Grandfathers

During a recent sort out, my mum found a small square of newspaper, cut out and neatly gummed onto a piece of glass cut to size. It had been sellotaped too, protecting the ink and turning the paper a deep golden-yellow, but before it was stuck down someone had penciled their name on it in three different places, as well as scratching their initials on the back. The date, handwritten alongside, is 28 June 1919.

The clipping is from the ‘London “Daily Express” Aeroplane Post’, and the headline is ‘Peace Proclaimed.’ You don’t get much of the story, but everything important is captured in sixteen words: ‘The Peace Treaty was signed by the Peace Emissaries of the Allied and Enemy Countries today’.

Dick Mulley's keepsake of the announcement of peace, 1919

The penciled name is ‘R Mulley’. This was my grandfather, Richard Mulley, better known as Dick, then a fourteen-year-old boy with very tidy writing. He was clearly hugely aware of how momentous that day was, marking the end of what was then known as The Great War. Little wonder, since one of his older brothers had served in the Royal Navy and was twice on ships that were torpedoed - although amazingly he survived to run a toyshop in the peace. Dick’s deep sense of moment is captured both in the number of times he scribbled his name on the paper, and in his determination to write so neatly on this small keepsake of history.

I have very little that once belonged to my dad’s dad, although there are a few photos of his many naughty, handsome brothers and long-suffering sisters. I love the fact that this small plaque has survived, a memento of a boy who had clearly been following the war, and had a sense of history as well as of victory. It is also a memento of my father, who must have cautiously held this fragile square of paper and glass, just like I have, and wondered about the boy who grew up to become his father. These two men carefully kept this small cutting safe for ninety-five years.

My husband, Ian, has similarly precious little from his father’s father; in fact he has even less. However, as a child he did inherit his father’s stamp collection, which he carefully stuck in an album bought for the purpose in the 1960s, adding to it as he went. Looking at the individual stamps, however, some of these must have come down from another generation, from Ian’s father’s father, Reiner.

This album contains stamps from all over the world. The smaller the country, the more fabulous the stamp, my dad once told me, looking at his own childhood collection with me. The same is true here, but the most fascinating stamps in this album come from Ian’s grandfather and father’s birth-country; Germany.

Germany first issued stamps in 1872. Sadly there are none in this album from then, but there are two Germany pages, very neatly distinguishing stamps dating from 1949 which were issued in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, ie post-war Eastern Germany, and look suitably Soviet, from an older collection from the Deutsche Reich.

These Reich stamps are fascinating. The oldest, perhaps, is a pretty dark blue one showing a stylised hunting horn for a value of 6 marks. The collection quickly moves up in face-value however to 200, 400 and 500 marks. In the years after the First World War the value of the German mark fell rapidly, mainly as a result of reparation payments and the penalties imposed on German trade, combined with the depression. As the German government printed money, the country experienced rapid, debilitating inflation. German stamps in circulation were overprinted to reflect this. A pink stamp in the album that had been issued at a face-value of 500 marks, had been given a value of 250,000 marks in around 1923, while below it a paler pink 200 mark stamp is overprinted with a value of 2 million marks! Some of these stamps do not even look used, as though even when revalued in the millions they could hardly cover the cost of delivering a letter.

Deutsche Reich stamps from the album, c.1920s

So while, as a lad, one grandfather, Dick Mulley, was cheerfully sticking his newspaper cutting on to some glass to keep it nice, another, Reiner Wolter was - possibly less cheerfully - not sticking stamps onto envelopes, but keeping them safe nonetheless, with a sense for preserving history that was just as keen as Dick’s.

So what happened to these two boys when they grew up? In the Second World War my father’s father, Dick, served as a chef in the navy, cooking Christmas dinner for 1,400 men one year; ie for two troopships. He survived the war, and later worked for the New Zealand Shipping Company. Story has it that one day, in a storm, he chopped his own thumb off but simply sewed it back and got on with dinner.

Ian’s grandfather, Reiner, was drafted too, but he was less lucky. There are several stories as to his end, but the one that seems most likely is that he was sent to the Russian Front, and died or was killed at Stalingrad, with so many others. We don’t really know. His widow, Ian’s beloved German grandma, fell in love again a few years later, with an English soldier based in the British-occupied zone of post-war Germany. They married, and although her older sons chose to stay in Germany, she brought her youngest son, Ian’s father, with her to England when her new husband was posted home. Very little came with them, no photos that we know of, but a few Christmas tree baubles and a small collection of stamps. And she sang wonderful German carols in their house at Christmas time.

So my children have great grandfathers who fought on both sides of that second terrible world war: men who were boys once, and collected small souvenirs of peace – little bits of gummy paper that still survive to tell us something rather wonderful about them, something about being aware of the zeitgeist that they might have recognised in each other.


