October 20, 2022 • 25 mins
Virginia Hall enlists in France's organization that provided medical assistance to soldiers on the battlefield. It would be a grueling endeavor. Virginia is given basic medical training, learning how to apply tourniquets and bandages on some of the worst wartime injuries recorded in human history. They were supposed to work in the echoes of gunfire, long after the battle was over, but she often found herself closer to firefights and exploding shells than she expected. Virginia was given a job as an ambulance driver and stationed near the Maginot Line. She was to witness hell.
It only took a few months for the work to become both physically and emotionally overwhelming. Virginia finds her dreams haunted by the dislocated bones and missing limbs of the blood-soaked soldiers.
Virginia leaves France for Britain. She attends a cocktail party of one Ms. Vera Atkins, an anti-fascist sympathizer. There, Virginia sets herself on the path that would change her life--and eventually the entire course of World War II.
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“Good Assassins” is a production of Diversion Audio, in association with iHeartPodcasts. Featuring the voices of Matthew Amendt, Orlagh Cassidy, Raphael Corkhill, Manoel Felciano, Sean Gormley, Mikaela Izquierdo, Lenne Klingaman, Andrew Polk, John Pirkis, Steve Routman.
This season is hosted by Stephan Talty and written by C.D. Carpenter. Produced and directed by Kevin Thomsen for Real Jetpacks Productions. Story Editing by Jacob Bronstein with editorial direction from Scott Waxman. Additional research and reporting by Sophie McNulty. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Sound Design, Mixing, and Mastering by Paul Goodrich. Sound Editing by Justin Kilpatrick. Executive Producers: Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and Scott Waxman for Diversion Audio.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M M M diversion audio. A note this episode contains
descriptions of violence and torture that may be disturbing for
some audiences. Please take care in listening. This series is
(00:23):
based on historical characters and real events. Some dialogue has
been imagined for dramatic purposes when no primary source material
is available. Poland has been again overrun by two of
(00:51):
the great powers, which held in bondage for but we
are unable to queen of the After Germany conquered Poland
on September, just twenty six days after they invaded, Hitler
announced his plans to continue westward, setting his sights directly
(01:15):
on France. It seemed at first that many French were unbothered.
The severity of the news took some time to sink in.
Germany's goals seemed impossible, but Virginia Hall was hesitant to
write off the Nazis power so flippantly. In the early days,
this became the subject of much debate. What Hitler wants
(01:40):
is impossible, Virginia. It doesn't matter if it's impossible, Claire.
People are dying and they will keep dying so long
as the Nazis believed the so called impossible is possible? No,
I am not saying we shouldn't fight. We should. I
just think that, given with my brother has told me
the Germans aren't a true threat, it doesn't mean we
(02:00):
shouldn't squash them. If they managed to cross the border,
a victorious Nations still counts there dead. You don't have
to be so preachy, Virginia. What do you want to fight? Well,
I think we should. They won't allow it. Then we
find a way. I'm Steven Talty and from diversion. This
(02:31):
is good Assassin's Season two. Being killed would be the
easy part. Being tortured would be the hard part. Our
intel suggests she is behind many of the prison bricks
all over the country. She is dangerous, so sabotage plus
a little espionage paramilitary operations make things blow up. The
(02:56):
message for Captain Bobby, and I believe I have found
the nest of the Limping Lady. Episode two, The Death
of Old Lives. Exhausted by the debates and weeks of inaction,
Virginia Hall and her best friend Claire de Latour decided
(03:18):
to enlist in one of the few ways women could
at the time, by joining the Service Sanitaire de l'armi
and the organization akin to the Red Cross that provided
medical assistance to French soldiers on the battlefield. Being an
ambulance driver was widely seen by French women at the
(03:38):
time as the most militarized role they were allowed to have,
because the French Army did not allow women to join
until just days before the collapse of the French Army.
That's Andrew Or, a professor who runs the Institute for
Military History at Kansas date University, and so someone like
(04:02):
Hall is engaged in the outer edge of what the
French will let a woman get away with in terms
of national defense. So this was a group of very
highly motivated women who were pushing the boundaries of what
they could get away with to help defend against Nazi Germany.
(04:29):
It would be a grueling endeavor and it would separate
them totally from the peaceful lives they've been living before.
