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00:00women who are whip smart women who are beautiful killers women with ice in their veins
00:09women who risk everything to cause mayhem behind enemy lines the life expectancy given
00:20to some agents was only six weeks with a survival rate of 50 50. nothing was off limits
00:25they use bombs to destroy trains and bridges there were all three a trio of assassins
00:34or seduction to steal the enemy's most vital secrets when the guard opens the door there's
00:41baddie standing naked in the moonlight supposedly with a strand of pearls what they do will change
00:49the course of history these are the female spies of world war ii
01:05in this episode hanny shaft and the sisters truce and freddie overstergen the dutch girls who seduced
01:14and killed nazis valvoli dickinson the doll woman zeng pingru the honey trap that bit back
01:26odette sanson world war ii's most decorated woman and catherine dior the spy who inspired a legendary
01:35perfume the fateful hour of eleven has struck and britain's final warning to hitler having been
01:48ignored a state of war once more exists between great britain and germany 1939
02:05the outbreak of world war ii
02:12just 21 years after the guns fell silent at the end of the first world war in britain on what's known
02:20as the home front female roles that evolved in the great war then disappeared are quickly revived
02:28women are soon mobilizing contributing to the war effort however they can becoming aviators
02:38mechanics munitions workers truck drivers and radio operators all serving as medics close to the front
02:48line but some a brave few go further still they will risk everything to spy against hitler's nazis
03:01to work for any form of resistance in france was immensely dangerous
03:07to be caught with anything from a microfilm to a gun or just to be seen doing the wrong
03:13thing in the german eyes was enough to get you arrested interrogation and torture were sure to follow
03:24so from doing a very small act you could essentially lose your entire life
03:32for these women the couriers and radio operators their odds of survival were borderline at best
03:39betrayal the slightest slip up or just sheer bad luck and they wouldn't live to see the war's end
03:50any forward unit is going to see the most death in any war odds are pretty poor that you're coming
03:56back alive one in two of you look to your left look to your right someone's not coming home the
04:02death rate for female couriers was 42 which is the same for bomber command and for the first three years
04:07the war in particular this is considered an air war we don't have a single boot on the continent of
04:13europe bomber command is your entire fighting unit the most important people in your war in that moment
04:21are in your airplanes and 42 of them are going down she is doing exactly the same kind of dangerous work
04:30with the exact same kind of results as your most important soldiers and fighters war fighters in that
04:37moment others will make it to tell their stories they're extraordinary stories
04:57the netherlands may 1940 germany ignores dutch neutrality and invades
05:07and so begins a brutal five-year occupation
05:35DERLAND it's not a period of time
05:37amongst a half-year occupation
05:37lies back by the military light
05:41and using brutal secret police squads
05:46the nazis were confident they'd be able to terrorize
05:49the dutch people into complete submission
05:52they'd have no way of knowing that of those who'd still challenge them
05:56some of the fiercest would-be teenage girls.
06:05Hanni Schaft was 19 when Hitler sent his panzer divisions
06:08into the Netherlands.
06:20She would team up with two others,
06:22Troos Overstergen, who was 16 years old,
06:30and her even younger sister, Freddie.
06:33She was only 14.
06:39Despite their youth,
06:40the trio became formidable figures in the Dutch resistance.
06:46But by the war's end, one of them would be dead.
06:52Hanna, Freddie, and Troos, young girls,
07:02the acts of defiance are small at first.
07:05Maybe it's just stealing or trying to get extra food to people,
07:11Jewish people, who are hiding or being mistreated.
07:18And then it grows to the point where they are guns slinging,
07:21bomb-throwing demons of revenge.
07:26Yannice Johanna Schaft, or Hanni as she's known,
07:35will be the brains of the trio.
07:38Hanni Schaft had had a particularly sheltered upbringing.
07:41She was very intellectual, a very quiet kind of girl.
07:44She was training to be a human rights lawyer,
07:47and she had many Jewish friends while she was at university.
