At the start of the First World War, with the assistance of the police, MI5 rounded up all the agents of any significance working for German naval intelligence. No remaining agent was able to pass on potentially crucial intelligence on the departure for the continent of the British Expeditionary Force. Gustav Steinhauer, the head of the British section of German Naval Intelligence, later acknowledged that the Kaiser had been beside himself with fury when told of the ‘wholesale round-up of our secret service agents’: ‘Apparently unable to believe his ears, [he] raved and stormed for the better part of two hours about the incompetence of his so-called intelligence officers, bellowing: “Am I surrounded by idiots? Why was I not told? Who is responsible?” and more in the same vein.’ Steinhauer is unlikely to have fabricated such a devastating denunciation of his own alleged incompetence.
German archives reveal that at least 120 spies were sent to Britain at some point during the First World War. MI5 caught 65 of them. There is no convincing evidence that any of the remainder sent back significant intelligence to Germany. Some appear to have been ‘reconnaissance agents’ on neutral shipping, able to report only on what they could observe when calling at British ports. A number of other agents broke contact with their case officers.
A post-war MI5 report concluded: ‘It is apparently a paradox, but it is none the less true, and a most important truth, that the efficiency of a counter espionage service is not to be measured chiefly by the number of spies caught by it.’ Though MI5 caught a record number of spies in 1915, it was probably less successful then than in 1918 when it caught none. Good ‘protective security’ (better developed during the First World War than ever before) and the deterrent effect of the executions of some captured spies had by then made it difficult for Germany either to recruit any spies for work in Britain or to carry out sabotage operations as effective as those in the United States (which included blowing up a huge arms dump in New Jersey in which 900 tonnes of explosives was detonated, killing seven people and damaging the Statue of Liberty).
Faced with the declining threat from German espionage, MI5 paid increasing attention during the second half of the War to counter-subversion. Like the government, it wrongly suspected that German and Communist subversion was inflaming British industrial disputes. Its New Year Card for 1918, correctly forecasting victory by the end of the year, showed MI5, depicted as a masked Britannia, impaling the beast of Subversion with her trident before it can stab the British fighting man in the back. The card was personally designed by Kell’s long-serving deputy, Eric Holt-Wilson.
In the course of the war MI5’s staff increased almost fiftyfold to reach a total of 844. Though the leadership remained overwhelmingly male, several female recruits achieved positions of greater significance than in any other British official agency or department. Miss A. W. Masterson became the first woman to manage the finances of a government office. Jane Sissmore, who joined MI5 as a sixteen-year-old secretary straight from school in 1916, progressed so rapidly that by 1924 she had qualified as a barrister and become MI5’s chief expert on Soviet affairs. Though the intelligence glass ceiling was not broken until Stella Rimington became Director General of MI5 in 1992, the first cracks began to appear in the First World War.
At five feet, eight inches tall and weighing barely 100 pounds, the diminutive Frank Stringfellow proved to be one of the Civil War’s most effective spies, acquiring and passing a bevy of secrets to the Confederacy about Union troop movements and plans throughout the conflict.
A scout in the 4th Virginia Cavalry, Stringfellow repeatedly donned civilian clothes, disguising himself as a dental apprentice, a store assistant, and even a woman, enabling him to operate freely and extensively in Washington, D.C., as well as in Union-occupied Alexandria, Virginia. In one instance, in August 1862, Stringfellow guided Confederate cavalry on a raid at Catlett’s Station, Virginia, where the Union Army of Virginia, under the command of Major General John Pope, was headquartered. After overrunning Federal troops guarding Pope’s tent, the Confederates seized documents, including Pope’s dispatch book filled with valuable intelligence. The information was used to aid General Robert E. Lee in his decisive defeat of Pope’s army at the Second Battle of Bull Run.
In April 1864, General Lee wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, informing him of a report that Union General Ambrose Burnside was marching with 23,000 troops through Alexandria and toward Confederate positions outside Richmond, Virginia. Lee believed the report came from Stringfellow and was trusting enough of it to ask Davis that troops previously diverted to North Carolina be summoned back to Virginia to strengthen Confederate defenses there.
From left: Convalescent camp; Ambrose Burnside; Marshal House, Alexandria, Virginia; Erecting a stockade, Alexandria, Virginia
Stringfellow’s daring led to capture on multiple occasions. After his first arrest, the Union failed to identify him as a spy and released him within days as part of a prisoner exchange. After his second arrest, he was jailed at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., and interrogated by operatives of Union spymaster Allan Pinkerton, who threatened him with execution. Stringfellow was in his Confederate military uniform when captured, though, and was thus treated as an ordinary prisoner of war, rather than a spy, and subsequently exchanged once again.
Union soldiers captured Stringfellow for a third time in April 1865, but he escaped during his transfer to a prison in Maryland. At the same time, a manhunt was underway following the assassination of President Lincoln, and Union authorities briefly suspected Stringfellow might be an accomplice of John Wilkes Booth, since the pair had once shared the same boarding house. Stringfellow fled to Canada, where he remained until 1867, when he returned to the United States to marry.
From left: William McKinley; Ulysses S. Grant; Stringfellow grave
Later ordained an Episcopal priest, Stringfellow wrote a letter to President Ulysses S. Grant, revealing that in 1864, he had once been close enough to shoot Grant, then commanding the entire Union Army, but could not bring himself to pull the trigger. Grant responded to the letter, thanking Stringfellow for sparing his life and promising that he or any future president would accommodate any request made by the former spy. In a letter to President William McKinley in 1898, Stringfellow referenced Grant’s offer, and asked that he be allowed to serve as an army chaplain in the Spanish-American War. McKinley agreed.
Stringfellow died of a heart attack in 1913 at the age of 73 and is buried at the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia.
Every war brings to the fore a new way of maiming and killing soldiers. Gun powder in the 16th and 17th centuries meant that – finally, sadly – one could eliminate many of his enemies with one agent of offensive effort, an artillery round. Ultimately, in WWII it was demonstrated that a single atomic weapon could kill more than one hundred thousand of the enemy with a single use of a single weapon. While the efficiency of maiming and killing steadily advanced from the 17th to the 20th centuries it accelerated by an order of magnitude in WWI with the use of inhaled poison gasses.
One of the enduring hallmarks of WWI was the large-scale use of chemical weapons, commonly called, simply, ‘gas’. Although chemical warfare caused less than 1% of the total deaths in this war, the ‘psy-war’ or fear factor was formidable. Thus, chemical warfare with gases was subsequently absolutely prohibited by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. It has occasionally been used since then but never in WWI quantities. Production of some of these dangerous chemicals continues to this day as they have peaceful uses – for example, phosgene (carbonyl dichloride) is an industrial reagent, a precursor of pharmaceuticals and other important organic compounds.
Masked soldiers charge through a cloud of gas.
Several chemicals were weaponized in WWI and France actually was the first to use gas – they deployed tear gas in August 1914. The agent used was either xylyl bromide, which is described as smelling ‘pleasant and aromatic’, or ethyl bromoacetate, described as ‘fruity and pungent.’ Both are colorless liquids and have to be atomized to be dispersed as weapons. As lachrymatory agents, they irritate the eyes and cause uncontrolled tearing. Large doses can cause temporary blindness. If inhaled they also make breathing difficult. Symptoms usually resolve by 30 minutes after contact. Thus, tear gas was never very effective as a weapon against groups of enemy soldiers.
