Pod Insights The Rest Is History 674. The First World War: The Spy Who Took on the Germans (Part 4) About this episode Why did the British nurse, Edith Cavell, become a key player in the Belgian Resistance to German occupation? How did she carry out her mission? And, why was she ultimately executed, so controversially?
Join Dominic and Tom as they unfold the life of the remarkable Edith Cavell, her time as a nurse, her espionage, and ultimately her tragic fate, amidst the death and destruction of the First World War.
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Transcript 12,412 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:58 Tom Holland? At the first grave dawn with a heavy heart, I got into the motorcar and drove out to the prison. I sent in my name to Miss Carvel. If I remember rightly, the soldier told me she had just been kneeling at her table. In the cell, a flickering gas flame was burning. Two large bouquets of visit flowers, which had been standing there for 10 weeks, awakened the impression of a vault.
3:26 Tom Holland? The condemned lady had packed all her little property with greatest care in a handbag.
3:34 Tom Holland? I accompanied her through the long corridors of the great prison. The Belgian prison official stood there and greeted her silently with the highest respect.
3:46 Tom Holland? She returned their greeting silently. And we boarded the motorcar, which awaited us in the yard. And I sat beside Edith Cavell in order to accompany her to her own burial. So that was the German pastor Paul Le Sere, who was chaplain at the great prison of Saint Gilles in Brussels. And in that passage, he is recalling the last hours of a British nurse called Edith Cavell.
4:16 Tom Holland? Who was about to be executed by a German firing squad for war treason on the 12th of October 1915. And if you're wondering how a British nurse can be executed by the Germans for treason, well, we will be coming to that. And Dominic, you think that her life and death is one of the most moving stories of the entire First World War. And you were just saying how you wish that you would have the chance to talk about it with her. She would be high on your list of dinner party guests, because it is an amazing story, isn't it? It's a story of spying and resistance and of courage and treachery and of patriotism and faith. And she's such a fascinating character that it would make a really brilliant film, you'd say.
5:00 Dominic Sandbrook? That's not right, Tom. No, I was actually saying something very different about. I think I like I like a funster at a dinner party. And I don't think Edith Cavell was was I don't think she was one of life's funsters.
5:13 Tom Holland? But a remarkable person.
5:14 Dominic Sandbrook? She was a remarkable person. It is a truly remarkable story that we'll be talking about today. So as you say, it's one of the most colourful and controversial stories of the whole First World War.
5:23 Tom Holland? And you say here that she's probably the war's single best known casualty after Franz Ferdinand.
5:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, if you think about people who were killed in the First World War, especially people who were killed while not fighting, which is true, both of Franz Ferdinand and of Edith Cavell, there aren't that many who have statues. Edith Cavell does, of course, have a statue. She has a statue of Trafalgar Square. And every day, I guess, every year, hundreds of thousands of people must walk past that statue. They probably barely give it a second's thought. Or they walk past the statue of her in King's Domain in Melbourne in Australia. Or they walk along one of the countless Rue Edith Cavell in France or in Belgium, or the schools and hospitals that are named after her.
6:08 Dominic Sandbrook? You know, all over the world, in Australia, New Zealand, in Canada, in the United States, and here in Britain.
6:13 Tom Holland? And there was a monument to her in Paris, which no longer stands for reasons that we will be coming to in due course.
6:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, so she became, I think, the great martyr of the First World War. Perhaps she's not as well known now as she as she used to be. But the story behind her martyrdom is an interesting one because it's a story, as we said, of espionage and secret machinations. And it's a complicated story, and let's get into it. We'll start with the place where it all happens, and that is plucky little Belgium. So people who listened to our first series about the Great War may recall that at the beginning of the war, Belgium resisted the German demands for free passage in August 1914. But within weeks, Belgium was absolutely steamrolled. These extraordinary scenes of the kind of grey ranks, like a tide, like a kind of tide
7:03 Dominic Sandbrook? of Teutonic militarism pouring through the streets of Brussels.
7:08 Tom Holland? Did you really just say that?
7:09 Dominic Sandbrook? A tide of Teutonic militarism. I did, but you know me, Tom.
7:12 Tom Holland? I do.
7:12 Dominic Sandbrook? I said it in a proving way.
7:14 Tom Holland? A tidal wave of Teutonic militarism.
7:16 Dominic Sandbrook? I love a tidal wave of Teutonic, I love a peaked helmet. So the the Germans occupied Belgium. They executed infamously about 6,500 civilians in their reprisals against suspected partisans. And they burned the medieval core of the city of Louvain. A library, which I know you were very shocked by, as somebody who loves libraries. So even before today's story begins, people in Britain, and in neutral countries, and the United States and so on, are primed to see Belgium as a place where Teutonic barbarians in these kind of spiked helmets are carrying out dreadful atrocities against innocent women. So already there are British posters that sort of say, remember Belgium.
7:59 Dominic Sandbrook? And the image of Belgium as a sort of maiden being violated by slavering Huns.
8:05 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's kind of a gorilla, isn't it, with a club holding a, like, almost like King Kong.
8:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Completely, yeah.
8:12 Tom Holland? Holding a maiden in its arms.
8:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. So by the end of 1914, almost all of Belgium is under military occupation. It's been divided into three occupation zones, and the largest of these, which includes Brussels, is called the General Government, anticipating what's going to happen to Poland in the Second World War. And here you have a German general, and he leads a German-dominated administration. And it's actually a pretty heavy-handed occupation. So Belgium had been the world's sixth biggest economy before the war. So much for plucky little Belgium. But the Germans dismantled the Belgian economy. They basically moved loads of machinery and equipment to Germany, and they deport more than 100,000 Belgian workers to German war factories. They even demand that the Belgians shift their time zone,
8:56 Dominic Sandbrook? say by an hour, from GMT to Central European time. And for ordinary Belgians, these are grim years, the years of occupation. It's maybe not like being occupied by Nazi Germany, but there's a sense of national humiliation. There's an economic collapse. There are massive food shortages. One way that Belgians deal with this, and Belgium is a very Catholic country. It's how they define themselves against their neighbours in the Netherlands. And there's a sort of revival of Catholicism, which actually plays a part in today's story. And the other way they respond, of course, is by resistance. And we shall be coming to this, exactly how the Belgians resist. But resistance is where today's heroine Edith Cavell comes in.
9:41 Dominic Sandbrook? And she, I have to say, is a very, very unlikely Belgian resistance hero. So she's a Victorian, born in 1865 in a village outside Norwich called Swardiston. And her father was the vicar there. He was called Frederick Cavell. He was the vicar there for almost half a century.
9:59 Tom Holland? He was like Nelson's dad.
10:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, except he's more formidable. Nelson's dad was a little bit, was mild-mannered and easygoing, a bit wet, wasn't he? This bloke's not wet at all. He's a sort of terrifying Victorian with massive sideburns. I mean, an indication of what kind of man her father is. When her father was training to become a parson.
