and now one of our favorite

lecturers, retired u.s. army historian dr. speaking on the women's spies of d-day. we'll have the lecture. we'll have time for q&a. and then we invite all of you to join dr. holden and committee members downstairs for a reception and that, my friends, is more than enough for me. so, dr. holden, the floor is yours. good evening. thank you very much. it's nice to see all of you here this evening. we're going to take a journey and time. but not that long ago when i first started with this program for the 75th anniversary, four

years ago, we actually had some fellow citizens here from normandy who as children had lived through the bombardment on june 5th and june six. and it was incredible to hear their stories. i will attempt to give you an overview. please understand i cannot touch on every hero. but what i would like to do is to give you a survey tonight and give you some pointers for a future reference research on your own. it's like the old library of congress series from the 1980s, and at the end of their hour long special would say and the library of congress recommends the following books, and they'd give you two or three or four books. well, i'll talk about some movies. i'll talk about some books. i'll talk about some future

avenues of approach. not everything has been declassified. there are still areas where you can not get into. i know that regarding my own father's activities at the end of world war two, at hitler's eagle's nest with the band of brothers so bear with me. we'll try to make this as intelligently presentable as possible. you may have to jump around with me a little bit because when you work in the field of intelligence, as i have, i had four top secret clearances and four different government agencies. you jump from that to dot and sometimes from dot to know that in order to make connections because a good intelligence analyst is putting together a jigsaw puzzle that the other

side doesn't want you to put a put together. so with that in mind, the first slide and here you see. members of i don't know which division they could be the fourth infantry division, they could be the 29th, which from here in virginia and maryland, or they could be big red one, the regular army division. they're going into the beaches the morning of june 6th. and now i will atte advance the slide. if you find yourself on enterprise momentarily, you'll know what'spened. there we are old friend george you remember him from last year's lecture and the year before and the year before a what would normandy be without george? well, as he would say, nothing

here's the starting quotation for tonight, 'll have a number of them. mankind is man their proper study of warfare, our m maps are the key to moving why that? the american army in europe, in world war two, the average division of 20,000 men consume. 700 tons of supplies per day. that's mind boggling. and you have to have a road network to do that with. you can't be hollywood and go traipsing over hillandale. it doesn't work that way. and we're here tonight because our sister city is con france. and i would like for you to look over here. here's normandy. normandy is the key to

liberating france, england. there's no other proper area of beaches that can be covered by support and can be landing craft coming in from the english ports. but normandy. and there' paris. ance? because france is the gateway to third reich. re it is. and here's the rhine river and theiegfried line you've got to come in to normandy, swing through paris to get to the rhine and hitl's third reich. there's georgia a we're going to go to the movies. 1970, patton. and they're on the island, sicily,hey've got big, huge maps of sicily. george and his headquarters. and he looks astaff and

says, messina, bill messina's the key sicily. if they had let me land that syracuse and drive up the coast road. messina, i have every german on this -- island now. it's the same thing with con, ladies and gentlemen. if you're going to go into normandy to get into northwest france, to get to the third reich, you've got to go through con imagine the old fashioned spoke wheel and the center hub that the roads come through north, south, east, west is con you cannot move an army through normandy unless. you have a road network. the only exception, of course, ise patton, because he doesn't go through general montgomery, stays at con and visits there for six weeks. and befts anywhere. but that's another story. the next map on your right shows

the relationship of con t paris. here's the rhine river and the third reich. so you can see how important this is, this connection con is like aow and arrow pointed at the heart of pears, and that points directly east to the third reich. george knew what he was talking ab so did someone else. this gentleman fro france, great napoleon master of continental warfare, a good spy is 20,000 soldiers. now, remember number, because that's the equivalent of two divisions. and general eisenhower, our leader iprogram will touch on that very thing greatly

others think alike. picture. the big picture our first film, fatal, is a americanady from minneapolis, minnesota, ota, is how my family it, because that's where they're from. this is called name cynthia. cynthia was the nom de guerre of of amy elizabe born in 1910. she is a hollywood cen casting model, tall, blond hair. they said she had the most piercing emerald green eyes. anyone saw. she was fearless. she apso lutely was fearless. there wasn't. she wouldn't go or anything wouldn't do to achieve her

