The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy

by Judith L. Pearson

  The “Night of Broken Glass” was a two-day orgy of terror during which raging mobs in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland freely attacked Jews in the street, in their homes, and at their places of work and worship. Ninety-six Jews were killed and hundreds more injured. More than a thousand synagogues were burned. About seventy-five hundred Jewish businesses were destroyed. Cemeteries and schools were vandalized. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

  Following Kristallnacht, panicked German, Austrian, and Czech Jews flooded France, which had already been overwhelmed with refugees two years earlier as a result of the Spanish Civil War. Some of Virginia’s new Parisian acquaintances expressed their feelings regarding the Germans: they simply and unapologetically did not like them. While the French field marshals had been exceedingly rough with their German POWs during World War I, the Kaiser was downright inhumane to the French prisoners. And thus far, Nazi behavior was following an equally odious course. The fact that German-speaking refugees were now clogging the streets of beautiful Paris pushed French tolerance to the limits.

  Added to all of this was the decade’s worldwide economic depression. It had caused the French to become as poor and hungry as their American counterparts. Quotas limiting jobs for foreigners had gone into effect, which caused enormous unemployment among the refugees, followed by hunger. Sharing an already limited amount of resources with the immigrants, the majority of whom were Jewish, resulted in rabid anti-Semitic feelings among many French citizens.

  All of these elements collided in the summer of 1939. With increasing regularity, Virginia saw vulgar sentiments painted on buildings that housed Jewish-owned businesses. It disgusted her that the newspaper stories were becoming more sympathetic to the gangs that attacked Jews in broad daylight than to the victims themselves. And the stories she overheard from newly arrived refugees were unbelievable. In broken French, they related horrific tales of Nazi persecution against Jews and others. And every one of them, regardless of nationality or religion, was relieved to have escaped to the security of France, a security physically represented by the Maginot Line.

  Named for the French Minister of war, André Maginot, who had directed its construction since its inception in 1929, the Maginot Line had become known as the “Great Wall of France.” It was built to protect France from Germany, her longtime enemy. The line was a fortification along the eastern frontier, extending from the Swiss border up to the Ardennes Forest on the Belgian border. The line stopped there because French military strategists believed that the impenetrable Ardennes forest would keep any invaders at bay.

  Constructed mainly of concrete, the Maginot was not a particularly attractive edifice. When the ladies of Parisian society learned of its lack of appeal, they were concerned for the morale of the young men posted there and so devised a plan. They took up collections to purchase and plant rosebushes along the mighty wall.

  Aside from its aesthetic shortcomings, the Maginot Line was a vast, state-of-the-art system of underground components. Dynamic and ultramodern, its interconnecting tunnels stretched for miles, housing thousands of men who trained, watched, and waited for war. Its fortifications could accomplish many goals, including the absolute imperative—protecting France’s northern industrial regions from invasion.

  French confidence was also bolstered by the terms of peace struck in 1919—following World War I—that were designed to prevent Germany from ever being able to fight again. Her military was dismembered, she was forced to pay reparations to injured nations, and her former empire was reallocated. The map of Europe was completely redrawn.

  But while the treaties signed at the close of the war overcame discrepancies on the map, national hatreds were not overcome. Germans, both by birth and by citizenship, lived in all of the newly defined areas, none too pleased at now finding themselves citizens of other nations. Upon his rise to political power in 1933, Adolph Hitler sought to change that and restore Germany to her former glory as a superstate.

  Hitler rearmed his country by conscription in 1935, and in 1936 reoccupied the Rhineland, a portion of Germany adjacent to Belgium and France that was demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria, an apparent stepping-stone, to test the world waters on its road to expansion. When he met no opposition, Hitler hungrily snapped up the frontier area of Czechoslovakia known as the “Sudetenland” a year later. Acquired as a result of the Munich Agreement, “The Sudetens are the last territorial demand I shall make in Europe,” Hitler vowed. Located in the heart of Europe, the area was one of the richest territories on the continent because of its natural resources and great industries, both much needed by the Nazis.