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Jan Karski, messenger from the past

When we think about the Holocaust today, we mostly remember the victims, perpetrators, bystanders and collaborators. We should also think about those who risked their lives to protect individuals, families and groups, or even in the attempt to end the genocide altogether. Last month, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, I attended an event at the London Central Synagogue organised in tribute to the Polish Catholic, Jan Karski, who attempted just that. After Rabbi Barry Marcus, Cantor Steven Leas and Polish Ambassador Witold Sobków had welcomed guests, Martin Smith’s short film Messenger from Poland was screened, in which Jan Karski told his own story.

Rabbi Barry Marcus opens the Jan Karski tribute evening
at the London Central Synagogue. 

In the winter of 1943, Karski was selected by the Polish Underground State to alert the international community to the mass murder of the Polish Jews by the Nazis. The young former diplomat was already a veteran of clandestine war-work. Taken prisoner by the Russians in the early weeks of the war, Karski had been released in a prisoner exchange, thereby avoiding death in the Katyn forests. In August 1940, having escaped from a second detention, this time by the Gestapo, Karski served as an underground courier with the Polish resistance, smuggling information out of the country. 

Jan Karski, 1943

Eighteen months later he was chosen to bring news of the genocide to the outside world. It was felt that his diplomatic credentials, along with the fact that he was not Jewish himself, made him a strong emissary. To give him even greater authority, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto where he watched two boys from the Hitler Youth 'shooting mindlessly' into the miserable scene of ‘poverty, hunger and death’. Then, disguised as a Ukranian militiaman, he was taken to Izbica, a Nazi ‘sorting station’ where he watched ‘masses of Jews’ being sent to the Treblinka death camp for ‘liquidation’. Karski reached London in November 1942, where he put a simple plan to the Polish Government-in-Exile. Germany should be leafleted with details of the camps, Karski began, 'so the German nation could not say that they did not know'. The Nazi government should be directly lobbied to stop the genocide, and if they failed to do so the Allies should respond by bombing key sites in retaliation until action was taken. ‘In the name of common values’, the Pope should be called to publically intervene, calling on German Catholics to find their consciences. 'Who knows', Karski argued, perhaps if the Pope threatened to excommunicate those who did not protect the Jewish population, enough Germans might take a stand. Karski also wanted blank passports and hard currency to bribe Nazi officials, and the Polish resistance to operate a strict policy of execution for those who betrayed their Jewish neighbours.

Republic of Poland report for the United Nations, 1942

Karski’s was not the first report of mass killings to reach the West but it was one of the most detailed, an eyewitness account, and considered very reliable. But despite his testimony, the Allies remained largely indifferent to the fate of the Jews in Poland. All those who met Karski gave various reasons why nothing could be done. The Pope took six weeks to respond, and then only stated that he had already done all he could. In Britain Lord Selbourne, who met Karski in place of Churchill, told him that no political leader would comply with the idea of providing hard currency to bribe Nazi officials, which would effectively mean subsidising the enemy regime. Roosevelt ‘looked like a master of humanity’, Karski felt, but seemed more interested in the fate of Polish horses than Polish Jews, and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, possibly the most influential Jewish man in the USA, simply said he could not believe Karski’s report. When asked if he was suggesting that Karski was lying, Frankfurter replied only that not being able to believe was not the same as doubting the reliability of the source. Karski was horrified by the lack of action, despite his reaching the highest authorities. ‘I swore to them’, he told film-maker Martin Smith at the end of his interview, ‘as long as I will live, I will speak about it’. Karski was true to his word, but Smith felt that he seemed ‘weighed down by doubt and death’. Karski died in July 2000, believing to the end, Smith told me, that he had achieved nothing. In fact his constant lobbying had helped lead to the development of the USA’s War Refugee Board, an important achievement but not the goal he had set himself. In 1982 Yad Vashem recognised Karski as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. In 2012 he was honoured with the USA’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and this year, 2014, has been designated Jan Karski year by the Polish parliament. 

Film-maker Martin Smith talks with a member of the audience.

Important though such recognition is, Jan Karski has been honoured as a hero too late. Over drinks after the film, I asked why Karski’s testimony had been so largely ignored. The responses were diverse. Some felt that Karski had been treated by suspicion because he was known to be a socialist. Others, that the Western powers were fearful of giving too much weight to the Jewish question when there was so much general suffering caused by the war. Certainly there was also the refusal to believe, as expressed so starkly by Felix Frankfurter. Above all, however, the feeling was that no government felt justified in diverting any resources from the ultimate goal of defeating Nazi Germany. What everyone seemed to agree, however, was that if we remain silent, then we too, in a sense, are tacit.

