As promised to Dirk before my sepsis on 8 February: a thread about female spies in wartime.
I put today first the links on the board to discuss them tomorrow.
https://www.thoughtco.com/female-spies-of-the-world-wars-3530435
http://historylists.org/people/10-most-famous-daring-and-dangerous-spies.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carve_Her_Name_with_Pride
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Szabo


https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Het_meisje_met_het_rode_haar_(film)


And finally an interview also with a Dutch woman:
https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/dp5a8y/teenager-nazi-armed-resistance-netherlands-876


Kind regards from Paul.

I think I mentioned on another thread last year that I missed a one-woman play a lady performed at the small theatre in my town which was (the play not the theatre) about Mrs Aphra Benn who was apparently a spy as well as a writer.

Addendum to the previous:

And further on Violetta Szabo:
http://www.violette-szabo-museum.co.uk/film.html
And the film I have seen on TV:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x684znd
It appears via the dailymotion picture, but when I push on "preview" it says "invalid video"
But when you click on the http you can watch the film...


Kind regards, Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I think I mentioned on another thread last year that I missed a one-woman play a lady performed at the small theatre in my town which was (the play not the theatre) about Mrs Aphra Benn who was apparently a spy as well as a writer.

Lady in retirement,

by mentioning Aphra Behn, you pushed me into research about her and from her into the history of the British Secret Service and its 18th century predecessors, as a Walsingham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphra_Behn
http://www.historiamag.com/aphra-behn-secret-life/

And the history of the secret service:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Intelligence_Service
https://penandpension.com/2015/02/24/the-c18th-british-secret-service-under-pitt-1/


I send it first to comment it in addendum.

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul,

  we have to mention that in my opinion there is a difference between ;

spies, intelligence agents and resistance workers.

Let's start with the resistance workers and I rather refer to those resistance workers who were operating in occupied Holland.

However accept the fact that after the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1945 it was amazing how suddenly there were thousands upon thousands who claimed they were working for the Dutch resistance or underground movement.
And the stories some were telling were fantastic almost unbelievable. And when one further pressed them and ask who were all involved then thet usually said that they had been sworn to secrecy.

Children or teenagers being resistance workers? 
Let us be clear on the fact that the actual resistance movements in operation were not that stupid to recruit children or teenagers.



Intelligence agencies are working in a totally different manner and obtain their information in different ways.


Spies.
 This is a difficult area to explain as they have their own ideas and way of working.


Paul,

  let's await reaction from forum members and continue from there.



Dirk

But I first start with the comments on the Dutch women. Just saw again the film: The girl with the red hair. Sadly only Dirk Marinus and I cans follow the film while there  are no subtitles even not in Dutch. But that is only a start to comment the second thread about
the link:
https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/dp5a8y/teenager-nazi-armed-resistance-netherlands-876

about the 14 years old Dutch resistant girls. I wanted to speak about their motivations, but wanted to start with the warning after seeing the film that if I would have lived in that time I am not sure if I would have gone to the active resistance of killing people, which was many times contraproductive to the allied sake and the civil occupied population. althugh perhaps the killing of Heidrich in Czecho-slovakia?... I have a lot to say about that, while I heard it all from the first hand immediately after the war. In my case I would have been rather a spy, or working with an organisation for exfiltrating people from occupied territory or gathering information, which was valuable for the allies. And now while typing this I see that also Dirk warned against the difference between spies and resistants. I will first read his message before going further with this thread. To be honest: spies were my title and not resistants.

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul,

  as I mentioned I wonder about  a 14 year old girl doing resistance work in Holland during the German occupation.

Yes, maybe her father/ mother or even her older brother/sister  might have been involved or had connections with the underground movement but a 14 year old girl.


You also mentioned something about someone from the resistance asking this girls mother if she could do resistance work.
Paul ,I doubt if the resistance workers would be that stupid.

But as I said it was amazing how many people in Holland claimed that they had been in the resistance during the occupation of Holland. Yes , to take it with a pinch of salt might be the right thing to do.

Most of the resistance workers during the occupation were in the age group 21- early 60's .

But I will come back on this topic.


Dirk

Dirk Marinus wrote:

Paul,

  we have to mention that in my opinion there is a difference between ;

spies, intelligence agents and resistance workers.

Let's start with the resistance workers and I rather refer to those resistance workers who were operating in occupied Holland.

However accept the fact that after the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1945 it was amazing how suddenly there were thousands upon thousands who claimed they were working for the Dutch resistance or underground movement.
And the stories some were telling were fantastic almost unbelievable. And when one further pressed them and ask who were all involved then thet usually said that they had been sworn to secrecy.

Children or teenagers being resistance workers? 
Let us be clear on the fact that the actual resistance movements in operation were not that stupid to recruit children or teenagers.



Intelligence agencies are working in a totally different manner and obtain their information in different ways.


Spies.
 This is a difficult area to explain as they have their own ideas and way of working.


Paul,

  let's await reaction from forum members and continue from there.



Dirk

Dirk of course you are right and yes spies were my title and they seem mostly to work in the frame of the intelligence office or secret service.

"However accept the fact that after the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1945 it was amazing how suddenly there were thousands upon thousands who claimed they were working for the Dutch resistance or underground movement.
And the stories some were telling were fantastic almost unbelievable. And when one further pressed them and ask who were all involved then thet usually said that they had been sworn to secrecy."

