Doomed to Fail - Ep 94 - The Most Fashionable Nazi Collaborator: Coco Chanel

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Ok, listen. Taylor will die on this hill. Coco Chanel, the iconic fashion designer, was a Nazi Spy during WWII: she and her boyfriend, Baron von Dinklage, a member of the Abwher (Nazi Military Intelligence) tried to use Chanel's connections with Winston Churchill to negotiate peace specifically with the Nazi SS. Knowing this, Taylor is still OK with wearing fake pearls but not OK with quoting Chanel for Women's History Month.  Let us know your thoughts. https://www.michigan.org/article/trip-idea/learn-how-drive-model-t-gilmore-car-museumhttps://kafkaesqueblog.com/tag/chanel-baron-von-dincklage/Stop Idolizing Coco Chanel : a shocking history of theft - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km4dJCGZXFYhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/style/the-new-look-premiere-fashion.htmlWas Coco Chanel a Nazi Agent? - https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/review/sleeping-with-the-enemy-coco-chanels-secret-war-by-hal-vaughan-book-review.htmlSpinster Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-myth-of-coco-chanel/id1537901366?i=1000581616389 Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we're up and we're recording, Taylor. We're having some fun little banter about a not-so-fun thing that happened to you with a little fender-bender you experienced, which sucks. But it sounds like everybody's fine.

everybody's healthy the car is a little bit you know dented in or busted up but the car is dented but it's not totaled so we're good miles is in the car with me but he's good his car seat did what it was supposed to do you know it kept him straight up and safe and good so i definitely someone hit us on the side on the driver's side and he was on that side as well and i i got a little jostled but his seat kept him kept him good so we're okay Nice. Good to hear that. But yeah, okay, cool. We'll get and dive right in. Yes, I will do the intro because I'll remember this time.

We're doomed to fail. Farr is joined here by Taylor. We'll be discussing two topics this week. I believe I go first this week. Is that right, Taylor? No, I think I go first. Okay. Wait, but I don't know. Wait, I need to check.

What was last week? What did we do last week? No, I go first because you did, you didn't mean and I did. to triangle short waist. Cool. All right. We'll do... Yep, yep, you're right.

You're right. Sweet. So it is your turn to go, and I'm curious if you're going to give me some clues on where you're going to cover. One clue for you is, can you see what I'm wearing?

A bunch of pearls. Yep. Who they remind you of? Ruth Bader Ginsburg? No, but that's good. That's pretty good. It could be. It could be her.

No, I bought these pearls at Walmart because I, like, knew that I was going to be doing this, and I knew I'd find them there because this kind of costume jewelry, especially these pearls, are something that was popularized by a certain woman, woman fashion designer in the 1940s and 1950s, well, maybe the third is when she started doing the costume jewelry. So she's one of the most famous women fashion designers in the world, and also she was a Nazi. She'll know. Exactly. And I love these pearls. I'm going to wear them all the time. They were like $6, and I just like love them. So they're real. They're all.

They're real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone dove into the ocean for these guys. You look so rich right now. Don't I? Don't I? Don't I? Yeah. So I did a whole bunch of research for this. I watched, I read a bunch of New York Times articles. I read the book sleeping with the enemy about Chanel and her Nazi boyfriend. And I watch, I have a bunch of other articles that I will share with you. I watched a YouTube video called Stop Idolizing Coco Chanel, a shocking history of theft. And, um, I watch, I have a bunch of other articles that I will share with you. I watched a YouTube video called stop idolizing Coco Chanel, a shocking history of theft. And, listened to a podcast. It was like the myth of Cocoa Chanel, all the things. So this is the thing that I talk about every women's history month on Twitter. I deleted all my twitters because Twitter is stupid, but I did keep my one every March where I'm like, for the past like six years, I'm like, hey, it's March. Reminder, Coco Chanel was a Nazi, just so that everyone remembers and knows. So I think before this, before I tell you about Coco and her life, I do want to talk a little bit about separating art from the artist. Because it's like a personal, I think it's a personal decision, like what you want to do

and like how you want to be this. Like, I want to wear these pearls, you know, but I don't want to like say that Coco Chanel was not a Nazi. You know what I mean? And like, so I think that it's up to you, what you want to do. Like, for example, I love Michael Jackson music. You know, there's no replacement for that in my life, you know? Like, I'm going to listen to it.

And like, things that I do, like, I don't want to go. a chick-fil-A because they have garbage political policies and that's fine it doesn't affect my life but i can buy other chicken sandwiches you know like whatever so like that's like a personal decision of mine i think the big one right now is harry potter because like jk rowling just keeps doubling down on hating trans people for no fucking reason and you're like why are you doing this like but so is your point that being selective about separating the art from the artist is okay i miss you're going to do so no I think it's okay I think it's a personal decision and it's whatever you want to do as long as you know the context you know what I mean so if you're like so yeah so that's my point so like jk Rowling is doing garbage things on Twitter all the time everywhere about hating trans people she's like making that her life mission and you're like why are you doing this like you have just like walked away with your billions of dollars and like not done that so for me I can still love Harry Potter for all the Harry Potter has like done and it's I love it it's great my kids love it

all that. But what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to go to like a woman's author conference and quote J.K. Rowling. And like I know how like, like, you know, like I have a Ford car, even though last week you were like four cars are garbage for seven thousand hours. Oh my God. I totally, I totally forgot that you had Ford when I said that. I'm really, really sorry. No, I mean, like I think that was a weird opinion of you to have, but that's fine. It's also not like an $80,000 Ford. It's like a regular safe American made Ford. who cares um but um so yeah so that's it like i i can have a ford and know that henry ford was violently anti-semitic and the hitler loved him you know and like i can separate that my separation my distinction is like what is criminal versus what is opinion It is, and it's your choice. The Michael Jackson one is, like, pretty tough. It's a rough one. But, like, also, like, I love watching Thriller every Halloween.