The German gas warfare program was headed by Fritz Haber (1868 – 1934) whose first try for a weapon was chlorine, which he debuted at Ypres in April 1915. Chlorine is a diatomic gas, about two and a half times denser than air, pale green in color and with an odor which was described as a ‘mix of pineapple and pepper’. It can react with water in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid, which is destructive of tissue and can quickly lead to death, or, at least, permanent lung tissue damage and disability. At lower concentrations, if it does not reach the lungs, per se, it can cause coughing, vomiting, and eye irritation. Chlorine was deadly against unprotected soldiers. It is estimated over 1,100 were killed in its first use at Ypres. Ironically, the Germans weren’t prepared for how effective it would be and were unable to exploit their advantage, gaining little ground.
Chlorine’s usefulness was short-lived. Its color and odor made it easy to spot, and since chlorine is water-soluble even soldiers without gas masks could minimize its effect by placing water-soaked – even urine-soaked – rags over their mouths and noses. Additionally, releasing the gas in a cloud posed problems, as the British learnt to their detriment when they attempted to use chlorine at Loos. The wind shifted, carrying the gas back onto their own men.
Phosgene (carbonyl dichloride) was Haber’s next choice, probably used first at Ypres by the Germans in December 1915. Phosgene is a colorless gas, with an odor likened to that of ‘musty hay’, but for the odor to be detectable, the concentration had to be at 0.4 parts per million, or several times the level at which harmful effects occur. Phosgene is highly toxic, due to its ability to react with proteins in the alveoli of the lungs, disrupting the blood-air barrier, leading to suffocation.
Allied soldiers pose for a picture while wearing their gas masks.
Phosgene was much more effective and more deadly than chlorine, though one drawback was that the symptoms could sometimes take up to 48 hours to be manifest. The minimal immediate effects are lachrymatory. However, subsequently, it causes build-up of fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema), leading to death. It is estimated that as many as 85% of the 91,000 gas deaths in WWI were a result of phosgene or the related agent, diphosgene (trichloromethane chloroformate).
The most commonly used gas in WWI was ‘mustard gas’ [bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide]. In pure liquid form this is colorless, but in WWI impure forms were used, which had a mustard color with an odor reminiscent of garlic or horseradish. An irritant and a strong vesicant (blister-forming agent), it causes chemical burns on contact, with blisters oozing yellow fluid. Initial exposure is symptomless, and by the time skin irritation begins, it is too late to take preventative measures. The mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%, but those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had long hospitalizations and if they recovered were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life.
Windswept gas spreads across a battlefield in Europe.
Chloropicrin, diphenylchlorarsine, American-developed Adamsite (diphenylaminechlorarsine), and others were irritants that could bypass gas masks and make soldiers remove their masks, thus, exposing them to phosgene or chlorine.
Gases often were used in combinations. Most gas was delivered by artillery shells. The agent(s) were in liquid form in glass bottles inside the warhead, which would break on contact and the liquid would evaporate. Shells were color coded in a system started by the Germans. Green Cross shells contained the pulmonary agents: chlorine, phosgene and diphosgene. White Cross had the tear gases. Blue Cross had the ‘mask breakers’ like chloropicrin. Gold (or Yellow) Cross had mustard gas.
John Singer Sargent’s ‘Gassed’ depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack on British troops.
In retrospect it is sad to know that warfare by poisoning soldiers – so brutal, highly personal, and used with such little restraint by both sides in WWI – had been previously outlawed by the Hague Convention in 1899. The ironies of gas warfare are vividly focused in the life of Fritz Haber, the German chemist who invented phosgene and also the ‘Haber Process’ which allowed fixation of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia-based fertilizer. A German Jew who converted to Christianity, he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1919 for the Haber Process. Though long dead before The Holocaust, he was one of the chemists who perfected the hydrocyanide-based insecticides Zyklon A and Zyklon B, the latter gas used to kill millions of Jews and others, including some of his relatives.
Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American actress and technology inventor. She was a film star during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, the only child of Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler (née Lichtwitz) and Emil Kiesler.
Her father was born to a Galician-Jewish family in Lemberg in the Austrian part of the Austrian Empire (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was, in the 1920s, deputy director of Wiener Bankverein, and in the end of his life a director at the united Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Her mother, a pianist and a native of Budapest, had come from an upper-class Hungarian-Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a “practicing Christian” who raised her daughter as a Christian, although Hedy was not formally baptized at the time.
As a child, Lamarr showed an interest in acting and was fascinated by theater and film. At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also began to learn about technological inventions with her father, who would take her out on walks, explaining how devices functioned.
European film career
Early work
Lamarr was taking acting classes in Vienna when one day, she forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to get herself hired as a script girl. While there, she was able to get a role as an extra in Money on the Street (1930), and then a small speaking part in Storm in a Water Glass (1931). Producer Max Reinhardt then cast her in a play entitled The Weaker Sex, which was performed at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Reinhardt was so impressed with her that he brought her with him back to Berlin.
However, she never actually trained with Reinhardt or appeared in any of his Berlin productions. Instead, she met the Russian theatre producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in his film directorial debut, The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931), starring Walter Abel and Peter Lorre.Granowsky soon moved to Paris, but Lamarr stayed in Berlin and was given the lead role in No Money Needed (1932), a comedy directed by Carl Boese. Lamarr then starred in the film which made her internationally famous.
Ecstasy
Lamarr in a 1934 publicity photo with the name “Heddie Kietzler”
In early 1933, at age 18, Lamarr was given the lead in Gustav Machatý‘s film Ecstasy (Ekstase in German, Extase in Czech). She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man.
The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarr’s face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief scenes of nudity. Lamarr claimed she was “duped” by the director and producer, who used high-power telephoto lenses, although the director contested her claims.
Although she was dismayed and now disillusioned about taking other roles, the film gained world recognition after winning an award at the Venice Film Festival.Throughout Europe, it was regarded as an artistic work. In America, it was considered overly sexual and received negative publicity, especially among women’s groups. It was banned there and in Germany.
Withdrawal
Lamarr played a number of stage roles, including a starring one in Sissy, a play about Empress Elisabeth of Austria produced in Vienna. It won accolades from critics. Admirers sent roses to her dressing room and tried to get backstage to meet her. She sent most of them away, including a man who was more insistent, Friedrich Mandl. He became obsessed with getting to know her.
Mandl was an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer who was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. She fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth. Her parents, both of Jewish descent, did not approve, due to Mandl’s ties to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, and later, German Führer Adolf Hitler, but they could not stop the headstrong Lamarr.
On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18 years old and he was 33. In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, she described Mandl as an extremely controlling husband who strongly objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed she was kept a virtual prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau.
Hedy Lamarr, 1944
Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country, and although like Hedy, his own father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany, as well. Lamarr wrote that the dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.
Lamarr’s marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to separate herself from both her husband and country in 1937. In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but by other accounts, she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party, then disappeared afterward. She writes about her marriage:
I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife. … He was the absolute monarch in his marriage. … I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded—and imprisoned—having no mind, no life of its own.
After arriving in London in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, who was scouting for talent in Europe. She initially turned down the offer he made her (of $125 a week), but then booked herself onto the same New York bound liner as him, and managed to impress him enough to secure a $500 a week contract. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr (to distance herself from her real identity, and “the Ecstasy lady” reputation associated with it), choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star, Barbara La Marr, on the suggestion of his wife, who admired La Marr. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman”.
Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers (1938), an American version of the French film, Pépé le Moko (1937). Lamarr was cast in the lead opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a “national sensation”, says Shearer. She was billed as an unknown but well-publicized Austrian actress, which created anticipation in audiences. Mayer hoped she would become another Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich.According to one viewer, when her face first appeared on the screen, “everyone gasped … Lamarr’s beauty literally took one’s breath away.”
In future Hollywood films, she was invariably typecast as the archetypal glamorous seductress of exotic origin. Her second American film was to be I Take This Woman, co-starring with Spencer Tracy under the direction of regular Dietrich collaborator Josef von Sternberg. Von Sternberg was fired during the shoot, replaced by Frank Borzage. The film was put on hold, and Lamarr was put into Lady of the Tropics (1939), where she played a mixed-race seductress in Saigon opposite Robert Taylor. She returned to I Take This Woman, re-shot by W. S. Van Dyke. The resulting film was a flop.
Lamarr played the exotic Arab seductress Tondelayo in White Cargo (1942), top billed over Walter Pidgeon. It was a huge hit. White Cargo contains arguably her most memorable film quote, delivered with provocative invitation: “I am Tondelayo. I make tiffin for you?” This line typifies many of Lamarr’s roles, which emphasized her beauty and sensuality while giving her relatively few lines. The lack of acting challenges bored Lamarr. She reportedly took up inventing to relieve her boredom.
Lamarr in Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)
She was reunited with Powell in a comedy The Heavenly Body (1944), then was borrowed by Warner Bros for The Conspirators (1944). This was an attempt to repeat the success of Casablanca (1943), and RKO borrowed her for a melodrama Experiment Perilous (1944).
Back at MGM Lamarr was teamed with Robert Walker in the romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945), playing a princess who falls in love with a New Yorker. It was very popular, but would be the last film she made under her MGM contract.
Her off-screen life and personality during those years was quite different from her screen image. She spent much of her time feeling lonely and homesick. She might swim at her agent’s pool, but shunned the beaches and staring crowds. When asked for an autograph, she wondered why anyone would want it. Writer Howard Sharpe interviewed her and gave his impression:
Hedy has the most incredible personal sophistication. She knows the peculiarly European art of being womanly; she knows what men want in a beautiful woman, what attracts them, and she forces herself to be these things. She has magnetism with warmth, something that neither Dietrich nor Garbo has managed to achieve.
Of all the European émigrés who escaped Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria, she was one of the very few who succeeded in moving to another culture and becoming a full-fledged star herself. There were so very few who could make the transition linguistically or culturally. She really was a resourceful human being–I think because of her father’s strong influence on her as a child.
She participated in a war bond-selling campaign with a sailor named Eddie Rhodes. Rhodes was in the crowd at each Lamarr appearance, and she would call him up on stage. She would briefly flirt with him before asking the audience if she should give him a kiss. The crowd would say yes, to which Hedy would reply that she would if enough people bought war bonds. After enough bonds were purchased, she would kiss Rhodes and he would head back into the audience. Then they would head off to the next war bond rally.
After leaving MGM in 1945, Lamarr formed a production company with Jack Chertok and made the thriller The Strange Woman (1946). It went over budget and only made minor profits.
She and Chertok then made Dishonored Lady (1947), another thriller starring Lamarr, which also went over budget – but was not a commercial success. She tried a comedy with Robert Cummings, Let’s Live a Little (1948).
Her career went into decline. She went to Italy to play multiple roles in Loves of Three Queens (1954), which she also produced. However she lacked the experience necessary to make a success of such an epic production, and lost millions of dollars when she was unable to secure distribution of the picture.
Lamarr was signed to act in the 1966 film Picture Mommy Dead, but was let go when she collapsed during filming from nervous exhaustion.She was replaced in the role of Jessica Flagmore Shelley by Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Although Lamarr had no formal training and was primarily self-taught, she invested her spare time, including on set between takes, in designing and drafting inventions, which included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a flavored carbonated drink.
Copy of U.S. patent for “Secret Communication System”
During the late 1930s, Lamarr attended arms deals with her then-husband arms dealer Fritz Mandl, “possibly to improve his chances of making a sale”. From the meetings, she learned that navies needed “a way to guide a torpedo as it raced through the water.” Radio control had been proposed. However, an enemy might be able to jam such a torpedo’s guidance system and set it off course. When later discussing this with a new friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, her idea to prevent jamming by frequency hopping met Antheil’s previous work in music. In that earlier work, Antheil attempted synchronizing note-hopping in an avant-garde piece involving multiple synchronized player pianos. Antheil’s idea in the piece was to synchronize the start time of identical player pianos with identical player piano rolls, so the pianos would be playing in time with one another. Together, they realized that radio frequencies could be changed similarly, using the same kind of mechanism, but miniaturized.
Based on the strength of the initial submission of their ideas to the National Inventors Council (NIC) in late December 1940, in early 1941 the NIC introduced Antheil to Samuel Stuart Mackeown, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech, to consult on the electrical systems. 169 Lamarr hired the Los Angeles legal firm of Lyon & Lyon to search for prior art, and to draft the application for the patent which was granted as U.S. patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942, under her legal name Hedy Kiesler Markey. The invention was proposed to the Navy, who rejected it on the basis that it would be to large to fit in a torpedo,[49] and Lamarr and Antheil, shunned by the Navy, pursued their invention no further. It was suggested that Lamarr invest her time and attention to selling war bonds since she was a celebrity.
In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society.
Later years
Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States at age 38 on April 10, 1953. Her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, was published in 1966. She said on TV that it was not written by her, and much of it was fictional. Lamarr later sued the publisher, saying that many details were fabricated by its ghost writer, Leo Guild. Lamarr, in turn, was sued by Gene Ringgold, who asserted that the book plagiarized material from an article he had written in 1965 for Screen Facts magazine.
In the late 1950s, along with former husband W. Howard Lee, Lamarr designed and developed the Villa LaMarr ski resort in Aspen, Colorado.
In 1966, Lamarr was arrested in Los Angeles for shoplifting. The charges were eventually dropped. In 1991, she was arrested on the same charge in Florida, this time for stealing $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. She pleaded no contest to avoid a court appearance, and the charges were dropped in return for her promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year.
Seclusion
The 1970s was a decade of increasing seclusion for Lamarr. She was offered several scripts, television commercials, and stage projects, but none piqued her interest. In 1974, she filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Bros., claiming that the running parody of her name (“Hedley Lamarr”) in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy. Brooks said he was flattered; the studio settled out of court for an undisclosed nominal sum and an apology to Lamarr for “almost using her name”. Brooks said that Lamarr “never got the joke”. With her eyesight failing, Lamarr retreated from public life and settled in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1981
A large Corel-drawn image of Lamarr won CorelDRAW‘s yearly software suite cover design contest in 1996. For several years, beginning in 1997, it was featured on boxes of the software suite. Lamarr sued the company for using her image without her permission. Corel countered that she did not own rights to the image. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement in 1998.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd adjacent to Vine Street where the walk is centered.