In just four weeks, Virginia and Claire were given basic
medical training, learning how to apply tourniquets and bandages on
some of the worst wartime injuries recorded in human history.
They were supposed to work in the echoes of gunfire
(04:51):
long after the battle was over, but often found themselves
closer to firefights and exploding shells than they ever expected.
They were also given self defense lessons, but no weapons.
Guns were in short supply and out of the question
for civilians. Only soldiers carried guns instead. Virginia kept a
(05:12):
knife on her and learned to use it in secret,
aided by the wounded soldiers she rescued. At the end
of their training, Virginia and Claire were given jobs as
ambulance drivers and stationed near the Magino line. They were
about to witness hell. It's not like they were turned
(05:35):
on lights and sirens and going seven minutes down the
street to your local hospital. Right. These ambulance riots were
often long. They're going super slow because the roads are terrible.
That's Dr Justin bar the surgeon and historian of medical
military history from episode one. Sometimes they're actively getting shot
at by the Germans, and so you're dodging our tolaries
shelves yourself. It's not like it's a nice little spring
(05:57):
later ambulance, right. These people are just piled in the
back of the truck, which is bouncing on potholes. So
they're screaming because their legs are broken. So every time
you go over a pothole, some poor kid behind you
is shouting out in pain. So I'm sure they had
a tremendous psychiatric toll on on the driver's On top
of that, Virginia found it tough to drive with the
prosthetic leg. Though she had grown used to it over
(06:18):
the years, she struggled to manage the speed of the
car and the weight needed to push down the accellery.
Virginia began tending to men not unlike herself, applying tourniquet
after tourniquet too bloodied stumps and mangled limbs. She hoped
she could bring some solace to them, displaying an able
(06:40):
bodied role model who was still on the battlefield serving
the country. Instead, most of the men felt like she
was patronizing them. Oh, don't trash you make it worse.
(07:03):
In her preparation, Virginia was trained specifically with saving lives.
The rehabilitation aspect of recovery was a second thought. We
can't do anything for them, Sah, shut up, gets them
home on their own. It only took a few months
for the work to become overwhelming, both physically and emotionally.
(07:27):
Virginia and Claire found their dreams, haunted by the dislocated
bones and missing limbs of the blood soaked soldiers they
loaded into their trucks, their clothes and aprons existed in
a perpetual state of lingering. Gore Virginia found the pace
of the work dehumanizing. Any of these major battles, they
(07:51):
could drop off a thousand patients at your doorstep, and
you have you have to get through them as as
efficiently as possible, and patients would die waiting to have
surgery because you can only move so fast. Rarely did
she learn these men's names, but she heard their screams
in her dreams, and news across Europe kept looking bleaker
(08:21):
and bleaker. Hitler added another to his bag of small nations.
Today the fifth and fourteen months when the Dutch army
laid down its arms everywhere except in the extreme southwestern
part of the country, and this week the King of
the bell Ducks asked commands in chief of the Belgian
process made an unconditional surrender on the Hawker's troop. Holland
(08:48):
surrendered to Germany on May fourteenth in Belgium. On every
Nazi victory stripped Virginia's morale and increased the odds of
a German triumph over ants. Oh but I'm a thirty ninety.
(09:08):
Virginia's volunteer work as an ambulance driver became much more personal.
Working in a medical tent in the hot sun, she
encountered a man whose entire head was bandaged, blood seeping
through the cause. I'll take this one, doctor, don't bother.
Get that one down at the end there there's already
(09:30):
blood coming through. It won't take me along to wrap it,
I said, don't bother. It. Took a shell to his face.
There's nothing there. He still has a pulse. You didn't
hear what I said. It took a goddamn shell to
the face. He's got nothing there to save, No eyes,
no nose. Get down to the end of the line
(09:51):
where his DAGs. I already have them. Jean Paul de Lator,
what's his name? Let now get down to the end.
There's a line inside the man's boot. Virginia found a photo,
laughing happily at the camera was a handsome young man
in uniform. Standing next to him, laughing just as happily,
(10:14):
blonde hair ruffled by a breeze, was Claire. And they're
in the tent just feed away from Virginia. Claire's brother
died just a few minutes later. It wouldn't be long
before Germany could declare yet another victory. In Virginia's patients
was being pushed to a breaking point. She wanted to
(10:35):
do more, She wanted to face the Nazis head on.