During the Second World War, despite Karski’s unceasing meetings with journalists, authors, officials and MPs, and his own writing, the vast majority of people did not know the truth about the genocide until July 1944, when the first Nazi death camp was liberated. Those who did know had other priorities. Today the world has changed. Courageous reporters, and members of the public armed with mobile phones and internet access, have taken the place of brave couriers like Jan Karski, and there are few conflicts around the world where atrocities, state-sponsored or otherwise, go unreported. If anything people feel overwhelmed. General knowledge is not lacking, and nor perhaps is public conscience; what is lacking is clear solutions to these complex situations. What is certain, however, is the importance of constant vigilance and repeated challenges to those who abuse human rights. Perhaps the most significant lesson from Karski’s story is that without knowledge nothing can be achieved, but with knowledge comes both collective and personal responsibility.


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Four Sisters

To mark ‘Women’s History Month’ I am dedicating my March blog to four Russian sisters…

A couple of years ago the Russianist, historian, translator and author Helen Rappaport decided to write about four sisters. I was researching three very different sisters at the same time, so I hoped that collectively we could write about seven sisters, and meet occasionally in north London to toast our progress. Sadly, my chosen sisters fell by the wayside (at least for now), but Helen’s wonderful book: Four Sisters: The Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses was published this week.

The British hardback of Helen Rappaport's Four Sisters

A fluent Russian speaker, Helen is a specialist in Russian history and 19th century women’s history. Her subjects have ranged from a blackmailing Victorian beautician to Lenin’s years in exile, and from the stories of women in the Crimean War of the 1850s to an encyclopedia of female social reformers.

Author Helen Rappaport, photo by John Kerrison

Four Sisters is Helen’s second look at the Imperial Romanov family. In 2009 she examined the last painful fourteen days of the dynasty in her history, Ekaterinburg. Now she widens her lens to provide a deeply moving account of the four Romanov sisters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

Important chiefly as dynastic assets in their own lifetime, these women were perhaps the most photographed and talked about young royals of the early twentieth century. Presented essentially as beautiful, demure figures, flanking their parents, in gauzy white dresses, it would have been unthinkable that not one of them would find a husband. However, in 1918, they were all brutally murdered, along with their parents, thirteen-year-old brother, and loyal personal staff, by members of the Bolshevik secret police.

Olga, Maria, Nicholas II Alexandra Fyodorovna,
Anastasia, Alexei and Tatiana, 1913
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Fyodorovna_of_Hesse

The fate of the Imperial Romanov family is well-known, and yet this is a story still obscured by confusion, deceptions and myth. Inevitably perhaps, such a tragic tale of innocence and brutality has often been reduced to a binary narrative about good and evil. However, presenting the four Romanov sisters simply as innocent victims without independent character, fault or value, does little to further our understanding. The apparently irrepressible desire to believe that Anastasia escaped her family’s fate, despite all evidence to the contrary, has further romanticised the story.

I asked Helen why these four women’s lives have not been more critically examined before, despite their fame, and about the politics of writing about women who are primarily known for their relationship to, or association with, more famous men.

 ‘The perennial problem with telling the story of interesting women in history’, Helen told me, ‘is the lack of sufficient source material. Sometimes the only way we can learn anything about women is when they are shown as an adjunct to the much more famous men in their lives and the results are not always satisfactory. I don't believe in trying to aggrandise the role of such women, but by taking a close up look at the key role they played - as in the case of Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife - one can find fascinating perspectives on the bigger story. Similarly, the lives and upbringing of the four Romanov sisters hopefully sheds much valuable new light on their parents and the whole dynamic of Russia's last imperial family.’

The tragic fate of the Romanov family provides a brutally direct metaphor for the end of Imperial Russia. How did you balance the focus between the personal drama, and the political context?

 ‘I think the reason that people are so endlessly fascinated by the last imperial family has a lot to do with the murder of those five innocent children in 1918. And yes, it is indeed a metaphor for the dreadful, savage and bitter civil war that followed the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Millions of people died in the first formative years of the new Soviet Russia, many of them innocent women and children. The Romanov children represent the murder of innocence and also the difficulty, even now, that people in Russia have of coming to terms with the savagery of their own past.’

What is new in your approach to the story?

‘The sisters have always been perceived as an adjunct to the much bigger story of their parents and their haemophiliac brother. I had never had any interest in writing standard biographies of, say, Nicholas or Alexandra, nor have I ever considered myself to be a political historian. I was interested in the Romanovs' private, domestic life, as a family and how they interacted with each other.

As a mother of daughters myself, I wanted to write about them as any other young women – i.e. without preoccupation with their status and titles. I wanted to view their development as one would any other developing girls - with the same interests, impulses, hopes and disappointments. I wanted to show their very different personalities and how each of them had qualities that were uniquely their own. This was no bland collective, as they are so often presented, but four very interesting young women who were on the brink of life and who, in their own very different ways, had a great deal to offer.’

How important was your fluency in Russian during your research?

