Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War

by Hal Vaughan

  All over France the arrival of French and Allied troops released powerful forces. In Paris, amid wild celebration, German-language street signs around the Opéra and elsewhere were ripped down with bare hands. Many toasted freedom; others spewed revenge. For known collaborators, there was flight or death; if found, they risked being shot on sight. Handsome women, “horizontal collaborators,” were dragged nude from their homes and had their heads shaved in public. Twelve thousand German troopers, officials, and hangers-on didn’t make it out of Paris. Many would be imprisoned in French camps.

  Among them was Dincklage’s former wife, Catsy, suspected by the Free French intelligence officers of being a German intelligence agent. Just before the occupation she had been interned at Gurs, a French camp for German civilians. During the occupation she was released and then returned to Paris. After the war Catsy’s half sister, Sybille Bedford, in a book about the period, claimed Catsy had suffered deprivation during the occupation because she was Jewish.

  A secret postwar French intelligence report tells a different story, describing how Catsy worked with the Germans all during the occupation—protected by Dincklage and a host of Nazi friends. The file reveals that after the liberation, Catsy, terrified she might be caught by French resistance fighters, reported to the Paris police. She hoped to find protection but was immediately interned with other German nationals at the former SS holding camp for Jews at Drancy. Later she was held at a camp in Noisy-le-Sec, a Paris suburb. She was finally transported to a detention camp in Basse-Normandie, where she would remain a prisoner for eighteen months.

  Catsy was released after repeated efforts by her lawyer. To free her, he presented the authorities with a recommendation for release written by the wife of a senior French officer. But secret French counterintelligence reports reveal that far from being a victim during the German occupation, Catsy was a collaborator, a black market dealer, and a spy for the Nazi regime. She had not lived in hiding as a Jew; instead, she “lived [the four years of the occupation] on the best of terms with the Germans … people she now pretends she abominated.”

  To gain her release, “Catsy collected letters from friends who were accomplices in her black market operations selling fine women’s intimate apparel. She used these to try to prove [to liberation authorities] her loathing of the German occupation forces.” The French secret report states: “Despite her testimony to French authorities, Catsy frequently received her ex-husband Hans Günther Dincklage at her rue des Sablons apartment.” They were, after all, fellow Abwehr agents and friends. The report does not spare Dincklage: “Dincklage was an active and dangerous propaganda agent. He employed Mme Chasnel [sic] to obtain intelligence for his service.” The report noted that as Allied forces approached Paris, “Catsy’s friend SS Standartenführer Otto Abetz advised her to leave France.” It concluded, “Maximiliane von Schoenebeck [Catsy] is an agent of the German intelligence service, and her presence in France is a danger to national security. We must assume she received orders to stay in France for the purpose of one day beginning to work again as a spy. She must be considered as undesirable in France.”

  Despite the fact that Catsy and Dincklage were officially expelled from France by ministerial decree dated July 5, 1947, Catsy managed to remain in France until her death at Nice in 1978 at age seventy-nine. The Schoenebeck family, in an interview at their home in Austria in the summer of 2010, stated that after the war Catsy was employed by Chanel, but they could offer no proof of this.

  SINCE 1942 Chanel had been on an official FFI blacklist. Now, in the first week of September 1944, a handful of young FFI resistance fighters—Fifis as Chanel called them, the strong arm of the Free French purge committee—took Chanel to the office of the committee for questioning.

  Chanel’s biographers report that she scorned the armed youths with their sandals and rolled-up sleeves. However, the group that interrogated Chanel had no record of her secret work; they did not know the details of her collaboration with the Abwehr or her 1941 mission with Vaufreland in Madrid. Above all, they had no idea she had been the key figure in the Modellhut peace mission financed by Schellenberg in 1944.

  By all accounts, Chanel was more insulted by the truculence and bad manners of the Fifis than by her arrest. After a few hours of interrogation by the épuration committee, she was back in her rue Cambon apartment. Her grand-niece, Gabrielle Palasse Labrunie, recalls that when Chanel returned home, she told her maid, Germaine: “Churchill had me freed.”

  Though there is no proof, Labrunie and some of Chanel’s biographers believe that it was Prime Minister Churchill who intervened via Duff Cooper, the British ambassador to de Gaulle’s provisional government, to have Chanel released. Biographer Paul Morand wrote that Churchill had instructed Duff Cooper to “protect Chanel.”

  Chanel’s maid Germaine told Labrunie that soon after Chanel “left her rue Cambon apartment abruptly … she had received an urgent message from [the Duke of] Westminster” through some unknown person telling her: “Don’t lose a minute … get out of France.” Within hours, Chanel left Paris in her chauffeured Cadillac limousine headed for the safety of Lausanne, Switzerland.

  Churchill’s intervention to shield Chanel from prosecution has been the subject of speculation by biographers. One theory has it that Chanel knew Churchill had violated his own Trading with the Enemy Act (enacted in 1939, which made it a criminal offense to conduct business with the enemy during wartime) by secretly paying the Germans to protect the Duke of Windsor’s property in Paris. The duke’s apartment in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris was never touched when the Windsors were exiled in the Bahamas, where the duke was governor. A Windsor biographer claimed “had Chanel been made to stand trial for collaboration with the enemy in wartime she might have exposed as Nazi collaborators the Windsors and a number of other highly placed in society. The royal family would not easily tolerate an exposé of a family member.”

  The royal family was so touchy about the duke’s collaboration that Anthony Blunt, the royal historian, was sent to Europe in the final days of the war. Blunt, who was later exposed as a Russian spy, traveled secretly to the German town of Schloss Friedrichshof in 1945 to retrieve sensitive letters between the Duke of Windsor, Adolf Hitler, and other prominent figures. (The duke’s correspondence with Hitler and the Nazis remains secret.)

  Chanel certainly knew of the duke and his wife’s pro-Nazi attitudes; she may have known about his correspondence with Hitler. MI6 agent Malcolm Muggeridge was in Paris at the liberation as a British liaison officer with the French sécurité militaire. He marveled at the way Chanel had escaped the purges: “By one of those majestically simple strokes which made Napoleon so successful a general, she just put an announcement in the window of her emporium that her perfume was available free for GIs, who thereupon queued up to get free bottles of Chanel No. 5, and would have been outraged if the French police had touched a hair on her head.” Chanel managed to put off testifying before a court that decided the fate of Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, Sacha Guitry, and Serge Lifar.”

  CHANEL WOULD MAKE LAUSANNE one of her homes from 1944 onward. Dincklage was hidden by friends from the Allied occupation forces in Germany or Austria. Later, he joined Chanel at the four-star Beau Rivage hotel on Lake Leman, where Chanel resided before buying a house in the heights above the lake and forest of Sauvabelin, Lausanne.

  With the end of World War II, Chanel made frequent trips to Paris. From there, she and Misia Sert traveled to Monaco and returned to Lausanne to buy drugs. As obtaining controlled substances was dangerous, the pair went to cooperative pharmacies outside France for their drugs, according to Misia Sert’s biographers. They took for granted that their “powerful friends” would protect them.

  Misia was “reckless and impatient. She made no attempt to hide what she was doing. Chatting at dinner parties or wandering through the flea market she would pause to jab a needle right through her skirt. Once in Monte Carlo she walked into a pharmacy and asked for morph
ine while a terrified Chanel pleaded with her to be more careful.”

  In Switzerland Chanel had privileged relations with a pharmacy in Lausanne, and she and Misia visited there to buy their drugs. “The two old friends had changed over the years: Chanel’s gamine beauty had turned into simian chic, her shrewdness to vindictiveness. Misia, once full blown and radiant, had wasted away.” On train trips to Lausanne “they sat deep in talk and laughter, distinguished and elegant. Habit—that weaver of old friendships—had made them indispensable to each other.”

  Misia Sert’s biographers claimed that when Chanel was with “her fellow collaborationist Paul Morand, Chanel still criticized Misia’s relations with Jews and homosexuals; and she complained that Misia was a perfidious devourer of people, a parasite of the heart. But despite her hatred, she told Morand, whenever she needed someone she turned to Misia, for Misia was all women and all women were in Misia.”

  IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS of the war, Winston Churchill was desperately busy with the political aftermath of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Soviets grabbing Berlin, and the German surrender in May 1945. Yet he still found time to be involved in the affairs of Chanel and Vera Lombardi; the latter was, after all, a member of the British aristocracy and a personal friend of Churchill, the Duke of Windsor, and the Duke of Westminster, as well as close to members of the royal family.

  From the winter of 1944 through the spring of 1945, Colonel S. S. Hill-Dillon at Allied Force Headquarters in Paris sent a number of messages to Churchill at 10 Downing Street. In one dispatch, he informed the prime minister that investigators wanted to know why Vera Lombardi had been “sent to Madrid on a specific mission by the German intelligence service.” On December 28, 1944, P. N. Loxley, a senior officer of SIS-MI6 and the principal private secretary to Lord Alexander Cadogan, the permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office, sent the following top secret dispatch to British Armed Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) in Rome. A copy was sent to Churchill’s secretary at 10 Downing Street, Sir Leslie Rowan. (It contains a wrong date.):

  When Madame Lombardi was in Paris in December 1941 [sic], her friend Madame Chanel deliberately exaggerated her social importance in order to give the Germans the impression that she [Madame Lombardi] might be useful to them, so that they would allow her to go to Madrid.

  Independently, Lombardi appears to have had a fantastic notion about trying to arrange Peace Terms and thus end the war. While she was in Madrid, Madame Lombardi received letters from Rome by clandestine means. She is by no means anti-Fascist, but there is no indication that she was entrusted by the Germans with a specific mission.

  I have told A.F.H.Q. that, in these circumstances, I cannot recommend her continued exclusion from Italy … I think [those] in Rome who are likely to meet Madame Lombardi socially should be warned that she is still under a cloud.

  While negotiating with Stalin in Moscow, Churchill found time, on October 14, 1944, to send this top secret personal telegram to General Wilson in Rome: “FROM MOSCOW TO FOREIGN OFFICE: I shall be glad to discuss with you on my homeward journey the case of Vera Lombardi née Arkwright who wishes to rejoin her husband in Italy. I shall be glad if you will have the security authorities at A.F.H.Q available.” (illustration credit 11.3)

  Previously Churchill’s office at 10 Downing Street had been informed by a British official at the Foreign office:

  from the outset [Vera Lombardi] was regarded with suspicion by our people in Madrid who found her story of her journey through Germany and German occupied territory unconvincing and contradictory. There was also conclusive evidence that she was directly assisted by the Sicherheitsdienst [Schellenberg’s SS Intelligence service].

  In Madrid, in the waning days of 1944, Vera’s efforts to return to Rome seemed in vain. Then, just after the New Year of 1945, the British Foreign Office advised the Madrid Embassy in cipher: “Allied Forces Headquarters have withdrawn their objection and the lady is free to return to Italy. Prior notification of place and date of arrival will be necessary.” Churchill had intervened.

  Four days later, Downing Street sent a top secret note to Colonel Hill-Dillon at Allied Force Headquarters in Paris: “I have shown the Prime Minister your letter of December 30 … about the case of Madame Lombardi; and Mr. Churchill asked me to thank you very much indeed for the enquiries made and all the trouble that had been taken in this matter.” (The signature on the note is illegible.)

  December 1944 top secret dispatch from British diplomat reporting how Chanel “exaggerated [Vera’s] social importance in order to give the Germans the impression that she (Madame Lombardi) might be useful to them, so that they would allow her to go to Madrid …” (1941 date is an error.) (illustration credit 11.4)

  Vera was finally reunited with her husband, Alberto, in April or May 1945, as her thank-you letter to Churchill makes clear:

  Rome, 9 May 1945

  My Dear Winston,

  Thank you with all my heart for what you found time to do for me and forgive me what I can’t forgive myself. That you should have been obliged to give such a useless person a thought in a time when you certainly were saving the world. Randolph has been a great joy to us here and I shall sadly miss him. His English character and great big heart are the breath of life to me after being cooped up in these stifling countries five years.

  Please God I’ll get home soon and come up to breathe for a brief space.

