¶ Intro / Opening
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🎵 Music
¶ Edith Cavell's Final Hours
At the first gray of dawn, with a heavy heart, I got into the motor car and drove out to the prison. I sent in my name to Miss Cavell. If I remember rightly, the soldier told me she had just been kneeling at her table. In the cell, a flickering gas flame was burning. Two large bouquets of wizard flowers which had been standing there for ten weeks awakened the impression of a vault. The condemned lady had packed all her little property, its greatest care, in a handbag.
I accompanied her through the long corridors of the great prison. The Belgian prison officials stood there and greeted her silently with the highest reproduction. She returned their greeting silently. And we boarded the motor car which awaited us in the yard, and I sat beside Edith Carvel, in order to accompany her to the to her own burial.
So that was the German pastor Paul Lesur, who was chaplain at the Great Prison of Saint Gilles in Brussels, and in that passage he is recalling the last hours of a British nurse called Edith Carvel who who was about to be executed by a German firing squad for war. on the twelfth of October nineteen fifteen. And if you're wondering how a British nurse can be executed by the Germans for treason, well we will be coming to that.
And Dominic, um, you think that her life and death is one of the most moving stories of the entire First World War? And you were just saying how
¶ A War Martyr's Legacy
you wish that you had had the chance to talk about it with her. Um she would be high on your list of dinner party guests. Because it is an amazing story, isn't it? It's a story of spying and resistance and of courage and treachery. And of patriotism and faith. Um and she's such a fascinating character that it would make a really brilliant film, you'd say.
That's not right, Tom. No, I was actually saying something very different about I think I like a I like a funster at a dinner party and I don't think Edith Cavill was was I don't think she was one of Lyce funsters.
But a remarkable person.
You're also a remarkable person and it is a truly remarkable story that we'll be talking about today. So as you say, it's one of the most colourful and controversial stories of the whole First World War.
And you say here that she's probably the war's single best known casualty after Franz Ferdinand.
Well, if you think about people who were killed in the First World War, especially people who were uh killed while not fighting, which is true both of Franz Ferdinand and of Edith Cavill. Um, there aren't that many who have statues. Edith Kevill does, of course, have a statue. She has a statue off Trafalgar Square, and every day, I guess
every year hundreds of thousands of people must walk past that statue. They probably barely give it a second's thought. Or they walk past the statue of her in King's Domain in Melbourne, in Australia. or they walk along one of the countless Rue Edith Cavelle in France or in Belgium, or the schools and hospitals that are named after her You know, all over the world, in Australia, New Zealand, in Canada, in the United States, uh and here in Britain.
There was a monument to her in Paris, which no longer stands for reasons that we will be coming to in due
course. Yes. So she became I think the great martyr of the First World War. Perhaps she's not as well known now as she as she used to be. But the story behind her martyrdom is uh an interesting one because it's a story, as we said, of espionage and um
¶ Belgium Under German Occupation
Secret machinations and it's a complicated story, and let's get into it. We'll start with the place where it all happens, and that is Plucky Little Belgium. So people who listened to our first series about the Great War may recall that at the beginning of the war
Belgium resisted the German demands for free passage in august nineteen fourteen, but within weeks Belgium was absolutely steamrolled. These extraordinary scenes have the kind of grey ranks, like a tide, like a kind of tide of Teutonic militarism. pouring through the streets of Brussels. A tide of Teutonic militarism. I did. But you know me, Tom. I do. I said it in a proving way.
A tidal wave of Teutonic militarism.
I love a title wave with each one of them. I love a peaked helmet. So the the Germans occupy Belgium. They executed infamously about six thousand five hundred civilians in their reprisals against suspected partisans and
uh they burned the uh medieval core of the city of uh Louvain library, which I know you were very shocked by, as somebody who loves libraries. So even before today's story begins, People in Britain and in neutral countries and the United States and so on are primed to see Belgium as a place where Teutonic barbarians in these kind of spiked helmets are carrying out
dreadful atrocities against innocent women. So already there are British posters that sort of say Remember Belgium. And the image of Belgium as a sort of maiden being violated by slavering Huns
Yeah, it's kind of a um a gorilla, isn't it, with a club holding a like almost like King Kong.
Completely.
Yeah. Holding a maiden in its arms.
Yeah, exactly. So by the end of nineteen fourteen, almost all of Belgium is under uh military occupation. It's been divided into three occupation zones, and the largest of these, which includes Brussels, is called the General Government, anticipating what's of course gonna happen to Poland in the Second World War.
And here you have a German general, and he leads a German-dominated administration. And it's actually a pretty heavy-handed occupation. So Belgium had been the world's sixth biggest economy before the war. so much for plucky little Belgium. But the Germans dismantle the Belgian economy. They basically move loads of machinery and equipment to Germany and they deport more than a hundred thousand Belgian workers to German war factories.
They even demand that the Belgians shift their time zone, so by an hour from GMT to Central European time. And for ordinary Belgians these are grim years, the years of occupation. It's maybe not like being occupied by Nazi Germany, but there's a sense of national humiliation, there's an economic collapse, there are massive food shortages.
One way that Belgians deal with this, I mean Belgium is a very Catholic country, it's how they define themselves against uh their neighbours in the Netherlands. And there's a sort of revival of Catholicism, which actually, you know, plays a part in today's story. And the other way they respond, of course, is by resistance. And we shall be coming to this exactly how the Belgians resist. But resistance is where today's heroine, Edith Cavill, comes in.
¶ Cavell's Early Life and Character
And she, I have to say, is a very, very unlikely Belgian resistance hero. So she's a Victorian, born in eighteen sixty five, in a village outside Norwich called Swardston, And her father was the uh vicar there. He was called Frederick Cavill. He was the vicar there for almost half a century.
He's like Nelson's dad.
Yes, except he's more formidable. Nelson's dad was a little bit um was mild mannered and easygoing, a bit wet, wasn't he? This bloke's not wet at all. He's a sort of terrifying Victorian with massive sideburns. I mean an indication of what kind of man her father is. When his her father was um training for the to become a parson,
He m fell in love with his housekeeper's daughter, who was called Louisa, and he wanted to marry her. But he said to her, I will only marry you when you've educated yourself to an appropriate level for a parson's wife. And depending now, y some people may say that's unromantic of him, others may applaud his high standards. I leave that to the listeners. to decide. But anyway, this bloke gets a living in Norfolk, and that's where Edith is born, where she grows up. It's obviously a
austere kind of existence. So they had servants, and one anecdote we have about the servants is that a maid once scrawled in pencil on the wall of her attic bedroom. The pay is small, the food is bad, I wonder why I don't go mad. Um, which doesn't say much. For the jollity and generosity of the Cavill family. Basically we don't really know anything about Edith when she's growing up. I mean the accounts that you you find, she liked dogs, she liked ice skating, she liked flowers.