Don't say it to me. Immediately after the liberation in 1944, there were that many boasting resistants in Deinze.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinze
Map:
https://goo.gl/Vhoyjh

On 23 May 1940 we had the Germans using the citizens of Deinze as living shield ending in 28 death on the market of Deinze.
In 1944 we had the liberation of Deinze (I first thought that it were Canadians as my mother told but afterwards I learned that it were Scotish and English (and they had quarrels in the café next to us (in fact our house was between two cafés)).
The city changed two or three times hands between the Germans and the British.
Some 40 metres from our house you had a crossing between our street and a street coming from the Lys and going to Bachte Maria Leerne. At that very crossing when the German soldiers came back on the crossing, one from the Witte Brigade (the resistance group of Belgium) (it remembers me at the White Helmets in Syria) shot a German dead crossing there. The Germans retreated, but then came back in full with a Tiger tank (told my mother). The German soldiers moved again in our street and threatened to kill the civilians as retaliation for the dead German soldier. Then a woman from Deinze, a female dentist or pharmacist, married during the war with a German soldier, risked her life by going to the German soldiers, saying that  she was married to a German soldier and that she had seen that it were the British entered the street, who had shot the German soldier. And the Germans believed her and let the civilians in peace. But as it is such a small city, were each one knew each one (for instance my mother delivered fish to the woman I just mentioned) it came  nearly immediately at the light that it was someone from Ghent, a baker to be precise, who had shot the German at the crossing. And the baker had to move, perhaps to Ghent again, to avoid the people's wrath immediately after the liberation.

Dirk, see you tomorrow again,to discuss further about for instance the 90 years old Dutch lady, recruted at 14. Is she lying, is she boasting upon something that didn't happen?

Kind regards from Paul.

Spies use covert means to gain intelligence that can be passed on and used against an enemy. Resistance fighters engage the enemy. In occupied countries the roles overlapped, but there is still a distinction between the two activities and therefore reason not to conflate them.

Unlike in spy novels and movies - be it James Bond type fantasy or Le Carrier's near-realistic portrayal of intelligence agency work - collection and passing on of good intelligence during WWII to the Allies was not as cut-and-dried an activity as either fictional genre suggests and was conducted piece-meal, often in a very opportunistic and amateurish fashion, often for less than noble motives, and as often risking retribution from neighbour as from occupier etc. It was, in short, as mixed a bag of method, effectiveness, style, personality and motive as one can imagine under the circumstances, and therefore the term "spy" itself when applied to certain individuals retrospectively (even by themselves) has little meaning without actually examining each individual case.

For the intelligence gatherers the problem with information gleaned from these sources is in establishing its veracity. Recruitment and training of spies helped in some way to lessen the risk of being misinformed, though even this wasn't certain given the quantity of disinformation also in currency, and the best solution when possible was to attempt to corroborate information using independent sources. Or, as one MI5 officer once remarked in his memoirs, the best spies were often those who didn't even know they were spies at all. Certainly those who afterwards may have tried to boast about how they had acted as spies might indeed have been useful in that regard on certain occasions, but this does not mean they were necessarily successful in the manner they assumed or would wish us to believe.

Resistance activity was a rather different kettle of fish. Successful active resistance (as opposed to passive) is a much easier thing to measure, and a much more difficult thing to fake involvement in afterwards, at least as long as there are living witnesses in a position to contradict such claims with some authority backing their view. Some individual cases previously not common knowledge may come to light decades afterwards, but these are rare and are generally even now still corroborable to an extent, at least when it comes to resistance activity. But the spying thing is anyone's guess - in the absence of a hard definition regarding what it actually amounted to in the circumstances that prevailed it is very difficult to consider claims made later and to decide their authenticity one way or the other. Which of course makes it fertile ground for false or exaggerated claims. And so on.

nordmann,

you are completely right about the difference, as I admitted to Dirk too.
But as an aside, I want to discuss first, as Dirk asked, the Dutch resistance during WWII. Then I will start with the real spy stories, as our Edith Cavell in WWI. She has many remembering sites in Belgium and is honoured here for her work. But again her task was a mixed one (the one I prefer), evacuating British soldiers and collecting data from the ennemy to pass it to her country.
If I have time in between I will further elaborate on LiR's Aphra Behn, as she was working for Minette's treacherous Charles II (Minette where are you?) and in our Antwerp and got "stank voor dank" (stench for thanks) (they translate in my dictionary: "small thanks for her pains) from that  perfidious Charles.

Kind regards, Paul.

Not sure that's exactly what Dirk meant, but it's your thread so you decide its title and then how much you want to talk about other things.

What is the point of the thread though? Have you actually something to add besides what's contained in the links you provide? Are you for example suggesting that Cavell was not as honourable as she's made out to be? Or that she wasn't a spy at all (as has also been said by others)? Or that female spies are somehow different to male spies and deserve some special discussion regarding this difference? Or that "some males" are like females when it comes to spying?

I'll be interested to find out what your own opinion is on these matters - when you're finished discussing resistance movements on your spy thread, of course.

Dirk,

I reread now the link of the 14 years old girl:
https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/dp5a8y/teenager-nazi-armed-resistance-netherlands-876


As I understand it, but say it if you think I am wrong, they were indeed recruted and came in the movement of Hannie Schaft, but again as I understand it they only seduced collaborators and the dirty work in the woods was done by other members of the movement. And I guess as she was in the same movement as Hannie Schaft, they belonged to the Communist resistance, which was much more unscrupulous, than the other resistance groups. At least that was the case in Belgium, where there were at random killings, even immediately after the war, in the woods under Brussels, someone from Brussels working in our factory told me in the Sixties. Of course that is only one source and has to be recherched in depth for confirmation.

I see now that I wrongly under the film Hannie Schaft put the Dutch wiki and as I remembered from the wiki about the Communist party, I didn't find it in the Dutch wiki. And indeed it differs very much from the English language one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannie_Schaft
"Shortly after the war, the communist movement enjoyed popularity,^{[citation needed]} partly because of the effort of the USSR in defeating the Nazis.^{[citation needed]} However, with that country's increasing influence in Eastern Europe, the popularity decreased.^{[citation needed]} Because the Dutch communist party celebrated her as an icon, her popularity decreased too, to the point that the commemoration at Hannie's grave was forbidden in 1951.^[5] The commemorators (who were estimated to number over 10,000) were stopped by several hundred police and military with the aid of four tanks. A group of seven managed to circumvent the blockade and reached the burial ground, but were arrested when they tolled the bell. From the next year on, the communists decided to prevent another such scene by holding their commemoration in Haarlem instead."