Lamarr became estranged from her older son, James Lamarr Loder, when he was 12 years old. Their relationship ended abruptly, and he moved in with another family. They did not speak again for almost 50 years. Lamarr left James Loder out of her will, and he sued for control of the US$3.3 million estate left by Lamarr in 2000. He eventually settled for US$50,000.
In the last decades of her life, the telephone became Lamarr’s only means of communication with the outside world, even with her children and close friends. She often talked up to six or seven hours a day on the phone, but she spent hardly any time with anyone in person in her final years.
Death
Memorial to Hedy Lamarr at Vienna’s Central Cemetery (Group 33G, Tomb n°80)
Lamarr died in Casselberry, Florida, on January 19, 2000, of heart disease, aged 85 Her son Anthony Loder spread part of her ashes in Austria’s Vienna Woods in accordance with her last wishes.
In 2014, a memorial to Lamarr was unveiled in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. where the remainder of her ashes were buried.
In 1939, Lamarr was selected the “most promising new actress” of 1938 in a poll of area voters conducted by Philadelphia Record film critic. British moviegoers voted Hedy Lamarr the year’s 10th best actress, for her performance in Samson and Delilah in 1951.
The British drag queen Foo Foo Lamarr (born Francis Pearson, 1937–2003) originally took his surname from the actress when embarking on a performing career.
In 1997, Lamarr and George Antheil were jointly honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s Pioneer Award and Lamarr also was the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, known as the “Oscars of inventing”. The following year, Lamarr’s native Austria awarded her the Viktor Kaplan Medal of the Austrian Association of Patent Holders and Inventors.
In 2006, the Hedy-Lamarr-Weg was founded in Vienna Meidling (12th District), named after the actress.
In 2014, Lamarr was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology. The same year, Anthony Loder’s request that the remaining ashes of his mother should be buried in an honorary grave of the city of Vienna was realized. On November 7, her urn was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery in Group 33 G, Tomb No. 80, not far from the centrally located presidential tomb.
On November 9, 2015, Google honored her on the 101st anniversary of her birth, and on her 109th on November 9, 2023 with a doodle.
On August 27, 2019, an asteroid was named after her: 32730 Lamarr.
Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert (28 October 1892 – 8 January 1966), later Marthe McKenna, was a Belgian nurse who became a spy for the United Kingdom and its allies during the First World War. She later became a novelist, and is credited with writing over a dozen spy novels in addition to her memoirs and short stories.
Early life
Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert was born on 28 October 1892 in the village of Westrozebeke in the Belgian province of West Flanders, to Felix Cnockaert and his wife Marie-Louise Vanoplinus. She began studying at the medical school at Ghent University, but her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.
World War I
In August 1914, German troops razed the village, burning her home down and temporarily separating her family. Cnockaert was studying medicine but was conscripted as a nurse at a German military hospital located in the village, where she was valued for her medical training and her multi-lingual skills, speaking English and German as well as French and Flemish. She was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans for her medical service.
In 1915, she was transferred to the German Military Hospital in Roulers, where she was reunited with her family who had also moved there after the destruction of their home. Around this time, she was approached by a family friend and former neighbour, Lucelle Deldonck, who revealed to Cnockaert that she was a British intelligence agent, and wished to recruit her to an Anglo-Belgian intelligence network operating in the town.
For two years, Cnockaert (codenamed “Laura”) used her cover as a nurse and her frequent proximity to German military personnel—at both the hospital and as a waitress at her parents’ café—to gather important military intelligence for the British and their allies, which she passed on to other agents in local churches. She mostly worked with two other female Belgian spies: an elderly vegetable seller codenamed “Canteen Ma”, and a letterbox agent codenamed “Number 63”, both of whom helped her relay messages to and from British General Headquarters. Her exploits during the war included destroying a telephone line which a local priest was using to spy for the Germans; and obtaining details of a planned but cancelled visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II for a British aerial attack. At one stage, her German lodger, Otto, tried to recruit her to spy on the British. Cnockaert attempted to relay harmless but seemingly important information to him for a short time, but when operating as a double agent became too difficult, she arranged for him to be killed.
She discovered a disused sewer tunnel system located underneath a German ammunition depot, and placed the explosives to destroy the ammo dump; however, this operation led to her exposure and capture when she lost her watch, engraved with her initials, while placing the dynamite. In November 1916, Cnockaert was sentenced to death for her espionage; however, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to her Iron Cross honour. She served two years in grim conditions in a prison in Ghent, and was released in 1918 when the Armistice with Germany was declared, ending the war.
After the war
Cnockaert was awarded British, French and Belgian honours for gallantry for her espionage work—she was mentioned in despatches on 8 November 1918 by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig in recognition of her intelligence work, as well as receiving a British certificate for gallantry from Winston Churchill; she was also made a member of the French and Belgian Legions of Honour.
She married John “Jock” McKenna, a British army officer. Her memoir I Was a Spy! was ghostwritten by her husband and published under her married name in 1932. Winston Churchill wrote the foreword for the book. The publication of her memoir was prompted by the visit of an English author who encouraged Marthe to write and publish details of her wartime experiences. Following a warm critical and popular reception of her memoirs and other espionage anecdotes, the McKennas published a string of over a dozen spy novels. Although published under Marthe’s name, it is speculated that her husband was largely responsible for their writing.
The couple moved to Manchester during World War II and, despite her retirement, she was listed in ‘The Black Book‘ of prominent subjects to be arrested by the Nazis in the case of a successful invasion of Britain.
The McKennas later returned to Marthe’s family home in Westrozebeke, and no further books were forthcoming after the McKennas’ marriage ended around 1951. McKenna remained in Westrozebeke, and died in 1966.
Louis created the ‘Alice Network’ an organisation to manage female spies.
The word conjures up images of James Bond villainesses in slinky dresses, purring double-edged one-liners through a haze of cigarette smoke as they coax information out of their helpless marks. Spying wasn’t really perceived as glamorous until after the Bond myth took hold, but women have always been essential parts of the intelligence business, simply because women could often eavesdrop, run messages, or pass information without being noticed and suspected as men would have been. World War I’s most successful spy ring was called the Alice Network, and it was run by a woman. Her name was Louise de Bettignies, and she was known as the Queen of Spies.
Louise was born to an impoverished manufacturing family in France. Well-educated and multi-lingual, she took the Jane Eyre option like many educated-but-broke women of the day, and supported herself as a governess for various noble European families. Louise was in France when war broke out, and on a visit to England soon afterward she was recruited by British intelligence, who were not slow to notice her quick wits and her fluency in French, German, and English. Louise returned to northern France, now occupied by the Germans, and quickly set up a network of sources throughout the region: men, women, and even children who would collect information on the enemy, everything from troop numbers to train schedules to artillery placements. Louise, on the move constantly through the region, compiled her sources’ information into reports which she passed back to England.
The risks were appalling. The Germans did not hesitate to shoot those suspected of espionage, and mounted frequent checkpoints to catch spies. Louise employed a handful of differing identities, passing across borders with coded messages hidden in a variety of ingenius ways: between the pages of a magazine, rolled up inside shoe heels or umbrella staffs, wrapped around hairpins or the band of a ring. She knew exactly how to play the guards, whether by playing the witless female chattering gossip, or whether taking so long to fuss with an armload of packages that she was waved through in exasperation without being checked further. “They are too stupid,” she once laughed. “With any paper one sticks under their nose and plenty of self-possession, one can get through.” Louise also crossed borders on foot and in stealth when necessary, making grueling nighttime hikes across heavily mined and search-lighted borders already littered with the bodies of refugees who had not made it to safety. Even when she saw a fleeing pair blow up before her eyes as they stepped on a mine, Louise remained undeterred from her work. Her poise, humor, and way of shrugging off peril was remarkable. “Bah! I know I’ll be caught one day, but I shall have served. Let us hurry, and do great things while there is yet time.”
