If one took seriously the disclosures that Mademoiselle Chanel allowed herself to make about those black years of the Occupation, one’s teeth would be set on edge.
― Marcel Haedrich, friend and biographer
It’s the continuation of my new miniseries on a subject extremely near and dear to my heart: Women In War! For the next few weeks I’ll be focusing on the experiences of women in France during World War II: fighting the resistance, collaborating with the Nazis, keeping children alive against the odds, and trying to figure out the right way to live in a world that seemed upside down. The idea of this series first took shape before I even began this podcast, and I’m thrilled to bring it to you now.
Picking up where my previous episode left off, women across the country are adjusting to life under German rule. Where some women see Occupation, however, others see an opportunity…
Episode 55: “Women At War 3: The Collaborator (Coco Chanel)”
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Transcript
Bienvenue and welcome back to the Land of Desire! I’m your host, Diana, and if you’ve forgotten my name, I don’t blame you – it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? If you don’t subscribe to the newsletter or follow the show on Facebook, you may be wondering just what the heck took me so long to release the next episode. Well, here’s the quick summary: I got laid off unexpectedly. While I was deep into an incredibly stressful job hunt, I found out my little sister had been in a terrible car accident. My sister was badly injured – she’d broken her back, along with about nine other bones, and for the next few weeks I dropped everything to stay with her in the ICU. After about a month, my sister had recovered enough that she forced me to go back home and restart my job hunt. Then, after months of looking, I finally found an amazing job and I’ve spent the past few weeks getting up to speed at that new job as quickly as I can. Needless to say, it was the most chaotic season of my life. Thankfully, I can now say that I’m up and running in my new role, and as of this week, my little sister is officially taking her first steps since the accident! So thank you to everyone who reached out to me, especially those of you on Facebook who sent messages and reassurances after my sister’s accident. It really meant a lot to me. So with all of that said, I for one am ready for a new year! Happy 2020, everyone! To kick things off with a bang, today’s continuation of my series, Women in War, zeroes in on a French icon with a famous name – and an infamous war record.
To recap the series so far: first, we followed 16 year old Elisabeth Kauffman and her family as they experienced the fall of France and then hit the road during the great Exodus from Hitler’s army. Then, we met retired schoolteacher Berthe Auroy, who along with millions of others made her way back from the exodus, only to find a whole new way of life waiting at home for them: a life of occupation under the German army, a life of deprivation, desperation, compromise and oppression. But not everyone was suffering under German rule. This week, we’ll focus on the aspect of the Occupation that France hates to talk about. We’re talking about a certain slice of French society: rich, anti-Semitic, obsessed with power and status, and hopelessly corrupt. These French power brokers saw the Occupation as an opportunity, and their cooperation and collaboration contributed to the worst Nazi cruelties of the war. In today’s episode, we’ll focus on one woman in particular, whose behavior during the war was so scandalous that it can prompt only one question: how on earth did she ever get away with it? It’s a story of class loyalty, of greed, and of twisted ideologies. It is a story about a perfume, a con man, and a heist. It is also a story of love. But most importantly, it is a story of how one French woman, confronted with the Third Reich, saw not just an Occupation, but an opportunity. This is the story of Coco Chanel.
One night, in December 1940, a beautiful Christmas party unfolded in Paris like something out of a dream. In a glamorous hotel tucked behind the d’Orsay, men were streaming in through the doors, wearing spotless white dress uniforms, escorting women in elegant gowns and glittering jewels. The air was warm and fragrant and filled with music, with guests chattering away in French when they weren’t dining from a grand buffet. As one guest that evening later recalled, “the officers, particularly the pilots, in evening dress did honor to the ladies, moving like butterflies…it was a real French gala evening.” But of course, the officers, those pilots in evening dress, weren’t French at all: this Parisian party was thrown by and for the Nazis. After the swift invasion and defeat of France, the Nazi elite wasted little time establishing a foothold in the capital. Otto Abetz, the Francophile ambassador of Nazi Germany, and his French wife, Suzanne, were the hosts of this sumptuous affair. Having lived in France in the years prior, Abetz already had a coterie of elegant friends in the city: artists, aristocrats, anti-Semites. This Christmas party offered a chance to demonstrate his newfound power. That night, light sparkled off the medals pinned to the chest of high-ranking officers, medals presumably earned by killing French men. Guests moved through rooms decorated with paintings, paintings recently stolen from the walls of the Rothschild family. And outside the hotel gates, as the rich and famous dined and danced, the average Parisian went without food or heat during the coldest winter in memory. They were the lucky ones, of course. That night, a twenty-eight year old named Jacques Bonsergent was dragged beyond the Paris city walls, accused of fighting a German soldier in the Metro. He wrote his family: “I am accused of hitting German soldiers on November 10 when I only wanted to stand between them and the real culprit. I am strong in my innocence and I am leaving my conscience clean.” That night, while other, not-so-clean consciences ate canapes and flirted, the young Bonsergent was executed. He was the first Parisian civilian to die by German firing squad. Back at the party, the music swelled. “Champagne flowed,” remembered a guest. “The German officers, dressed in white tie and splendid uniforms, spoke only French. Social life had returned with friends and our new guests, the Germans.” That winter, Otto and Suzanne Abetz spent their time with one new couple in particular, a perfect match between a high-ranking German officer and a French society queen: Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage and his new lover, Coco Chanel. They were both rich, they were both virulently anti-Semitic, and before the next Abetz Christmas party rolled around, they were both Nazi spies.