07:53She starts hearing disturbing stories
07:55about how the Jews are being brutally treated by the Nazis,
07:59and resolves to avenge them any way she can.
08:03She wanted to prove herself.
08:08She wanted to show her bravery.
08:11She wanted a dangerous role,
08:13and she really wanted to help with these acts of resistance.
08:23Hanni's resistance starts in a small way.
08:26The theft of identification cards and food vouchers
08:30to give to her Jewish friends.
08:34Truss is the more outgoing of the Oversteegans,
08:37a natural leader.
08:39Her little sister, Freddie, is quieter.
08:42Their resistance effort begins
08:43with scrawling anti-Nazi graffiti on walls.
08:47Though the three girls haven't met,
08:48they share a common bond.
08:51Hanni, Schaft, and the Oversteegans sisters
08:53were outraged at the Germans invading their country.
09:01And they were outraged
09:02at how they were treating the Jewish people.
09:04So for some resistors,
09:06this just meant hiding Jewish people in their homes.
09:09But for others, young people,
09:11idealistic people like Hanni and the Oversteegans sisters,
09:15it meant taking a gun to their enemies,
09:17and they didn't have a problem with that.
09:23These young girls, imagine this.
09:26They can just try to hide in childhood.
09:29They can just try to cling on to the past
09:32or just hope for the war to end.
09:34But they take action.
09:37Like other women spies,
09:39they are not complacent.
09:41They are not just going to sit there
09:43and watch their countries, their people overrun.
09:47They are going to fight back
09:48with everything within their power.
09:51From 1941, the Oversteegans sisters
09:53start ramping up their attacks
09:54on the occupied forces,
09:58knowing full well the terrible risks
10:00that they'll be running.
10:01They are blowing up railways
10:02to try and stop the movement
10:03of German troops or German arms.
10:06They are helping the Jews to escape,
10:08to get them out of the Netherlands
10:10or to get them away from danger.
10:12And they're even becoming involved in acts of assassination.
10:24These are kids.
10:25They are traveling by bikes.
10:27Some of these big sabotage missions,
10:29they are pedaling away on bikes as fast as they can.
10:33Just, you know, the next time you see a 14-year-old on a bike,
10:37imagine that they are fighting for their life.
10:40It is just really hard to imagine
10:43that what you would have done in these circumstances
10:46and how brave they were to undertake what they did.
10:50The Germans are ruthlessly hunting the resistance.
10:57But can't believe girls like the Oversteegans
11:02could be part of it.
11:03The girls managed to avoid capture for so long
11:09because they were so good at what they did.
11:11They kept on the move all the time
11:14and they managed to evade bringing attention to themselves.
11:18And we can't avoid the fact that they were incredibly young.
11:21You're looking at 14 and 16 for the two younger girls
11:25and their innocence.
11:26Nobody would believe that such young girls
11:28would be able to do such acts of resistance
11:31and even terrorism.
11:35In spring 1943,
11:38Hany, Truce and Freddie first meet after they joined the RVV,
11:44a communist resistance group.
11:47They are the only female members.
11:51Hany and the Oversteegans sisters at first were very different
11:55because the Oversteegans sisters were not highly educated.
11:59Hany had been a law student
12:01and they said that she had a different kind of an accent.
12:05She had sort of an educated accent
12:07as opposed to their accent,
12:09which was more blue-collar, you might say.
12:12But they became very, very close friends
12:15and they were all three a trio of assassins.
12:18And they not only shot German officers,
12:21but they also targeted Dutch collaborators.
12:25Apart from assassinations and sabotage,
12:28they perfect a deadly honey trap,
12:31using charm and the promise of sex
12:34to lure SS soldiers and officers
12:37to secluded spots where RVV gunmen are waiting to ambush them.
12:43So the young woman would meet the men in a tavern
12:47and then because these three women were so young and attractive,
12:53the Germans didn't think that they were in danger,
12:56but they would lure them into the woods to their death.
13:02The two sisters, Freddie and Truce,
13:05could really play the enemy however they wanted to.
