Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War

by Vaughan, Hal

  small, dark and simian … the personification of her own fashion … hung with every sort of necklace and bracelet which rattled as she moved. Her sitting room was lavish and she sat in a large armchair, a pair of tall Coromandel screens making an effective background. I perched, rather at a disadvantage; on a stool at her feet … I doubt that I or my tweed suit passed the test. For something to say I told her that Mrs. George Keppel had given me a Chanel necklace as a Christmas present. Immediately she asked me to describe the necklace.

  “No,” she said coldly, “that necklace certainly doesn’t come from my establishment.”

  Some biographers claim that Bendor came to Paris to see Chanel a few days after his wedding to Loelia.

  IN THE FALL of 1929 the American stock market crashed. U.S. securities worldwide soon showed a massive loss of $26 billion. In America, Great Britain, and on the Continent losses wiped out great fortunes. In Germany, political violence, general strikes, fear of Bolshevism, and hyperinflation eventually destroyed political stability, leading to the ascent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Fearing Hitler and German aggression the French began building the Maginot Line along a part of the French-German border.

  Grand Duke Dmitri married a rich young woman from New York, and Bendor at fifty still longed for a son. Nevertheless, Bendor remained Coco’s on-and-off lover, acting the spoiled, pampered, and sexually demanding self-indulgent “sport.”

  THE WALL STREET CRASH of Black Tuesday, on October 29, 1929, wrecked American industry and commerce and ushered in the Great Depression. Soon the bells tolled for Germany’s Weimar Republic as American loans and investments to the German government and industry came to an end. In France, the early tremors of a coming economic slowdown were apparent.

  Dincklage and his German half-Jewish wife, Maximiliane (called “Catsy”), now lived part time on France’s sun-drenched Côte d’Azur. For the Dincklage couple it was a sublime moment as they savored their good fortune, an assignment in France far from the German economic turmoil and the chaos of Berlin.

  Dincklage had earned this plum posting at a moment when nearly 6 million Germans were out of work. Coming from a family steeped in military tradition helped, but ten years of undercover work as a military intelligence officer had won him the friendship of General Walther von Brauchitsch, the man Hitler would later choose to be commander in chief of the German army, the Wehrmacht.

  Because Dincklage spoke impeccable French and English, his cover story as a fun-loving, sun-worshiping tennis man and sometime independent German merchant was easily accepted. Having a flirtatious beautiful wife with Jewish blood helped, and the couple mixed easily with the locals and a growing colony of German refugees. In 1930 the town records of Sanary-sur-Mer show Maximiliane von Dincklage receiving a residence permit from the Sanary Préfecture de Police along with a host of Italians and Germans. Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, and English writer Sybille Bedford, a German and Catsy’s half sister, were in residence. Later, Sanary became a refuge for a growing number of German intellectuals and Jews who fled Germany and Hitler’s Brown Shirt thugs.

  When at Sanary, the Dincklages lived a life of pleasure on the bountiful Mediterranean coast, with abundant sunshine, fresh fish, and local wine. As the author Marta Feuchtwanger, a German expatriate in Sanary in the early thirties, wrote: “We were by the sea. From the cliff you could see deep blue bays and an island some way off. There was also a private beach … the size of a handkerchief. The rocks were covered with a dense brush: rosemary, sage and thyme. The scent … was intoxicating.”

  At Sanary-sur-Mer the only disturbance might have been from the clacking of the metal boules as the locals and their guests played at pétanque, or the sounds of a wind-blown sea crashing against the shore. Sun, surf, fun, and good company, “arrosés” with a delightful local wine, were guaranteed pastimes at this haven a few kilometers from where the French war fleet lay at anchor in the harbor of Toulon, the headquarters of the French Mediterranean ships. The fleet and French naval headquarters at Toulon would become Dincklage’s principal target for the next few years; and Dincklage was financed through the German Embassy in Berlin from funds drawn from the coffers of the German military intelligence service and delivered via couriers. The flow of money paid Dincklage’s agents, bribed corrupt officials, and supported their lifestyle. Spatz and Catsy’s masters in Berlin were paying the Dincklages to build an espionage operation and to recruit a web of secret agents paid or blackmailed into penetrating the secrets of the French navy at their Toulon base, where secret plans and codebooks were stored. After settling in at Sanary and scouting out the Toulon naval base and fleet, Spatz and Catsy went about seeking potential recruits, men and women prepared to betray France.

