WWI and II spies

Spies were in every war. Espionage was how you got information about the next enemy attack and their strategy, as well as who was in charge of what and anything else that made a difference in the war.

Knitting Stitches were a way of sending coded messages.

When it came to WWI and II this meant hiring women to be 'code girls'. These women would go home and tell their folks they pushed pencils and were personal secretaries, when they were actually breaking codes for the military. WACs and WAAVs were hired to do this, though WAAVs got cooler uniforms and more perks.

This wasn't the only espionage that went into these wars. Men and women were both spies, through code-breaking and undercover work. Today I'm here to tell you all about them.

WWI

Mata Hari

Exotic dancer Mata Hari did strip teasing and was shot for spying for the Germans. She was Dutch, but claimed to be raised as an Indian temple dancer. She performed under the name Lady Gresha MacLeod, then took on the name Mata Hari. She had several affairs with military officers and wealthy aristocrats, as a matter of financial survival, before she was forced back to Holland. She was paid to become a German spy and had the name H 21 as a spy. She continued her affairs with the military men and politicians like before, but now the British had caught on to her. She was offered money to spy for France, and then switched sides. Because of this, they could track her codename to the German espionage and she was caught for being a German spy. She claimed not to have done anything for the Germans, but still got shot for it. Researchers say the case was flimsy against her, or that she was a great spy, or that she was a scapegoat to raise French moral. Either way, it is unclear if she actually spied for the Germans or just took the money and codename. Her accuser turned out to be a German spy.

The Statue of Edith Cavell
at St. Martin's Park

Edith Cavell, a matron at a hospital, helped 200 or more soldiers escape the Germans. She helped

soldiers from France, Belgium, and England get to safety. She also cared for anyone who needed help, no matter what side, out of religious conviction. There is a statue in her honor at St. Martin's Park with the epitaph 'Humanity, Fortitude, Devotion, Sacrifice' and what she told the priest before her death, "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone". She was executed for harboring foreign soldiers on German soil.

WWII

Virginia Hall

There was once a woman spy with a wooden leg. I know that sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it was true. Virginia Hall, 'the limping lady', had a prosthetic she named Cuthbert because of a freak hunting accident. She was the first female resident agent in France. She radioed information and recruited resistance spies, as well as filing "news" stories with coded messages in them. She would signal pickup spots with potted plants. The Nazis eventually put her face on a wanted poster, but that didn't deter her. She just did her spy work from another place, after hot-footing it out of France. She planned sabotage missions that were credited with killing 150 Nazis and capturing 500 more. She retired from the CIA (a mandatory retirement) at age 60. She was the only woman to receive the distinguished service cross during WWII.

Juan Pujol Garcia

Some spies faked their deaths, this next one for 36 years, because they

could take on new identities. MI5's Juan Pujol Garcia did just that. He joined British forces against the Germans. To pad his resume after being rejected by the British, he posed as a Spanish Official and fed wrong information to Germans. He became a rogue double agent. After padding his resume enough, he tried again. This time they let him in. His double-agent status was never found out by Nazi forces.  He was a large part of the success of the D-Day invasion due to bringing false information to the Nazis. He faked his death in 1948 until 1980. A reporter looked into him around 1980 and suspected he was actually alive, as did Garcia's wife. He died for real in 1988. Some say he would have been okay to come out of hiding in 1960, but suspect he was ashamed for not making a war career in Venezuela and stayed in hiding because of that.

Invisible ink, now a gag gift or kids toy, was not a toy during wartime. In fact, Josephine Baker, a black singer and dancer, put invisible ink messages in her sheet music while working for the French Resistance, in order to get the messages into Portugal from France. Invisible ink was a way to get messages out that was used in more than one war. This is only one example of its' use, but even in the Civil War, it was used. Also used was knitting stitches, something that could easily hide a coded message in an innocent sweater. 

Invisible Ink being read

Spies and their techniques are fascinating to me, and if you share my enthusiasm, I'd suggest reading my sources and digging deeper. Women and men spies and Code Girls are easy research topics and you can find a lot of information, and not all of it can fit in one blog post. There are several movies on famous spies out there, too.