13:10The younger sister could be the innocent child lost.
13:15I'm not doing anything.
13:17The older sister was old enough to be a lure,
13:20to be sexually provocative,
13:22to, you know, get a soldier out into the woods
13:25where you might then execute the enemy.
13:29The women never remain in one place for long.
13:45They need to stay on the move to avoid detection or betrayal.
13:50One night, soldiers and the feared Nazi intelligence agency,
13:54known as the SD,
13:56raids the Oberstergen sisters' safe house.
14:01Truce and Freddie manage to hide and escape
14:03when the coast is clear.
14:05A close call and one of many.
14:09In the desperately uncertain world,
14:11all three know they're only ever moments away
14:14from capture, torture and death.
14:19It was not a unified, organized,
14:21let's have a resistance meeting tonight.
14:23It is, you know, messages passed between individuals.
14:28This is such a precarious experience
14:31where your life is constantly on the line,
14:34to a point in which I think they all become inured to it.
14:38The girls weren't just assassins.
14:47They used their feminine wiles to entice information
14:52out of the Germans that they were talking to.
14:55They managed to get some really important information.
14:57Information about the Atlantic Wall and the defenses there,
15:01or about the various rocket sites that were being set up.
15:06So they managed to glean really important information
15:09with a little bit of flirtation.
15:17The winter of 1944 was the worst winter in Dutch history.
15:21People were hungry, they were starving.
15:24The rations quite simply weren't enough.
15:26And to add to this, it was bitterly, bitterly cold.
15:29And so the resistance started to get desperate.
15:36They made desperate attempts at assassination,
15:39at acts of resistance.
15:40But because of this cold and this hunger and this desperation,
15:44they started to make some very big mistakes.
15:50In 1944, Hanni is ordered to assassinate
15:53a Dutch police officer and Nazi collaborator.
15:57But it doesn't go to plan.
16:04One of the kill team is captured and starts to talk.
16:10Hanni Shaft is in real danger.
16:12There's now a very detailed description of her
16:15and they know exactly who they're looking for.
16:23Hanni, known as the girl with the red hair,
16:25is now one of the Nazis most wanted
16:28and her parents are thrown into a concentration camp.
16:34She dyes her hair black and goes underground.
16:38But in March 1945,
16:40two months before the Netherlands is liberated,
16:43Hanni is caught during a routine police check.
16:47The end of Hanni Shaft's story is incredibly sad.
16:51She's captured and she has incriminating information on her.
16:55She has evidence of resistance activities
16:57and she's carrying an underground newspaper.
17:00So they know that she is the person they're looking for.
17:02Also, the red roots of her hair are starting to show through.
17:06She was known as the girl with the red hair
17:08and the evidence is there for all to see.
17:11But despite brutal interrogation and torture,
17:13she never gives up the names of Truce and Freddy.
17:16Just three weeks before the end of the war,
17:2124-year-old Hanni is executed in the North Sea sand dunes
17:25that the Dutch Nazi police used as their killing ground
17:28for resistance fighters.
17:30Truce and Freddy Oberstergen both lived to the age of 92.
17:38Although asked many times,
17:41they refused to reveal how many people they killed in the war.
17:45Their reply to that question,
17:47we were soldiers and soldiers don't say.
18:01Odette Sanson,
18:03who becomes the most highly decorated spy in World War II.
18:06Frenchwoman Odette Sanson is a married mother of three
18:21living with her British husband in England when war breaks out.
18:29She is effectively single mothering.
18:32Her husband has been recruited,
18:34so she is alone with her three daughters.
18:37And Britain at this point is so isolated.
18:39It is the last democracy in Europe, right?
18:43It is this island off the coast of a continent that Hitler owns.
18:48And she frames the question in the terms of a mother.
18:53Instead of saying, well, I can't leave my three girls,
18:56she says, what happens to my three girls
18:59if Hitler gets the British Isles too?
19:01What kind of life will it be for them?
19:07She hears a radio appeal for postcards and photographs
19:10taken of the French coastline.