There appears nothing in the Dutch wiki about all that. Is it not salonfähig anymore to talk about such things in The Netherlands of today.?
I had also bad experiences with wiki, for instance about a specific subject, which is promoted by a Walloon independentist, even on wiki about the difference in combatativity between the Flemish and Walloon regiments during the 18 days campaign in 1940. In my opinion he approached me on two French fora via a proxy of someone writing under his own name, with reference to the montly from this person Toudi and after some lengthy research from me published on these fora verifying the facts that he mentioned, the wiki was suddenly changed and that question wasn't mentioned anymore...what if the readers of the wiki aren't insider enough in the question to discuss the matter and have to believe what the so-called experts say?

Kind regards from Paul.

nordmann wrote:

Are you for example suggesting that Cavell was not as honourable as she's made out to be? Or that she wasn't a spy at all (as has also been said by others)? Or that female spies are somehow different to male spies and deserve some special discussion regarding this difference? Or that "some males" are like females when it comes to spying?

I'll be interested to find out what your own opinion is on these matters - when you're finished discussing resistance movements on your spy thread, of course.

 
nordmann,

before it is immersed in the length of this thread I want to answer first to your message right now.
No I just mentioned Edith Cavell at random here (and from remberance of discussing her on the ex-BBC with an Englishman living in Brussels for some years with his family) as an example of an in my eyes "normal" spy. And I regret already that I started with female spies as there is in my opinion no difference between a male and a female spy. And male spies can also seduce people as the Navo girl, which give Navo documents to him for Russia, East-Germany, the SU? I have to seek it all back. The only reason I started with the females, was that Dirk contacted me in the time (on jiglu?) about an article on Mata Hari, who was indeed Dutch.

No the Edith Cavell mentioning was a neutral one. And no, in my opinion and from all what I read, there is no difference between male and female spies. But as you proposed we can discuss it further in the thread, when we arrive at the subject "spies" both male and female.

Kind regards, Paul.

Let me know if you ever get round to it.

Let me know if you ever get round to it.

Yes nordmann, I will highlight it to you when I "once at the end" get round to it...but I ask for some patience...at least a bit of patience...

Kind regards from Paul.

From one of my last messages:
"about the difference in combatativity between the Flemish and Walloon regiments during the 18 days campaign in 1940."
Correction: "combatativity" I guessed I was wrong and looked it up in my French dictionary: "combativité" and as it is in English also a French word, it has to be of course: "combativity"... OOPS again: looked it up in my Dutch-English and there the word "strijdbaarheid" don't exist and of course I didn't find a translation...Then on the net: and surprise, surprise...the translation of "strijdbaarheid" is "combativeness"...what a tricky language that English ...and the word "combativeness" don't appear in my paperback Collins of...oops the year is nowhere mentioned, but it is mentioned that it was a "new" edition on the flap...only the price is indicated: "in the U.K. £ 4.50 net" and in Canada "$ 9.95"

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul,

   I have read that female story a few times but honestly I am a bit dubious about her.
 She mentions that she was one of the FEW women in the resistance but she is talking rubbish.

There were from 1940 up to the end of occupation (1945) many females doing work for the resistance. However the female workers were usually not involved in the more dangerous assignments.
They were mainly delivering messages, papers, finance ,printed news letters etc. Some of them would also be used to act as escorts to help downed Allied aircraft crews on trains ,busses etc and deliver them to safe addresses.

Also this female mentions communism yet from 1940 until June 1941 the communists in the Netherlands were leaning towards Hitler ( his agreement with Russia was the main course) and some of the communist party members only became a resistance movement after Germany invaded Russia.

As a matter of fact there was throughout the occupation ( 1940-1945) always a distrust between the resistance movement and the communist resistance movement.

Paul, it has been estimated that the NBS ( Nederlandse Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten) "translated into English as Netherlands Interior Army" was about 20.000 strong.

And of this 20.000 strong interior army there were some 2000 members who were actually involved in the dangerous operations.

I can elaborate further on that if you want me to.


And talking about spies and spying do some googling and read all about the " Duquesne Spy Ring"


This is one of the links about this  Frederick Duquesne:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Joubert_Duquesne


Dirk

Thanks Dirk,

for the debunking of the 14 years girl's story. As overhere in Belgium it is so difficult, as the resistance was a hidden network, to come to a realistic story about it. But I will try to come back on it further in the thread. And trying to make a difference between spy work and resistance work., as the Rote Kapelle...

"I can elaborate further on that if you want me to."

yes I want Dirk, please.

And thank you for the spy link about Duquesne.
Will nevertheless at the same time start with the spy story. While nordmann mentioned Edith Cavell, I read now, to start with, the wiki about Cavell and it is that much more stuffed? (gestoffeerd, étoffé) then in my time on the ex-BBC board with the Englishman living near Brussels and having a nickname of a hamlet near Waterloo.

Kind regards from Paul and see you tomorrow again.

Paul,



The woman also claims that as a 14 year old she and her older sister would flirt with collaborators ,take them somewhere where they would (using her words) with a bullet.

This is certainly NOT the way the resistance would deal with what she calls collaborators.



The resistance movement were quite aware of the fact that first of all questions would be asked AFTER the war ( German occupation) why certain people had been assassinated by resistance movements.

Secondly there was also the fact that the German authorities would be getting involved especially if the person killed was a informer or Dutch employee in German service.

The German SD ( Sicherheits Dienst in English Security Service ), Gestapo, Grune Polizei would without any doubt arrest Dutch citizen or take political prisoners and execute them as a reprisal.

Thus what was the resistance’s action?



When it became necessary to take action if a Dutch national had turned informer or was a employee in the German service and was considered to be or become a danger to the Dutch people or resistance movement by betraying people consideration would given to get rid of him/her.

As I have mentioned to you the resistance in Holland was made up of trusted man and women from all backgrounds irrespective if they were butcher, bricklayer, doctor, judge, shop owner, police officer, housewife, typist or even retired people.

The underground organisation would approach their legal members judges, barristers layers in their area and explain in detail who had become a danger to the country and why and why they requested the permission to kill the person concerned.

The whole situation , reasons of and future possibilities would be examined by the legal experts. There have been instances whereby the legal experts sought advice and permission of the Dutch government in exile (London) but it was generally accepted that they were professionally quite able to make a decision.

When once it had been decided that the person concerned has to be assassinated the resistance swung into action.