‘My Russian was crucial. There was much that I wanted and needed to read in the Russian original, especially the girls' letters and diaries, even though a lot of source material has now been published and translated. I visited Russia several times to refuel my sense of place, but not so much to discover new things. I found much new material by other means, even without going there. Being in Russia helped me connect with the four girls and their story in an important emotional and spiritual way.’

Finally, how would you like the four Romanov sisters to be remembered?

‘As four very different contrasting personalities who deserve to be remembered more than as just pretty girls in white frocks and big picture hats. They were not a bland collective, they were a fascinating quartet of young women who at heart were decent, loving, honest and inherently altruistic and caring. They deserve to be remembered for the love and devotion they showed each other, their parents and their sick brother without complaint and with a gentle stoicism that I find admirable and touching.’

Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana
in captivity, Spring 1917
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Nikolaevna 

Helen is passionate about uncovering the neglected truths behind well-known stories and releasing women from what she calls ‘the footnotes and margins’ of history. Four Sisters gives individuality and vibrant identity back to Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, presenting them not just as pawns in the hands of their Imperial family, symbols of an out-of-touch regime, or tragic victims of the brutal revolution, but as young women with hopes, dreams, frustrations and fears of their own. Here they are actors in their own right, each responding distinctly to the circumstances, opportunities and constraints of their lives, and living without the foreknowledge that usually clouds perceptions of them. Their personal stories are told lightly but with such scholarly authority that it is easy to forget how new it is to consider them in this fresh and sensitive way.

History like this shows how women’s lives have often been doubly marginalised, first in life, and then in their retrospective historical treatment. Helen Rappaport not only liberates the Romanov sisters to great degree but, in doing so, she shows how revisiting the lives of women living in the shadow of more powerful men can illuminate history in all sorts of new ways.

Singing History with Katy Carr

Sometimes art and music provide a much more immediate and powerful connection with the past than history books, or the biographies that I write. This month I would like to dedicate my blog to another wonderful ‘History Girl’: the truly original and talented Anglo-Polish singer-songwriter Katy Carr.

Singer-songwriter Katy Carr

I first met Katy when she came to the National Army Museum to hear me lecture about Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the Polish-born countess who was the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent during the Second World War, and the subject of my biography 'The Spy Who Loved'. Sporting a retro-chic 1940s look, topped by felt hat and red lipstick, Katy stood out among the audience, like an elegant ghost straying in from the post-war London streets. (The only other time I have been so struck by an individual member of an audience, was when WinStan Churchill, aka Stan Streather, professional Churchill doppelgänger, once turned up in a polka-dot bow-tie to hear me talk at the Imperial War Museum’s Churchill War Rooms.)

You can watch my National Army Museum lecture here: 

Over lunch in the pub afterwards with our mutual friend, Paweł Komorowski, who is a distant cousin of Krystyna Skarbek, I began to learn what made Katy tick. Raised in Nottingham, Katy’s East Midlands accent belies her knowledge and passion for Poland, her mother’s country. This is a woman with a mission to communicate not just the culture and history of Poland, but the individual, and very personal stories, that compose and reflect the nation’s character.

Katy has released four indie-folk music albums, the last of which, the hauntingly brilliant Paszport, was produced in Poland and Britain in 2012. Described as ‘an epic, poetic journey through her past and that of her mother’s nation’, Paszport is dedicated to the Polish experience in the Second World War. Its sixteen songs explore the themes of love and loss, patriotism and resistance, hope and struggle through the prism of Poland’s modern history.

Paszport by Katy Carr

Paszport is full of wonderful tracks. The bitter-sweet ‘Mała Little Flower’ was inspired by Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish Catholic girl who not only saved the lives of twelve Jews by hiding them in the basement of an SS officer’s house, but who went on to join the Polish resistance with the codename ‘Mała’, which means ‘Little’ in Polish. This song is dedicated to the memory of Irena’s fiancé, Janek Ridel, who was killed in action the day before their wedding in May 1944.

Watch the video here: Katy Carr, 'Mala Little Flower'

The song of Katy’s that I find most moving, however, is ‘Kommander’s Car’, which tells the story of Kazik Piechowski. Kazik was imprisoned by the Nazis for being a Polish Boy Scout at the start of the war and sent on the second transport to Auschwitz in June 1940. It would be two years to the day that Kazik and three fellow political prisoners would realize a plan to steal SS uniforms and drive out of the camp in the car belonging to its infamous commandant, Rudolf Höss. The song, beautifully illustrated here by South African born artist and illustrator Galen Wainwright, manages to convey the emotional truths as well as the factual story of Kazik and his friends’ bid for freedom.

Watch the video here: Katy Carr, 'Kommander's Car'

Still from the music video for 'Commander's Car'

Still from the music video for 'Commander's Car'

Katy had no idea that Kazik was still alive when she recorded the song, and she was thrilled when he got in touch, inviting her to meet him in his home city of Gdansk. Kazik had not only survived the war, but also seven years imprisonment by the Soviets afterwards, for his involvement with the Partisans and Polish Home Army following his escape from Auschwitz. ‘It is very difficult to make a film about Auschwitz’, Kazik, now in his 90s, told Katy. ‘But this music video, through the use of the symbols and artwork and music, is bringing something new to the world.’ 

