Helen Sensburg

Helen Sensburg (also Helen Sandsberg , called "Mary of Arnhem"; * around 1914 , † after 1945) was a German radio announcer. She worked in the occupied Netherlands in 1944 and 1945 .

Life

Helen Sensburg grew up in Germany and went to England around 1929 . From 1935 she worked for the "Asiatic Petroleum Company", a subsidiary of Shell , in London . With the beginning of the war in 1939 Helen Sensburg returned to Germany. She worked for the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft and was sent to the occupied Netherlands in autumn 1944, where she became the spokesperson for a German radio station in Hilversum in English . Her warm and seductive voice made a strong impression on the Allied soldiers, especially the Canadian soldiers, and the station was heard a lot, especially in the winter of 1944/45. The intention was to demoralize the soldiers and mislead them through targeted false information. The station played a lot of shallow English-language music and answered with "Arnhem Calling", which is why it was supposed to be based there. The speaker called herself "Mary".

When the Allies took Hilversum in May 1945, they also got hold of the radio announcer. A photo from those days shows Canadian soldiers dressing up a mannequin as Helen Sensburg in front of a fashion store in Hilversum. An interview was conducted with her in The Hague, where she continued to confess to Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. Her husband, a German Wehrmacht captain, was in Soviet captivity during this time.

The further fate of Helen Sensburg is unknown.

Web links

• "Helen of Arnhem" is in costody in Holland , National Library of Australia
• Mary of Arnhem , BBC

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Duitse radio-presentatrice "'Mary of Arnhem' zaait twijfel bij geallieerden" (German spokeswoman "Mary of Arnhem" sows doubts in the Allies), Omroep Gelderland , with photo and newspaper article