But this is so generic this is so sort of generic, saintly Victorian child. that um I don't think you can extrapolate much from it. She's educated at home at first, then she goes to a series of boarding schools. Her big thing at boarding school apparently was French. She has a great gift for French. And at her school in Peterborough they do no fewer than ten whole minutes of French conversation every day. Unbelievable. I mean people say that the British don't bother learning foreign languages.
Yeah.
Yeah, she's tremendous linguist.
He's not learning Flemish though.
¶ Brussels Nursing Career Begins
No, she's not l exactly, no. So she works as a governess and then in eighteen ninety she is recommended for a post in Brussels where she goes off to work for the Francois family. And what is she like? Now you said at the beginning that she might be a f a fun person to talk to at a dinner party. I'm not so sure.
So the accounts that you have of her as a uh as a young woman, she's very s she's very short, I mean that's not a reason to not talk to her at a dinner party. But she's not a one of Ly's funsters and japesters. So a trainee nurse who's met her later said her voice was low, agreeable and cultured, her French fluent which she's done ten minutes a day.
Uh everything around her, the neatness of her attire, her attitude and poise, the words she used, all conveyed her characteristic efficiency, thoroughness, serenity, and kindness. They're not attributes that I look for in a conversation list, frankly, but anyway.
Anglicanism at its best.
Obviously she has this very, very sort of Christian sensibility. She wrote to her cousin Some day I'm going to do something useful, something for people. They're most of them so helpless, so hurt, and so unhappy.
You bring her alive, and I frankly However short she is, I would relish the chance to spend an evening listening to her talk about flower ranging.
I think there's I think there's just a trace in her conversation of the Grantham grocer's shop, no? Of the Grantham grammar school girl is going to lecture you about God's plans for you. Anyway. In the eighteen nineties she comes home from Brussels, and she ends up training as a nurse.
And she r rises to become the assistant matron of a hospital in Shoreditch in nineteen oh three. Now, on the issue of her as a dinner party companion, though, I didn't think this would be such a theme of the episode, but there we are. She's very good at running this um hospital. But she's not a bundle of laughs. So these are the reports of her from the late eighteen nineties and nineteen hundreds.
A very strict person who demands obedience from others. Orderly, methodical, and of kindly and gentle disposition, unbelievably unselfish, with an almost fanatical sense of duty. rather withdrawn, uninterested in superficial friendships, but thoughtful, pleasant, and sympathetic to all her patients.
¶ War Erupts: Duty Calls
Does that tick your boxes, Tom? Yeah. But anyway, in nineteen oh seven, she is recruited to go back to Belgium. Now, she'd been working, remember, as a governess for the Francois family. And they have a family friend called Doctor Antoine Dapage. How familiar are you, Tom, with the history of Belgian nursing?
I mean everyone obviously has heard of Dr. Antoine DePage. He's he's a name that trips off the tongue when discussing the history of Belgian medicine. I mean i if you want to go deeper into the weeds, then then maybe not. But Dr. Antoine DePar. I know all about him.
Doing a bonus, surely. Well, Dr. Antoine de Page, he's
He's the Belgian Royal Surgeon, isn't he? Um and he's also he's founder of the Belgian Red Cross. Um and also he was co founder of the Belgian Boy Scouts. And Dominic, here's an amazing fact about him, which of course y you will know but
Probably
Listeners who who know the outline of his life may not be aware of this. His daughter Marie died on the Lusitania. Probably everyone does know that, but just for the few who don't know anything about him, it's an interesting fact. And also, isn't it the case that he's very keen to set up Belgium's first nursing school um on the outskirts of Brussels? Uh because up until this point nursing has been largely controlled by Catholic nuns.
Yeah.
Doctor Ontwine the Park. thinks that nuns are backward and useless and so he wants to bring Edith Carville in as a matron and director. So Dominic, what about Edith? How does she come in?
Doctor DePage says to her, Come and set up this nursing school. She says, Brilliant. Can't wait. She goes over to Belgium. She goes to Brussels. She sets up Belgium's first ever professional nursing journal. Did you know that?
And she's so interesting, Dominic, isn't she, that she gets a second job as matron of the big new circular hospital at Saint Saint Gilles.
It's mad that some people say she's not interesting.
Doesn't get more interesting than that. And then in nineteen fourteen she goes back in the summer, doesn't she, to Norfolk to visit her elderly mother who's now a widow.
So that's sad, the father's dead, she goes back to Norfolk, Anna Partridge's heartland, and sh the story goes that she is weeding her mother's garden in College Road, Norwich when she hears the news of the German invasion of Belgium. So if there was a film, this is the point at which a small child kicking a ball says, Have you heard? Germany's invaded Belgium. She's like what? And her mum says to her, Don't go back, Edith. And Edith said Edith, because she's a saint, says
My duty is with my nurses. At a time like this I am more needed than ever. Now, as this might suggest, we are very dependent for all this. On incredibly treakly hagiographies that were written after her death. So whether this really happened and whether she really said this, you know, listers can draw their own conclusions. Anyway.
Otherwise would she have gone back? I I mean it that seems plausible to me.
Maybe she s wants to set up another nursing channel in Belgium, might become the matron of a third hospital, I don't know
Tidal wave of grey Prussian militarism descending on her.
Right, a tidal wave of Teutonic militarism, exactly. Anyway, by the third of August she's gone back to Brussels. She sends the German nurses that she's got home, she says you can go home. She says to the other nurses Your task is to care for any soldiers regardless of their nationality. Any wounded soldier must be treated, friend or foe. Every man is a father, husband, or son. As nurses you must take no part in the quarrel. Our work is for humanity. The profession of nursing knows no frontiers.
¶ First Acts of Resistance
So, twentieth of August, she's been back for two weeks and Brussels falls. And, you know, the German tidal wave uh tramps into the city. And Edith writes in her journal, We were divided between pity for those poor fellows far from their country and their people.
So she's talking about the Germans.
The Germans were suffering the weariness and fatigue of an arduous campaign. This is my kind of talk. And hate of a vindictive foe bringing ruin and desolation on hundreds of happy homes and to a prosperous and peaceful land. Now, by this point our training school and the sort of clinic have been converted into a Red Cross hospital, and all English nurses have now been sent home. But Edith stays on with her assistant who's called Miss Wilkins, and we're
That'd be correct in assuming that Miss Wilkins is English as well.
exactly as she is. I imagine her as having steel rimmed spectacles.