After the break, Virginia's frustrations bubble up in a more
public setting. Yeah, and within just a few days, the
(11:04):
Germans have actually pierced through a natural barrier the forests
of the Ardenne region, which no one was defending. The
French were on the Machino line, a lot of the
British forces were kind of towards the coast on the
Belgian border. No one was expecting this to happen in
the Aldenne. That's Dr Ludovin Brock, a senior lecturer at
(11:26):
the University of Westminster who specializes in World War two
French history. And then they just they create this whole gap,
this hole in the Aldenne, and then they just started
pouring pouring in. In the photograph you to see lines
and lines and lines of tanks coming into France. And
the problem is that neither the French nor the British
(11:47):
can counter attack. The French resistance has collapsed, and the
imagine no line has been broken, destroying all French resistance.
Paris is an open city. A really important move during
this major June period is the arrival of a man
called Filipita, Marshal Philippita into the French government. He is
(12:10):
a military hero from the First World War. He saved
the French at Velda, so having him on board with
any decision was going to be very important because the
French people really respected him. He was a military hero,
like a real hero. But Peta, once he's there in
this inner circle, he also comes to the decision that
it is best to lay down arms. At June thirteenth nine,
(12:35):
Paris was declared an open city. The Germans had successfully
invaded France, sending the capital government of Paris fleeing a
hundred forty miles to the town of Tour. Virginia increasingly
believed her efforts to say wounded soldiers were in vain.
Over the course of a few days, she watched as
(12:55):
French forces began to surrender, with Chief of State Philippe
Paton issuing a countrywide broadcast. At June the broadcast ended
with these words translated from the French. Last night I
spoke with adversary and asked if they were propelled to
(13:16):
help me between soldiers after the fight, with intact to
find a way in which to end the hostilities. France
became part of Germany's Empire Frances armistice allowed them to
(13:40):
continue operating under new stipulations. Germany would occupy three fifths
of the country and have influence within the French government.
And so with that the new authoritarian Vichy regime with
Baton at its helm, was born. And one of the
first things that he does is put in staff. Jused
to exclude people from certain professions, exclude people who aren't French,
(14:05):
and especially exclude Jews for instance. So the Jews are
no longer to exercise certain professions as of October, and
all of these are not forced by the Germans. They
also come from actually a kind of xenophobia and anti
Semitism which had been swelling over the course of the
nineteen thirties in France. Virginia couldn't ignore the rampant anti
(14:27):
Semitism coming from the VG government, French citizens and the
occupying Nazis anymore. On top of that, the Service Sanitaire
de Lamais was soon disbanded, and Virginia found herself once
again without a job. With more and more Frenchmen becoming
(14:48):
new recruits in the German army, she decided to leave
for Great Britain, where she would plot against the Nazis
in relative safety. Is anyone seated there miss? The train
(15:08):
ride to London proved faithful for Virginia Hall. It was
there she met an Englishman named George Bellows. Uh no, no,
you're welcome to it, Ah, bless you. Hm rather nasty business,
(15:28):
isn't it? What well the state of everything? I suppose
It's nice to see somebody living in reality. You wouldn't
believe the amount of people I come across who seemed
to think this is all some sort of unfortunate phase,
as though occupations just dwindle away on their own. I
(15:51):
don't know when I'll visit again. I used to spend
all my summers in Paris, but the city isn't what
it was. These areas afoot. I can't bear it myself.
And of course the French would rather blame the depression,
anything to keep the word fascism out of their mouths.
(16:12):
I'm sorry, I promise. I usually have a sense of
humor whenever the world isn't ending. Oh no, please, you're
in the company of a kindred spirit. I just don't
know how it happened. In the beginning, everywhere I went
there was such a united front against Hitler, and then
(16:32):
he appears on our doorstep, and suddenly we have the
same enemies. Well, I can't tell you how many friends
I've watched go from staunchly anti fascist throwing out any
Jew who comes into their store. You're going to London, Yes,
I could use a breather in a place where the
air isn't stiff. Yes, m m hmm. I'd play to
(17:00):
give you the name of a friend of mine. When
you arrive, look up Mrs Tipton and her boarding house.