What would happen now is that the area resistance sought contact with another area’s resistance group explaining what was wanted. That area would supply the person(s) who would carry out the job,

Not long thereafter the person concerned would be found dead.



Paul, If you want me to elaborate further , in other words why the resistance had to get the permission of their legal advisers and how the resistance nominated the person(s) and why from another area to carry out the shooting etc do let me know.

But why I mention all the above is just purely and simply to point out that the story of the woman makes me feel a bit dubious.

Btw , have you ever seen this film of the raid on the jail in Leeuwarden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YMhOpLNVkU&t=42s

For the English speaking there is the same film dubbed in English when you google “The Silent Raid”







Dirk

Dirk,

thank you very much for your critique on the interview with the Dutch woman, 14 years old she said when she entered the resistance.

You seems to be knowledgeable about the resistance in the Netherlands during WWII. And it seems that the Dutch were well organized. I have not that impression in Belgium. Due to my parents "de witte brigade" (the white brigade) was not that well organized and made many mistakes. And after all the Belgian government (Pierlot and Spaak) came only reluctantly via Spain to the UK, but that is another story, that has still up to now a lot of reticences to be published in the general press, and it is only in specialist honest historical work that it is told in full. As I have done on a French forum based on the study of these two historians)
But my parents could have been the victim of some common gossip not based on reality. As I have seen now, at my research about Edith Cavell and today on my research on the assasination of Heidrich in Prague there is a lot more available and more accurate than in the time of my messages on the ex-BBC messageboard. And I will have perhaps more infomation on the Belgian Secret Army on the internet than I had for the ex-BBC in the time.

"Paul, If you want me to elaborate further , in other words why the resistance had to get the permission of their legal advisers and how the resistance nominated the person(s) and why from another area to carry out the shooting etc do let me know."

Of course Dirk I am interested, while perhaps I will be able to use it on a French-Belgian forum about WWII, together with what I find on Belgium here. I will ask the Belgians there to give information about that subject too, while they are more knowledgeable on that subject than I am.

Kind regards from Paul.

Dirk and Meles meles,

Dirk I suppose that your grasp of German is better than the one of French, but this film is in French and no subtitles, but I suppose Meles meles will be able to listen to it.

As I am the last days busy with resistance and spies, I read this morning coincidentally on teletext of the French language Belgian RTBF, an item about a grandson seeking for the secret life of his grandparents during WWII, of whom his parents hadn't told that much.
I was so lucky to find in a few minutes on the internet the film about that story from the grandson himself...
https://www.rtbf.be/info/article/detail_l-incroyable-secret-de-mes-grands-parents-la-belge-histoire-de-7-a-la-une?id=9856265
I am curious if Meles meles hears the difference between the French French and the Belgian/Walloon French from the grandson? It is unbelievable, but in my opinion I hear some sounds that although they are in French, sound as some sounds of the Flemish dialects near Wallonia. After all they were together for some 450 years, even a 600 years if you reckon with the Burgundian unification.
But back to the film to make a summary:
Meles meles, correct me if I made some mistakes.
Oscar Petit et Eglantine Petit-Pierre
grandparents de Olivier Petit now 55 years old. When Olivier asked his mother about the story, she had "la bouche fermée comme un huitre" (the mouth closed as a oyster). At the end he found papers in a basket. among them his father in a racewaggon, and many other documents, which sparked him to do research during 4 years in Belgium, Germany and the US. His grandparents were resistants from the first hour November 1941 at the "milice patriotique". They received aviators from the net-work and brought them to a save place, giving them food and drink and from the network false papers to escape via the net-work files. March 1944 they were denounced to the Germans and taken prisoner. Eglantine died in the gas chambers and Oscar died from utterly exhaustion. And that sadly only some weeks before the liberation of the camps. Olivier show at the end a medal and a letter from the American president via Eisenhower of remerciements to the family.

Dirk and Meles meles: Two comments:

-that's the way I prefer the resistance would work and yes (not in this case) gathering information about the ennemy for the allies.
- I wonder why Olivier's mother had "la bouche fermée comme un huitre"?

Too late to start with the Heidrich assassination...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Paul,

You may wonder why an resistance worker from a different area would be asked to assassinate a collaborator in another area.

Simply because there could always have been a possibility that if it would be a local resistance worker doing the job some passer-by or someone in the neighbour hood might have recognised or even have known him.



As I mentioned in my previous post that although the resistance movement was about 20.000 strong only about some 2000 were active in dangerous undertakings such as raids on police offices, jails, distribution centres, bank raids, offices where the town/city population’s records were kept etc.

These units were known as “KNOK PLOEGEN” ( Fighting/Action Units).

And of course these units were also the ones who would carry out the elimination of individuals if so required.

Age group was usually between 20 to 40 years of age.



And a raid or something like that would usually be carried out by between 4 to 10 men.

As a matter of interest they usually had no idea at all of the names and addresses of each other but were known to each other by a nick name usually a first name only.

In other words you may have introduced your self to me as Brikkie or something like that and I may have said ; I am “Koekebakker “and nice to meet you.



Why ?

Wel let’s presume that if I got caught by the SD/Gestapo all I could tell them even under severe torture that I knew you as Brikkie and that was all I know and could tell them .

Thus in other words if a raid was carried out by let us say 8 men each man would only know his mates by the nick name/alias.

Yes, I suppose that sometimes it did not always worked out like that but it was the safest way of operating





To avoid message becoming bored I will come back later with more info how the assassination would be carried out.

　

　

Dirk

The Heidrich assassination at Prague.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anthropoid

The wiki seems to be relatively well elaborated and is extremely more elaborated than in the beginning of the 21th century.

