Women Wartime Spies

by Ann Kramer

  In his book Spies and Secret Service, a history of espionage which was published in 1915, Hamil Grant stated clearly that ‘Women… are rarely effective or satisfactory agents in secret service’. In his view it was not because women were incapable of ‘sounding lower depths than the vilest of the male species’, but that ‘they are rarely to be relied upon once romantic sentiment becomes engaged in their operations.’ Going further, Grant claimed that ‘it is extremely rare that women display either the self-restraint or the reasoning power… in matters of love or revenge, where her deepest feelings are concerned, she is capable of a sustained effort calling for the application of whatever analytical powers she may possess, but seldom in other cases; for an appeal to, say, her patriotism leaves her almost invariably cold and unenthusiastic, since love of country is a quality which depends too largely on an essentially platonic and impersonal principle to attract and hold for long her undivided attention.’ In other words, women spies, like all women in Grant’s opinion, were incapable of being subjective, analytical or patriotic.

  Hamil Grant was not alone in his views. French intelligence officer Ferdinand Tuohy, writing in the 1920s, also considered that women made poor spies because of their tendency to fall in love. By the 1930s he was revising his views slightly, although he obviously felt that women’s role was that of auxiliary to male agents. Writing an article on spies for the Daily Mail in 1937 he clearly stated that going after the ‘real secrets’ such as blueprints was strictly a man’s job, but that it was ‘idle to pooh-pooh the potential value of women agents’, particularly during peace time, when as secretaries they are in a good position to steal and copy documents.

  When war began the newly formed Secret Service under Kell had a list of suspected spies, who were immediately watched or detained. There were a few women on the list although by 1916 only just over 240 women were being watched, had been detained or were banned from military zones, compared with well over 1,000 men. Just about every woman of German or Austro-Hungarian origin came under surveillance, even if they had become British citizens by marriage. Most of those arrested and charged were caught as a result of letters being opened, or tip-offs by neighbours, or by association with men already under surveillance. But very few of the women spies captured in Britain came anywhere near the fictional images of women spies. They included Martha Earle, a German-born 64-year old woman who had obtained British citizenship when she married a British headmaster in 1908. The letters she wrote to her sister in Germany were intercepted and she was arrested and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment in Holloway for sending coded information in her letters. Earle claimed she had used a family code and that she had only written to her sister. The information she sent had no military value but nevertheless, whether Earle’s actions can be seen as spying or not, Earle was considered to have committed a crime and was convicted.

  Another German-born woman charged and imprisoned for espionage was Louise ‘Lizzie’ Wertheim, who had arrived in England in 1902 and married a naturalized British citizen. They separated in 1913. She subsequently met George T. Breeckow, a German spy living in London under the assumed name Reginald Rowland, they became romantically involved and worked together. Wertheim’s hotel room was searched and substances found that could be used for invisible ink. Breeckow and Wertheim were arrested and tried in September 1915. Breeckow took sole responsibility and was executed, death being the penalty for espionage. Wertheim was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in Aylesbury Prison, where conditions were particularly harsh. The British authorities had by this time, and particularly following the British outrage following execution of Edith Cavell by the Germans, decided not to execute women spies caught in Britain. Wertheim died of natural causes in prison in Aylesbury Prison in 1921.

  A handful of other German-born women arrested for espionage during the war included Martha Earle’s daughter, Eleanor Polkinghorne, Louise von Zastrow Smith, Lina Heine, Heddy Glauer and Marie Kronauer. Also arrested for espionage were Danish-born Eva de Bournonville, and French-born Albertine Stanaway. Many went to prison protesting their innocence or claiming that information they had sent was of little importance. Some protested the harsh conditions in prison and most were deported in 1918. In the end, despite the thousands of names that were gathered by intelligence officers and police, only thirty German spies were finally arrested in Britain between 1914 and 1918. Twelve, all men, were executed, one committed suicide and the others were imprisoned.

  Virtuous nurses and exotic dancers: the archetypes

  Two of the best-known women spies of the First World War – in fact two of the best-known women of the First World War – were Edith Cavell and Mata Hari. The two women could have not have been more different and, strictly speaking, neither of them was actually a spy or, in the case of Mata Hari, not a very successful one. Both women were executed but the way in which they were portrayed and the reaction to their deaths varied enormously: Edith Cavell was seen as a virtuous and humanitarian martyr, who died for her country, Mata Hari as an exotic, dangerous, self-interested and vamp-like female spy. Both images reveal much about how women were perceived at the time and both provide clues to the enduring myths and stereotypes about women spies that continue to this day.

  Edith Cavell was a nurse; an occupation that was seen during the First World War as an honourable and virtuous activity for women. She was born on 4 December 1865 in the village of Swardeston near Norwich into a middle-class family; her father was the local vicar. She was well-educated and initially worked as a governess but subsequently took up nursing as a career, working in Manchester. In 1907, aged in her early forties, she went to Belgium where she was invited to head a pioneer training school for nurses, a task that she fulfilled efficiently, introducing strict regimes and expanding the potential of the nursing school. In a letter home, Edith Cavell wrote that there was still prejudice in Belgium against women taking waged work, but after the Queen of Belgium used one of the trained nurses from the school to treat a broken arm, the school’s status was assured and by 1912 the training school was providing nurses for various hospitals, schools and kindergartens.