You know, like, I know. It's a rough one. It sucks. I mean. When I found out the guy who was in Bronxdale, like, turned into a meth head and killed the cop and went to jail, like, I was like, man, I love, I really like that movie. I know, I know. So, yeah.

I don't know. It's up to you as a person. you should try to know as much as you can um so again my point it's oh also i was like i wonder if you could drive a model t and you can at the gilmore car museum in michigan you can take a class to drive a model tea and it's like really hard and there's like three pedals and you have those like weird gear stuff and like that sounds super fun you know that sounds super fun stuff like i would love to do um and then but but again i hope i've said this loud enough i am not going to quote henry ford in a presentation about hard work

very clear that's very clearly my opinion um so i think somebody did that at your last work absolutely 100% yep i lost my mind i um that's that's when i like joined that woman's group and did that presentation for the company for women's history month being like and then like gave other options of people to quote and just like yes i was mad and people were a couple people were like thank you for bringing that up because it's just like no need to do that was it like in all hands or something something they quoted Henry Ford a thousand percent it was like its own quote on a side

being like work hard I don't know something like work hard and whatever I'm saying was it like a very very unique quote or was it just something very okay I got it something special you know yeah so during women's history month people often quote Quoco Chanel and I'm I just found my college graduation announcement

where I quoted her you know because she said has like nice things and that are exciting and like so i mean it happens she was a woman business owner she's a kind of style all of those things but you also like need to know that like during world war two she bet on the nazis you know so that's what i'm going to tell you about um so yeah yes she bet on the nazis yes i'll tell you all about it not like you know what i mean she thought they were going to win um so oh i i also wanted to remind you that i have my pearls They were $6. And here is a quote to start us off from the book Sleeping with the Enemy that I read that I would recommend.

It says this quote is from a New York Times review of sleeping with the enemy. And they say, quote, Gabrielle Chanel, better known as Coco, was a wretched human being, anti-Semitic, homophobic, social climbing, opportunistic, ridiculously, snobbish and give into sins of phrase making like if blonde used blue perfume she was addicted to morphine and actively collaborated with the germans during the nazi occupation of paris that's the tlDR yeah that paints picture yeah um so the quote goes on to cation revolution as fashion but i don't know if i believe that either um because like fashion is i don't know obviously again i'm not a fashion historian so we can talk about this maybe later in different ways but i don't know but like styles have to exist somewhere and a lot of times they exist out of like utilitarian things like I just found this out in this video that I watched

do you know where a trench coat comes from? The trenches? Yes, it comes from the trenches of World War I. It was like the military coat that would wear in the trenches. I could see that. I saw Dunkirk. I can totally see it but I was like, oh,

I didn't think of that until like I saw that in video and I was like, oh, well, that's crazy. That was like, so then like Chanel popularized a trench coat for women, you know, but like it was already there. It already existed. I had this like, I had a couple like rich boyfriends in college who was like blue blood American guys. And one of them, his brother one time took us on a tour of the library at Harvard because he was at Harvard. And like now that I think about it, his brother was a creep. And like he probably was like a lone library night. That's weird. But, um, that guy. No, it was like in a creepy way. But, um, but that boyfriend that I had,

had he made a store in Soho that was like, you know, you have to be rich to own a store in Soho, but they would do things like buy like Garbage Man uniforms from like Turkey and make it into high fashion. You know. There's, um, one episode of last podcast talked about how in that part of New York, there's all these stores that have like four shirts inside them. It's like, who's who is this? Can you explain that? I saw that when I was in New York. I was like, what are these? So here's what I think. And here's what I think. And here's what I I've been like learning and this is something that I learned about with um in I think maybe in the resachi episode of of last podcast and the couple other things that were like kind of getting put

together for me is it's not about those high fashion things like it's not about like those stores that are like the you know the Versace store that has like six dresses in it there are very few people actually going there and buying those things what it is is an advertisement and people with less money to buy like save up a thousand dollars and buy a chanelle handbag you know that's where they make their money they make their money from selling perfume from selling key chains from selling the stuff that like a less rich person will say i want the status symbol of wearing this like gigantic louis baton outfit but like and that's where they make all their money you know like not on the not on the things that cost a million dollars on the things that cost like a thousand dollars and

selling all of those for someone to people are like saving up to do that special thing yeah i know remember that too i meant more like the stores where it's not like the brand is the clothing it's like somebody who just starts the store and it's like it's like it's always some like 35 year old really attractive woman and it's like what is what do you how do you have this money and i don't understand like i feel i feel so bad for the people who work there you know like no one comes in you just like stand there but it but it strikes me like it's one of those places where like Like, it's more like a status symbol that you work there. Like, it's like your, it's like when Abercrombie, when we're in a high school and it was like the good looking kids, you got applications.