Her efforts paid off: her network was astoundingly successful, her intelligence so reliable and so fast-moving that British military men gushed like teenage girls at One Direction concert. They called Louise de Bettignies “A really high-class agent” and wrote “I cannot speak too highly of the bravery, devotion, and patriotism of this young lady.” And Louise was not the only woman facing incredible danger to serve her country in the war. Red Cross nurse Edith Cavell smuggled many wounded French and English soldiers to safety from Belgium; young Gabrielle Petit led downed pilots from behind enemy lines; a Belgian vicomtesse ran a successful organization for passing information and people into the Netherlands. And ordinary women risked themselves, too, like the teenaged Aurelie le Four who worked for the Alice Network as a local guide for Louise’s spies.
The price that was paid for such courage could be horrifying. Edith Cavell and Gabrielle Petit were arrested, condemned for espionage, and shot by firing squad. The vicomtesse was arrested and spent three grueling years in Siegburg prison. Young Aurelie le Four was raped by German soldiers when returning from guide duty after curfew, but still continued to serve the Alice Network . . . and when she became a nun after World War I, she was still standing up to German soldiers thirty years later, when the next war came to her doorstep looking for the Jewish children under her care. Courage continued undaunted, from the Queen of Spies to even the youngest of her couriers.
Of the many women who served in the OSS, field agent Virginia Hall was one of the most distinguished. Undaunted by her artificial leg, she created a spy network and helped organize and arm French commandos behind enemy lines. Posing as a dairy farmer, she scouted potential drop zones while herding cows. Later, she tapped out Morse code messages over wireless radio to officials in London. She radioed intelligence reports, coordinated parachute drops of supplies, oversaw sabotage missions, and planned ambushes of German soldiers. Virginia Hall was the only female civilian in WWII to receive the coveted Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, Hall became one of the CIA’s first female operations officers.
“She was the most highly decorated female civilian during World War II,” said Janelle Neises, the museum’s deputy director, who’s providing a tour.
So why haven’t more people heard about Hall? A quote from Hall on the agency display offers an explanation: “Many of my friends were killed for talking too much.”
British author Sonia Purnell wrote one a book, A Woman of No Importance, and she explains the irony in the biography’s title. “Through a lot of her life, the early life, she was constantly rejected and belittled,” said Purnell. “She was constantly just being dismissed as someone not very important or of no importance.”
Hall was born to a wealthy Baltimore family in 1906, and she was raised to marry into her own privileged circle. But she wanted adventure. She called herself “capricious and cantankerous.” She liked to hunt. She once went to school wearing a bracelet made of live snakes.
College in France
Sonia Purnell’s book about Virginia Hall is one of three that have been published this year. The others are Hall of Mirrors, a novel by Craig Gralley, and The Lady Is A Spy, a young adult book by Don Mitchell.
Hall briefly attended Radcliffe and Barnard colleges. Then she went to study in Paris and fell in love with France. She decided to become a diplomat, said Purnell.
“She wanted to be an ambassador. She got pushed back by the State Department. She applied several times,” Purnell said, noting that women accounted for only six of the 1,500 U.S. diplomats at the time.
Hall did land a clerical job at a U.S. consulate in Turkey. But while hunting birds, she accidentally shot herself in the foot. Gangrene set in, and her left leg was amputated below the knee.
Recovery was long and painful, as she learned to use a clunky wooden leg. Yet it was also a turning point, said Craig Gralley, a retired CIA officer who has written his own book about Hall — a novel, Hall of Mirrors.
“She had been given a second chance at life and wasn’t going to waste it. And her injury, in fact, might have kind of bolstered her or reawakened her resilience so that she was in fact able to do great things,” he said.
When World War II erupted and Nazi Germany invaded France, Hall volunteered to drive an ambulance for the French. France was soon overrun, forcing her to flee to Britain. A chance meeting with a spy put her in contact with British intelligence.
After limited training, this one-legged American woman was among the first British spies sent into Nazi-occupied France in 1941. She posed as a reporter for the New York Post.
There were failures, especially in the early days, when members of her network were arrested and killed.
The Germans came to realize that they were after a limping lady.
But Hall was a natural spy, keeping one step ahead of the German secret police, the Gestapo.
“Virginia Hall, to a certain extent, was invisible,” said Gralley. “She was able to play on the chauvinism of the Gestapo at the time. None of the Germans early in the war necessarily thought that a woman was capable of being a spy.”
Hall operated in the eastern French city of Lyon. She initially stayed at a convent and persuaded nuns to help her. She befriended a female brothel owner and received information that French prostitutes gathered from German troops.
Hall organized French resistance fighters, providing them with safe houses and intelligence. This didn’t go unnoticed, said Purnell.
“The Germans came to realize that they were after a limping lady,” she said.
Hall constantly changed her appearance.
“She could be four different women in the space of an afternoon, with four different code names,” said Purnell.Enlarge this image
This mannequin of World War II spy Virginia Hall is on display at the CIA Museum at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va. While her story is well recognized inside the intelligence community, it is only now coming to a wider audience in a series of books and planned movies.
Barbie ordered “wanted” posters of Hall that featured a drawing of her above the words “The Enemy’s Most Dangerous Spy — We Must Find And Destroy Her!”
The Nazis appeared to be closing in on Hall around the end of 1942. She narrowly escaped to Spain, embarking on a harrowing journey that included walking three days for 50 miles in heavy snow over the forbidding Pyrenees Mountains.
While researching his book, Gralley, a marathon runner, made a part of that walk and found it exhausting.
“I could only imagine the kind of will and the kind of perseverance that Virginia Hall had by making this trek,” he says, “not on a beautiful day, but in the dead of winter and with a prosthetic leg she had to drag behind her.”
When Hall reached Spain, she was arrested because she didn’t have an entrance stamp in her passport. She was released after six weeks and made her way back to Britain.
She soon grew restless and wanted to return to France. The British refused, fearing it was too dangerous.
William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services, presents Virginia Hall with the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945. She was the only civilian woman so honored in World War II. President Harry Truman proposed a public ceremony at the White House, but Hall declined because she wanted to stay undercover. The event with Donovan was private. The only outsider attending was Hall’s mother.
Back to France
However, the Americans were ramping up their own intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, which had virtually no presence in France.
The Americans needed Hall, yet the Nazis were everywhere, making it even more difficult for her to operate, said Purnell.
“She got some makeup artist to teach her how to draw wrinkles on her face,” she said. “She also got a fierce, a rather sort of scary London dentist to grind down her lovely, white American teeth so that she looked like a French milkmaid.”
Hall’s second tour in France, in 1944 and 1945, was even more successful than the first. She called in airdrops for the resistance fighters, who blew up bridges and sabotaged trains. They reclaimed villages well before Allied troops advanced deep into France.
At its peak, Hall’s network consisted of some 1,500 people, including a French-American soldier, Paul Goillot — who would later became her husband.
Hall’s niece, Lorna Catling, is now 89 and lives in Baltimore. She recalls meeting her aunt after the war.
