Stiletto Spies: 10 Female Spies Who Changed the Course of History

By Jennifer Warner

In Hollywood, the world of the spying is a glamorous male driven world full of gadgets and fast cars. But real life isn't Hollywood. It takes more than a bit of charm and whiskey to steal secrets...it takes skill. And skill is often a task left up to a woman!

The ten female spies profiled in this book, are largely forgotten in history books; they risked their lives for their country and the honor of serving their country was their only reward...and for them that was reward enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Jun 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310088810

Book preview

About HistoryCaps

HistoryCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a brief period of history is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to science and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly (www.bookcaps.com) to see our newest books.

Introduction

In Hollywood, the world of spying is a glamorous, male-driven world full of gadgets and fast cars. But real life isn't Hollywood. It takes more than a bit of charm and whiskey to steal secrets; it takes skill. And skill is often a task left up to a woman!

The ten female spies profiled in this book, are largely forgotten in history books; they risked their lives for their country and the honor of serving their country was their only reward…and for them that was reward enough.

Stephanie von Hohenlohe

Every little girl wants to grow up to be a princess, but not every girl sees that dream come true – and sometimes, when it does come true, that princess also happens to be a Nazi spy. Stephanie von Hohenlohe, born Stephany Richter, rose from humble beginnings to marry an Austrian prince, but she’s no Grace Kelly. From her femme fatale beauty to her aristocratic connections, this insidious princess gives tiara-wearers everywhere a bad name.

Birth and Origins

Let’s get the salacious details out of the way right off the bat: yes, this Nazi spy was Jewish. Her mother, a Czechoslovakian Jew, may or may not have had an affair with a Jewish moneylender while her Austrian husband was in prison; in any case, a Jewish mother is generally enough to get you into the club. (No, she wasn’t a practicing Jew as an adult, but that hardly wins her back a lot of points in the Maybe You’re a Completely Horrible Person After All Olympics.)

While the young Stephany described herself as a mediocre pupil with top marks in some classes and failing grades in other, she did seem to be very proud of her looks as a young woman – a trait that would carry with her through the rest of her life, along with her confidence, which got her a spot in the Vienna Court Opera’s ballet school long before it was turning the heads of Austrian royalty. (Princess and ballerina? There’s another little girl’s dream being awarded to the worst possible candidate.) One subject she did excel in at school was foreign language, and she even studied abroad in the United Kingdom to polish up her English. If you’re wondering why the Brits were so welcoming of a dangerously alluring young German speaker with a knack for the local lingo and a keen set of eyes, keep in mind that Europe hadn’t gotten around to World War I yet – the English were too busy disliking the French to get too worried about anyone who sprechened zie Deutsch. (We can probably believe Stephanie about travelling to the UK to further her education, too, since the Nazis weren’t around yet to sympathize with.)

As a young woman in her twenties, Stephanie had figured out what she wanted in life: 1.) the finer things, and 2.) a title. By the time she was 22, she was conducting an affair with the Prince of Tuscany, Franz Salvator (who was already married to someone who, by the way, would not grow up to be a Nazi spy). She probably wouldn’t have been taking the Pill even if it had been invented then, but before long, Stephanie was knocked up with M Not content to have one royal fish on the hook, she hooked up with Austrian prince Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst and convinced him the baby was his. (If you try to say that name out loud ten times in a row, we can’t be held responsible for any medical problems you incur.) A royal wedding followed soon after, and, as often happens in the case where a guy marries a girl because he’s trying to do the right thing only to discover that’s she’s a charming, conniving snake, they divorced six years later. Stephanie would continue to use the title of ‘Princess’ for the rest of her life, because ‘Princess’ is a more appealing thing to call yourself than ‘Single Mom’.

Even after she and the Prince separated, Stephanie was still able to use her political acumen and skill at the craps table to insert herself into the inner circle of the English newspaperman and monarchist, Lord Rothermere. The pair of inveterate, cigar-smoking gamblers became fast friends – many people found it hard not to be charmed by the articulate, boisterous, political princess. Brains, beauty, big bucks, and a British buddy who controlled the broadsheets, and whose ear she could bend on subject of Bolshevik-bashing – what was an ex-princess with everything going for her supposed to do with herself in all that spare time?

Rise of the Nazi Party

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a horrible little group called the National Socialists started winning German elections in a serious way, led by the man who ruined pencil mustaches for everyone else. By what was no doubt the purest of random happenstances, Stephanie von Hohenlohe’s best buddy Lord Rothermere began to churn out some epically pro-Hitler propaganda in his newspapers – stuff that would put grocery store tabloids to shame. Despite having his nose so far up Hitler’s bum, Rothermere had never actually met the man. But he was friends with Stephanie, and really, Austria’s a pretty small country – they probably all knew each other, didn’t they? He sent Stephanie with a cushy