  The Dincklages were not the first Abwehr agents to be assigned to France. The French Ministry of the Interior, Sûreté générale, reported that eight years earlier three German military intelligence agents (no first names were given), Herr von Brinkmann, Count von Brennkendorf, and Major Roll had arrived in France each bankrolled with 500,000 French francs. Their mission, according to a source in the Polish army high command, was to organize an espionage network in Paris to penetrate the French army high command and obtain French military war plans. No record was found that the three spies were arrested.

  Dincklage was the perfect man to head the Abwehr mission on the Côte d’Azur. His Berlin masters had picked a man with credentials and a pedigree. Dincklage was, after all, the grandson and son of senior military officers who had served German emperors in two wars. His mother, Lorry, was English-born. Her brother, Dincklage’s uncle, was an admiral active in German naval affairs. From his early life he had been steeped in the social graces of old Europe. From 1914 to 1918 he had been tested in the world war and in the trenches of the Russian front. Dincklage, in another time and place, would have been the ideal recruit for the CIA or the British secret service, MI6.

  Maximiliane had a Jewish mother, affording her the possibility of playing the role of an anti-Nazi German. It was good cover for an espionage assignment in France. And Maximiliane had solid credentials, too. A 1929 German Registry document tells of Dincklage’s 1927 marriage to Maximiliane, the daughter of a Jewish mother and an aristocratic father, a lieutenant colonel in the German army. The report claims Dincklage retired in 1929 as a major from military service—but this was a cover story invented by his Abwehr bosses in Berlin. Dincklage simply swapped a cavalry officer’s dress for the civilian garb of a clandestine intelligence officer. Indeed, French military intelligence prior to World War II documented “Dincklage, alias Spatz … from 1920 an officer of the German military intelligence service known as ‘Abwehr.’ ”

  It would take some time for the Sûreté, French military intelligence and counterintelligence, the Deuxième Bureau (often written in French as 2ème Bureau), to realize the extent of Dincklage’s clandestine work on the Côte d’Azur. A 1934 secret Sûreté document headed “Suspected Germans at Sanary” describes how Dincklage (then special attaché at the German Embassy in Paris) carried out operations in the South of France: “living in a number of villas at the Mediterranean resort village of Sanary-sur-Mer, 13 kilometers from Toulon; but settled at Villa Petite Casa for many years.” The report goes on to say: “The Dincklage couple kept the villa even during their absences from the Côte d’Azur.”

  Maximiliane von Schoenebeck, “Catsy,” the wife of Baron von Dincklage, sometime in 1930 when she spied for Germany near the French naval base at Toulon, France. (illustration credit 3.7)

  The Dincklages’ cover at Sanary included an active social life. They befriended their neighbors, including the English pacifist writer Aldous Huxley and his wife, Maria. Sybille Bedford, Catsy’s half sister, told of their adventures in diary entries from 1932, when, together with Catsy, Dincklage played at the casino and dined with Aldous and Maria Huxley. “There were Huxley picnics at sundown on beach or olive grove or cliff … we ate fried rabbit, zucchini flowers, and drank jugs of iced punch—
white wine, lemon, rum—made by Aldous himself.”

  Among the Dincklages’ friends at Sanary were French naval commissioner Charles Coton and his Jewish fiancée, Alida Léa Salomon. Coton described Sanary as “a small agreeable port filled with artists, writers, painters and sculptors. There was a passionate intellectual ambiance.” Everyone met at the two port cafes. “We danced at the Marine, and we talked at the Nautique.” Coton later wrote how he found Dincklage to be distinguished: “The Baron, known as Spatz, was an excellent tennis player and we played often. From what I knew they had left Germany because the regime didn’t please them and because it had created some problems for them for racial reasons, his wife was Jewish … Rightly or wrongly, I don’t know, the noise around Sanary was that he was a German spy, and that was one of the reasons he lived there since it was so close to the port of Toulon. In my case, he never spoke to me about military matters.”

