5. Enemy Territory (Season 2)

rescue came with the cost. While meeting with the downed airman in a public restaurant, she was confronted by the Gestapo after the pilot ordered a beer, a drink forbidden to the French public. In an effort to cover for him. Virginia explained that she was in the Mary a newspaper reporter named Brigitte Le Contra, but by doing that, she'd exposed her alias to the Nazis earlier in her mission than she had hoped. Now she felt she had to move.

Virginia abandoned her current safe house and leon and set up shopping another, notifying Vera Atkins, her unofficial handler with the s O back in London, that she was changing her street name to Marie. She decided she'd have to be smarter about direct contact with Nazis. Going forward, she would offer aid to operatives who needed it, but she'd have to work more discreetly. Up to this point, Virginia

could move about in France without much pushback. She could use her status as an American to fend off a stint in a German prison, so long as she wasn't actively stirring up trouble. Though America had thrown financial and moral support to the Allied forces, it was still the middle of nineteen forty one and the US hadn't officially entered the war. As President Roosevelt explained in late nineteen the people of Europe, who are defending themselves, do not

ask us to do their fighting. They asked us well. The implements of law, the planes, the tanks, the guns freight us which will enable them to fight for their liberty and our security. The Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate at that point, and believed in tangling themselves in an international war would distract from an economy

that was still recovering from the Great Depression. America was confident that the United France, and Britain could feedback Hitler's armies, but after the Blitz of nineteen forty Germany's persistent bombies of English cities to simphthy from America. The Blitz was a series of German air raids and bombing attacks that lasted until forcing Britat into their homes for extended periods of time and leaving much of London in ruins. As one BBC radio reporter recalled, I was walking between solid

walls of fire. Roofs of shops and office buildings came down with a roaring crash. Panes of grounds were cracking everywhere from the heat. At Every street was criss crossed with innumerable lengths of hose. President Roosevelt began taking bigger steps away from neutrality and an effort to help the British, eventually offering U S ships to work as convoys for British travel around the globe. It wasn't long before the Axis powers realized the U S would be more directly involved,

sooner rather than later. With that in mind, the order was given yesterday. They sum US some nineteen forty one, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked. Japan bombed the U S naval base at Pearl Harbor and what was then the U. S Territory of Hawaii, killing two thousand, three hundred and thirty five people and wounding over a

thousand more. The next day, President Roosevelt declared war against Japan, officially entering World War two and effectively ending Virginia's cover in France, as she was now stationed deep within enemy territory. I'm Stephen Talty and from Diversion. This 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 over the country.

She is dangerous, so sabotage plus a little espionage paramilitary operations make things blow up. The message for Captain Bobby and I believe I have found the nest of the Limping Lady. Episode five, Enemy Territory. It was early and Robert Alesha's hunt for the Limping Lady had brought him to the doorstep of a French gynecologist and resistance operative

named doctor jean Ussey and leone France. Alessia had managed to trick the doctor into believing he was a priest named Robert at coom, a new courier for the French resistance. In reality, he was a Nazi spy working directly for infamous s S officer Klaus Barbie. Alesha had received information from Dr Roussey and concluded a woman named Marie maybe the Limping Lady he had been searching for. He wired his superiors with a report A message for Captain Bobby.

This is Alesh. I believe I have found the nest of the Limping Lady. Between her rescue of the British pilot and Alesha's visit to Dr Hussey's home, the Limping Lady had become a major thorn in the side of the s S. She had managed to gather intel of German missions and plots to target British strongholds in France

that gave the Brits an edge. But most importantly, the Limping Lady was considered by the s S to be the leader of a new resistance network named Heckler that supplied resistance members with weaponry, housing, and escape roots out of the country. In reality, Virginia wasn't just the leader of Heckler, but the founder. We tried to confirm why Virginia named her unit Heckler, but our research was unsuccessful.