Gabrielle Chanel was never slated for a life of luxury. Born in 1883 to a penniless peddler and a laundrywoman in southern France, the girl who would eventually become one of the most influential figures of the 20th century found herself dumped in a convent orphanage by the age of 12. Young Gabrielle spent most of her days scrubbing, sewing and dreaming of a new, more glamorous life. At the age of 18, she aged out of the orphanage and set out to support herself in the nearby city of Moulins. It was in Moulins that Gabrielle set out on a new career: she would persue a life on the stage.
By day, Chanel was a seamstress, building on the years of experience she’d obtained at the convent. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid the bills. By night, Chanel performed song and dance numbers around town. In the luxurious new turn-of-the-century dancehalls, cavalry officers would come to admire pretty dancers, offer them company and champagne, and hopefully lure one of them to bed. The stage bestowed on Gabrielle a whole new identity, and a new identity required a new name. Before long, the soldiers in Moulins began cheering for the audacious little “Coco” – a name she’d probably picked up from one of the songs in her repertoire. Before long, Coco attracted the attention of a wealthy officer, Etienne Balsan, the heir to a textile fortune. Etienne spied potential in this ambitious little orphan, and like something out of My Fair Lady, Etienne decided to transform his new mistress into a socialite who could navigate the world of the rich and famous. Etienne moved the young Coco off of the sordid dancehall stage, and into his beautiful country chateau, where he instructed his protege in the art of living as an elegant woman. Within five years, Coco Chanel transformed from a penniless backwoods orphan into the sophisticated mistress of a spectacularly wealthy man. She rode horses, she went hunting, she befriended rich women, and she dreamt big dreams. For the first time, Coco hitched her star onto a wealthy, well-connected man in order to climb her way through the ranks of society. It was a pattern she would repeat, over and over again.
By 1908, Coco transferred her affections from Etienne Balsan to his best friend, Boy Capel. It was a handshake deal, mutually agreeable to all parties. Etienne and Coco stayed lifelong friends, while Boy Capel figured out how to keep his new mistress happy. To start, he set her up in a new apartment in Paris. Next, he financed a little boutique on rue Cambon, so Chanel could pursue her new interest: fine hatmaking. When the hatmaking business did well, Chanel expanded to clothing. On the Riviera, Chanel opened a seaside boutique selling fashionable sportswear. The designs were striking, and based on clever psychology: Chanel had stumbled onto the intoxicating idea of rich women slumming it. Just like today’s celebrities wear $1000 sneakers and designer sweatpants, Chanel convinced aristocratic women to wear clothing made of simple, unglamorous fabric like jersey knit. The clothing was outrageous, and instantly fashionable. Not only was her sportswear innovative, it was deeply profitable: by relying on those simple jersey fabrics, Chanel kept her costs low, and they’d go lower still once the industry began producing those fabrics in bulk for soldiers during World War I. While Europe bled and raged around her, Chanel spent the war years becoming outrageously wealthy, opening up textile plants, shopfronts up and down the Riviera, and then, at last, an atelier, or workshop, on the rue Cambon, where she would design her iconic haute couture for decades.
Since I’ll spend most of this episode pointing out her tremendous failings and flaws, it’s only fair to pause for a moment and address the other side of the coin: Coco Chanel was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. As detestable as her personal failings might be, I’ll still argue that she doesn’t get enough credit for her innovations. Why? Because her work is so influential that it’s the water we swim in, even today. The clothing she designed in 1920 has more in common with clothing produced today than it did with clothing produced in 1915. Take a moment and look at a dress from the first season of Downtown Abbey. The dresses are luxurious, confining, delicate, and layered over whalebone corsets. Those dresses have more in common with bustles and ruffles of the Victorian era, and the extravagant gowns of the 1700s, than they do with anything in my closet. Now, watch an episode from the third season of Downtown Abbey. It’s 1922, and everyone is dressed in clothing that looks reasonably familiar to us today. Gone are the corsets, the heavy satin and lace, the formality. Instead we see knit fabrics, skirt suits, tank tops, and simple day dresses. Only ten years have elapsed. What happened? The answer is: Coco Chanel happened. She challenged fundamental assumptions about what womenswear should be, because the world was challenging fundamental assumptions about what women should do. Under her innovative eye, Chanel’s boutiques sold clothing fit for modern women: women who need clothing for their new office jobs, for dancing in jazz bars, for being young and gay in the twentieth century. If you got up this morning and dressed in women’s wear today, the odds are high that you wore clothing inspired by Coco Chanel. There’s a famous photo of Coco in the 1920s, wearing an iconic Breton striped sweater and black trousers. Listeners, I just looked down. Guess what I’m wearing right now? By 1920, the war was over, women’s fashion was radically, fundamentally transformed, and Coco Chanel was the most innovative, sought after designer in the world. Right on the cusp of greatness, however, she received a stunning double blow.