  French naval lieutenant Charles Coton and his wife, Alida (Léa), in the mid-1930s. The couple were part of the Dincklage-Abwehr ring that spied for Germany at the French naval base at Toulon, France. (illustration credit 3.8)

  Coton’s disingenuous remark was a pure lie. In 1933, French counterintelligence agents were already tracking Coton suspecting the naval officer was one of Dincklage’s agents at the Toulon naval base. Later, Coton’s spying was confirmed and he would become the Dincklage courier, traveling between Toulon and Paris.

  IN 1930, Dincklage’s Berlin masters pulled him out of Sanary and gave him temporary duty as a diplomat at the German Embassy at Warsaw. There, he was befriended by Bernard du Plessix, a fellow diplomat stationed at the French Embassy. Author Francine du Plessix Gray, daughter of Bernard and his wife, Tatiana, remembered her parents befriending Dincklage in Warsaw. Plessix Gray writes that her father and mother found Dincklage “a charming Chargé d’affaires at the German embassy.” However, there is no record in the German foreign affairs archives of Dincklage being chargé d’affaires—the diplomatic term for the assignment of an officer as a temporary replacement for an absent ambassador.

  Yet there is no doubt that Spatz was in Warsaw through 1931. Despite the diplomatic dinners and balls, the city was torn with intrigue and beset by an economic crisis after the collapse of the Austrian Credit-Anstalt, the German Danat-Bank, and the official closure of all German banks. The financial crisis pushed Polish politics to the right, led by General Józef Pilsudski. In 1931, the shift in political sentiment toward the far right was even more pronounced in Germany where multimillionaires Alfred Hugenberg, Emil Kirdorf, Fritz Thyssen, and Kurt von Schröder agreed to lend financial support to the eight-hundred-strong Nazi party of Adolf Hitler.

  FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT was elected the thirty-second President of the United States in 1932. That same year Dincklage shed his diplomatic role in Warsaw to return to clandestine work at Sanary, where Catsy had remained during his absence.

  Chanel was nearing fifty. In middle age she remained ever fascinating, seductive, and ambitious—“attracting men and women of the arts.” Times were hard in France. Rich Americans were a disappearing breed. On the Côte d’Azur, a quarter of the luxury hotels closed. Still, between 1931 and 1935, the House of Chanel prospered—almost doubling business: employing 2,440 women in 1931 and nearly 4,000 by 1935, selling 28,000 dresses that year in Europe, the Near East, and America. In Britain, Chanel made her mark as English debutantes adopted her new designs for cotton evening dresses in piqué, lace, and organdy with innovative zippers.

  America beckoned.

  FOUR

  A HOLLYWOOD DIVERTISSEMENT

  God makes stars. I just produce them.

  —SAMUEL GOLDWYN

  ONE SUMMER DAY in 1930 in Monte Carlo, Grand Duke Dmitri introduced Chanel to Samuel Goldwyn, who wanted her to design clothes for his stars—Joan Blondell, Madge Evans, and Gloria Swanson. At the height of the American economic depression, with 13 million citizens out of work, Goldwyn offered Chanel a million dollars (about $14 million in today’s money) if she would spend a few weeks in Hollywood. Goldwyn’s offer came at a time when American, French, and German fashion journals were celebrating Chanel couture. Vogue magazine had gone so far as to hire no less than four top fashion photographers—Cecil Beaton, Edward Steichen, Horst, and Hoyningen-Huene—to capture her creations.

  It was the right moment for Chanel to leave Paris, to try something new. Her major competitor, Elsa Schiaparelli, was displaying her creations practically under Coco’s nose on the Place Vendôme around the corner from the Chanel atelier on the rue Cambon. “The Italian Wizard” was bent on “clipping Chanel’s wings … with her sudden flash of fantasy, surrealism, and extravagance that marked the 1930s.” Art and photography were major fashion influences, and Schiaparelli had made a mark working with Salvador Dalí to create surreal sweaters and leg-of-lamb felt hats.

  Hollywood would be challenging, but a trip to America would be a break from Paris and far from the shadow of Schiaparelli—Chanel was sure of her own skill and talent. She was, after all, a long-established and star purveyor of clothes, jewelry, and perfume, “the best-selling fragrance in the world.” Chanel had taken women “out of fussy clothes and hats … modeling them into jersey sportswear, with nautical details and beach pajamas—ideas she claimed she had stolen from Bendor and other men’s wear.”

