Coco Chanel, high priestess of couture, created the look of the chic modern woman: her simple and elegant designs freed women from their corsets and inspired them to crop their hair. By the 1920s, Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, and had amassed a personal fortune. But at the start of the Second World War, Chanel closed down her couture house and went to live quietly at the Ritz, moving to Switzerland after the war. For more than half a century, Chanel's life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in rumour. Neither Chanel nor her biographers have told the full story, until now. In this explosive narrative, Hal Vaughan pieces together Chanel's hidden years, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of the Liberation. He uncovers the truth of Chanel's anti-Semitism and long-whispered collaboration with Hitler's officials. In particular, Chanel's long relationship with 'Spatz', Baron von Dincklage, previously described as a tennis-playing playboy and German diplomat, and finally exposed here as a Nazi master spy and agent who ran an intelligence ring in the Mediterranean and reported directly to Joseph Goebbels. "Sleeping with the Enemy" tells in detail how Chanel became a German intelligence operative, Abwehr agent F-7124; how she was enlisted in spy missions, and why she evaded arrest in France after the war. It reveals the role played by Winston Churchill in her escape from retribution; and how, after a nine-year exile in Switzerland with Dincklage, and despite French investigations into her espionage activities, Coco was able to return to Paris and triumphantly reinvent herself - and rebuild the House of Chanel. As Hal Vaughan shows, far from being a heroine of France, Chanel was in fact one of its most surprising traitors.

About the Author

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1928, Hal Vaughan has been a news reporter, foreign correspondent and documentary film producer working in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia since 1957. He served in the US military during the Second World War and Korea and was involved in CIA operations as a US Foreign Service officer. Vaughan is the author of Doctor to the Resistance, the story of an American surgeon and his family in occupied Paris, and FDR's Twelve Apostles: the spies who paved the way for the invasion of North Africa. He has spent years piecing together the Chanel story and its cover-up for Sleeping with the Enemy, combing through wartime intelligence archives - public and private, and many newly released - as well as letters and police and court documents in America and Europe. He lives in Paris.

Prizes

The first book to uncover the true story of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel in occupied Paris during the Second World War. Hal Vaughan reveals: her life as an Abwehr secret agent; her long love affair with a Nazi master spy; her missions on behalf of German military intelligence; and her astonishing escape from retribution through the intervention of Winston Churchill.

Reviews

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's war was not as secret as the subtitle implies. It's well known that during WWII, the celebrated fashion designer took as her lover a much younger Nazi intelligence officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, and through him developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Nazis. Journalist, diplomat, and author Vaughan (FDR's 12 Apostles), searching archives in several countries, fills in gaps in the record regarding Chanel's two intelligence missions to Madrid. The first she performed in exchange for the Nazis returning her ailing nephew from a German POW camp. The second, more well-known Operation Modellhut, a German effort to broker a separate peace with Britain, ended disastrously. Vaughan also explains Chanel's mysterious ability to avoid prosecution as a collaborator after the war, and her attempts to destroy or buy off anyone who might have testified against her. Vaughan gives mainly superficial, cliche-ridden attention to Chanel's prewar life, nor does he explore her self-contradictions-or hypocrisies-such as fiercely asserting her independence while accepting real estate worth millions from one of her serial lovers, the duke of Westminster. Vaughan's at times fascinating but unsatisfying book tarnishes Chanel's aura of glamour, leaving instead a picture of a pathetic, morphine-addicted woman who would do literally anything to have a powerful man by her side. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This is an absorbing expose of a mystery that has long intrigued. Paris-based veteran journalist Vaughan (FDR's 12 Apostles) is unequivocal in his argument that there were two sides to the elegant Coco Chanel. Using information from French counterintelligence sources as well as other documents hidden for years in French, German, Italian, Soviet, and U.S. archives, he unmasks her activities during the war years; she embarked on a romance with a senior German officer in occupied Paris and cooperated with German military intelligence agents. Her reasons were personal, political, and financial, as Vaughan makes clear. While Chanel's secret life is the central focus here, other little-known details of her life and career are also -included to present a complete biography of this worldwide celebrity whose fashion genius transformed the way modern women dress. Staunchly right-wing, anti-Semitic, and anti-communist, Chanel was also lucky in love and politics, and these factors enabled her to escape postwar retribution and punishment when thousands of "collabos" like her were executed. A decades-long friendship with Winston Churchill may have been key to shielding her from prosecution. VERDICT Engrossing and accessible, this is recommended for general readers interested in fashion celebrity, espionage, or World War II.-Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.