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Scent of a Traitor · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Gabrielle was born in eighteen eighty three in western France.
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  Speaker 1: Her childhood was destined to be a difficult one. Her
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  Speaker 1: mother died when she was twelve, and her father wasn't
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  Speaker 1: willing to look after her and her siblings, so he
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  Speaker 1: left them in the care of nuns and never came back.
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  Speaker 1: The nuns impact on Gabrielle would be unexpected. She hated
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  Speaker 1: how strict and chase they were. She saw the glamour
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  Speaker 1: and the riches of nearby Paris, and and to understand
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  Speaker 1: why anyone would intentionally live a life of poverty. However,
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  Speaker 1: the nuns did teach her the important skills she needed.
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  Speaker 1: They taught her how to sew and clean. She developed
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  Speaker 1: a preference for a clean home and immaculate hygiene, and
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  Speaker 1: these skills and traits would define her life and even
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  Speaker 1: lead her to change the world. By the time Gabrielle
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  Speaker 1: was twenty, she was living in Paris and pursuing that
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  Speaker 1: glamorous life. She used her sewing skills to open up
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  Speaker 1: a hat shop in nineteen ten, which immediately became a success.
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  Speaker 1: Some of the local cabaret performers took to wearing her hats,
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  Speaker 1: making them even more popular throughout the country. She soon
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  Speaker 1: began designing dresses as well. Gabrielle's preference for immaculate hygiene
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  Speaker 1: led her to notice that some of her rich clients
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  Speaker 1: were actually less hygienic than her. She thought many of
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  Speaker 1: them even smelled. She learned more about the world of perfumes,
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  Speaker 1: which up until this point was still not widely used.
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  Speaker 1: They had existed for millennia, but the advent of modern
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  Speaker 1: chemistry meant that safe synthetic fragrance says could be developed
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  Speaker 1: that were affordable and would last on the skin for
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  Speaker 1: a long time, and so Gabrielle immediately commissioned a whole
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  Speaker 1: variety of perfumes, and she eventually settled on a scent
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  Speaker 1: that she wanted to sell. Not only would it make
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  Speaker 1: her money, but it would keep her from having to
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  Speaker 1: smell the bo of her clients as she fitted them
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  Speaker 1: for hats and dresses. All throughout the nineteen twenties, Gabrielle
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  Speaker 1: became a Paris fashion icon. In addition to her popular perfume,
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  Speaker 1: she also invented the first little black dress, which is
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  Speaker 1: a simple and slim dress in contrast to the big
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  Speaker 1: gowns of previous decades. She had liberated women's fashion, but
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  Speaker 1: she wasn't exactly a feminist. More than anything, she just
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  Speaker 1: wanted success and the money and power that came with it.
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  Speaker 1: She wanted to be a part of high society to
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  Speaker 1: show that she was more than just an orphan raised
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  Speaker 1: by nuns, and so all throughout the nineteen thirties, Gabrielle
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  Speaker 1: became known for having affairs with powerful men. At first
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  Speaker 1: this was members of high society in France, but soon
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  Speaker 1: she was even in English royalty and friendly with the
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  Speaker 1: likes of people like Winston Churchill. And because of all
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  Speaker 1: of this, you would think that she would have sided
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  Speaker 1: with the Allies when World War II darkened over Europe,
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  Speaker 1: But again, all Gabrielle cared about was her own success.
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  Speaker 1: When the Nazis conquered France, Gabrielle quickly struck up an
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  Speaker 1: affair with German officer Hans Gunter von Dinklich. In addition
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  Speaker 1: to having the most German name imaginable, he was also
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  Speaker 1: a spy tasked with infiltrating the French resistance. This seems
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  Speaker 1: to have been Gabrielle's most long lived and passionate affair.
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  Speaker 1: The fact that the Nazis were conquerors and anti Semites
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  Speaker 1: didn't seem to bother her. The reality is that most
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  Speaker 1: of the Western world was pretty anti Semitic at the time.