It's like one of those. Totally. Yeah, totally. I just remember that guy one day, the Aberprobby guy. The guy's an absolute monster. Anyway, sorry, I'd be only your episode. No, I definitely want to hear about the Abercrombie guy. One time, actually with that boyfriend, if I mentioned boyfriend with the store, we were walking.

There was an Abercrombie store right across from our dorm room, like our dorm building in downtown New York. And we went late at night. we went for a walk on the pier and we went and they were recarpeting the abracombie store and they had extra carpet and so we took a roll of carpet that was like a carpet scrap and it was like 13 by 13 it was huge and we took it back to my dorm room and that carpet in my dorm room for like two years it was a beautiful like plaid it's cool so you're a fan of apricombi no i mean i don't like i ever ever bought a single thing at abercambi but i had that free carpet that was really cool um i can't think of any style more opposite yourself than you wearing aproponby

Can you imagine? I remember when I worked at Chili's and you had to wear khaki paint colored shirt. And I was there one time and someone was like, oh, hey, are you working today? And I was like, no, I just wear this in my regular life. I was like, and they were like, sorry. I would never freaking wear this. You were on drugs. Of course. Okay. So let's talk about Coco Chanel and her boyfriend, Herman Dinklage, Dinklaga. I'll say Dinklaga. and their relationship and their collaboration with the Nazis. He was like a full-out Nazi. And I'm also going to hold space to talk later about Catherine Dior, who is the sister of Christian Dior. This is what, there's an Apple TV show called The New Look that just came out. I watched the first two episodes. It's pretty good.

I definitely want to finish it. But it is about how Catherine Dior was actually a resistance fighter. And she ended up in a concentration camp. And she was liberated. created in 1945 and she lived until 2008. So she deserves her own episode because she's definitely a hero of this time. And I'll get to that. So let's talk about Chanel herself.

Gabriel Bonhoire, Coco Chanel was born in 1883 on August 19th. She was born in like a small town in France. Her family was like unbelievably poor. Her parents weren't married. They would get married later and they would have 11 children. Chanel would make up stories about her childhood to like, you know, she'd lie about her age, she'd make her dad sound like a hero when like really they were just like a dirt poor family. Eventually Chanel and her sisters went to a poor house for children or they lived with nuns. And while she was living there, the nuns taught her two things. They taught her how to sew. And guess what the other thing they taught her is? how to dislike other people? Yep, specifically Jewish people.

They taught her how to hate Jewish people. So she definitely came out of that, come out of her childhood, very, very antisemitic, and she also knew how to sew. So she moved to Paris, and she would sing in cabarets in Paris, which sounds super fun. And I think I want to mention this later,

or maybe a couple times, but in the show, the new look, they really do a great job with like the visuals and like the ambiance and like Paris is so beautiful you know and like everyone is like starving to death and living in these beautiful apartments because like you know your stuff isn't worth anything anymore like you have like you know you still have the space and there'll be like these big empty apartments that belong to Jewish people that they would that the Nazis would like be like oh Chanel you can just take anything you want out of here you know like things like that so it's like

a beautiful background for a lot of terrible suffering I mean it must have been a hell of a time to be alive if you were not Jewish. Yeah. So a lot of her life, well, no, I mean, people in France were starving. All of them were. If you were Jewish, you were sent to a concentration camp. If you weren't, we're still starving. So this starts off and it started this, she moves to Paris in the 1920s, but I'm talking like during World War II. Okay. Is when you get like the ambia, the, in the show, they do a really good job of like showing like visually what it was like, you know, in this beautiful city, but people, everyone is starving. Like Christian Dior is in a breadline, you know, like there's no food um so a lot of but we'll get to that a little bit later so a lot of chanelle's

life is bookmarked by men that she met and gave her opportunities she never married she never had any kids but she had a ton of affairs and these men would like give her things that was like the kind of affair where like the guy gives you jewels you know like here's an emerald I don't either obviously but like that's the kind of like fancy affair it is her first big affair was in 1906 with a French ex-Calvary officer and textile air named Atienne Balson. She became his mistress. That's when she gets to live this big rich lifestyle. He just gives her an apartment. He gives her a lot of things. And since he was a textile air, he also had a lot of fashion contacts and he had a lot of extra fabric and he was able to buy some fabric

for her to sew and create with at like a really cheap price. So she was ready to kind of start her fashion line. In 1908, she started another affair with Balson's friend, Captain Arthur Edward Boy Capel. So everybody calls him Boy. He was love of her life. They were together for nine years. But even during those nine years, like she was still just his mistress. He got married during that time to an English aristocrat named Lady Diana Wyndham. And she didn't have an affair. she had a boyfriend who then had an affair with her while being married actually technically he had an affair with his wife while dating her i think he was already always with someone else you know like that when i say like had an affair with it's like i mean she's like a mistress

like she's the person that he like you know gives fancy things to sets her up in an apartment but like he has a family you know all these all these men i don't get one of these become someone's mistress, you mean? Yes, I want to be the mistress. Right, right, right. To a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy Capel died on December 22nd, 1919 in a car accident,

and she will always, you know, say that she references that. And that was, like, something tragic in her life that she would always always reflect back to. But those two men that she was, you know, in relationships with, they helped her buy a store. So she wanted to be like a designer. She had like a good fashion sense. They brought her a store to sell hats. So this time it's still pretty Edwardian. There's like corsets and like those huge, huge hats that people wear.

