For International Women’s Day
The story of Agent Rose
“Men organize life; women are their support and implement their decisions.” Joseph Goebbels wrote these words in his diary in March 1932. One year later, the Nazi Party banned International Women’s Day, branding it a “communist” event and replacing it with Mother’s Day, to be observed on the third Sunday in May. The Nazi worldview saw no place for women who spoke out in public and demanded a political voice. But not all women were willing to be pushed back into the private sphere. Thousands joined the resistance, some in occupied France. Andrée Virot was one of them.
A day of political action for women’s rights
In Copenhagen, on August 27, 1910, women workers from 17 countries decided that once a year they would take to the streets together in an act of international solidarity to march for women’s rights. There was no fixed date in the early years. It was not until 1921 that the communist wing of the women’s movement led by Clara Zetkin agreed on March 8 as the international day of struggle – in memory of the female textile workers who went on strike in St. Petersburg, sparking the revolution against Russian tsarist rule.
After the collapse of the monarchy, the women’s movement achieved equal political rights for men and women in the young Weimar Republic – at least on paper. Everyone over the age of 21 was eligible to vote and run for office. Around 300 women stood for election to the National Assembly, and 37 ultimately won seats. The newly founded Nazi Party viewed these developments with hostility. In 1921, the party decided to exclude women from leadership positions.
No place for women in the Nazi Party leadership
According to the Nazi worldview, emancipatory aspirations were an “invention of the Jewish or Marxist spirit.” Instead of engaging in politics, women were expected to support their husbands, care for their families, and above all serve the German people by bearing numerous children for the Führer. The Nazi Party’s electoral success in the following years alarmed many in the women’s movement. They feared that their newly won rights were in danger – and rightly so, as the events of 1933 would show.
At the end of February 1933, the Nazi Party used the Reichstag fire as a pretext to suspend key civil liberties, justifying the move as “a defensive measure against Communist acts of violence that endanger the state.” Personal liberty, the inviolability of the home, the privacy of correspondence, freedom of expression, and the rights of assembly and association were suspended until further notice.
Women lost their hard-won rights
For the next 13 years, it was impossible for women to take to the streets on March 8 in Germany and demonstrate in the socialist-communist tradition. Like other oppositional groups, the organizations that belonged to left-wing women’s movement were banned with the subsequent passing of the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act). Many bourgeois women’s associations dissolved themselves to avoid Gleichschaltung, the Nazi policy of forcibly bringing organizations into line with the regime.
Others took a conscious decision to join the NS-Frauenschaft (Nazi Women’s Association), an organization that preached ideals of loyalty, duty, sacrifice, endurance, and selflessness – and above all expected women to bear and raise healthy “Aryan” children for the good of the German people. In 1934, the Nazi regime “granted” them a new official “women’s day,” – Mother’s Day – which is still celebrated today on every third Sunday in May.
A symbolic date that continued to offer hope
But even underground, committed women continued to mark International Women’s Day. They did so in private – at secret gatherings behind closed doors or with quiet gestures of solidarity, such as hanging red bed sheets out to air on March 8. The day was also a source of strength for politically persecuted women held in women’s prisons and concentration camps. They banged their metal bowls as a sign of togetherness or pinned a red thread to their clothes to show their support. In 1944, Andrée Virot was one of those imprisoned in the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp.
Andrée Virot, a courageous woman in the resistance
Andrée Virot was 35 years old when the German troops occupied her hometown Brest in France. She was running a hairdressing salon in 1940 and saw French soldiers running past in panic. On a sudden impulse, she decided to call them into her salon and give them civilian clothes to save them from being taken prisoner of war. “This, my first act of defiance against the German regime, made me wonder whether it was my vocation to fight with the full force of my convictions, and with the help of my compete faith in a civilized ideal. Would whatever I could do make me one of the defenders of Christian civilization?” This is how she later recalled the pivotal moment that ultimately led her to join the French Resistance.
From the hairdressing salon into the underground
She began by distributing leaflets in her home town for a student underground group from Paris. In her autobiography, Andrée described how everything inside her resisted accepting the humiliations inflicted on the population by the German occupiers. She was a patriot and believed deeply in divine purpose. The leaflets also strengthened her own resolve to refuse to cooperate with the German occupiers and to help those persecuted by the Nazis.
Agent Rose: Agent for the Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) charged her with close observation of activities in the port of Brest. From then on, she used the codename Agent Rose. The German Wehrmacht had set up its central U-boat base in the port, and major warships set out westward from there. She soon became the leader of a spy network that operated in and around Brest and not only gathered information for the Allies, but also organized escape routes for Royal Air Force pilots whose planes had been shot down.
As Agent Rose, Andrée helped more than 100 soldiers return to Great Britain over the following months. Twice her cover was blown, and twice she managed to escape at the last moment. In 1944, she fled to Paris, but the Gestapo tracked her down. She heard about the successful Allied landings in Normandy while detained in Fresnes prison. But “D-Day” did not bring her freedom. Instead, she was tortured and deported to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, severely weakened by the mistreatment.
Forced labor and humiliation in the concentration camp
“The guards didn’t speak to us, they barked,” Andrée later recalled. She was assigned to a cleaning detail in the camp. She fell seriously ill with meningitis, but eventually recovered. Two months later, she was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp and from there to the HASAG Leipzig sub-camp. She had to work 12-hour shifts for the armaments company Hugo Schneider AG, manufacturing grenades and ammunition. Violence, standing for hours at a time at roll call, hunger, illness, and exhaustion dominated her daily life.
Freed at the last minute
As Allied forces advanced in April 1945, the Nazis wanted to leave no evidence of their crimes behind. Thousands of concentration camp prisoners were driven out of the concentration camps and sent on death marches. Only the weakest stayed behind in the HASAG Leipzig sub-camp. Andrée was among them and later vividly described the dramatic moments before their liberation. A firing squad had lined her and the other women up against a wall. “We had heard about the targeted executions, we all knew what was coming.” But then a phone rang. The SS men dropped their weapons and fled. American troops were at the factory gates.
Showered with honors after the war
After her liberation, Andrée returned to Paris and worked in a restaurant. Many guests came to eat there because of her role in the Resistance. This was how she met John Peel, a young student from England. They fell in love, got married, and moved to the Bristol area. They had a happy life together but never had children.
In 1999, she published her memoir, giving it the title “Miracles Do Happen.” She died in 2010 at the age of 105. Throughout her life, Andrée Peel, née Virot, received numerous honors for her courage from the French and British governments and from the United States. She also received a personal letter of thanks from Winston Churchill, and on her 100th birthday a congratulatory message from Queen Elizabeth II.