I believe you were finding her excellent company. But Virginia
(17:21):
arrived in London, she followed fellow suggestions, taking a room
at the boarding house of Mrs Tipton and quickly becoming
friends with what turned out to be a fascinating radical woman.
In between rants about dictators and anti Semites, Mrs Tipton
served tea and eggs, offering Virginia a modicum of normalcy
(17:41):
in her uprooted life. But that normalcy, of course, was
quickly shattered in a new and horrible stage of the conflict,
the Nazis took their war right into the heart of London.
More after the breaks getting on September seven, Germany began
(18:18):
to bomb London. The sirens gave little warning, but just
enough for Virginia and her neighbors in the boarding house
to find shelter in the basement outside hell rained down
from above, obliterating street corners and setting massive fires to
chains of homes. Here's one Londoner's experience. No I distinctly
(18:41):
remember being in the shelter hearing a rush of wind,
followed by this noise that was the most deafening, frightening
noise I've ever heard in my life, followed by a
sense of the whole of your body being compressed in.
(19:12):
Virginia found herself huddled between strangers, gripping their hands and
holding on for dear life. As a ceiling threatened to
give way. She could practically see the bomb breaching, slicing
through the roof like it was sheet cake, and landing
at her feet. Just before detonating, She pictured her own
complete eradication wiped from existence in the moment it would
(19:34):
take her to gasp. While she had grown somewhat accustomed
to the bombings of fields and planes in her work
as an ambunance driver, the surreality of the city setting
made the entire event feel more like a dream, or
rather a nightmare. But while the attack went on for hours,
the dreaded bombs she envisioned never dropped through the roof.
(20:04):
When the assault ended, Virginia took on a new identity,
that of the survivor. It would be an identity she
maintained for the remainder of her life, but was forged
over the following fifty seven consecutive nights as the bombs
came again. When those first attacks subsided, the English pressed on,
(20:43):
attempting normalcy again. They continued going to their jobs, raising
their families, and attending church, always keeping one eye in
the sky, but refusing to capitulate to Hitler's threats okay
i say. On January fourteenth, Virginia made a trek out
(21:06):
to a cocktail party of one Ms Vera Atkins, an
anti fascist sympathizer. She'd been given Vera's name by George Bellows.
The English guys she had befriended on her train ride
to London. They're at Vera's party. Virginia made a bit
of a name for herself among the guests. And I'll
(21:27):
say again what I have said to George a dozen times.
The reason for the war is not simply a response
to the economy. Hitler has targeted a group of people, men,
women and children, and he's scapegoating them. He has a
conspiratorial evil man who understands that people must be united
in their hatred of something, and so he's picked an
(21:49):
innocent people, a people he's effectively slaughtering by the thousands
and proclaimed they are the problem. He's calling his conquests
of Poland and France financial successes, but the well of
those countries live in poverty and misery. Hitler is not
just an evil man. He's a fraud, a shameless fraud.
And the sooner he's taken care of, the sooner we
can return Europe to a prosperous continent. What Virginia didn't
(22:25):
know was that their host, Vera Atkins, was a very
well connected woman, and she didn't hold these parties just
to entertain. She admired Virginia's openness, her strength and her perspective,
her knowledge of France and capacity for language. Virginia displayed
all the hallmarks of an individual who could be seen
(22:47):
as exceptionally useful in a time of war. And so
after everyone had gone home later that evening, Vera sat
at her desk and typed up a memo, I have
counted a most interesting prospect, a woman whom I believe
(23:08):
could make a valuable asset, requesting permission to bring her
into the full Listen to episode three right now. You
have a badom of disloyalty, my son, have you also
been disloyal to Germany? Not only does the French police
(23:33):
help with the mass roundup of over ten thousand Jews
in July, but it also transports Jews who are in
turned into camps in the south of France win the
free zone. You're not cross. Barby was the head of
the Gestapo in lyon In so by this point, situation
(23:55):
in France is pretty bad. Is quite tense to scold
to finally meet you, Hitler. If you have any questions
for us about good assassins, if you're curious about some
(24:17):
aspect of Virginia hall story, or have any comments on
the podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please email
us at good Assassins at diversion audio dot com. Make
sure you spell assassins correctly again, that's good Assassins at
diversion Audio dot com. We'll try to answer your questions
on a future episode. Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
(24:38):
Instagram at diversion pods. Good Assassins is a production of
Diversion Audio in association with I Heart Podcasts. This season
is hosted by Stephen Talti and written by C. D. Carpenter,
Produced and directed by Kevin Thompson for Real Jet Packs Productions.
Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editor real direction from
(25:00):
Scott Waxman, Additional research and reporting by Sophie McNulty. Theme
music by Tyler Cash featuring the voices of michaela Is Caerdo,
Raphael cork Kill, Lenna Klingerman, John Parkes, Andrew polk or Lock,
Cassidy Manoel Falciano, Sean Gormley, Matthew Amnt and Steve Rautman.
(25:22):
Sound design, mixing and mastering by Paul Goodrich, Sound editing
by Justin Kilpatrick. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and
Scott Waxman for Diversion Audio. Diversion Audio
M M M diversion audio. A note this episode contains
descriptions of violence and torture that may be disturbing for
some audiences. Please take care in listening. This series is
(00:23):
based on historical characters and real events. Some dialogue has
been imagined for dramatic purposes when no primary source material
is available. Poland has been again overrun by two of
(00:51):
the great powers, which held in bondage for but we
are unable to queen of the After Germany conquered Poland
on September, just twenty six days after they invaded, Hitler
announced his plans to continue westward, setting his sights directly
(01:15):
on France. It seemed at first that many French were unbothered.
The severity of the news took some time to sink in.
Germany's goals seemed impossible, but Virginia Hall was hesitant to
write off the Nazis power so flippantly. In the early days,
this became the subject of much debate. What Hitler wants
(01:40):
is impossible, Virginia. It doesn't matter if it's impossible, Claire.
People are dying and they will keep dying so long
as the Nazis believed the so called impossible is possible? No,
I am not saying we shouldn't fight. We should. I
just think that, given with my brother has told me
the Germans aren't a true threat, it doesn't mean we
(02:00):
shouldn't squash them. If they managed to cross the border,
a victorious Nations still counts there dead. You don't have
to be so preachy, Virginia. What do you want to fight? Well,
I think we should. They won't allow it. Then we
find a way. I'm Steven Talty and from diversion. This
(02:31):
is good Assassin's Season two. Being killed would be the
easy part. Being tortured would be the hard part. Our
intel suggests she is behind many of the prison bricks
all over the country. She is dangerous, so sabotage plus
a little espionage paramilitary operations make things blow up. The
(02:56):
message for Captain Bobby, and I believe I have found
the nest of the Limping Lady. Episode two, The Death
of Old Lives. Exhausted by the debates and weeks of inaction,
Virginia Hall and her best friend Claire de Latour decided
(03:18):
to enlist in one of the few ways women could
at the time, by joining the Service Sanitaire de l'armi
and the organization akin to the Red Cross that provided
medical assistance to French soldiers on the battlefield. Being an
ambulance driver was widely seen by French women at the
(03:38):
time as the most militarized role they were allowed to have,
because the French Army did not allow women to join
until just days before the collapse of the French Army.
That's Andrew Or, a professor who runs the Institute for
Military History at Kansas date University, and so someone like
(04:02):
Hall is engaged in the outer edge of what the
French will let a woman get away with in terms
of national defense. So this was a group of very
highly motivated women who were pushing the boundaries of what
they could get away with to help defend against Nazi Germany.
(04:29):
It would be a grueling endeavor and it would separate
them totally from the peaceful lives they've been living before.
In just four weeks, Virginia and Claire were given basic
medical training, learning how to apply tourniquets and bandages on
some of the worst wartime injuries recorded in human history.
They were supposed to work in the echoes of gunfire
(04:51):
long after the battle was over, but often found themselves
closer to firefights and exploding shells than they ever expected.
They were also given self defense lessons, but no weapons.
Guns were in short supply and out of the question
for civilians. Only soldiers carried guns instead. Virginia kept a
(05:12):
knife on her and learned to use it in secret,
aided by the wounded soldiers she rescued. At the end
of their training, Virginia and Claire were given jobs as
ambulance drivers and stationed near the Magino line. They were
about to witness hell. It's not like they were turned
(05:35):
on lights and sirens and going seven minutes down the
street to your local hospital. Right. These ambulance riots were
often long. They're going super slow because the roads are terrible.
