Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War

by Vaughan, Hal

  It took nearly two years after the Liberation before a French Court of Justice issued an “urgent” warrant to bring Chanel before French authorities. On April 16, 1946, Judge Roger Serre ordered police and French border patrols to bring her to Paris for questioning. A month later he ordered a full investigation of her wartime activities. It wasn’t Chanel’s relations with Dincklage that attracted Serre’s attention. Rather, the judge had discovered that Chanel had cooperated with German military intelligence and had been teamed with a French traitor, Baron Louis de Vaufreland. French police had identified the baron as a thief and wartime German agent who was tagged as a “V-Mann” on German Abwehr documents—meaning, in the parlance of the Gestapo and German intelligence agencies, that he was a trusted agent.

  Serre, forty-eight years old and with more than twenty years of experience as a magistrate, grilled Vaufreland for months. Serre also learned from French intelligence officers how Vaufreland and Chanel had collaborated with the German military. Slowly, Serre, a painstaking investigator, turned up details of Chanel’s Abwehr recruitment, her collaboration with Vaufreland, and how she and the German spy had embarked on an Abwehr mission to Madrid in 1941.

  During her interrogation and testimony, Chanel would claim Vaufreland’s stories were “fantasies.” But French police and court documents tell another story: while French Resistance fighters were shooting Germans in the summer of 1941, Chanel was recruited as an agent by the Abwehr. Fifty pages of minute detail describe how Chanel and the trusted Abwehr agent F-7117—Baron Louis de Vaufreland Piscatory—were recruited and linked together by German agent Lieutenant Hermann Niebuhr, alias Dr. Henri Neubauer, to travel together in the summer of 1941 on an espionage mission for German military intelligence. Vaufreland’s job was to identify men and women who could be recruited, or coerced, into spying for Nazi Germany. Chanel, who knew Sir Samuel Hoare, the British ambassador to Spain, via her relations with the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, was there to provide cover for Vaufreland’s work.

  It is doubtful that Judge Serre ever learned the extent and depth of Chanel’s collaboration with Nazi officials. It is unlikely he saw the British secret intelligence report documenting what Count Joseph von Ledebur-Wicheln, an Abwehr agent and defector, told MI6 agents in 1944. In the file, Ledebur discussed how Chanel and Baron von Dincklage traveled to bombed-out Berlin in 1943 to offer Chanel’s services as an agent to SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. Ledebur also revealed that Chanel, after visiting Berlin, undertook a second mission to Madrid for SS general Walter Schellenberg, Himmler’s chief of SS intelligence. Serre would never learn that Dincklage had been a German military intelligence officer since after WWI: Abwehr agent F-8680.

  It is also unlikely that Judge Serre ever discovered the depth of Chanel’s collaboration with the Nazis in occupied Paris or that she was a paid agent of Walter Schellenberg. Nor did he know that Dincklage worked for the Abwehr and the Gestapo in France and for the Abwehr in Switzerland and, later, during the occupation of Paris.

  ONE

  METAMORPHOSIS—

  GABRIELLE BECOMES COCO

  If you’re born without wings, do nothing to preclude them from growing …

  Get up early, work hard. It won’t hurt: your mind will be busy, your body active …

  —COCO CHANEL

  GABRIELLE CHANEL, who would grow up to be the essence of French chic, was born in a hospice for the poor at Saumur, in France’s Pays de la Loire, on a blistering hot August afternoon in 1883. She was descended from a tribe of peasants who lived on the edge of a chestnut forest in the Cévennes and were driven by the blight to become itinerant peddlers. Her name was registered at birth as “Chasnel.” Quite possibly, this was a slip of an official pen; or, more likely, it was the ancient spelling of the family name, softened later to please the ear. (The added “s” would cause some confusion in later police documents.)

  Her mother, Jeanne Devolle, unwed at Chanel’s birth, and her street-hawker father, Albert Chanel, were finally married a few years later. For the twelve years before Jeanne died, the family, a brood of three sisters—Julia-Berthe, Gabrielle, and Antoinette—and two brothers, Alphonse and Lucien, lived here and there in shabby lodgings as Albert drove a horse-drawn goods-wagon from one market town to another. Upon Jeanne’s death at age thirty-three in 1895, Albert put his two sons out to hire on a farm and sent Gabrielle, age twelve, and her two sisters to the stark Corrèze region of central France. There, at the Aubazine convent-orphanage founded in the twelfth century by Étienne d’Aubazine, the Chanel sisters became wards of Catholic nuns.

