The spy must be prepared for the punishment of being caught with death, often preceded by torture. These agents captured by the Nazis also gave their lives for the cause - only that in their case the torturers decided to organize an execution ... straight from the Middle Ages.
Almost immediately after the fall of France in June 1940, Great Britain began to organize its spy network in the territory of the Nazi neighbor. One of the intelligence organizations was the Special Operations Management (SOE), which established a special "French" section - F SOE.
During the several years of the war, a number of independent intelligence "circles" were created. They were operated by both agents and agents transferred from the Islands, as well as those recruited on the spot. Unfortunately, the Germans continued to tread on the Allies' heels - especially since not all spies kept adequate security measures.
"Missing Agents"
Among the SOE members captured by the Nazis were four women:Andrée Borrel, Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh, and Sonia Olschanezky. Their fate remained unknown even after the war. As in the book "Agents. Enforcers, seducers, traitors, ”recalls Douglas Boyd:
By order of the German authorities SOE agents were to disappear without a trace like "night and fog" ("Nacht und Nebel" - the code name of the Nazi extermination action started in 1941, the victims of which were, among others, political activists and members of the resistance movement). The families, friends and companions of the murdered were never supposed to know where, when or how they died.
Four SOE agents came to Natzwiller to die.
Vera Atkins, an officer at SOE who trains spy candidates, went in search of these and other missing intelligence workers. The trail led her to the Natzwiller concentration camp. Agent John Stonehouse, held there, saw four female prisoners arrive on July 6, 1944. Confident and elegant, they aroused considerable interest in inmates.
Initially, it was thought that they were prostitutes brought to a brothel for SS men. However, these assumptions were quickly forgotten. "When the four women were led down the stairs to the cells, everyone in the camp but themselves knew they had come to Natzwiller to die," reports Boyd. The only question was:what death awaited them? As it turned out, even their murderers were unable to make a decision:
Before that, there was a dispute among the camp staff about how to murder them. They could have been hanged in public during roll call, which was the most common method of executing prisoners. However, executioner Peter Straub said he was against arranging such a "theater" . So it was decided to tell the women that they needed to be vaccinated against typhus, and inject them with a lethal dose of phenol. However, Natzwiller was a concentration camp, not a death camp, so the crew did not know if they had an adequate supply of phenol.
"Pourquoi?"
On the day of the execution, the agents were taken to the crematorium block, where they were injected. When they fell asleep, they began to be dragged towards the stove, which was ordered to be fired to the maximum temperature. The rest of the camp prisoners heard loud moans coming from the corridor. One of them claimed that the last of the dragged victims was actively resisting. "Pourqoui?" - she asked her torturers. “I heard this woman being dragged too. She moaned louder than the others. After the sound of the crematorium furnace door, I can firmly say that each of the moaning women was immediately placed in the furnace "- reported the witness.
The curiosity is based on Douglas Boyd's book “Agents. Enforcers, seducers, traitors ”published by the Bellona publishing house.
"All women were able to regain consciousness from the excruciating pain of burning them alive" - confirms Douglas Boyd in the book "Agents. Enforcers, seducers, traitors ”. This version of the events was confirmed by one of the SS men from Naztwiller, whom the executioner himself told about the event. The prisoners fought for their lives until the end:
When the last woman was halfway in the oven - put her feet first - she woke up and started to struggle [presumably because of the pain on the hot stove]. Since there were a lot of men there, they managed to shove her into the oven, but she managed to fight back and scratch Straub's face .
This extraordinary execution made a great impression on Straub. “I was in Auschwitz for a long time. About four million people came out of the chimney during that time, but I've never experienced anything like it. I'm finished, "he later confessed to his colleague. The fingernail marks on his face were still visible a few months after the end of the war, when Vera Atkins reached him ...
Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- Douglas Boyd, Agents. Enforcers, seducers, traitors , Bellona 2019.
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