Introduction
WHO WERE THE heroes of World War II? Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, who refused to surrender while the mighty German air force tried to bomb Great Britain into submission? Jean Moulin, a man who worked tirelessly to unify the French Resistance and died under torture rather than betray his fellow resisters? Or were the heroes of World War II the thousands of Allied troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, and helped put an end to the Nazi occupation of Europe? All these men were heroes. Without their courageous acts, Nazi Germany certainly would not have been defeated.
But there were other heroes in World War II, many whose names are not as familiar as those of U.S. generals Patton and Eisenhower but whose courageous actions helped win the war. These are the women heroes of World War II. A few of them were already quite famous before the war, and some of them became so afterward, but many more were simply ordinary. They were hairdressers and watchmakers, social workers and university students, teenagers and housewives, all of them very different women who had one thing in common: they were outraged at Hitler’s actions.
Hitler’s troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, which officially began World War II. Shortly after Hitler invaded Poland, France and Great Britain—technically allies of Poland—declared war on Germany, and Hitler in turn declared war on both of them. But France and Great Britain did not come to Poland’s aid, and for eight months after the Polish invasion nothing happened between Great Britain, France, and Germany during this peaceful but tense period called the Drôle de Guerre (French for “strange” or “funny” war).
Then, on April 9, 1940, German troops invaded Denmark and Norway, claiming to be protecting them from a possible Allied invasion (but in fact using them as buffers against a possible British attack on Germany). On May 10, 1940, German troops simultaneously invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and then France.
Although there was some initial defensive fighting from each of these countries, by the end of June 1940 the Germans had conquered most of Western Europe. Hitler could now attempt to implement the ideas he had written about years earlier in his rambling memoir, Mein kampf (My Struggle). In the book he described his desire to make Germany the dominant culture in Europe. Hitler planned to eventually “Germanize” those he had conquered from “Aryan” countries (whose populations had Germanic features; very generally, blue-eyed blonds), forcing them to forsake their own culture for that of Germany. As for the Slavic peoples (whom he considered to be inferior to the Aryans) such as the Soviets and the Poles, he planned to destroy or enslave them and then take their lands and goods for Germans and Germanized Aryans.
Hitler seized the occupied countries’ farmlands, oil fields, mines, and factories. Then, depending on their owners’ race, he either murdered them, shipped them off to forced labor camps, or left them behind to keep the country running and survive on what they could manage through strict ration cards.
Hitler then turned his attention to his central obsession: his hatred for Jews. He believed that before the Aryans could emerge as the dominant race of Europe, the Jews—supposedly the racial enemies of the Aryans—had to be destroyed. As the Nazis in every occupied country tried to implement Hitler’s anti-Semitism, stripping Jews of their citizenship, property, and money and forcing them to live in unhealthy, overcrowded areas called ghettos, eventually a monstrous plan came into place: the Final Solution. Ghetto after ghetto was emptied by malnutrition, disease, and, finally, by cattle car trains that shipped the ghetto survivors into concentration camps or death camps in Poland and Germany.
Many people in occupied countries thought the Nazis were there to stay, so they cooperated with them, some enthusiastically, and some just so that they could survive. But there were others who were outraged and determined to do something—anything—to fight the Nazis. This was called the Resistance. While some worked alone, most people in the Resistance formed groups. Organizations such as the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), kept some of these groups supplied and organized so that they could fight their secret but deadly battles against the German occupiers. Other militant Resistance groups received money from their own governments, some of which had escaped to London and were operating out of exile.
The Germans took control of the newspapers in all of the occupied countries, printing only German propaganda. They also ordered everyone in those countries to turn in their radios so that they would have no access to outside news. Some Resistance workers sought to fight German propaganda by printing underground (illegal) newspapers that reported Allied news obtained from hidden radios. These newspapers were encouraging to many residents of occupied countries, not only because they printed the truth, but because their existence was proof that there were others who were trying to resist the occupation.
FORCED LABOR CAMPS, CONCENTRATION
CAMPS, AND DEATH CAMPS
The Nazis ran three basic types of camps during World War II. Forced labor camps were usually set up next to agricultural areas or munitions factories. Hundreds of thousands of people from occupied countries—first the Poles and later those from Western Europe—filled these German camps and factories. While conditions in labor camps were bad and the promised pay nonexistent, the workers were kept just healthy enough to be productive. The hundreds of concentration camps (located mostly in Germany and Poland), however, were created to punish and kill. Prisoners arriving at concentration camps were either killed immediately, used for medical experiments, or worked and starved to death through the Nazi “annihilation through work” policy. There were also death camps that existed exclusively to kill Jews upon their arrival: Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno.