Prosnay.
So then a few weeks later comes the moment that changes her life.
Of course. This is where Doctor Depage comes back. So he's the guy who first brought her to Belgium. Yes. And he has his daughter Marie, doesn't he?
Remember what happens to Marie? What how what happened to Marie?
Oh, she ends up on the Lusitania, but before she gets on the Lusitania, she comes to see Edith and says that a friend has come to ask her um for help with two British soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Bodger and Sergeant Major Frank Meachin.
It's totally booger. No?
God, you know, all these years I've been reading about this and I thought it was Bodger.
So these two guys were both in the Chesters and they both fought in the Battle of Mongs. Remember the angels of Mong, Tom, the archers who saved the British? So they were both badly wounded in the British retreat from Mongs. They were captured and they were taken to a temporary German hospital in a nearby convent, German military hospital. Now both of them incredibly managed to escape from the Germans in the night, and they hid in a village where Belgian families took them in.
And now they need Edith's help, basically,'cause they're still injured and they need to get out of um Belgium. And she says, Yes, she will she will help them. Uh this is where Marie has come to ask her, will she do it in principle? And then on the evening of the first of November 1914, a guide brings these two blokes to um Edith's clinic, which is at Rue du Convent in uh Brussels. And Boger or Bodger as you call him.
is dressed as a factory worker and he's wearing a uh what I read is a floppy Belgian black beret. So he looks very entertaining. And he's growing a beard to disguise himself. No Briton no British soldier would ever have a beard at this point. And he's wounded So he'd been hit in the hand and the thigh and the foot, so he needs medical help. And Michin is dressed as a Belgian labourer, but he's also disguised himself as a hunchback. He's wearing like a coward he hunched.
That is always the mark of a bad actor, isn't it? Someone who just goes that little bit too far, puts on a limp, develops a hunchback.
Yeah, eye patch, surely. An eye patch. But the the rationale for this is that um you know, he's a man of fighting age. So if the Germans say to him, Why are you not in the army, he can gesture at his hunt. And that will be the reason. So Edith takes these two blokes in, she keeps them hidden in the clinic, and she personally tends to their wounds. And then, after seven days, the Belgian guide returns to collect them.
And they're going to be passed from one person to another to escort them towards the frontier with the neutral Netherlands, so Holland, from where they will be able to escape back to Britain. didn't make it. He could barely walk, unfortunately,'cause he'd been wounded in the thigh and the foot, and he was captured on the outskirts of Brussels when the Germans discovered that he was carrying a false passport. But this boat Meachin, previously disguised as a hunchback,
Has now disguised himself as a fish hawker. So a man who sells fish.
Fish fish Poisson Poisson.
It's an easy part to play, though. I mean Yeah. And I suppose if you smell very fun
Yeah, horrible.
A vi violently a fish. People won't approach you. See he got to Holland, he went home, he came back to France, and he ended up winning a medal in nineteen seventeen. So that was nice.
¶ The Croix Resistance Network
So this is the beginning of Edith Cavill's connections with the Belgian Resistance. Now, I'm I mentioned we mentioned the occupation. The Belgian resistance is not one big organized group. I mean this isn't the case with all resistance groups really. It's basically about three hundred different kind of interlocking groups that attract both men and women. They're very informal, you kinda come and go. And they do some sabotage acts, but
By and large, what the Belgian resistance largely do is they distribute underground newspapers and pamphlets and they get intelligence on what the Germans are up to, so German troop movements, and they send it across the border to the Allies. And the other thing of course they do
which these two blokes have just uh been the beneficiaries of, they smuggle Allied soldiers to safety'cause there's a lot of Allied soldiers that have been left behind enemy lines during the chaotic retreat at the end of nineteen fourteen. And so through her friend Marie de Page, the daughter of top Belgian doctor Antoine DePage, Edith is now connected to one of these resistance groups. And this is a resistance group that has very aristocratic leanings.
Because it is centred on Prince Reginald de Croix and his sister Princess Marie, and the Croix the House of Croix, a kind of bug Belgian aristocratic house. Dates back I read to medieval Burgundy.
Are they members of the Golden Fleece?
I don't think they are. The Croix family had used their chateau at Belligny, which is not that far from Mons. They turned it into a hospital for wounded Allied soldiers. And they are now using their chateau to hide Allied soldiers and to send them on to neutral Holland. So the way it works is this.
Basically, if you have a British and you've been hiding in someone's pig style or something, because you were left behind during the retreat from Moles, Belgians will take you to the chateau and introduce you to the Prince and Princess. And they will give you forged papers. I mean h how they are forging these papers I do not know, whether the prince Prince Reginald has kind of got a machine in his his hand cranking a passport machine or something.
Anyway, they'll give you your forged papers and then they'll introduce you to a series of guides to take you to the Dutch frontier. And the bloke is in charge of organizing the guides is an architect and Catholic social activist called Philippe Buk. And Boak is like a big resistance figure,'cause he also distributes two underground papers, La Libre Belgique and Le Mau du Soldat.
And there's about two hundred people in this network. They so they have safe houses and there are people who are gonna you know, I'll take you from here to here, then I'll pass you on to this person, all of this. And it's very informal. A lot of them are actually just rich posh Belgians who've got big houses so they can hide you in you know, in one of their many bedrooms or something. And there's a slight sense I think about this of
Sort of rich people having having fun, having a little bit of an adventure. Sure I shall smuggle some some British and French soldiers to safety, or
I mean, you do risk being shot, don't you, if you're found out by the Germans?
It's sort of on the one hand you risk being shot. On the other hand, th it's a bit of a lark, so their password, for example, is York, which is Y O R C which is qua backwards. Which doesn't seem to me like the it's a bit inablighton in terms of passwords.
I suppose it's the beginning of the war, so you know.
¶ Cavell's Expanding Rescue Efforts
Yeah. They're having fun. So Edith's role in this is twofold. I think one medical, so they bring soldiers to her training school in Brussels. where she looks after them. And two, the clinic itself becomes an important safe house, so a link in the chain in the Belgian capital. Now there probably also is an espionage dimension to all this. It's impossible to say with any certainty that
She's a woman of mystery.
Yeah, but probably some of the men who are coming through her clinic are carrying intelligence for the Allies. We don't know really how formalized this was, or whether this is just very informal. But anyway, in total, between November nineteen fourteen and July nineteen fifteen, Edith is thought to have helped
about sixty British and fifteen French soldiers. So these are people who've been left behind in the retreat. But she's also thought to have helped about a hundred Fren young Frenchmen or young Belgians. who want to get to Holland because they want to join the war on the Allied side. So they can't go west as it were.