19:13She sends in some of her hometown, Bologna,
19:17hoping it might help the planning for D-Day.
19:19The allies are trying to put together a plan of the landing beaches
19:23from the point of view of a landing craft.
19:26And they realize if they have postcards, if they have family photo albums,
19:30they might be able to sort of stitch together a map of what the landing beaches all over France look like.
19:36So they send out a call on the BBC and they say, if you have French holiday photos, please send them to us.
19:46When she sends her photos, Odette also reveals she can speak French fluently.
19:55That gets the immediate attention of the British Special Operations Executive,
20:00the shadowy espionage organisation that was running agents in occupied Europe.
20:07With her husband away fighting for the allies, Odette sends their three children to boarding school
20:14before undergoing an intense SOE training course
20:18that will give her the sabotage and survival skills she'll need to operate in occupied France.
20:24Because she was the first class of trainees, in some ways she received the least amount of training.
20:32And it was very intense, but it was only three weeks.
20:36They fast forwarded through a lot of the training that the men got
20:40and took them straight to teaching them how to shoot, teaching them how to parachute,
20:46and teaching them how to build an identity, the security stuff.
20:50The male trainees got months and months. The female trainees got three weeks in the woods.
20:57Most of the women who left children or perhaps husband behind wanted to do their bit.
21:03They couldn't let the future of the war pan out without them even trying to help.
21:10And they were given this unique and amazing opportunity to go into enemy-occupied territory
21:15and to put up a real fight, a real visceral attempt at trying to stop Nazism
21:22in a way that they could never do if they'd remained home to be housewife and mother.
21:28So in some ways she was a terrible choice for a spy.
21:32Her recruiter even wrote on her recruitment documents something like,
21:36well, God help the Germans, if she gets her hands on them.
21:41But maybe God help us in the meantime while we have to train her.
21:45She was a large personality, probably too flamboyant even to be a good spy.
21:51She didn't blend in. She was a force of nature.
21:54In late 1942 she lands at a small Mediterranean town near Marseille and links up with Captain Peter Churchill,
22:09the leader of the local resistance network.
22:11Within a few days she is working as his courier, moving material messages between agents who are trying to coordinate arms drops,
22:26they're trying to get fallen pilots out of France, they're trying to get ration tickets to other agents,
22:32they're communicating with other networks.
22:33Couriers, liaising between resistance groups, are constantly on the move, risking capture all the time.
22:48It is lonely and dangerous work.
22:52When she goes in, they've got basically less than half of their agents are coming home alive.
22:58It is a very high risk situation that she's going into.
23:03And it gets higher risk still.
23:05There were a certain set of rules for Vichy France, a way people were operating when it was French controlled.
23:12Within a week of her arrival, the Americans and the Brits land in North Africa, Operation Torch.
23:19It's the very first landing of the Allies in Europe.
23:25And so Hitler, in retaliation, rolls in across the demarcation line and takes over Vichy France.
23:37So all the rules that were there the day she arrived were no longer there a week later.
23:43Suddenly she's in German controlled France and it's a whole new ball game.
23:46German military intelligence is swarming across the south of France.
23:56Troops and checkpoints are everywhere.
23:59Odette can feel the net is tightening around her.
24:02When the network moves to the Alps, they become much more visible to the Germans at that point.
24:08They know that arms drops are happening. There are more people connected to them.
24:13As the networks fall apart, a list of names is stolen.
24:17And it has the names of all the agents and all the contacts.
24:21And that falls into German hands.
24:25And that becomes an unraveling for many networks.
24:27And then Odette and Peter Churchill make a serious mistake.
24:35They decide to trust a German officer who claims he's secretly opposed to Hitler.
24:41They agree to a meeting and walk straight into a trap.
24:44They're taken to Paris where they're subjected to brutal torture and interrogation.
24:53But one bit of quick thinking will save them.
24:57When Peter and Odette are arrested, they get a chance to talk very briefly.
25:03And they agree that they should be a married couple.
