Credit, National Archives of the United Kingdom
caption,
The Peruvian writer Hugo Coya told the story of the double agent in “Elvira’s Secrets”.
Item Information
Early one morning in 1942, at the Crockford Casino in London, Elvira de la Fuente or Elvira Chaudoir told some friends that she had found a wellpaying job, that she was learning a British secret service code and that she would soon be on mission after France sent.
Peruvian writer Hugo Coya’s book “Los Secretos de Elvira” (Elvira’s Secrets, in direct translation) states that an agent in charge of surveillance recorded the “infidelity” in his file because “the information could reach the Germans “, enemies of the British in World War II.
The secret service was MI6 and Elvira was criticized “severely” for her recklessness and questioned about the friends she had told the secret to. Fortunately, they had no ties to the Nazis.
Elvira promised to be more reserved from then on. She kept her promise and was not only a spy for the British, but also a double agent, infiltrating the German ranks for another three years, until May 1945, near the end of the conflict.
The initial difficulty of keeping secrets was not the only “weakness” that made her an unusual secret agent. While agents were portrayed in the popular imagination as reserved and discreet, Elvira went to parties, drank heavily, wasted money gambling, was popular and bisexual, which was a scandal at the time.
In other words, her life attracted attention and sparked conversation.
How could a Peruvian with such a striking personality help the Allies defeat the Nazis?
Busy life
Elvira’s story was virtually unknown until 1995, when she gave an interview to a newspaper. A decade later, the UK declassified its archive, meaning it was no longer confidential.
These documents, seen by BBC News Mundo (the BBC’s Spanishlanguage service), are a detailed account of all the letters and telegrams Elvira sent and received as a spy, the expenses associated with her work and the payments she received from the spy received German, the debates about what information she had to reveal or not, about the people she had contact with, her family members, her changes of address.
But even before she entered the world of espionage, Elvira led a very busy life.
Credit, National Archives of the United Kingdom
caption,
Elvira de la Fuente’s life was eventful
His birth is recorded in two places: 1912 in Lima; and in Paris in 1911. Despite this ambiguity, “she was certainly Peruvian, she is registered with the Peruvian consulate in Paris,” Hugo Coya, author of “The Secrets of Elvira,” tells BBC News Mundo. “The only doubt is the exact place where she was born. There is no discussion about his nationality.”
Additionally, although Elvira grew up and studied in Paris, her education was “strongly linked to Peru,” says Coya, and she communicated with her family, who lived in Arequipa, a city south of Lima.
She was the daughter of Edmundo de la Fuente, a Peruvian diplomat and wealthy importer of guano (a compound made from bird droppings).
His mother, Dolores Martínez, came from a family of Spanish and Cuban origins that owned a tobacco empire.
Since childhood, Elvira was popular and always made it a point to be welldressed. She graduated with a degree in political science, was an agnostic and, since her school days, questioned the ideas and customs of the time, such as the obligation for women to marry and have children.
In fact, she turned down several applicants, preferring to “take refuge in friends, reading and music,” says Coya, who had access to the Peruvian’s diaries to write her book. In addition, as an adult she spent her nights in bars and cabarets.
Until, in 1931, she seemed to give in to the idea of falling in love when she met the Belgian Jean Chaudoir, the heir to a family dedicated to buying and selling gold. The wedding took place in Paris in 1934 and after a honeymoon in Peru the couple moved to Brussels.
But boredom began to set in in Elvira’s life, and affairs broke out on both sides. The marriage ended after four years.
The young woman returned to Paris and then settled in Cannes, in the south of France, where she devoted herself to going to parties and wasting her money in casinos. Until the start of the Second World War forced them to change course.
recruitment
Facing the German occupation of France, Elvir fled to London in September 1939 and, according to Coya, attempted to live the same partying and gambling life that he enjoyed in Cannes.
Elvira’s neighbors complained about meetings at her apartment and the presence of drunks in her house in the early hours of the morning. The young woman encouraged rumors about her love life. She just wanted to have fun. “In fact, she said to her friends: ‘Why not enjoy life when death follows us at every turn?'” says the Peruvian writer.
However, it became increasingly difficult for Elvira to maintain this lifestyle. Because of the war, her parents couldn’t send her any money, so she fell deeper and deeper into debt. In 1942 she complained that she couldn’t find work as a Peruvian, but she wasn’t looking for work either.
Coya says in his book that one night at the Hamilton Club in London, a Royal Air Force officer heard Elvira’s complaint and informed British military intelligence “about a woman from a neutral country who belonged to the highest social circles” and apparently “he had some.” economic difficulties.”
caption,
Elvira was recruited by an agent connected to Nazi Luftwaffe officers
A man identified as “Masefield” contacted Elvira and invited her to dinner at the Connaught Hotel. He offered him a job that would allow him to maintain the standard of living he had enjoyed so much.
“Masefield” was Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey, deputy director of MI6, the British secret service. He told Elvira that she had something valuable at the time: a Peruvian passport.
Since Peru was a neutral country in the war at the time, Elvira was able to travel through Europe with this document.
However, some MI6 officers opposed his recruitment. “They argued that involving a person in this lifestyle brings dangers: they could become a victim of blackmail or be sexually ambushed,” Coya writes.