  When war began in 1914, Cavell remained in Belgium. The training school became a Red Cross Hospital, treating both Belgian and German wounded. The British retreat from Mons in September 1914 and German advances into occupied Belgium had left French, British and Belgian soldiers stranded behind enemy lines. In November 1914 two stranded British soldiers, separated from their units, found their way to the hospital where Cavell hid them for two weeks before helping them to escape to neutral territory in Holland. Over the next few months Cavell continued to hide refugee soldiers when they arrived at the hospital; she also helped them with new identities and found couriers to help them to escape occupied Belgium, many of them to rejoin the Allied forces. From February 1915 Cavell and her hospital became the hub of a much larger underground escape network that involved ‘guides’ who moved men from one safe house to another and so-called ‘chemists’, who produced forced identity papers. The network itself was based near Lille in Northern France and Mons in Belgium; soldiers arrived at Cavell’s hospital and were then moved along the network from occupied Belgium into the Netherlands. Various other women were also involved including Belgian aristocrat Princess Marie de Croÿ, whose surname backwards – Yorc – was used as a password, a French teacher Louise Thuliez, and Comptesse Jeanne de Belleville. De Croÿ and her brother Reginald hid soldiers in their chateau in Mons, as did de Belleville at her home in Montigny-sur-Roc. Thuliez either escorted soldiers to hideouts or took them to Cavell in Brussels, where they were hidden and nursed while Cavell made escape arrangements. Guides were organized by Philippe Baucq, an architect, who also helped to plan escape routes, while Hermann Capiau, an engineer, was one of the guides, often taking soldiers to Cavell’s school. Exact figures are not known but at least 200 Allied soldiers were helped to escape from occupied Belgium.

  By summer 1915 the Germans were beginning to get susp
icious and searched Cavell’s school in June but found nothing incriminating. Apparently Cavell remained perfectly calm while the search was taking place. On 31 July 1915 however two members of the escape team – Thuliez and Baucq – were arrested with evidence of their escape activities. Five days later on 5 August Cavell was also arrested and taken to St Gilles Prison. Subsequently another thirty-five members of the network were also arrested. During questioning Cavell confessed almost immediately to her involvement in the network and openly admitted both then, and later at her trial, that she had helped to nurse, hide and help Allied soldiers to escape from Belgium to rejoin their army, even though she would have known that this was a capital offence under German law.

  Cavell and the other prisoners were tried in Brussels between 7-11 October 1915. Twenty-six of the accused were found guilty of treason and five were sentenced to death, one of whom was Edith Cavell. Early the following morning, despite intervention by neutral American and Spanish embassies, Edith Cavell and Philippe Baucq were executed by firing squad. Cavell was 48 and made no protest against her sentence. Apparently the day before her death, speaking to the chaplain who spent her last day with her, she had said: ‘I realize that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’ Thuliez was also sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

  Germany’s intention in executing Cavell had been to send a warning to others in the Belgian Resistance; posters and proclamations stated clearly that anyone helping Germany’s enemies could and should expect the same treatment. However, their action backfired very quickly so that they soon discovered they had handed Britain a powerful propaganda tool. Cavell’s execution caused a major outcry, not just in Britain but also among other Allied and neutral countries. Newspapers in Britain, the United States and elsewhere were full of the event, screaming in banner headlines that the barbaric Germans had murdered a pure and honourable woman.

  In a letter to The Times on 19 October 1915, the Rev Jocelyn Henry Speck wrote emotionally of the ‘dastardly execution of an Englishwoman at the hands of an enemy for whom self-respecting nations… can have but one feeling: absolute abhorrence. By this crowning tragedy of cowardice, the enemy has murdered not only a woman in cold blood, they have also murdered chivalry’. He went on to comment that Edith Cavell’s death would no doubt awaken the ‘chivalry of our young men of military age not yet enlisted’, which in a way it did. Postcards and posters featuring dramatic images of the fallen Edith Cavell were widely used for propaganda purposes, helping to fuel anti-German sentiment and the image of Germany as a barbaric nation – already at boiling point following the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915. Her imagery was also used for military propaganda, stimulating patriotic fervour and encouraging enlistment, which doubled for two months after Cavell’s death. There were memorial services and concerts, and in November 1915 a new chrysanthemum named after Edith Cavell was exhibited in London.

  Much was made of the fact that Edith Cavell was a nurse. Replying to a note from the American ambassador, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Edward Grey, was quoted as saying, ‘that news of execution of this noble Englishwoman will be received with horror and disgust, not only in the Allied States, but throughout the civilized world. Miss Cavell was not even charged with espionage, and the fact that she had nursed numbers of wounded German soldiers might have been regarded as a complete reason in itself for treating her with leniency.’ (The Times, 22 October 1915).