Katy and Kazik’s meeting was documented by British film-maker Hannah Lovell in a short film: Kazik and the Kommander's Car short documentary

Kazik and Katy at a memorial in his local Gdansk park

‘Kazik is my inspiration’, Katy told me earnestly, ‘meeting him changed my life’. This is not just some flip patter. Kazik not only inspired Katy to learn more about her Polish roots, he showed her the importance of memory and reaching out to share stories. Kazik has written two books and many articles about his experiences, inspired by the words of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, ‘You did not survive simply to live, you have little time left, you must give the world the truth’. Katy now also tours schools and local community groups to bring Kazik’s story to new audiences, and to foster stronger relations with local Polish communities across Britain. It is work that has earned her the prestigious Polish Daily Award for Culture as part of their ‘People of the Year’ awards in 2013.Last year, when my biography of Krystyna Skarbek was published in Poland, Katy and I flew over to Warsaw together, where Katy is something of a star! Paweł came with us too, to generously help promote the book and to toast Krystyna in her homeland. The launch was held at the wonderful Warsaw Uprising Museum, where Katy has performed in the past with her band, The Aviators. However, for me the night before was just as special. Paweł’s wonderful aunt Joanna had invited us over for dinner to meet family and friends including his mother, Babcia. After some fine barszcz czerwony (Polish borscht) and far too much good Polish liquor, Katy got out her ukulele and treated us all to some traditional songs like ‘Hej Sokoły’ - in which you can hear my faintly ludicrous ‘Hej’s’ towards the end! A camera, balanced on a wineglass, recorded the lot: 

Katy and Babcia Sing 'Hej Sokoly'

Katy singing with Babcia

There is a lot of talk about immigration at the moment, and this month Polish Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, who also came to the Warsaw launch of the Polish edition of my book, blogged that ‘if Britain gets our taxpayers, shouldn't it also pay their benefits?’ I certainly believe that Britain is all the richer, in every sense, for remembering, celebrating and building on our historic connection with Poland during the Second World War. With singer-songwriters such as Katy Carr, I hope that another generation will hear these stories.

I am absolutely delighted to announce that Katy is now working on a song about Krystyna Skarbek for her new album, Polonia. Polonia will mark the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, and the beginning of Poland’s long loss of independence which Krystyna and the Polish Free Forces fought so hard to regain.

Me, with Katy holding The Spy Who Loved

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The Original Hackers

Last week I was delighted to meet Ruth Ive, ‘the woman who censored Churchill’, as she is styled in her memoirs.[i] As a war-time telephone censor, Ruth is probably the last person still with us who once listened in on conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt, but then we still don’t know for sure exactly who else was party to the great men’s conversations. For those who have been surprised by recent phone tapping and state surveillance revelations, it is sobering to remember that hacking has been a recognised policy since a least the Second World War.

Ruth Ive in the 1940s
when she worked in the Postal and Telegraph Censorship

In 1942, Ruth’s shorthand skills led to her being picked out of her job at the postal-censorship offices for a role monitoring the Transatlantic radio link between Britain and America. For three and a half years she worked long shifts, tucked into a small office in a partly destroyed building in St Martins Le Grand. Here Ruth listened in to conversations between the dispersed members of European royal families, a ‘rather bad-tempered’ Mme Chiang Kai-shek, and senior political and diplomatic staff including Churchill and Roosevelt, or Mr Smith and Mr White as they were known over the phone. Ruth’s job was two-fold; to note down everything that was said, and to pull the plug, literally, on any conversation that might in any way compromise the Allied war effort if overheard.

Churchill was ‘a natural telephoner’ Ruth told me over tea and sandwiches in her North London care home, ‘very effusive with Roosevelt and often unguarded in his comments’. Listening down the line, she felt that she never knew what he might say next, and she suspects that Roosevelt did not either. Their conversations might start with a description of Churchill’s dinner, or Roosevelt’s polite enquiry after his opposite number’s family, but would soon develop into often quite passionate discussions. Churchill ‘didn’t hide his emotions’, Ruth remembered. Although he was always confident about ultimate victory, ‘he did not have that clipped, buttoned-up quality’. On one occasion, when he was distraught at the devastation caused by a V2 that had landed near Holborn Circus, Ruth had to cut the line on Churchill twice in quick succession, for fear he would reveal the exact location and extent of the damage caused. And yet the PM only spoke to Ruth directly once, demanding ‘what did you do that for?’ when the line went dead unexpectedly. Ruth had to explain that this time it was her US counterpart who had cut the line on Roosevelt – something Ruth was never allowed to do herself. The only consistent thing in the calls was the way that Churchill always signed off saying, ‘Kaye Bee Oh’. Eventually, unsure how to transcribe this curious farewell, Ruth asked her boss who told her it was K.B.O. for ‘Keep Buggering On’.

