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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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:
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