Coco Chanel - the Nazi spy who lived at the Ritz

January 21, 2019

Coco Chanel - the Nazi spy who lived at the Ritz

Coco Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on 19th August 1883.

Coco Chanel

The daughter of a laundress and a street vendor, Coco was born into extreme poverty. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was 12. Shortly after her mother's death, her father abandoned her in an orphanage run by nuns. He actually did her a favour. The nuns taught her to sew.

When I first started researching for this article - I thought Coco Chanel a strong woman to be admired for her innovative approach to couturier, and her business acumen.

I was going to write about how she rose from poverty to opulence, because I think it important for women of today, to believe that they no matter who they are or where they come from, they can raise themselves up from the depths of nothingness.

Then during my research of her, I discovered another side to Coco Chanel. A sinister dark side.

She betrayed her country and collaborated with the German occupying forces during WW2.

Being part French, I am deeply ashamed that a woman I admired for so long - did not actually deserve my admiration at all.

Whilst young French women were fighting for their country's freedom,

Coco Chanel was not only sleeping with the enemy, but she was also a spying for them.

In 1939 when World War 2 broke out, she closed her shops throwing 4,000 women out of work. Her reason - she said, it was not a time for fashion. More likely she did it to rid herself of workers who had lobbied for better working conditions and higher wages during a general strike in 1936.

For French women who collaborated with German soldiers, the usual outcome after the war, was public humiliation. They were stripped to their underwear, had their heads shaved, and often tarred and feathered for good measure.

So how come Chanel got away with not only sleeping with the Germans, but also spying for the enemy? She had very powerful friends. One of whom was her lover the Duke of Westminster, probably the reason Winston Churchill, is said to have helped her escape justice.

Chanel used men to get want she wanted. At age 23 she became the mistress of Etienne Balsan a wealthy textile heir. For 3 years she lived a luxurious lifestyle with him in his chateau. Not satisfied with one rich man, at the same time as she was Balsan's lover, she began an affair in 1908 with his friend Arthur Capel. Capel a wealthy member of the English upper class installed Chanel in a Parisian apartment, and financed her first shops. They were lovers until his death in a road accident in 1919.

As the tanks rolled into Paris, Chanel immediately chose to side with the invaders, and began spying for this man General Walter Schellenberg - Chief of SS Intelligence.

Long before the break out of the second world war, she moved in high society circles where antisemitic feeling was the norm. So I guess it should be no surprise that she welcomed the invading German army with open arms, and into her bed.

She left the deprivations of occupation to her fellow French men and women, and promptly, thanks to her affair with Baron Hans Gunther Dincklage, she was able to settle herself comfortably in the Ritz Hotel, where the upper-echelons of the German military also resided.

She may have hated Jews, but that did not stop her doing business with them. In 1924 Chanel made an agreement with two Jewish brothers. The Werthiemers, to expand her perfume business, Parfums Chanel. In exchange for 70% of the business they provided full financing for the production, marketing and sales distribution of Chanel No.5. 20% went to Theophile Bader, who brokered the deal, and Chanel got 10% of the profits for her name, allowing her to enjoy the financial benefits of the company, whilst at the same time, not having to involve herself with the day to day running of the business. As the company became more and more profitable, Chanel tried unsuccessfully in 1935 to regain control.

Ever the opportunist, in 1941 she used her position as an 'Aryan', to seize ownership of the company under the Nazi laws that said Jews could not own property. The smart thinking brothers were way ahead of her, before they fled to New York in 1940, they had legally turned control of Parfums Chanel to a French Christian man, Felix Amoit. Unlike his fellow countrywoman, Amoit, was an honourable person and after the war returned the company to it's rightful owners. Parfums Chanel is still today owned by the Werthiemer family.

Her spying involved her with identifying and recruiting Nazi sympathisers as spies for the German occupying forces.

Chanel, not satisfied with this 'small time' spying, devised a plan to put herself at the forefront of German intelligence. In 1943 she travelled to Berlin accompanied by von Dincklage with a plan for her to meet the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and persuade him to negotiate with the Germans. Arrogantly, but falsely believing he would countenance the idea, as she had known Winston Churchill before the war, due to her affair with the Duke of Westminster. An Italian woman, Vera Bate Lombardi, a lesbian interest of Chanel's, in the mistaken belief she was on a business trip to exploit the potential Spanish couture market for Chanel, agreed to deliver a letter to the British authorities in Spain. The plan collapsed when on arrival in Madrid, Lombardi, realising the truth promptly denounced Chanel and her co-conspirators to the British, as Nazi spies.

Paris was liberated in August 1944, by September, Chanel was interrogated by the Free French Purge Committee. Unfortunately, as the committee had no documented evidence of Chanel's collaboration, they had to release her. She maintained that it was because of Winston Churchill's intervention that she was released.

It was more likely she got away with her traitorous wartime activities, not because of Winston Churchill, but because of what she knew about the British elite, and certain members of the Royal Family's unwholesome associations with the Nazi regime.

Duke and Duchess of Windsor meeting Hitler in 1937

Many post-war Nazi sympathisers said they had no idea of the atrocities perpetrated - whilst I personally think that argument is so thin it has no validity. Chanel does not even have that spurious argument to fall back on. She knew exactly what the Nazi machine did. Not only did she agreed with the ideology, she helped promote it.

In 1945 Chanel moved to Switzerland, living there for several years with von Dincklage. Proof that she had no remorse came when she paid for Walter Schellenberg's medical treatment after he was released from prison, after serving 2 years of a 6 year sentence. She also supported his wife and family - all this for a man who was arrested by the British and stood trial in Nuremberg for his part in the murder of Soviet Prisoners of War.

Having kept her head down for 15 years, and now in her 70's, she reopened her couture house, unbelievably with the financial backing of Pierre Wertheimer. Who knows, maybe he saw making money out of her was a good way to get revenge.

When she brought out her comeback collection in 1954, the French press were no so forgiving, and it took the American and British press to hail her collection as a fashion triumph.

I guess as they say, the rest is history.

After all that I have discovered about Coco Chanel, if I could afford to, would I buy Chanel clothes?

The answer to the question is easy. NO.

The House of Chanel, will always be synonymous with Coco Chanel - a legacy that for me, is tainted by pure evil.

It would take an article a lot longer than this one for me to delve completely into the truth about Chanel - I've skimmed the surface - if you want to find out more about her. Hal Vaughn's book - Sleeping with the Enemy - is a compelling read. It brilliantly exposes Coco Chanel for what she really was. A Nazi Spy.