A Secret History of Brands

by A Secret History of Brands- The Dark

  The 1924 contract to gain Parfums Chanel was again an issue when Coco had the nerve to bring the case up again, this time post-war in a court of law.

  The Nazi Mistress

  When Adolf Hitler became the German Chancellor in 1933, the rise to power for the Nazi leader was soon in full swing and he would soon make a carefully crafted move to full dictatorship. The regime of the Third Reich involved many branches, from the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) to the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the German secret police, Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo). These were the well-known divisions of the Nazis, but there were several departments, including a propaganda wing called Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and the Abwehr. The Abwehr was a secret German military intelligence organisation that had been established in 1920. In the post-First World War era, Germany wasn’t allowed to engage in any espionage, thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, an agreement that would also levy harsh restrictions on the country.

  When Hitler took power he gained control of the Abwehr and in 1938 he organised the branch into a more effective intelligence-gathering unit. It was Joseph Goebbels himself, the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, who would appoint Abwehr spy Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage to the position of ‘special attaché’ to the German Embassy in Paris in 1933. The position that Dincklage held should not be underestimated. His German Embassy position provided him with the extremely convenient and effective veil of diplomatic immunity to work and plot while in France. His actions didn’t fall beneath the notice of the French intelligence community. Records reveal that they had been watching Dincklage since 1919. The French knew full well that he was a German Abwehr agent and even that his agent identification code was F-8680.

  Once Dincklage got his attaché position he was able to move into a wealthy area of Paris and could be seen sporting around town in his flashy grey Chrysler roadster. Even his live-in maid, Lucie Braun, was a Nazi agent. The primary purpose of having the Baron as the attaché was to allow him the ability to gather intelligence effectively by planting employees in various key places, like factories and various government agencies. In 1934 the Abwehr agents were directed by the Nazi hierarchy to work more closely with the Gestapo to organise and execute espionage. It was, in fact, the very first Nazi cell in France.

  Chanel had moved to a gorgeous suite in the famed Hotel Ritz, Paris. The high ceilings and ornate but elegant style made it the place to be if you had means. To this day, the Ritz has a famed reputation for its lavish atmosphere and unique culinary experience. Cesar Ritz opened the hotel bearing his name right on the place Vendome, a square that sits at the start of the Rue de la Paix, a fashionable shopping district. Ritz promised that his hotel would offer ‘all the refinements that a Prince might hope to find in his own private residence’. It’s said that his own investors complimented Cesar on his hotel at the opening, proclaiming: ‘Kings and Princes will be envious of you, Ritz. You’re going to teach the world how one should live.’ The move to the Ritz was no small hallmark in the life of Chanel, a woman who came from meagre beginnings. Her apartment there was, literally, the lap of luxury and high society.

  During this time she was seeing designer Paul Iribe, who worked with Vogue magazine doing illustrations and design. The relationship between Iribe and Chanel started in 1931. Iribe, like all good artists, had his muse. The two would collaborate on a provocative magazine, titled Le Témoin, Iribe as illustrator and Chanel as financier. Le Témoin was well known as a purveyor of anti-Semitism and aggressive nationalism. The heroine of the illustrations within was Marianne, a symbol of French liberty. Iribe clearly modelled Marianne after Chanel herself. Chanel was deeply in love with Iribe and the two looked likely to wed, but in 1935, during a rousing game of tennis, Iribe collapsed and died in front of Chanel. She was devastated by the loss. Chanel mourned, but continued to move forward with her work, unaware that the world was about to be plunged into war.

  Chanel and the French authorities were well aware of Dincklage’s Nazi connections and his work as an agent of espionage. During the prewar era his dealings were revealed by French counter-intelligence agents and were published in the newspaper Vendémiaire. There was no denying knowledge of his exploits, so when Chanel embarked upon a relationship with the Baron, she knew full well who she was getting into bed with. The moment that Coco and Hans met is not known; Coco would tell officials after the war that she had known him for decades, while others place their meeting sometime in the 1930s. Regardless of the truth, by the time the Nazis had taken France, the Hotel Ritz where Chanel resided had become a reserved place for senior Nazi officials. Chanel was one of the few foreigners who was allowed to remain.

