Coco Chanel Was Given a Secret Code Name and a Mission From the Nazis
All of the records of Chanel’s time spent as a Nazi spy remains in a collection of documents by the French Secret Service. All of the documents are in French, and they are only available in person, but they have been translated and summarized in a book called Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War by Hal Vaughan. Her spy name was “Westminster”, since she used to date the Duke of Westminster, and her official agent number was F-7124, which is nowhere near as cool as 007, but maybe all of the cool numbers were taken.
French Secret Intelligence figured out that Heinrich Himmler gave her the task of delivering a letter to Winston Churchill, which was nicknamed “Mission Model Hat”. Since she was friends with Churchill, she could actually get close to him without raising suspicions. In the letter, the Nazis were encouraging Great Britain to back down so that they could come to some kind of peace treaty.
So, even though she was working on behalf of the Nazis, Chanel was hardly a cool gun-toting super-spy who assassinated the Allies. And by delivering this letter, she was exposing herself to Churchill. He would have known right then and there that she was in collaboration with the Nazis. Despite him knowing this, he never exposed her after the war. No one knows what kind of private conversation went on between the two of them. Did she say that she was only cooperating in order to stay alive and keep her business? Or was she truly in love, and standing by her man no matter what his political beliefs may have been? Either way, Churchill kept his friend’s secret.