goals, which were espionage. she comes here to washington, a teenager. she comes becomes very fluent and linguistics. and she's bitten by potomac fever. probably the most deadly fever in the history of mankind. she goes over to spain during the spanish war in the 1930s. and she becomes deeply involved with british espionage in during their civil war. she then goes to for special operations executive mr. churchill's little plaything of spies in occupied europe. in the beginning of the war in vichy france. and she does a very credible job, so creditable all that a gentleman by the name of william stephenson, head of security

operations throughout the entire western hemisphere. you know, his biography, a man called intrepid. he will her the most important spy of world war two, four, two reasons, one for himself and england and one for general eisenhower. power and operation torch, the invasion of north africa. what she does is there's a log jam on capitol hill. gee, that sounds familiar. and senator arthur vanden berg is an old curmudgeon. and he's not going to on lend-lease. in the spring of 1941, i'll be darned if fdr is going to get lend-lease over my vote. cynthia goes to pay him a midnight visit. and, you know, the next day, he had seen the light and voted for it. and it got passed.

amazed. because lend lease, say england as you've just been seeing on the fdr series. then she goes to the french consulate up in the vichy french consulate in georgetown and see seduces a senior member of the staff. and while she is having her way with him but letting him think he's having his way with her. lo and behold, a team of black bag fbi i safe crackers walk in through an open door. go to the safe and the vichy consulate. open it up. pull out the code and cipher books to see if i remember all northwest africa was under vichy

control. and they take them out and they photocopy him that night and take him back in just morning. no one the wiser. those are the code and cipher books that enable general eisenhower to succeed fully launch operation torch. and of course, who else could lead it but george patton. but we need to go to georgetown. we didn't go to northwest africa. we can go six miles up the road to arlington hall on route 50. and collins brings road. they were known at that time, as taken over by army signal intelligence and here you see old signal or the old signal school as it was when it was a girls finishing there's been a book written

about that called girls highly recommended. now they would work three in three shifts of 8 hours a round the clock, seven week, 365 days a obviously, they weren't. congressional people on capitol hill wit schedule. these very dedicated individuals, mostly women, because women are much more patient overall men and they have a much more heightened sense ofail than most men. these are generalized options, yes. but basically troop now on your right side is a photograph of a separate section that work there because virginia was completely segregated at the time. and these ladies and a few

gentlemen are all african-american cousins. they were doing same work, but in a different section. a lot of the records are, i wa to say, missing. i tried to get a hold of them for th afriends in the field there said, we can't come up with them right now. maybe in a year's time. stuff does get misfiled. i've worked in top secret in the archives. stuff does get lost. and then some stuff gets shredded and burned. so you don't know which road they've down. i feel based on just gut instinct alone, that there is at least masters, if not a doctorate, waiting to be written on this african-american section at arlington hall. very dedicated. and they weren't technically spies behind enemy lines, but

the work that they did was as critically important to bringing about victory. and what i'm trying do tonight, both on this side of the pond and the other side of the pond, is to have you realize that you need everybody working together as a team. i was born in an army hospital and raised on army post. and believe me, you're taught from day one. you're a member of a team. excel on your own. yes. but only as member of a team. so it takes the people back here at arlington hall, as well as people out in the field doing their espionage best, such as this lady here from a town just of u baltimore. i know we hav representative here tonight from that distinguished town. and this is virginia hall, born

in 1906, ten years after wallace simpson is born up there. there was something obviously in watebecause virginia hl was uncontrollable. her family and as a young woman, she went off and, joined the foreign service. but she avil discriminated against because she was a woman. she went out field h one da accidentally. blew off her lower left leg. soas a war. a wooden prosthesis didn't slow her down a -- bit. she was gutsy. she had grit. and then some. she goes work for mr. churchill's. executive in vichy france, and she has a very good sixth sense. if you. and she finds out that the gestapo was about to come and

