Martin Farr , BBC History Magazine

The best biography of a post-war British Prime Minister yet written.

—— Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University

A unique and astonishing social history book which is revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining

—— History magazine

Previous Article：Pavel's Letters Next Article：Diaries Volume Two

Comments

Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.