The room where Churchill made his Transatlantic calls.
The outside door was disguised it as a toilet,
with a sign that could be moved from 'Vacant' to 'Engaged'

Ruth knew that all her shorthand notes on the Churchill/Roosevelt conversations were shredded once she had transcribed them and in any case, she told me, a few days later ‘no one could read them, not even me’. After the war, in October 1945, Churchill was asked to attend a US Congressional hearing with the longhand transcripts, and responded that they, too, had been ‘destroyed’. It seemed that that was end of that. Ruth married soon after the war and raised two sons and, having signed the official secrets act, she never spoke about her work listening in to the hottest British hotline of the war.

Ruth's July 1945 reference, noting that she was 'the best censor'
and 'highly recommended for work requiring tact and discretion'

Fifty years later Ruth was ‘horrified’ to learn about the existence of a German listening station at Valkenswaard, near Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where Philips electronics are based. Up till then she had imagined that her role had been little more than a necessary war-time precaution. ‘If I had had any proof [that the Germans were listening] at the time, I would have just laid down my pencil and made a run for it’ she told me laughing. Looking back, however, she has become fascinated by just who, besides herself and the American phone censor, was eavesdropping on ‘these two old men, talking to each other’.

In 2004 Ruth travelled to the Netherlands to search for the Valkenswaard listening station. Major Tony Bayley, of the British Battalion of the Irish Guards, had introduced her to members of the military team who, just after the war, had found the abandoned Dutch farmhouse that had once served as the German listening station hidden away in some woods. Sadly the building had already been stripped, and all the equipment either thrown into the nearby river or evacuated with the staff. Visiting nearly sixty years later, Ruth found the building was still standing and used as an Arts Centre, but she met ‘a blanket of silence’ when she began asking questions at the Valkenswaard Heritage Centre and other official archives. ‘You imagine that the Dutch are liberal’ she sighed, ‘it is shocking that this happened there’. However she did meet a man who remembered the high security around the building when he was a local teenager during the war.

Post-war Valkenswaard
The former German Intelligence Centre disguised as a Dutch farmhouse

The American historian, David Khan, has written about the German facilities at Valkenswaard, describing the underground bunker where the technology was kept, and the radio masts hidden among the trees.[ii] Here the thirty-five staff, all fluent English-speakers, lived in comparative luxury, with comfortable bedrooms, an on-site kitchen preparing fresh meals, and a lounge with an open fireplace. ‘Apparently, the quality of the reception was good too’, Ruth added ruefully as we spoke, thinking about her own cramped office, lack of lunches, and sometimes terribly static lines.

On her last day in Amsterdam, ‘this little man turned up on the doorstep’ Ruth told me. Hans Knap was a retired TV journalist who had written a history of official postal monitoring dating back to the end of the nineteenth century.[iii] While researching Valkenswaard he, too, had also drawn a blank with the Dutch authorities. Nonetheless Knap’s research led him to conclude that ‘after forty years of German-Dutch colonial co-operation, German engineers listened to the “hot-line” of Churchill and Roosevelt with the help of the facilities of the Dutch PTT and Philips Electronic Industries’. David Khan, who has looked at records in the USA and elsewhere, even asserts that translations of all the Churchill/Roosevelt talks landed on the Fuehrer’s desk within hours of the calls being made.

Now in her 90s, Ruth is still a woman with a mission. ‘I’ve had a lot of fun’, she told me, ‘and I’ve got very irritated and very angry…’ In a way though, she says, it did not matter that the Germans were successfully listening in. Given the coded nature of the conversations, and her own and her American counterpart’s quick action to prevent any sensitive information from being discussed, she feels sure that they ‘gained little original intelligence’ from the Transatlantic radio line. However, her memoirs tell just one side of a conversation, she explained, and she would still like to know just who these ‘original hackers’, as she calls them, were. ‘I am surprised at people now – that the authorities were so amazed by the recent hacking’, she told me as we said goodbye. ‘Why was it a scandal? We’ve all been doing it for years.’

Ruth Ive's book, The Woman Who Censored Churchill (The History Press, 2008)

[i] Ruth Ive, The woman who censored Churchill (The History Press, 2008).

[ii] David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (Scribner, 1996)

[iii] Hans Knap, Forschungsstelle Langeveld: Duits afluisterstation in bezet Nederland (De Bataafsche leeuw, 1998)

Joyeux Noel

Earlier this month I was invited to contribute to a three-hour festive marathon; Channel 5’s ‘Greatest Ever Christmas Movies’ special, which was shown on Christmas Eve. As I went in to the studios, Aled Jones came out. My specialist subject was war films. War may not typically be associated with the Christmas film feel-good factor, but it led to some merriment in our house as we tried to work out whether Christmas had featured in The Eagle Has Landed, Downfall or The Hurt Locker. In the end it turned out there was only one war film among Channel 5’s festive top 40 list: Christian Carion’s very beautiful French film Joyeux Noel from 2005, about the Christmas truces down the Western Front in 1914.