  Years later, when reflecting upon her humble beginnings at the convent, Chanel recalled: “From my earliest childhood I’ve been certain that they have taken everything away from me, that I’m dead. I knew that when I was twelve. You can die more than once in your life.”

  None of her biographers have speculated about how twelve-year-old Chanel found life at the convent. She never talked about her years as a ward of the nuns or about the long years of Catholic discipline—the hard work, the frugal life. At the time, Catholic doctrine and theology stressed sin, penitence, and redemption. We also know that at the turn of the twentieth century, Catholic institutions such as Aubazine indoctrinated Catholic youth to loathe Jews. Chanel was no exception. She was often given to anti-Semitic outbursts. Well-known French author and editor in chief of the French fashion magazine Marie Claire, Marcel Haedrich, tells of a conversation he had with Chanel over his book And Moses Created God. Chanel asked Haedrich, “Why Moses? You can’t believe that ancient stories are still of interest? Or you hope Jews will like your story? They won’t buy your book!” When the conversation turned to how new fashion boutiques were springing up like mushrooms in Paris, Chanel declared, “I only fear Jews and Chinese; and the Jews more than the Chinese.” Haedrich observed, “Chanel’s anti-Semitism was not only verbal; but passionate, demoded, and often embarrassing. Like all the children of her age she had studied the catechism: hadn’t the Jews crucified Jesus?”

  Christian religious beliefs for centuries held that Jews were the Christ killers. From the Middle Ages, Europeans preached that “Jews are bad luck” and excluded them from professions and corporations. Jews were banned in England in Shakespeare’s time and considered socially inferior and fit only for collecting taxes—not work that would endear them to peasant families such as the Chanels. Later, the Nazis and even many less fanatical Europeans fervently believed in a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy, blaming the Jews for inventing Communism.

  At eighteen, Chanel moved to a Catholic pension for girls at Moulins. It was at a time when the French were still debating the Dreyfus affair, a scandal that divided France for nearly a decade. The saga evolved from the 1894 arrest, trial, and conviction for high treason based on false evidence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian-Jewish descent. The condemned Dreyfus was banished to a penal colony at Devil’s Island in French Guiana; later he was retried and finally in 1906 exonerated. Restored to the French Army with the rank of major, Dreyfus served honorably in World War I, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1919.

  The Dreyfus affair laid bare the anti-Semitic passions of the day and the decisive influence of the Catholic Church and their allies the monarchists and nationalists. During Chanel’s teens at the convent and later in the Catholic community at Moulins, “anti-Semitism was in full froth.” The widely read Catholic Assumptionist daily La Croix (The Cross) “raged against Jews.” A typical spokesman for the Church’s position was the Jesuit priest Father Du Lac, the spiritual guide to the anti-Semitic publicist Édouard Drumont, author of La France juive (Jewish France). Drumont coined the slogan “France for the French”—words that still echo today in French politics, particularly in the campaigns of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine, now head of the powerful and extreme-right Front National party.

  Chanel could not have escaped the Catholic Church’s propaganda campaign against the Jewish officer Dreyfu
s. Later, her fear and hatred for Jews was noxious and notorious—even to those who themselves practiced a more genteel form of anti-Semitism.

  AT TWENTY, Chanel was put to work as a seamstress and, in her spare time, sang at a cafe patronized mostly by cavalry officers. There she became “Coco,” a name taken from a ditty she sang, or perhaps drawn from the shorthand version of the French word for a kept woman: cocotte.

  It was her burning black eyes, striking silhouette, and slim good looks bordering on the juvenile that eventually captured the heart of a rich ex–cavalry officer, Étienne Balsan. Chanel put needle, thread, cafe coquetry, and a life destined for drudgery aside. At twenty-three, she became Balsan’s paramour, living for the next three years at his château and racing stable near Compiègne—seventy-five kilometers from Paris. In the dense forest of Compiègne, among heath and moor, pond and bog, Chanel, her lover, and his friends rode Balsan’s stable horses on hunting paths used by the kings of France.