First, Boy Capel got married – to another woman. Then, before Coco had time to process this betrayal, Boy Capel was killed in a car accident on Christmas day, 1920, while driving home to see his new wife. Reeling from anger and grief, Chanel was desperate for another outlet, another distraction. That distraction presented itself in the form of another rich, helpful lover: the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, first cousin of the doomed Russian czar Nicholas II. He was handsome, tragic, well-connected and smart, and he knew exactly what his sad, bored lover should do next. In the summer of 1921, while the pair whiled away the days in Monte Carlo, Dmitri introduced Chanel to a friend of his, a famous perfumier who had spent his life making luxury fragrances for the imperial Russian family. Like so many Russian luxury workers, following the assassination of Czar Nicholas and his family, the perfumier was out of a job. Coco seized the opportunity, and working together with the Russian master, they produced the greatest innovation of her career, the idea which would make her fortune, secure her lasting fame and, a few decades later, save her life: the world’s all-time bestselling perfume, Chanel No. 5.
In the 1920s, Chanel established herself as a creative force, transforming fashion the way her friends were transforming the arts. She ran with Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani – and like them, she represented the avant garde. Chanel No 5 was one of the world’s first abstract fragrances. Just as art shifted away from representational forms to ambiguous shapes and colors, perfume stopped focusing on fidelity to a particular flower, but rather a mood or a feeling. Coco understood that fashion wasn’t just about clothing, it was about intangible qualities and aspirations. The Chanel girl had bobbed hair, a dropped waist, a raised hem, a slim figure a suntan…and a waft of that signature scent. Everyone wanted to be her. Coco was making money hand over fist, employing hundreds of workers, and working long hours. She was so successful, in fact, that she needed help. The world wanted more Chanel No 5 than she could supply. Coco Chanel was busy – busy mourning Boy Capel, busy designing her haute couture fashions, busy making friends and pursuing lovers. She didn’t have time to worry about the ins and outs of the perfume industry. So, on the advice of her friends, Coco Chanel set up a meeting with Pierre and Paul Wertheimer.
Pierre and Paul Wertheimer owned Bourjois, which was and is one of the largest cosmetics and fragrance companies in France. They had decades of experience managing large distribution models, and they were able to maintain a high level of quality even for products manufactured in bulk and sold around the world. They were professional, they were well-connected in the industry, and they were wealthy. Oh, they were Jewish. In 1921, that wasn’t a dealbreaker for Chanel, and together, they created a new company, Parfums Chanel. Coco herself would own 10% of the company, the brothers Wertheimer would own 70%. The meeting was brief and to the point. Chanel didn’t put up a fuss, didn’t ask a lot of questions, didn’t even consult a lawyer of her own. Twenty years into the fashion business, Coco Chanel was a shrewd businesswoman, but her hit perfume simply wasn’t a top priority for her. The deal done, Coco was able to turn her attention back to her artist friends, and new, exciting lovers.
In the spring of 1923, Coco accepted an invitation from her friend and employee, Vera Bate. Vera was the head of PR for Chanel’s operations in London. She was the first cousin of Prince Edward, heir to the throne, so she could drum up business among fashionable aristocrats like nobody else. Vera was on her way to visit an old friend, and Coco simply had to come, she insisted. Her friend, Bendor, was simply a dear, he was just too, too wonderful and besides, his enormous yacht had plenty of room. Bendor, as it turned out, was Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster, and the richest man in Britain. For Coco, Bendor represented the apex of high society, the stratosphere which, despite her fame and wealth, was still off limits for an illegitimate orphan who used to dance on the stage. From Bendor’s point of view, Coco Chanel was a 41 year old who looked 30, intelligent and quick-witted, devastatingly elegant, rich as Croesus, and able to hold her own in a fiery discussion. It was love at first sight, and in one fateful boat trip, Chanel ascended to the highest rung of the social ladder.
Over the next decade, Coco and Bendor spent their time hosting extravagant dinners and hunting parties for their social circle, especially Bendor’s lifelong friend, Winston Churchill. Winston was particularly struck by Coco, and over the course of many hunting trips they became close, intimate friends. As Winston wrote to his wife in 1928, “I took great fancy to her – a most capable and agreeable woman…She is very agreeable – really a great and strong being, fit to rule a man and an empire.” Bendor loved the way Chanel played hard to get, and if he didn’t shower her in enough diamonds or affection, she’d stop returning his calls and sleep with another lover – including, the rumors say, Prince Edward himself. By the mid 1920s, Chanel was juggling one aristocrat after another. But her choice was simple: “Between my three suitors, the Prince of Wales, Grand Duke Dmitri and the Duke of Westminster, I chose the man who would protect me – the simplest of men.” And Bendor was very simple: he loved hunting, he loved money, he loved beautiful women, and he hated inconvenience, Communists and Jews. When he was drunk, Bendor would mutter conspiracy theories about the royals, suspecting even Queen Victoria of secret Jewish connections. “I cannot bear those bloody Jews.” But what was a little anti-Semitism coming from a man who gave you art, diamonds, apartments in London and five acres on the French Riviera?