get her. so she takes cuthbert her wooden leg. and she walks 50 miles through the pyrenees mountains in the middle of a snowstorm to get to neutral spain. she then cable is the british contact office in london saying, i am now in spain. but cuthbert gave a lot of problems and they cable back should crews. not realizing it was her wouldn't like she is gutsy. so in fearless brave she goes back into occupied france for oasis. you see there their original insignia there. and while bill donovan general donovan sends in and she does a magnificent job of espionage and

then she comes at the end of the war, he wants her to be given a medal at the white by president truman. she says n i want to stay undercover and continue my work whatever it may be. ar, distinguished servicehe cross. prately in his office, which the photograph here on the right my gut insnct having been 41 years and several seven federal agencies. my g instinct is had she been a main uform, she would ve gten the medal of honor. and i think somebody should really seriously look into that. she was in career edible general donovan, who won the medal of honor in the first war.

general donovan called her the finest espionage agent in all of world war two. that worked for the ss very, very, very high recommendation. here is someone i met when i was 12 years old, figuratively speaking, because that is when this fabulous book air spy came out and i have my copy over here on the table. i read it when ind was totally captive. out on photo interpretationme analysis in the form of intelligence and what it mea it meant the difference between d-day being and not lauand it's all to this fabulousero,

a photo interpretation. constance babington smith she has three things going for her. number one, she'from a titled english family, which means everything across pond. number two, her brother also works in photo analysis. and then the same overall area so he can back her. number three she looks like she came out of central casting from hollywood and she was in aviation having become aviation buff in the 1930s as a young woman. when amelia earhart is flying in and june cochran and and all of these women are in the group that will eventually called the 99 ers. and she is just really an expert

on early aviation. she notices something on one of her skirt, stereoscopic views. and they're looking down like this and that's the illustration here. now is fuzzy i wish i could gotten a better copy. i couldn't. but that is the v one the buzz bomb. now, this is shown the movie 1965. george peppard and sophia loren. operation crossbow. and there's also a book by that name i mentioned, the m because the movie. sure. it now it's a british. so it's better than american movies, especially at the time. but the interesting point here on constance babington smith, they show the hardheaded wooden

blockheads, she has to go up against, namely professor lindemann, who is churchill's scientific advisor. and he is adamant that she doesn't know what she's talking about, that he does. and that's a torpedo, a 30 foot long german torpedo. well, professor lindemann, i've dealt with those people for 41 years. it's not fun. they're a pain that a pill can't reach because are god and they know it. and they're going to let you know it. and it's their way or no way. well, again, she's titled. she has a brother who looks like he came out of central casting and works in the same general area. and she presents her theory over

and over. she sticks her guns. and this is critical because it finally gets to mr. churchill, as you'll in the movie. and he the entire royal air force bomber command 800 plus to fly from england over panama and on the north central german baltic coast and bomb the secret base there. they do so, causing great havoc, great casualties. and it causes the nazi rocket project to go underground down into central germany and southern germany in the hearts mountains and in the four alps. and why is this so important this evening? because general eisenhower, our when asked the war about the importance of the raid on panama, india said it delayed

the german rocket program six months in august of 1943. is the raid if that raid had occurred when it did, the germans would have had literally thousands of these v rockets going into the ports in southern england where the invasion fleet was gathered south hampton, plymouth, etc. . and those young men you saw in the first slide going on the troop ships to get ready to go onto the landing boats would have been fishing a barrel and they would have been slaughtered and no invasion have taken place all due to this one woman sticking to her guns. we need some more people like that today. but she didn't do it by herself.