“She came home when I was 16, and she was pale and had white hair and crappy clothes,” Catling said.
And what did Hall say about the war?
“She never talked about it,” Catling added.
A painting of Virginia Hall hangs in one of the main hallways near the entrance of CIA headquarters. The painting shows her making radio contact with London from an old barn in France to request supplies and personnel. Power for her radio was provided by a bicycle rigged to power an electric generator.
Courtesy of CIA
The British and the French both recognized Hall’s contributions — in private. President Harry Truman wanted to honor Hall at a public White House ceremony. Hall declined, saying she wanted to remain undercover.
William Donovan, the OSS chief, gave Hall the Distinguished Service Cross — making her the only civilian woman to receive one in World War II. Hall’s mother was the only outsider present at the ceremony.
“I do think that she became America’s greatest spy of World War II,” Gralley said of Hall.
Hall then joined the newly formed CIA, which succeeded the OSS, and worked there for 15 years, mostly at headquarters. These were not her happiest days. She thrived on the adrenaline of acting independently in the field during wartime. Now she was largely confined to a desk.
“As you get higher in rank, now it’s all about money and personnel and plans and policy and that sort of bureaucratic stuff,” said Randy Burkett, a historian at the CIA.
And Hall faced discrimination as a woman.
“Was she treated properly? Well, by today’s standards, absolutely not,” said Burkett.
Hall retired in 1966 and never spoke publicly. She died in 1982 in Maryland, her story still confined to the intelligence community.
William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services, presents Virginia Hall with the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945. She was the only civilian woman so honored in World War II. President Harry Truman proposed a public ceremony at the White House, but Hall declined because she wanted to stay undercover. The event with Donovan was private. The only outsider attending was Hall’s mother.
Gabrielle Petit, a local 21-year-old shop assistant in Brussels was furious when Germany had occupied on 20th August 1914. She wanted to share her knowledge of the surrounding area and activities of the Germans with the British. In July 1915 she was invited by the British authorities to London’s Spy School.
Back in Brussels, she soon created her own spy network. She crossed backwards and forwards between Occupied France and Belgium carrying TOP SECRET information and she was always on the look-out for anything the Allies might find useful.
Gabrielle was arrested on 20th January 1916 and thrown into St Gilles Prison, Brussels. At every interrogation she stressed her loathing of the Germans. After a trial conducted in German, she only spoke French, and without knowing anyone influential to plead on her behalf, Gabrielle was sentenced to ‘Death by Firing Squad’
After the war, combatant nations sought to memorialise their glorious dead. In Belgium someone thought of the little Brussels shop assistant, Gabrielle would become Belgium’s martyr. In May 1919, her body was exhumed; at an elaborate funeral the Belgian queen awarded Gabrielle the Croix de l’ Ordre de Léopold. Gabrielle’s statue still stands in Brussels’ Place St Jean. She looks down proudly on passers-by and reminds them that poor and young though she was, Gabrielle Petit had known both how to spy and how to die for her beloved Belgium
As can be seen on this map, Spain was far from the main battlefields, located on the Franco-German border, northern Italy, Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Spain remained neutral throughout World War I between 28 July 1914 and 11 November 1918, and despite domestic economic difficulties, it was considered “one of the most important neutral countries in Europe by 1915”. Spain had enjoyed neutrality during the political difficulties of pre-war Europe, and continued its neutrality after the war until the Spanish Civil War began in 1936. While there was no direct military involvement in the war, German forces were interned in Spanish Guinea in late 1915.
Spanish neutrality
Sprinklings of the War: “Without fashions coming from Paris, I don’t know what to put on.”
“Existent, sadly, the state of war between Austria, Hungary and Serbia […] the Government of His Majesty believes in the duty to order the strictest neutrality to Spanish subjects.”
Dato was applauded for this in the Cortes when they reconvened on 30 October. Opinion among the public was divided. The upper classes (the aristocracy and the rich bourgeoisie), the Catholic Church and the Spanish Army generally favoured the Central Powers, usually identified with Germany. Among political parties, the Germanophile tendency was represented among the reactionary Carlists and the conservative Mauristas, followers of Antonio Maura, who himself favoured closer ties with the Allies because of Spain’s 1907 pact with Britain and France, which was designed to head off German colonialism in north Africa. Pro-Allied sentiment, which was generally Francophile, was most common among the middle and professional classes and intellectuals. It was common among Catalan nationalists, Republicans and Socialists. A few Liberals, including Álvaro de Figueroa, leader of the opposition in the Cortes, were also pro-Allied, along with Miguel de Unamuno and other select members of the Spanish intelligentsia.
The Italian government’s initial neutrality was a key factor in Spanish government also being able to declare itself neutral. Due the Pact of Cartagena of 1907, the Spanish fleet would support the French Navy in case of war with the Triple Alliance against the combined fleets of the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary in the Mediterranean Sea since the Royal Navy should focus on the North Sea against the Imperial German Navy; and the French fleet alone could not contain the Italian and Austro-Hungarian fleets together and it was necessary for France to transport its colonial troops from North Africa to the European continent.
Throughout 1914-18 the Spanish Army continued to be maintained on a peacetime basis without the extended mobilisation measures of other neutral nations (Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden) in closer proximity to areas of actual fighting. Except in Morocco, Spanish troops continued to wear colourful dress uniforms for parade and off-duty wear; a feature that quickly disappeared in all armies directly involved in the war.
The main rifle of the Spanish Army at this time was a version of the Mauser, manufactured in Oviedo in 7 mm caliber, known as the Mauser Model 1893 rifle. To this was added a small number of machine guns such as the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss M1909 and even the M1895 Colt. However, the number of machine guns per company or division was much lower than in the rest of the European countries. The artillery was made up of cannons made by Krupp or various versions of the Schneider cannon made in Trubia and Seville. Most were being used in the Rif War being fought in northern Morocco (Rif), where Spain had been granted a protectorate).
Finally, the massive construction of T-1 class torpedo boats began, of which six had already been enlisted, together with the older Orión, Habana and Halcón torpedo boats, and finally the typical conglomerate of tugboats, cutters, gunboats and small boats.
In short, the Spanish Navy of 1914 was composed largely of older ships that were not sunk near Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish–American War, either because they survived the naval battles or because they were part of Admiral Cámara’s fleet, which had not been involved in the conflict. Other ships had been recently built under the Ferrándiz Plan.
The Military Aeronautics (predecessor of the Spanish Air Force) had just been created in 1913, so it had few units. All the planes were bombers, since the fighters did not appear until well into the war. Of biplanes it had Farman MF.7, Farman MF.11, Lohner B.I; and monoplanes with several Morane-Saulnier G and Nieuport II, which together formed the Military Aeronautics, to which a few more biplanes and the first seaplanes of the Naval Aeronautics would later be added.
Spanish neutrality left the country outside the technological advances derived from war needs, so that, at the end of the war in November 1918, the Spanish Military Aviation was in a situation of clear inferiority in means compared to those of the other neighbouring countries.
Some pictures of Spanish Armed Forces of that time
Spanish artillery in action in September 1913 in the Gaba forest during the Rif War.
A Lohner B.I airplane of the Spanish Army returning to its base in the Tetuan area in 1913.