25:06She is now going to be Odette Churchill.
25:08And that Peter Churchill is a nephew of Winston Churchill.
25:14And this is the key moment.
25:17In this moment where she has been arrested by Nazis, she is going from jail to jail.
25:22She does not have much hope for her.
25:24She knows that the consequences are, she comes up with this very romantic cover story.
25:29And it's going to save both of their lives.
25:31Odette insists she's the leader of the resistance group to protect Peter.
25:39She's tortured and starved, but does not give up names or information.
25:45Odette in particular, they ripped out her toenails trying to get the name of her radio operator over and over.
25:54And she does not give it up.
25:56She had incredible interior strength.
25:58For all of her high drama, I think that this fit a sense of herself, that she was the heroine in a novel with extraordinary stakes.
26:14She was also burned.
26:16They used a hot poker to sear her flesh.
26:19But within the world of Odette Samson, in her mind, this is part of the story.
26:28She can survive this.
26:30Because the heroine of this tale is a survivor.
26:35And that is how she gets through the war, is knowing herself as this heroine.
26:411943. The Nazis are tightening their grip on France and rounding up Jews to be sent to concentration camps.
26:52Everything in France is at fever pitch at this point.
26:57There is no free France anymore.
26:59All of France has been taken over by Germany.
27:02Hitler is also getting increasingly punitive towards France.
27:04France is the most starved country in Europe.
27:08All of French produce is going to German soldiers on the Eastern Front.
27:13There are fewer calories for the average Frenchman than anywhere else in Europe.
27:17And on top of that, there's starting to be unrest.
27:20And every time a German soldier is killed, this outrages Hitler.
27:30And so he says, I want 50 executions of innocent Frenchmen for every German death.
27:40Odette is sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp.
27:46A woman's only camp north of Berlin.
27:48She's kept in appalling conditions.
27:52In an unlit punishment cell block on a starvation diet.
27:58It is now 1944.
28:12The Allies land on the coast of Normandy.
28:16And in fierce fighting, start to drive the Germans back.
28:22In Ravensbrück, Odette doesn't know how close the war is to being won.
28:27And that she only has to hang on for a few more weeks.
28:30When the Allies are closing in on Ravensbrück, the Camp Commandant decides to trade her in exchange for his life, believing her story about being related to Winston Churchill.
28:48It allows her to still be alive on the last days of Ravensbrück.
28:55When the Commandant comes to her and he says, Madam Churchill, you're coming with me.
29:00You are my ticket out of here.
29:02We're going to the Americans and I am going to bring them, hand over Winston Churchill's niece.
29:12Odette survived the war and was reunited with her three children.
29:16Peter Churchill also made it through to see the peace.
29:21Long live the cause of freedom. God save the King.
29:29Odette divorced her husband and she and Peter were married.
29:33She testified against the camp guards and one of her chief torturers was executed.
29:38The camp commandant who traded her life for his was eventually put on trial for war crimes and executed in 1950.
29:52Odette remains the only woman to be awarded the George Cross, the highest British award for bravery outside the battlefield while still alive.
30:00Catherine Dior, the little sister of legendary clothes designer Christian Dior and a brave resistance fighter.
30:14The name Dior is now synonymous with Paris.
30:29Style, fashion, perfume.
30:35But in World War II, it was still an emerging brand in haute couture.
30:39And the woman who'd become the namesake of the famous Misty Or perfume is living a dangerous double life.
30:52Female resistance fighters could find themselves in very dangerous territory because they could easily be picked up by the Gestapo.
31:00And it wouldn't matter if you were male or female.
31:03Once you're in Gestapo hands, you would be interrogated, potentially tortured in the same way.
31:07And so it was very, very dangerous for these women to be involved.
31:12And in some ways they had more to lose in terms of maybe they had families or people who were dependent on them.
31:19And so it was a very dangerous situation for them and very brave of them to get involved with resistance activities at all.
31:25At the outbreak of war, Christian, a young artist trying to break into the fashion industry in Paris, and Catherine Dior moved to the south of France near Cannes.