But “that was exactly the value of De la Fuente, that no one would believe she was a spy,” Coya told BBC News Mundo.
After analyzing the advantages and disadvantages, the secret service assigned him an initial assignment. To prepare, she learned to write letters in invisible ink and was trained to answer questions or recognize when someone is lying.
Double agent
Elvira De la Fuente spent a few days with her parents in Vichy at the Hotel Les Ambassadeurs and then went to Cannes. British intelligence ordered her to stay at the Hotel Martínez, which had been given to the Nazis for their own use due to the owner’s debts, and to devote herself to the social life that she had always enjoyed.
However, several weeks passed without her convincing the enemy to recruit her. Until one night the hotel owner introduced the Peruvian woman to “Bibi” in a bar, whose real name was Helmut Bliel and, according to Elvira’s findings, was an agent of Hermann Göring, the commander of the Luftwaffe, the Nazi air force.
“Bibi” invited her to dinner several times and little by little a relationship of trust developed between them. At a meeting, the German explained that he had some “friends” who were looking for someone who could send them information from business newspapers in Great Britain, the spy herself says in a letter that is kept in the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
The young woman volunteered to do the work, but as soon as she started, her “friends” changed the type of information they would ask for. They would no longer ask questions about economic issues, but rather military issues.
Elvira questioned “Bibi” about the direction of the mission, but ultimately agreed to participate on the condition that she not send any information that could harm anyone, her letter said.
The Germans created a pseudonym for her, Dorette, and asked her to communicate with them through letters written in invisible ink. They should be sent to a hotel in Monaco or a bank in Lisbon.
caption,
Elvira played a very important role in preventing a chemical attack on London
Spy network
Elvira had managed to infiltrate the Nazis, and so in October 1942 the British accepted her to become part of Double Cross, or Committee XX, “the most ambitious and secret British espionage project to date,” Coya writes.
British intelligence formed the Double Cross agent team to provide false information to German intelligence services.
In addition to Elvira, the group consisted of four other spies with different profiles who were unaware of each other’s existence to prevent any of them from revealing information about their colleagues if they were discovered, Coya said.
Elvira came “on the condition that she would never be left alone or lost from sight,” the author writes, due to her atypical profile and her previous infidelity.
But then “he changed his attitude and took what he was doing very seriously, he recognized the importance of his role, he strictly followed the instructions given to him, which made his collaboration valuable,” Coya explains to the BBC.
The Peruvian got a frontline job at the BBC and was given the pseudonym “Bronx”.
Once in Double Cross, the spy completed several important missions, according to Coya.
On the one hand, it led the German intelligence service, Abwehr, to believe that the British had chemical weapons and could therefore retaliate in the event of a German chemical attack on London.
A British intelligence officer “believed that Elvira’s report helped dissuade the Germans from launching a gas attack on the city, potentially saving many lives and showing that ‘in some cases we can influence or perhaps change the enemy’s operational intentions’ “, explains in detail the book Double Cross: The True Story of the DDay Spies, by the British Ben Macintyre, author of several works about the Second World War.
Later, Elvira’s most important mission helped the Allies win the war.
Credit, personnel file
caption,
Elvira de la Fuente died in 1995
The DDay
The Germans trusted Elvira because, unlike other spies, she mixed information supposedly from British high society with military data and, moreover, created the image of an ordinary but wellinformed person, Coya writes in his book.
In February 1944, the Nazis knew that the Allies were planning a landing in France, but did not know the exact location. Then they asked Elvira to find out where and when it would happen and to send the information by telegram to a bank in Lisbon, where there was an account into which her exhusband transferred a supposed pension.
The code agreed with the Germans stipulated that she should ask for money in a telegram for a visit to the dentist. The amount she required would indicate the code of the location where the Allies would land.
On May 27, 1944, Elvira sent a message to the Nazis with deliberately false information: she demanded 50 pounds, confirming that the Allies were arriving in the Bay of Biscay in southwestern France. An entire German armored division (the 11th Panzer Division) remained there, far from Normandy, in the northwest, where the landing actually took place.
A British service officer said that “the movement of an armored division towards Bordeaux (Bay of Biscay) may to some extent have been due to the ‘Bronx’ telegram.”
DDay or the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 marked the beginning of the defeat of the Axis powers, consisting of Germany, Italy and Japan.
The other Double Cross agents also transmitted false information about the landing, which resulted in the Nazis as in other Allied operations not having sufficient forces to defend themselves in Normandy.
“You will never know how each strategy contributed to the end result. However, everything together led to the Germans withdrawing up to 19 divisions from Normandy that day, leaving the place unprotected enough for the Allies,” writes Coya.
When the war ended, Elvirase retired with a oneoff payment of £197. He stayed in London for a while, then settled in the south of France and lived a peaceful life with Carmen, his new companion.
“She continued to be a happy and fun woman, although she felt she had not been properly recognized for her work as she risked her life to change the course of the Second World War,” Coya tells BBC News Mundo.
From a single newspaper interview in 1995, MI6 learned that Elvira was in financial difficulties. The ministry sent her $5,000 to thank her for her work. But she died just a month later.
Although the recognition was not enough, Elvira De la Fuente always remembered the adventure according to Macintyre in her book “as the most beautiful and intense time” of her life.