Chanel had moved to a gorgeous suite in the famed Hotel Ritz, Paris. The high ceilings and ornate but elegant style made it the place to be if you had means. To this day, the Ritz has a famed reputation for its lavish atmosphere and unique culinary experience. Cesar Ritz opened the hotel bearing his name right on the place Vendome, a square that sits at the start of the Rue de la Paix, a fashionable shopping district. Ritz promised that his hotel would offer ‘all the refinements that a Prince might hope to find in his own private residence’. It’s said that his own investors complimented Cesar on his hotel at the opening, proclaiming: ‘Kings and Princes will be envious of you, Ritz. You’re going to teach the world how one should live.’ The move to the Ritz was no small hallmark in the life of Chanel, a woman who came from meagre beginnings. Her apartment there was, literally, the lap of luxury and high society.
During this time she was seeing designer Paul Iribe, who worked with Vogue magazine doing illustrations and design. The relationship between Iribe and Chanel started in 1931. Iribe, like all good artists, had his muse. The two would collaborate on a provocative magazine, titled Le Témoin, Iribe as illustrator and Chanel as financier. Le Témoin was well known as a purveyor of anti-Semitism and aggressive nationalism. The heroine of the illustrations within was Marianne, a symbol of French liberty. Iribe clearly modelled Marianne after Chanel herself. Chanel was deeply in love with Iribe and the two looked likely to wed, but in 1935, during a rousing game of tennis, Iribe collapsed and died in front of Chanel. She was devastated by the loss. Chanel mourned, but continued to move forward with her work, unaware that the world was about to be plunged into war.
Chanel and the French authorities were well aware of Dincklage’s Nazi connections and his work as an agent of espionage. During the prewar era his dealings were revealed by French counter-intelligence agents and were published in the newspaper Vendémiaire. There was no denying knowledge of his exploits, so when Chanel embarked upon a relationship with the Baron, she knew full well who she was getting into bed with. The moment that Coco and Hans met is not known; Coco would tell officials after the war that she had known him for decades, while others place their meeting sometime in the 1930s. Regardless of the truth, by the time the Nazis had taken France, the Hotel Ritz where Chanel resided had become a reserved place for senior Nazi officials. Chanel was one of the few foreigners who was allowed to remain.
Paris had fallen and refugees had fled to the South. There was Nazi propaganda at every street corner, signs and posters served as an ominous reminder to citizens that obedience to the new occupying forces would be in their best interest. Chanel was 57 when she and Dincklage became lovers in 1940. Hans was a cultured, pleasant and handsome man and a great conquest for Chanel in the newly occupied Paris. It was Dincklage who would facilitate all of the Nazi dealings that Chanel would have during the war. It is assumed that it must have been her connection with Dincklage that allowed Chanel to remain at the Ritz, where only a chosen few non-Germans were permitted to remain in residence. Only a handful of known Nazi collaborators and the wife of the hotel founder were allowed to stay, along with Coco Chanel. The times would soon become hard for French citizens, with many families facing starvation. All the while, the German officials, including Dincklage and Chanel, would dine lavishly in the well-guarded confines of the Ritz. In much the same way that the eight-man band continued to play their cheerful songs for the aristocracy while the RMS Titanic sunk around them, the high society of Paris continued on their typical merry way, while Europe came crashing down under the pressures of wartime.
Coco Chanel may not have been regarded as the kindest person in the world and she was certainly a savvy opportunist to take advantage of the Nazi mandates, but that’s a far cry from making her a Nazi sympathiser, and certainly far away from any evidence that she was a Nazi spy. There had been whispers and rumours for decades about Chanel’s shady dealings throughout the Second World War, and certainly many suspected her involvement, but it wasn’t until recently that actual documented proof began to emerge when declassified French intelligence documents were discovered. These documents detailed not only an involvement with the Nazis, but her ascension into actual Nazi spy and the special secret mission that was crafted especially for her.
In 2016, Historians poring over hundreds of boxes of declassified government documents that had been provided to the French Defence Ministry’s archives back in 1999, discovered documents that proved the French secret services had suspicions about the extent of Chanel’s Nazi connections. These documents, now available to the public (but only in person), reveal a file on Coco Chanel that French intelligence had amongst their files on various celebrities whom they suspected of being Nazi sympathisers. One such document, from 1944, states that: ‘A source from Madrid informs us that Madame Chanel, in 1942–1943, was the mistress and agent of Baron Gunther Von Dincklage. Dincklage was the attaché to the German Embassy in Paris in 1935. He worked as a propagandist and was a suspected agent’ (translated from the original French).
A French television documentary titled L’Ombre D’un Doute - Paris and Les Artistes sous l’Occupation, which aired in late 2014 on France 3, provided further evidence as to the extent of Chanel’s involvement with the Nazi regime. Chanel was so involved with the Nazis that she wasn’t just dating a spy – she was one herself. Coco went by the code name ‘Westminster’, which was a reference to her previous relationship with the Duke of Westminster. Her Abwehr involvement was so deep that she was even assigned an agent number, F-7124, according to an official Nazi record. The records of this information were also uncovered in the archives at the French Ministry of Defence.
The idea that Coco Chanel was a Nazi sympathiser, and even a Nazi spy, has only surfaced in recent years, thanks to the declassified French intelligence documents. Coco was, quite literally, sleeping with the enemy. There is an assumption to be made that when someone aligned themselves with the Nazis, they were automatically an anti-Semite. It is easy to jump to that conclusion, but in the case of Coco Chanel I found it difficult to find any evidence that she harboured any particular ill will towards Jews. Coco Chanel may indeed have hated the Jews, and certainly many of her biographers assert this as a fact, but I am reluctant to label anyone without actual proof – or at least a direct quote or two. Obviously, she was no fan of the Jewish family who financed her Parfums Chanel Company, but beyond that I could find no quotes from Chanel to corroborate her being anti-Semitic. Chanel was a cunning opportunist through and through and her work with the Nazis may have been more about the opportunities and advancement it could provide her with over any political or social agenda.
Chanel was the subject of a covert Nazi mission in 1943 by the name of Modellhut (‘model hat’). This mission was planned for some time and apparently involved Chanel first travelling to Germany to have a personal meeting with infamous Nazi Heinrich Himmler to plan the details of the mission. We may not be privy to all of the duties that Chanel might have filled as an agent to the Nazis, but we do know about this one key mission, which took place in Madrid (as referenced in the document mentioned above). She travelled to Madrid in 1943 with Hans, with the mission of using her past acquaintanceship with Winston Churchill to persuade him to a ceasefire with Germany through a personal letter, with the hopes of ending the aggressions between England and Germany. In a flurry of arrogance, Chanel was convinced that Churchill would listen to her as a voice of reason. Churchill didn’t see it the same way and the deal was ignored.