As comment I wanted to start that in my opinion this resistance act of the Czecho-Slovak government in exile in Britain, wasn't worth all the deaths of the reprisals by the Nazis.
And I read also on the wiki:
under "strategic context":
"The resistance was active from the very beginning of occupation in several other countries defeated in open warfare (e.g., Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece), but the subjugated Czech lands remained relatively calm and produced significant amounts of materiel for the Third Reich. The exiled government felt that it had to do something that would inspire the Czechoslovaks as well as show the world that the Czechs and Slovaks were allies. Reinhard Heydrich was chosen over Karl Hermann Frank as an assassination target due to his status as the acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia as well as his reputation for terrorizing local citizens. The operation was also intended to demonstrate to senior Nazis that they were not beyond the reach of allied forces and the resistance groups they supported.^[2]

 If I understand it well, the government in exile, were disappointed by the resistance of the Czechs. The Slovaks had their own republic under the tutelle of Germany.
And I can believe in this competition with Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece as it seems still to be alive nowadays among for instance Polish nationalists, as on Historum I had a clash with such one, about pretending that the Belgians, Dutch and Czechs had only a poor resistance against the Nazi occupiers, boasting they were the true resistants in Europe. I answered that most overhere in Belgium wanted only to go on with their daily life, especially with food and healthcare. and as long as the Germans didn't interfere too much with all that they stood rather docile. It was only when the occupier started with the obliged work in Germany that the resistance rapidly grew. The same as in France. In the beginning it were more pamphlets (flyers?) against the ennemy that were distributed from clandestine printing offices.

As I wanted to know the source mentioned with a (2) of the wiki paragraph above, I tried in the notes to verify the source and came indeed to this:
http://www.army.cz/images/id_7001_8000/7419/assassination-en.pdf
When I read the document, it is from the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic in 2002 with a foreword of Jaroslav Tvrdik, minister of that same ministry.
I came to the article by the name on wiki of Michal Burian, but if I seek for Michal Burian I find only references in Czech and nothing points to a carreer in history.
Althougn it is all credible, I nevertheless prefer the input of historians as source, and even that is not a guarantee for no bias, as proven in my opinion in the German "Historikerstreit" or the French "Aristote au Mont Saint Michel"...



As an aside:
the whole operation nearly failed because the Stengun didn't work. And it had a reputation of failure.




When I had to fire with it in the "shooting gallery," (we call it the "schietstand") in the Sixties of the Armée belge-Belgisch leger (ABL) I found it such a dangerous weapon. And you could not easely shoot a man on ten metres (yards), you had to have it from the many bullets. As truckdrivers, we had as standard weapen the better French Vigneron, but you know the army, we had to exercise with the Sten.
They said to us in the Sixties, that the Stengun was concepted to be fabricated in occupied territory with simple parts easy to produce with rather unsophisticated machines as a small turning lathe.

Kind regards, Paul.

Dirk I completely understand your message, as with the resistance people of another region not known in the region of the assassination. And it seems to be a bit the same method as I learned on the French forum as in France.
BTW; what with the Communists in The Netherlands, after 1941? In France a resistant flew in from London to coordinate the Free French with the Communists, the name escapes me now, he was also murdered later by the Nazis, without giving names of comrades. The French made a whole thread about him.

Kind regards from Paul.

Again no spy, but a resistant from WWI: Edith Cavell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell

And seemingly even not a resistant, while she didn't resist the Germans, only helped escape British and French soldiers and citizens to escape to the neutral Netherlands. It was perhaps not that wise of her, to admit seemingly to the Germans that they received thankings from England, while England was the ennemy and not the Netherlands.
And she seems to have had a real law suit from the Germans; based on real law articles and that law was neutral equallly to men and women. Although perhaps had they wanted it, they could have found a lawful escape from the death penalty, but the political will wasn't there.
Note that she was not persecuted for intelligence gathering, but only for the escape route...
There seems to be in the wiki some discussion about the controversy if she was working with the Secret Service:
from wiki:
"Cavell was arrested not for espionage, as many were led to believe, but for 'treason', despite not being a German national.^[3] She may have been recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and turned away from her espionage duties in order to help Allied soldiers escape, although this is not widely accepted.^[17] Rankin cites the published statement of M. R. D. Foot, historian and Second World War British intelligence officer, as to Cavell having been part of SIS or MI6.^[18] The former director-general of MI5, Stella Rimington, announced in 2015 that she had unearthed documents in Belgian military archives that confirmed an intelligence gathering aspect to Cavell's network. The BBC Radio 4 programme that presented Rimington's quote, noted Cavell's use of secret codes and, though amateurish, other network members' successful transmission of intelligence.^[19]


And of course her case became used fully by the British propaganda including that she was a woman.


In the first half of the 20th century there seems to have been still the picturing of the role of the women in the 19th century. In my opinion it was only later in the 20th century with all the atrocities of WWII that there came balance in the gender role. And perhaps with the doctrines of Socialism/Communism too?
Perhaps, the nordmann questions in the beginning of the thread were related to that? Yes in my opinion in WWI women were still treated otherwise than men.
And even the German Kaiser was aware of all the fuss that was made by the British propaganda about the "woman" and "nurse" Edith Cavell, while he along wiki:
"However, in January 1916 the Kaiser decreed that regarding women from now on capital punishment should not be carried out without his explicit prior endorsement.^[27]

Kind regards, Paul.

And now with "Die Rote Kapelle" (the red orchestra) I seems for the first time to be come in the field of the spies: gathering information and giving it through to a controlling secret service.
But first about the actuality and also in the light of Leopold Trepper...Russia seems not to appreciate that his spies are turned by the British into their secret service...

I find the wiki article not too well stuffed, but in any case it gives a first insight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Orchestra_(espionage)
And it can be that gathering evidence is not that easy as it  by the fact itself are secret actions and not easy to put an official light on it. As I see it, I discovered on the first sight only "The great game" from Leopold Trepper himself, not a reliable source while it is written by the spy himself, if you ask me...perhaps more historical interviews from several sources by the Frenchman Gilles Perrault, allthough this one too is not an historian but a journalist...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Perrault

And now I see that the Red Orchestra was composed by three groups:
1. The Trepper group based in Brussels
2. The Schulze-Boysen/harnack group based in Berlin
3. The Red Three based in Switzerland.

And the big figure head: Leopold Trepper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Trepper
It's a dirty craft in my opinion when you all read it...