Some resisters did their best to help Allied servicemen trapped in Nazi-occupied territory through escape lines—a series of safe houses (hiding places) that led to freedom. Others worked to hide Jews and those on the run from the Nazis. Still others created false identification papers or stole ration cards—which were necessary to buy groceries—so that the “hiders” could survive while concealed or traveling to freedom.
Women were involved in all aspects and all levels of Resistance work, although the most common job for a female in the Resistance was that of a courier, someone who carried messages and documents from place to place. Courier work was crucial during the occupation because phone lines were tapped and mail was censored to root out Resistance activities. And since most men in occupied countries were supposed to be working in German munitions factories, it was dangerous for them to be seen in public. Women, less in demand for factory work, could move about in public more freely. Plus, the Germans did not—at first—imagine that women could possibly be involved in Resistance activities.
Yet if these female couriers were caught carrying materials related to Resistance work, they would be immediately arrested. All Resistance activities were dangerously illegal in Nazi-occupied Europe, and anyone who was caught, whether male or female, usually received either an immediate death sentence or a one-way ticket to a concentration camp. But this would occur only after the unfortunate Resistance worker had undergone severe interrogation and torture so that the Nazis might obtain the names and addresses of other connected resisters.
In spite of the serious dangers involved, most Resistance workers felt they had no choice but to resist occupation. The arrogant and cruel Nazi regime was completely contrary to everything they believed in; their consciences demanded action. And on the horizon, there was always the hope that the United States would eventually enter the war and use its large population and military potential to help wipe Hitler off the European map.
However, during the summer of 1940, when the Nazi darkness had spread across mainland Europe, and the Battle of Britain—fought between the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe air force—raged in the skies above England, U.S. involvement in the war didn’t seem likely. Although Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s new prime minister, had repeatedly urged U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt to help him fight Hitler, at least half of all Americans were strongly opposed to sending American troops overseas to fight in a European war.
That all changed on December 7, 1941, when Japan, Germany’s ally, destroyed the U.S. naval fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The United States declared war on Japan and then Germany declared war on the United States. Hundreds of thousands of young American men and women quickly enlisted in the armed services so that they could fight Japan and Japan’s allies, the Axis powers (which included Italy, Japan, and Germany).
Hitler made a fatal mistake when he invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Soviets immediately joined the Allied powers, and by 1943 Hitler had lost several million fighting men on the Russian front. When Allied troops—composed largely of U.S., Canadian, and British soldiers—finally landed on the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, they were met by determined but depleted German forces. The Allied troops pushed the Germans east while the Soviet troops pushed them west. Yet, the Nazis fought on for another year, energetically continuing their destructive racial policies and severely punishing anyone remotely involved with Resistance work, until Germany formally surrendered to the Allies on May 7, 1945. May 8 was declared V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.
Although most Allied women in the armed forces had worked in supportive roles and had not been directly involved in combat, many Soviet women had been. Without the successful combat missions of these Soviet women, the crucial support work of other Allied women in the armed services, the daring missions of female SOE and OSS agents, and the varied work of the female Resistance workers who had lived every moment of the occupation in danger, the war probably would not have ended the way it did, or at least as soon as it did. Allied governments recognized the contributions of many these women after the war by granting them top awards. And the Jewish organization Yad Vashem granted its Righteous Among the Nations award to both men and women who, to their great peril, had hidden Jewish people from certain death.
The women whose stories are featured in this book are not the only female heroes of World War II. There were hundreds of thousands of women who fought against the Nazi regime in many different ways. Some of them are remembered only by a short chapter in a book, others by a paragraph on a Web site. The stories of thousands more might never be known.
But most of these women—the famous and the obscure—had one thing in common: they did not think of themselves as heroes. They followed their consciences, saw something that needed to be done, and they did it. And all of them helped win a war, even though many of them paid the ultimate price for their contribution. But their sacrifice was not in vain, especially if their courage continues to inspire others to fight injustice and evil wherever they find it.
YAD VASHEM
The name Yad Vashem (literally “a hand and a name”) is taken from Isaiah 56:5, a verse that speaks of eternal remembrance. Yad Vashem was established in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1953 as the world center to commemorate the Holocaust including each victim who was lost. Another important goal of the organization is to seek out Gentiles (non-Jews) who risked their lives to help Jews during the war and to award them with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Those who are given this award receive a medal and a certificate of honor, and their names are commemorated on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem.