Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [179]
My mother greatly admired Arletty. She considered that her affair with the German was just a sentimental matter . . . There was never a betrayal on her part . . . My mother was faithful in her friendships. The only person with whom she broke up because of the war was Chanel, who played a double or triple game.42
While one appreciates Antoinette d’Harcourt’s suspicions about Gabrielle, unfortunately proof will almost certainly never be possible—especially as Antoinette d’Harcourt’s papers were all burned in a fire.
In 1943, Gabrielle was to take part in a bizarre episode. Possibly at von Dincklage’s suggestion, she apparently decided she should help negotiate a peace settlement. Gabrielle was by no means alone in believing that this would be the speediest end to the war. (Her friendship with men of standing, such as Westminster and Churchill, may have encouraged her.) Her first step was to summon Captain Momm to the rue Cambon to lay out her plan. Momm, we remember, was von Dincklage’s friend and the person who had interceded on André Palasse’s behalf to get him out of prison.
Gabrielle’s plan had her act as messenger to initiate peace talks between Churchill and the German High Command. Churchill was due to visit Madrid after the Tehran Conference, and Gabrielle said that he had agreed to see her on his way back. At first stupefied, Theodor Momm was eventually won over and took her “peace proposal” to Berlin. With Momm as her emissary, Gabrielle’s scheme was at first brushed aside. But then the new director of German foreign intelligence, the ambitious young colonel Walter Schellenberg, became interested. Risking execution if discovered, he was himself looking for a way to negotiate with the Allies, and agreed, naming Gabrielle’s mission Operation Modelhut (model hat). Even more extraordinary than that, in early 1944, Gabrielle apparently visited Berlin to meet Walter Schellenberg, with von Dincklage as her escort. (Our one piece of evidence for this is Schellenberg’s testimony in his subsequent trial.)43
Schellenberg decided Gabrielle should travel to Madrid to set up her meeting with Churchill via Sir Samuel Hoare, the British ambassador. As her safety net with the British, however, Gabrielle wanted the Germans to bring along Vera Bate-Lombardi—from internment in Italy—an acquaintance of Winston Churchill’s. At this point, the two women’s stories diverge. Vera afterward claimed that Gabrielle sent a German officer to Italy with a letter asking her to return to Paris and help Gabrielle reopen Chanel.44 Having refused, Vera was subsequently arrested as a British spy. (Vera believed Gabrielle had caused this.) According to Gabrielle, she waded in on Vera’s behalf and got her out of a Roman prison.
Vera next came to Paris, and later said that instead of reopening her salon there, Gabrielle told her that it was in Madrid she wanted help with a salon. Vera went along with this, although, as it turned out, neither she nor Gabrielle trusted each other. When they arrived in Spain, Gabrielle apparently went to see the British ambassador to present him with her plan. He informed her that Churchill was not now visiting Spain; he was unwell and returning to England via Cairo and Tunisia. (It is highly unlikely that Churchill had ever agreed to meet Gabrielle in these times.) Meanwhile, in Gabrielle’s discussion with the ambassador, she omitted telling him that Vera was also in Madrid. This was a mistake because Vera, meanwhile, had arrived at the embassy and was in another room denouncing Gabrielle as a German agent.45
Vera’s request to be returned to Italy was refused, and she duly wrote to Churchill. Telling him she wasn’t a spy but a loyal British subject, she begged for his assistance. Gabrielle also wrote to Churchill, explaining that she had been “obliged to address someone rather important to get her [Vera] freed and be allowed to bring her down here [Madrid] with me.” She went on to tell Churchill that she realized that this had put Vera