And she would add a little something like a feather or a jewel or something. And people really liked them. They became pretty fashionable. She opened up a little shop in DuVille, France, which is on the beach. And it was during World War I. And it was a really good time to have a store in the, in a beach town. of course all the rich people in Paris left Paris during World War I and they went to these beach towns. And so she was able to have her sister and her aunt would wear the hats on the boulevard and people would be like, oh, where did you get that and like want to go to the store? So she starts to get a little bit more popular with like her hats. She also starts to design dresses. She designs dresses in jersey fabric, which is like an inexpensive to make fabric, but she would make like fancy dresses. She got a lot of that from Balson. He had gotten her like all this extra fabric. And she didn't really, like, invent anything.

Other people were doing it. But she was kind of pulling things from menswear in a way that was different and just starting to design around. Another man she met during this time was the Grand Duke, DeVitri Pavlich of Russia. And she would design for the Russian ballet. And so she would do, like, all sorts of, like, you know, international things as well. In the 1920s, she started to create her perfume, the Chanel number five. And this is where she's going to make a shit ton of money is from.

selling the perfume because it's like low cost it's uh very unique she used they use like very natural fragrances it's the same recipe that they use on it today so that's where she may end up making a ton of money um there's a little bit of like a myth behind why it's called chanel number five there's one that she just loved the number five that was your favorite number another that you know the the person who had designed the perfume like the actual perfumer person gave her like 20 options and this was the fifth one you know all sorts of reasons but either way it becomes very very popular um it's in a classic little bottle it's like a whiskey bottle so it's kind of like a it's not as like the style then was to have those like really like beautiful perfume bottles and hers

was like very simple and people really loved it um so in the 20s she sold chenelle number five to a company run by two brothers they were the vert the verthammer brothers there's pierre and another one. And they gave her 10% of the sales and they messed marketed it like around the world. She made so much money from this. Like this is where she's really going to make all of her money. The Verhammers, they were Jewish and she would, she's later going to try to get out of the contract and say that she was like tricked by them and, you know, we used a lot of her anti-Semitic beliefs to try to get out of that. They ended up escaping to, to the United States. And it's a bit out of order, but the Vertheimers do sell

Chanel Number 5 to someone who is not Jewish to protect their investment and we'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit. Have you sold Chanel number 5? I'm sure I have. I can't remember though. Yeah, I don't know either. I'm going to put on my perfume.

Currently, the one that I've been wearing for like six years, no, 10 years, is no longer available in America. So if we have anybody who lives in Europe and wants to hook me up with some perfume, send us an email. Doomedeplepot at gmail.com, and I will. What is it?

It's Artelier Cologne Vanilla Incense. It just is really good. Okay. And you can't get it anywhere. So in the meantime, while Chanel is doing this, she's building her fashion business, she's building her perfume business. She also continues to meet a lot of rich and very influential people. She becomes really good friends with Winston Churchill.

They go hunting together. There's pictures of them, like hunting together. he just adores her there's like an anecdotal story where he was upset about something and like cry it in her lap he just loves Chanel she has an affair

with the Duke of Westminster Hugh Richard Arthur Gravesner and he was the richest man in the world so now she's like moving up you know as high as you can go he buys her

you know a house all the things she knew Edward the Prince of Wales the one who married Wallace Simpson who advocated the throne you remember that yeah

so she's friends with him. This circle is rich and aristocratic and they are very anti-Jewish. You know, Edward and Wallace Simpson, they will, you know, meet with Hitler at the Eagles nest. You know, like they were much more like, we can have peace with the Nazis, not like we should stop them. What? I, do you know why they hate the shoes so much? Like, what was the thing? It's, I mean, it's like, it is, a tale as old as time, you know, there's, it's otherizing another group of people. In Germany, you know, in Germany it stemmed a lot from, I mean, so I was looking up like other riots when I, like, besides like the Nika riots of history. And like, there's a list

on Wikipedia of like famous riots in history. 95% of them are riots because people are trying to kick Jews out of their town. You know, it's just like an easy otherization, an easy person, an easy group of people to blame. They handled the money, which they did because that was the only job they were allowed to have in a lot of history because um yeah it's like you force them into a certain thing then you're angry that they can control that thing yep i mean is that why hollywood is what it is now it's because they weren't allowed to do anything but like entertainment entertainment is considered lowly yeah a lot of it is like that and people are complaining like now the jewish will control the understanding it's like yeah they were what were they supposed to do

And it's not like they're having like meeting talking about Judaism and Hollywood. It just like happens to be that way. You know? And like the bank thing like this, this, it's a side, but drives me out of my freaking mind. In the Bible, it says that you cannot charge interest on loans. And obviously people needed that. So that's why like Jewish people would be in banking and they would be able to give loans to Christians when Christians weren't allowed to give loans to them. And it just like drives me fucking out of my mind because how can you quote the Bible for things like anti-abortion but not mention that you shouldn't have interest.

not just remove all interest from student loans. Fuck you. Well, hold on. Wasn't the theory? I'm not going down this road. Like, I feel like we're going to get into it. Well, you can't use the Bible to justify one thing and then conveniently forget another thing.