there was a whole team in england at bletchley park. now. if you look at the slide in the upper corner here, you think, well, it's a prettyt place to work. the whole they didn't work there. that's for lord high monkey s. that's for visitors coming in to be shown around. this is where they worked unheated huts. unheated huts.o ke no ac. and they worked eight h , the shifts a day, seven days a w65 ds a year fromeptember. of 1939 until september of 19 when v-j day was declared. grit. it takes grit to go in there every day and in hour

shift. it takes perseverance. had ttinchonor and privilege to have a lunch at mye onef the ladies that worked at bletchley park. she was a scots woman. i want to meet her in a dark alley. we were talking. of course. all i was doing was asking a few questions. and then i would her go forth. and one time she stops, looks at me and she gets this very intense look on her face, burning eyes are like being eyes of lasers. and she pounds on the lunch table and goes, we did it before and we can do it again. hey, works for me. so that was the spirit of bletchley park. here you the group of women

working. there were some men working there too. but the majority were women. and in the lower right corner, what were they working on? the enigma machine. i fool around with an enigma machine before you ever try to lift one up. whties.rtain eaten your it's like gold. it may look small. excuse me. sm like a portable typewriter or. it's heavy is led. the germans thought, they were unbreakable. but as you would see in the movie, the imitation game came out in 2014. again, a superior british movie. i hate to think what it would look like if hollywood did it

and see. of course, their focus is on alan turing. but there were a huge amount of women working there day and night doing this. now we will come to mr. churchill's special operations executive for war heroes of the suite. and that book came outber of years ago. so you may have to go to ebay to pick it up. the first lae on your left is violet, and i'm going to was courageousond belief.eve she and she got picked up early in occupied france. now i say up early in occupied france? she asked, a bored a piper cub size aircraft in the middle of the night fly over the channel

and get into a darkened field somewhere in france, hoping to god that her contacts are down there to greet her and not the gestapo. the ss. i mean, that's incredibly in and of itself. and then she's a courier. she's radio transmitter, and they catch her. here's why i've included her for d-day. she never. just absolutely incredibly courageous. she never gave away any of the secrets of the so agents and. operatives in occupied france. so the gestapo and the sick or einsteins and the ss who they were, they executed her at ravensbrück concentrate in camp.

the british made a nice movie about her in 1958 and it's called carve her name with meaning on a monument and i would recommend it. it's a little dated, yes, but gives you what the hair is a german word or high. the spirit of the times. much better than a movie made today think would do. the next hero. is a ladhas an american mother from new mexico and her father is india and noor side of the family.hrough her and she, like violet sabol, was five foot four and she was this

mrs. violet sabgically on, her second night drop int occupied france and again, you get in an airplane on a darked airfield somewhere in england. they fly you over the channel. you don't know if you're going to get shot down. then they drop you over a darkened somewhere in france and you hope to god you're going to get friends at the bottom of that drop. she did, but one of them wasn't a friend. one of them was a counterintelligence agent for the gestapo, and he betrayed her. they took her prisoner and she ended up never talking, no matter how brutal. they were with her. no matter what the torture and they executed her along with two of her comrades at dachau. it's because of this type of

courage that the rest of the underground movements throughout europe and in particular france were not betrayed and therefore enabled d-day to go forth and. this lady here is cecile witherington that's close. it may not be exact. up trains where she got thisng specialty from inow, but there is a very interestinl written recently about called charlotte gray. and i would highly recommend i she blew up 800 train loads of german supplies in france as phenomenal. remember, 700 tons of supplies

so if you're blowing up 800 train loads of supplies over a period of time, think of the divisions not getting their ammunition, not getting their food, not getting their replacement equipment, not getting their tanks there, artillery pieces, etc. she escaped and survived the war and was a fabulous spy, linguist, specialist. they couldn't tell her french accent from a native of france, a a lot of these women were brilliant linguist. the last lady here. is somebody that needs to have an individual movie made about tried to get her for four years

and she escaped every time. so they call thete mouse. and that is the title of her biography, the mouse. her name is nancy wake. she's originally from new aland. a great group of people i worked with some in the pentagon, and then she was raised in australia. foster's beer yes, fabulous people. the aussies are well, nancy wake said whenever she had to travel france and remember she's 2021 she would make sure to put on her perfume her makeup nice clothes for traveling and have a drink. so when the regular german army guards would stop her at a roadblock, they could smell. she had been drinking, but she was also great at flirting them.