  A faked scene of jealousy: left to right, Boy Capel in a satin kimono threatens Léon de Laborde, who shields a sleepy Chanel in bathrobe, ca. 1908. (illustration credit 1.1)

  Balsan, the son of a wealthy industrialist family of fabric makers who had supplied uniforms to the French army, saw to it that Chanel developed solid equestrian skills—riding astride and sidesaddle—and taught her how to manage the stables. Pictures of Chanel on horseback show her proud carriage; one in particular shows her mounted on a fine great bay hunter, a bowler hat settled on braided hair—her torso proud and confident. Her love of horses and skills at riding would serve her well when, years later, she hunted with Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster, known as Bendor, and his friends, among them Winston Churchill and his son, Randolph.

  Chanel’s life had changed in the space of a few months. One has only to scan pictures taken of her at the time: Chanel on horseback; in the arms of the elegant Léon de Laborde as Étienne Balsan looks on; with Arthur Capel (her future lover) dressed in a satin kimono and wielding a large stick as a pajama-clad Laborde playfully shields Chanel from a mock attack by Capel. In one picture, Chanel wears the look of a little girl who just got out of bed—with coal-black hair tumbling down her shoulders and flowing over her white bathrobe. One, taken later that summer of 1912, shows the Balsan set clad in flimsy pajamas and robes at breakfast: Capel, Laborde, Gabrielle Dorziat, Balsan, Chanel, Lucien Henraux, and Jeanne Léry.

  Arthur “Boy” Capel with Chanel on horseback at Balsan’s Château Royallieu, set in the forest of Compiègne. In 1908, they would begin an eleven-year romance. (illustration credit 1.2)

  In 1908, Chanel fell in love with Arthur Capel, Balsan’s riding partner and friend. Nicknamed “Boy,” Capel was from the English upper class—handsome, rich, and mercurial. In 1908, Boy installed Chanel in a Paris apartment and helped her to launch a business making ladies’ hats. Balsan may have lost a mistress—he had many—but he would remain friends with Chanel for a lifetime.

  Boy Capel and Chanel were now soul mates. A generous Capel arranged for his mistress’s nephew, André Palasse, to attend a fine English boarding school after his mother, Chanel’s older sister, Julia-Berthe, committed suicide. Later, when Chanel moved into ladies’ fashion wear, Capel would finance boutiques for her in Paris, Deauville, and Biarritz.

  SEM’s illustration of Chanel at Boy Capel’s mercy, ca. 1910. (illustration credit 1.3)

  Between 1914 and 1918, the years of the Great War, Chanel took an apartment overlooking the Seine and the Trocadéro; she was on her way to acquiring enormous wealth. Soon she would employ up to three hundred workers making a line of dress wear in jersey fabric. Later, she opened her landmark Paris boutique-residence behind the elegant Place Vendôme at 31, rue Cambon. There she began building the House of Chanel into a hallmark of French style, refinement, and craftsmanship. As business prospered Chanel would later create “les Tissus Chanel” to reproduce high-quality fabrics.

  For eleven years Chanel enjoyed being Boy Capel’s lover and pal—but given her lowly origins she could hardly become the wife of a socially connected upper-class Englishman. In 1918, Boy married the daughter of an English lord. Still, he and Chanel remained lovers. Then, at Christmas, returning home to be with his wife and newborn child, Boy died in a road accident. Chanel was devastated at Boy’s death—and all the more so when she discovered she was not his only mistress. The Times of London revealed in February 1920 how Capel had left Chanel and another—an Italian countess—handsome bequests. Overwhelmed by feelings of betrayal and grief Chanel sank into an agonizing period of mourning. Twenty-five years later, exiled in Switzerland, she confided to her friend and biographer Paul Morand, “His death was a terrible blow to me. In losing Capel, I lost everything. What followed was not a life of happiness I have to say.”

  TWO

  THE SCENT OF A WOMAN

  A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.