  Despite the fact that these steps were in direct contrast to the earlier treaties, France and Great Britain calmly tolerated Hitler’s moves. But in March of 1939, he seized more of Czechoslovakia: Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. Many French and British policy makers abruptly woke up to the fact that Hitler appeared to be marching toward European, if not world, conquest.

  When Hitler’s plundering gaze fell upon Poland, France and Great Britain publicly guaranteed to help the country defend itself against any action considered a threat to her independence. As the summer of 1939 slipped by, French newspapers were replete with stories of words and actions protesting Germany’s audacity. One edition of the Paris news organ L’Oeuvre, Virginia’s favorite with her morning café au lait and croissant, quoted an unnamed French governmental source: “If Poland fights, Britain and France will fight, too.” What a tragedy that war appeared once again to be on Europe’s doorstep.

  At 5:20AM on Friday, September 1, 1939, Adolph Hitler started World War II. The first German bombs were dropped on Puck, Poland, a fishing village and air base on the Baltic Sea. By 8:30 AM, thirty cities were in flames. Homes, hospitals, and churches were bombed along with military objectives. Shrines, museums, and libraries were flagrantly destroyed. Women, children, and the elderly were slaughtered as they fled from their falling cities.

  Virginia heard the news that war had officially begun on the radio in her flat that morning. She was stunned; Hitler had really done it. Her first thoughts were of Emil. What part would he play as Poland was being ravaged by vicious invaders? And beautiful Warsaw—what would happen to that magnificent city? She thought of their long walks along the river and the hours they had spent discussing the world and their futures. Sitting at her tiny table, with the window open and a late summer breeze floating in, tears stung her eyes. The destruction of Poland and the death of thousands of its soldiers would be a tragedy. And the thought of Emil in the midst of it was overwhelming.

  By evening, Paris newspapers had labeled the day “Gray Friday,” as had other papers around the world. And they gave extensive accounts of French and British governmental missives insisting that Hitler “withdraw entirely from Polish soil or consider himself at war with them.” Virginia and five friends had dinner that night at the Café Cluny on the Left Bank. One of the women, Claire de la Tour, lived in the flat below Virginia and the two had become good friends. It was Claire who had introduced Virginia to the others, all young, progressive thinkers. This gathering had become a weekly tradition for them.

  Claire told the group that her brother, Jean-Paul, who was stationed near Metz on the Maginot Line, had written her, insisting that Hitler’s days were numbered. The French army, Jean-Paul had said, was waiting for the Führer to take one step too far. The result would be war. It was Claire’s opinion that the invasion of Poland might be the last straw.

  Claire’s prediction proved accurate. France officially declared war against Germany at 5:00 PM the next day, September 3. Great Britain had done so six hours earlier. The newspapers dubbed this day “Black Sunday.”

  At dawn on Monday, heavy guns up and down the 250-mile-long Maginot Line began talking. By nightfall, France had launched two high-powered attacks into Germany. French newspaper stories extolled the power of the French military, proudly st
ating that for an invasion of Germany, the country was in a much better position than it had been in 1914. The Alsace-Lorraine area along the border was now in French hands, unlike the last war, and the region’s high escarpments that jutted east toward the enemy would make for excellent cover. These reports did a great deal to bolster French confidence.

  The following Friday at their weekly dinner, Virginia and her friends discussed Great Britain’s new leaflet campaign. The week before, British planes had dropped millions of circulars over Germany containing messages to the German people. Statements such as “This war is unnecessary,” “You are on the edge of bankruptcy. We have unlimited reserves of men and provisions,” and “The Reich is not threatened from any side,” were printed in German in the hope that the people themselves would rise up against the war.