Effects of war
The German submarine SM U-35 next to the merchant ship Roma, also German, in the port of Cartagena. The visit of the submersible on June 21, 1916, endangered Spanish neutrality in the Great War. It is estimated that German submarines caused losses of between 139,000 and 250,000 tons in the Spanish merchant fleet.[11] Four German submarines were interned in Spain (the SM UB-23 in La Coruña, the SM U-39 in Cartagena, the SM UC-56 in Santander and SM UB-49 in Cádiz)[12] and two others, visited Spanish ports, one of them, the aforementioned U-35, transporting to Cartagena a letter from the Kaiser to the King.[13]
Though it remained one of the few neutral countries in mainland Europe, Spain was still affected by the conflict in a variety of ways.
Economically Spain experienced both positive and negative consequences from the war. Spanish maritime trade was significantly impacted by German U-boat campaigns, with an estimated 100 lives and 66 ships lost to submarines. Though Spanish industry in the north and the east of the country expanded as demand rose among the warring powers for Spanish goods, the inflow of capital produced inflation and imports dropped, exacerbating the poverty of the rural areas and the south. The growing poverty intensified internal migration to the industrial areas, and the railway system was unable to bear the increased demand. Spain experienced a scarcity in food commodities. The shortage of basic commodities became known as the crisis de subsistencias. In 1915, food riots erupted in some cities, and in December 1915, the government resigned, to be replaced by a Liberal government under Figueroa.
In July 1916, the two main trade unions, the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores and the anarchosyndicalistConfederación Nacional del Trabajo, joined forces to put pressure on the Liberal government. In March 1917, they even threatened to start a general strike. Their example inspired military officers to form unions of their own, the juntas de defensa. The officers’ goal was to prevent the passage of the Bill of Military Reform tabled in the Cortes in 1916, that sought to professionalise the military by introducing intellectual and physical tests as prerequisites for promotions; the ultimate goal being a reduction in the size of the bloated officers corps. The juntas de defensa demanded that promotions and pay increases continue to be based strictly on seniority.
The war also had a significant impact on the construction program of the Spanish Navy. The second and third España-classbattleships, built in Spain between 1910 and 1919, were delayed significantly because of material shortages from Britain. Most importantly, the main battery guns for Jaime I did not arrive until 1919, after the war had ended. The projected Reina Victoria Eugenia-class battleships, which also would have relied heavily on imported guns and armour plate, were cancelled outright after the war started.
Also significant were the social impacts of the war. Though Spain as a whole was neutral throughout the war, the conflict split the country into groups of ‘Francophiles’ and ‘Germanophiles’ who each sympathised with the opposing Entente and Central Powers, the rift being only deepened by the ongoing U-boat campaign which continued to impact Spanish ships. The army, clergy and conservatives were inclined to be pro-German whereas merchants, liberals, republicans and most of the public leaned towards the Allied cause. Intellectuals were divided. Gran Canaria was used to supply submarines with food and water as an island with lots of caves it was easy to remain out of site to re load the subs. Although this was not known till after the war.
The Spanish public became aware of the harsh realities of the war itself by contact with a migratory influx of approximately 10,000 Spanish workers who returned home from Belgium, France and Germany.
Spanish journalists also acted as war correspondents near the battlefront, keeping the public informed with regard to the conflict and conditions, with opposing viewpoints in these reports often also contributing to the varying sympathies of the country and the divide as a whole.
As early as August 1914, some Spaniards were volunteering to enlist in the French Army, mainly joining the Foreign Legion. In 1915, they founded their own magazine, Iberia, to defend and propagate their cause. In February 1916, the Comitè de Germanor (Committee of Brotherhood) was set up in Barcelona to recruit for the Legion. Over 2,000 Spaniards ultimately served in the Legion. King Alfonso XIII also tried to help in the war by creating the European War Office.
Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Following the death of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 and the death of Karl Ludwig in 1896, Franz Ferdinand became the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His courtship of Sophie Chotek, a lady-in-waiting, caused conflict within the imperial household, and their morganatic marriage in 1900 was only allowed after he renounced his descendants’ rights to the throne. Franz Ferdinand held significant influence over the military, and in 1913 he was appointed inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces.
On 28 June 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by the 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia. Franz Ferdinand’s assassination led to the July Crisis and precipitated Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia, which in turn triggered a series of events that eventually led – four weeks after his death – to Austria-Hungary’s allies and Serbia’s allies declaring war on each other, starting World War I.
In 1889, Franz Ferdinand’s life changed dramatically. His cousin Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide at his hunting lodge in Mayerling This left Franz Ferdinand’s father, Karl Ludwig, as first in line to the throne. Karl Ludwig died of typhoid fever in 1896. Henceforth, Franz Ferdinand was groomed to succeed to the throne.
Franz Ferdinand posing in front of a killed elephant, 1893
Franz Ferdinand had a fondness for trophy hunting that was excessive even by the standards of European nobility of this time. In his diaries he kept track of 272,511 game kills, 5,000 of which were deer. About 100,000 trophies were on exhibit at his Bohemian castle at Konopiště which he also stuffed with various antiquities, his other great passion.
Military career
Franz Ferdinand, like most males in the ruling Habsburg line, entered the Austro-Hungarian Army at a young age. He was frequently and rapidly promoted, given the rank of lieutenant at age fourteen, captain at twenty-two, colonel at twenty-seven, and major general at thirty-one. While never receiving formal staff training, he was considered eligible for command and at one point briefly led the primarily Hungarian 9th Hussar Regiment. In 1898 he was given a commission “at the special disposition of His Majesty” to make inquiries into all aspects of the military services and military agencies were commanded to share their papers with him.
He also held honorary ranks in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and received the rank of Admiral at the close of the Austro-Hungarian naval maneuvers in September 1902.
Franz Ferdinand exerted influence on the armed forces even when he did not hold a specific command through a military chancery that produced and received documents and papers on military affairs. This was headed by Alexander Brosch von Aarenau [de] and eventually employed a staff of sixteen. His authority was reinforced in 1907 when he secured the retirement of the Emperor’s confidant Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky as Chief of the General Staff. Beck’s successor, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, was personally selected by Franz Ferdinand.
Franz in 1913, as heir-presumptive to the elderly emperor, had been appointed inspector general of all the armed forces of Austria-Hungary (Generalinspektor der gesamten bewaffneten Macht), a position superior to that previously held by Archduke Albrecht and including presumed command in wartime.
Marriage and family
Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, and their three children (from left), Prince Ernst von Hohenberg, Princess Sophie, and Maximilian, Duke of Hohenberg, in 1910
To be eligible to marry a member of the imperial House of Habsburg, one had to be a member of one of the reigning or formerly reigning dynasties of Europe. The Choteks were not one of these families. Deeply in love, Franz Ferdinand refused to consider marrying anyone else. Finally, in 1899, Emperor Franz Joseph agreed to permit Franz Ferdinand to marry Sophie, on the condition that the marriage would be morganatic and that their descendants would not have succession rights to the throne. Sophie would not share her husband’s rank, title, precedence, or privileges; as such, she would not normally appear in public beside him. She would not be allowed to ride in the royal carriage or sit in the royal box in theaters.