So they go the long way around by going east to Holland, then to Britain, then back to France, because they're desperate to fight. And to give you just one example of the people she saved, this is on there's a there's an Edith Cavill website. And this is where I discovered this story. I recommend it to people. Just Google it. And this is a bloke called Billy Mapes, who was a private and came from a village outside Norwich.
Edith's uh neck of the water.
Woods. Yeah, this neck. The woods. He fought in the first battalion of the Norfolk Regiment. He was wounded in the British retreat. He was cut off, like these other blokes, captured by the Germans, taken to a Red Cross convent, escapes. He shelters in the home of a family called the Camus family. Like the uh l'étranger. No relation. At one point the Germans actually searched the house of this family looking for British soldiers, but they didn't find him.
The family put him in touch with this uh prince and princess de Croix. They smuggled him to Brussels. With it he's still wounded in the ankle, but he makes his way to Edith's clinic. She recognised his Norfolk accent straight away, so loads of Norfolk bants, which was great. She knew his village. She'd been to his village. So that was lovely. She nursed him back to fitness and then she organized for him to escape to the Dutch border with six other men.
Their first attempt to cross the border was a disaster. It turned out the Germans had reinforced the border with electric wires and increased patrols. Now that tells you something that the Germans are kind of on to what's happening. And we'll come back to this. But they made a second successful attempt to escape, they got across, and they got back to England. This bloke Mapes, he'd been listed by the army as missing presumed dead.
And his local vicar in his Norfolk village had offered to organise a memorial service for him, and his mother had said no, I won't give up hope. And when he walked down the street into the village, everybody started crying because they were so it was so moved to see him back from the dead. And when he was interviewed later, he had he he had a Hollywood instinct that spoke because he said that before he left
Edith Cavill made a point of kissing him on the cheek and saying to him her final words were Dear old Norfolk, I'd do anything to help a Norfolk man. Okay.
Okay, and hold on, so this he's reporting this in a local newspaper in Norfolk.
Ja, maar je is later.
Oh okay, so not at the time.
Well, we shall come to this because at the time some of the people that escape do give interviews to their local newspapers. although by and large they are quite circumspect about exactly how they got out. But we'll come back to this point'cause it's an important one. So as early as the spring of nineteen fifteen, so just within months of really starting this operation,
¶ Network Compromised by a Spy
things are starting to go wrong. And the princes de quoi is worried that the network has been compromised. Now part of this is because you mentioned giving interviews. Part of this is because of this issue about people giving interviews when they get home to the kind of, you know, I don't know, the nun Eaton bugle or something to say I hid in somebody's in a barrel in a Belgian family's place, then I went to a safe house, then a kindly nurse helped me and then I got home.
So the Germans can you know, it's not like the Germans can't reach.
Many English nurses working in Brussels.
Some of the people actually write postcards to Edith to thank her. So that boy Billy Makes gave an interview to an East Anglian newspaper. He didn't mention her, he didn't mention the nursing school, but it was kind of obvious that somebody must have helped him. And the prince, the prince de Croix, actually sent a message to the British and said, Could you please
stop this appearing in your newspapers because this is very dodgy for us if this keeps appearing. Sometime around May nineteen fifteen, Princess Marie actually goes to Brussels to see Edith and to say I'm worried that uh the Germans are gonna find out. And Edith was very alarmed and said, You shouldn't have come. Like you y you know, this is too public. And the princess said, We should think about shutting the operation down.
But then she mentioned almost casually there are thirty more men in the Combre area. And Eda said, Oh, we must save these men. If one of them were caught and shot, it would be our fault. and his name is Georges Gaston Quillon. And he says to her, I'm a French officer. When the French captured my home town, which is at Saint Comtin, I went into hiding,
and I need money and I need help to get to the Dutch border. And Edith is slightly puzzled by this story, because Kion, unlike most of the fugitives, says to her, Can I have three hundred francs? I need three hundred francs. Now, it's not clear to her why he needs this, because if he is who he says he is,
Then when he gets to Holland, he can go to the French consulate and they'll give him loads of money. But anyway, you know, she gives him the money. And the other thing that's weird is that he doesn't seem in a hurry to leave. So when she says, I've got you a guide to take you to the Dutch frontier, he says I'm not really ready yet, I'd like to wait a few days longer.
And he's kind of watching her the whole time as though he's observing everything. Anyway, after about two weeks he says, Okay, I'm ready to go now. The truth is, of course, he's learned everything he needs, and he is a spy. He is in fact not a French officer. He was a convicted criminal who was in prison when the Germans captured his hometown, Saint Comin.
He was short of money, and he basically offered his services to the Germans as an informant. And in his hometown he befriended a girl called Jean Balligon, and she was connected to the Quan network. And he sold her this story, Jeanne, about being a uh French officer and she fell for it. Incredibly she took him to the castle of the Prince and Princess, and they gave him false papers,
And then he was passed on to a school teacher, and then she took him to Brussels and she took him to Edith's clinic. So Edith has now fallen for his story as well. She helps him to get to Holland. He goes to Holland, he goes to the French consulate. They give him i yet more money. He's rolling and he's got another five hundred francs. But once he's got this money, he goes straight back across the border, all the way back to Brussels, to report to his German handlers.
And so two days later, on the thirty first of july nineteen fifteen, the Germans spring into action. First they raid the house of this architect bloke who runs the network, Philippe Burg. And they arrest him and they arrest this school teacher who'd been helping him, who was called Louise Toulier. And when they search Bogue's house, they find a list of names, and one of the names is Edith Cavill.
On the fourth of August the Germans raid the nursing school, and Edith is very calm. She's hidden her journal inside a cushion, and she's destroyed any incriminating papers. And she and Miss Wilkins manage to keep the Germans talking, while the British soldier they've gone in the clinic escapes out through the garden. The Germans go away, but the next day, the fifth of August, the Germans come back.
And this time they come into the clinic, they look around, but when they leave, they take Edith with them.
Not Miss Wilkins.
Edith is under arrest. She is charged with war treason, and war treason is a crime punishable by death.
Death. Oh my goodness. Well, let's find out what happens.
After the break.
Hello, it's Marina Hyde from the Restors Entertainment. Now Tom, it's fair to say there isn't normally a huge amount of crossover between our podcasts.
Well Marina, I know that we have um both on our respective podcasts discussed Bin Diesel's ambition to play Hannibal. So um I've always thought that perhaps there is potential here for the rest of history and the rest of his entertainment. to combine and produce something beautiful.
