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

by Judith L. Pearson

  As soon as she landed at the Naples airport, Virginia could see that war had devastated Italy much as it had France. Many of its beautiful buildings lay in ruin; its bucolic countryside was pocked from falling bombs; its people, although liberated, were still struggling with all they had lost.

  The Allies’ Italian campaign, conducted at the same time as their sweep through France, had involved some of the hardest fighting in the war, costing the United States forces alone more than 1x4,000 casualties. But the sacrifice was not in vain. The Allies, with a minimum of strength, had been able to engage German forces in Italy that otherwise might have upset the balance in France.

  Virginia and Goillot traveled by jeep from Naples to Caserta, a city seventeen miles to the north. There, at the ancient Palace of the Kings, the Allied Military Forces had established their Italian headquarters. The OSS Mediterranean Theater staff was headquartered there as well, under the command of Colonel Edward Glavin. But Virginia and Goillot reported to the man in charge of Special Operations, former Philadelphia banker William Davis, Jr. He had been on board with the OSS since the beginning, and most recently had done a masterful job in coordinating the conflicting French secret service factions in North Africa.

  Davis briefed Virginia and Goillot on their mission, code-named FAIRMONT. The objective was to organize the Austrian underground. They would be limited in the amount of matériel available, so their goal was to look for individuals of quality, not amassing a quantity. They would be based in the Innsbrück region. Once organized, their first duty would be day-to-day sabotage. No specific targets were given, but OSS did have some priorities in class of targets, namely the German air force, fuel, and oil repositories and enemy communications.

  Virginia would be the radio operator for the group. Davis told her he’d heard about her exemplary job in France, but regulations required him to put her through a two-day radio school there nonetheless, followed by a day of practice over in Bari, not far from Caserta. The school would begin on January 19. Her field name would be Camille, cover name Anna Moller. Her story was that she was born in Turkey and was a German citizen, now working for the Sicherheitsdienst. Goillot’s field name would be Henri. Since he would remain undercover with the Resistance and didn’t speak German, he wouldn’t receive a cover story.

  While Virginia and Goillot were in Italy preparing for their next mission, unusual bedfellows were being united not far away. Allen Dulles, the senior OSS officer in Switzerland, had been contacted by Nazi General Karl Wolff, a well-connected officer who commanded the SS and Gestapo in Italy. The result of their negotiations became known as Operation SUNRISE.

  Wolff and other Nazi leaders were seeking amnesty and escape for themselves and an extensive roster of SS and Gestapo personnel. Furthermore, they were hoping to take along the booty that they had collected during the war: gold, cash, precious jewelry, artwork, and antiques, most of which had belonged to those who had fallen victim to the Final Solution. On the surface, this seemed a preposterous proposal. But in exchange, Wolff had a priceless offer.

  Up to this point, Allied leaders had been greatly concerned about Joseph Stalin’s postwar plans. They were certain he would continue to foster the spread of Communism across Europe. And they were without a useful deterrent. Enter General Wolff. He and his Nazi cohorts would shift their allegiance to the West and would arrange for an army of some 5,000 anti-Communists of Eastern European and Russian descent. After espionage training at a camp called Oberammergau, the army of spies would cover Europe, undertaking a covert battle against Communism. This secret war would come to be known as the “Cold War.”

  The offer was more than Dulles and the Allied leaders could pass up and Operation SUNRISE commenced. The Nazis, all of whom were war criminals, fled Europe via “ratlines,” operated by the Vatican. Thousands escaped, destined for South and Central America. Their numbers included Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, the extermination camp; Gustav Wagner, commandant of the death camp Sobibor; Adolf Eichmann, Holocaust architect; Dr. Joseph Mengele, the “white angel” who performed horrific experiments on inmates at the death camp Auschwitz; and Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon.”

  By the time Virginia and Goillot were allowed to proceed to the field, it was April 10, 1945. They caught a plane from Caserta to Marseille and then flew to Lyon. There was no time for Virginia to check on her friends, but she promised herself it would be high on her priority list of things to do once the war was over.