The wedding took place on 1 July 1900, at Reichstadt (now Zákupy) in Bohemia; Franz Joseph did not attend the affair, nor did any archduke including Franz Ferdinand’s brothers. The only members of the imperial family who were present were Franz Ferdinand’s stepmother, Princess Maria Theresa of Braganza; and her two daughters. Upon the marriage, Sophie was given the title “Princess of Hohenberg” (Fürstin von Hohenberg) with the style “Her Serene Highness” (Ihre Durchlaucht). In 1909, she was given the more senior title “Duchess of Hohenberg” (Herzogin von Hohenberg) with the style “Her Highness” (Ihre Hoheit). This raised her status considerably, but she was still required to yield precedence at court to all the archduchesses. Whenever a function required the couple to assemble with the other members of the imperial family, Sophie was forced to stand far down the line, separated from her husband.
Franz Ferdinand and Sophie visited England in the autumn of 1913, spending a week with George V and Queen Mary at Windsor Castle before going to stay for another week with the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, where they arrived on 22 November. He attended a service at the local Catholic church in Worksop. Franz Ferdinand and the Duke of Portland went game shooting on the Welbeck estate when, according to Portland’s memoirs, Men, Women and Things:
One of the loaders fell down. This caused both barrels of the gun he was carrying to be discharged, the shot passing within a few feet of the archduke and myself. I have often wondered whether the Great War might not have been averted, or at least postponed, had the archduke met his death there and not in Sarajevo the following year.
As described by contemporary Spanish magazine El Mundo Gráfico: “The moment when the Austrian archdukes, following the first attempt against their lives, arrived at the City Council (of Sarajevo), where they were received by the mayor and the municipal corporation.”Franz Ferdinand’s blood-stained uniformThe 1910 Gräf & StiftBois de Boulognephaeton automobile in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. It is now displayed in the Museum of Military History in ViennaThe Latin Bridge near the assassination site
Earlier in the day, the couple had been attacked by Nedeljko Čabrinović, also a Young Bosnia conspirator, who had thrown a grenade at their car. However, the bomb detonated behind them, injuring the occupants in the following car. On arriving at the Governor’s residence, Franz asked “So you welcome your guests with bombs!”
After a short rest at the Governor’s residence, the royal couple insisted on seeing all those who had been injured by the bomb at the local hospital. However, no one told the drivers that the itinerary had been changed. When the error was discovered, the drivers had to turn around. As the cars backed down the street and onto a side street, the line of cars stalled. At this time, Princip was sitting at a cafe across the street. He instantly seized his opportunity and walked across the street and shot the royal couple. He first shot Sophie in the abdomen and then shot Franz Ferdinand in the neck. Franz leaned over his crying wife. He was still alive when witnesses arrived to render aid. His dying words to Sophie were, “Don’t die darling, live for our children.” Princip’s weapon was the pocket-sized FN Model 1910 pistol chambered for the .380 ACP cartridge provided him by Serbian Army Military IntelligenceLieutenant-Colonel and Black Hand leader Dragutin Dimitrijević. Franz Ferdinand’s aides attempted to undo his coat but realized they needed scissors to cut it open: the outer lapel had been sewn to the inner front of the jacket for a smoother fit to improve his appearance to the public. Whether or not as a result of this obstacle, his wound could not be attended to in time to save him, and he died within minutes. Sophie also died en route to the hospital.
A detailed account of the shooting can be found in Sarajevo by Joachim Remak:
One bullet pierced Franz Ferdinand’s neck while the other pierced Sophie’s abdomen. … As the car was reversing (to go back to the Governor’s residence because the entourage thought the Imperial couple were unhurt) a thin streak of blood shot from the Archduke’s mouth onto Count Harrach’s right cheek (he was standing on the car’s running board). Harrach drew out a handkerchief to still the gushing blood. The Duchess, seeing this, called: “For Heaven’s sake! What happened to you?” and sank from her seat, her face falling between her husband’s knees.
Harrach and Potoriek … thought she had fainted … only her husband seemed to have an instinct for what was happening. Turning to his wife despite the bullet in his neck, Franz Ferdinand pleaded: “Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder! – Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!” Having said this, he seemed to sag down himself. His plumed hat … fell off; many of its green feathers were found all over the car floor. Count Harrach seized the Archduke by the uniform collar to hold him up. He asked “Leiden Eure Kaiserliche Hoheit sehr? – Is Your Imperial Highness suffering very badly?” “Es ist nichts. – It is nothing.” said the Archduke in a weak but audible voice. He seemed to be losing consciousness during his last few minutes, but, his voice growing steadily weaker, he repeated the phrase perhaps six or seven times more.
A rattle began to issue from his throat, which subsided as the car drew in front of the Konak bersibin (Town Hall). Despite several doctors’ efforts, the Archduke died shortly after being carried into the building while his beloved wife was almost certainly dead from internal bleeding before the motorcade reached the Konak.
The assassinations, along with the arms race, nationalism, imperialism, militarism of Imperial Germany and the alliance system all contributed to the origins of World War I, which began a month after Franz Ferdinand’s death, with Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand is considered the most immediate cause of World War I.
After his death, Archduke Karl became the heir presumptive of Austria-Hungary. Franz Ferdinand was buried with his wife Sophie in Artstetten Castle, Austria.
Character
The German historian Michael Freund described Franz Ferdinand as “a man of uninspired energy, dark in appearance and emotion, who radiated an aura of strangeness and cast a shadow of violence and recklessness … a true personality amidst the amiable inanity that characterized Austrian society at this time.” As his sometime admirer Karl Kraus put it, “he was not one who would greet you … he felt no compulsion to reach out for the unexplored region which the Viennese call their heart.” His relations with Emperor Franz Joseph were tense; the emperor’s personal servant recalled in his memoirs that “thunder and lightning always raged when they had their discussions.” The commentaries and orders which the heir to the throne wrote as margin notes to the documents of the Imperial central commission for architectural conservation (where he was Protector) reveal what can be described as “choleric conservatism.” The Italian historian Leo Valiani provided the following description.
Francis Ferdinand was a prince of absolutist inclinations, but he had certain intellectual gifts and undoubted moral earnestness. One of his projects – though because of his impatient, suspicious, almost hysterical temperament, his commitment to it, and the methods by which he proposed to bring it about, often changed – was to consolidate the structure of the state and the authority and popularity of the Crown, on which he saw clearly that the fate of the dynasty depended, by abolishing, if not the dominance of the German Austrians, which he wished to maintain for military reasons, though he wanted to diminish it in the civil administration, certainly the far more burdensome sway of the Magyars over the Slav and Romanian nationalities which in 1848–49 had saved the dynasty in armed combat with the Hungarian revolution. Baron Margutti (de), Francis Joseph’s aide-de-camp, was told by Francis Ferdinand in 1895 and – with a remarkable consistency in view of the changes that took place in the intervening years – again in 1913, that the introduction of the dual system in 1867 had been disastrous and that, when he ascended the throne, he intended to re-establish strong central government: this objective, he believed, could be attained only by the simultaneous granting of far-reaching administrative autonomy to all the nationalities of the monarchy. In a letter of February 1, 1913, to Berchtold, the Foreign Minister, in which he gave his reasons for not wanting war with Serbia, Franz Ferdinand said that “irredentism in our country … will cease immediately if our Slavs are given a comfortable, fair and good life” instead of being trampled on (as they were being trampled on by the Hungarians). It must have been this which caused Berchtold, in a character sketch of Francis Ferdinand written ten years after his death, to say that, if he had succeeded to the throne, he would have tried to replace the dual system by a supranational federation.
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