Her well known wit might be some indication. But whether Heckler was named to aggravate the Nazis, there was no denying its impact on German war efforts. Over the course of about eleven months between August nine and July, Virginia masterminded multiple jail breaks free captured British and French resistance fighters, returned information to London. And she did it all from the shadows. What do you want me to do? Then I find the limping Lady, confirm her location, and then

returned to us. Do not make any attempt to arrest her. We don't want to expose you just yet. I don't want to tell you how to do your job, Captain. But if this really is the limping Lady, I would discourage any attempt to imprison her. She won't go to prison, She'll go to the camps. Soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor in Germany, the Nazis began to set up a number of isolated stations, ostensibly to hold those they deemed

undesirable until the war ended. These stations, architecturally designed for the purpose of suffering and dehumanization, were called concentration camps. The first concentration camp was built in Dakout, Germany, just

outside of Munich, in March of ninety three. So Dachau was the most important, the most long lasting of the concentration camps that are set up in the first months of Hypnostic titorship, and therefore, as such, Dakau was central to the destruction of the Bimar Republic and to the destruction of the rule of law in Germany. That's Christopher Dillon, a senior lecturer of modern German history at King's College, London. In two thousand fifteen he published a book called Dakau

and the s S, a Schooling in violence. Dakau was built for political prisoners and perceived threats to the Nazi Party, and the majority of its first occupants included Jews, social Democrats, German communists, and others perceived as sympathetic to socialist ideals. As the camp grew over time, it became home to others deemed unsociable, most notably homosexuals, the Roma, and Jehovah's witnesses. Once these prisoners arrived, they faced a world of terror.

Some of theatum with an oxwid in front of the SA prisoners, which is both a punishment for their supposed these would also a demonstration to the wider prisoner community of the s S is absolute power in the camps. Some arrivals are taken off to the camp knock up or bunker where they're tormented, are insulted, beaten, deprivate of sleep,

subjected to attack dogs, and invited to commit suicide. And in a handful of cases also you have Nazi apostate supposed internal traitors of the movement who were brought to the camp and then a kind of gruesomely murdered in so called female executions, which is on a killing that was quite fashionable in the German right during the Weimar Republic in the first commandant of Dakao invoked martial law in a unilateral declaration, one that had no validity and

would not be recognized by the local government, but it gave the SS guards grounds for their actions. Years before World War Two began in Auschwitz, Comman Down, who had cut his teeth at Dakau, wrote a post war memoir. He uses the term dak House spirit to describe what he calls the unique quote atmosphere of hatred end quote in Dakau towards the prisoners, and he saw this as being kind of proactively brutal and hectoring guard culture, and it almost kind of boyish open joy in inflicting creative

suffering on the inmates. This dak House spirit was then diffused throughout the camp system because ss men who kind of earned their spurs and Dakau are then posted to set up camps elsewhere and a core ethos of the guard mentality with anti Semitism. In fact, fourteen of the twenty two prisoners murdered at Dakao in his first year of operation were Jewish, even though Jews made up less than ten percent of the inmate population at the time. If he didn't loudly and publicly hate Jews at all

times as a Dacaud, you simply wouldn't fit in. It was absolutely axiomatic to the world view of Nazi activists and party members. Decas primary architect with an AS officer named Theodore Acre who became commandant of the camp in June of and he was fanatical Nazis, charismatic, pugnacious, devoted your no kind of life really outside the s S. I can want to guards to hate the prisoners on

a very personal and emotional level. He wrote, quote SS members hate the heart in their breasts must be turned to stone and quote So under Ka's command, the guards at Dark House and increasing these young males who come from the Hitler youth are hazed and drilled in the roughest German tradition and encouraged, in turn, to channel their resentments of being mistreated during drill onto the camp prisoners

to cascade them. Guards are promoted full violence and then protected from many legal consequences from their actions, so the camps really are a lawless space by the Big n It was Ica who masterminded the blue and white pajamas given to detainees, and it was Ica who oversaw a new regiment of Nazi guards and methods that led to most of the harsh and often lethal punishments that became standard in every camp. The Nazis regularly withheld food from

their prisoners while simultaneously increasing their workloads. They were literally worked to the bone and not given medical treatment for malnutrition, injury, exhaustion, and dehydration. If they died, they were merely replaced with others. Ica would rise through the ranks and be placed in the crosshairs of history, as he was later handpicked by Hitler to murder Ernst Rome, a high ranking Nazi who Hitler feared was plotting to take over the Nazi Party.

