Transcript
00:00:00story of a Spanish chicken farmer called Juan Poyol. So it's 1941, start of World War I,
00:00:08and he's essentially a failure his entire life. So he's been a chicken farmer, a manager of a
00:00:14one-star hotel before bankruptcy. And he's after a new job with a tremendous CV. So he's walking
00:00:22along the streets of Madrid, takes a right, goes into the British embassy and says,
00:00:27I want a job at MI5 to help out and spy on the Nazis. And MI5 or the embassy sort of say,
00:00:39okay, how about you put that in writing and we'll come back to you, which is the British way of saying
00:00:45get the fuck out. So he leaves the building, comes back, walks across, goes into the embassy, says,
00:00:53I want a job at MI5. They ask him to leave, tries again.
00:00:58He just like walks across the street and turns around.
00:01:00No, these are multiple like future events. So he keeps coming back.
00:01:04Fourth time, he's walking along and he decides, he walks up the steps, but this time he goes into the
00:01:11German embassy and he goes, I hate the Brits. I want a job for the Nazis to spy on Britain.
00:01:19And the Nazis are eyeing him up and he talks about his love for the Führer, the love for the Third Reich
00:01:25and how much he hates his new inspired hatred for Great Britain. And the Nazis end up training him up,
00:01:32giving him little tasks and he keeps proving himself, learns how invisible ink works, ends up
00:01:39recruiting multiple agents inside of Great Britain. So he builds his way up and then he walks back
00:01:47street of Madrid, goes to the British embassy and says, I now want a job at MI5 because I'm one of
00:01:54the most valuable spies for the Nazis. So he got rejected, rejected, rejected and was like, okay,
00:02:00I'll take matters into my own hands. So he then becomes the most valuable spy for Britain during
00:02:07World War II. He builds up a network of 27 sub-agents inside of Britain that the Nazis believe
00:02:15are true, but it's all his own imagination. All these different agents that he would create stories
00:02:21from that they were doing. So much so when he arrived, the MI5 called him Garbo, because Garbo
00:02:29at the time was the most famous actress in the world.
00:02:32Greta Garbo. Yes. So named after, for his acting skills. So Juan Poyol, the Spanish chicken farmer,
00:02:39the most important moment in World War II was D-Day. So as D-Day was happening, Juan gave so much fake
00:02:49information. He convinced them that D-Day was going to happen in Calais. So Hitler and Himmler were getting
00:02:55these reports from Juan. They thought the war was going to happen in Calais. So they sent some of
00:03:02their most important armies to Calais. Then the D-Day happens. And Juan was so convincing, even with
00:03:11these fake reports that Hitler gave him the Iron Cross. So he's the only agent to get both an Iron Cross
00:03:19from Hitler and an MBE from- No way.
00:03:22Greta Garbo. Yeah. And do you know what's tragic though? So they say that when it comes to D-Day,
00:03:27the most important day of World War II, the three most important people were Eisenhower, who looked
00:03:32after the US. I think Montgomery, who looked after the Great Britain and Juan Poyol, the Spanish chicken
00:03:39farmer. Those are the three most important people in D-Day in terms of the impact. But this guy who gets
00:03:44these double awards ends up dying in 1949, Mozambique to malaria. And in the 1980s, three of the agents that
00:03:56worked with him in MI5 are sat at a bar. So they're all in their late eighties now. And they're talking
00:04:02about the war. They're in this former little intelligence pub and they're chatting about the war
00:04:07and having a few drinks. And they have this kind of confused look on their faces. This old guy is walking
00:04:16towards them. And they get more and more confused with their face. And then this 80 year old man, who's a
00:04:23MI5 spy, breaks down in tears, crying. And they go, "It can't be. You're supposed to be dead." So his final last act
00:04:33was to fake his own death in 1949. And he lived in a bookstore in Venezuela. So the Nazis would never know
00:04:44where he was.
00:04:46- That's insane. - Yeah. Spanish chicken farmer.
00:04:50- Was he really worried about Nazi retribution in 1949? - Yes.
00:04:54- Were the Nazis still going around and chasing people in the 50s? - Ironically,
00:04:57even though he's in Venezuela, there was a lot of Nazis in South America.
00:05:00- Yeah. But if he'd not gone to fucking Venezuela, he supposedly caught malaria in Africa.
00:05:05- There's still a lot of- - Where's Mozambique?
00:05:06- Mozambique is, I think, West Africa. - Right. Okay.
00:05:09- But in 1949 or even onwards, there was, first off, we're viewing history, few hindsight. At the time,
00:05:16there was still millions of Germans that served for the Nazis that were still alive. So yeah,
00:05:20there was lots of Nazis afterwards. - And they would have wanted retribution
00:05:23for people that had, I guess I don't know what- - The most impactful man during D-Day,
00:05:27who was a double agent that gave them all this false information. If there's one person they're
00:05:31going to try and kill. - Yeah, that's true. I guess I don't know what happened in Germany after
00:05:37they lost. I don't know how quickly everybody capitulated. - Well, there was this, I was
00:05:42listening to Finn versus history and they was talking about how- - Friend of the show.
00:05:45- When, after the Nazis commit the Holocaust, I think they were banned for the World Cup or from
00:05:51like international games for four years. But when Liverpool had the incident in Juventus where loads
00:05:56of fans died, they were banned for six years. And it's like, it's not, it doesn't scale.
00:06:00- It's quite even out. - It doesn't scale accordingly.
00:06:02- Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's, I mean, unbelievable.
00:06:06amount of agency. I suppose to be a guy that wants a job so badly that you take the opposite job to get
00:06:13the first job. It's just as well that he really did want to work for MI5. Because if he didn't,
00:06:18he would have just been a great asset for the Nazis. - But it's having that, that level of theory
00:06:23of mind of, okay, I've been rejected from something. What does this person want that would make me
00:06:29completely invaluable? Because I think there's this kind of myth that, oh, if you've been rejected,
00:06:33just keep going and they're idiots versus can you get inside of their head and think how they think?
00:06:39- Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, is it time to push or is it time to pivot? It's kind of the age old
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