But there was only one thing the duke wanted in return, and Coco couldn’t give it. The Duke wanted an heir. Well into her forties, and uncomfortable around children, Coco Chanel had few maternal instincts. The couple drifted apart, and the sound of wedding bells faded away. The Roaring 20s were coming to an end, and the party was over. Bendor married an aristocrat who would bear him a son, Coco moved to Hollywood to design costumes for movie stars, a stock market crash triggered a worldwide economic crisis, and a young war veteran named Adolf Hitler began amassing power.
It’s impossible to say when Coco Chanel’s anti-Semitism began. Who knows what Chanel heard in her Catholic orphanage, as the Dreyfus affair gripped the nation? Dmitri, the Grand Duke, was a fascist sympathizer whose family oversaw the great Russian pogroms of the 19th century. Bendor, Duke of Westminster shared the casual anti-Semitism of the ruling class, and kept a copy of The Jews’ Who’s Who on his bedside table, which purported to spill which aristocrats had Jewish blood running through their veins. By the 1930s, Anti-Semitism was rampant and routine throughout the ruling classes of Europe. The heir to the British throne, Coco’s rumored lover Prince Edward, frequently expressed admiration and sympathy for Adolf Hitler. Things weren’t much better back home – Chanel’s greatest competitor in the perfume business, François Coty, founded a far-right movement which claimed 80,000 members in Paris alone. For this reason, when Chanel met a new lover in 1934, the fashionable illustrator Paul Iribe, his breathtaking anti-Semitism wasn’t a dealbreaker. By this time, Chanel was rolling in wealth – the equivalent of a quarter billion dollars in today’s money. She’d used that money to move into a suite at the Hotel Ritz, right across the street from her flagship boutique and atelier. She’d also used that money to fund her lover’s new pet project: a violent, ultra right-wing newsletter, which perpetuated conspiracy theories and railed against foreigners and Jews. It is, honestly, too revolting to quote. Nevertheless, Chanel was head over heels in love. At long last, Coco Chanel received a marriage proposal, which she happily accepted. While her employees pinched pennies to scrape through the Depression, Chanel and her fiancé spent lavishly on one another, splashing out at fabulous restaurants and spending weekends in the country. And it was there, in the country, during a tennis game on a lovely September afternoon, that Paul Iribe dropped dead of a heart attack right in front of Coco’s eyes.
Chanel never recovered. Again and again, Coco’s lovers died young or left her for other women. Over and over, she was left alone. Now approaching fifty, Coco retreated, and turned bitter. Crippled with pain, Chanel developed a morphine addiction and lashed out at everyone around her. She wasn’t the only one struggling. The Depression triggered widespread labor strikes across France, and in 1936, Chanel woke up to find her boutiques and workshops empty. Her “little hands” as she called them, had locked the doors. They hung a sign on the door: “OCCUPIED”. A picture of the strike shows the little hands smiling, waving to the camera in front of the rue Cambon boutique. They weren’t alone: Leon Blum, a Jewish socialist, assembled a working class party supported by 85 percent of French voters. Chanel was not among them – far from her days running with the avant-garde, her conservatism grew with her wealth. She was terrified of the socialists. “I tell you,” she said later. “In 1936 they were mad!” The world was dissolving into chaos. At the beginning of 1936, Coco’s friend and ex-lover, Prince Edward, ascended to the British throne. By the end of 1936, Edward abdicated the throne so he could marry his divorced, American girlfriend, Wallis Simpson. Coco’s old friend, Winston Churchill, was bereft. That Christmas, he and Jean Cocteau dined in Coco’s suite at the Ritz. Cocteau later recalled Churchill’s confusion and grief. After drinking too much, the future Prime Minister started sobbing, crawled into Chanel’s arms, and declared, “A king cannot abdicate!” Within a few months, Edward and his new bride would honeymoon in Nazi Germany, shaking hands with Hitler, before continuing on to Paris, where they moved into the Ritz, a few doors down the hall from Coco.
Spooked by the strikes, shocked by world events, strung out on morphine, twisted by grief and fear, Chanel retreated into conspiracy theories. She was convinced that she was being cheated, somehow, especially by Jews – especially the Wertheimer brothers, who had transformed Chanel No 5 into a global sensation. “I’ve been swindled,” Chanel would mutter to herself, even as enormous checks deposited from Parfums Chanel into her Swiss bank accounts. She hired a young attorney, Rene de Chambrun, to take the Wertheimers to court. For the next twenty years, she’d try every tactic she could to take back control over the perfume she’d blithely signed away. The lawsuit became her obsession, bringing out her worst impulses, inflaming her paranoia and driving her ever closer to Nazis and their promise of retaliation against the Jews.