The Joyeux Noel poster (2005)

Joyeux Noel is a visually stunning film, with wonderful music – not least the singing of ‘Stille Nacht’ and ‘Ave Maria’ between the trenches. However it does rather romanticize this most powerful moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most violent episodes in modern history, the First World War. When it was released, the New York Times film critic, Stephen Holden, neatly declared that the film was ‘as squishy and vague as a handsome greeting card declaring peace on earth’. But while it is tempting to write off Joyeux Noel as purely Christmas feel-good, with a narrow focus that does little to help widen our understanding of this remarkable moment in the war, the film does prick interest in the truly extraordinary story of the 1914 Christmas truces.

Joyeux Noel is pegged around a rather feeble love story. A handsome and feted German opera singer has been drafted to the front. His beautiful wife, who hails from the same trade, has negotiated his return from the trenches for the night of Christmas Eve so that they can duet at the officers’ party. Our hero then forgoes a night of peaceful romance to dutifully return to the front, prompting his wife to follow. As far as I am aware, there are no reports of female opera singers performing at the Christmas truces, but the premise certainly provides lots of powerful cinematic and surround-sound opportunities. However, despite this, and a few other historical inaccuracies, the fundamental premise of the film, the most apparently unbelievable thing of all, is entirely true – there were a series of unofficial ceasefires down the length of the Western Front, during which the men who had been killing each other one day put down their arms, climbed out of their opposing trenches, and met in no man’s land for a day of shared Christmas peace.

German soldiers of the 134th Saxon Regiment with men of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in no man’s land, Christmas 1914

At the start of the Great War, as it was then known, there were several localized cease-fires and some fairly accepted codes of conduct among soldiers of both sides. In late 1914, the first winter of the war, 101 British women wrote an ‘Open Christmas Letter’ to the women of Austria and Germany, hoping to promote peace. Pope Benedict XV followed their lead, calling for an official Christmas truce, sadly without success.

Nevertheless, on 24 and 25 December 1914, around 100,000 troops stopped fighting along the length of the Western Front. As in the film, along some stretches of the trenches, German soldiers set up small Christmas trees, lit with candles. Carols were sung collectively by the men of both armies, and some later met to exchange uniform buttons, photographs and gifts of wine and Christmas puddings. Over the following days the fallen were retrieved and buried in peace, religious services were held and, if not refereed football matches, there were at least informal kick-arounds.

The ceasefires were not official policy, and they were not ubiquitous. In some places the peace lasted just one night, in others several days. Some soldiers were shot under cover of the truce, and along much of the front there was no cessation of hostilities at all. Most commanders opposed the truces as did, famously, one young corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry called Adolf Hitler. But the truces did take place, as hundreds of letters from both sides of the front testify.

Letter from Major Hawksley, Warwick Regiment, 27 December 1914

‘The Germans were quite friendly with us’ Lance Corporal Cooper of the 2nd Northampton’s wrote home. ‘They even came over to our trenches and gave us cigars and cigarettes and chocolate and of course we gave them things in return.’ ‘Fancy shaking hands with the enemy!’ scribbled Private B Calder of the 6th Gordons, ‘I suppose you will hardly believe this, but it is the truth’. Despite attempts at censorship the British press were quick to cover the story, some more sentimentally than others, and many quoted the soldiers’ letters. The Times endorsed the men’s lack of malice, and The Mirror regretted that the ‘absurdity and tragedy would begin again’. 

The Daily Mirror: 'A Historic Group; British and German soldiers photographed together'

Like most of those articles, Joyeux Noel is a film with an intimate focus. It does not consider the political or military causes, or wider morality, of the First World War. At most, it hints at the later public swell of feeling to never let such an atrocity happen again, which led to the establishment of, among other organisations, the League of Nations, the Save the Children Fund, and the German Youth Hostel Association, the latter founded by a returning soldier who had taken part in the Christmas truces. There is also a poignant reference to the failure of this movement, when the Iron-Cross holding German commanding officer mentions that he is Jewish.