  From Lyon, a car took them up to Annemasse on the Swiss border. Virginia would cross into Switzerland the next evening and then into Austria the following night. Once she was established, Goillot would parachute in to join her. But as she was preparing to leave the next day, they were told Virginia’s border crossing had been delayed. They were sent to the town of Annecy, thirty-four miles away, to wait.

  A few days later, word came that their original mission had fallen through, but another opportunity had arisen, to which they agreed without delay. Virginia was already frustrated from having been inactive for so long, but the waiting continued. It wasn’t until April 25 that they were finally able to move on to Switzerland, checking into a hotel in Zürich.

  During the next six days, they perfected their plans for crossing into Austria, taking shelter in an abandoned mine, and zeroing in on sabotage targets. They collected equipment and arms for the ten men they would take in with them on the night of May 2. To kill time, they even spent two days cleaning their cache of grease-caked automatics and carbines to ensure that the weapons would perform when needed. But at six-thirty on the evening of their planned departure, they received a cable from headquarters in Caserta: “IN VIEW RAPID DEVELOPMENTS MILITARY SITUATION BELIEVED POINTLESS RISK LIVES OF DIANE, HENRI AND GROUP. CANCEL PLANS AND HOLD DIANE AND HENRI PENDING FURTHER WORD.”

  By the spring of 1945, the war had caused millions to lose their lives, some because it was their duty, some because they were persecuted by hatred, and some because an act of fate put them in harm’s way. On April 12, the war claimed one of the world’s most powerful men. President Roosevelt’s health had been in decline for about a year. The stress of his position and the difficult decisions he was forced to make on a daily basis were no doubt contributors to that fact. While visiting Warm Springs, Georgia, the president died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Vice President Harry S. Truman, who had only been inside the White House on two previous occasions, was sworn into office, inheriting a world at war.

  Two and a half weeks later, on April 29, Adolf Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun. He wrote out a will naming Martin Bormann as his deputy and Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz as president of the Reich and commander in chief of the armed forces. The next afternoon, the new Mrs. Hitler swallowed a cyanide capsule and was dead within minutes. Adolph Hitler followed her in death after shooting himself in the mouth.

  Their deaths also sounded the death knell for the Third Reich. At 2:41 AM on May 7, in a modest schoolhouse in Rheims, France, Field Marshall Alfred Gustav Jodi signed an unconditional surrender. The war in Europe was over.

  18

  The Dawn of a New World

  “LA GUERRE EST FINIE!” proclaimed the headlines of the May 7 edition of the French newspaper Le Monde. Virginia and Goillot had returned to Paris on that day to find a city mad with elation at the news that the war was over.

  The two had speculated about a German capitulation. The cancellation of their mission into Austria because of rapid developments in the military situation was their first clue. And tidbits of information gleaned from the OSS contact in Zürich further supported their guess. Virginia had met with him to return the money and radios she’d been entrusted with for their aborted mission.

  Sheer joie de vivre blossomed all around them in Paris, even more so than the last time they had been there. Goillot once again was able to spend time with his mother and sister. And for the first time in a long while, Virginia relaxed, allowing herself six weeks in Paris to un
wind from the pressure of five years of war. Total unproductivity was out of the question, of course, so she devoted time each day to writing various reports to OSS headquarters in Washington. She detailed the HECKLER mission, not just for the sake of fully reporting her work, but because she wanted the American government to realize how much the French had assisted her. Compensation for them, she said, should be considered a priority.

  Virginia’s report cataloged all of her supporters: Farmer Lopinat in Crozant, Colonel and Mme Vessereau in Cosne, Estelle Bertrand in Sury- près-Léré; and in Le Chambon, Mme Lebrat, Edmund and Maurice Lebrat, Dédé, Lieutenant Bob, and the others. They had given up their homes, shared their scanty food stores, and risked capture and death without ever asking for, or even thinking of, recompense. Their generosity and bravery deserved the utmost attention from Washington.