Pictures:

Atlas Obscura

BBC

Urban75

NPR

Art of Manliness

Sources:

https://www.history.com/news/female-allied-spy-world-war-2-wooden-leg

https://www.history.com/news/spy-double-agent-death-hoax-world-war-2

https://www.history.com/news/the-exotic-dancer-who-became-wwis-most-notorious-spy

https://www.thoughtco.com/female-spies-of-the-world-wars-3530435

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/knitting-spies-wwi-wwii

civil war women spies

The Civil War, two sides fighting each other over the issue of slavery. This war was filled with female spies. Who else could get closer to a general or an officer than a 'harmless' woman? There were dresses that held secrets in their underskirts and women wouldn't be frisked. It was genius!

In the Civil War women weren't equal to men, according to society, so women could get real, real close to diplomats, politicians, officers, and leaders in the community and pass on what they overheard to the side they actually supported. A little charm, some romance here and there, maybe some listening at doors, and you already have a lot of information at your fingertips.

As for messages being hidden, try hiding a message in your hair or underskirts. Most men are not going to frisk a young or aged woman. Women spies were caught, in some cases, but by then the other side had gotten quite a bit of information if the spy was smart. Some got messages out despite house arrest.

Famous Women Spies

Harriet Tubman

You have, most likely, already been taught about one of them. Harriet Tubman is considered a woman spy for helping slaves escape through the underground railroad. Spy work is no picnic, and if caught you could die for it, but that never stopped her from saving her fellow slaves. She even set up an espionage ring for the Union side of the war. She coordinated the sending of black men to the other side to get information. Because black people were considered less of a person, it got a wealth of information to the Union side of the war. She organized missions to destroy plantations and free slaves. She led a group to disrupt Confederate supply lines and freed 700 slaves in the process. This woman was more than an underground railroad conductor and freed slave. 

Belle Boyd

When it comes to beauty and brains, I'd say Belle Boyd had it. She supported the Confederate side of

the war and had southern loyalties. Despite shooting a drunk Union soldier, she got her share of military secrets to pass on to her side. She eavesdropped through holes and rode into enemy lines. She was caught a few times, but she survived the war. One officer, out of his love for her, helped her escape to London, then married her.

Elizabeth Van Lew

Loyal to the abolitionist movement, Elizabeth Van Lew, who brought help to prisoners in the form of basic needs, got information from guards and prisoners. She helped Union soldiers escape and smuggle out valuables and messages. She headed an espionage ring in Richmond. Using invisible ink and hollow vegetables, she got messages to union soldiers. She recruited a Libby Prison high ranking official to her ring. Unfortunately, her spy work left her in poverty, so a Union officer provided for her until her death in 1900.

Tactics and Techniques

How did they do it? Other than feminine wiles and a friendly smile, there were societal rules in their favor. For one, women were considered harmless and not equal to men. If they had been considered equals this would never have worked. This is the only situation that women being unequal was an advantage. For another, they were being intelligent about it. Using people to get what they wanted was a smart move here. It may have saved their lives and the lives of others. We know it saved and freed slaves. 

The women above used their care-giving and support roles to hide messages and smuggle messages and valuables out of prisons and camps. All those undergarments and good looks, as well as hairstyles, came in handy for the use of espionage. Who would question a woman giving aid to the men in the prisons? 

The clothing of the time for women made great hiding spots for weaponry, clothing, supplies, you name it! For the sake of modesty, strip-searching was not something a woman would likely experience. Men? Yes, but women? Not often. Fans that came with clothing could also be used for morse code. With the care-giving role came cooking pistol parts into bread and hiding supplies using domestic arts. Messages could hide anywhere- eggs, hair-dos, bread, false-bottomed baskets. 

Towards the end of the war, however, the men learned and women had to be more and more careful how they smuggled information in. Men started searching women more aggressively and women started getting caught. Hoop skirts could be torn off in an effort to find hidden weapons, and sometimes they were found out that way. It got harder as the war continued.