That's Dr Justin bar the surgeon and historian of medical
military history from episode one. Sometimes they're actively getting shot
at by the Germans, and so you're dodging our tolaries
shelves yourself. It's not like it's a nice little spring
(05:57):
later ambulance, right. These people are just piled in the
back of the truck, which is bouncing on potholes. So
they're screaming because their legs are broken. So every time
you go over a pothole, some poor kid behind you
is shouting out in pain. So I'm sure they had
a tremendous psychiatric toll on on the driver's On top
of that, Virginia found it tough to drive with the
prosthetic leg. Though she had grown used to it over
(06:18):
the years, she struggled to manage the speed of the
car and the weight needed to push down the accellery.
Virginia began tending to men not unlike herself, applying tourniquet
after tourniquet too bloodied stumps and mangled limbs. She hoped
she could bring some solace to them, displaying an able
(06:40):
bodied role model who was still on the battlefield serving
the country. Instead, most of the men felt like she
was patronizing them. Oh, don't trash you make it worse.
(07:03):
In her preparation, Virginia was trained specifically with saving lives.
The rehabilitation aspect of recovery was a second thought. We
can't do anything for them, Sah, shut up, gets them
home on their own. It only took a few months
for the work to become overwhelming, both physically and emotionally.
(07:27):
Virginia and Claire found their dreams, haunted by the dislocated
bones and missing limbs of the blood soaked soldiers they
loaded into their trucks, their clothes and aprons existed in
a perpetual state of lingering. Gore Virginia found the pace
of the work dehumanizing. Any of these major battles, they
(07:51):
could drop off a thousand patients at your doorstep, and
you have you have to get through them as as
efficiently as possible, and patients would die waiting to have
surgery because you can only move so fast. Rarely did
she learn these men's names, but she heard their screams
in her dreams, and news across Europe kept looking bleaker
(08:21):
and bleaker. Hitler added another to his bag of small nations.
Today the fifth and fourteen months when the Dutch army
laid down its arms everywhere except in the extreme southwestern
part of the country, and this week the King of
the bell Ducks asked commands in chief of the Belgian
process made an unconditional surrender on the Hawker's troop. Holland
(08:48):
surrendered to Germany on May fourteenth in Belgium. On every
Nazi victory stripped Virginia's morale and increased the odds of
a German triumph over ants. Oh but I'm a thirty ninety.
(09:08):
Virginia's volunteer work as an ambulance driver became much more personal.
Working in a medical tent in the hot sun, she
encountered a man whose entire head was bandaged, blood seeping
through the cause. I'll take this one, doctor, don't bother.
Get that one down at the end there there's already
(09:30):
blood coming through. It won't take me along to wrap it,
I said, don't bother. It. Took a shell to his face.
There's nothing there. He still has a pulse. You didn't
hear what I said. It took a goddamn shell to
the face. He's got nothing there to save, No eyes,
no nose. Get down to the end of the line
(09:51):
where his DAGs. I already have them. Jean Paul de Lator,
what's his name? Let now get down to the end.
There's a line inside the man's boot. Virginia found a photo,
laughing happily at the camera was a handsome young man
in uniform. Standing next to him, laughing just as happily,
(10:14):
blonde hair ruffled by a breeze, was Claire. And they're
in the tent just feed away from Virginia. Claire's brother
died just a few minutes later. It wouldn't be long
before Germany could declare yet another victory. In Virginia's patients
was being pushed to a breaking point. She wanted to
(10:35):
do more, She wanted to face the Nazis head on.
After the break, Virginia's frustrations bubble up in a more
public setting. Yeah, and within just a few days, the
(11:04):
Germans have actually pierced through a natural barrier the forests
of the Ardenne region, which no one was defending. The
French were on the Machino line, a lot of the
British forces were kind of towards the coast on the
Belgian border. No one was expecting this to happen in
the Aldenne. That's Dr Ludovin Brock, a senior lecturer at
(11:26):
the University of Westminster who specializes in World War two
French history. And then they just they create this whole gap,
this hole in the Aldenne, and then they just started
pouring pouring in. In the photograph you to see lines
and lines and lines of tanks coming into France. And
the problem is that neither the French nor the British
(11:47):
can counter attack. The French resistance has collapsed, and the
imagine no line has been broken, destroying all French resistance.