In ninety four, Here's a man named Abe Melnick reflecting at his horrific time as a prisoner at Dakau. In the house every morning, other friend of mine and myself we had a small card like a little y show, and we walked from back to back, and we pulled up all the dead people and stacked him up and

take the rown, dumped them and do it again. And some of my own friends I wouldn't even recognize because full of lies, lies, monetrician diarrhea, the cent terium, typhoid, everything, all that everything hit us Daka was the longest camp in operation, only shutting down after its liberation from Allied forces in April. It's estimated over two thousand prisoners in Dakau throughout the course of its operation, though the death

toll is disputed. While account of nearly twenty eight thousand deaths was talied between nineteen forty, the number from nineteen thirty three to nine is unknown, as the amount of murdered unregistered prisoners can't be counted. The first thing they see is like an enormous train of the sidings of Daca, which is full of corpses. These are prisoners that have been transported from elsewhere in the camp system that have

died en route. So let's just get absolutely sickening sites, these other worldly scenes of suffering and death, as saying into everyone's historical consciousness, we have to take a short break, stay with us. According to the US Holocaust Museum quote, the Nazis and their allies ran more than forty four thousand camps, ghettos, and other sites of detention, persecution, forced labor, and murder during the Holocaust. Daka was just the first

of the concentration camps created by Germany. They varied in size and function. Some were labor camps and others were just execution sites. These were the hellish places that people like Robert Alesh were sending Jews, resistance fighters, and those who spoke out against the Nazi Party. After receiving permission from Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo and Leone to hunt down the limping lady, Alesha knew that the address Dr Russey had given him wouldn't likely put him

in direct contact with her. Molestia had spent enough time undercover among resistance fighters to know that they all carried multiple aliases, and while he was sure that Marie was the Limping Lady, he knew that disco bring her real identity before making contact would give him an advantage. But he couldn't go back to Dr Hussey and ask him directly. Alesh once again turned to the Leone churches, adopting his

persona as a priest to find more information. Forgive me, father, for I have seen that it has been seven months since my last confession. Forgive me, father, for I have seen forgive me six weeks since my last my last confession, five months since my last confision. But this method seemed to have run its course. The resistance unit known as Heckler had dug deep into Leone, and apparently the word had gotten out not to trust the clergy with any

resistance secrets. With his secret weapon taken away, unless went back to Barbie for advice. You told me you had her Lokay, Sir, I think we should know more about her before we show up at her door. What we know about her is that she is single handedly taking us apart. Hecla is responsible for the Menvy lost at Muzak, and now you are hesitating. In July of n Virginia had successfully plotted the escape of twelve British agents and resistance fighters from a prison called Muzak in the city

of berger Rock in the southwest of France. It was an amazing operation. Over a series of a few months, Virginia brought together a number of Heckler operatives who slowly and methodically delivered to the prisoners bits of clay in tin sardine cans that could be used to make a cast of the lock of the barracks door. After successfully building a replica of the lock, a locksmith was able to build a key that was then smuggled into the

prison and allowed the prisoners to escape. After their escape, Virginia smuggled the agents out of France, through Spain and into London, all while never stepping out of the shadows. This incredible operation was deemed one of the nazis greatest embarrassments. Every moment you're standing here in front of me is another moment where that woman is transmitting our plans to the British and setting us back months. If I go to the address and misidentify her, we'll have played our

hand and all of this will be for nothing. Then they'll shows the place on sir. If she's there, you'll kill her and we won't have learned anything. We need her alive. We need her face on a poster that we can shove into the faces of the British so we can make them think we know everything about the operations. If we capture the Limping Lady, we destroy HECLA. But if we haven't confirmed exactly who she is and we just kill some woman we could be looking for the

Limping Lady forever, then go get her. We have to imagine this exchange with Barbie was frustrating. For a lesh, he would have felt like he was back at square one. He considered that if he just knew what the Limping Lady looked like beyond her limp, he could make a

positive idea with a careful interrogation. He also knew that if she had to tell as prominent as a limp, and she was the leader of Heckler, it was possible that other female agents or resistance members might pretend to have limps just to keep the Nazis guessing, but Lesh couldn't get church parishioners to talk about the resistance and confession anymore. They were either not involved or had gotten

wise dispelling secrets. His priest persona was proving ineffective, so he would have to take a more scholastic route and review reports made by the Gestapo about past encounters with Suspic's civilians. It was here that a Lash learned of an instance in which a foreign news reporter had a strange encounter with the Gestapo about a year before. Robert Delash, Yeah, you are the man who spoke to zoa porter. Yeah,

in the cache what exactly major supporters stand out? She was a woman, and she was with a man who tried other pier shaky fellow, nervous on accident. Her French was excellent, but the accident was I believe perhaps Canadian. What was her name? I don't remember. Was it Marie? No, it wasn't Marie Bridget and believe Bridget. M hm. You have written a new report that she had a limb. Yeah, that's right, and this was about a year ago before as a limping lady was known to us. Yes, Sir,

