One morning in Paris, soon after the city’s liberation in 1944, two men appeared at the Ritz hotel to arrest Coco Chanel.
They were members of the French Forces of the Interior (F.F.I.), the loose band of soldiers, Resistance fighters, and ordinary citizens who’d taken up arms toward the end of World War II, and they took Chanel away to interrogate her on charges of treason to France. The F.F.I. had targeted Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel because of her romance with Hans Günther “Spatz” von Dincklage, a handsome Nazi spy with whom she lived throughout the war.