Paris is an open city. A really important move during
this major June period is the arrival of a man
called Filipita, Marshal Philippita into the French government. He is
(12:10):
a military hero from the First World War. He saved
the French at Velda, so having him on board with
any decision was going to be very important because the
French people really respected him. He was a military hero,
like a real hero. But Peta, once he's there in
this inner circle, he also comes to the decision that
it is best to lay down arms. At June thirteenth nine,
(12:35):
Paris was declared an open city. The Germans had successfully
invaded France, sending the capital government of Paris fleeing a
hundred forty miles to the town of Tour. Virginia increasingly
believed her efforts to say wounded soldiers were in vain.
Over the course of a few days, she watched as
(12:55):
French forces began to surrender, with Chief of State Philippe
Paton issuing a countrywide broadcast. At June the broadcast ended
with these words translated from the French. Last night I
spoke with adversary and asked if they were propelled to
(13:16):
help me between soldiers after the fight, with intact to
find a way in which to end the hostilities. France
became part of Germany's Empire Frances armistice allowed them to
(13:40):
continue operating under new stipulations. Germany would occupy three fifths
of the country and have influence within the French government.
And so with that the new authoritarian Vichy regime with
Baton at its helm, was born. And one of the
first things that he does is put in staff. Jused
to exclude people from certain professions, exclude people who aren't French,
(14:05):
and especially exclude Jews for instance. So the Jews are
no longer to exercise certain professions as of October, and
all of these are not forced by the Germans. They
also come from actually a kind of xenophobia and anti
Semitism which had been swelling over the course of the
nineteen thirties in France. Virginia couldn't ignore the rampant anti
(14:27):
Semitism coming from the VG government, French citizens and the
occupying Nazis anymore. On top of that, the Service Sanitaire
de Lamais was soon disbanded, and Virginia found herself once
again without a job. With more and more Frenchmen becoming
(14:48):
new recruits in the German army, she decided to leave
for Great Britain, where she would plot against the Nazis
in relative safety. Is anyone seated there miss? The train
(15:08):
ride to London proved faithful for Virginia Hall. It was
there she met an Englishman named George Bellows. Uh no, no,
you're welcome to it, Ah, bless you. Hm rather nasty business,
(15:28):
isn't it? What well the state of everything? I suppose
It's nice to see somebody living in reality. You wouldn't
believe the amount of people I come across who seemed
to think this is all some sort of unfortunate phase,
as though occupations just dwindle away on their own. I
(15:51):
don't know when I'll visit again. I used to spend
all my summers in Paris, but the city isn't what
it was. These areas afoot. I can't bear it myself.
And of course the French would rather blame the depression,
anything to keep the word fascism out of their mouths.
(16:12):
I'm sorry, I promise. I usually have a sense of
humor whenever the world isn't ending. Oh no, please, you're
in the company of a kindred spirit. I just don't
know how it happened. In the beginning, everywhere I went
there was such a united front against Hitler, and then
(16:32):
he appears on our doorstep, and suddenly we have the
same enemies. Well, I can't tell you how many friends
I've watched go from staunchly anti fascist throwing out any
Jew who comes into their store. You're going to London, Yes,
I could use a breather in a place where the
air isn't stiff. Yes, m m hmm. I'd play to
(17:00):
give you the name of a friend of mine. When
you arrive, look up Mrs Tipton and her boarding house.
I believe you were finding her excellent company. But Virginia
(17:21):
arrived in London, she followed fellow suggestions, taking a room
at the boarding house of Mrs Tipton and quickly becoming
friends with what turned out to be a fascinating radical woman.
In between rants about dictators and anti Semites, Mrs Tipton
served tea and eggs, offering Virginia a modicum of normalcy
(17:41):
in her uprooted life. But that normalcy, of course, was
quickly shattered in a new and horrible stage of the conflict,
the Nazis took their war right into the heart of London.
More after the breaks getting on September seven, Germany began
(18:18):
to bomb London. The sirens gave little warning, but just
enough for Virginia and her neighbors in the boarding house
to find shelter in the basement outside hell rained down
from above, obliterating street corners and setting massive fires to
chains of homes. Here's one Londoner's experience. No I distinctly
(18:41):
remember being in the shelter hearing a rush of wind,
followed by this noise that was the most deafening, frightening
noise I've ever heard in my life, followed by a
sense of the whole of your body being compressed in.