10:21 Dominic Sandbrook? He fell in love with his housekeeper's daughter, who was called Louise, and he wanted to marry her. But he said to her, I will only marry you when you've educated yourself to an appropriate level for a parson's wife. And depending, you know, some people may say that's unromantic of him. Others may applaud his high standards. I leave that to the listeners to decide. But anyway, this bloke gets a living in Norfolk, and that's where Edith is born, where she grows up. It's obviously a austere kind of existence. So they had servants. And one anecdote we have about the servants is that a maid once scrawled in pencil on the wall of her attic bedroom, the pay is small, the food is bad,
11:01 Dominic Sandbrook? I wonder why I don't go mad. Which doesn't say much. For the jollity and generosity of the Cavell family. Basically, we don't really know anything about Edith when she's growing up. I mean, the accounts that you you find, she liked dogs, she liked ice skating, she liked flowers. But this is so generic. This is so sort of generic, saintly Victorian child, that I don't think you can extrapolate much from it. She's educated at home at first, then she goes to a series of boarding schools. Her big thing at boarding school apparently was French. She has a great gift for French. And at her school in Peterborough, they do no fewer than 10 whole minutes of French conversation every day.
11:39 Tom Holland? Unbelievable.
11:40 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, people say that the British don't bother learning foreign languages.
11:43 Tom Holland? Total fluency.
11:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, she's tremendous linguist.
11:47 Tom Holland? She's not learning Flemish, though.
11:49 Dominic Sandbrook? No, she's not. Exactly, no. So she works as a governess. And then in 1890, she is recommended for a post in Brussels, where she goes off to work for the François family. And what is she like? Now, you said at the beginning that she might be a fun person to talk to at a dinner party. I'm not so sure. So the accounts that you have of her as a as a young woman, she's very, she's very short. I mean, that's not a reason not to talk to her at a dinner party. But she's not one of life's funsters and japesters. So a trainee nurse who's met her later said, her voice was low, agreeable and cultured, her French fluent, which she's done 10 minutes a day, everything around her, the neatness of her attire, her attitude and poise, the words she used, all conveyed her characteristic efficiency, thoroughness, serenity and kindness.
12:34 Dominic Sandbrook? They're not attributes that I look for in a conversationalist, frankly, but anyway.
12:37 Tom Holland? Anachronism at its best.
12:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Obviously, she has this very, very sort of Christian sensibility. She wrote to her cousin, someday I'm going to do something useful, something for people. They're most of them so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy.
12:51 Tom Holland? I mean, you bring her alive, you bring her alive, and I frankly, however short she is, I would relish the chance to spend an evening listening to her talk about flower arranging.
13:02 Dominic Sandbrook? I think there's, I think there's just a trace in her conversation of the Grantham grocery shop, no? Of the Grantham grammar school girl who's going to lecture you about God's plans for you. Anyway, in the 1890s, she comes home from Brussels and she ends up training as a nurse. And she rises to become the assistant matron of a hospital in Shoreditch in 1903. Now, on the issue of her as a dinner party companion, I mean, I didn't think this would be such a theme of the episode, but there we are. She's very good at running this hospital, but she's not a bundle of laughs. So these are the reports of her from the late 1890s and 1900s.
13:40 Dominic Sandbrook? A very strict person who demands obedience from others. Orderly, methodical and of kindly and gentle disposition. Unbelievably unselfish with an almost fanatical sense of duty. Rather withdrawn, uninterested in superficial friendships, but thoughtful, pleasant and sympathetic to all her patients. Does that tick your boxes, Tom?
14:01 Tom Holland? Yeah.
14:01 Dominic Sandbrook? But anyway, in 1907, she is recruited to go back to Belgium. Now, she'd been working, remember, as a governess for the Francois family. And they have a family friend called Dr. Antoine Depage. How familiar are you, Tom, with the history of Belgian nursing?
14:15 Tom Holland? Pretty familiar. I mean, everyone obviously has heard of Dr. Antoine Depage. He's, he's a name that trips off the tongue when discussing the history of Belgian nursing. I mean, if you want to go deeper into the weeds, then yeah, then maybe not. But Dr. Antoine Depage, I, I know all about him.
14:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Doing a bonus, surely. Well, Dr. Antoine Depard.
14:39 Tom Holland? He's the Belgian royal surgeon, isn't he? And he's also, he's founder of the Belgian Red Cross. And also, he was co-founder of the Belgian Boy Scouts. And Dominic, here's an amazing fact about him, which of course you will know, but probably listeners who know the outline of his life may not be aware of this. His daughter Marie died on the Lusitania. Probably everyone does know that, but just for the few who don't know anything about him. It's an interesting fact. And also, isn't it the case that he's very keen to set up Belgium's first nursing school on the outskirts of Brussels? Because up until this point, nursing has been largely controlled by Catholic nuns.
15:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
15:18 Tom Holland? Dr. Antoine Depard thinks that nuns are backward and useless. And so he wants to bring Edith Cavell in as a matron and director. So Dominic, what about Edith? How does she come in?
15:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Dr. Depard says to her, come and set up this nursing school. She says, brilliant, can't wait. She goes over to Belgium. She goes to Brussels. She sets up Belgium's first ever professional nursing journal. Did you know that?
15:40 Tom Holland? And she's so interesting, Dominic, isn't she? That she gets the second job as matron of the big new secular hospital at St. Sanger.
15:47 Dominic Sandbrook? It's mad that some people say she's not interesting.
15:49 Tom Holland? Doesn't get more interesting than that. And then in 1914, she goes back in the summer, doesn't she, to Norfolk to visit her elderly mother, who's now a widow.
15:55 Dominic Sandbrook? So that's sad. The father's dead. She goes back to Norfolk. Alan Partridge's Heartland. And the story goes that she is weeding her mother's garden in College Road, Norwich, when she hears the news of the German invasion of Belgium. So if there was a film, this is the point at which a small child kicking a ball says, have you heard? Germany's invaded Belgium. She's like, what? And her mum says to her, don't go back, Edith. And Edith, because she's a saint, says, my duty is with my nurses. At a time like this, I am more needed than ever. Now, as this might suggest, we are very dependent for all this. On incredibly treacly hagiographies that were written after her death.
16:38 Dominic Sandbrook? So whether this really happened and whether she really said this, you know, listeners can draw their own conclusions. Anyway.
16:43 Tom Holland? But why otherwise would she have gone back? I, I mean, it, that seems plausible to me.
16:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Maybe she wants to set up another nursing journal in Belgium, might become the matron of a third hospital. I don't know.
16:52 Tom Holland? Not with a tidal wave of grey Prussian militarism descending on her.
16:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, a tidal wave of Teutonic militarism, exactly. Anyway, by the third of August, she's gone back to Brussels. She sends the German nurses that she's got home. She says, you can go home. She says to the other nurses, your task is to care for any soldiers regardless of their nationality. Any wounded soldier must be treated, friend or foe. Every man is a father, husband or son. As nurses, you must take no part in the quarrel. Our work is for humanity. The profession of nursing has no frontiers. So 20th of August, she's been back for two weeks and Brussels falls. And, you know, the German tidal wave tramps into the city. And Edith writes in her journal, we were divided between pity for those poor fellows far from their country and their people.
17:41 Tom Holland? So she's talking about the Germans there.
17:42 Dominic Sandbrook? She's talking about the Germans suffering the weariness and fatigue of an arduous campaign. This is my kind of talk. And hate of a vindictive foe bringing ruin and desolation on hundreds of happy homes and to a prosperous and peaceful land. Now, by this point, her training school and the sort of clinic have been converted into a Red Cross hospital. And all English nurses have now been sent home. But Edith stays on with her assistant, who's called Miss Wilkins.
18:07 Tom Holland? And would I be correct in assuming that Miss Wilkins is English as well?
18:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly, she is. I imagine her as having steel-rimmed spectacles.
18:14 Tom Holland? Prost, nee.
18:15 Dominic Sandbrook? So then, a few weeks later, comes the moment that changes her life.
18:19 Tom Holland? Yeah, of course. This is where Dr. De Parge comes back. So he's the guy who first brought her to Belgium.
18:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
18:24 Tom Holland? And he has his daughter Marie, doesn't he?
18:26 Dominic Sandbrook? And remember what happens to Marie? What happened to Marie?
18:28 Tom Holland? Oh, she ends up on the Lusitania, but before she gets on the Lusitania, she comes to see Edith and says that a friend has come to ask her um, for help with two British soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Bodger and Sergeant Major Frank Meachin.
18:43 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it's Dudley. Boger, no?
18:45 Tom Holland? Oh god, you know, all these years I've been reading about this and I thought it was Bodger.
18:48 Dominic Sandbrook? So these two guys were both in the Cheshire's and they both fought in the Battle of Mons. Remember the Angels of Mons, Tom, the archers who saved the British? So they were both badly wounded in the British retreat from Mons. They were captured and they were taken to a temporary German hospital in a nearby convent, German military hospital. Now, both of them incredibly managed to escape from the Germans in the night. And they're hidden in a village where Belgian families took them in. And now they need Edith's help, basically, because they're still injured and they need to get out of Belgium. And she says, yes, she will, she will help them. This is where Marie has come to ask her, will she do it in principle?
19:28 Dominic Sandbrook? And then on the evening of the first of November, nineteen fourteen, a guide brings these two blokes to Edith's clinic, which is at Rue du Convent in Brussels. And Boger, or Bodger, as you call him, is dressed as a factory worker. And he's wearing what I read is a floppy Belgian black beret. So he looks very entertaining and he's grown a beard to disguise himself. No Britain, no British soldier would ever have a beard at this point. And he's wounded, so he'd been hit in the hand and the thigh and the foot. So he needs medical help. And Mechin is dressed as a Belgian labourer, but he's also disguised himself as
20:07 Dominic Sandbrook? as a hunchback. He's wearing like a comedy hunch.
20:10 Tom Holland? That is always the mark of a bad actor, isn't it? Someone who just goes out a little bit too far, puts on a limp, develops a hunchback.
20:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, eye patch, surely.
20:20 Tom Holland? An eye patch.
20:21 Dominic Sandbrook? But the rationale for this is that, you know, he's a man of fighting age. So if the Germans say to him, why are you not in the army? He can gesture at his hunch and that will be the reason. So Edith takes these two blokes in. She keeps them hidden in the clinic and she personally tends to their wounds. And then after seven days, the Belgian guide returns to collect them. And they're going to be passed from one person to another to escort them towards the frontier with the neutral Netherlands. So Holland, from where they will be able to escape back to Britain. Now Colonel Boja or Bodger didn't make it. He could barely walk unfortunately because he'd been wounded in the thigh and the foot. And he was captured on the outskirts of Brussels when the Germans discovered that he was carrying
21:06 Dominic Sandbrook? a false passport. But this boat Mechin, previously disguised as a hunchback, has now disguised himself as a fish hawk. So a man who sells fish, fish, poisson, poisson.
21:21 Dominic Sandbrook? It's an easy part to play, no? I mean, yeah. And I suppose if you smell very
21:26 Tom Holland? Yeah, horrible.
21:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Violently a fish, people won't approach you. So he got to Holland, he went home, he came back to France and he ended up winning a medal in 1917. So that was nice. So this is the beginning of Edith Cavell's connections with the Belgian Resistance. Now, I mentioned, we mentioned the occupation. The Belgian Resistance is not one big organised group. I mean, this isn't the case with all resistance groups really. It's basically about 300 different kind of interlocking groups that attract both men and women. They're very informal, you kind of come and go. And they do some sabotage acts, but by and large, what the Belgian Resistance largely do is they distribute underground newspapers and pamphlets and they get intelligence on what the Germans are up to.
22:09 Dominic Sandbrook? So German troop movements and they send it across the border to the Allies. And the other thing, of course, they do, which these two blokes have just been the beneficiaries of, they smuggle Allied soldiers to safety because there's a lot of Allied soldiers that have been left behind enemy lines during the chaotic retreat at the end of 1914. And so through her friend Marie de Paj, the daughter of top Belgian Dr Antoine de Paj, Edith is now connected to one of these resistance groups. And this is a resistance group that has very aristocratic leanings because it is centred on Prince Reginald de Qua and his sister Princesse Marie and the Qua, the House of Qua,
22:52 Dominic Sandbrook? a kind of a Belgian aristocratic house, dates back, I read, to medieval Burgundy.
22:58 Tom Holland? Are they members of the Golden Fleece?
23:00 Dominic Sandbrook? I don't think they are.
23:01 Tom Holland? Okay, so they're not that posh.
23:02 Dominic Sandbrook? They're not that posh, but quite posh. And during the fighting at the Battle of Monts. The Quat family had used their chateau at Beligny, which is not that far from Mons. They turned it into a hospital for wounded Allied soldiers. And they're now using their chateau to hide Allied soldiers and to send them on to neutral Holland. So the way it works is this, basically, if you have a British and you've been hiding in someone's pigsty or something because you were left behind during the retreat from Mons. Belgians will take you to the chateau and introduce you to the prince and princess. And they will give you forged papers. I mean, how they are forging these papers, I do not know.
23:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Whether the prince, Prince Reginald has kind of got a machine in his, his hand cranking a passport machine or something. Anyway, they'll give you your forged papers and then they'll introduce you to a series of guides to take you to the Dutch frontier. And the bloke is in charge of organising the guides is an architect and Catholic social activist called Philippe Bouk. And Bouk is like a big resistance figure because he also distributes two hundred grand papers, La Libre Belgique and Le Maux du Soldat. And there's about 200 people in this network. They say they have safe houses and there are people who are gonna, you know, I'll take you from here to here, then I'll pass you on to this person, all of this. And it's very informal. A lot of them are actually just rich, posh Belgians who've got big houses so they can hide
24:29 Dominic Sandbrook? you in, you know, in one of their many bedrooms or something. And there's a slight sense, I think, about this of sort of rich people having, having fun, having a little bit of an adventure. Sure, I shall smuggle some, some British and French soldiers to safety, all of this.
24:42 Tom Holland? But, I mean, you do risk being shot, don't you, if you're found out by the Germans?
24:46 Dominic Sandbrook? It's sort of, on the one hand, you risk being shot. On the other hand, it's a bit of a lark. So their password, for example, is York, which is Y O R C, which is Quat backwards, which doesn't seem to me like the, it's a bit Enid Blyton in terms of passwords.
25:02 Tom Holland? I suppose it's the beginning of the war, so, you know.
25:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, they're having fun. So Edith's role in this is twofold, I think. One, medical, so they bring soldiers to a training school in Brussels where she looks after them. And two, the clinic itself becomes an important safe house, so a link in the chain in the Belgian capital. Now, there probably also is an espionage dimension to all this. It's impossible to say with any certainty.
25:27 Tom Holland? She's a woman, a mystery.
25:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but probably some of the men who are coming through her clinic are carrying intelligence for the Allies. We don't know really how formalized this was, or whether this is just very informal. But anyway, in total, between November 1914 and July 1915, Edith is thought to have helped about 60 British and 15 French soldiers. So these are people who've been left behind in the retreat. But she's also thought to have helped about 100 young Frenchmen or young Belgians who want to get to Holland because they want to join the war on the Allied side. So they can't go west, as it were. So they go the long way round by going east to Holland, then to Britain, then back to France because
26:11 Dominic Sandbrook? they're desperate to fight. And to give you just one example of the people she saved, this is on, there's a, there's an Edith Cavell website. And this is where I discovered this story. I recommend it to people. Just Google it. And this is a bloke called Billy Mapes, who was a private and came from a village outside Norwich.
26:26 Tom Holland? So Edith's neck of the woods.
26:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it is neck of the woods. He fought in the first battalion of the Norfolk Regiment. He was wounded in the British retreat. He was cut off, like these other blokes, captured by the Germans, taken to a Red Cross convent, escapes. He shelters in the home of a family called the Camus family, like the l'étranger.
26:45 Tom Holland? No relation.
26:46 Dominic Sandbrook? No relation. At one point, the Germans actually searched the house of this family, looking for British soldiers, but they didn't find him. The family put him in touch with this Prince and Princess de Qua. They smuggled him to Brussels. With it, he's still wounded in the ankle, but he makes his way to Edith's clinic. She recognized his Norfolk accent straight away. So loads of Norfolk bants, which was great. She knew his village. She'd been to his village. That was lovely. She nursed him back to fitness and then she organized for him to escape to the Dutch border with six other men. Their first attempt to cross the border was a disaster. It turned out the Germans had reinforced the border with electric wires and increased patrols. Now, that tells you something that the Germans
27:29 Dominic Sandbrook? are kind of on to what's happening. And we'll come back to this. But they made a second successful attempt to escape. They got across and they got back to England. This bloke Mapes, he'd been listed by the army as missing presumed dead. And his local vicar in his Norfolk village had offered to organise a memorial service for him. And his mother had said, no, I won't give up hope. And when he walked down the street into the village, everybody started crying because they were so, it was so moved to see him back from the dead. And when he was interviewed later, he had, he, he had a Hollywood instinct, this bloke. Because he said that before he left, Edith Cavell made a point of kissing him on the cheek
28:09 Dominic Sandbrook? and saying to him, her final words were, dear old Norfolk, I'd do anything to help a Norfolk man.
28:15 Tom Holland? Okay, and hold on, so this, he's reporting this in a local newspaper in Norfolk?
28:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but years later.
28:21 Tom Holland? Oh, okay, so not at the time.
28:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, we should come to this because at the time, some of the people that escaped do give interviews to their local newspapers. Although by and large, they are quite circumspect about exactly how they got out. But we'll come back to this point because it's an important one. So as early as the spring of 1915, so just within months of really starting this operation, things are starting to go wrong. And the Princesse de Qua is worried that the network has been compromised. Now, part of this is because, you mentioned giving interviews. Part of this is because of this issue about people giving interviews when they get home to the kind of, you know, I don't know, the nun Eton bugle or something to say. I hid in somebody's in a barrel in a Belgian family's place.
29:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Then I went to a safe house, then a kindly nurse helped me and then I got home. So the Germans can, you know, it's not like the Germans can't read.
29:13 Tom Holland? There aren't many English nurses working in Brussels.
29:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Some of the people actually write postcards to Edith to thank her. So that bloke Billy Mapes gave an interview to an East Anglian newspaper. He didn't mention her, he didn't mention the nursing school, but it was kind of obvious that somebody must have helped him. And the prince, the prince de Quinze, actually sent a message to the British and said, could you please stop this appearing in your newspapers? Because this is very dodgy for us if this keeps appearing. Sometime around May 1915, Princess Marie actually goes to Brussels to see Edith and to say, I'm worried that the Germans are going to find out. And Edith was very alarmed and said, you shouldn't have come. Like, you know, this is too public. And the princess said, we should think about shutting the operation down. But then she mentioned almost
29:59 Dominic Sandbrook? casually, there are thirty more men in the Combray area. And Edith said, oh, we must save these men. If one of them were caught and shot, it would be our fault. And then one day, not long after that, a new fugitive arrives at her clinic. And his name is Georges Gaston Chion. And he says to her, I'm a French officer. When the French captured my hometown, which is Saint-Comtein, I went into hiding. And I need money and I need help to get to the Dutch border. And Edith is slightly puzzled by this story. Because Chion, unlike most of the fugitives, says to her, can I have three hundred francs? I need three hundred francs. Now, it's not clear to her why he needs this, because
30:40 Dominic Sandbrook? if he is who he says he is, then when he gets to Holland, he can go to the French consulate and they'll give him loads of money. But anyway, you know, she gives him the money. And the other thing that's weird is that he doesn't seem in a hurry to leave. So when she says, I've got you a guide to take you to the Dutch front there, he says, I'm not really ready yet. I'd like to wait a few days longer. And he's kind of watching her the whole time, as though he's observing everything. Anyway, after about two weeks, he says, okay, I'm ready to go now. The truth is, of course, he's learned everything he needs. And he is a spy. He is, in fact, not a French officer. He was a convicted criminal who was in prison when the Germans captured his hometown, Saint-Comtein. He was short of money, and he basically offered his services to the Germans as an informant.
31:25 Dominic Sandbrook? And in his hometown, he befriended a girl called Jeanne Baligot, and she was connected to the Quinze network. And he sold her this story, Jeanne, about being a French officer, and she fell for it. Incredibly, she took him to the castle of the Prince and Princess, and they gave him false papers, and then he was passed on to a schoolteacher, and then she took him to Brussels, and she took him to Edith's clinic. So Edith has now fallen for his story as well. She helps him to get to Holland. He goes to Holland, he goes to the French consulate, they give him, he gets more money, he's rolling it, he's got another 500 francs. But once he's got this money, he goes straight back across the border, all the way back to Brussels, to report to his
32:06 Dominic Sandbrook? German handlers. And so two days later, on the 31st of July, 1915, the Germans spring into action. First, they raid the house of this architect bloke who runs the network, Philippe Bouc, and they arrest him, and they arrest this schoolteacher who'd been helping him, who was called Louise Tullier. And when they search Bouc's house, they find a list of names, and one of the names is Edith Cavell. On the 4th of August, the Germans raid the nursing school, and Edith is very calm. She's hidden her journal inside a cushion, and she's destroyed any incriminating papers, and she and Miss Wilkins manage to keep the Germans talking, while the British soldier they've gone in the clinic escapes out through the garden. The Germans
32:49 Dominic Sandbrook? go away, but the next day, the 5th of August, the Germans come back. And this time, they come into the clinic, they look around, but when they leave, they take Edith with them.
32:59 Tom Holland? Not Miss Wilkins?
33:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Not Miss Wilkins. Edith is under arrest. She is charged with war treason, and war treason is a crime punishable by death.
33:10 Tom Holland? Oh my goodness. Well, let's find out what happens after the break.
33:17 Speaker 03 Hello, it's Marina Hyde from The Rest is Entertainment. Now, Tom, it's fair to say there isn't normally a huge amount of crossover between our podcasts.
33:24 Tom Holland? Well, Marina, I know that we have both on our respective podcasts discussed Vin Diesel's ambition to play Hannibal. So I've always thought that perhaps there is potential here for The Rest is History and The Rest is Entertainment to combine and produce something beautiful.