  —PAUL VALÉRY

  MARIE SOPHIE OLGA ZÉNAÏDE GODEBSKA—“Misia” to the Paris Bohemian elite—was, like Chanel, banished at age ten to a Catholic convent. As a child, her skill at the piano delighted composers Franz Liszt and Gabriel Fauré. Tutored by stern nuns, Misia over time became an accomplished pianist. “Neglect taught Misia independence and loneliness taught her courage.”

  Unhappy and oppressed by convent life, Misia escaped to Victorian London at eighteen and engaged in a series of trysts with older men. Eventually, she rejoined her family in Belgium where, barely twenty, she inherited a large sum of money from a rich uncle. A year later, Misia married twenty-five-year-old Thadée Natanson. The couple moved to Paris, where her beauty combined with a tart’s “above-it-all iconoclast attitude” brought her full sail into the free and easy Bohemian lifestyle at the turn of the century. For the next few years, Misia lived a rough-and-ready life with “speech peppered with four-letter words,” seducing some of the most creative talent in Paris. Marcel Proust portrayed her as Princess Yourbeletieff, whom he found as dazzling and seductive as the Ballets Russes itself. Misia and husband Thadée quickly joined a band of what were then considered unconventional artists. She became a favorite model for Vuillard, Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir. Each artist painted her many times over. Today, portraits of Misia at the piano, at a table, and at the theater hang in some of the world’s most important museums. Attracted to the performing arts, Misia entered the world of theater and ballet, becoming the close friend of ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev. Misia’s biographers describe her as “enthroned at his [Diaghilev’s] side, the eminence rose of the Ballets Russes.”

  The face that would fascinate world-renowned French painters: Misia Godebska, 1905. (illustration credit 2.1)

  To know Misia was to be admitted to Diaghilev’s exclusive circle and the post–World War I elite of Paris. But Misia was not the princess drawn by Proust. In her three marriages, she was Madame Thadée Natanson; Madame Alfred Edwards (a very rich businessman and notorious coprophiliac who forced Natanson to relinquish Misia in payment for a debt); and, finally, wife of Spanish painter José-Maria Sert.

  Chanel met Misia when they were guests at a dinner offered by renowned Comédie-Française actress Cécile Sorel. Years later Misia remembered their first meeting and described the event in an unpublished memoir:

  [I] was drawn to a very dark-haired young woman … she did not say a word [but] radiated a charm I found irresistible … she was called Mademoiselle Chanel. She seemed to me gifted with infinite grace … when I admired her ravishing fur—she put it on my shoulders, saying with charming spontaneity she would be only too happy to give it to me … her gesture had been so pretty that I found her completely bewitching and thought of nothing but her.

  When I visited her boutique on the rue Cambon, two women were there talking about her, calling her “Coco” … this name upset me … my heart sank … I had the impression my idol was being smashed. Why trick out someone so exceptional with so vulgar a name? [Suddenly] the woman I had been thinking about since the nigh
t before appeared … magically the hours sped by … it was I who did most of the talking, for she hardly spoke. The thought of parting from her seemed unbearable … that same evening Sert and I dined at her apartment … in the midst of countless Coromandel screens, we found Boy Capel.

  Sert was really scandalized by the astonishing infatuation I felt for my new friend. I was not in the habit of being carried away like this … Then [on the death of Boy Capel] Coco felt [the loss] so deeply that she sank into a neurasthenic state; and I tried desperately to think of ways to distract her … Sert and I took her to Venice the following summer …

  Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, attending the premiere of the 1911 ballet Petrushka, produced by Diaghilev. (illustration credit 2.2)

  Something had clicked between these two beautiful women. Gabrielle Chanel and Misia Sert’s atoms had hooked, as the French say. Of Misia, Chanel would remember: “I remained forever a mystery to Misia—and therefore interesting. She was a rare being who knew how to be pleasing to women and artists. She was and is to Paris what the goddess Kali is to the Hindu pantheon—at once the goddess of destruction and creation.”

  Misia’s biographers, Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, summed up how they believe she valued Chanel in those early years of their intimate friendship:

  Chanel’s designs imposed an expensive simplicity—an almost poor look on rich women—and she made millions in the process. Her genius, her generosity, her madness combined with her lethal wit, her sarcasm, and her maniacal destructiveness intrigued and appalled everyone.