Both Harro and Libertas came from upper-class German backgrounds, Harro the son of a decorated naval officer and Libertas, the daughter of German nobility. Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen (pictured) were committed anti-Nazis who formed an espionage ring referred to by the Gestapo as the Red Orchestra after an investigation determined the group was "singing" to Soviet Russia. She is the first woman to receive the George Cross, instituted in 1940 by Britain's King George VI for participating in “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.” Ultimately, Fritz Sühren, the camp commandant, personally drove her to American lines and surrendered, still believing that her supposed status would save his neck. He was wrong. Hallowes testified against him and other Ravensbrück prison staff in 1946. Her defiance was rewarded with a transport to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.Ĭondemned to months of beatings and isolation, she somehow convinced the Germans she was a relative of Winston Churchill. Tortured in the notorious Fresnes Prison near Paris, Hallowes underwent multiple interrogations but refused to reveal the whereabouts of other agents in her network. She worked as a courier before her arrest by the Gestapo. She married an Englishman and moved to Britain in the early 1930s, where she was eventually recruited into the Special Operatives Executive and sent back to occupied France. Odette Sansom Hallowes was born in France in 1912. Infuriated, Hitler ordered his execution.Ĭanaris and several other co-conspirators from the Abwehr were hanged on April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg concentration camp. In early April of 1945, a German military officer discovered Canaris's diaries and notes in a safe in the Abwehr's former headquarters, which spelled out his deliberate attempts to recruit others to oppose the regime. He received severe detention and repeated torture, but refused to admit guilt. Hitler abolished the Abwehr in February 1944.Īfter the July 20, 1944, plot to terminate the Führer failed, Canaris was quickly implicated by others who were tortured, or by association with conspirators who had committed suicide. Canaris also undermined the Nazi government when sent to Spain in 1940 to compel General Francisco Franco to join the Axis, instead hinting strongly that this would be a bad idea and Franco should remain neutral. He was involved in several plots to kill the Führer, but was wily enough to avoid direct responsibility. Initially a fervent supporter of Hitler, his attitude transformed after personally observing atrocities in Poland and receiving numerous reports of SS extermination squads operating throughout the Eastern front.Ĭanaris began to assemble a group of like-minded opponents to Hitler in both the Abwehr and the military. That's exactly what happened in Nazi Germany when Wilhelm Canaris was appointed the head of the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence, in 1935. Imagine for a moment if, during wartime, it suddenly came to light that the head of the CIA was actively working to undermine the American government and military. Muldowney was ultimately hanged, and Skarbek was buried in London. Employed on the housekeeping staff of a cruise ship, she was living in a hotel in 1952 when a rejected suitor, Dennis Muldowney, stabbed her to death. She engaged in various intelligence operations, the most famous being an incident in Digne, France, where she tricked the Gestapo into believing her cover story and persuaded them to release two other captured agents, despite the fact that her picture was on wanted posters all over the German headquarters.ĭespite being awarded the Order of the British Empire and the George Medal from the UK and the Croix de Guerre medal from France, Skarbek was cut loose by the British government after the war, could not return to Communist Poland, and fell upon hard times. Fluent in French, Skarbek parachuted into France in 1944 with a new nom de guerre, "Christine Granville." She also established a courier system from Poland to Hungary. The couple emigrated to London, where Skarbek went to work for British intelligence. In 1930, she was a runner-up in a Miss Poland contest and was already involved in her second marriage - to writer and politician Jerzy Giżycki - when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Krystyna Skarbek was born in Poland in May 1908.
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