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  Speaker 1: It was a matter of degrees to her. The English, French,
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  Speaker 1: and Americans tended to segregate Jews and keep them from
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  Speaker 1: positions of power, but they drew the line systematically murdering
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  Speaker 1: them like the Germans did. Gabrielle, however, took full advantage
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  Speaker 1: of the Nazis' anti Semitic laws. She had a few
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  Speaker 1: Jewish business partners with a stake in her business, and
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  Speaker 1: she tried to essentially steal their stake from them under
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  Speaker 1: Nazi laws that stated Jews couldn't own their own businesses.
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  Speaker 1: This ultimately failed when those Jewish partners smartly sold their
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  Speaker 1: stake to a different French industrialist before fleeing to the
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  Speaker 1: United States. Toward the end of the war, as the
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  Speaker 1: Nazis continued to lose ground, Gabrielle and Hans tried to
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  Speaker 1: save face by negotiating a truce behind Hitler's back with
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  Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, but the Allies weren't interested. They continued their
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  Speaker 1: advance and retook Paris, arresting Gabrielle in nineteen forty four.
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  Speaker 1: Hans fled to Switzerland while Gabrielle was a Nazi collaborator.
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  Speaker 1: It seems that the Allies felt that she wasn't responsible
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  Speaker 1: for any crimes, and she was released. Some believe her
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  Speaker 1: connections with English high society just might have had a
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  Speaker 1: hand in that, but her time as a collaborator remained
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  Speaker 1: a stain on her legacy. She never again had the
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  Speaker 1: same prominence in the fashion world and died bitter and
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  Speaker 1: alone in nineteen seventy one. Today, gabriel Coco Chanel, as
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  Speaker 1: she was better known, is respected for her contributions to
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  Speaker 1: the fashion world. Her perfume Chanelle number five is still
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  Speaker 1: in use, and of course, the Black Little Dress is
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  Speaker 1: practically its own genre of clothing. Naturally, the extent of
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  Speaker 1: her anti Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis will always
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  Speaker 1: be debated. Curiously, her insatiable desire for power actually undermined
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  Speaker 1: her success in the long run. If she had remained
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  Speaker 1: loyal to France, she would be remembered today as the
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  Speaker 1: saintly godmother of all modern fashion. Maybe she should have
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  Speaker 1: listened to those nuns, after all. Paris, one of the
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  Speaker 1: most beautiful cities in the world, is famous for many things,
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  Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower, of course, Notre Dame Cathedral, the River Senn.
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  Speaker 1: It's also famous for its mysterious and macab network of
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  Speaker 1: underground tunnels metcones, which pass beneath every part of the
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  Speaker 1: city and are estimated to hold the remains of over
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  Speaker 1: six million people. Those tunnels were built from old quarries
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  Speaker 1: left over from the Roman Empire and span over one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and seventy miles. When Parisian cemeteries began to overflow
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  Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundreds, millions of bodies were transferred from
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  Speaker 1: where they had been laid to rest in cemeteries to
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  Speaker 1: the underground tunnels. There are so many bodies down there
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  Speaker 1: that one sign above a public entrance reads, stop the
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  Speaker 1: Empire of Death lies here. Now. It must be said
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  Speaker 1: that only a very small section is open for tourists
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  Speaker 1: to explore, while other areas are used for municipal purposes
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  Speaker 1: like sewer maintenance and in some cases training exercises for
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  Speaker 1: law enforcement. And in two thousand and four, a branch
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  Speaker 1: of the Paris Police Department set out to do exactly that,
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  Speaker 1: odd as it may seem. Officers use the unusual environment
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  Speaker 1: to practice traversing difficult terrain and to check for anyone
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  Speaker 1: illegally visiting. On this occasion, officers entered through a sewer
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  Speaker 1: drain beside the Trocadero, not far from the Eiffel Tower.