On September 1, 1939, Coco Chanel woke up to the news that France and Germany were at war. Exhausted, Chanel took this opportunity to retaliate at last against her employees for their strike of 1936. As the rest of the world prepared for war, Coco closed down the House of Chanel. Three thousand seamstresses, artisans, embroiderers and shopgirls entered the unemployment line. Fashion industry leaders accused her of treason. Labor unions tried to force her to reopen. Chanel’s competitors reopened their boutiques, and Parisian women streamed in to shop, despite the war. But Chanel was indifferent, writing to her brothers to warn them against asking for handouts, “I’ve closed the business…and I fear living in misery…don’t count on me anymore.” But of course, Chanel was far from penniless just because she’d closed her fashion line. She still received enormous amounts of money on a regular basis, thanks to the Wertheimer brothers. While a war brewed outside, Chanel retreated and took comfort in her life at the Ritz. And even in 1939, there was a lot of comfort to be had.
While air raid sirens raged outside and soldiers marched through the streets on their way to the front lines, the Ritz continued to operate as usual. One visitor was delighted to find “The same smiling little manager at the reception desk, with his long cutaway coat that almost touched his heels…the same smell of fur and perfume, and the sounds of high bird-babble voices.” Champagne still flowed, cigar smoke still floated through the air, and the dining room still filled with intoxicating aromas and couture fashions. Chanel kept the usual company. The former Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson had moved in. Noel Coward passed the winter at the hotel. And Winston Churchill turned up frequently, trying and failing to judge the situation on the ground. While France held her breath, the orchestra at the Ritz played on. Finally, in May 1940, the Germans crushed the Maginot Line, and the Exodus began. On June 11, Chanel and a few other loyal ex-employees stuffed into a Cadillac and headed out to the country. By the time she returned to the capital, Paris was overrun with Nazis. There were at least 300,000 of them by the fall: Nazis occupying government offices, Nazis moving in to the Ritz, Nazis in the front row of the theater, and Nazis in dress uniforms, escorting glamorous women into fashionable parties. It didn’t take long before Coco snagged herself a Nazi of her own.
At fifty-seven years old, Coco Chanel had finally met the love of her life. He was handsome, debonair, wealthy, high-ranking, and German. He was also extremely dangerous. Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage – called Spatz by his friends – was an accomplished spy. Together, Chanel and Dincklage accrued power, for themselves and the Third Reich, and seized any opportunity to exact revenge against their Jewish enemies. Chanel was no longer merely a right-leaning old woman. She was a collabo, and within a year, she would begin committing treason. First, however, Chanel needed a place to stay.
The first clue that something was wrong was that Coco Chanel spent World War II living at the Hotel Ritz. Even the rich and powerful Parisians who occupied the legendary hotel rooms found themselves evicted during the Occupation. Chanel, however, was moved to a room on the seventh floor, in the privatgast or “Private Guest” section. It’s where the Nazis kept their very favorite guests. Herman Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Albert Speer all maintained rooms at the Ritz, so only a select handful of non-Germans could be allowed in such a high-security zone. Ruth Dubonnet was the American wife of a collaborator. Fern Badaux was the outrageously wealthy American who had hosted the wedding of Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson, now living down the hall. Fern’s husband was an Nazi agent. As one acquaintance recalled, she “boasted of having free access to Hermann Goering” living just a few rooms away. Meanwhile, Chanel dined with Spatz every night, before retreating to her bed in a cloud of morphine. When she emerged from her rooms, Chanel sat down with power players like Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goring, and her lawyer, Rene de Chambrun. Rene was coming up in the world – his father-in-law, Pierre Laval, was the deputy vice president of the new government in Vichy. But of Coco’s wartime circle, there was no one with whom she and Spatz would rather spend time than Otto Abetz, ambassador of the Third Reich. Safe in the company of Spatz, Otto and his wife, Suzanne, Chanel would spew invective, a long stream of anti-Semitic spite. Over the next two years, Chanel would harness her new social circle to exact revenge on her enemies – and betray her country.
By 1941, Coco Chanel’s world was shrinking. Her beloved nephew, André, was in a prisoner of war camp, suffering from tuberculosis. Her best friends were growing old. Now, with the close of her fashion house, Chanel found herself with entirely too much time on her hands. In self-protective statements later in life, Chanel indicated that any activities she undertook during World War II were on behalf of friends, family, or France, but based on the overall pattern of her life I think it’s also fair to consider that Coco Chanel became a Nazi spy for no other reason than that she was bored. If her early retirement was an unforced error, Chanel was determined to inject a little intrigue and excitement into her life. She had a lot to gain by doing so.