  But Virginia didn’t believe the campaign would be successful. She told her friends that, based on what she had heard when she was still working at the consulate in Estonia, Hitler had made many improvements in what had been a sorry state of affairs in Germany. He had put the country back to work, although most of the jobs, she conceded, were probably related to war production. He reorganized the educational system and forced the young people to join his youth groups. On the surface, it all sounded wonderful. Why wouldn’t the German populace be thrilled with the progress?

  But a recent letter she had received from her mother told of the Nazis’ atrocious treatment of Jews in Germany and elsewhere. The reports came from those who had hurriedly immigrated to the United States. Nazis were rounding up whole families and forcing them to move to camps.

  Claire volunteered a story she had heard from her rabbi, who had a cousin living in Munich. The last letter the rabbi had received from the cousin described how the family had lost their apartment and was moved to an all-Jewish area, where they shared a smaller flat with two other families. The cousin had been a successful dentist, but was now only allowed to treat Jews. Since most of them were out of work, there was very little money changing hands and everyone was living near poverty. Sadly, that letter from Munich had arrived three months ago. The rabbi hadn’t heard anything from his cousin since.

  Hitler’s campaign against Poland lasted twenty-seven days; Warsaw surrendered on September 27, 1939. During that time Germany deployed one and a half million men and tested a newly devised tactic known as “blitzkrieg” (lightning war). Blitzkrieg consisted of fast-moving armored thrusts, penetrating deep behind enemy lines, supported by air strikes. The concept had been an even greater success than was expected.

  On September 17, Russia also entered a war with the Poles. Fully aware of Germany’s probable intentions to invade Russian territory at some point, the Russians began what they called “armed interventions” from the east to protect their frontiers. Within two days they had crossed half the country, repositioned themselves on what had been their border before the First World War, and sent the message to Berlin that Nazi aggression into the Baltic and the Ukraine must stop immediately.

  The day of Poland’s surrender, while Germany seized 72,500 square miles, Russia took 78,000 square miles. That same day, Hitler announced to his generals that his next plan was to attack the west. He demanded a strategy from them that would allow him to accomplish his goal before winter.

  French and British generals were conferring as well. They felt confident that Hitler would soon make a move westward since he had created his own defensive bastion facing the Maginot Line called the Westwall. Soldiers of both armies were reported bathing in the Rhine River in plain sight of one another. The Germans had even posted signs announcing to their French counterparts, “We have orders not to fire on you until you fire on us.”

  However, aside from minor skirmishes, neither side did much fighting. This bizarre nonaction was dubbed “la drôle de guerre,” the phony war, or more accurately, the funny war. Hitler’s goal of attacking the west before winter, however, was not met and as 1940 dawned, the worst winter of the century settled in. Temperatures fell dangerously low and mountains of snow covered the continent. Hitler’s plans for a massive attack were postponed again and again. On the French side of the border, the army used the time for training exercises and lectures. Across the channel, the British did the same.

  Virginia and Claire decided that it was out of the question for them to sit idly by while preparations for war were going on all around them. They enlisted in the Services Sanitaires de l’Armée, a Red Cross—type organization. Volunteers were gladly accepted, regardless of nationality or the number of legs they possessed. They received basic medical training, such as how to bandage wounds and how to apply a tourniquet. Additionally they were given a brief course on how to defend themselves should the need arise. Kicking, scratching, and stomping on insteps were all acceptable in time of war they were told. None of that, of course, would have stopped a bullet, but then no one expected a protracted war at that point either.

  When they had completed the four-week training course, Virginia and Claire were given the rank of private, second class, and assigned the duty of ambulance driving. Virginia didn’t tell her mother about her decision to volunteer. When the real fighting broke out, the French victory would be quick and decisive and when it was all over, she would simply write a letter home telling her mother about the minor part she had played in the French victory over the Nazis.