so they got to know her on her regular runs so they would see her comments. great, we can relax. we can flirt. we've got a pretty french etc. she got away with everything as long as she was there and escaped and got all the back to england. all of these ladies were highly decorated. oh, i forgot to mention on princess noor. there is a tv series made in britain about her and that is titled spy princess and it's rather recent. i mean, very recently within the past years. so that would be well looking into, if you're interested. this lady is simon kwong. i again pronunciation excuse me.

she was a member of the french underground and she became the darling of robert cappa of life magazine photo and of george stevens, the great hollywood director, because they ran across h as they were liberating france and she became their poster girl first in life magazine in two issues in september of 1944 andn george stevens has her quite om d-day to berlin.imes in his color film, movie t didn hisxploits about how he showed general eisenhower how to win the war in europe. why do i have eye care when we're talking about female w're going to go back to napoleon and remember his otatn in a good spy is worth 20,000 soldiers, a division in

his time was 10,000. that's two divisions. i was asked how important the french underground were to the liberation of france and the freeing of all western europe afterwards, he immediately replied. they were worth 40,000 soldiers. that's the equivalent to two divisions in world war two time frame. 20,000 soldiers per division. as a sidelight, you'd be interested to know the tall lanky lieutenant that he's talking to survived and wen back home to pennsylvania to run a gas station. and every member of the 101st airb and in the photo of that could ideified tns survived so lucky photograph. and now were gng to have the final four final slide and the final slide and caps eights

everything we're here to tonight to honor and i think it's done by the one man who like many of these women stood alone and he did it in 1940 when nobody else was doing it. i'll get out of the way so can read it over there. of course, i never. meet mr. churchill, but his fiusin was at maine state when i was working top secret there in 1972 and 73 and occasinly. i would see him walking out of state down to the bus stop on lower constitution avenue.

he would swear, god, you were seeing a double and he was deliberately out to me by some of the old timers there. they said, if you'll stand here and watch at a certain time, monday through friday, you'll see churchill's first cousin and you'll think you'll seeing him. and they were right. it quite a fabulous, to say the least. that is the for this evening. i'm open for q and a with go please go to the mic. you can ask about the program. you can ask about programs. you can ask about world war two. you can ask about having to deal the federal bureaucracy. and you can ask about all the spy locations around washington within 200 feet of where you're now sitting or to cold war secret army office.

so it's all around you, ladies and gentlemen, whether you're aware of it or not, every time you turn a corner around washington, there's a spook there. there's c. i was going to say, let's go to the mike to wait for the lady with the mp 40 submachine gun there. her is simon. so google matzo boku yeah that's how you thank you really appreciate that. apparently your dad was a decorated soldier the first world war french soldier. it runs in the family. how interesting. there's a lot of family connection in all of this. thank you so much for the lecture. i kind of want to i was kind of interested in your thoughts on

josephine baker as a spy during the war to josephine baker was hollywood central casting. of course, she was beyond beautiful. she was beyond talented. she was a fabulous spy. as long as her health held up, she spied for the allies against vichy french throughout 1940 and 41. and then she had series of catastrophic illnesses. the likes of which, having gone through seven heart operations. i don't know how she went through what she did and she still survived. gutsy is is nowhere close to describe her but she did not have a role far as i've been able to determine. she did not have a role in regards to d-day. i say that with a caveat files

are still classified. god help you if you try to work in english files. they have a 75 year rule automatic and then they can expand it. another years beyond. i can tell you working top secret in our national archives, the. that things are misfiled honestly misfiled somebody's having a bad day and i'll chuck it i'm home poof it into the wrong file or somebody says that's got to remain off it goes. when i was working top secret in one of those huge vaults like you see in diana jones, raiders of the lost ark, they honestly exist not that far from here. and we would do that and we would run across ultra. this is before declassified.