31:41Here, Catherine meets Hervé de Chabonnier, an older married man.
31:47But he was involved in the resistance, and through his charm and his good looks, he managed to convince her that working in the resistance alongside him would be a very good thing for her to do.
32:00And a lot of people wanted to resist. They wanted to fight back against the Nazi regime.
32:06It was a little more than this, though. Catherine was very attracted to him, and they did eventually fall in love, as well as working the resistance together.
32:19Using the code name Carol, she joins him in the underground resistance called F2.
32:24It was a British-funded intelligence network and did some pretty drastic things. It certainly wasn't for the faint-hearted to get involved with something like this.
32:39Catherine reported on the movements of German warships and troops and the location of minefields.
32:44Within her resistance network, Catherine's incredibly important because she's gathering intelligence. She is, in every aspect of the word, a spy.
32:59She's collecting information and making sure that it's sent back to London via the wireless operator and learning wireless skills herself along the way.
33:08So she has a very active role within her resistance network.
33:111944 is a perilous year to be working with the resistance in Paris.
33:18Aided by French collaborators, the German secret police were increasingly breaking up cells.
33:29Catherine was warned she was in grave danger, but was caught before she could get to safety out of the city.
33:36After Catherine's arrest, she's taken to the Rue de la Pombe notorious interrogation centre.
33:43And there she's interrogated by a French Gestapo officer, Friedrich Berger, renowned for his interrogation techniques and the way he would extort information.
33:55So she really had found herself in the thick of it.
33:57The interrogation techniques were brutal and she really was going to suffer for the work she had done for the resistance.
34:03Catherine endured days of hideous torture, but refused to break and give up any resistance names.
34:10Talking to all his powerful and well connected friends, her brother Christian was doing everything he could to secure her release before she could be sent to a concentration camp and her almost certain death.
34:35Catherine's brother Christian Dior is in an entirely different situation.
34:42His career is soaring and he is making contacts in high society and knows people who might have influence.
34:50Some of them are top Nazi collaborators.
34:52So whilst she is languishing in a cell, Christian is up there and maybe he's going to be able to help her.
35:00Eventually, one of his contacts agrees to help Catherine, but it's too late.
35:07She is on one of the last prison trains of 1944 from Paris to Ravensbrück, the women only concentration camp where Odette Sanson was tortured.
35:19At its height, there were 132,000 inmates at Ravensbrück.
35:24In fact, the camp got so overcrowded that new inmates were put outside in a tent where they were left in all weathers under all conditions and basically abandoned.
35:35The camp was known for its brutality.
35:38Women were put onto forced labor and sent to many of the satellite camps.
35:42But it really was a place that struck terror into the heart of anyone who heard its name.
35:49Catherine is transferred to work on aeroplane engines in slave labor factories near the camp and joins in acts of sabotage.
36:01They obviously couldn't blow things up anymore, but they could just break little pieces of machinery here and there or drop bits or say something was fit for purpose when it wasn't.
36:11So they still managed these little tiny acts of resistance whilst in these camps and under these dreadful conditions.
36:18With the war in Europe in its closing stages, the Allies are rapidly advancing east towards the Ravensbrück camp.
36:33There was an air of panic about the place.
36:36Records started to be destroyed and the Germans decided they wanted to evacuate the camp.
36:43Inmates were rounded up in their rags, bare feet, whatever physical state they were in, and they were forced to leave the concentration camp.
36:53And they were marched for days on end, miles every single day.
36:58No food, no water, bare feet, rags in the freezing cold winter of 1945.
37:06Anyone who fell by the wayside was shot.
37:09Those who collapsed were left for dead.
37:12And so thousands of these women were marching across Europe out of the concentration camp.
37:19And some women did actually manage to escape from the death marches.
37:24Catherine is one of them.
37:27She breaks away from the column and hides in woodland.
37:30Then makes it safely to Dresden until it is liberated by Soviet forces.