Yes, in a crossover nobody saw coming, the worlds of reality TV and historical high society collide live on the South Bank center stage.
Yeah, the real housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV reality show eye onto the women of the early nineteenth century. And when we say the women of the early nineteenth century, we're talking about some of the most extraordinary, most charismatic. most scandalous women in the whole of British history.
Exactly, think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen and my chaotic queen, Caroline Laugh.
Yeah, so Marina and I are planning to pull out all the stops for a reality TV tour of Regency London. complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting, a special celebrity guest from the world of the real, real housewives. Members of The Rest is History and the Rest is Entertainment can get tickets on the twenty eighth of may.
General Sale goes live on the second of June at ten a.m. Visit Southbankcenter.co.uk to find out more.
Hungry now. Now. What about now?
Yeah.
Whenever it hits you.
Wherever you are.
are grab an OH. Satisfy your hunger. Delicious combination of big
🎵 Music
Fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get a
Oh Henry!
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¶ Imprisonment and Interrogation
Hello and welcome back to the rest is history. It is August nineteen fifteen and the Germans have finally moved against the network of the Prince and Princess de Croix. um, these very posh Belgians, although Dominic is you're anxious to make clear that they're not
Uber posh. They're quite posh. I mean, they're pretty boss. Posh enough.
Um so the prince himself, he escapes to Holland, doesn't he? But his sister, the Princess de Croix, um and some of the other key figures in their network, they get rounded up. And among them, as you described just before the break, is our heroine Edith.
Yes. And so she is taken to the prison at Saint Gilles and she's held in this prison for the next ten weeks. And for much of that time, she's in solitary confinement. And she's interrogated three times on the eighth, eighteenth and twenty second of August, and she gives statements to the Germans. And there's a slight complexity here. Edith was interrogated in French, which she was very good at, remember,'cause she'd done ten minutes a day at school in Peterborough.
Uh but her answers were then translated into German. And there's a biography of her by Diana Suhami, and Diana Suhami says she thinks that the answers were slightly mistranslated to make them sound more incriminating.
So she thinks that
Though when Cavill was asked about her motivation She said that she was saving injured men from death. If I hadn't saved them, they would have been shot. But the German translation made it sound as though she was motivated by eagerness to help the Allies.
which is a slightly different thing and that's a subtle difference and that of course can mean the difference between life and death. I mean you could be motivated by both, I think, and I think she probably is, but there's an ambiguity that runs through this story. Anyway. The important thing is she doesn't make any effort to deny what she's been doing. And in fact, the figures that I quoted earlier for the number of men that she helped to smuggle to safety,
They come from her own testimony. She says to the Germans, I have helped almost 200 men, some of them soldiers, some of them civilians. And her biographers and people who've written about this case have often wondered why she was so candid. So one explanation is obviously that she's a pious, Victorian Christian, and she can't tell a lie. You know, it's not in her repertoire to be dishonest. There's also people who think she's just naive. She doesn't realise the gravity of her situation.
And then there are also people who say, Well, the Germans told her that the other suspects had already confessed and, you know, she was gullible and she fell for it. And so she thought, Well, if the others had confessed I might as well confess myself. I think there is definitely an unworldliness to her. I don't think she quite realises the severity of the situation.
Or do you think perhaps she does and she is I mean prepared to accept a form of martyrdom.
She would need to know more about her inner life to get a sense of that. I mean that's obviously a possibility that she willingly embraces martyrdom and sacrifices herself almost deliberately. That can only be suppositioned because we know so little about what's going on behind the sort of you know, behind the slightly prim nursing facade.
I mean, she's clearly an unbelievably brave woman.
Yeah, and very, very s serious and earnest. So she describes her time in prison, for example, as a solemn fast from earthly distractions. If you're the kind of person who says that about your time in the German prison, then you you're not a very I suspect you're not a very worldly person. Or
You're a you're a person who is steeped in the narratives of Christian martyrs because that's exactly how they talk, you know, in the the early martyrologies.
And I think she is. I mean she grew up in a vicarage. She knows she's a nurse. Absolutely she's part of all that.
I feel that sh she you know, she is aware of the script in a situation like this.
¶ The Court Martial and Verdict
Yeah, quite possibly. Quite possibly. I still don't think this makes her a brilliant dinner party companion. You and I may differ on this. After ten weeks in prison, she's taken out on the second of October to face the charges. Now this is not an ordinary court, it is a court martial, and it's a court martial because she's been charged with war treason under section fifty eight of the German military code.
And this reads as follows that in time of war, anyone who with the intention of aiding a hostile power or out of causing harm to German troops, anyone who commits one of a series of named crimes shall be punished with death for war treason.
So even if she's English.
even if she's English. The the code is absolutely explicit about this, that this applies to anybody in the war zone or in the occupation zone. And her specific offence is conveying troops to the enemy. Now later You see it a lot in in accounts of the trial, sort of popular accounts and things. It is described as a show trial. It absolutely was not a show trial.
So she has a defence lawyer. Uh Miss Wilkins chose a lawyer for her who they knew, and the Germans said, No, that person's not right. That's just a mate of your.
So Miss Wilkins is fine. She's she's off the hook.
Yeah, Miss Wilkins is fine. Uh but the Germans found her a replacement who was a Brussels lawyer called Sadi Kirschen, and there's no suggestion that this defence lawyer let her down or or you know was inadequate or anything like this. She doesn't deny the charges.
So this is a report by a Belgian official. In her oral statement before the court, Miss Cavill disclosed almost all the facts of the whole prosecution. She was questioned in German, an interpreter translating all the questions in French, with which language Miss Cavill was well acquainted. She spoke without trembling and showed a clear mind. Often she added some greater precision to her previous depositions.
When she was asked why she helped these soldiers to go to England, she replied that she thought that if she had not done so they would have been shot by the Germans, and that therefore she thought she only did her duty to her country in saving their lives.
But I think it's here that the issue of the translation is so damaging because the Germans say, Well hold on, are you doing this to save their lives or are you doing this to do your duty to your country? Those are two slightly different things. Are you helping your country or is this just about pure humanitarianism?
Right,'cause she's saving Belgians as well, isn't she, and getting them out to go and join the Allies.
Yes. So the military prosecutor said, but you haven't just helped injured soldiers. You have also helped young Belgians who were not in danger at all, but wanted to get out of the country to join the Allied armies. You're not saving their lives, you're actually you know, aiding and abetting them to take up arms against us, against the Germans. And because of that point, it's very hard for them actually to pardon her. I know this sounds like a massively team tuton,
Again.