33:40 Speaker 03 Yes, in a crossover nobody saw coming, the worlds of reality TV and historical high society collide, live on the South South Bank Centre stage.
33:49 Tom Holland? Yeah, the Real Housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV reality show eye onto the women of the early 19th century. And when we say the women of the early 19th century, we are talking about some of the most extraordinary, most charismatic, most scandalous women in the whole of British history.
34:10 Speaker 03 Exactly. Think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen and my chaotic queen Caroline Lamb.
34:15 Tom Holland? Yeah, so Marina and I are planning to pull out all the stops for a reality TV tour of Regency London, complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting a special celebrity guest from the world of the real Real Housewives.
34:35 Speaker 03 The Rest Is Fest is running from the 4th to 6th of September at London's South Bank Centre.
34:39 Tom Holland? Members of The Rest Is History and The Rest Is Entertainment can get tickets on the 28th of May.
34:46 Speaker 03 General sale goes live on the 2nd of June at 10am. Visit southbankcentre.co.uk to find out more.
34:53 Speaker 02 From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theatres this Thanksgiving.
35:12 Speaker 04 Streaming October 30th on Paramount Plus.
35:15 Speaker 05 I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this.
35:23 Speaker 04 He's back.
35:24 Speaker 05 I'm older. I'm wiser.
35:28 Speaker 04 And sharper than ever.
35:29 Speaker 05 Things are going to get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.
35:37 Speaker 04 Dexter Resurrection, new season October 30th on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.
35:47 Tom Holland? Hello and welcome back to The Rest Is History. It is August 1915 and the Germans have finally moved against the network of the Prince and Princess de Croix, these very posh Belgians, although Dominic is anxious to make clear that they're not uber posh.
36:04 Dominic Sandbrook? They're quite posh. I mean, they're pretty posh.
36:06 Tom Holland? Yeah, posh enough. So the prince himself, he escapes to Holland, doesn't he? But his sister, the Princess de Croix, and some of the other key figures in their network, they get rounded up. And among them, as you described just before the break, is our heroine Edith.
36:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes. And so she is taken to the prison at Saint-Gilles, and she's held in this prison for the next 10 weeks. And for much of that time, she's in solitary confinement. And she's interrogated three times on the 8th, 18th, and 22nd of August. And she gives statements to the Germans. And there's a slight complexity here. Edith was interrogated in French, which she was very good at, remember, because she'd done 10 minutes a day at school in Peterborough. But her answers were then translated into German. And there's a biography of her by Diana Suhaemi. And Diana Suhaemi says, she thinks that the answers were slightly mistranslated
37:01 Dominic Sandbrook? to make them sound more incriminating. So she thinks that when Cavell was asked about her motivation, she said that she was saving injured men from death. If I hadn't saved them, they would have been shot. But the German translation made it sound as though she was motivated by eagerness to help the Allies, which is a slightly different thing. And that's a subtle difference. And that, of course, can mean the difference between life and death. I mean, he could be motivated by both, I think. And I think she probably is. But there's an ambiguity that runs through this story. Anyway. The important thing is she doesn't make any effort to deny what she's been doing. And in fact, the figures that I quoted earlier for the number of men that she helped to smuggle to safety,
37:45 Dominic Sandbrook? they come from her own testimony. She says to the Germans, I've helped almost 200 men, some of them soldiers, some of them civilians. And her biographers and people who have written about this case have often wondered why she was so candid. So one explanation is obviously that she's a pious Victorian Christian and she can't tell a lie. You know, it's not in her repertoire to be dishonest. There's also people who think she's just naive. She doesn't realise the gravity of her situation. And then there are also people who say, well, the Germans told her that the other suspects had already confessed. And, you know, she was gullible and she fell for it. And so she thought, well, if the others have confessed, I might as well confess myself.
38:29 Dominic Sandbrook? I think there is definitely an unworldliness to her. I don't think she quite realises the severity of the situation.
38:35 Tom Holland? Or do you think perhaps she does and she is, I mean, prepared to accept a form of martyrdom?
38:42 Dominic Sandbrook? We would need to know more about her inner life to get a sense of that. I mean, that's obviously a possibility, that she willingly embraces martyrdom and sacrifices herself almost deliberately. But that can only be supposition because we know so little about what's going on behind the sort of, you know, behind the slightly prim nursing facade.
39:02 Tom Holland? I mean, she's clearly an unbelievably brave woman.
39:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and very, very serious and earnest. So she describes her time in prison, for example, as a solemn fast from earthly distractions. If you're the kind of person who says that about your time in the German prison, then you're not a very, I suspect you're not a very worldly person.
39:22 Tom Holland? Or you're a, you're a person who is steeped in the narratives of Christian martyrs. Because that's exactly how they talk, you know, in the, the early martyrologies.
39:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course, and I think she is. Oh, she grew up in a vicarage. She, she's a nurse. Absolutely. She's part of all that.
39:36 Tom Holland? I feel that she, you know, she is aware of the script in a situation like this.
39:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, quite possibly, quite possibly. I still don't think this makes her a brilliant dinner party. Companion. You and I may differ on this. After 10 weeks in prison, she's taken out on the 2nd of October to face the charges. Now, this is not an ordinary court, it is a court martial. And it's a court martial because she's been charged with war treason under section 58 of the German Military Code. And this reads as follows, that in time of war, anyone who with the intention of aiding a hostile power or out of causing harm to German troops, anyone who commits one of a series of named crimes shall be punished with death for war treason.
40:16 Tom Holland? So even if she's English?
40:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Even if she's English. The, the code is absolutely explicit about this, that this applies to anybody in the war zone or in the occupation zone. And her specific offence is conveying troops to the enemy. Now, later, you see it a lot in, in accounts of the trial, sort of popular accounts and things, it is described as a show trial. It absolutely was not a show trial. So she has a defence lawyer. And Miss Wilkins chose a lawyer for her who they knew, and the Germans said, no, that person's not right, that's just a mate of yours.
40:49 Tom Holland? So Miss Wilkins is fine, she's, she's off the hook.
40:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, Miss Wilkins is fine. Uh, but the Germans found her a replacement who was a Brussels lawyer called Sadi Kirshen. And there's no suggestion that this defence lawyer let her down or, or, you know, was inadequate or anything like this.
41:03 Tom Holland? Well, it's tricky, isn't it? Because she's confessed everything.
41:05 Dominic Sandbrook? She doesn't deny the charges. So this is a report by a Belgian official. In her oral statement before the court, Miss Cavell disclosed almost all the facts of the whole prosecution. She was questioned in German, an interpreter translating all the questions in French, with which language Miss Cavell was well acquainted. She spoke without trembling and showed a clear mind. Often, she added some greater precision to her previous depositions. When she was asked why she helped these soldiers to go to England, she replied that she thought that if she had not done so, they would have been shot by the Germans, and that therefore she thought she only did her duty to her country in saving their lives. But I think it's here that the issue of the translation is so damaging. Because the Germans say, well, hold on, are you doing this to save their lives?
41:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Or are you doing this to do your duty to your country? Those are two slightly different things. Are you helping your country? Or is this just about pure humanitarianism?
41:58 Tom Holland? Right, because she's saving Belgians as well, isn't she? And getting them out to go and join the Allies.
42:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, so the military prosecutor said, but you haven't just helped injured soldiers. You have also helped young Belgians who were not in danger at all, but wanted to get out of the country to join the Allied armies. You're not saving their lives. You're actually, you know, aiding and abetting them to take up arms against us, against the Germans. And because of that point, it's very hard for them actually to pardon her. I know this sounds like I'm massively team cute on.
42:32 Tom Holland? Again.
42:33 Dominic Sandbrook? The German military code, Tom, is very clear. I don't know how familiar you are with that.
42:37 Tom Holland? They're only, they're only obeying orders.
42:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, the penalty for her crime, right? In the code is death. And section, you asked about her being foreign. I don't know how familiar you are with section 160 of the German military code. But this explicitly says that in time of war, the penalties will apply to foreigners as well as to German nationals. Now, you might not want to take this unwelcome news from me, but surely you would take it from Sir Horace Rowland of the Foreign Office. Because Sir Horace Rowland, as we know now from the classified files, wrote about this to his colleagues and said, she's in a mess and with nothing we can do to save her. I am afraid it is likely to go hard with Miss Cavell. I'm afraid we are powerless.
43:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, he's right, because, you know, given the legal framework, conviction is a foregone conclusion. And a couple of days later, on the afternoon of Monday, the 11th of October, the sentences are handed down. So nine people are found guilty. Four of them are sentenced to hard labour, five of them as condemned to death. And the people who are condemned to death are Edith Cavell, this bloke Bauke, the architect, the schoolteacher, Tullier, who was helping him, and two other people.
43:50 Tom Holland? I mean, the princess gets off, doesn't she?
43:51 Dominic Sandbrook? She gets off, exactly.
43:53 Tom Holland? And she then pops up in the Second World War doing exactly the same thing. She's a very impressive woman.
43:57 Dominic Sandbrook? You can't get enough of it. Tullier, the schoolteacher, and two of the others are given reprieves. But Philippe Bouk and Edith Cavell are seen as the worst offenders. Edith, because she has confessed and made such a sort of, she's made no secret about what she's done.
44:13 Tom Holland? And she's unrepentant.
44:14 Dominic Sandbrook? And she's unrepentant. And as a result of this, she is sentenced to death by firing squad. And the German military commander in Brussels, who has the excellent name, General Traugott von Sauberzweig, he says, I want the sentence carried out straight away because otherwise there's going to be a massive hullabaloo. Like, come on, we're not going to have a massive faff and a back and forth about this. Let's just get this done. And so that very night, 11th of October, the German Lutheran chaplain of the prison, who's called Paul La Sire, who you quoted at the beginning, he comes to see Edith and he says to her, you're going to be shot at dawn. And he describes it, for one moment, her cheeks were flushed and a moist film passed over her eyes, but only for a few seconds.
45:00 Dominic Sandbrook? I offered her my services as a pastor and I stated that I was at her disposal any hour of the day and night, but she declined it politely, but definitely. And then this bloke, La Sire, says to her, can I not offer you some kindness? Please do not see in me now the German, but only the servant of our Lord and Savior, who places himself entirely at your disposal. And she says, well, okay, fine. Could you get word of what's happened to my mother? My mother is 80 and she's back in Norwich and I don't want my mum to hear about this in the newspapers. And he says, I will. And actually, he, he says in his account, I kept my promise. I don't know how they, they must have sent a message somehow to the British.
45:39 Tom Holland? Telegram or something?
45:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. And then he makes a pretty big offer to her, I think. He says, I know that you're. You're, you know, very pious and you're a big Christian. And I know you'll want to take communion before you die. But I know you also will find it difficult, if it's coming from, and this is from his account, a German in the uniform which she doubtless hated. And he says, I know the Anglican chaplain in Brussels, who you also know, who's a guy called Reverend Sterling Gahan, and I'll bring him to your cell. And he says, her eyes lighted up and with great joy she accepted.
46:14 Tom Holland? I mean, I've got to say, everyone is behaving very well.
46:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And this bloke, the Reverend Sterling Gahan, he arrives that later that evening. He already knew her. The German authorities said, fine, you know, you can come. He finds this very, very emotional. To my astonishment and relief, I found my friend perfectly calm and resigned. But this could not lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on either part. And she says to this bloke, please tell all my friends that I willingly gave my life for my country. I've seen death so often, it's not strange or fearful to me. And then some very famous lines, which end up being on their statue. They have all been very kind to me here, but this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
46:59 Dominic Sandbrook? And then they pray, they take communion together. And they talk quietly until the guards tell him it's time to go. He says later, I said goodbye and she smiled and said, we shall meet again.
47:12 Dominic Sandbrook? And then when he's gone, she writes a farewell letter to her nurses, very moving letter, actually. When better days come, our work will again grow and resume all its power for doing good. I told you that devotion would bring you true happiness and that the thought that before God, you've done your duty well and with a good heart will sustain you in the hard moments of life and in the face of death. I may have been strict, but I have loved you more than you can know. Oh, very sad. Now overnight, while she's doing all this, there is a chance of a lifeline. And this comes from the Americans. People who listened to the last episode will recall that despite the sinking of the Lusitania, the Americans have still not entered the war and the Germans are keen not to antagonise them.
47:56 Dominic Sandbrook? And the US ambassador in Brussels, of course, he has a US ambassador's name. He is called Brand Whitlock. And Brand Whitlock sends the German governor general a note asking him for mercy. And he says, her career, Miss Cavell's career as a servant of humanity is such as to inspire the greatest sympathy and to call for pardon. And Brand Whitlock is actually ill that evening. He can't be bothered to go himself. So he sends a delegation from the US embassy and indeed some Spaniards who are also neutral. And they go to see the governor. And at the head of this is a diplomat called Hugh Gibson, American diplomat. And he says, we reminded him of the burning of Louvain and of the sinking of the Lusitania.
48:39 Dominic Sandbrook? And we told him, this is the German governor, that this murder would rank with those two affairs and would stir all civilized countries with horror and disgust.
48:48 Tom Holland? And one day a podcast series will do them in succession.
48:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly as we did. And at that, one of the German officials who's called Count Herrak interrupts and he says, hold on, hold on. I would rather see Miss Cavell shot than see any harm come to the humblest German soldier. My only regret is that we don't have three or four more old English women to shoot.
49:14 Tom Holland? Well, they've got Miss Wilkins.
49:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, they could shoot.
49:16 Tom Holland? Why aren't they shooting Miss Wilkins?
49:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, she's the one that got away, no?
49:20 Tom Holland? She is.
49:21 Dominic Sandbrook? The Americans were really shocked by this. So this bloke Gibson went back and wrote it down and said, this is terrible form from the Germans.
49:27 Tom Holland? Is it a joke?
49:27 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it's obviously a joke. It's German banter.
49:31 Tom Holland? Very Wagnerian quip.
49:32 Dominic Sandbrook? It's Wagnerian banter. Plus, the Germans have been woken up at like one in the morning by this group of people who aren't even in the war. I think this bloke's just like, come on, leave us alone. We're just, you know, we're not following orders. They're just following the German military code.
49:48 Tom Holland? Yeah, I'm glad that's very, very clear.
49:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. So now we come to the early hours of the 12th of October. And there were different accounts to what happened, but the most reliable is from that Lutheran pastor, Paul the Ser, is very evocative. And that scene that you described, so he goes to the prison, she's been kneeling at her table, he's told, she's been kneeling in prayer and he goes into the cell. And she's packed up all her stuff and there's just a little sort of flame, burning gas flame and she's got, she's got ready. The two of them go out of the cell and they walk through the silent corridors of the prison, the scene that you described at the beginning. The Belgian prison guards have all lined up to sort of wish her well. And as Le Sire says, they greeted her silently with the highest respect. They get into a
50:33 Dominic Sandbrook? car and then the Catholic chaplain comes out of the prison with Philippe Bouc. He gets into a car. He also behaves splendidly. Philippe Bouc, he says to all the German sentries in Dutch, he says, let us bear no grudge. And then he gets into the car and they drive off and they drive to the Tien Nationale, which is the National Shooting Range, which is where the Germans usually hold their executions. And there, a company of 250 German soldiers is lined up, waiting for them. They present arms. Edith and this architect Bouc are led to the front and the sentences are read out in French and German. Bouc cries out at this point. He says, comrades, in the presence of death, we are all comrades.
51:14 Dominic Sandbrook? And then someone says, pipe down, you know, stop talking. Le Sire, the Lutheran, is allowed a last word with Edith and he sort of presses her hand and he says to her in English, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you forever. Amen. And she says, ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later that my soul, as I believe, is safe and that I'm glad to die for my country. And then she's led to the pole. She's loosely tied to this pole. A bandage is put over her eyes, which the sir says, as the soldier who put it on told me, were full of tears. And then a few seconds passed, which appeared to me like eternity. Immediately, the sharp
51:56 Dominic Sandbrook? commands were given. Two salvos crashed at the same time, each of eight men at a distance of six paces, and the two condemned persons sank to the ground without a sound. Now that makes it sound as though it's all very clean and very clinical, but actually that's not the case. The sir goes on to say, "My eyes were fixed exclusively on Miss Cavell, and what they now saw was terrible. With a face streaming with blood, one shot had gone through her forehead. Miss Cavell had sunk down forwards, but three times she raised herself up without a sound with her hands stretched upwards. And he runs forward with the doctor, and the doctor says to him, 'Don't worry, these are just the sort of last automatic reflexes before death.'" And then she does die, and the sir said, "The
52:41 Dominic Sandbrook? bullet holes as large as a fist in the back proved without any doubt that she was killed immediately. I only mention this fact because untrue rumours have been connected with it. We will come back to these rumours, so keep these rumours in your heads." Then, a few minutes later, he says, "The coffins were lowered into the graves, and I prayed over Edith Cavell's grave, and I invoked the Lord's blessing over her poor corpse. Then I went home, almost sick in my soul." So this is just one death, or two deaths if you include the architect, against the backdrop of a war in which thousands of people are dying every month on the western and eastern fronts. But it becomes a massive story on both sides of the Atlantic, because
53:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Edith Cavell is turned immediately into a martyr, into an innocent victim of German barbarism. So to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is very enthusiastically pouring out propaganda for the British government at this point, "Everybody must feel disgusted at the barbarous actions of the German soldiery in murdering this great and glorious specimen of womanhood." The New York Herald, "The official report received today will cause a wave of horror to sweep over the world at the thought of the possibility of a nation which will perpetrate such a terrible thing succeeding in this war and dominating Europe." And basically, the newspaper goes on to say, you know, "The thought of the Germans winning must be complete anathema to any democratic American, having read this story."
54:09 Dominic Sandbrook? And the funny thing, of course, is that nobody up to this point had ever heard of Edith Cavell. It's not like she's a celebrity or something, but in a way that works brilliantly because it means that she's a blank slate. And people can project onto her this sort of idealized portrait of a kind of Christian womanhood.
54:24 Tom Holland? She's a nurse, so her kind of white wheat uniform and the red cross on it and perfect.
54:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So the British War Propaganda Bureau, which was operating to spread the word in America, takes her story and it puts it alongside the Belgian atrocities and the Lusitania in the sort of chamber of horrors of German crimes. And the newspapers, both in America and in Britain, print ever more lurid accounts of her final moments. So this is what LeSueur was talking about when he said about untrue rumours. So there were stories that German soldiers refused to fire on her, although the officers had to do it. Or the most common story, that she'd fainted before the firing squad. And then an officer stood over her with his revolver pressed against her head and basically blew her brains out.
55:15 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, this is not true, but it becomes, again, a little bit like the stories that we talked about last time, about German schoolchildren being given the day off to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania. It becomes a widely accepted urban legend. And you can find, you know, you can see them online, loads of examples of posters and postcards about the execution of Edith Cavell. They always show her in a nurse's uniform, which she would not have worn at the execution, marked with a big red cross.
55:43 Tom Holland? It does seem like the Lusitania in that you can see the military justification for it, if that is your perspective. But it just seems insane to have done it.
55:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course, insensitive.
55:55 Tom Holland? Well, it's not just insensitive. I mean, it's, it's, it's worse than a crime. It's a mistake.
55:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I think that's fair.
56:00 Tom Holland? You know, you were shooting. A nurse, it's just mad.
56:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's mad. I mean, one thing, one last thing about the propaganda. Interestingly, the pictures always show her as young.
56:11 Tom Holland? Yeah, and she's what, forty nine or something?
56:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So they always show her as young, maidenly, beautiful, you know, and the fact that she was unknown meant to CC to do that.
56:23 Tom Holland? But also, it's feeding into all those images that we were talking about earlier of the the kind of Simeon hum, uh, holding the, uh, the, the kind of the maiden who has fainted and is dressed in flowing white robes. I mean, it's tapping into all of that.
56:39 Dominic Sandbrook? But just on your thing about it being mistaken, Tom, there is a counter argument to that, and this is as follows. The German position at the time is, this person is very, very clearly guilty. There's no question of that. And she confessed. And their argument is this. We have issued a lot of public proclamations telling people that to help enemy soldiers escape is a crime punishable by death. She knew this. And one of the things that actually really condemned her was in court, they said to her, did you know this? Now, if she'd been sensible, she would have said, I didn't actually know that it was a crime punishable by death. Because some people did say that and they got off. She said, yeah, I knew that perfectly well, but I did it anyway.
57:25 Dominic Sandbrook? And at that point, they're like, oh, come on. Now, the issue about her being a woman, right, this, because this is the, the main thing, the fact that she's a woman. It's not even the fact that she's a nurse, it's the fact that she's a woman.
57:36 Tom Holland? I think the fact that she's a nurse is, is massive.
57:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course, I know that, but the Germans debated this internally. We know that they debated this. Should we let her off because she's a woman? And their argument was, well, no, our legal code makes no distinction between men and women. That's not how the law works. So this is a guy, Alfred Zimmerman, not the Zimmerman from the Zimmerman Telegram, but another Zimmerman, who was the under secretary for foreign affairs, and he was briefing the press. He said, it was a pity that Miss Cavill had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly. It's undoubtedly a terrible thing that a woman has been executed, but consider what would happen to a state, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety
58:20 Dominic Sandbrook? of its armies to go unpunished because they were committed by women.
58:24 Tom Holland? Yeah, I understand that, but I still think that you have to weigh, you know, if you're in the German High Command, you have to weigh up, you know, which is the worst. And I think you could, you know, send it to prison, whatever.
58:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I agree. I mean, deep down, I agree with you, of course.
58:37 Tom Holland? It's a deep error, I think.
58:38 Dominic Sandbrook? It's a political mistake rather than a moral mistake, I would say.