  Paris had fallen and refugees had fled to the South. There was Nazi propaganda at every street corner, signs and posters served as an ominous reminder to citizens that obedience to the new occupying forces would be in their best interest. Chanel was 57 when she and Dincklage became lovers in 1940. Hans was a cultured, pleasant and handsome man and a great conquest for Chanel in the newly occupied Paris. It was Dincklage who would facilitate all of the Nazi dealings that Chanel would have during the war. It is assumed that it must have been her connection with Dincklage that allowed Chanel to remain at the Ritz, where only a chosen few non-Germans were permitted to remain in residence. Only a handful of known Nazi collaborators and the wife of the hotel founder were allowed to stay, along with Coco Chanel. The times would soon become hard for French citizens, with many families facing starvation. All the while, the German officials, including Dincklage and Chanel, would dine lavishly in the well-guarded confines of the Ritz. In much the same way that the eight-man band continued to play their cheerful songs for the aristocracy while the RMS Titanic sunk around them, the high society of Paris continued on their typical merry way, while Europe came crashing down under the pressures of wartime.

  Coco Chanel may not have been regarded as the kindest person in the world and she was certainly a savvy opportunist to take advantage of the Nazi mandates, but that’s a far cry from making her a Nazi sympathiser, and certainly far away from any evidence that she was a Nazi spy. There had been whispers and rumours for decades about Chanel’s shady dealings throughout the Second World War, and certainly many suspected her involvement, but it wasn’t until recently that actual documented proof began to emerge when declassified French intelligence documents were discovered. These documents detailed not only an involvement with the Nazis, but her ascension into actual Nazi spy and the special secret mission that was crafted especially for her.

  In 2016, Historians poring over hundreds of boxes of declassified government documents that had been provided to the French Defence Ministry’s archives back in 1999, discovered documents that proved the French secret services had suspicions about the extent of Chanel’s Nazi connections. These documents, now available to the public (but only in person), reveal a file on Coco Chanel that French intelligence had amongst their files on various celebrities whom they suspected of being Nazi sympathisers. One such document, from 1944, states that: ‘A source from Madrid informs us that Madame Chanel, in 1942–1943, was the mistress and agent of Baron Gunther Von Dincklage. Dincklage was the attaché to the German Embassy in Paris in 1935. He worked as a propagandist and was a suspected agent’ (translated from the original French).

  A French television documentary titled L’Ombre D’un Doute - Paris and Les Artistes sous l’Occupation, which aired in late 2014 on France 3, provided further evidence as to the extent of Chanel’s involvement with the Nazi regime. Chanel was so involved with the Nazis that she wasn’t just dating a spy – she was one herself. Coco went by the code name ‘Westminster’, which was a reference to her previous relationship with the Duke of Westminster. Her Abwehr involvement was so deep that she was even assigned an agent number, F-7124, according to an official Nazi record. The records of this information were also uncovered in the archives at the French Ministry of Defence.

  The idea that Coco Chanel was a Nazi sympathiser
, and even a Nazi spy, has only surfaced in recent years, thanks to the declassified French intelligence documents. Coco was, quite literally, sleeping with the enemy. There is an assumption to be made that when someone aligned themselves with the Nazis, they were automatically an anti-Semite. It is easy to jump to that conclusion, but in the case of Coco Chanel I found it difficult to find any evidence that she harboured any particular ill will towards Jews. Coco Chanel may indeed have hated the Jews, and certainly many of her biographers assert this as a fact, but I am reluctant to label anyone without actual proof – or at least a direct quote or two. Obviously, she was no fan of the Jewish family who financed her Parfums Chanel Company, but beyond that I could find no quotes from Chanel to corroborate her being anti-Semitic. Chanel was a cunning opportunist through and through and her work with the Nazis may have been more about the opportunities and advancement it could provide her with over any political or social agenda.