The German military code, Tom, is very clear.
They're only obeying orders.
Well the penalty for her crime, right, in the code is death. And section you asked about her being foreign. I don't know how familiar you are with section one hundred and sixty of the German military code, but this explicitly says that in time of war, The penalties will apply to foreigners as well as to German nationals. Now, you might not want to take this unwelcome news from me, but surely you would take it from Sir Horace Rowland of the Foreign Office.
Because Sir Horace Rowland, as we know now from declassified files, wrote about this to his colleagues and said She's in a mess, and with nothing we can do to save her. I am afraid it is likely to go hard with Miss Cavill. I am afraid we are powerless. Now, he's right. Because you know, given the legal framework, conviction is a foregone conclusion. And a couple of days later, on the afternoon of Monday the eleventh of October, the sentences are handed down. So nine people are found guilty.
Four of them are sentenced to hard labour and Five of them as condemned to death. And the people who are condemned to death are Edith Cavill, this bloke Bauch, the architect, The school teacher Toulier who was helping him and two others.
I mean the princess gets off, doesn't she?
She gets off, exactly.
And she then pops up in the Second World War doing exactly the same thing. She's a very impressive woman.
You can't get enough of it. Toulier, the school teacher, and two of the others are given reprieves. But Philippe Book and Edith Cavill. are seen as the worst offenders. Edith, because she has confessed and made such a sort of she's made no secret about what she's done.
And she's unrepentant.
And she's unrepentant, and as a result of this, she is sentenced to death by firing squad. And the German military commander in Brussels, who has the excellent name, General Traugott von Salbertsweig
He says
¶ The Sentence and Last Moments
I want the sentence carried out straight away because otherwise there's going to be a massive hullabaloo. Like, come on, we're not going to have a massive faff and a back and forth about this. Let's just get this done. So that very night, eleventh of October, the German Lutheran chaplain of the prison, who's called Paul LeSer, who you quoted at the beginning, he comes to see Edith and he says to her, You're going to be shot at dawn.
And he describes it. For one moment her cheeks were flushed and a moist film passed over her eyes, but only for a few seconds. I offered her my services as a pastor, and I stated that I was at her disposal any hour of the day and night, but she declined it politely but definitely. And then this bloke, Le Sir, says to her
Can I not offer you some kindness? Please do not see in me now the German, but only the servant of our Lord and Saviour, who places himself entirely at your disposal. And she says Well okay, fine. Could you get word of what's happened to my mother? My mother is eighty and she's back in Norwich, and I don't want my mum to hear about this in the newspapers. And he says, I will. And actually he he says in his account, I kept my promise.
I don't know how they they must have sent a message somehow to the British
Telegram or something?
Yeah, exactly. And then he makes a pretty big offer to her, I think. He says, I know that you're, you know, very pious and you're a big Christian and I know you'll want to take communion before you die. But I know you also will find it difficult if it's coming from, and this is from his account, a German in the uniform which she doubtless hated. And he says, I know the Anglican chaplain in Brussels, who you also know, who's a guy called Reverend Sterling Gahan. and I'll bring him to your cell.
And he says her eyes lighted up and with great joy she accepted.
Everyone is behaving very well.
Exactly. And this bloke, the Reverend Sterling Garden, he arrives that later that evening. He already knew her. The German authorities said fine, you know, you can come. He finds this very, very emotional. To my astonishment and relief I found my friend perfectly calm and resigned, but this could not lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on either part. And she says to this bloke, Please tell all my friends that I willingly gave my life for my country.
I have seen death so often it's not strange or fearful to me. And there's some very famous lines which end up being on their statue. They have all been very kind to me here, but this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. And then they pray, they take communion together,
And they talk quietly until the guards tell him it's time to go. He says later, I said goodbye, and she smiled and said, We shall meet again. And then when he's gone, she writes a farewell letter to her nurses, very moving letter actually. When better days come our work will again grow and resume all its power for doing good.
I told you that devotion would bring you true happiness, and that the thought that before God you've done your duty well and with a good heart will sustain you in the hard moments of life and in the face of death. I may have been strict, but I have loved you more than you can know.
¶ Failed Attempts at Clemency
Oh, very sad. Now, overnight, while she's doing all this, there is a chance of a lifeline. And this comes from the American People who listened to the last episode will recall that despite the sinking of the Lusitania, the Americans have still not entered the war, and the Germans are keen not to antagonize them. And the US ambassador in Brussels, of course he has a US ambassador's name. He is called Brand Whitlock. As Brand Whitlock.
sends the German Governor General a note asking him for mercy, and he says her career, Miss Cavill's career as a servant of humanity, is such as to inspire the greatest sympathy and to call for pardon. And Bran Whitlock He's actually ill that evening, he can't be bothered to go himself, so he sends a delegation from the US Embassy, and indeed some Spaniards, who are also neutral, and they go to see the governor. And at the head of this is a diplomat called Hugh Gibson, American diplomat.
And he says,
We reminded him of the burning of Louvain and of the sinking of the Lusitania, and we told him this is the German governor that this murder would rank with those two affairs and would stir all civilized countries with horror and disgust.
And one day a podcast series will do them in succession.
Exactly, as we did.
And at that
One of the German officials, who's called Count Harak, interrupts and he says, Hold on, hold on. I would rather see Miss Cavill shot than see any harm come to the humblest German soldier. My only regret is that we don't have three or four more old English women to shoot.
Well they've got Miss Wilkins.
Yeah, they could shoot.
Why are they shooting Miss Wilkins?
Yeah, she's the one that got away, no? I mean the Americans were really shocked by this. So this book Gibson went back and wrote it down and said what's his terrible form from the Germans.
Is it a joke?
I think it's obviously a joke. It's German banter.
Yeah. Very Vagnarian.
It's Wagner Vancer. The Germans have been woken up at like one in the morning by this group of people who aren't even in the war. I think this bloke's just like come on, leave us alone. We're just you know we're not following orders, they're just following the German military code.
But yeah, I'm glad that's maybe very clear. Yeah.