I didn't seein thing all describe her to me. Virginia was described as mid thirties, dark hair with a large, slender nose. She had thin eyebrows with a higher than normal arch, the curled sharply and thin lips. Her height was noted as five ft seven with this description and limited other options. Unless decided on his next move. After the break, he pays a visit to the address given to him by Dr Hussey. It's unclear if Robert Alesh felt any guilt for what he was doing. When Germany

first became a threat to Europe. He had originally sited against them, and record show he even considered himself part of the resistance, aligning with the French and working to hide immigrant Jews in his parish. But when the Nazis took over all of France and forty two and Alesha was arrested for his activities, he quickly switched sides and

never seemed to look back. Now he was in league with some of the top ranking Nazis stationed in France, although it seems he was not himself a designated member of the Gestapo. With his connections to the s S, he likely could have run and escaped to almost anywhere in the world, but instead Alesh chose to stay and work, maybe hoping to build an identity in this new world. The Nazis promised. He come a long way, and we haven't been able to find any evidence that he ever

planned to turn back. I wish with all my heart that everyone fighting in this war could have come with me through the bobbed wire offense that leads to the inner compound. The app following the end of the war in the world started to learn of the devastating number of people killed in the concentration camps, starting with Belson in Germany. Richard Dimbleby described what he found there in

his role as a war correspondent for the BBC. But beyond the barrier was a whirling cloud of dust, the dust of thousands of slowly moving people, laden in itself with the deadly typhus job. And with the dust was a smell, sickly and thick, the smell of death and decay, of corruption and filth. I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of a nightmare. Dead bodies, some of them in decay, lay strewn about the road and along the rutted tracks, on each side of the

road were brown wooden huts. There were faces the windows, the bony, emaciated faces of starving women too weak to come out sid An estimated six million Jewish people were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. Sometimes when we hear numbers so large, it's difficult to put them into perspective. So consider this. More Jews were murdered in concentration camps, then there are people currently living in the entire city

of Los Angeles. While the Holocaust can't give us a perfect number for all its casualties due to the Nazis destroying their records as camps were being liberated, it remains the most well documented and accurate count of genocide in

human history. I've seen many terrible sites in the last five years, but nothing, nothing approaching the dreadful interior of this hot At Belson, the dead and the dyeing lay close together as Alest approached the address give into him by dr who say he shifted into his father, a con persona. He would only get one chance with this lead, and he still wasn't sure if this Marie was in fact the limping lady. Mm hmmmm, Yes, Marie Marie, it's father. Can have you treated the cats on the roof? Yes,

but they won't take a brandy come in father. Coming up on the next episode of Good Assassins, being burned is devastating. That means your whole network could be compromised. Your number one thing is that tingly spider sense. Right, they've been banging the fourth there's made landings that all around about give on the long coat of front North

Africa and somewhere on the web coat. Whatever it is the Gestapo wants, they'll demand it in exchange from making the pain end, and then at the end they'll mainly execute the people. If you have any questions for us about Good Assassins, if you're curious about some 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 Instagram at diversion Pods. Good Assassins is a production of Diversion Audio in association with iHeart Podcasts. This season is hosted by Steven Talti and written by C. D. Carpenter, Produced and

directed by Kevin Thompson for Real Jet Packs Productions. Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial direction from Scott Waxman, Additional research and reporting by Sophie McNulty. Theme music by Tyler Cash featuring the voices of mikayla Is Caerdo, Raphael cork Kill, Lenna Klingeman, John Pierkese, Andrew polk or Lock, Cassidy Manouel Falciano, Sean Gormley, Matthew Ament, and Steve Rautman. 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 S Simply for Diversion Audio