  But the fashion business was lagging, hurt by the impact of the economic crisis in Europe. Goldwyn offered more than money. He was a publicity genius who might get the House of Chanel a piece of the American ready-to-wear garment trade—without the Chanel Paris label, of course.

  Later, Chanel would say, “Hollywood is the capital of bad taste. It was like an evening at the Folies Bergères. Once it is agreed that the girls were beautiful in their feathers there is not much to add—and when everything is super: super sex, super production it all looks alike—and it’s vulgar.” But Chanel couldn’t refuse the package: a cool million, along with Goldwyn’s well-oiled public relations expertise.

  Despite her declared distaste for Jews, Chanel signed up for a trial with Goldwyn, born Schmuel Gelbfisz—once an inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto. One author tells how Goldwyn did his best to keep Jews away from Chanel. Indeed, she was on good behavior, saying at the time: “There are great Jews, Israelites and there are youpins …” (a pejorative French slur for Jews).

  The mass-produced “talkies” of the time were quickly outdated and often no longer in synch with the rapidly changing fashions of the day. Knee-length garments and unisex fashions went out overnight and long slinky gowns came in the next day—or so it seemed. “What looked young last year looks old this season as longer fuller skirts, a higher waistline looked right, smart and becoming.” Something had to change. Goldwyn, a master at image building, now created another Hollywood fantasy. His stars were to be dressed by Chanel and his “women [moviegoers] would be able to see in our pictures the latest in Paris fashions.”

  CHANEL DECIDED that Marie Sophie Godebska, her aging Polish “Misia,” had to come along to Hollywood, if nothing else to charm Goldwyn in his native Polish. And Misia needed a break. Her troubles were a sordid Paris story of debauchery in the libertine late 1920s. She and her husband, José-Maria Sert, had been in love with a nineteen-year-old delectable Georgian princess and novice sculptress: Roussadana Mdivani, known as Roussy. Exceedingly beautiful and manipulative, Roussy had come to Paris with her refugee parents and was studying art when the fifty-year-old José fell for the teenager. Then Cupid struck again when Misia, too, fell for her charms. Paris tongues began to talk: “An inseparable trio … a sinister threesome … they drug her—use her.” Roussy’s “Tatar charm had captivated the Sert couple.” Chanel had warned her friend to stop playing with fire. Instead, Misia gave José-Maria tacit approval to share Roussy’s bed. Now Paris rumors spread about how Misia was intimate with Roussy—and how Chanel was intimate with Misia. Of the latter, Misia’s biographers stated, “Coco and Misia were seen together so constantly and their relations wer
e so highly charged that it was said they were lovers.”

  Homosexual and heterosexual affairs were common among Chanel’s clique, as was the use of morphine, cocaine, and other drugs. The Serts; Cocteau and his new lover, French film actor Jean Marais; Serge Lifar; Étienne de Beaumont; painter Christian Bérard; and artist and editor Paul Iribe were all substance abusers. Indeed, by 1935 Chanel herself would be dependent on morphine-based sedol. Inconstant and whimsical, she paid the medical expenses to wean Cocteau off the drug, and yet in a magazine interview, she described him as “a snobbish little pederast who did nothing all his life but steal from people.”

  ALTHOUGH BOTH WERE fervent Catholics, José-Maria Sert divorced Misia in a civil court proceeding. The middle-aged José ran off with then-twenty-two-year-old Roussy after arranging a civil marriage in The Hague. Misia was devastated.

  To the beat of Goldwyn’s star-making drums, Chanel took a heartbroken Misia and a battalion of models, assistants, and seamstresses to the New World in the spring of 1931 aboard the Norddeutsche Lloyd SS Europa. Embarking from Calais, the luxury liner sailed the great circle route at 27.5 knots, landing in New York five days later. The ship’s manifest noted Chanel’s birth date as 1889 instead of 1883. She had somehow arranged to shave six years off her life; it would not be the last time she would lie about her age.

  At a suite in the Hotel Pierre overlooking Central Park on Fifth Avenue, Chanel spoke to the press, in the words of the New York Times, “not as an animated picture star but as a shrewd businesswoman.” Dressed in a simple rose-red jersey sport ensemble with a white knit blouse and a very Chanel collar and cuffs of white piqué, “a slight, charming brunette with bobbed hair told reporters [through an interpreter] long hair would be coming back into general fashion soon. If a few smart women wear their hair long the rest will follow.”