But they made the Jews do it because the Christians couldn't charge interest. Correct. And now in America, Christians are like, we don't supposed to be a Christian nation, but we're also going to have these predatory loans, you know? I'm saying Congress is using the Bible to justify some things, but not other things. You don't have Congress. Okay. Thank you.

That's where the confusion was. Okay. I don't think that Jewish people have a secret cabal against anyone or do anything secret or nefarious. I do not believe that. We're literally heading towards the Kanye West route right now. We're absolutely not. We are not. I'm 100% right.

I'm not saying anything wrong. So anyway, so she is with a group of people who are, you know, very anti-Jewish. They're also very homophobic, which is funny because, like, all these affairs are all, like, a little gay, you know? There's gay people around, of course, like always, you know, it's not like, it's not like they didn't know gay people, but they still have a solar homophobic. She also becomes addicted to morphine. She will shoot up morphine every day for most of her life just to, like, survive. So she's also addicted to drugs. this is when she allegedly invents the little black dress but like you know it's just like

something repeatable and something that people can count on like her her style and that's how they become become pretty classic in the 1930s samuel goldwin of hollywood gives her a million dollars in 1920 money then 1930 money to go to california and design for the movies so she goes to california gets to america goes to california and it doesn't work out people don't love her, love her fashion sense in, in Hollywood as much as they thought that they would. And her costumes don't really get a lot of attention. And she goes back to Europe and was like, it didn't work out. But she still got a ton of money from that. Her fashion line, the Chanel Couture, was a lucrative business. Four thousand people worked there by 1935. So a ton of

people. She has some rivalries with like other designers, but it was very successful. So now it's the late 1930s. And the Nazis are coming to Paris. And right before in 1939, there was a labor strike of garment workers, which we just talked about recently. So there's a labor strike. And the workers lock the doors of Chanel. And they're like, we need to be treated better. You know, we need to be in a union. And she says, she's such an asshole.

She says, like, oh, I just do this for, you know, I do this because I love it. She's like, why don't I just sell the company to you, my workers? Like, I'll sell a company to you. You guys can be in charge. but she, like, knew they couldn't afford it, you know, like, they could never do that. So they had to say, like, no. And then she ended up closing her business right before the war. She said that she did it because to be patriotic to France, but really she did it to say, fuck you to her workers.

She didn't need the money. And it was kind of a hassle. So she just, like, stopped doing it for a little bit. We'll talk about Dior later when I talk about Catherine Dior in another episode someday. But he did keep working. He worked for a fashion house. And a lot of them would make, you know, they would make gown. for Nazis and they it it is a thing to be like how could you do that but also like everyone's

starving my family needs to eat you know and like someone's going to do this so yeah what do I mean yeah I mean Hugo boss made uniforms but like yeah like what are you supposed to do what are you supposed to do and like you need to employ people like you know you need to I don't know and they all did it bear did it Volkswagen did it like they don't yeah ibn sold wait i'm going to get libel for this i think i bm sold the machines that they used to tabulate like people in the concentration camps or something or something like yeah yeah yeah so like there's you know something that but she'll you know she she actually stopped her business during the war um but it was mostly because of the labor labor strike um another

thing in the new look that they do a good job of is like yes everything's beautiful and people are the people in paris are so scared you know so the jewish people have been taken out of paris there's the french resistance which is you know people on the ground trying to get the nazis out but the nazis are in paris there's a nazi flag on the eiffel tower you know and if you do anything wrong they will kill you like there is no like it is it is a very tense everyone is very everything is very tense. Everyone is afraid. But a place where they did always have food and always have whatever they wanted was at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. And that's where Chanel lived during World War II. She lived at the Ritz with the Nazis. That's where they lived. They had plenty of

food. There's quotes in the book of people being like, oh, it's such a privilege in war to be fat and happy. You're like, yeah, because everyone's fucking starving. And you're having like, yeah, because everyone's fucking starving and you're having like three course meals fed to you like presented to you by waiters who are fucking terrified because if they mess anything up you will shoot them you know I mean they're just like having it would be nice to have that would be nice to have that kind of privilege for real so I mean but they're just ignoring everything all the atrocities and just like you know living there so this is where Chanel meets Baron Hans Guter von Dinklage um Diklaga maybe I think I might say Dinklage I think this is happening but um his name was

spots that was the a nickname for him it means sparrow um because he was a spy and he was a nazi spy a good german spy for so long he spoke english he spoke french he spoke german obviously he spoke a bunch of languages um and there's a story in in sleeping with the enemy in the book where during world war two when he's like visibly a nazi like you know but he had been spying and pretending to be all these other things for a while he sees a woman that he had known when he was spying in a different part of France and he was like oh hi how are you and she sees that he's wearing this like SS uniform you know and she was just like how fucking dear you you were a spy this whole time she's like I believe that you were a you know like a French person who was working

really hard and you were poor with the whole time you were a spy you know it's like once it's like listen ma'am being a spy is it actually the worst thing I do the worst thing I do is being a Nazi yeah yes that's really true um he was actually married to a jewish woman named maximilian Henrietta von Schoenbock and they were both Nazi spies even after they got divorced in 1935 because she was Jewish and so that he could go and do other things because it wasn't

even in their circle it wasn't safe for him to be married to her but they both kept spying they like kind of like overlooked her Jewishness because she was such a good spy for the Nazis which was fucked up I mean yeah and then also incidentally everyone in the story dies in the 1970s

like they weren't put to trial for any of this. Right. So she died in the 1970s as well. But so Spots is his nickname. He met Chanel at the Ritz and it's definitely, you know, the thought is that as early as 1941, Chanel was working for General Walter Schellenberg.