And in the Trepper group appears someone that we know overhere in Belgium, the niece of our PM in WWII Paul-Henri Spaak: Suzanne Spaak...and if I conclude it well then tne daughter of Paul-Henri that I saw many times "vigorously" on the Belgian RTBF and Suzanne have to be cousins...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Spaak


For those who want to learn more about spies and all, I found two books, that you can read nearly completely on line:

And now I don't find the first one...will give it in an addendum...
And the second about the Red Orchestra from Anne Nelson:
https://goo.gl/FpT1t7

Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum to the previous:

"A century of spies" by Jeffrey T. Richelson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_T._Richelson
https://www.amazon.com/Century-Spies-Intelligence-Twentieth/dp/019511390X
https://goo.gl/Gt6Tiz


And about Anne Nelson of the other book.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/anne-nelson



Kind regards, Paul.

I remember (50 years ago or more) a serialised reading of Elizabeth Nicholson's book "Death Be Not Proud" (borrowing the title from John Donne) about 7 special operations unit women, Diana Rowden*, Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel, Madeleine Damerment, Elaine Plewment, Yolanda Beekman and Sonia Olchanesky.  They all died (in death camps if I remember rightly - it is 50 years and odd).

* EN had been at school with Diana Rowden.

Lady in retirement,

as promised in the "café", I publish here the links that you mentioned about:
Ernan Alban Forbes Dennis: diplomat and MI6 head of station for Austria, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F79095
and Phyllis Bottome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Bottome


Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I remember (50 years ago or more) a serialised reading of Elizabeth Nicholson's book "Death Be Not Proud" (borrowing the title from John Donne) about 7 special operations unit women, Diana Rowden*, Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel, Madeleine Damerment, Elaine Plewment, Yolanda Beekman and Sonia Olchanesky.  They all died (in death camps if I remember rightly - it is 50 years and odd).

* EN had been at school with Diana Rowden.

Lady,

I discovered a lot. And it is Elizabeth Nicholas
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Not-Proud-Elizabeth-Nicholas/dp/0856176109
I didn't find nearly nothing about her and if she is the author as it seems from "Redeemed"...
To start with some critical books...
Vision of War WWII in popular literature and culture by Paul Holsinger and Mary Anne Schofoeld
https://goo.gl/1so9wy
and
A life in secrets. Vera Atkins and the missing agents of WWII by Sarah Helm
https://goo.gl/j5wtUs

See you tomorrow and kind regards from Paul.

Anyone who has seen John Ford's film The Horse Soldiers (1959) set during the American Civil War might remember the character of Miss Hannah Hunter. A young plantation mistress faced with Union cavalry officers billeted in her home, she plays the role of ditzy Southern belle while all the while spying upon them and eavesdropping on their conversations. She is helped in this work by her maid slave Lukey.
 
The character of Hannah is based on the real life spy Belle Boyd who began her career in espionage in 1861 aged just 17 when Union soldiers were billeted in her Virginia home. She used her slave Eliza to send messages to Confederate forces and notably provided crucial intelligence for General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Belle was twice arrested by Northern forces and later escaped to England. There she married a Union naval officer Samuel Hardinge and the war now being over found herself a redundant ex-spy. Returning to America she published her memoirs and died in 1900 still aged only 56.

Belle Boyd’s was not an isolated case. There were many female spies in the American Civil War working for the Confederacy and also for the Union.

PaulRyckier wrote:

As an aside:
the whole operation nearly failed because the Stengun didn't work. And it had a reputation of failure.

As I understand it, the Sten was initially introduced because of the need to rapidly reequip the Army after Dunkirk, and something cheap and easy to produce was ideal.  Those same characteristics made it theoretically ideal for resistance groups - though as you say in practice its unreliability and inaccuracy made it a dubious asset.  The Sten was due to be replaced by the superior Sterling, but although a few of the latter saw service from 1944 it wasn't widely introduced until well after the War.  The Sterling is arguably better known these days as the BlasTech E-11 Blaster Rifle, the weapon of choice of Imperial Stormtroopers in the Star Wars films!  Ironically late in the War the Germans produced their own version of the Sten (virtually identical apart from the bottom- rather than side-mounted magazine), the MP3008, for use by the Volkssturm, their 'Home Guard'.

Anyway, I'm digressing from the theme.  Aphra Behn, 1640(?)-1689, was a rather earlier woman spy, an 'intelligencer' for Charles II during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67).  She was based in Antwerp and Bruges, working under the codename Astrea.  It is possible, however, that she was eventually betrayed, although she survived.  She also abandoned her career thanks to the King failing to pay her for her services or cover her expenses.  She eventually became a successful playwright, producing 19 plays, as well as poetry and A Discovery of New Worlds, a translation of a French book on astronomy.

This is an article about spies in the ACW, including more about Belle Boyd:

Civil War Agents


and from another site; African American Woman Spies
The Dabneys
Black Americans made significant contributions to Union intelligence during the War. Because of the culture of slavery in the South, blacks performing menial activities could move about without suspicion. A black couple provided intelligence about Confederate troop movements to the Union during the fighting around Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1863.

A runaway slave named Dabney crossed into the Union lines with his wife and found employment in General Joseph Hooker's headquarters camp. A few weeks later, Dabney's wife returned to Confederate territory after learning that her master, a Southern woman, was returning to her home nearby. Shortly thereafter, Dabney began reporting Confederate movements to Hooker's staff. Union officials soon discovered that his reports were accurate, and asked him where he got his information.

Dabney led them to an elevated area in the camp, from which they had a clear view of Fredericksburg and much of the surrounding area. He pointed to a house on the outskirts of the town, along the river bank. In its yard was a clothesline where clothing, sheets and towels were hung out to dry.

Dabney explained that he and his wife had worked out their own signaling system using the laundry that she hung out to dry for her employer. Whenever she saw troops moving through the area or overheard Confederate soldiers discussing their future plans, she would rush to the clothesline and hang items in particular formations, sending Dabney a coded message.

For example, a white shirt stood for General A. P. Hill, pants hung on the clothesline upside down indicated the direction west, etc. While this system could send simple messages such as "Hill-north-three regiments," its use was extremely limited. However, that does not diminish the courage and commitment these individuals demonstrated by their actions. It illustrates the extent to which African Americans would go to assist their saviours, the Union Army.