¶ The Execution and Aftermath
So now we come to the early hours of the twelfth of October. And there were different accounts of what happened, but the most reliable is w from that Lutheran pastor, Paul Lassur. It's very evocative. And that scene that you described, so he goes to the uh Prison. She's been kneeling at her table, he's told. She's been kneeling in prayer, and he goes into the cell and she's packed up all her stuff.
and uh there's just a little sort of flame burning gas flame and she's got she's got ready. The two of them go out of the cell and they walk through the silent corridors of the prison. Uh the scene that you described at the beginning the the Belgian prison guards have all lined up to to sort of wish her well. And as Le Sir says, they greeted her silently with the highest respect. They get into a car
And then the Catholic chaplain comes out of the prison with Philippe Bouk and he gets into a car. He also behaves splendidly. Philippe Bouk, he says to all the um German censures in Dutch He says, Let us bear no grudge and they sh and then he gets into the car and they drive off. And they drive to the Tier National, which is the national shooting range, which is where the Germans usually hold their executions.
and there a company of two hundred and fifty German soldiers is lined up, waiting for them. They present arms. Edith and this bl architect Boak are led to the front, and the sentences are read out in French and German. Book cries out at this point. He says, Comrades, in the presence of death, we are all comrades. And then someone says, Pipe down, you know, stop talking. Le Seur, the Lutheran, is allowed a last word with Edith, and he so presses her hand, and he says to her in English
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you forever, Amen. And she says, Ask Mr Gahan to tell my loved ones later that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country. And then she's led to the pole, she's loosely tied to this pole. A bandage is put over her eyes, which, uh, the sir says, as the soldier who put it on told me, were full of tears. and then a few seconds passed which appeared to me like eternity.
Immediately the sharp commands were given, two salvos crashed at the same time, each of eight men at a distance of six paces, and the two condemned persons sank to the ground without a sound. Mae'n gwneud hynny'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd La Sir goes on to say My eyes were fixed exclusively on Miss Cavill, and what they now saw was terrible.
With her face streaming with blood, one shot had gone through her forehead. Miss Cavill had sunk down forwards, but three times she raised herself up without a sound with her hands stretched upwards. And he runs forward with the doctor, and the doctor says to him, Don't worry, this these are just the sort of last automatic reflexes before death. And then she does die, and La Sir said, The bullet hole's as large as a fist in the back.
Proved without any doubt that she was killed immediately. I only mention this fact because untrue rumours have been connected with it. We will come back to these rumours. So keep these rumours in your head. Then a few minutes later he says The coffins were lowered into the graves, and I prayed over Edith Cavill's grave, and I invoked the Lord's blessing over her poor corpse.
¶ Martyrdom and Propaganda Machine
Then I went home, almost sick in my soul. So this is just one death, uh or two deaths if you include the architect, against the backdrop of a war in which thousands of people are dying every month on the Western and Eastern Front. It becomes a massive story on both sides of the Atlantic, because Edith Cavill is turned immediately into a martyr, into an innocent victim of German barbarism.
So to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is very enthusiastically pouring out propaganda for the British government at this point. Everybody must feel disgusted at the barbarous actions of the German soldiery in murdering this great and glorious specimen of womanhood.
The New York Herald The official report received today will cause a wave of horror to sweep over the world at the thought of the possibility of a nation which will perpetrate such a terrible thing succeeding in this war and dominating Europe. And basically the b newspaper goes on to say, you know, the thought of the Germans winning must be complete anathema to any democratic American having read this story.
And the funny thing of course is that nobody up to this point had ever heard of Edith Covell. It's not like she's a celebrity or something. But in a way that works brilliantly because it means that she's a blank slate and people can project onto her this sort of idealized portrait of a kind of Christian womanhood.
She's a nurse. So her kind of white wheat uniform and the red cross on it and
Perfect. Exactly.
So
The British War Propaganda Bureau, which was operating to spread the word in America, takes her story and it puts it alongside the Belgian atrocities and the Lusitania in the sort of chamber of horrors of German crimes. And the newspapers, both in America and in Britain, print ever more lurid accounts of her final moments. So this is what Le Sir was talking about when he said about untrue rumours.
So there were stories that German soldiers refused to fire on her and that the officers had to do it. Or the most common story, that she'd fainted before the firing squad and that an officer stood over her with his revolver pressed against her head and basically blew her brains out. I mean, this is not true.
But it becomes y again, a a little bit like the stories that we talked about last time about German school children being given the day off to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania. It becomes a widely accepted urban legend. And you can find, you know, you can see them online. Loads of examples of posters and postcards about the execution of Edith Cavill. They always show her in a nurse's uniform, which she would not have worn at the execution, marked with a big red cross.
It does seem like the Lusitania in that you can see the um military justification for it, if that is your perspective, but it just seems insane to have done it.
Of course. Insensitive.
Well it's not just insensitive. I mean it's it's it's worse than a crime, it's a mistake.
Yeah, I think that's fine.
You know, you were shooting. A nurse. It's just mad.
Yeah, it is mad. I mean one thing they one last thing about the propaganda. Interestingly the pictures always show her as young.
Yeah, and she's what, forty nine or something?
Exactly. So they always show her as young, maidenly, beautiful, you know and the fact that she was unknown meant a C to do that.
But but also it's feeding into all those images that we were talking about earlier of the the kind of simian hum uh holding the uh the the kind of the the maiden who has fainted and is dressed in flowing white robes. I mean Tapping into all of the
¶ German Justification: A Political Blunder
that. But just on your thing about it being a mistake, Tom, there is a counter argument to that, and this is as follows. The German position at the time is this person is very, very clearly guilty. There's no question of that. And she confessed. And their argument is this. We have issued a lot of public proclamations telling people that to help enemy soldiers escape is a crime punishable by death.
She knew this. And one of the things that actually really condemned her was in court they said to her, Did you know this? Now, if she'd been sensible, she would have said, I didn't actually know that it was a crime punishable by death. Oh, because some people did say that and they got off. She said, Yeah, I knew that perfectly well, but I did it anyway. And at that point.
They were like, Oh, come on. Now the issue about her being a woman, right, this'cause this is the the main thing, the fact that she's a woman. It's not even the fact that she's a nurse, it's the fact that she's a woman. I
I think the fact that she's a nurse is is massive.
Of course I know that, but the Germans debated this internally. We know that they debated this. Should we let her off because she's a woman? And their argument was, Well, no, our legal code makes no distinction between men and women. That's not how the law works. So this is a guy
Uh Alfred Zimmerman, not the Zimmerman from the Zimmerman Telegram, but another Zimmerman, who was the undersecretary for foreign affairs, and he was briefing the press. He said it was a pity that Miss Cavill had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly.
It's undoubtedly a terrible thing that a woman has been executed, but consider what would happen to a state, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety of its armies to go unpunished because they were committed by women.
I understand that, but I still think that you have to weigh you know, if you're in the German high command, you have to weigh up, you know, which is the worst. And I think you could eat you you know, send it to prison or whatever.
I agree I mean deep down I agree with you of course
It's a deep error, I think.
It's a political mistake rather than a moral mistake, I would say.