  Chanel was the subject of a covert Nazi mission in 1943 by the name of Modellhut (‘model hat’). This mission was planned for some time and apparently involved Chanel first travelling to Germany to have a personal meeting with infamous Nazi Heinrich Himmler to plan the details of the mission. We may not be privy to all of the duties that Chanel might have filled as an agent to the Nazis, but we do know about this one key mission, which took place in Madrid (as referenced in the document mentioned above). She travelled to Madrid in 1943 with Hans, with the mission of using her past acquaintanceship with Winston Churchill to persuade him to a ceasefire with Germany through a personal letter, with the hopes of ending the aggressions between England and Germany. In a flurry of arrogance, Chanel was convinced that Churchill would listen to her as a voice of reason. Churchill didn’t see it the same way and the deal was ignored.

  Chanel was sent on this rather odd mission, because the reality was that Hitler didn’t have a mind to continue using his resources in a war with England, but would rather prefer they concede and allow the Nazis to further pursue their intended target: Stalin and the Soviet Union. Reportedly, Hitler even sent his number two, Rudolf Hess, into Britain in 1941 with an offer of peace. Churchill likely refused these ploys for a number of reasons, partly because he knew Hitler wasn’t to be trusted and there were no guarantees that the sights of the Nazis wouldn’t simply be turned right back on England when they were done with the Soviets.

  The documentary series also claims that the post-war records about the involvement of Coco Chanel, and other French celebrities, with the Nazis was scrubbed from existence to preserve the pride of the French resistance and keep from demoralising the public and further tarnishing the spirit of the French people.

  The Post-war Getaway

  Once the Second World War finally came to a close and the Axis powers were defeated, it was time to rebuild Europe, mourn the losses and hold those still alive accountable for their vast and devastating war crimes. The Nuremberg trials were the world’s answer to justice and retribution for the Nazis and their cohorts. Throughout 1945 and 1946 the military tribunals were charged with prosecuting twenty-four members of the remaining Third Reich leadership. One person that was missing from any trials was, of course, Coco Chanel. Well, of course she was missing if the documents that detail her partnership with the Nazis were only recently uncovered, you say? Unfortunately, those documents were classified by the French. The French government took measures to erase the history of Chanel’s involvement with the German occupying forces in Paris.

  French women who slept with, had relationships with, or were even so much as friendly with German soldiers were accused of ‘collaboration horizontale’. In 1944 approximately 35,000 women had their heads shaved by hoards of male French citizens. They were utterly humiliated, stripped naked, and sometimes even had swastikas painted on their bodies. A fate that Coco Chanel craftily avoided. The irony is that many German women suffered the same fate when they cavorted with the French troops as they invaded the Rhineland in 1923. The Nazi party would also make the shaving of women’s heads a public punishment for being involved with a non-Aryan. These outbursts of public shaming and humiliation weren’t condoned by everyone and many found them to be disgusting displays of misplaced anger or jealousy. The sad reality for many women during the occupation of France is that the only way for many of them to care for their children, or themselves, with their husbands away at war was to have a liaison with a German soldier.

  This ill treatment would not be the fate of Coco Chanel. The natural assumption might be that someone who was so much in the public eye would be subjected to the same, if not much worse, treatment as any other woman who had openly cavorted with a member of the Third Reich. In reality, the worst that Coco Chanel got was a few days of minor inconvenience.

  It was August of 1944 and the allied troops were approaching Paris; the region was about to be completely freed from Nazi control. Chanel didn’t remain in Paris during the allied liberation. According to her former maid, Germaine, Chanel got a call from someone passing on a secret message from the Duke of Westminster. The Duke was warning Chanel to get out of France urgently. In a matter of hours Coco was fleeing to Lausanne, Switzerland. There has been talk that Winston Churchill was responsible for shielding Chanel from much of the post-war fervour, while other sources suggest that her connections within the royal family may have had an impact in protecting certain members of the Windsor family’s Nazi collaborations.