LiR and others, I started to read this evening the book from Sarah Helm that I mentioned to you about the missing agents that you mentioned.

"A life in secrets. Vera Atkins and the missing agents of WWII by Sarah Helm
https://goo.gl/j5wtUs


It is really an excelent book and it reads as a novel, very well written, bravo for Sarah Helm...
I strongly recommend it to Triceratops, Vizzer, Gilgamesh, Meles meles, Anglo Norman and why not,  to all the rest of the band...
It is about the life of Vera Atkins at the end the most powerful personality in the SOE. In the beginning when the SOE started there was rivalry between MI6 and the new SOE.
And the book goes further with the downturning of the Prosper network in France but I am not that far yet, which is among others about the 7 women that you mentioned. And I read from comments on the book that there were made faults...I hope to find more in the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Atkins
And now I see neary all my questions are answered in this wiki about Vera Atkins...
About the author:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Helm


And btw: for Dirk Marinus: I don't know if the "Kriegsspiel" in the Atkins link is not the "Englandspiel" mentioned by Dirk to me in the BBC time...Dirk, where are you?

Kind regards, Paul.

OOPS and I forgot as it is not in the wiki:
Sarah Helm: born Nov. 2; 1956

Anglo-Norman, I had mentioned Mrs Aphra Benn (Behn?) a little earlier in the thread though certainly not in as much detail as your good self.  She first came on to my radar when I read a historical novel where the Thomas Southerne play "Oronooko" is performed at one point in the story.  I looked the play up on Google (as one does) and saw that it was based on a short prose work by Mrs Behn.

Thinking of S.O.E. there was a TV mini-series in the 1980s based on the wartime life of Nancy Wake, who was an Australian lady married to a Frenchman and living in France.  On the whole it was at least a competent adaptation of an intriguing story but unfortunately the people who wrote the adaptation took some licence and portrayed a person who was always loyal as being a traitor; of course in the 1980s that man still had friends (and maybe family) alive so the falsehood went down like a ton of bricks.  Even though it wasn't Ms Wake who wrote the screenplay I seem to remember reading that some people who had known both her and the gentleman who was wrongly depicted as a traitor expressing their displeasure.

Vizzer wrote:

Anyone who has seen John Ford's film The Horse Soldiers (1959) set during the American Civil War might remember the character of Miss Hannah Hunter. A young plantation mistress faced with Union cavalry officers billeted in her home, she plays the role of ditzy Southern belle while all the while spying upon them and eavesdropping on their conversations. She is helped in this work by her maid slave Lukey.
 
The character of Hannah is based on the real life spy Belle Boyd who began her career in espionage in 1861 aged just 17 when Union soldiers were billeted in her Virginia home. She used her slave Eliza to send messages to Confederate forces and notably provided crucial intelligence for General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Belle was twice arrested by Northern forces and later escaped to England. There she married a Union naval officer Samuel Hardinge and the war now being over found herself a redundant ex-spy. Returning to America she published her memoirs and died in 1900 still aged only 56.

Belle Boyd’s was not an isolated case. There were many female spies in the American Civil War working for the Confederacy and also for the Union.

Vizzer thank you for mentioning the espionage in the American Civil War.
It is part of the history of  espionage, which is perhaps as old as the first humans...
I find it interesting too that even in the 17th century there were already spies sent from Britain to the continent by Charles II as mentioned by LiR and Anglo-Norman cfr: Aphra Behn.

Kind regards from Paul.

LiR and to tease a bit Temperance and Priscilla, and as I have done the search:
The stories of the 7 lady spies, who get murdered by the Germans, from your story. I give eight, because one survived from the Prosper network.

And horrifying detail in one of the stories the Germans pulled out the fingernails of one of the ladies to try to let her tell the names and details...
http://spartacus-educational.com/SOErowden.htm
http://nigelperrin.com/yolandebeekman.htm#.WqRk-cKWwdV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e_Borrel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Leigh
http://what-when-how.com/women-and-war/damerment-madeleine/
http://spartacus-educational.com/SOEsansom.htm
http://spartacus-educational.com/SOEplewman.htm
http://spartacus-educational.com/SOEolschanesky.htm



Kind regards from Paul.

Thank you for the information PR.  I don't want to bring unwarranted levity into a serious thread, but my mother was a primary school teacher at an RC school during the war.  The kids and the teachers (who included a couple of nuns) were evacuated to a smaller place (might have been Ripon).  Anyway there was a story doing the rounds that Germans were parachuting into Britain disguised as nuns and somebody reported the nuns to the local constabulary saying they might be spies.  Fortunately, the local constabulary satisfied themselves that the people in question were bona fide nuns and not spies.

You've just awoken a long-buried memory, LiR.

The late great Jake:

Any comment on the fact that Germany murdered British spies but Britain executed German spies.

Why is the difference between murder and execution.


Dirk Marinus

Is that a rhetorical question?

Surely it depends who eventually won. Or on whose side the narrative is intended for: who is "we" and who is "them"? Why do you ask?

Meles meles,

no , I am not at all surprised by your response.
As you say it all depends who is the victor.

It brings back the allegation of German submarine commanders shooting at survivors of torpedoed ships during WW2 yet there is no mention of who actually  started the shooting survivors in lifeboats in September 1939 in the South Atlantic. 


Dirk Marinus

The personal testimony of witnesses suggests that the word "allegation" in your sentence merits revision, Dirk. And the same with "there is no mention of who actually started the shooting of survivors in lifeboats ..." where personal testimony from survivors in that instance too is also now a matter of historical record. I agree that many post-war histories glossed over or ignored these issues but many have not, though it is also true that very few impartial and serious histories would concern themselves too much with notions of "who started it", so in that much you are correct. In fact the first time I saw accounts from survivors from both sides who had been at the receiving end of such treatment in breach of international convention, they had been assembled in a Time-Life book published in the 60s in which Canadian, British, German and some other navy and merchant navy survivors of being sunk during the war recounted their experiences. Hardly a fringe publisher or publication, and published while many of the people concerned still alive hadn't even reached late middle age.