we'd have to automatically our hand and a team leader would come in with clearances above my top secret. god only knows they were, but they were there. and he would come and he would take the document out of the file. he would put in a blank page stamp it the document removed by so and so, such and such a day's such and such a time. and then he and i would have to walk over to a safe that looked like something out of a james bond movie. and he would say now have to look away while i it up. and he would open it up. herb and the big six, seven inch steel door would open. and he'd say, okay, look back, look back. and he'd say, now i want you to note i am putting the document in here. and then the safe doors closing, and we'd have to sign off and

dated and do everything but a blood test and how careful we were with that stuff. so on. josephine baker there's a wonderful biography on her. she had courage and grit. again, grit just to withstand the physical trauma to her body and, all that she went through and yet she came through with flying colors and she, like seamen, whom i'll touch on in a minute. she back and she adopted 12 children, and there had been abandon and took care of them and raised them, which i think is just an example for. everyone similar on the one who became the poster girl for life magazine and george stevens. she became a pediatric after the war, which is quite wonderful. so service to others i think

it's in these people's dna. yes, sir. i wonder if you'd comment the roles of hedy lamarr and perhaps marlene dietrich in terms of intelligence, or are contribution marlene dietrich worked for us as and of course, being a native german and she could listen in on german conversations on the radio and tell you exactly that there are many different german dialects. forget the hollywood dialects. there's high, middle, low german, then there's spanish, which is where i come from. and stuttgart, having been born an army hospital there and there's which is what they speak in bavaria. and then they got other linguistic twist and turns from the rhineland and every little enclave of germany. that time had its own linguist

dialect, and she would be able listen to that and tell you. that's a native speaker or that's somebody trying to fake it and oh, what did they mean by using that colloquial expression like sick or einsteins? okay, that's the security service. but how about? fingers. fingers you feel you can feel the battlefield danger, your fingertips, which is what they said about rummel. now, interestingly and then i'll get the hedy lamarr, interestingly enough, hitler's original foreign secretary was brought over here to just outside of alexandria bush hill, right along eisenhower avenue today between eisenhower avenue and the beltway at the west end of alexandria bush hill plantation. and that's where they put hitler's press secretary when he fled nazi germany because he

thought the inner circle of the nazis were trying to get him. every time hitler would give public speech, fdr would have them put in the trunk of a car, army staff car, brought over to the white house. and they would sit there and listen. hitler give his public speech. and fdr, who was fluent in basic german, would ask him, is that really hitler's voice? what does he mean by that? because remember, hitler was from the from now on in which is down there on the austria and german border in bavaria. he had a lot of local dialects. he had a lot of expressions that they only use locally. and he say to him, what does hitler mean by that? so he was able to give him the

real score of what was going on in hitler's mind in his public speech. now, hedy lamarr or was from austria, she was married to munitions tycoon. she escaped way beforehand and to hollywood. not only was she beyond beautiful, she was beyond smart. i don't think they measure her iq. she invented that pulsating. radar transom mission. and it's absolutely incredible because i am worthless when comes to technology and i stand in complete of people like that. and she just sat down one day with a counterpart and the two of them together worked it out. but because she was a female well, you know, she didn't get any credit for it at the time

and she still really hasn't gotten full appreciation what she did. if congress was to strike another congressional gold medal, which is not the same as the medal of honor, by the way, but if they were to do another gold medal, certain people and their contract ution to the war effort, she should certainly be there. it was for the allies to know exactly what was happening with the atlantic, but without giving away the fact that they were concentrating normandy. i would like pay tribute to the hundreds of nameless people, predominantly women who reported on every single change they saw as they deliberately made their way along the coastline. if the german engineers moved to telegraph pole, it got reported. if they moved a bus stop it got

reported and there were hundreds of these people sending back these little bits of information on what made up the atlantic wall. yes. and they're nameless today, but i think they there's still time for them to be recognize. i am firm believer that a monument should go up to all of those who serve the of freedom in france but are nameless just as a matter of fact when they on the fdr series last night and they talked to fdr the tragic negative cost of bombing in france. and he looked at, i think was general marshall and he said, yes, i understand be civilian casualties. france lost. 40,000 civil aliens killed by allied bombardment from the air. it was the cost of liberation

and board stoically and there should be a monument to those individuals also there's still time next year the 80th anniversary. there are still a few survivors left and there are many family members still left that would like to see that done. i think it would be very fitting to do both. any questions on the bureaucracy and how to deal with them in washington. well, thank you for your kind attention tonight. i'd like to begin the program today. the birth of israel tru