He was an SS officer. He was chief of the Abwere, which is like their counterintelligence and he was just like one of the biggest Nazis in Paris and she was like kind of doing little things for him for a long time since

the 1940s. Schellenberg was a very very bad guy. He was tried in Nuremberg. He got six years in prison for war crimes. He was released after he had in the 1950s he had an incurable liver disease so they let him go to go out and die on his own. And she

Chinell paid for his medical care and living expenses for the rest of his life. Jeez. You know? Friends in high places. For real. Chanel's nephew, he was actually captured by the SS. I think he was more of a resistance fighter for real. And she used her connections to get him out, which is understandable.

Definitely. But by the Nazis, she was given the code name Westminster, which was like a nod to her affair with the Duke of Westminster. And she's not the only woman that collaborated with the Nazis. A lot of like regular women did. Like they would sleep with the Nazis like in sex work or, you know, different ways to survive, you know, like because they needed food. And, you know, but some of them were like, if these guys are going to be in charge, then like, I want to date one, all the things.

When the war ended, a lot of those women were called horizontal collaborators. You get it. and they had their head shaved right yep they had their head shaves were preyed down the street and i read a quote that was like not a hair on chanelle's head was touched you know because like she was definitely one of them yeah if you're looking at the definition look i kind of get it like that's why you were like oh that she was betting on the nazis and i was like i don't know man like i think that if i was in that class and i was in that moment and i was like these guys are kind of nuts like i don't really want to fight them because they're going to do horrible like i don't know like right but plenty of people didn't actually go on spy missions and she actually did so you think it was because she actually bought into the ideology it wasn't like uh i'm fucked if i don't go along with this no i think she bought into it and she was like this is going to be great for me you know she's like she tries to get her um i don't know when i write this but she tries to get chenelle number five back from the vertheimers and she invokes a thing called

arian law which is like do you have people can't own anything. There's no way they own my business and she tries to get it back from them. But she doesn't know that they have sold it to someone who is not Jewish. And then they send someone, they send their own perfume spy. His name's Gregory Thomas. He seems awesome. He's like six, eight. He's like really tall and like comes from America, sneaks all the way through France, steals the recipe and brings up back to America. So they can start mass producing Chanel Lover Five on their own, which I love. And I want to know more about that story sometime. But in 1943, Chanel did go on a mission for the Nazis

to Madrid. They called it Operation Model Hout, which is Model Hat, because she was a designer. She was supposed to get to Churchill and get Churchill to stop the war. She knew him, and that's what they had pressured her to do. And this was a specific

side hustle deal by the SS to be the ones that negotiate peace, because this is when the war is coming to an end. And they're trying to figure out how they can, Nazis can, like, It still exists as like a thing, but like make peace with with the English. She brought her friend Vera Lombardi with her.

And there's one in the in the declassified German file, they said that Lombardi was invited because Chanel and her were like girlfriends, like lesbians, but I don't hear that anywhere else. I don't know if that's true or not. But anyway, she invited her friend with her to Madrid. And it's a great scene in the show The New Look. But before she could try to get to Churchill, Lombardi told on her she told the British embassy what Chanel was trying to do

that Chanel was specifically working with with spots and the Nazis and the SS to have this meeting in the um so she had to go back to Paris why is the meeting why is the meeting nefarious it's like they're not trying to kill Churchill it's trying to get in a room with him right but she they're getting a room with him to make peace with the Nazis which is not what Churchill wanted to do you know yeah I don't think it's not in affairs so you it's like Churchill's like a wet noodle like he can negotiate on his own behalf like he can make an argument sure but she's like it's a it's a that the mission is to keep nazis in power it's not to like not have nazis anymore

sure yeah okay that's your point um so at the end of world war two she's like a little bit like fuck like this like um all of the Nazis are leaving um they are being tried for their crimes she put a sign on the door of her store that was selling just her perfume and said that there's a free bottle of Chanel number five for all the American GIs, which definitely helped like the public opinion of her because there would be like lines out the door for soldiers to take Chanel number five back to, you know, to their wives and girlfriends in the United States. And in Wikipedia, there's a quote that said that they would have been outraged if the French police had touched a hair on her head because they were like so. like excited to be able to bring that back that like fancy french thing um later she would come to an agreement with the vertheimers and she would still get a big percentage of chenelle number five um really she just made like millions and millions of dollars from chenelle number five even after the war um she Churchill directly got her off she was going to be arrested and charged

with spying and collaborating with the Nazis but churchill got her off it's probably because she knew that many of the English aristocracy were Nazi sympathizers, like Edward and Wallace Simpson. Wait, what? Like, I just told you. Like, I just said that Prince Edward, who was going to be king, spent time with Wallace Simpson at the

Eagles Nest with Hitler. And they were like, we should negotiate with them. And they were also very anti-Semitic, and they were like, we should have peace with these. When Churchill was like, absolutely not. Wait, so why was, hold on. The why was Churchill, like, not like that?