37:37She returns to France and the family who haven't known where she was for nine months.
37:50Against all odds, Catherine has survived the war.
37:54The liberation of Paris, what a day that was.
37:57Or rather what a series of days.
37:59Her brother names a new perfume, Miss Dior, in her honour.
38:13It will become known around the world.
38:18But the horrors of Ravensbrück have left their mark.
38:23She leaves Paris to spend the rest of her years tending flowers on a rose farm.
38:28Zeng Pingru is born in China to a Japanese mother and a politically active Chinese father.
38:49While studying politics and law, she became a socialite who rose to the top of Shanghai's social circles.
39:02When she was recruited, she would have been in her late teens, early twenties,
39:07and probably didn't really realise what she was getting into.
39:11Prior to this point, she'd been at a university.
39:13She'd run drama clubs.
39:15She'd been part of magazine cover shoots.
39:18She was probably hoping to make a life as a movie star,
39:22which the Shanghai movie industry was really booming at this point.
39:26Zeng Pingru came from a family that were committed to the building of China.
39:30China had experienced decades of war prior to this point,
39:33and the government was just being formed,
39:36the nationalist government had just been formed, and Japan invaded.
39:39So there were direct threats to the stability of China.
39:48Europe's not the only place spies are risking all against occupation forces.
39:551930s Shanghai,
39:57a city with a cosmopolitan and glamorous social scene that Japan controls.
40:03And right at the heart of it, young Chinese socialite Zeng Pingru.
40:10Few would imagine she is one of the top spies the Chinese nationalist government has in the huge city.
40:20Gathering intelligence on the Japanese occupiers and local people who are collaborating with them.
40:25The language skills that Zeng Pingru had were vital to her role because the nationalists wanted her to be able to infiltrate and move within the highest levels of the Japanese community that were living in Shanghai.
40:39They also wanted her to be able to move with the Chinese community and to be that intermediary.
40:46But what she also had was that high level connection, that socialite mobility, the beauty, the talent and the intellect to move smoothly between all of these groups and to be trusted by all of them.
41:00In 1937, war breaks out between China and Japan.
41:07In 1937, war breaks out between China and Japan.
41:21Zeng Pingru uses her language skills and knowledge of the elite social scene
41:25to gather information on the Japanese military.
41:32Every nightclub outing, every whispered piece of gossip she overhears.
41:37All valuable intelligence for her Chinese spy masters.
41:40So when she was approached to become a spy, no doubt the allure of the spying world probably loomed in her mind as something that might be appealing.
41:57All sides of the war at this point were promoting the role of women in espionage.
42:01They made it appear very glamorous.
42:04They made it appear as if it was all about fabulous hats, beautiful chi-pau and lots of dancing and hanging around with glamorous men.
42:14But I don't think she really understood just how dangerous it was going to be.
42:18The people she was asked to spy upon were extremely brutal, ruthless, cunning men.
42:23Men, like Dean Mokan, the corrupt security boss of the puppet regime, governing Chinese territory occupied by Japan.
42:40He was hated for ordering the torture and execution of Chinese resistance fighters.
42:44Zhengping Gru is given a single task by her controllers, seduce Ding and set him up for an assassination.
42:58The honey trap spy was very common in the first and second world wars as a method for mobilising men's weakness and women's charms.
43:08The problem for this role is that it's often too obvious and I think this was the case with Zhengping Gru.
43:16So Ding Mokan would have been alert to the fact that she was either a double agent or an agent or a triple agent and probably didn't care.
43:25Probably thought he's in for a good time and that he would have control over her anyway.
43:30She invites him to her home after a dinner date, where two Chinese assassins are waiting.
43:39But he refuses her invitation.
43:44Next, she persuades him to go shopping for a fur coat with her, with assassins waiting outside the store, ready to pounce.
43:51They then fire off all these bullets at him, but he manages to escape in a rather daring and dashing kind of screeching of tyres down the road.
44:02She's left standing at the Siberian fur shop, having seen all of this, wondering whether her cover's been blown.
