The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy

by Judith L. Pearson

  Learning to manipulate the leg was a bit more challenging than Virginia had expected. She had to learn to stabilize her knee with her weight and to move the leg with her hip. That part was not a problem. What was most difficult was learning where her new “foot” was in relationship to space. Because she had no feeling, she did not have a sense of where the foot was at any given time.

  A physiotherapist helped Virginia with strengthening her body and balancing on her new leg. She began by “walking” with crutches, then graduated to a cane, and finally managed steps on her own with a swinging gait. By early fall of 1934, she wrote a letter to the secretary of state’s executive assistant, Hugh Cumming, requesting to be reinstated to her former position at an embassy or consulate.

  “Any post in Spain, preferably Malaga or Seville, would be my choice,” her letter read. “I want the opportunity of learning Spanish and am interested in the economic future of Spain.”

  The civil unrest in Spain at the time was not a concern to Virginia. As a matter of fact, she viewed it as an incredibly interesting time to be posted there. Her letter continued, “Second choice of post, Estonia; third choice, Peru.”

  Cumming responded soon afterward that they would be pleased to have Virginia back at work. She could be transferred to Venice, which, he said, should meet her “requirements from the standpoint of climate, etc. Unfortunately,” Cumming continued, “there is at the moment no vacancy in Spain, Estonia or Peru, but I am having a note made of [your] preference for a post in one of those countries.”

  Virginia left Box Horn Farm soon after, bound for Venice, where she would begin work at the American Consulate on December 10. With no doubts in her mind, she was enthusiastic about picking up the career that had been so dramatically interrupted. But she could not have guessed what challenges lay ahead for the continent of Europe. Nor could she know that the ghastly accident she had just recovered from would lead her to a job far afield from her Foreign Service goal but with much greater rewards.

  3

  A Vanished Dream

  Virginia Hall had first visited Venice, one of Europe’s oldest and most elegant cities, with her family as a young child. Later, college history professors had painted vivid portraits of palaces, canals, and cathedrals. Now at the age of twenty-nine, she eagerly anticipated her assignment at the American Consulate that would allow her to work so closely to the heart and soul of Venice.

  The consulate was impressive. Rich tapestries, opulent furniture, and draperies adorned the light and airy chambers. It had recently been renovated and redecorated under the auspices of then American consul general, Terry Stewart. The decor reflected traditional Italian flavor, tempered with an American flair.

  The new environment was very different from Virginia’s previous post. In Smyrna, the offices had been woefully understaffed, while the Venice office had an ample number of employees, including a vice consul to lighten the workload of Consul General Stewart. The atmosphere was relaxed and very social. Virginia’s work was similar to her duties in Smyrna. She preformed traditional clerking tasks, typing English correspondence, and handling the filing, postage, and notarials. She earned such a degree of Consul General Stewart’s confidence with her attention to detail and overall effectiveness that during Vice Consul Charles Terry’s occasional absences, Consul General Stewart assigned Virginia the various duties reserved for Foreign Service officers, including citizenship and passport work. The taste of life as a Foreign Service officer made Virginia even more determined to become a member of that private club.

  Although working on behalf of the American government, Virginia and the other consulate employees were isolated from the thoughts and opinions of their compatriots. Immersed in a cocoon of foreign culture, they were unaware of the ideas, lifestyle, and trends being propagated on the opposite side of the Atlantic.

  Barbara Hall sought to keep her daughter current on American developments via weekly letters. Knowing Virginia’s tastes and interests intimately, Mrs. Hall filled each letter with intriguing stories and anecdotes.

  In a letter sent in July 1935, Mrs. Hall covered the American sports scene. Virginia had been a tomboy as a child, holding her own playing the roughest games her older brother and his cronies conjured up. She never feared a physical challenge and never complained when she was the most bruised at the end.

  “Babe Didrikson made her first appearance as a professional golfer a few weeks ago in Chicago at the Western Open Championship,” Mrs. Hall wrote. “She’s just twenty-two and can already out-drive any other woman golfer. She only needs to shore up her short game to be a real contender.”

  The letter continued. “One of the enclosed clippings will be of special interest to you, Dindy, given your current post.” It was a Time magazine story about a new Detroit prizefighter by the name of Joe Louis who had recently defeated the Italian heavyweight champ, Primo Camera. Even though Camera outweighed him by sixty pounds, the American had dropped the Italian in the sixth round.

  Mrs. Hall’s letter included entertainment news as well. Virginia had been interested in drama throughout her years in high school, too. She had been in the cast of every play produced at Roland Park Country Day School, and with no boys available, she often took on male roles. She even played a rogue pirate in one production, complete with a great deal of swashbuckling and swinging on ropes across the stage. Slipping into a new identity was great fun, even if it was only for a few hours.

  “According to the New York Post last week,” Mrs. Hall wrote, “Shirley Temple, Will Rogers and Clark Gable are the country’s top three box office draws. Gable’s new picture, Mutiny on the Bounty, has just arrived in Baltimore and I’m looking forward to seeing it.”

