There has always been evidence of the iconic French designer Coco Chanel’s collaboration with the Nazis during the World War II, and now it all came together in a book that came on sale on Tuesday.
The book, written by Hal Vaughan and entitled “Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War,” lays down the designer’s heretofore hidden part of life at the time when France was occupied by the Germans.
Not only was Chanel sharing a bed with a Nazi spy Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, but also was engaged in spying. Her wartime lover was in Paris with the task of supervising a spy ring in France and in the Mediterranean area and was in constant touch with propaganda minister Goebbels, Germany’s second man after Hitler.
Vaughan’s book traces Chanel’s life from becoming a spy for the German intelligence organization Abwehr through her various missions to the end of the war when she managed to escape being arrested. Like many other high-standing Frenchmen who were unmasked as German collaborators, Chanel is revealed as a fervent anti-Semitist.
When the war was over, Chanel, an orphan since the time she was 12 and a pioneering designer, went to Switzerland and returned to Paris 9 years later to continue her designer career. No charges were ever brought against her.
Source of the image: Fashionologie.
