Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Her couture house closed in 1939, with the outbreak of World War II. Chanel stayed in France during the Nazi German occupation and collaborated with the occupiers and the Vichy puppet regime. Declassified documents revealed that she had collaborated directly with the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst. One plan in late 1943 was for her to carry an SS peace overture to Churchill to end the war. Chanel began a liaison with a German diplomat/spy she had known before the war, Baron (Freiherr) Hans Günther von Dincklage. After the end of the war, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator due to intervention by her friend—British prime minister Winston Churchill. When the war ended, Chanel moved to Switzerland before returning to Paris in 1954 to revive her fashion house.
Early life
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in 1883 to Eugénie Jeanne Devolle Chanel, known as Jeanne, a laundrywoman, in the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence (a poorhouse) in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire. She was Jeanne's second child with Albert Chanel; the first, Julia, had been born less than a year earlier. Albert Chanel was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments, living a nomadic life, travelling to and from market towns. The family resided in run-down lodgings. In 1884, he married Jeanne Devolle, persuaded to legitimate his children by her family who had "united, effectively, to pay Albert".
Early life
At birth, Chanel's name was entered into the official registry as "Chasnel". Jeanne was too unwell to attend the registration, and Albert was registered as "traveling".
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