58:42 Tom Holland? And it kind of reinforces the possibility that she knew what she was doing and she was consciously martyring herself.
58:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, quite possibly. I mean, all through the 20th century, the perception of her in Britain was as a sort of saintly martyr. But actually, in the last, I don't know, 30, 40 years, the perception has slightly begun to change. So in 2015, Stella Remington, who used to run MI5, did a documentary on Radio 4, um, looking at the, they went into the Belgian archives, and it looks as though some of the fugitives that she was helping were carrying information about trench systems and munitions dumps and things like this. Whether she knew about that is unclear, but there was definitely an espionage dimension to the story, which is still very murky. It doesn't undermine her courage or anything
59:30 Dominic Sandbrook? like that, but perhaps it slightly strengthens the case that the Germans, you know, didn't have that much choice. And the other interesting thing I always think about it is that her, you know, that what's written on the statue, patriotism is not enough. This implies that she is a Christian heroine whose story kind of transcends the war and the rivalry between nations. But actually, her last words to Paul the Sir, I'm glad to die for my country. There's a slight tension there, I think. I don't think she would have necessarily recognised the tension herself, of course, because she would have thought that her Christian duty and her country were the same thing because, you know, God was on Britain's side.
1:00:13 Dominic Sandbrook? But I think there is a slight, not contradiction exactly. On the one hand, she says patriotism is not enough, but on the other hand, she's doing this for Britain. So which is it? You know, are you doing it for the world or for Britain?
1:00:25 Tom Holland? Well, I suppose she would say, I love my country, but I have no hard feelings against the country that's going to, you know, it's like, like the beginning when she sees the Germans. Oh, how sad that they're very tired, but equally they are invaders.
1:00:39 Dominic Sandbrook? She was a tremendous cakeist, no?
1:00:40 Tom Holland? I mean, that's that would be an unsympathetic way of framing it.
1:00:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Never, I'm never unsympathetic. Anyway, what happened to her? So she was buried at the prison initially under a plain wooden cross. But in 1919, when the war was over, her body was brought back to Britain with great honour. And they had a memorial service at Westminster Abbey for her, attended by Queen Alexandra and lots of bigwigs. And then she was re-interred at Norwich Cathedral. And in 1920, the statue, which you can see today, went up just off Trafalgar Square with the message, patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone. Very similar message on the memorial unveiled in Melbourne, Australia, six years later. And then you have all of these hospitals and schools and streets all over the world.
1:01:25 Dominic Sandbrook? And actually, I think there's a case that she's more famous in Belgium and even France than in Britain. So I don't know whether you followed, Tom, the competition in 2005. Les plus grands Belges, the greatest Belgians. So this was a big public vote in Belgium to decide the greatest ever Belgians in history. Did you follow this?
1:01:46 Tom Holland? Who won?
1:01:46 Dominic Sandbrook? I think it was some form of nun, not King Leopold.
1:01:50 Tom Holland? Do you know, he actually did quite well.
1:01:54 Tom Holland? I think. Would you be allowed to have a kind of a Gandhian painter or something?
1:01:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay, we could fall down a massive rabbit hole here. It's bizarrely interesting. So they held different versions of the programme in different languages.
1:02:06 Tom Holland? French and Flemish.
1:02:08 Dominic Sandbrook? So the bloke who won in the German speaking and Flemish speaking bits of Belgium was a guy called Father Damien, who's some form of missionary, Victorian missionary, loads of people that I don't recognise at all.
1:02:23 Tom Holland? But one of them is Edith Cavell.
1:02:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Edith Cavell, she came 48th.
1:02:28 Tom Holland? That's not bad, considering she's not Belgian.
1:02:30 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, she did well. She came ahead of the tennis player, Kim Kleister. She came ahead of Bruegel.
1:02:37 Tom Holland? Well, I mean, it's it's it's an instance of of our insularity in Britain, isn't it? That in the 100 greatest Britons, we didn't have a Belgian.
1:02:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Hercule Poirot, no? Did we not have Hercule Poirot?
1:02:45 Tom Holland? No, I don't think we did.
1:02:46 Dominic Sandbrook? So I said that she's very famous in Belgium, and what about France? Well, she's actually incredibly famous in France, but in an indirect way. So, two months after she was shot on the 19th of December, 1915, a baby girl was born at the Opital Tunnel in Paris. And this girl's father was a circus performer, and her mother was a cabaret singer and kind of performer as well. And they had clearly been reading about the Edith Cavell case in the French newspapers. I mean, it was a big story in France. Because even though the name Edith was at that point pretty unknown in France, these two people chose it for their baby.
1:03:28 Dominic Sandbrook? And their baby's full name was Edith Giovanna Gassillon. But, Tom, we know her better by her stage name, Edith PF.
1:03:38 Tom Holland? Can I just mention one other instance of her celebrity in France, which I think is fascinating because it also demonstrates the consciousness that the Germans had of the damage that her story had done to Germany's reputation. And this relates to Hitler's visit to Paris in the wake of the fall of France in 1940. You know, and he's he's a tourist, he goes to the Eiffel Tower and Napoleon's tomb and all of that. But he specifically orders the destruction of two monuments. And one is to a general who had fought against the Germans in the First World War by the name of Charles Marja. And he had occupied the Rhineland in 1918.
1:04:22 Tom Holland? And among the troops under his command had been Senegalese soldiers, so black soldiers. And the story was among the Germans that he had licensed these soldiers to rape German women and had said that basically German women weren't good enough for his black soldiers. And the statue to him in Paris showed him with a kind of a guard of honour formed up of of Senegalese soldiers. So you could see why Hitler would want that destroyed because it's it's a French statue celebrating.
1:04:57 Tom Holland? French aggression, as Hitler would see it, against Germany, you know, occupying the Rhineland. There's the sense of the injustice of Versailles, that he's there as, you know, in the wake of the armistice. And also Hitler is obviously obsessed by the whole notion of miscegenation. So he, he's an obvious baddie. And so Hitler duly orders it to be destroyed, and it's blown up. And the other statue that he orders destroyed is of Edith Carville. And clearly, her story is as offensive to him as the war record of this French general.
1:05:36 Tom Holland? And it's a kind of amazing demonstration of how haunted by this story, in the wake of the First World War, even Nazis were. They wanted to erase all memory of it.
1:05:48 Dominic Sandbrook? So interesting. So interesting. Well, anyway, if you want to go and commune with her spirit, you can go to the statue in London, or indeed in Melbourne, I suppose, or go to one of the streets named after. Or, I suppose indirectly, you could listen to a song by Edith Piaf. But next week, we will be going east. We will be turning our attention to the Ottoman Empire, to the Straits of Constantinople, and to one of the greatest military disasters of modern history. And this is a story with a really tremendous cast. So you've got Winston Churchill, you've got Clement Attlee, you've got Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and we welcome on to the show thousands upon thousands of Australians and New Zealanders. Because, great to have the
1:06:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Anzacs, as people no doubt said at the time, in the streets of Istanbul, because this is the story, the long awaited story of the Allied attempt to seize Gallipoli.
1:06:41 Tom Holland? Thank you, Dominic. And listeners to the Rest is History Club, of course, can hear both of them right now. And to hear them and to get the full range of benefits that come with this sensational offer of membership, go to therestishistory.com. Thank you, Dominic. Au revoir, everyone. See you soon.
1:07:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Au revoir.
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