  Throughout the winter and the drôle de guerre, Virginia and Claire lived in a barracks outside Paris. Their monotonous days consisted of rolling bandages and sharing their sketchy first-aid knowledge with citizen groups that were anxious to be prepared. But as winter melted into spring, French-German skirmishes accelerated. Virginia and Claire assumed their duties as drivers in March and were assigned to cover an area outside the city of Metz, about twenty miles from the Maginot Line. They lived in a little cottage near town that had been donated to the war effort by its owner. The accommodations were rustic but adequate and food was available from nearby farms. The two worked the day shift, and tried to meet back at the cottage each evening for supper.

  Since her accident, Virginia did nearly everything she had done previously. But admittedly, the ambulance work was physically difficult. The vehicle was a pared-down Deux Chevaux, a French panel truck. Already spartan, it was made even more so with nothing in the interior but a hard bench seat in the front and room for two stretchers in the back. And of course it was a straight shift, which meant Virginia had to use her artificial leg and foot for the clutch pedal.

  Every night, when she returned to the cottage, she massaged her stump and took care to dry out her stump sock to prevent blisters the next day. Virginia had told Claire about the accident long before the war began. Although Virginia wasn’t ever comfortable talking about or displaying her amputation, Claire didn’t make a fuss over it. And for that, Virginia was grateful.

  The ambulance job was emotionally draining as well. At each stop, Virginia helped the attending medics load the blood-caked men, some crying out in agonizing pain. Then she sped off, with the patients bouncing in the back, across the rough terrain to field hospitals. And when the need arose, she took the patients from the field into Metz, where more complicated procedures could be performed at the hospital.

  Even at this stage, war was ugly. It wasn’t the blood and gore that bothered Virginia. It was the faces of the young men, grimacing in pain. It was the knowing look of the medic when he recognized that his patient would not survive. And it was the knowledge that through this misery and death, the future of an entire generation of French was being changed forever.

  Still, it was very gratifying work. And with every day that passed, memories of Foreign Service exams and being told that her disability was limiting became more distant. They hardly mattered now. She was needed; and she was secure behind the insurmountable defense of the Maginot Line.

  The issue of security changed on May 10, 1940. The Low Countries—Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg—had hoped that Hitler might ignore them ou
t of respect for their neutrality. It was not to be. At about 3:00 AM the Nazi blitzkrieg swept in. The Germans announced they were advancing to protect the Low Countries from an invasion by Great Britain and France, and gave the latter two countries notice that any resistance would be crushed. These announcements, however, came well after the attack had begun.

  By May 14, Holland, which hadn’t fought in a war since 1830, had surrendered. Belgium, having been attacked the same day as Holland, made no forward progress against the German onslaught and began to fall back only a day into the fighting. France and Great Britain responded to Belgium’s cry for help by sending powerful forces, led by General Charles de Gaulle, to hold off the Germans at one end of the border. Like all of the French, de Gaulle believed that the Ardennes Forest and the Meuse River would protect the other end.

  Such positioning was precisely what the Germans had counted on. The Nazi army had spent months training in order to be able to cross the raging Meuse, one of Europe’s most difficult rivers, and to penetrate the previously deemed impregnable Ardennes. By tackling them both, the Germans effortlessly avoided the Maginot Line and took the Allied army by complete surprise. The massive armies of Nazi tanks swept across the river and through the forest. In the midst of the fighting, on May 28, Belgium’s King Leopold III surrendered his army. This left the Allies fatally outnumbered.

  Likewise, the fighting had also increased in the east where Virginia and Claire were working. Now their jobs were overwhelming. They drove for hours at a time, the notion of “shifts” having completely disappeared. They worked until they dropped from exhaustion only to begin again after a quick nap.

  Their comfortable little cottage became a distant memory. They slept wherever they could in infantry camps, without the benefit of cots, sheets, or pillows. A blanket was considered a luxury. They lived out of small, canvas duffel bags that contained life’s bare essentials: a toothbrush, a comb, slivers of soap. Personal hygiene was a near impossibility. There was no time or place to bathe, so splashing in a pail of river water had to do. They only had a few extra items of clothing, and laundry was out of the question.