At the beginning of 1941, less than a year after the Germans had first crossed the Maginot line, Spatz participated in Take Your Lover To Work Day. Spatz was having a banner year – he’d been invited to meet with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels personally, an enormous honor at the time. Returning in triumph with his bona fides, Spatz began introducing Chanel to his higher-ups in the Third Reich. Coco met with another shady baron, Baron de Vaufreland, a Gestapo agent. As the writer Hal Vaughan notes: “Chanel was the perfect target for recruitment by the Germans: she needed something the Abwehr could supply, and she had powerful connections to London, neutral Spain and Paris.” What did one of the richest women in the world want from the Germans? Well, understandably she wanted her nephew released from his prisoner of war camp. But that wasn’t all. Baron Vaufreland made it clear that in exchange for her cooperation, the Nazis would be more than happy to help Chanel wrest control of Chanel No 5 back from those two Jewish brothers, the Wertheimers.
Music to Coco’s ears. Everyone decided that the best place for Chanel to demonstrate her usefulness to the Nazis would be Spain. Coco Chanel was duly enrolled into the Abwehr, the German secret service, as agent number F-7124, code name Westminster. That is, The Duke of Westminster, that is, good old Bendor – in case anyone forgot the kinds of connections Coco had to offer. With a well-placed phone call from Abwehr headquarters, Chanel and Vaufreland flew through security checkpoints and straight into Madrid. Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened after she arrived, as almost every record of her trip was destroyed. We have a letter from a British diplomat in Spain, who met with Chanel and sat for three hours as she detailed all the different ways in which the Germans, really, didn’t hate Britain, they just hated Winston Churchill! Why, if Britain would just consider setting Churchill aside, surely peace could come quickly. I’m sure Winston Churchill was thrilled to know his old hunting buddy was keeping him in her thoughts. Whatever else Coco did during this journey, the Nazis were very pleased. Within weeks of her return to Paris, a filthy, hungry, desperately sick André showed up without warning on his family’s doorstep. “My joy was beyond words,” Chanel said. “It was as though the bells you heard chiming throughout Paris were all pealing together within me.”
Safely reunited with her nephew, Chanel now turned from her friends to her foes: it was time to exact revenge on the Wertheimers. But to Coco Chanel’s surprise and apoplectic rage, the Wertheimers were not ones to be easily defeated. They’d read the tea leaves early on, and long before the Maginot Line was breached, the Wertheimers began making arrangements to protect themselves, their families and their businesses. They secured passage to the United States, but just as importantly, they secured an arrangement with a greasy local businessman, Felix Amiot. Amiot was the kind of scuzzbucket who positively thrived during the German Occupation. Amiot pocketed 50 million francs from the Wertheimers, in exchange for temporary ownership of a perfume empire. The Wertheimers had their lawyers working around the clock to formally transfer ownership of Parfums Chanel to Felix Amiot. Meanwhile, they boarded ships to New York, and quickly established a new factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. Back in France, ignorant of the change in ownership, Chanel reached out to Baron Vaufreland to call in that favor about her little perfume trouble. Vaufreland put Coco in contact with Dr. Kurt Blanke. Dr. Blanke was the master thief of the Occupation. He was responsible for seizing anything Jewish people were no longer allowed to have: apartments, possessions, and businesses. Chanel wrote to Dr. Blanke to let him know that Parfums Chanel was owned by Jews, and ought to be given to her, a good Aryan woman, instead. To Chanel’s dumbfounded amazement, however, Dr. Blanke got back to her with a shrug. Eh, it’s owned by Felix Amiot now, fair and square. Sorry, no can do. Chanel couldn’t believe it – didn’t they realize the kinds of connections she had in the Third Reich now? But it probably never occurred to Chanel that Amiot himself had contacts much higher up than hers. When he wasn’t busy protecting Jewish business interests for a price, he was selling airplanes to none other than Hermann Goring himself. It was a tricky move, but Amiot pulled it off: during the war, he used his deal with Goring to escape the Nazis. After the war, he used his deal with the Wertheimers to escape the Allies. But this wasn’t the only arrangement made by the Wertheimers before their Atlantic escape.
In August 1940, while Chanel was still on the road following the Exodus, a mysterious man made his way into Paris. Described as “a big-boned, jagged-faced, giant of a man” Don Sotto Mayor was granted passage from neutral Spain into the chaos of a freshly fallen France. In all the ruckus of the invasion, nobody paid much attention to the stranger. He was large but otherwise unremarkable. He was boring and passed without notice. While German Panzers rolled over the French countryside and swastikas appeared over the Champs Elysees, Don Sotto Mayor walked into the capital with a large suitcase, possibly containing solid gold coins, and conducted a series of feats that one eyewitness described as something “out of a Bond movie.”
Don Sotto Mayor was no Spaniard at all, but Gregory Thomas, an American employee of the Wertheimer brothers. Fluent in many languages, including that of crime, Thomas’s first mission was to track down Jacques, the son of Pierre Wertheimer. He’d been captured in a prisoner of war camp, but in the chaos of the fall of Paris, he’d escaped with the help of none other than Felix Amiot. Jacques was now hiding out in Bordeaux. By seeking out and bribing local gangsters, Thomas smuggled Jacques to safety. But that wasn’t the only thing he smuggled. Next, Gregory made his way to the village of Grasse, home of France’s perfume industry. Grasse was the only place in the world which could produce the exquisite jasmine blossoms and roses which were essential to Chanel No 5. Each thirty milliliter bottle of Chanel No 5 contains the essence of more than one thousand jasmine flowers and one dozen roses. The Wertheimers were selling 60,000 bottles a year. In his Spanish disguise, moving so covertly that historians still can’t find any trace of his actions, Thomas smuggled back seven hundred pounds of floral essences, enough to produce nearly half a million bottles of Chanel No 5. Then, without attracting any notice to himself, Thomas melted away into the distance and returned to New Jersey undetected.
