Female Intelligence : Women and Espionage in the First World War

by Proctor, Tammy M.

• ISBN13: 9780814766934
• ISBN10: 0814766935
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-06-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe Cnockaert's home was burned and her family separated. After getting a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without trepidation, Cnockaert embarked on a career as a spy, providing information and engaging in sabotage before her capture and imprisonment in 1916. After the war, she was paid and decorated by a grateful British government for her service.Cnockaert's is only one of the surprising and gripping stories that compriseFemale Intelligence. This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history, existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet.Using personal accounts, letters, official documents and newspaper reports,Female Intelligenceinterrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.

Author Biography

Tammy M. Proctor is Associate Professor of History at Wittenberg University.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
List of Illustrations	xi
List of Abbreviations	xiii
Timeline	xv
Introduction	1	(6)
1 Intelligence before the Great War	7	(22)
2 DORA's Women and the Enemy within Britain	29	(24)
3 Women behind the Scenes	53	(22)
4 Soldiers without Uniforms	75	(24)
5 Spies Who Knew How to Die	99	(24)
6 Intimate Traffic with the Enemy	123	(22)
Conclusion: "Perpetual Concubinage to Your King and Country"	145	(6)
Notes	151	(32)
Bibliography	183	(16)
Index	199	(6)
About the Author	205