Dirk Marinus wrote:

Any comment on the fact that Germany murdered British spies but Britain executed German spies.

Why is the difference between murder and execution.


Dirk Marinus

Dirk I mentioned yesterday in the Vera Atkins message 9h25:
"And btw: for Dirk Marinus: I don't know if the "Kriegsspiel" in the Atkins link is not the "Englandspiel" mentioned by Dirk to me in the BBC time...Dirk, where are you?"

If you want to have a look to that message and the wiki on Vera Atkins?

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Thank you for the information PR.  I don't want to bring unwarranted levity into a serious thread, but my mother was a primary school teacher at an RC school during the war.  The kids and the teachers (who included a couple of nuns) were evacuated to a smaller place (might have been Ripon).  Anyway there was a story doing the rounds that Germans were parachuting into Britain disguised as nuns and somebody reported the nuns to the local constabulary saying they might be spies.  Fortunately, the local constabulary satisfied themselves that the people in question were bona fide nuns and not spies.

Yes, Lady in retirement, we had the same overhere in Belgium 1940. There was a hoax going round among the population that the Germans had hidden regional plans behind the well know iron panels of "Café Pacha" of course every shop with a Pacha advertisement shield had the shield taken from the wall. But the Germans had good plans with them and needed no other ones, my mother testified as she saw every street even the most remote from her neighbourhood on the plan that the German showed to the population of the street.
Another hoax was that the German parachutists had a cassock with them to go disguised as priests among the population near Deinze that I already mentioned in this thread. So was a pastor taken by the population until some one others, who know him had recognized him as the true one.
What the Germans did and that was true, to drop dummies instead of real parachutists to give the impression of a lot more than the real number and also to make panique behind the lines, even with only dummies as was the case in 1940 at the Albert Canal, and which was the cause of a general panique among the soldiers along the Albert Canal., with at the other side real German soldiers.

But back to the serious thread: From the wiki about the mistakes of the SOE.
And it seems that Buckmaster (what a name? we have the same in Dutch: with buck (male rabbit) and "bucken" you know the act of ...)
was the real culprit...and it was perhaps for these mistakes that Vera Atkins felt her also responsable for? In any case I suppose I will further learn it in the Sarah Helm book.
From the wiki:
"Whatever the truth, Buckmaster was Atkins' superior officer, and thus ultimately responsible for running SOE's French agents, and she remained a civilian and not even a British national until February 1944. It was Buckmaster who recklessly sent a reply to the message supposedly sent by Norman telling him, and thus the actual German operator, that he had forgotten his "true" check and to remember it in future.
On 1 October 1943 F-Section received a message from "Jacques", an agent in Berne, passing on information from "Sonja" that "Madeleine" and two others had had "a serious accident and were in hospital"—code for captured by the German authorities. "Jacques" was an SOE radio operator, Jacques Weil of the Juggler circuit, who had escaped to Switzerland, "Sonja" was his fiancee, Sonia Olschanezky, who was still operating in Paris, and "Madeleine" was Noor Inayat Khan, a wireless operator of the Cinema circuit. This accurate information was not acted upon by Buckmaster, probably because "Sonja" was a locally recruited agent unknown to him, and F-Section continued to regard "Madeleine's" messages as genuine for several months after Noor's arrest. There is no evidence that Atkins was aware of this message, and as she was later to misidentify Sonia as Noor because she was unaware the former was an SOE operative, the responsibility for ignoring Sonia's communication and continuing to send agents to the blown Prosper circuit and sub-circuits in Paris, and so to their capture and often death, must lie with Buckmaster and not Atkins, as with the case of "Archambaud" above.^[17]

Kind regards from Paul.

Not so much about female spies, but spies generally, between 1959 and 1961 the BBC ran a couple of drama series about Oreste Pinto (who I think was Dutch) who worked during the war in the UK interrogating refugees to find out the genuine ones and the ones who had come with the intention of spying.  Bernard Archard played Mr Pinto in the series - slightly off-topic but firtling* around the internet to check my facts (as much as one can on the internet) it seems Mr Archard had bought a ticket to Canada because he was fed up of regular periods of unemployment as an actor but the show runners decided they wanted someone who wasn't a "star" and Mr A auditioned and got the part.  In a 1962 Dutch programme covering the same subject matter (Wikipedia being my guide) an actor called Frits Butzelaar played the part of Oreste Pinto.  It's many years ago of course but I remember in one episode someone was outed by Mr Pinto as a spy because he threw darts at a picture of Hitler and the person being interrogated ran to place himself in front of the picture of Hitler to protect it from the darts.  There was another one where somebody claimed to have swum across either the English Channel or the North Sea and he was made to swim in a swimming pool a distance equivalent to the one he claimed to have swum in the sea (he was successful in swimming the distance if I remember correctly).

* Edited - not sure if it should be 'firtling' or 'furtling' - meaning hunting around - a dialect word I think.  Flipping autocorrect had changed it to 'firstling' and I only noticed today (23 May 2018) and I typed the original entry in March.

Lady in Retirement ,

Films and books about what has happened are sometimes exaggerated and these two incidents quoted by you:

...... "  It's many years ago of course but I remember in one episode someone was outed by Mr Pinto as a spy because he threw darts at a picture of Hitler and the person being interrogated ran to place himself in front of the picture of Hitler to protect it from the darts.  There was another one where somebody claimed to have swum across either the English Channel or the North Sea and he was made to swim in a swimming pool a distance equivalent to the one he claimed to have swum in the sea (he was successful in swimming the distance if I remember correctly)."........


should be taken with a pinch of salt.



Dirk Marinus

Dirk,

wait a minute, while you are here, I wanted to start  a reply to LiR about King Kong, the Dutch double agent, who was exposed by the Dutch Oreste Pinto, as the betrayer to the Germans about Operation Market Garden and Arnhem, which costed the lives of many British soldiers and perhaps of the Commonwealth as well. And also ask you about the Englandspiel, Funkspiel, Kriegsspiel? wich was meantioned in the messages about £Die Rote Kapelle and Trepper.

Kind regards from Paul.