It was a total triumph for the Wertheimers. With a staggering supply of luxury ingredients and unrestricted manufacturing abilities in the United States, the Wertheimers created a new company: Chanel, Inc. While other continental perfumes vanished from shelves or plummeted in quality, Chanel No 5 was just as luxurious and just as available as before. In fact, it was easier to acquire than ever: the Wertheimers arranged to sell Chanel No 5 at American commissaries. Any American soldier could mail a letter, buy a chocolate bar, and pick up a bottle of Chanel No 5, duty-free. It was so successful that even today’s travelers are bombarded with perfume stands at the airport. Chanel was outraged to see her precious fragrance sitting on the same dusty shelves as army boots, but she should have been grateful. With her fashion house closed, Chanel No 5 sales were her only source of income, and thanks to the Wertheimers, sales were reaching unprecedented heights. in a stunning act of unity, both sides of the War went crazy for Chanel No 5. For American GIs, oblivious to the Nazi sympathies of its creator, Chanel No 5 was the perfect gift for the wife or girlfriend back home. But the Germans felt the same way – one historian notes that “The ground-floor of the rue Cambon boutique was filled with German soldiers buying the only item on sale – Chanel No 5.” Sales were enough to keep Coco fabulously, stupidly rich at a time when most Parisians struggled to buy enough food. And yet, it was around this time that Coco Chanel and Spatz started going on shopping trips together – in the homes of recently evicted Jewish families. At one point, Spatz’s chauffeur recognized the home of his former employer. According to the chauffeur, Spatz told Chanel, “Here’s a pencil and paper, go and make a list and you’ll have it. It’s yours.” Coco was one of the richest women in the world and could surely afford whatever she wanted. But Coco didn’t care about money. She cared about power.
—
By 1942, the tide of war was turning – and conspicuous collaborators felt a chill go up their spine. LIFE magazine published a list of traitors, including Rene de Chambrun, Chanel’s personal lawyer and the son-in-law of the Vichy vice president, Pierre Laval. Chanel appears to have known Pierre Laval well, inviting him over for tea as early as the 1920s. Like Chanel, Bendor, and the rest of Europe’s social elite, Laval’s anti-Semitism was rapacious and long pre-dated the rise of Nazism. Once installed in power, Laval went above and beyond to wipe out French Jews. When the Germans suggested Laval might round up Jewish men and women for deportation to the camps, Laval insisted on sending the children, too. Four thousand Jewish children were rounded up, never to return. Pierre Laval, Rene de Chambrun, Coco Chanel and others began to worry about the repercussions if Germany should lose the war. She was right to worry – Resistance networks were already marking her for punishment, along with her friends. Certainly, the Occupation seemed to be crumbling in the streets of Paris. No longer could Germans pretend that the Third Reich would reign over France for ten thousand years. The Resistance grew bolder every day, and German retaliation grew harsher. While bullets fired outside, Chanel and Spatz considered their options. Spatz, of course, could leave – he spoke a million languages and was one phone call to his superior away from a transfer. But where on earth could Coco Chanel, fashion icon, disappear?
She had more to fear than retaliation from her angry countrymen. If the war dragged on, it might give the Soviet Union enough time to roll through Germany and into France. The idea of Red Army tanks retracing the path of the German panzers made her sick. Images of the little hands locking up her boutiques flashed behind her eyes. Recollections of the Grand Duke Dmitri’s cousin, Czar Nicholas, murdered at the outset of the Russian Revolution, probably came back to mind. It would be a blow to her personal politics, and probably a death sentence for her. Therefore, Chanel thought, the war must end soon – Britain must make a separate peace with Germany, to wrap up the war as quickly as possible. She wasn’t alone – jolly old Bendor, the Duke of Westminster, was determined to forge a separate peace. So was the head of Hitler’s Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler. As Germany’s army collapsed in Stalingrad, and Hitler’s mental health deteriorated, Himmler secretly began putting out feelers to see whether peace with Britain could be obtained. He’d need contacts with Winston Churchill’s ear. It didn’t take long for Spatz to raise his hand. “As it turns out, I have just the person you need.”