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  Speaker 1: Almost immediately they discovered something unusual, a large tarp blocking
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  Speaker 1: a previously uncharted passage with a sign saying building site
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  Speaker 1: no access. Thinking that it may be part of the
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  Speaker 1: training exercise, the police pulled back the tarp to reveal
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  Speaker 1: a desk and a closed circuit TV camera, which recorded
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  Speaker 1: anyone who passed by the tarp, including the officers themselves.
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  Speaker 1: When someone passed in front of the camera, a box
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  Speaker 1: on the desk played a recording of snarling and barking dogs.
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  Speaker 1: The police quickly realized that this was no exercise, and
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  Speaker 1: the advanced security and camera equipment made it clear these
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  Speaker 1: were no teenagers exploring the creepy underground on a dare.
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  Speaker 1: This was something more sinister. They had no choice but
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  Speaker 1: to push forward. Further down the tunnel opened into a
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  Speaker 1: huge cavern, and inside the rock had been carved into
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  Speaker 1: seats and benches for people to sit in. Investigators found an
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  Speaker 1: enormous movie screen and projection equipment, along with a collection
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  Speaker 1: of mood movies. None of the films were offensive and
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  Speaker 1: none of them had been banned. On the far side
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  Speaker 1: of the cavern was another room with a makeshift bar
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  Speaker 1: and a restaurant, nice bottles of spirits, tables and chairs,
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  Speaker 1: even a pressure cooker, even strangers. Still, the restaurant and
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  Speaker 1: bar were clearly running on electricity and impossibility in the catacombs,
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  Speaker 1: given that they were carved out centuries ago. One police
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  Speaker 1: officer said there were at least three phone lines down there.
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  Speaker 1: So who was responsible for the clandestine and I must
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  Speaker 1: say illegal cinema tucked inside Paris's deadliest tunnels. Well it
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  Speaker 1: didn't take long for one group to take the credit.
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  Speaker 1: Lay UX short for Urban Experiment, is a secret organization
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  Speaker 1: taking on urban renewal projects all over Paris, which the
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  Speaker 1: French government lacks funding for or chooses not to pursue.
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  Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, lay Ux restored several medieval crips
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  Speaker 1: beneath the city by creating underground workshops and accessing them
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  Speaker 1: after hours. Two thousand and seven, they secretly restored the
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  Speaker 1: Pantheon's clock with the help of expert clockmaker Jean Baptiste Void.
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  Speaker 1: The clock was originally made in eighteen fifty one and
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  Speaker 1: had stopped working in the early nineteen sixties. Restoration took
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  Speaker 1: over a year and was mostly done at nights in
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  Speaker 1: secret in a workshop set up by LAYUX members. When
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  Speaker 1: the clock was fully repaired and Layux took public responsibility,
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  Speaker 1: the Center for National Monuments in France attempted to bring
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  Speaker 1: charges against the group, but ultimately they failed. The spokesman
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  Speaker 1: for this otherwise secret society, Lazar Kunzmann, explained that in
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  Speaker 1: September of nineteen eighty one, Layux stole comprehensive maps of
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  Speaker 1: the catacombs from the city planning office, and these maps
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  Speaker 1: are instrumental to the planning and success of the group's
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  Speaker 1: projects and a key reason that its members are able
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  Speaker 1: to keep their identity secret. As far as the cinema goes.
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  Speaker 1: Police returned the next day with members of the French
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  Speaker 1: Electrical Board. They wanted help finding out where the power
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  Speaker 1: had been routed from, but when they arrived at the
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  Speaker 1: entrance of the cavern, the tarp, the sign and the
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  Speaker 1: camera were all gone. In fact, the entire theater had
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  Speaker 1: been emptied. No pressure cooker, no phone lines, no movie
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  Speaker 1: screens or liquor. The only sign that something had been
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  Speaker 1: in the cavern at all was a scrap of paper
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  Speaker 1: left in the center of the room. Addressed to the
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  Speaker 1: Parisian police. The note said simply, do not come searching
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  Speaker 1: for us. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.