GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis

[rj]

Mark, cfa:

> > c) Reference to OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which is
> > referred to directly later in GR (where I can't recall just now). This
> > is more obscure, but the linkage is intended, I think, to imply some
> > possible equivalence between the two organizations.  CIA = american
> > fascist pigs; very 60's.
> 
> Wish I had my Worlds Second Oldest Profession handy ( a great read 
> for those who want to learn about the relatively recent development 
> of national intelligence services) but as I recall the OSS was hardly 
> an established outfit, even late in the war. Individual branches of 
> the service had their own intelligence functions, and the effort to 
> consolidate them had mixed results. Will Bill Donovan was the guy 
> chosen to create a unified branch, which he set about trying to do 
> with the aid of one young Bill Casey.

I saw a tv documentary program recently about female Allied operatives
in WWII (should have noted the title!) The O.S.S. was definitely up and
running and had operatives in the field by 1944, if not earlier I think.
There were some wonderful stories: an Englishwoman with a wooden leg who
operated successfully in Paris as a spy and Resistance worker, had to
flee on foot across the Pyrenees, returned disguised as a peasant
cowmaid, and continued. She made some phenomenal number of radio
transmissions back to London, in the hundreds. In one, as she fled
across the mountains, she mentioned that 'Cuthbert' (the name she had
given her leg -- it would have been a bloodied stump, so the narrator
conjectured) was giving her trouble. London (not realising the
reference) responded that it was perhaps time to terminate Cuthbert!
There was also a Czech/Polish woman in the O.S.S. who was only a private
because she was a woman but even so she was in charge of the unit's
activities, working out of Rome or Turin interrogating prisoners,
reprogramming them and sending them back to enemy regiments to spread
rumours and create havoc with morale. She recalled how in one interview
situation with a German POW the young man's obstinate loyalty to the
Reich and taunts had enflamed her so that she struck him hard across the
face. She specifically targeted Czech soldiers who had been forcibly
drafted into the German army I think. Another (or the same) woman had
been involved in the printing and aerial drops of pamphlets and pirate
radio broadcasts to the German soldiers telling them that a decree had
been passed in Berlin that their wives and daughters and sisters at home
had to sleep with any soldier returning on furlough. The program started
off with a Dutch woman, but I wasn't really paying attention to that bit
and can't say whether there may be an actual historical prototype for
Katje. (Like Doug points us to with Mitch Prettyplace -- thanks Doug!)

There were interviews with some of the male and female operatives who
were still alive. Can't quite remember the numbers, but I think the
program, or one of those interviewed, said that of about 40-50 female
operatives more than half were uncovered and either executed or sent to
concentration camps. The average working lifespan of an operative was
very short, a few weeks or months before suspicion was aroused. It was
better for the operatives to locate in cities rather than the country,
and in apartment blocks rather than houses, because that way the radio
transmissions could only be detected to the building, and not to the
actual apartment. Women operatives were more likely to be executed than
men. Pynchon's depiction of Katje's activities rings pretty true to what
the program described.

best