In 1943, Coco Chanel and Spatz boarded the train to Berlin. There, in an unglamorous office amidst the burning, bombed out capital, Chanel met with Himmler’s deputy to plead her case. As the SS agent wrote in his report of the meeting, “Frau Chanel was an enemy of Russia and desirous of helping France and Germany, whose destinies she believed to be closely linked.” Oh absolutely, Chanel told the SS agent, of course she still had the ear of her old friend, Winston. Didn’t she used to date the richest man in England? Did Churchill once come to her room, to weep in her arms over the abdication of their dear friend, Prince Edward? Churchill would listen to her, surely. All she needed was a way to contact him – perhaps her old friend? Vera Bate? Vera Bate, cousin to Prince Edward and King George VI, former head of PR for Chanel UK, the matchmaker between Chanel and Bendor, was now married to an Italian. Oh, dear Vera is tangled up in a shameful little camp in Italy right now, but if I could just get Vera free, the two of us could wrap up this war tout suite. In November 1943, Vera was freed from the Italian prisoner of war camp. She was stunned to find out Coco was responsible – and how. Within a month, Vera found herself on a train with Chanel and Spatz, speeding towards Madrid. There, Coco would press a handwritten letter into Vera’s hands, and ask Vera to send the letter on to Churchill without knowing what it contained. At this moment, however, the mission faced an unexpected surprise. Once inside the British embassy in Madrid, Vera darted into another room to spill the beans. She wanted no part of this! She wasn’t interested in helping Germany one bit, and she was just a prisoner of Chanel, Spatz and the SS. Vera denounced everyone as a German agent. This was a setback. Chanel didn’t really have Churchill’s attention – not after all the collaborating she’d been doing these past few years. Vera, the king’s cousin, was the real ticket to Churchill. Chanel wanted to use Vera’s influence, but take all the credit for it. Without Vera’s help, Chanel simply forwarded her letter on to Churchill herself. Unsurprisingly, Churchill was too busy to deal with a long-lost friend now working for the Gestapo. He never read the letter.
Six months later, the Americans landed in Normandy and steamrolled the Germans out of France for good. Once again, Chanel found herself looking out the window of the Hotel Ritz as people panicked, packing their possessions into their cars and filling the sky with the smoke of burning documents. Well into her sixties, hopelessly dependent on morphine, Chanel felt the walls closing in. Spatz was gone, fleeing into the woods the second Eisenhower touched down. Chanel knew her days were numbered, and sure enough, within two weeks of the liberation of Paris, Resistance fighters knocked on the door. Coco Chanel, the most iconic fashion designer of the 20th century, was under arrest.
Thanks for listening to the Land of Desire! Don’t worry – you’ll hear about how Chanel pulled off her greatest trick yet in the final episode of this miniseries. For now, however, I think we’ve spent more than enough time on the miserable collabos of the Occupation. As you compare the stories of Berthe Auroy eking out a neutral existence with Coco Chanel thriving in her horizontal collaboration, it’s easy to see that all the gears of power – political, financial and social – firmly supported Adolf Hitler during the Occupation. It is therefore all the more astonishing that any French citizens fought back at all. But fight back they did, joining the Resistance and making it possible for Britain to carry on the fight while the Soviets and Americans pushed back elsewhere. But when we think about the French Resistance, there is one aspect which is usually overlooked: an enormous number of French Resistance fighters were women. These women fought back in silence, right under the noses of the Occupation, frequently dying for the cause, even more frequently ending up in a camp for the cause, only to be overlooked completely after the war was over. In my next episode, I’ll track the daring exploits of French female resistantes, and give them the celebration and honor they deserve after all this time. Join me for the fourth installment of Women in War. Until next time, au revoir!
Sources
Chanel’s story is fascinating because it’s fairly recent scholarship – only in the last few years has all the evidence been declassified. Reading biographies of her, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and a bit of empathy towards the authors. The facts on the ground changed FAST. It’s also hard to sort out quality, because pissed-off Chanel fans are constantly rating these books 1 star for saying unflattering things about her. (Check out the top rated review for Garelick’s work. Oh, Lord.) With that said, here are 3 books of particular interest, amidst the 200,284,493 biographies of Coco Chanel:
- The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume – Tilar J. Mazzeo: This is a perfect example of a book to take with a grain of salt. A lot of incriminating evidence was still in the archives at the time, plus this author has a bizarre need to make assumptions about Chanel’s state of mind which aren’t really supported by anything she said or did. That said, the first ~150 pages of this are a great primer. I’d never thought about the move from representational > abstract perfume as a parallel movement to what was happening in art. Does a great job explaining aldehydes. Still hate the smell of Chanel No 5, but at least I can appreciate it.
- Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War – Hal Vaughan: This book was a bombshell. Vaughan was the first one to really synthesize all the recently declassified evidence from French and German archives, and he builds a damning case. That said, it needs an editor, and it’s frequently confusing. I wish he’d done a better job writing, but I appreciate that he probably wanted to beat the others to print.
- Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History – Rhonda K. Garelick: If you had to choose one book to read on Chanel, this would probably be the one I’d select. It’s very recent, so it includes Vaughan’s findings PLUS stuff that was declassified after he was published. Garelick tracks own some damning testimony of her own. But more importantly, this is an erudite, scholarly work, not a puff piece. She does a marvelous job situating Coco’s life within the context of the rapidly shifting 20th century. Garelick gives praise when its due, without sugarcoating or excusing terrible behavior – her chapters on fascism are great.
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