  Affectionately and gratefully,

  (Sgd.) VERA

  In the meantime, Alberto Lombardi had managed to bury his past connections with Mussolini. He went on to serve the Allies as he had the Fascist dictator. Vera Lombardi died from a severe illness in Rome a year after her return from Madrid.

  A FEW MONTHS after Paris was liberated, French general Philippe Leclerc’s armored division liberated the French city of Strasbourg and American troops broke out of the German trap at the Battle of the Bulge. Two months later, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz, the SS-run Polish death camp. Meanwhile, Dincklage had arranged through the Berlin Abwehr—now controlled by General Schellenberg—to have a German firm open negotiations with Swiss authorities with the aim of obtaining a permit for him to visit Switzerland. According to the Swiss Alien Police, a German firm—United Silk-Weaving Mill, Ltd., Berlin—sought permission for Dincklage to travel to Zurich for talks with the company’s Swiss subsidiary and the German industrial commission in the Swiss capital of Bern. The company maintained that Dincklage was to negotiate the import of silk and the export of tools. In actuality, the transaction involved swapping Swiss-made artificial silk for German cast-steel tools. According to the United Silk-Weaving Mill, the deal was worth 1.2 million Swiss francs.

  The Swiss authorities saw through the subterfuge. They denied Dincklage’s entry permit in December 1944. The Swiss report is succinct: “The German citizen of the Reich, Hans Günther von Dincklage, resident of Berlin, is refused an entry permit into neutral Switzerland.”

  Later, Dincklage used a Swiss attorney to apply to become a naturalized citizen of Liechtenstein—which would automatically allow him to enter Switzerland. The Swiss Department of Justice and Police now advised Liechtenstein authorities that Dincklage was an unwelcome person. His application for citizenship was refused.

  Bern had not forgotten how, in 1939, Dincklage had been on an Abwehr espionage mission in their country. The Liechtenstein authorities were told: “Information on Dincklage is negative, and he was banished from France in 1947.” It would not be the last time Dincklage would try to get a legitimate permit to live in Liechtenstein or Switzerland.

  IN PARIS, those in the know were wondering if Chanel’s luck could hold out. In May 1946 at the Paris Cour de Justice, Judge Roger Serre opened a case against her. The case dossier on Chanel for this period has disappeared from national archives of the French Justice Department. All that remains is an index card with her name handwritten on it and the notation “art 75 I4787”—signifying that the file was related to a French article of the penal code dealin
g with espionage. According to the chief conservator of French twentieth-century archives, the card is a clear indication that “the special French court concerned with collaboration had opened a case under the French penal code concerning Chanel’s dealing with the enemy in wartime.”

  By 1946 Judge Serre was eager to question Chanel. His French intelligence sources in Berlin turned up documents describing her as Abwehr agent F-7124, code name Westminster—the nom de guerre drawn from her lifelong friend and lover, Bendor, the Duke of Westminster. Serre’s intelligence team also found that Vaufreland had written a number of reports for the Abwehr. However, they could find nothing written by Chanel. For this reason and because investigators never made the connection to Chanel’s Modellhut mission for the SS, she was never formally arrested. Nevertheless, court orders were issued to bring her before Judge Serre.

  December 30, 1944, top secret letter from S. S. Hill-Dixon a senior officer at Allied Force Headquarters in Paris. Letter states “… Mme. Chanel has been undergoing interrogations by French authorities … it is clear that Mme. Chanel deliberately exaggerated Mme. Lombardi’s social position in order to give the Germans the impression that if she were allowed to go to Madrid she might be useful to them. Mme. Lombardi herself seems to have had some curious notion of trying to arrange peace terms …” (illustration credit 11.5)

  Chanel knew how vulnerable she had become. She believed she was threatened—not only by Vaufreland—but by Theodor Momm and Walter Schellenberg. The main actors in the Modellhut mission clearly compromised her future in France. And Dincklage, too—what might he reveal under questioning? An astute observer later wrote, “Spatz … was her living hell.” She was “like an angry sea captain walking the deck of a sinking ship.” Pierre Reverdy knew of Chanel’s treason and would later forgive her.