Pictures:
National Women's History Museum
The Herald Dispatch
Pinterest
Military History Now



Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/secret-agents-in-hoop-skirts-women-spies-of-the-civil-war
http://www.clarabartonmuseum.org/spies/

propaganda toward men Part 2

In a previous blog post, I talked about propaganda toward women. Today is propaganda directed toward men. Propaganda is political, biased information put out to influence the public through any media source possible, sometimes subtle in nature and other times extremely obvious.

The Disney Cartoon Private Snafu  - WWII era propaganda from Warner Brothers

I'm starting from the Civil war and ending on today's propaganda, because believe me, propaganda is still out there. It just isn't as obvious as the 1950s carpooling posters and offensive appliance ads. I'd encourage all of you out there to analyze the messages in your daily dose of media to see what comes up over and over again. You might be surprised.

Civil War

proslavery propaganda

The civil war, as most know, was within one country over the issue of slavery. Most of the propaganda was in the form of songs, songs that sang that real men went off to fight. Some propaganda toward men was in the newspapers, like the cartoon of black men taking white men's' places in a ballroom while the white men watched. That example was clearly for slavery, given that it played on the fears of what could happen when slaves were free. Others showed slavery to be despicable and showed a slave mother sold separate from her children, among other things. They also showed slaves being whipped.

Union Recruiting poster

As you'd expect, men were called into the fighting, but what ended up happening to the women back home was near or actual starvation. They were begged to come home, but the propaganda continued to draw them into the war. It was unpatriotic not to be fighting. The vast majority of the propaganda, however, occurred before the fighting and was a tug-of-war between pro-abolitionist and anti-abolitionist views.

World War I

1917 recruiting poster

Here we have a beacon towards the fighting, yet again. This is the theme in every war, except the cold war, which we will get to later. This was the years of visual posters and Uncle Sam urging you toward war, a poster that was reused in WWII later on. People were into isolationism and didn't want to enter the war, so they were being encouraged into it by the emotional appeals of the posters showing what could happen if the enemy came to them. Fear tactics and pride in your country was used big time. 

Images of women and Uncle Sam drew countless men into the conflict. A woman in a loose Navy outfit declared how if she were a man she'd join the Navy. Vivid images of the enemy as a mad brute holding a victimized woman (much like King Kong) declared that women and children were in trouble and men had to step up and defeat that enemy. If you were a pacifist, you were harassed by your own neighborhood, in some cases. All roads pointed to the war effort, and fighting was the goal if you were a man. It was that simple. 

World War II

After the first world war poster went so well, it was used again. Uncle Sam was urging men to fight once again. It was basically a repeat of the first, in many ways, except that it was a different war. Add Hollywood into the mix and we have even more propaganda power behind the recruitment messages. No surprise here, those directors went on to be more famous than those who didn't get in on the war. 

The war propaganda films were all about patriotism, recruitment, and

Der Fuehrer's Face

portraying the enemy badly, much like the posters. Newsreels can even be considered propaganda, in my opinion, especially during the wars. It portrays the US as heroic and the enemy as barbaric. Walt Disney threw himself into war cartoons during this war, which is part of the reason that Disney is probably big now, given the war films saved him from bankruptcy. His war cartoons included Der Fuehrer's Face, starring Donald Duck, as well as Donald Gets Drafted, Commando Duck, and Adolf Hitler Goes to Hell. Plus, Disney put out war training films for the troops.

The Cold War

An ad for a tie

Living in this era was restricting for women, yes, but was it restricting for men? I doubt that. The 1950s was a time where men went to work, came home, and sat down to a good meal, then (if I may be so bold) knew their wife and could boast of a large family while leaving household childrearing to the wife. Does that sound hard? I didn't think so. Unless you were ADHD or unconventional (couldn't sit still and didn't fit in) or homosexual (manhood and dominance were a definite thing), men were holding the stick while women got the short end of the stick. Some men were even, figuratively, dragging the women behind the stick. 

 coffee ad

Watch the sitcoms Father Knows Best, I dream of Genie, or Bewitched and you will immediately notice who the head of the family is, even if there are no children. The women serve the men. There is even an ad in a magazine that says "show her it's a man's world". Men weren't active fathers, though, so if you were more domestically involved as a father you were the exception to the rule, because domestic tasks were womens' work at that time. It was also acceptable to criticize women for their looks and homemaking abilities, so if a husband was mad at his wife for doing anything wrong it was almost acceptable to punish the wife for it, as shown by this ad for coffee. Like I said, men were holding the stick and women got the short end of it. 