  On June 17, Virginia made good on her promise to herself when she and Goillot were finally able to head to Lyon. She had no idea of what and whom they would find. They went first to Dr. Rousset’s office. He answered the door himself, looking thin and tired, but smiling broadly when he saw Virginia, and told her the story of what had happened in the months after she left. All of them had been visited by the Gestapo at one time or another. At this news, the guilt that Virginia had managed to keep at bay for nearly three years flooded her emotions. She felt she had deserted them just when they needed her the most.

  But Pep waved her off kindly. She did what she had to do. She knew too much and was too valuable. They were well aware of the risks they were taking, and they took them nonetheless. After the Gestapo had questioned him in Lyon, he continued, they sent him to Fresnes and then on to Buchenwald late in 1943.

  The Nazis allowed him to work as a doctor there, and he managed to hide away more than 150 medical files on English and American prisoners. The men had been brought to Buchenwald after the Germans had caught them trying to escape. They were eventually turned over to the Gestapo and never returned. Rousset said he knew they’d be liberated one day, and when the Americans finally arrived, he took the files with him as his part to prove what had taken place.

  Virginia and Goillot next went to the home of the Catins, who welcomed them effusively and told their story. After the Gestapo had beaten Mme Catin while trying to extract information, they sent her, too, to Fresnes and then to Ravensbriick women’s prison. Finally she was shipped to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The Americans had liberated the camp and she had only been home a short while. M. Catin had managed to avoid capture, and continued working with the Resistance. But when he finally returned to his flat, it had been picked clean by the Germans. There was no furniture, no clothing, no pots and pans, not even any eating utensils.

  A visit to the Joulians was next. They told Virginia the same story of torture for information about the “Limping Lady” and the Resistance. And they returned from prison to nothing but bare walls and floors in both their home and factory. All of the machinery was gone, and with it, their means of earning a living.

  The Germans had been through Mme Guerin’s beautiful home, too, she told Virginia and Goillot when they arrived. They sent her to a prison camp, then stole her artwork, antique rugs, draperies, even the plumbing. But at least she had survived, she said. Her dear friend, M. Genet, had not been so lucky. The Gestapo beat and tortured him, and when he wouldn’t give up any information, they loaded him into a cattle car with 150 other prisoners. A Resistance friend had seen him manacled, “his wrists and arms in tatters.” He suffocated on the way to Buchenwald.

  With each visit, Virginia’s emotions became more and more jumbled. On the one hand, she was relieved to see that most of her dear and faithful friends had survived. But on the other hand, it broke her heart to hear what they had been through to protect her and the Resistance. And seeing the abject poverty they now faced was almost unbearable.

  Next they went to the Labouriers’ home. Monsieur was wearing a suit loaned to him by a friend who was apparently much shorter than he was. Madame wore a tattered blouse and a skirt made from the ticking she had taken off her mattress in the concentration camp. Their fleet of trucks had disappeared long before and, like their friends, they didn’t have the money to replace them.

  When they left Lyon, Virginia and Goillot traveled cross-country, picking up radios Virginia knew had been stashed throughout France. This part of the trip was difficult, too. France was a burned-out shell of her former self, filled with people without home or hope. Mile upon mile of landscape had been ravaged by the war. What the Germans had not stolen or destroyed before the Allies’ arrival had been laid to waste in the fight for freedom.

  Virginia saw conflicting emotions on the faces of the people. Their country had been liberated from the evil it had struggled against, yet more than two million of their compatriots were still straggling home from German POW, labor, and concentration camps. And those were the lucky ones.

  Poverty was everywhere. As in Lyon, homes had been stripped of all useful items. The food shortage, a way of life under the Nazis, showed no sign of being relieved any time soon. Displaced persons wandered the roads. And of course, there were many scores to be settled, both judicially and privately.

