Coco Chanel was Nazi spy, new book claims

COCO CHANEL: A fashion icon whose name has become shorthand for timeless French chic, a shrewd businesswoman who overcame a childhood of poverty to build a luxury supernova and ... a Nazi spy?

A new book by a Paris-based American historian suggests Chanel not only had a wartime affair with a German aristocrat and spy, but that she herself was also an agent of Germany’s Abwehr military intelligence organisation and a rabid anti-Semite.

Doubts about Chanel’s loyalties during World War II have long festered, but Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, goes well beyond those previous allegations, citing as evidence documents culled from archives around the world.