¶ Reappraising Cavell's True Motives
And it kind of reinforces the possibility that she knew what she was doing and she was consciously martyring herself.
Yeah, quite possibly. I mean all through the twentieth century the perception of her in Britain was as a sort of saintly martyr. But actually in the last, I don't know, thirty, forty years, the perception has slightly begun to change. So in twenty fifteen, Stella Rymington, who used to run MI five, did a documentary on Radio Four. Um looking at the they went into the Belgian archives
And it looks as though some of the fugitives that she was helping were carrying information about trench systems and munitions dumps and things like this. Whether she knew about that is unclear. But there was definitely an espionage dimension to the story, which is still very murky. I mean it doesn't undermine her courage or anything like that, but perhaps it slightly strengthens the case that the Germans
you know, didn't have that much choice. And the other interesting thing I always think about it is that her you know, the th what's written on the statue, patriotism is not enough. This implies that she is a Christian heroine. whose story kind of transcends the war and the rivalry between nations. But actually her last words to Paul Lassur, I'm glad to die for my country, there's a slight tension there, I think. I don't think she would have necessarily recognized the tension herself.
Of course,'cause she would have thought that her Christian duty and her country were the same thing because, you know, God was on Britain's side. But I think there is a slight not contradiction exactly. On the one hand she says patriotism is not enough. But on the other hand, she's doing this for Britain. So which is it? You know, are you doing it for the world or for Britain?
Well I suppose she would say I love my country but
But
I have no hard feelings against the country that's going to you know, it's like like the beginning when she sees the Germans and she says, Oh, how sad that they're very tired, but equally they are invaders.
She was a tremendous cakist.
No?
¶ Post-War Honors and Memorials
I'm never unsympathetic. Anyway, what happened to her? Uh so she was buried at the prison initially under a plain uh wooden cross. But in nineteen nineteen, when the war was over, her body was brought back to Britain with great honour, and they had a memorial service at Westminster Abbey for her, attended by Queen Alexandra and lots of uh bigwigs, and then she was reinterred at Norwich Cathedral.
And in nineteen twenty, the statue, which you can see today, went up just off Trafalgar Square, with the message Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone. Very similar message on the memorial unveiled in Melbourne, Australia, six years later. And then you have all of these hospitals and schools and streets all over the world. And actually
I think there's a case that she's more famous in Belgium and even France than in Britain. So I don't know whether you followed Tom, the competition in two thousand and five, Le Plus Grand Belges, the greatest Belgians. So this was a big public vote in Belgium to decide the greatest ever Belgians in history. Did you follow this? Who won? I think it was some form of nun. Not Do you know he actually did quite well? I think we're not going to be able to do
Would you be allowed to have a skandbundian painter?
Okay, we could fall down a massive rabbit hole here. It's bizarre interesting. So they held different versions of the program in different languages.
French and Flemish.
So the bloke who won in uh the German speaking and uh Flemish speaking bits of Belgium was a guy called Father Damien. who's some form of missionary. Victorian missionary. Loads of people that I don't recognise at all.
But one of them is Edith Cavell.
Edith Cavell, she came forty eight years.
That's not bad, considering she's not Belgian.
I mean, she did well. She came ahead of uh the tennis player Kim Kleisters. She came ahead of Bruegel.
Well, I mean it's a it's it's an instance of of our insularity in Britain, isn't it? That in the Hundred Greatest Britons we didn't have a Belgian.
Uh paro no? Did we not have Uparo?
No, I don't think we did.
¶ Cavell's Enduring French Influence
So I said that she's very famous in Belgium and what about France? Well She's actually incredibly famous in France, but in an indirect way. Two months after she was shot on the nineteenth of december nineteen fifteen, a baby girl was born at the Hopital Tounon in Paris. And this girl's father was a circus performer and her mother was a cabaret singer and kind of performer as well.
And they had clearly been reading about the Edith Cavill case in the French newspapers. I mean it was a big story in France. because even though the name Edith was at that point pretty unknown in France, these two people chose it for their baby, and their baby's full name was Edith Giovanna Gasson, But Tom, we know her better by her stage name.
It is
Piaf.
Can I just mention one other instance of her celebrity in France, which I think is fascinating because it also demonstrates the consciousness that the Germans had of the damage that her story had done to Germany's reputation. Um and this relates to Hitler's visit to Paris in the wake of the fall of France in nineteen forty. You know, and he's he's a tourist, he goes to the Eiffel Tower and Napoleon's tomb and all of that.
specifically orders the destruction of two monuments, and one is to um a general who had fought against the Germans in the First World War by the name of Charles Majin, And he had occupied the Rhineland in 1918, and among the troops under his command had been Senegalese soldiers, so black soldiers. And the story was among the Germans that he had licensed these soldiers to rape German women and had said that basically German women weren't good enough for his black soldiers.
And the statue to him in Paris showed him with a kind of a guard of honour formed up of of Senegalese soldiers. So you could see why Hitler would want that destroyed, because it's sele it's a French statue celebrating um French aggression, as Hitler would see it, against Germany, you know, occupying the Rhineland.
Um, there's the sense of the injustice of Versailles, that he's there as as you know, in the wake of the armistice. And also Hitler is obviously obsessed by the whole notion of miscegenation. So he he's an obvious baddie, and so Hitler Julie orders it to be destroyed and it's blown up. And the other statue that he orders destroyed is of Edith Carval. And clearly. Her story is as offensive to him as the war record of this French general.
And it's a kind of amazing demonstration of how haunted by this story in the wake of the First World War even Nazis were. They wanted to erase all memory of it.
So interesting. So interesting. Well, anyway, if you want to go and um commune with her spirit, you can go to the statue in uh London or indeed in Melbourne, I suppose, or go to one of the streets named after her. Or I suppose indirectly you could listen to a song by Edith Piaf. But next week we will be going east. We will be turning our attention to the Ottoman Empire, to the Straits of Constantinople, and to one of the greatest military disasters of modern history.
And this is a story with a really tremendous cast. So you've got Winston Churchill, you've got Clement Attlee, you've got Mustafa Kemel Ataturk and we welcome onto the show thousands upon thousands of Australians and New Zealanders. Because Great to have the Anzacs, as people no doubt said at the time, uh in the streets of Istanbul, because this is the story, the long awaited story of the Allied attempt to seize Gallipoli.
Thank you, Dominic. Um and listeners to the Rest of History Club, of course, can hear both of them right now. And to hear them and to get the full range of benefits that come with this sensational offer of membership. Go to the rest is history dot com. Thank you, Dominic. Over what everyone. See ya soon.
Au revoir.
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