Today

Propaganda today is a little more subtle, especially now that social media, film, art, and false news can be spread like wildfire across the internet. With all the ideas floating around our political climate, politics is everywhere. You can no longer ignore it like you could before. When it comes to messages about manhood from society I'd say that war recruitment still goes, but it is not as urgently pressing as before. It also includes women, so it is no longer just men. On top of changing politics, men have more freedom to be in the domestic sphere, even to the point of being a stay-at-home dad. LGBTQ is also not taboo, according to most society, so homosexual men are not trapped in the 1950s role of playing happy family. Manhood has definitely changed, but the 1950s ideal still stuck some places and in some families, so it sometimes depends on how men were raised when it comes to manhood standards. 

I'll end this with a warning, and some advice to avoid being herded into a society standard like sheep. Check out all your facts and find the truth. Think about who gets the short end of the stick, no matter what perks you get. Gender continues to work toward equality, but men still, to some degree and in some places, have more power. Yes, women are no longer trapped into the 1950 standard, but some spheres have some old traditions that tend to keep women out. Some old traditions keep men who don't fit the mold out, too, so my basic advice is this; be intelligent and consider who could be potentially dragged behind the stick. We may not live in the 1950s, but there are minority groups who lose out. Find out facts for yourself and you can't go wrong. 

On a slightly strange note, I found the perfect way to either show off a sarcastic sense of humor or be single for eternity. See the picture below. Show this off in your bathroom and never be bothered by women again!

This is a shower curtain. I don't know why it was made, but here it is. 

Pictures:
New York Historical Society
Vintagraph
Disney Film Project
The Society Pages
Tribupedia
Fine Art America

sources:
https://ideologicalart.com/war/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/posters-sold-world-war-i-american-public-180952179/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/world-war-1-propaganda-posters
https://www.history.com/news/world-war-1-propaganda-woodrow-wilson-fake-news
https://www.sagu.edu/thoughthub/the-power-of-propaganda-in-world-war-ii
https://hazlitt.net/feature/hollywood-and-wwii-kings-propaganda
https://insidethemagic.net/2017/01/influencing-america-through-animation-wwii-propaganda-cartoons-part-three-walt-disney/
https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/cold-war-propaganda/

propaganda toward women part one

Every war came with propaganda, and most wars told men and women different messages. Today's post is all about what women were told from the civil war up until now. Next week is going to be what men were told up until now.

WWII propaganda for carpooling and saving gas

What is propaganda? Propaganda is promoting a political point of view through the use of posters, movies, and any other media source possible. It is usually biased and probably not reliable information. Now that we all know what propaganda is, let's dive in.

Civil War

The civil war was one country fighting itself over the issue of slavery. There were two sides, Confederate and Union (South vs. North). The South was for slavery and the North was not. It divided families and brothers fought brothers. 

We think about propaganda for WWI and WWII, but why not dig into propaganda during this war? Every war had it and used it to rally support for their side. In this case, it began long before the fighting did. The newspapers were the source, and given that brother was fighting brother, you can probably guess that both sides were putting out their propaganda competitively. War broke out, obviously, and the posters and patriotic songs became more common. "Join us!" Mail envelopes being the only communication, they were used for this purpose, too. 

In this case, women played an active role by singing about how men were real men if they enlisted. Women also wrote songs and poetry here. Visually, women are portrayed as weeping over graves, praying, and generally being the domestic that they were before, only in distress. You may imagine Gone With the Wind in this case, but that may not be entirely accurate, depending on social class. What women were encouraged to do was support both the home and the troops. As the war got worse, this meant working jobs out of necessity. Nursing, politics, factories, store clerks, even becoming spies were common. Some women wrote to their men saying to come home or they would starve. The ones that did this were facing possible starvation, so they questioned why the men had to fight and were considered unpatriotic. Women suffered, and sometimes ended up feeding families with prostitution money, when men went to war. The south was in the worst shape when it came to this due to the slaves deserting. With all this happening, women were told to support the home and still keep men's morale up.