Essentially however, Joyeux Noel is a statement about the insanity of war, the shared horror of trench warfare and, above all, about the men who found humanity in this least human of situations. Its message, that war is dehumanising, and that even our soldiers must not be made to demonise their enemies, is sadly still relevant today. With its sentimental romance, it might not make a list of top war films, but it does Channel 5 credit to include it in their Christmas list. Films about snowmen can be beautiful and important, but war, and peace, should be remembered at Christmas too

Getting Into the Olympic Spirit

The twenty-second Winter Olympic Games, and the 2014 Winter Paralympics, will be held in Sochi, in southern Russia, next February. So far thirty-eight nations have qualified to send athletes, including Great Britain. After all the excitement of the Olympics here last year, I will certainly be tuning in, watching the spectacle as much as keeping tally of the medals. By focusing the world’s attention on the host country, the Olympics always seems to provide a fascinating insight into how that nation perceives itself, and how it would like to be perceived.

I recently inherited a box of beautiful old German books, among them the official commemorative album of the 1936 Winter Olympic Games held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, high in the Bavarian Alps. The cover of this inky-blue cloth bound volume is embossed with a golden bell, inside of which the German eagle perches on the Olympic rings above the legend, ‘ich rufe die jugend der welt!’ – ‘I call upon the youth of the world!’ This was of course an exaggeration. Hitler was the Patron of the games and the Nazis had no wish to embrace young Jewish, Black African, Gypsy, Jehova Witness, gay, communist or disabled people. Nevertheless, just as for the infamous Berlin Olympics held later that year, the winter sports host town was cleared of anti-Semitic signs before the international community arrived, and teams from twenty-eight countries, then a record number, were made welcome.

Official commemorative album of the 1936 Winter Olympic Games 

The glossy photographs in the book, each individually stuck in place, provide a wonderful record of athletes launching into the air on their heavy wooden skis, crashing into ice-hockey goals, and bob-sleighing in matching woolly jumpers. The weather seems glorious and everyone is terribly well-dressed. Canada’s Alpine skier, Diana Gordon Lennox, enjoys a break leaning back on the slopes wearing mittens and a monocle, while the British figure skater Jack Edward Dunn sports a white trilby while competing on the ice.

Canadian Alpine skier Diana Gordon Lennox

British figure skater Jack Edward Dunn

But not everything is quite so jolly. The only picture printed directly into the book is the frontispiece, showing Hitler and Goebbels cheerfully signing cards for the winning athletes. Hitler had announced that he would be pleased to give his autograph to every medallist - sadly it is not recorded how many athletes took up his offer. 

Hitler and Goebbels cheerfully signing cards for the winning athletes

Of the hundreds of faces caught on camera here, only two are black, both in the American Olympic team shot, and there are many more stories hidden behind the pictures. Cecilia Colledge, a Brit who won silver in figure-skating, later drove ambulances during the Blitz, and Czechoslovakia’s beautiful Vera Hruba would escape to America with her mother just two years later when the Wehrmacht entered Prague.

Czechoslovakian figure skater Vera Hruba

Perhaps the most striking photograph in the book, however, shows the three ski-jumping champions on the podium. Norway’s remarkable Birgur Ruud is on the highest step, flanked by two fellow Scandinavians, all smartly dressed in lounge jackets and plus fours, and looking straight ahead as the Norwegian national anthem is played. Ruud had dominated ski-jumping in the 1930s, winning three world championships and the Olympic gold medal in 1932 as well as in 1936. To the three medallists’ left is the rather less-athletic-looking President of the International Olympic Committee, and beyond him the German President of the organizing committee, Karl Ritter von Halt, whose right arm is raised in the Nazi salute. ‘The German people honoured all the winners’, the accompanying text tells us, ‘with the raised arm as a symbol of peace’. Just four years later Germany invaded Norway and, having criticized the Nazi occupation of his homeland, Ruud was incarcerated in Grini concentration camp. In 1944, after his release, he joined the Norwegian resistance. Surprisingly perhaps, he survived the war, and won silver in ski-jumping at the 1948 Olympics in Switzerland.

Gold-medallist Norwegian ski-jumper Birgur Ruud, with fellow Scandinavian medalists and (far right) the German President of the organizing committee, Karl Ritter von Halt

Earlier this month 4,000 people demonstrated in Berlin to protest against Russia’s new anti-gay propaganda law, and call on the German government and all Winter Olympic 2014 sponsors to demand an end to homophobic legislation in Russia. In Britain, Stephen Fry called for a boycott of the games on the same basis and, when this was rejected, he suggested that participants protest silently by crossing their arms over their chests to show solidarity with LGBT campaigners. Three times US national champion figure skater Johnny Weir is against a boycott. In a September interview, while wearing Russian military uniform, the gay American athlete said that he hoped his presence would help empower the Russian LGBT community. However more recently he decided not to register for the US national championships this year, the event at which the US 2014 team are to be chosen, so he will not be competing in Russia.

Stephen Fry, demonstrating his symbolic protest

US Figure skating champion Johnny Weir, in Russian military uniform

Perhaps, then, rather different arm symbols may be caught on camera during the forthcoming Olympic coverage, gestures of freedom and solidarity. And may be some of the medallists will be able to proudly talk about standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the podium and making their support for human rights clear without fear of reprisals.