  However, as the German authorities were quick to point out, the British attitude towards Cavell’s execution smacked of hypocrisy. While acknowledging that it was hard that a woman had to be executed, Arthur Zimmerman, then German Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, argued that Cavell had been found guilty of war treason, a crime punishable by death, and that in such cases they treated women and men equally. In addition the German authorities pointed to British treatment of women and children during the Boer War, to say nothing of the way the British government had treated suffragettes before the war. To some extent the German authorities were not wrong; the sentence for espionage or treason was death in Britain, too. Although the British government made much of the fact that they did not execute female spies, in January 1916 an English court sentenced Swedish-born Eva de Bournonville to death for spying, only changing the sentence to imprisonment when the government realized what damaging propaganda this would provide.

  Following her death, Edith Cavell became an iconic figure, something that lasted well beyond the First World War. Even today she is often still presented as a pure, virtuous and innocent victim, almost a saint. However, in many ways, this was an image created after her death for specific purposes: in reality, Cavell can be seen as an activist, she had of her own free choice made a decision to involve herself in the Belgian Resistance movement helping Allied soldiers to escape occupied territory. An intelligent woman, she knew what the outcome might be and made no protest herself against the death penalty. However during the patriotic fervour of the First World War it was more appropriate for her to be presented as a murdered victim and one who had died for noble and selfless reasons.

  Almost two years later to the day, on 15 October 1917 another woman faced a firing squad, this time in a damp field on the outskirts of Paris. Charged with being a German spy, the woman was Margaretha Zelle MacLeod, better known as Mata Hari. Like Edith Cavell, Mata Hari became and has remained an iconic image but in Mata Hari’s case, the image was that of a decadent woman, the ‘spy seductress’, an image popularized by spy fiction and one that still attaches to female spies today.

  Since her death Mata Hari’s life story has been subject to so much legend, myth and misinformation – she herself added to the confusion by the stories she told – that it is difficult to arrive at the truth. However Mata Hari was born Margaretha Zelle in 1876 in Leeuwarden, Holland, the daughter of a wealthy Dutch hatter. She initially started training as a nursery school teacher but there was some scandal and she left. When she was 18, possibly wanting to escape from the rigid stuffiness of Dutch society, she took the unusual step of answering a ‘lonely hearts’ advertisement and in 1895 married Rudolf John MacLeod, a captain in the Dutch Colonial Army, who was twenty-one years older than she was. The couple moved to Java and had two children, a son who died very young, and a daughter. The marriage was not a success: MacLeod was an abusive alcoholic and after returning to the Netherlands in 1902, the couple separated; they finally divorced in 1906 with MacLeod having custody of their daughter.

  On her own, and in need of money, Margaretha went to Paris where she completely re-invented herself, initially as Lady MacLeod, but subsequently, in 1905, as Mata Hari, a Javanese princess, with a European father. She embarked on a career as a dancer, performing in the Paris salons. She was a striking woman and her erotic dancing, which she said was modelled on Javanese temple dancing, and her semi-nudity during performances, won her many admirers and soon made her the talk of Paris. She went on to dance in Vienna, Milan, Berlin and Monte Carlo, becoming one of the highest-paid performers of the time. She also acquired a string of lovers, becoming the mistress of many high-ranking military officers, businessmen and politicians in various countries, who provided her with money and apartments in return for sexual favours. Unfortunately for Mata Hari, her lovers included a number of high-ranking German officials, including Griebel, chief of the Berlin police, Alfred Kiepert, a lieutenant in the German army, and Kroemer, the German consul in Amsterdam.

  When war began, Mata Hari was in Berlin, initially unable to leave because of travel restrictions. Her bank account was frozen, and debtors seized her possessions. A Dutch businessman gave her the money to return to Holland, which remained neutral during the war. Naively, it is probable she failed to realize what impact the war was having. The heady pre-war days of bohemianism and hedonism were over to be replaced by a puritanical morality, as part of which women such as Mata Hari were seen as a major threat to national security. Mata
Hari’s dancing, lovers and lavish lifestyle had made her one of the most notorious women of the time and by 1915 she was already being regarded with suspicion by British intelligence.

  In December 1915 Mata Hari decided to return to France, apparently to sell a house and raise some money. Travel restrictions meant that the only route was via England or through Switzerland or Spain. On her arrival in Folkestone, she was detained by the British authorities who searched her luggage and interrogated her twice. Nothing incriminating was found but the British considered that she was ‘not above suspicion and her movements should be watched’; she was to be refused admission to Britain in future and her reputation as a courtesan and erotic dancer, plus her liaison with Griebel no doubt contributed to the British authorities’ view of her as a dangerous individual and probably a spy.

  In 1916 Mata Hari made a second journey to France; although she was unaware of it she was by now under surveillance, notes being made of her telephone calls, correspondence and the men she spent time with, who included French, British, Russian and Belgian military officers. Various suspicions were floating around Allied counter-intelligence including the unfounded theory that she was a trained German agent. Despite this, in August 1916 Georges Ladoux, head of French intelligence, approached Mata Hari, suggesting she might like to be a French secret agent. For a fee of one million francs it was agreed that Mata Hari would obtain an introduction to von Bissing, the German officer commanding occupied Belgium. Mata Hari was to return to Holland and await further instructions.