  Chanel didn’t face a judge or jury until 1946, when Judge Serre and his team put together documents that tied Chanel and her codename of ‘Westminster’ to the Nazis. They were unable to find any documented proof of information, or tangible advantages that Chanel had actually achieved for the Nazi party, so they were unable to issue an immediate warrant for her arrest. They did, however, issue a bench warrant for her to appear and explain herself and her extensive involvement and connections with the Germans. Judge Roger Serre issued a warrant on 16 April 1946, demanding that the police and the French border patrols bring her in to answer for the claims made by Baron Vaufreland when he was being interrogated. Chanel wouldn’t appear in court for years, and not in front of Judge Serre.

  Chanel finally answered the call a few years later to explain her actions during the war and about her connection to known Nazi conspirator and French traitor Baron Louis de Vaufreland. It turns out that in some of her travels she was paired with the Baron. Vaufreland bore the tag ‘V-Mann’ in his Abwehr files, which indicated that he had the trust of the Gestapo. The job that Vaufreland undertook was primarily recruitment of men and women who could be convinced or coerced into becoming spies for the Nazis. Apparently, Chanel would travel along with Vaufreland, in order to help conceal his actions. Vaufreland faced trial on 12 July 1949 for crimes against the French people by aiding the enemy during wartime. Coco Chanel was brought to testify during the trial and while she admitted to knowing Vaufreland, she downplayed their association and denied any wrong-doing. The prosecuting attorney, fixated on Vaufreland rather than Chanel, didn’t press her very hard during her testimony. She then returned to her safe haven in Switzerland, while Vaufreland was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison.

  Biographer Hal Vaughn speculated in his book, Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, that Chanel might have paid off a former Nazi after the war. According to Vaughn, when former Nazi SS head of foreign intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, was looking to release his memoirs, and in an effort to suppress the book, Chanel paid him and his family off. Schellenberg, of course, had intimate knowledge of Chanel’s involvement with the Nazis.

  Later In Life

  Coco Chanel had the luxury of living out the rest of her life in freedom, having never been truly taken to task for her actions during the war. She remained successful and outspoken, giving several interviews over the years that would contradict each other about various events in her life. On 10 January 1971, Chanel died in the Hotel Ritz, the lavish home she enjoyed during the Nazi occupation of Paris. She was 87 y
ears old.

  The Chanel Brand Today

  When Hal Vaughn’s salacious book, Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, outright accused Coco of being a Nazi spy, the Chanel fashion house decided to reply in a press release. A representative for the fashion house said the following:

  What’s certain is that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the War. Clearly it wasn’t the best period to have a love story with a German even if Baron von Dincklage was English by his mother and she (Chanel) knew him before the War.

  On the subject of Coco Chanel being perceived as an anti-Semite, the House of Chanel has said the following:

  She would hardly have formed a relationship with the family of the owners or counted Jewish people among her close friends and professional partners such as the Rothschild family, the photographer Irving Penn or the well-known French writer Joseph Kessel had these really been her views.

  Chapter Six

  Bayer: Heroin and Genocide

  The history of Bayer is one that can only be described as complex and troubled. We’ve all heard of heroin, one of the most dangerous and addictive drugs in the world. The very mention of heroin can inspire images of underweight junkies, needles, and arms covered in track marks. The reality of heroin is that it causes an immense amount of suffering for the users and their loved ones. What you may not think about when you picture heroin is a bottle of the drug on a store shelf. Imagine heroin bottled by Bayer, the makers of aspirin, and marketed as a cough remedy for children. This was the reality a little over a century ago. Then, imagine for a moment that the creation and introduction of heroin was only a drop in the bucket, as the same company would be a co-sponsor of the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.