Because he wasn't like that. So, so basically, Bramard would have got along with Nazi Germany if it weren't for Winston Churchill. And like, yeah, not just, yes. A lot of it is because Winston Churchill's was working his, he was one of the allies and their thing was, we cannot allow, sorry, allow Nazi Germany to exist.

And he knew if we, if you negotiate with Hitler, he's going to kill you like he's not going to stop you know well member churchill's like you know speech about fighting on the beaches he's like we're going to defend this island till till the death like we're not going to negotiate with them now i wonder if he did it because he literally was like we can't see control to hitler or because of the Aryan stuff i think it's i think it's the control thing you know probably probably probably now that you said that yeah it's probably just mostly that and like he was right like we couldn't like imagine if we'd all be Nazis you know I don't think I would have been a part of that cohort yeah you on the other hand I'd be here you

would not be here I would not be here yeah um so in 2023 there were some papers that suggested that Chanel was actually secretly part of the French resistance but I don't believe it um but I can look in that later if someone you know really really believes of it but um But she ended up, you know, kind of living in Switzerland for a little bit, finally going back to Paris and totally becoming more popular. You know, and as we know, in the 1960s, Jackie Kennedy is wearing her Chanel suit when JFK is shot. So it's like definitely back in fashion. I also was like, and that doesn't, that totally makes sense.

Like this is, I don't know if this is related, but it feels like it's related. Like the weekend before JFK was killed, he was in Florida meeting with Werner von brown about the space race you know so we certainly brought over the nazis that like were helpful in a whole different way i think i think we should maybe talk about that so many too because that story is just like so interesting um so chanelle lived until 1971 she was 87 years old she um went to sleep and said to her maid you see this is how you die and then just died you know where she died Ritz at the Ritz. She lived there for over 30 years, which also sounds dope.

I looked up the Ritz. You can actually rent the suite that she lived in for $40,000 euros a night. Jesus fucking Christ. 40,000 euros a night. That is insane. I love that. So when she died, when Chanel died in the 1970s, the first lady of France, Madame Pompidot was organizing a hero's tribute to her because she was so famous,

but French intelligence agencies released documents showing that she had a bit of spy, and they ended the funeral plans. So they didn't even have the big funeral for her that they wanted to because it started to hear some of the things that she had done. And yeah, I guess that's it. I feel like it's okay to, you know, like her clothes and like. her things but we don't need to quote her as a businesswoman because she would have been in business with the Nazis forever if that had had been an option she was you know

sleeping with a Nazi for many many many many years she went to all their parties she knew all the big ones she met him her hemler like she was you know in their circles and there's a little bit of like maybe she didn't survive but also like she did it because she wanted to be rich and she was very very very very rich really how rich like I keep saying very I'm going to do it Cocoa Chanel net worth. So it says when she died, she's worth $5 million in 1971 money,

which is oh, it's worth less today due to inflation. Nope. That's not true. It's impossible. That is impossible. That is a terrible job. AI. No, it is about

$38 million. That's pretty rich. Personal wealth. Yeah. Yeah. good for her well it's not good for her i guess you know all the things just like know what you know and think about who you're thinking about in these months of history so one thing i looked up that would so you talked about christian d'ior and christian d'ur's sister you should just do an episode on that family because another one of the sister yeah francois d'or that's listed here as a French socialite and neo-Nazi

underground financier. Amazing. Let's definitely I'll definitely do that because that's it's super interesting because you're like and then they are these like super iconic designs on this like

time in the world and yeah that's crazy. This man this Ritz room is so beautiful. I love I love a French apartment like everyone does. You know, it's like the high ceilings and the all of the like outlining and the things on the walls and the beautiful chandeliers and just like, oh my God, gorgeous.

Yeah, I'm down like a weird rabbit hole now looking up like Carl Lagerfeld, you've San Loran. We could tell you. Maybe I'll do a fashion designer series because I would love to, you know, love to dig into their lives. these guys are so unbelievably cool like just the wiki picture of you've seen a lot on i was like damn i got that's a cool looking dude you know who has a cool picture is the ducco of westminster

that she had an affair with um that when he was like the biggest he was the um you know the what you called it oh my god okay hold on this is going to be a little bit so the current duku of westminster looks like a big old nerd but the one during that time when she had an affair with him, man, he looked cool, I'm going to find him.

He was the Hugh Grosner one. I'm going to send it to you into this chat, but like he looked awesome. And he was the richest man in the world, which is crazy. My other thought as you were talking was being like outlandishly successful back then.

he does look cool and he actually looks like the current duke of he looks a lot like the current duke i guess they're related right yeah i guess if the current duke of rest was sort of dressed cooler and didn't just like look like a nerd then like yeah um no my yeah wait they're all related yeah look the names they're all the same name yeah that makes sense i mean it's a oh my god you're going to say can we I wanted to make sure we talk about Kate Middleton

and what you think is happening with her what I was saying was it occurs to me like looking at this stuff I'm like man like you really didn't have to do a crazy lot to be like super successful and stand out from people like it's I don't know it just felt like it was

it would be easier to be super successful back than it is like today but who knows Kate Milton I don't I don't know I don't know I don't really follow the royal family very much I don't like it's weird um but this is like it's really weird and this is I mean I've watching this like hilarious like 25 part series on Instagram um and there's like William had an affair there's potential love child there's like did Kate have a mental breakdown is she in a coma