  Other letters Virginia received from home were of a far more serious nature. Mrs. Hall had heard a radio program discussing the mass exodus of Europeans, most bound for the United States.

  “Some are Socialists and others simply feel they’ve offended the Nazis and might possibly be prosecuted for it in the not too distant future,” Mrs. Hall wrote. “They don’t feel safe remaining on the continent. What a grave injustice it is to force someone from their homes merely because of their beliefs. And despite news items like this, many Americans still view Hitler as a man with a comical mustache who really doesn’t hold a position of political power.”

  Virginia found the last line from another enclosed Time magazine article very ominous. It was a quote from Italy’s current Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini: “It was not Germany which lost the last war,” Il Duce told the reporter, “it was Europe. The United States gained, Japan gained, Russia gained, but Europe lost its recuperative power, the vital force.”

  Like many of the Europeans around her, Virginia was growing more disturbed by the gathering political gloom that surrounded much of Europe in 1935. Missives and representatives bounced between Britain, France, Italy, and Germany, all with the intention of soothing ruffled bureaucratic feathers. And while the dictators of Italy and Germany strutted across the world stage like grand peacocks, vowing that their expansionist ideas were for the sole purpose of creating a better world, their actions were interpreted differently.

  Such was the case with Italy’s designs on the North African country and League of Nations member Ethiopia. Italy insisted that her interest in Ethiopia be viewed solely as a mission to abolish slavery and replace oppression. In reality, it was the perfect conquest. As Mussolini’s dictatorship had smashed the middle class, degraded the working class, and all but bankrupted Italy’s big business, Ethiopia would provide a place to send the unemployed. Further, Italy could avail itself of the country’s vastly undeveloped resources. By the spring of 1936, Ethiopia had become a part of the Italian Empire.

  Once the invasion was complete, life at the American consulate in Venice became tenser. And Virginia had made no secret of her feelings about Europe’s Fascist leaders. Now at the age of thirty, she had spent one-third of her life in Europe studying and working
. She felt as much a part of the European continent as she did her own homeland. She knew the languages, customs, and geography of each of the countries she’d lived in. And she’d taken the time to get to know those whose lives crossed hers. It disturbed her that America wasn’t taking a greater role in mediating the rising European conflicts.

  A result of her outspokenness on the subject may have been the negative report she received on the consular review conducted during the summer of 1936. Mr. Huddle, the government reviewer, submitted this final inspection report with regard to Virginia:

  Virginia Hall is a clerk of … unbounded ambition, a lack of appreciation of her own limitations, and a most praiseworthy determination. She also lacks common sense and good judgement. She overcomes the physical disability … and this interferes in no way with her performance of duty …. She keeps up her spirits admirably. She is not good material for a career service because she lacks judgement, background, good sense and discriminatory powers. She also talks too much. She is a satisfactory enough clerk, and when I was at Venice, was working to Mr. Stewart’s satisfaction.

  Virginia was angry and humiliated. While most women of her time were content to allow the men around them to discuss politics and world affairs, she had learned at home to read and question everything. Mr. Huddle may have preferred women to be seen and not heard, but that was not in Virginia’s personality. However, a personality such as hers came with consequences. This was evidently one of them. Virginia had fallen victim to a man and a bureaucracy who had no time for deviation from the norm.

  Consul General Stewart’s annual report somewhat took the sting off the consulate review. He reported that Virginia Hall’s work was “marked by intelligence and understanding…. She has the capacity to develop into a good subordinate officer. She has a pleasing personality, shows proper discernment in her dealings with visitors and has no eccentricities.”

  Now the question was which of these two reports would have a greater influence on her future as a Foreign Service officer.

  President Grover Cleveland issued an executive order in 1895 regarding entrance to the Foreign Service. Potential candidates were required to pass two examinations, one written and the other oral, to measure an applicant’s knowledge and understanding on a range of subjects deemed necessary for the position.

  The written examination included essay questions about international law, arithmetic, modern history, resources and commerce of the United States, political and commercial geography, political economy, and American history and institutions. The oral examination was given in two parts. The first required that the candidate demonstrate a proficiency in a chosen foreign language and was scored in an objective manner. The second portion gave the State Department the opportunity to judge the applicant’s ability to think on her feet. These answers by their very nature were highly subjective. Not many women applied for Foreign Service, and it was rumored that their scoring was often set to a much higher standard than that of their male counterparts.

  Virginia had begun the process in December of 1929 when she first applied to take the Foreign Service examination. She presented herself at a Civil Service Commission examination room in Washington, DC, for the two-day written exam, and returned six weeks later for the oral portions.

  Despite a warning in her acceptance letter stating that “it is essential that candidates be thoroughly prepared in all the subjects before taking the Foreign Service examination,” Virginia felt her well-rounded education would sustain her. She was wrong. She failed to achieve the necessary average to be accepted. Some of her written scores were disastrous, including a 60 percent on the section entitled “Modern History (since 1850) of Europe, Latin America and the Far East.” And while she rated a perfect score on the language portion of the oral exam, she only achieved a 70 percent on the second oral section.

