Barbara Lauwers

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Barbara Lauwers receiving the Bronze Star Medal (1945).

Barbara Lauwers Podoski (born April 22, 1914 in Brno , Austria-Hungary as Božena Hauserová ; † August 16, 1999 in Washington, DC ) was an American OSS agent whose propaganda operations during World War II led to hundreds enemy soldiers switched sides.

Career

From training in Czechoslovakia to joining the US Army

Barbara Lauwers was born as Božena Hauserová in Brno , which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary and from 1918 to Czechoslovakia . She studied law at the University of Paris and Masaryk University in her native city. On the latter she graduated as a doctor of law and then worked as a lawyer. In 1939, when Czechoslovakia was occupied by the German Reich , she married the American Charles Lauwers in Zlín and emigrated with him to the Belgian Congo , where she worked for the shoe manufacturer Bata . Two years later the couple emigrated to New York .

When Charles Lauwers signed up for military service in the US Army in 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor , Barbara Lauwers, as she was now called, moved to Washington, DC and began working in the press office of the Czechoslovak embassy. As a ghostwriter , she wrote a book for two Czechoslovak colonels stationed there . She joined the Women's Army Corps on June 1, 1943, the day she received US citizenship .

Successful propaganda

Toilet paper as OSS propaganda.
Leaflet of the Association of Lonely Warrior Women .

Because of her language skills - she was fluent in English, French, German, Czech and Slovak - she was selected for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was founded only a year earlier . After initially stationing in Washington, she was transferred to Algiers in early 1944 and finally to Rome in the Morale Operations Department . There she conducted interrogations of prisoners of war in order to recruit them as defectors for propaganda purposes . During such an interrogation, Private Lauwers learned from a captured sergeant that the Wehrmacht was using mainly Czechs and Slovaks for "dirty work" on the Italian front. This gave Lauwers an idea, but then felt her anger. When he made contempt for US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , Lauwers let himself be carried away with a punch on his nose. She borrowed both a Czech and a Slovak typewriter from the Vatican and prepared a leaflet in both languages ​​to encourage the enemy soldiers to desert because they were only used by the enemy. In addition, the BBC broadcast the content of the leaflets on the radio. Within a week hundreds of Czech and Slovak soldiers converted to the Allied side, at least 600 of whom had the leaflets designed by Lauwers with them.

Lauwers' main focus was the production of so-called black propaganda to demoralize and disinformation the Germans. In this special form of psychological warfare , the enemy should be made believable that he had B. to do with the leaflets with products from German sources. As part of Operation Sauerkraut , Lauwers drafted further leaflets in which it was alleged, among other things, that the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 had led to an uprising within the German army. Another leaflet announced General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's resignation from all posts because he believed the war was lost. German prisoners of war who were held in Italy, selected by Lauwers and persuaded to desert, distributed this propaganda behind the German lines after their release. Kesselring, the German commander-in-chief in Italy, was forced to publicly deny the allegations about himself because of the success of the action.

Lauwers received a promotion to corporal and responsibility for the next operation, the League of Lonely War Women . The aim was to distribute leaflets among the German soldiers on leave from the front, encouraging them to lean the paper heart printed on the leaflet against their glass in public places such as bars and restaurants. Then members of the Association of Lonely Warrior Women , as the League of Lonely War Women was christened in German, would approach the soldiers so that they could satisfy their own and the women's need for physical closeness. Since their men were absent due to the war, they wanted to find temporary replacements in the vacationers from the front. This was intended to feed the suspicion among the soldiers that their own wives would be equally unfaithful at home.

“Of course we are also selfish - separated from our men for years, with all the strangers around us, we would like to once again hold a real German boy close to our hearts. Don't be shy: your wife, sister and lover is also one of ours. "

- Association of lonely warrior women : leaflet

Lauwers wrote the formulations of the leaflet himself, using common German soldier jargon to ensure a high level of authenticity. This deception turned out to be successful and so convincing that on October 10, 1944 even the Washington Post fell for it and reported on it. Barbara Lauwers was awarded the Bronze Star on April 6, 1945 for her services to the OSS .

After the war

After the end of the war, Lauwers initially spent a few years in Czechoslovakia. However, she returned to the United States before the February revolution in 1948 and initially worked for Voice of America , the states' official foreign broadcaster. She also worked as a " girl for everything " at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. During the war she had divorced her husband Charles. From 1948 she was employed by the Library of Congress as a research assistant for 20 years . During this time she met Joseph Junosza Podoski, whom she married in 1954. The couple had a daughter. When she retired in 1968, she returned to Austria , where she stayed for nine years and worked as an assistant in the Vienna office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . In 1977 she moved back to Washington. Joseph Podoski died seven years later. In 1999, shortly before Barbara Lauwers Podoski herself, her last partner, JR Coolidge, died. Lauwers Podoski died of cardiovascular disease on August 16, 1999 at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Washington.

It was not until 2008 that most of her work became public during World War II , when the files from her time at the OSS were released.

Web links

Commons : Barbara Lauwers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Patricia Sullivan: Barbara Lauwers Podoski dies at 95; launched psychological campaign against Germans in WWII. In: latimes.com. Los Angeles Times , August 31, 2009, accessed March 23, 2021 .
  2. ↑ a b Miroslava Menšíková: JUDr. Barbara Lee Podoski. In: brna.cz. February 25, 2020, accessed March 23, 2021 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Patricia Sullivan: Barbara Lauwers Podoski, 95, World War II operative. In: boston.com. The Boston Globe , August 24, 2009, accessed March 23, 2021 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Barbara Lauwers: Deceiving the Enemy. In: cia.gov. Central Intelligence Agency , August 19, 2019, accessed March 23, 2021 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Matt Fratus: Inside the OSS's League of Lonely War Women. In: coffeeordie.com. September 28, 2018, accessed March 23, 2021 .
  6. ↑ Alfred Cattani: Hitler in sight. In: nzz.ch. NZZ Folio , October 1993, accessed on March 23, 2021 .
  7. ↑ a b Moral Operations. In: soc.mil. United States Army Special Operations Command , accessed March 23, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Lauwers, Barbara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lauwers Podoski, Barbara (name after marriage); Hauserová, Božena (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American OSS agent
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1999
PLACE OF DEATH Washington, DC , United States