44:09Now, pretty much her cover had been blown, but Ding Mokan was not going to let her know that he knew that she was probably part of this plot.
44:21She waits a few hours and then later on in the evening rings Ding Mokan's headquarters and says,
44:27Are you OK? You know, what happened? I'm really worried about you.
44:30And he pretends that everything's fine. Yeah, it's fine. We'll see you later tonight.
44:35She's still not sure whether she's been outed or not, exposed or not.
44:39But, you know, it's a risky job. She's going to carry on acting as if everything is normal.
44:47But on her next visit to Ding Mokan's office, she's arrested.
44:50She's detained for several weeks, then driven to a forest outside Shanghai, a well-known killing ground.
45:07Zhang Ping-Ru is just 22 when she's executed.
45:12I think the role that Zhang Ping-Ru played in the war tells us that probably being a honey trap spy is not a great role
45:19to perform. Your target would not be blind to the fact that you would potentially be a honey trap spy.
45:26In the city of Shanghai at this point, everybody was, you know, struggling to survive,
45:31compromised morally in multiple ways.
45:35And the likelihood that you could be effective is, I suspect, pretty limited.
45:44Zhang Ping-Ru became entrapped in a cycle of spying,
45:48murder, assassination, exchange of information in Shanghai.
45:54And it's a web of deceit that she never could escape from.
45:57Zhang Ping-Ru
46:05Espionage can be a dark, dangerous world of mirrors and daggers.
46:11Triumph and terror.
46:14But it can also be a bizarre place, too.
46:16Valvillie Dickinson, who took money from the Japanese in return for spilling vital American military secrets.
46:32Valvillie Dickinson is one of the most interesting spy stories that I have ever come across.
46:41If you've ever heard of her, you've probably heard her referred to as the doll lady.
46:46And that is because she specialized in selling dolls.
46:52And she was a spy for the Japanese during World War II.
46:57New York City in the 1940s, a collector's doll shop on Madison Avenue, owned by a middle-aged woman named Valvillie Dickinson.
47:12Surely the least likely place to be an espionage hotspot, but it is.
47:16Dickinson was a spy who sent coded information about coastal defenses and the movements of U.S. warships to Japan via contacts in Argentina.
47:33Her shop was a perfect front from where her reports about activity in shipyards could be presented as innocuous correspondence about collectible dolls.
47:42So higher-end dolls, not, you know, not just a doll for a kid.
47:50And she would use her shipping of the dolls or letters about the dolls to share information about what she was seeing in New York in the harbors.
48:00She might say, I have a doll with a grass skirt, and this was to indicate that a battleship was in the harbor with a certain type of whippage or camouflage.
48:13So really, really intriguing.
48:14In 1942, the FBI intercepted one of her letters and realized it contained detailed information about the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet, especially ships damaged at Pearl Harbor.
48:33In another letter, Dickinson wrote,
48:41The only dolls I have are three love Irish dolls.
48:46One of these dolls is an old fisherman with a net over his back.
48:52Another is an old woman with a wood on her back.
48:55And the third is a little boy.
49:01The FBI realized Dickinson was detailing battle damaged vessels being repaired in West Coast shipyards.
49:10The old fisherman with a net was an aircraft carrier shielded by an anti-submarine net.
49:16The old woman was a wooden decked battleship.
49:21And the little boy was a destroyer.
49:24She was arrested and found in possession of a large amount of cash, some traceable to the Japanese consulate.
49:34Dickinson claims she was innocent and that it was her recently deceased husband who was the spy.
49:39But the judge refused to believe her and jailed her for 10 years.
49:47By the time she was released, World War II was long over.
49:51Hanny Schaft, Truce and Freddie Oberstegen, Catherine Dior, Odette Sanson, Zheng Pinggru and Verveli Dickinson.
50:10Teenagers, mothers, lovers, traitors, spies.
50:14It is recognized.
50:20We were signed to be Tea.
50:26Uncathed by Eric Sash.
50:29Murder,
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