Luring Nazis to their deaths might not be what you'd expect from a couple of teenage girls, but these female assassins are proof that age — and social standing — can't get in the way of doing the right thing.
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00:00Luring Nazis to their deaths might not be what you'd expect from a couple of teenage girls,
00:05but these female assassins are proof that age and social standing can't get in the way of
00:10doing the right thing. In May 1940, the German war machine stormed into Belgium,
00:15the Netherlands, France, and Luxembourg at the same time. The Netherlands had maintained a
00:19policy of neutrality for decades and were militarily unprepared to deal with such an
00:24onslaught. But piece by piece, the Dutch resisted German occupation. And in the city of Harlem,
00:29Harlem Council of Resistance found its perfect Nazi-killing assassins in the form of two teenage
00:34sisters, Freddie and Troes Overstael. The sisters joined the Dutch resistance in 1940 with their
00:40mother's approval. Freddie was 14 years old, while Troes was 16 at the time. Freddie's mother drove
00:46them around on a bicycle while they conducted drive-by shootings of German soldiers. The
00:50number is unconfirmed, but still worth noting. The sisters were responsible for hundreds of
00:55assassinations. Yeah, hundreds. It wasn't all assassinations. They did liquidations, too.
01:01In one known case, Troes lured the officer out of a restaurant with promises of a walk in the
01:06woods, while her sister, Freddie, kept watch. When everything was clear, another resistance
01:10member killed the officer. But it wasn't all fun and games. Freddie later said,
01:15"'It was tragic and very difficult and we cried about it afterwards.
01:18It never suits anybody unless they are real criminals. One loses everything.
01:22It poisons the beautiful things in life."
01:25Besides direct assassinations, they also burned down a German warehouse,
01:28sabotaged bridges and railway lines, and hid Jews and other targeted groups from Nazis.
01:33"'It was quite exceptional for young girls to be in the armed resistance."
01:38Freddie said that she coped with the war trauma by, quote,
01:41"'getting married and having babies.'" She received the Mobilization War Cross in 2014
01:46and died four years later in 2018 at the age of 92. After the war, Troes turned her attention
01:52to war-inspired arts, and also wrote a 1998 memoir, Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever. Like Freddie,
01:59she won the Dutch Mobilization War Cross in 2014. She died in 2016 at 92 years old.
02:06Hennie Schaft was the third member of the Dutch female assassin trio,
02:09along with the Overstehers sisters, and the eighth and final member of the Harlem Council
02:13of Resistance. Hennie grew up in a politically aware household and went to the University of
02:17Amsterdam in 1938 to study law. She left school after refusing to declare loyalty to Germany,
02:23after which her family moved back to Harlem and she got involved in the Dutch resistance.
02:28Known to German soldiers as the infamous Girl with the Red Hair, researchers attribute at
02:32least six attacks to her, including the death of a Nazi-collaborating baker and hairdresser.
02:37Before each kill, she fixed her hair and put on makeup. German soldiers eventually
02:41targeted her parents to flesh her out, and she dyed her hair black to try and escape.
02:46Nevertheless, she was caught, and her body was later found in a mass grave following the
02:50liberation of the Netherlands in May of 1945. Hennie has taken on legendary status in the
02:55Netherlands. In addition to having 15 streets in the country named after her, she has a memorial
03:00in Harlem and had a movie made about her in 1981, The Girl with the Red Hair.
03:05Lyudmila Pavlichenko lived a life very different from the previous women we've covered so far.
03:10She wasn't part of the underground resistance movement. Instead,
03:12she killed Nazis using a sniper's rifle in the Russian army. Referred to as Lady Death,
03:17she easily assassinated more Nazis than anyone on this list, with a combat record of 309 confirmed
03:24kills. If not for a shrapnel injury to the face in 1942 that took her out of combat at a mere
03:2925 years old, there's no telling how many more people she could have killed.
03:33Let's do a little war math. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
03:38Pavlichenko didn't start her sniper career until August of 1941.
03:42She sustained her injury in July of 1942. That's 309 confirmed kills in about 11 months.
03:49Lady Death might be the most fitting nickname ever.
03:52Believe it or not, she was one of about 2,000 female snipers in the army.
03:56Not as rare as you might expect, but she was definitely the most famous.
04:00In 1942, she even did a press tour in the U.S. with Eleanor Roosevelt. Pavlichenko died in 1974.
04:07Krystyna Skarbek was born to an affluent Polish family in 1908. In September 1939,
04:12Skarbek was on vacation with her husband in southern Africa when Germany invaded Poland.
04:17The pair instantly headed north, for her husband to join the French army and she to MI6.
04:22Skarbek was able to get across country borders by playing up her
04:25board countess persona. She'd smuggle cigarettes, even though she didn't smoke,
04:29just for kicks. She even suggested skiing across Eastern Europe to gather intelligence
04:34on German activities. Historian Claire Mulley, author of the 2012 Granville biography The Spy
04:40Who Loved, said on the BBC,
04:42"[Her great tool is her brain. She's so quick-thinking, talks her way in and talks her
04:46way out." And yes, Granville assassinated people. One of her signature weapons, a dagger and a
04:51hairbrush, is on display at the House on the Hill Museum in Stansted, Mount Fitchett, England.
04:56After the war ended, Granville wound up doing menial jobs in England.
05:00She died in a bizarre lover's spat in 1952 when a jaded lover stabbed her to death in her low-rent
05:05lodgings in Earls Court, London. Her other lasting legacy is that she was the first female MI6 agent.