  Undeterred, she applied to take the examinations again on July 14 and 15, 1930. Her written scores improved immensely, but her oral scores were identical to those of the previous test. And again her combined scores were not up to the standards set for entrance to the Foreign Service.

  By this time Virginia was in Warsaw. She took the written portion of the exam a third time in September 1932, but the questions for the oral portion of the test never arrived. Preoccupied with her relationship with Emil, Virginia did not pursue the matter.

  Virginia was ready to complete the oral exam in Venice in 1937. Once again the questions didn’t arrive. What came instead spelled the demise of Virginia’s Foreign Service dreams.

  In a letter to Consul General Stewart, Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles brought to light a stipulation for a Foreign Service career Virginia was unaware of:

  The regulation governing physical examinations to the Foreign Services prescribe that amputation of any portion of a limb, except fingers or toes … “is a cause for rejection, and it would not be possible for Miss Hall to qualify for entry into the Service under these regulations.”

  The duty of passing this information on to Virginia fell to Consul Stewart. He gave her the letter to read and tried to take on the job of supportive uncle. He told her he had admired her determination in applying for the Foreign Service and regretted this unfortunate conclusion to her quest.

  Virginia felt as though all of the air had suddenly been sucked from the entire room. Her mind spun across the past dozen years. There had been losses. But the loss of Emil, her father, even her leg had been tolerable because of what was possible, because of the anticipation her goal offered. It was the one thing she believed could never be taken from her. It was the one thing she was certain would some day be a reality. Now that dream had vanished like a stone sinking to the bottom of a deep, dark well.

  Consul Stewart gave Virginia the rest of the afternoon off. Once in her flat, she vented her disappointment, crying, sputtering, and yelling into pillows. Her leg had nothing to do with the decision, and she knew it. Of some fifteen hundred career Foreign Service officers, only six were women. Obviously she and others of her gender were not wanted or welcome, particularly if they refused to be wall flowers and preferred instead to hold and express their own opinions. Virginia’s intellectual self told her that perhaps it was because of the economic hardships suffered by most American households. The Depression had made jobs scarce. Giving a woman a position meant that a male breadwinner with a family to support would not be hired. But her emotional self told her that the position had been put out of her reach because she was part of a gender often viewed as incapable of handling diplomacy and decision making.

  Virginia didn’t go quietly. Over the next twelve months, appeals were made on her behalf by Hall family contacts, including several to President Roosevelt himself. Finally in the fall of 1938 Virginia wrote to then Assistant Secretary of State G. Howland Shaw. Her letter was a model of civility, belying her true feelings:

  When I applied for and received a position as clerk in the Foreign Service, nearly seven years ago, it was with the express intention of taking the examinations again, hoping that I might, in the meantime, convince the Foreign Service Personnel Board of my ability to handle the work and my sincerity in wishing to carry on with it as a career. Naturally when the Department in reply to my request … for designation to take the oral examination stated that I was not eligible on account of physical disability, I was bitterly disappointed.

  In June 1938, Virginia transferred to the consulate in Tallin, Estonia, hoping that a change of venue might restimulate her interest in her work. But with no prospect for moving any farther up the State Department ladder, the pleasure she had once derived from consular work faded. She submitted her resignation in May 1939. Her exit paperwork gave her the option of all former State Department employees. She could “proceed to the United States at any time within one year after the effective date of resignation.”

  But for the first time in her life, Virginia’s future was anything but certain. And at this point in time, her future car
eer choice wasn’t even on the government’s drawing board.

  4

  The Blitzkrieg

  Virginia went to Paris after leaving Estonia. Although she had had the rare opportunity of seeing a great deal of the world in her thirty-three years, this city seemed the perfect choice. It was a location she dearly loved that held myriad fond memories from childhood journeys with her family and her college days. It was a place to clear her head and refocus after the unexpected and heartbreaking conclusion of her State Department career.

  The tail end of spring 1939 greeted Virginia on her arrival in Paris. As May slid into June, and the Parisian summer began, solace washed over her. The quintessential French conventions, bouquinistes selling books and postcards at stands along the Seine, throaty French tunes pouring out of cabaret doors, and sidewalk cafes occupied from morning till night were so familiar. Paris always made Virginia think of the quote: “Every man has two countries, his own and France.” She spent her days wandering the city and doing some freelance journalism for American newspapers, all the while contemplating her future.

  And while she may have been focusing on the next chapter in her own life, Virginia was not oblivious to the rapidly changing political and social climate around her. Six months earlier, in November of 1938, while she was trying to reignite her enthusiasm for consular work in Estonia, shocking events had been unfolding in Germany. Adolph Hitler had been steadily enacting laws curtailing Jewish businesses and the Jewish lifestyle. The assassination of a German Embassy official in Paris by a Jewish youth on November 7 gave the Nazis a perfect excuse to further browbeat the Jews. The event became known as Kristallnacht.