Coco Chanel Biography Claims She Was a Nazi Spy

A new book about Coco Chanel claims that the legendary fashion designer was a spy for the Nazis during World War II who went by the code-name "Westminster."

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Sleeping With The Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War, by Hal Vaughan, an American journalist based in Paris, claims that Chanel worked for Germany's Abwehr military intelligence agency and that she went on missions to Madrid and Berlin with her lover, German officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, according to Reuters.

Chanel is said to have been given the agent number F-7124 and the code-name "Westminster," after the Duke of Westminster, with whom she had a love affair.

The book also claims that Chanel was anti-Semitic.

It's long been rumored that Chanel collaborated with the Nazis during WWII. She was once questioned by a judge in France about her ties to the Nazis but was later released. However, the fashion house shot down the book's allegations in a statement issued Tuesday.

"What's certain is that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the War," the company said. "Clearly, it wasn't the best period to have a love story with a German, even if Baron von Dincklage was English by his mother and she (Chanel) knew him before the war."

Chanel died in 1971 at age 87.