is she alive you know it's very fun I mean it's been a very fun week I feel she had a I don't know if mental breakdown is like the right word but I feel like it's potential that she just like is mad and not gonna put up with their shit anymore you know it's I don't totally agree with that because it feels like she was the one that like is really into that life more than anybody else but I mean but I also feel like because okay yes because I feel like if I was ever going to do a um an episode on Kate Melton I was going to call it Kate Melton she understood the assignment like she was was super in, you know, but maybe finding out that there's a baby with this woman that

he's having an affair with. She was just like, this is too much for me. What are you basing that on? I'm basing it on like, I'm not going to, it's all over the news. He had an affair with this woman. He did. William had an affair with a woman? Yes, many years ago. And Kate found out and then she has a older child that might be Williams. And then she also might be pregnant right now. We also haven't seen her in a while. Her name is lady. I mean, this is all conspiracy theory. It's very fun. Her name is Lady Rose Hanberry.

And it was like, that is definitely true that he didn't affair with her. When they were married? Yeah. What did you sit with, like, cheating in that family? Exactly. So, anyway, it's very exciting. I've listened to, I've watched a ton of conspiracy theory stuff. It's fun to yell about.

I mean, what are we, you know. Taylor, you should. And this woman's married, too. oh yeah yeah yeah it's like a small weird circle and this and then you know listening to the story it's literally always been like that so i um so one thing i recommend is um there's a four or five part series on princess diana and the world family on that podcast keep telling you about called stuff you're wrong about and it's awesome it talks so much about the history of the family and why they are the way they are and why they only marry each other and all the stuff

around that, so I highly recommend it. I know, it's wild. I mean, you could just watch The Crown. I did, I retweeted something, maybe, I don't know if I did it from, or re-instagram something, someone was like, I would pay so much money to be in the group chat of the Crown writers right now because people who are writing in the Crown are like, what is going on? Because they're up to, principally, a meeting Kate in the Crown, which is fun.

Yeah, I never, I never got into that unspisingly. Man, so much intrigue. Yeah, her husband looks like a nerd, too. He doesn't. He's a lot older on her. All of like nerds. With infinite money. With infinite money.

Like, honestly, like, she's fine, but it says, like, on her Wikipedia page, it's like, she was a model. And you're like, what?

It doesn't make sense. She's not everybody. You know, like, just because she was rich. She had to, like, be a model. Was she born into royalty? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes, I think she was actually, like, more powerful than him. He's the seventh Earl of Durham. So stupid. But, like, it's interesting. Wait, she went and got a degree from Open University. Is that a real thing?

I know, doesn't that sound fake? I don't know what that is either. I'm not going to look at up. No, but it just, it just strikes me. Like, these people's jobs are just to, like, dress up and go places. Like, that's really where their career is. And we're. They're given billions of dollars to do that.

Yep. So wild. It is wild. And I love, there's something, something I was like, oh, we're just talking to my mom about this because she watches the crown. And my mom's here. I think of my mom's here. She was so glad she was here when I got in the car accident.

My mom's here and she was talking about the crown and how they're like, oh, you know, if we took all this away from the British people, they'd be so sad. And I'm like, I don't know, would they be like, would we have the money for houses? I don't know. I did, there was a recent, a poll that the British people actually do love the monarchy. The intrigue of it all is just very entertaining, I think, but. And there was also, our friend Lindsay from our old job is actually in the UK right now and her and I are messaging because she was like, I'm at dinner with a bunch of Brits and they don't care at all where Kate Middleton is. They're like, they're like, she can have her privacy and she's like, what are they talking about? Like in Britain, they don't care as much as America right now. And we are just having the best time with this conspiracy.

I hope she's not dead, but it's just, it's been fun week of conspiracy theories around the royal family. I'm glad we were able to wrap our podcast episode about Coco Chanel with Kate Middleton. Honestly, if we didn't mention it, we would be wrong because it is the thing that's happening in the world right now. Which means what is really happening and what are they trying to distract us with, you know, from? Taylor is putting on her tin pole hats right now. I am. It's pretty fun. I have one message. Nadine and I were talking a little bit,

our friend Nadine, about labor and, you know, her and her husband are both in unions in Canada. And somehow, you know, it does work in some places, but it is, you know, like, Like, she sent me a quote from Robert Reich. He's a person on Twitter. I don't know what his actual job is, but he like, you know what that is. But he said, the two richest humans on the planet Earth have companies fighting in court to dismantle the government agency that holds corporations accountable for illegal union busting.

They know that they can't stop workers from organizing. So now they want to destroy the whole system. You know, so just like, if someone's union busting, they're not, they're, they would pay you nothing, you know. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not advocating. for, yeah, obviously they don't want unionizations. Yeah. That is clear. Very clear.

Cool. That's it. I'm going to rent a car and go see Dan Carlin on Thursday. Love it. Love it. Oh, did you see the sickers? I did. I did.

You send me a text with them. Yeah, they're cool. Very cool. Please write to us, DubeniflPod at gmail.com. Find us on the socials at DovenfelPod. We will rejoin you in a couple of days with my episode, which we will discuss, or I'll discuss with Taylor Shortblade.

Woohoo. Thanks, Mark. Sweet. Thanks, Taylor.