(19:12):
Virginia found herself huddled between strangers, gripping their hands and
holding on for dear life. As a ceiling threatened to
give way. She could practically see the bomb breaching, slicing
through the roof like it was sheet cake, and landing
at her feet. Just before detonating, She pictured her own
complete eradication wiped from existence in the moment it would
(19:34):
take her to gasp. While she had grown somewhat accustomed
to the bombings of fields and planes in her work
as an ambunance driver, the surreality of the city setting
made the entire event feel more like a dream, or
rather a nightmare. But while the attack went on for hours,
the dreaded bombs she envisioned never dropped through the roof.
(20:04):
When the assault ended, Virginia took on a new identity,
that of the survivor. It would be an identity she
maintained for the remainder of her life, but was forged
over the following fifty seven consecutive nights as the bombs
came again. When those first attacks subsided, the English pressed on,
(20:43):
attempting normalcy again. They continued going to their jobs, raising
their families, and attending church, always keeping one eye in
the sky, but refusing to capitulate to Hitler's threats okay
i say. On January fourteenth, Virginia made a trek out
(21:06):
to a cocktail party of one Ms Vera Atkins, an
anti fascist sympathizer. She'd been given Vera's name by George Bellows.
The English guys she had befriended on her train ride
to London. They're at Vera's party. Virginia made a bit
of a name for herself among the guests. And I'll
(21:27):
say again what I have said to George a dozen times.
The reason for the war is not simply a response
to the economy. Hitler has targeted a group of people, men,
women and children, and he's scapegoating them. He has a
conspiratorial evil man who understands that people must be united
in their hatred of something, and so he's picked an
(21:49):
innocent people, a people he's effectively slaughtering by the thousands
and proclaimed they are the problem. He's calling his conquests
of Poland and France financial successes, but the well of
those countries live in poverty and misery. Hitler is not
just an evil man. He's a fraud, a shameless fraud.
And the sooner he's taken care of, the sooner we
can return Europe to a prosperous continent. What Virginia didn't
(22:25):
know was that their host, Vera Atkins, was a very
well connected woman, and she didn't hold these parties just
to entertain. She admired Virginia's openness, her strength and her perspective,
her knowledge of France and capacity for language. Virginia displayed
all the hallmarks of an individual who could be seen
(22:47):
as exceptionally useful in a time of war. And so
after everyone had gone home later that evening, Vera sat
at her desk and typed up a memo, I have
counted a most interesting prospect, a woman whom I believe
(23:08):
could make a valuable asset, requesting permission to bring her
into the full Listen to episode three right now. You
have a badom of disloyalty, my son, have you also
been disloyal to Germany? Not only does the French police
(23:33):
help with the mass roundup of over ten thousand Jews
in July, but it also transports Jews who are in
turned into camps in the south of France win the
free zone. You're not cross. Barby was the head of
the Gestapo in lyon In so by this point, situation
(23:55):
in France is pretty bad. Is quite tense to scold
to finally meet you, Hitler. If you have any questions
for us about good assassins, if you're curious about some
(24:17):
aspect of Virginia hall story, or have any comments on
the podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please email
us at good Assassins at diversion audio dot com. Make
sure you spell assassins correctly again, that's good Assassins at
diversion Audio dot com. We'll try to answer your questions
on a future episode. Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
(24:38):
Instagram at diversion pods. Good Assassins is a production of
Diversion Audio in association with I Heart Podcasts. This season
is hosted by Stephen Talti and written by C. D. Carpenter,
Produced and directed by Kevin Thompson for Real Jet Packs Productions.
Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editor real direction from
(25:00):
Scott Waxman, Additional research and reporting by Sophie McNulty. Theme
music by Tyler Cash featuring the voices of michaela Is Caerdo,
Raphael cork Kill, Lenna Klingerman, John Parkes, Andrew polk or Lock,
Cassidy Manoel Falciano, Sean Gormley, Matthew Amnt and Steve Rautman.
(25:22):
Sound design, mixing and mastering by Paul Goodrich, Sound editing
by Justin Kilpatrick. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and
Scott Waxman for Diversion Audio. Diversion Audio
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