  Virginia and Goillot returned to Paris on Saturday morning, June 23, having traveled about a thousand miles. Virginia realized that no matter how much she might want to, she couldn’t single-handedly help the entire nation. But she could urge SOE headquarters in London to help those who had unselfishly assisted her. They needed compensation for their devastating losses, she wrote. They had sacrificed everything, and deserved not only the highest praise, but help in starting their lives over as well.

  Virginia wrote a long report about Abbé Ackuin, too, based on information she had gleaned from her friends in Lyon. Her instincts had been right on the money about him and there was no question in her mind that his treachery had triggered their arrests. She would have loved to get her hands on him, and she would have had no compunction about shooting him. But she knew a far worse fate would be for him to fall into the hands of Resistance members.

  At the time Virginia was writing her memorandum in Paris, Robert Alesh, alias Abbé Ackuin, was already in custody. Although his experiences since leaving Lyon in 1942 had been difficult, it would soon get worse now that he was in Allied hands.

  Germany had had a number of intelligence organizations during the war, including the Abwehr, which hated the Gestapo. The feeling was mutual and the two zealously competed with one another. Alesh had been employed by the Abwehr. At about the same time the Gestapo was arresting Virginia’s circuit members in Lyon in 1943, it also picked up Alesh in Paris. The Abwehr was incensed. It had planned to use Virginia’s group as a source of information about Allied plans. Alesh had ingratiated himself with the group’s members and his espionage work might have proven invaluable.

  Furthermore, Alesh had intercepted and decoded many of Virginia’s messages. He knew she suspected him, but he also knew a great deal about her circuit and its operations. Finally securing Alesh’s release, the Abwehr continued to pay him until June 1944. It was then that the Germans departed from Paris, leaving Alesh in an ugly predicament. He had been responsible for the arrests and deaths of many Resistance members there, as well as in Lyon, and he knew the consequences he faced if any of their families or friends should find him. His only recourse was to leave the city and head home to Luxembourg. He began his journey by bicycle, but was stranded in Brussels amid the liberating Allied forces.

  Ever resourceful, Alesh forged a letter from the Archbishop of Paris to a Belgian priest, detailing alleged mistreatment at the hands of the Germans. He used the letter as his entrée to secure a job as a chaplain for refugees at a center in Brussels. He worked there from November 1944 to May 1945 when he was finally arrested by the Allies. After they finished interrogating him, they turned him over to French authorities. Although there were never any official documents to support the conjecture, the rumor that traveled
in the Resistance circles was that the abbé had gotten precisely what he deserved—execution.

  A month earlier, on May 12, 1945, a note to President Truman’s secretary, Miss Rose Conway, had been delivered to the White House from General Donovan. It read, “Will you please hand the attached memorandum to the President?”

  The memorandum announced that Virginia Hall had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. The DSC is a military decoration of the United States Army, which is awarded for “extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force. Actions which merit the Distinguished Service Cross must be of such a high degree as to be above those required for all other U.S. combat decorations,” with the exception of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Donovan’s memorandum spared no accolades:

  Miss Virginia Hall, an American civilian working for this agency in the European Theater of Operations, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against the enemy.

  We understand that Miss Hall is the first civilian woman in this war to receive the DSC.

  Despite the fact that she was well known to the Gestapo, Miss Hall voluntarily returned to France in March 1944 to assist in sabotage operations against the Germans. Through her courage and physical endurance, even though she had previously lost a leg in an accident, Miss Hall, with two American officers, succeded in organizing, arming and training three FFI Battalions which took part in many engagements with the enemy and a number of acts of sabotage. … In addition Miss Hall provided radio communication between London Headquarters and the Resistance Forces in the Haute Loire Department. … This is the most dangerous type of work as the enemy, whenever two or more direction finders could be tuned in on a transmitter, were able to locate the transmittal point to within a couple of hundred yards. It was frequently necessary for Miss Hall to change her headquarters in order to avoid detection.