WWI

World War I was a war the US didn't enter until around 1917. The common medium for this propaganda was posters, lots of posters. 

Women were depicted as victims of war, to play on men's need to protect their women. In this same era, they were also shown as seducers, war bystanders, or supporting the troops. "Supporting the troops" posters were on the homefront, to encourage women to be active in support and soldier morale. Being bystanders or normal people on posters was to set an example for a social standard. As for the seductresses on the posters, they were telling men not to sleep with loose women or prostitutes in an attempt to cut down VD and illegitimate children. The army didn't want to deal with soldiers procreating on their off time (and if they did, the army had already told them to protect themselves).

We know how they were depicted, so let's move on to what they told

women directly. The most direct was the red cross posters that told women to "hold up their end". Support the war and give the men your support. Women were also shown on these posters what germans did to women, so fear tactics were being used. The only strong images of women were women nursing men back to health and women working factories. They were called to work, but after the war, called back to the home. During the war they were called to Victory Garden, for the sake of canning. Saving food for times fo famine was also a message sent.

WWII

World War II was a call to take men's places in the workforce. They even let women into the armed forces, but not at soldiers. Some were code girls (but couldn't talk about it), WAACs, and WAVEs. The ones at home were told to buy war bonds, get a victory job, and save resources for the men at war. Fear tactics told the general public "loose lips sink ships" and showed badly depicted enemies thanking them for the wasted resources. They were called to recycle and carpool, as well. Even baseball wanted women to take the place of men to keep the league going. An example of a carpooling poster is the first image on the blog.

The Cold War

After the war, however, we find propaganda that is anticommunist and resulted in the 1950s lifestyle that was so constricting and suffocating to womenkind. The Cold War was a war no one fought, but everyone felt. You stayed in line to avoid being labeled a communist, and thus if you were different you stuck out like you were neon. The propaganda toward women at this time was through household cleaner and appliance ads. Add the sitcoms like I Dream of Genie or Bewitched and you have an excellent picture of what propaganda was out there.

Pyrex Ad 1950

Women in the US were compared to unattractive, working Soviet Union women. Women in the US were portrayed as happy, perfect, domestic women with modern appliances. On top of this, single meant "sex-hungry" in this time and you were "a danger to men" according to society. Along with the pressure to be a perfect mother came the pressure to have a bomb shelter well stocked and prepared for a nuclear attack. Were these women happy in their lifestyle? Most weren't fulfilled at all. Why go along with it? You had nowhere else to go and your opportunity to be independent was not as present as when men were at war. In that way, the Cold War was far worse for women than WWI or WWII.

Today

Today's wars have propaganda, alright, but it is far more subtle. The news, TV shows, movies, and social media are where we get our propaganda today. We don't have a million posters of violent germans wearing swasticas in this day and age, but we do have memes and social media sources. What do these modern sources say about women? One, feminism is very much alive, and two, women have far more voice than ever before. We can join the military at any time now. We work jobs and have a lot of choices in our lives. 

All the same, when you look at your TV shows, movies, and social media sources check your history and your facts. Pay attention to details and trends. Don't fall for some of the overly ridiculous propaganda that is out there. Subtle trends that seem to be everywhere may be propaganda. Be intelligent about what you believe. If you Captain Picard face-palmed at any of this, I did, too. Learn from history and be safe out there.

Pictures:

cbs news

the riverdale press

hennepin county library
giphy
twitter

sources:

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/american-civil-war/propaganda-civil-war.html

https://medium.com/@AcunMustafa/propaganda-instruments-in-the-civil-war-poems-songs-pictures-and-cartoons-20fe0d6d3f57

https://www.nps.gov/articles/women-amidst-war.htm

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/women-in-wwi/war-posters

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003232927500500404
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-09-18-op-3106-story.html