Sleeping with the Enemy

Coco Chanel's Secret War

By: Hal Vaughan

Narrated by: Susan Denaker, Mark Deakins

Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

From this century, in France, three names will remain: De Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.” (André Malraux).

Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture.

She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters. In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than 2,000 people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.

Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of “a little black swan”. And, added Colette, “the heart of a little black bull”. At the start of World War II, Chanel closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Hôtel Ritz. Picasso, her friend, called her “one of the most sensible women in Europe”. She remained at the Ritz for the duration of the war, and after, went on to Switzerland. For more than half a century, Chanel’s life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor, mystery, and myth. Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years.

Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrative - part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait - fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II. Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanel’s long-whispered collaboration with Hitler’s high-ranking officials in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944. He writes in detail of her decades-long affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, “Spatz” (“sparrow” in English), described in most Chanel biographies as being an innocuous, English-speaking tennis player, playboy, and harmless dupe - a loyal German soldier and diplomat serving his mother country and not a member of the Nazi party.

In Vaughan’s absorbing, meticulously researched book, Dincklage is revealed to have been a Nazi master spy and German military intelligence agent who ran a spy ring in the Mediterranean and in Paris and reported directly to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, right hand to Hitler.

The book pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German intelligence operative; how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions; how she escaped arrest in France after the war, despite her activities being known to the Gaullist intelligence network; how she fled to Switzerland for a nine-year exile with her lover Dincklage. And how, despite the French court’s opening a case concerning Chanel’s espionage activities during the war, she was able to return to Paris at age 70 and triumphantly resurrect and reinvent herself - and rebuild what has become the iconic House of Chanel.

©2011 Hal Vaughan (P)2011 Random House

Coco remains a mystery

I've just completed this, a 3rd book, about the life and loves of Coco Chanel. As in b life, she continues to fascinate, befuddle, and evade even this long after her death. My uncle brought Chanel No. 5 home from Paris after The War; I wonder if it was one of the free bottles or if he bought it at the PX? Sad that during his lifetime I didn't know enough about Coco to ask the right questions.

Surprisingly engaging.

How often I select fiction over fact and yet this was a wonderful example of how engaging and interesting a factual plot can be! Great experience,

Meh

At times convoluted. History was presented non-linearly, and actors were not reintroduced to remind the reader who they were and why they were significant.

What really bothered me was the sympathy and admiration with which Chanel was portrayed. Takeaway message seemed to be: “She was a remarkable woman of great talent who became a Nazi collaborator because the men she loved happened to be Nazi sympathizers.” Utterly mundane and uninspired.

Very well documented

To many details in some parts, making it a bit confusing. But overall needed in order to understand the whole picture.

Chanel was such a complex woman!

I have read a couple biographies on CoCo Chanel, and this one does not disappoint. She had a way of telling different versions about her past to many friends and biographers, so it is hard to establish the truth of Chanel's life, but this book is very well researched. The narrator is very good, using French, German, British and American accents when quoting people. The tempo is very good and an easy listen. There are a lot of names and dates to keep track of, and when listening in small spurts, found it difficult to keep track of all the players.

I would recommend this book if you have an interest in Chanel, the woman. The book touches on her relationships with friends, family, her many romances but also on her relationship with the perfume makers of Chanel No. 5 which I found very interesting.

Wonderful, Insightful Book

I wish there were more books like this one. I loved it. The story is incredible, and it interweaves a lot of big names and historical figures you may not associate with Coco Chanel (such as Churchill). I loved the complexity. The book is stark at times, but the author has a light touch and includes many fascinating details throughout. There is so much more to Chanel than most people realize (both good and bad). I loved that the book wasn't just a total fan-girl type vibe like some books on Chanel, but still revered her persistence and creativity as an entrepreneur and artist, while recognizing her involvement with the Nazi party (truly amazing this has been overlooked by so many!).

Behind Every Successful Woman Is a Wealthy Man.

Chanel was a certain type of woman who used everything and everyone to advance her ambitions. She was a manipulative social climber as well as a drug addict and disembler equipped with some fashion talent. She knew what she wanted, and nothing could stand in her way. The only one who got the better of the deal was the extremely shrewd Pierre Wertheimer, ironically a Jew. It is hard to blame her for her flagrant anti semitism. Let's lay the blame at the feet of the Catholic Church, for instilling antisemitism in children, labeling the Jews as Christ killers. Chanel was brought up by the nuns in an orphanage. As my dad used to say back.in the day, as per the Catholic Chrch"give me a child of five, and we have him for life."

I have been interested in fashion my entire life. I was 5 years old when I saw a 255 hanging on its plain gold chain from the closet door of my older cousin. I was hooked for life. Well, not so much lately. As a brand Chanel has lost the plot, somewhat.
But that is another story.

This book is a fascinating tale about an outsized character who operated during an outsized period of modern history. All of the players had everything to gain, and just as much to.lose and lived that way. Well researched from French, Russian, and American archives, the author paints a picture of a not so lovely woman. The book lifts the veil off some of the sanitized biographies of Mademoiselle CC.

The narrator is superb. She needs to throw off a phrase in foreign tongues from time to time and does so excellently.

I could not stop listening, except when I had to for sleep and other telephone tasks.

I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in the machinations of quite a few players leading up to and during the WWII era.

If we all knew how things went...

Very interesting book with lots of details. When we see the famous people and their creations we never imagine what there was behind the curtains. Worth listening to the story. The good thing about the book is that it is not about fashion, but about the time in history with its players.

Informative but very dry

I liked that this book was about Chanel. I wasn't pleased with how often the author repeated himself on previously stated facts, as if I had put the book down for a few months, picked it back up,and couldn't be bothered to skim back a few pages to refamiliarize myself with where I'd left off. Also, there is some jumping forwards and backwards in the timeline of the story that I found confusing in a few parts. Overall, I recommend this because it's informative but I only made it through to the last two hours of the book.

Fascinating under the covers look at Coco Chanel

The things we didn't know about Chanel... her dark side. Well told and well read.