Black Canvas: Larry A. Lesley x Slimmy® GARBO Collaboration

Celebrating the spy in all of us, Slimmy GARBO is a tribute to the late Juan Pujol Garcia (AKA Agent Garbo), who worked as a double agent for MI5 in Britain during WWII. In a grand scheme of masterful deception, he duped Hitler into allowing the Allied forces to secure victory in Normandy, triggering the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany's occupation.

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Juan Pujol Garcia was a Spaniard born in 1912, who entered adulthood during the Spanish Civil War. During that time, he detested the authoritarian and fascist rule of Nationalist Francisco Franco, who became the dictator of Spain until 1975. Importantly, he equally disliked the opposition Republican forces, for which he was called to serve; they arrested his mother and sister, accusing them of being counter-revolutionaries. By today's standards, he was a true innovator, with a strongly disagreeable temperament toward anything that did not serve the greater good. With the Third Reich knocking on continental Europe's door, Juan Pujol Garcia decided to become a spy.

Incredibly, Juan Pujol was rejected when applying for a spy position with the British Embassy in Spain. Undeterred, he created a false identity as a fanatical pro-Nazi Spanish official and successfully became a German agent. In true "if you can't beat them, join them, and then kick their ass" fashion, he broke the rules at every turn, eventually gaining the full support of the Third Reich. Hitler went on to fully fund his fictitious network of 27 agents, and at the same time, he was eventually hired by Britain's notorious MI5 secret service, who gave him the code name "Garbo."

In a masterful display of espionage, Garbo convinced the Germans that Allied forces would be building up and attacking via the Strait of Dover, as opposed to Normandy. His craft of mass deception was so convincing that his messages were being read by Hitler himself.

Based on Garbo's intel, the German Commander-in-Chief in the west refused to send extra troops to Normandy, and the rest is history.

The amazing story of Garbo is one of soul-searching, persistence, deception, determination, goodwill, and loneliness. Juan Pujol divorced his wife, relocated undercover to a farm in Venezuela, where he lived the remainder of his life in solitude.

Juan Pujol Garcia refused to accept the dreams of dragons and instead illuminated peace in the world through a masterful game of deception, one keystroke at a time.

Slimmy GARBO is a tribute to the unshakable calling for what is in our hearts so we can say we lived.