LA RESISTANCE

"Mlle. Virginia Hall, a young Baltimore woman, served as a spy and saboteur in the
French underground in WW II. She received the Medal of Honor for her valorous espionage in the cause of Freedom. Her courage and enteprise inspired me to write this similar story.
She was not alone among spies. It was the cultivated, civilized people of Germany who shared the guilt of Nazi barbarism--when they knew about Hitler and were not blackedout by a controlled media, a deceived public and the philandered Lutheran and Catholic
Church, the Christian community.
Nationalistic pride had much to do with the rise of the evil Nazi regime. Although instigators of WW I, the older Germans thought that, by its terms, they had been raped by the Versailles Treaty. The younger Germans fell into line...the idealistic, nature-loving
Jungensbund. They became the SA, the secret police in a police state. Germanyâs castleated history of unelected baronial control of serfs and duchies simply added an historical fuel of acceptance to to the growing fl ames of centralized power. Hitlerâs few months in Landau
Prison for âbrownshirtâ treason garnered sympathizers and âMein Kampf.â
The people were duped into endorsing Hitlerâs election to the Reichstag--the German
Parliament--and then by his in-house appointment as Reichfuhrer, or Premier. Remember,
Germany: avenge Versailles! Once in offi ce, Hitler demanded and was granted absolute power in a legislated Mandate of Control by the blinded and thug-terrorized Reichstag. The Reichstag fi re, blamed on communists, destroyed all records of any democratic voice. Free speech and freedom of association were the fi rst to go. The âmaster raceâsâ extermination scapegoats were the Jews, âGypsies,â the handicapped and obstructionists in the regular army.
The French underground eventually involved hundreds of thousands of loyal Frenchmen,
operating from discreet and well-organized cells, listening, observing, committing acts of sabotage. Mlle. Hall was one of those, working freely but authorized on orders from London by an espionage agency established by Sir Winston Churchill. The Nazis represented another sort of aristocracy. The animating spirit of the French Revolution was not dead.
Although their Napoleonic army surrendered to the Germans in a matter of weeks, the
French peopleâs love of liberty--populist as opposed to elitist--lived on in the underground...
and in its conspirators.
(*** I worked from my few highlights of Ms. Hallâs foreign career, avoiding reference to her hunting accident in Turkey and her loss of one leg--this in order to avert undue focus on her handicap, the which, unlike Melvilleâs Captain Ahab, who lost a leg to the whale Moby
Dick and so pursues the beast out of destructive revenge, Ms. Hallâs handicap presented no causitive moral connection to her work in France. The Gestapo easily identifi ed her as âa woman who limps,â and her wooden leg made her ventures exceedingly diffi cult to execute. Her moral and physical courage, her intelligence and her actions are what give her historical stature as a freedom fi ghter.)"