I recently discovered my family tree. All I knew until last year was the name of my grandfather. Now I know so much more. Check out the Harris family tree on Tribalpages website, and see my family connections to Artists, Art Dealers, MI5, Garbo, Double Spies in World War II. OBE’s and books and Art Historians, and Antique Dealers, Diamond Dealers ..and the list goes on….
I have just been reading two books “Garb0” and the “Spy who Saved D-day”. The first written by MI5’s double agent spy, Garbo himself, and the second written by my fathers Uncle, Tomas Harris who was Garbo’s MI5 Case officer/Controller during World War II. Together these books tell the true story of how they came to work together for Britain and began the beginning of the end of the War.
The first Book, the one called ‘GARBO’– was written mostly MI5’s double Agent called Juan Pujol (codenamed GARBO) along with an author called Nigel West, who found him in hiding in Venezuela, and encouraged him to come back safely back to Britain for the 40th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings, to meet old colleagues from MI5 and be introduced to the Duke of Edinburgh . The book tells the personal story of the most successful double agent EVER and his MI5 controller/case officer who directed, channelled, encouraged and sustained the agents remarkable talents.
This case officer was Tomas Harris – my Great Uncle.
The second book I am reading is called ‘ The Spy who saved D-Day – (view large chunks of this book online here) ’ and was mostly written by Tomas Harris.
Both books describe how GARBO and Tomas came to work together at MI5, and their three years of scheming and planning together during World War II. They tell a detailed story of their efforts which were supported by various agencies of British intelligence and of how they contributed to a huge reduction of casualties among tens of thousands of allied servicemen who landed in Normandy in France on D-Day to fight to hold the Normandy Beachheads. Many, many more would have perished had their plan failed. They devised a plan to build a network (The GARBO Network) which was eventually composed of 27 imaginary characters, to mislead the Germans into expecting the landings to occur in Calais and maintain all their forces there, instead of moving them to Normandy. Their other activities in MI5 also embraced campaigns in North Africa and the V-weapon offensives.
On this site are other posts that I have written, in Note form, which are facts from the two books and contain details about some individuals mentioned in the two book, Mostly Garbo and Thomas Harris. These posts contain notes which I want to share with the rest of my immediate family and are relevant to expanding their knowledge about our Harris family which we knew absolutely nothing about until about a year ago.
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(D-Day 6/6/1944) – (view Link)
Marks the start of Europe invasion in Normandy, France – during World War II
MI5 (view Link)
was responsible for counter-espionage intelligence within the UK
MI6/SIS (view Link)
Secret Intelligence service for counter-espionage intelligence in foreign countries.
Garbo (view Post)
Spanish Agent Worked as a Double Spy for MI5 in Britain, when the Germans were so convinced he was a German spy, that they awarded him the Iron Cross
Tomas Harris (view Post)
MI5 Case Officer/Controller who worked with GARBO to create the GARBO network of 27 imaginary spies who mislead the Germans into thinking the invasion would occur in Calais instead of on the Normandy beachheads.
Anthony Blunt (view Post)
at MI5 B1(b)- An Art historian workedduring the war, who was knighted then suspected of being a Soviet spy Agent which resulted in his knighthood being annulled.
