The woman who outsmarted Nazis through seduction and strategy

Imagine, it's World War II. The Nazis are sweeping across Europe. And you're being trained as a covert assassin by a desperate resistance movement. And, oh yeah, you're only 14 years old. Today, we're going to take a look at the story of Freddie Oversteegen, the woman who seduced Nazis to kill them. OK, let's meet a lady who ain't in the prisoner taking business. We're in the killing Nazi business. Freddie Oversteegen was born in the village of Schoten in the Netherlands on September 6, 1925. Her family was working class and had deeply held left-wing political ideals. Along with her older sister, Truus, Freddy grew up in an area north of Amsterdam where communists were forced to live, known as the Red Zone. By the 1930s, the girls and their mother, became part of an underground organization called the Red Aid, which helps Jews and refugees escape the burgeoning Nazi regime. The girl's father was also a political activist, but showed no sign of wanting to support his family financially or otherwise. So their parents divorced. Their mother continued to raise them alone while working in industrial factories. Freddie would later recall her parents' separation as being highly unusual for the time. The family was living on a large boat in Harlem at the time. Freddie's father never made any money and didn't pay anything for the barge. So Freddie's mother just got fed up one day and left. According to Freddie, it wasn't an ugly divorce or anything. And her father actually sang a French farewell song from the bow of the ship on the day they left. She knew their father loved them, but she didn't see him very often after that. Resistance to fascism was in the Oversteegen girls' blood from day one. Their youth was full of memories of hiding Jews and political fugitives in their home. As soon as the sisters' parents divorced, their mother, Truus, moved them from the boat they were living in with their father to a modest apartment with straw mattresses she made herself. Even though the apartment was barely large enough for the three of them, they began harboring fugitives. Freddie remembers living with a Jewish couple during the years of the war. The Oversteegens were anti-fascist from the start, never succumbing to the fear tactics of the Germans as the war took hold of the Netherlands. In a 2016 interview with Vice, Freddie recalled, I remember how people were taken from their homes. The Germans were banging on doors with the butts of their rifles. That made so much noise, you'd hear it in the entire neighborhood. and they would always yell. It was very frightening. When the war officially began, Freddie and Truus began handing out flyers and pamphlets with information on how to join the resistance. They rode their bikes and wore their hair in pigtails in an effort to throw anyone suspicious of them off their trail. They tried to look as innocent and young as possible, as they vandalized the German posters that had made their way across Amsterdam. Freddie talked about this period of her life in interviews, saying that she and her sister glued warnings across German posters in the street calling men to work in Germany, and then we'd hurry off on our bikes. Since the Nazis were, you know, Nazis, the punishment for distributing information or organizing against them in any way was pretty much a death sentence. That being the case, the Oversthagen girls were showing more courage as young teenagers than most people show in their whole lives. In much the same way a college football player's dedication and skill might bring them to the attention of the pros, the Oversthagen family's fearless commitment to disseminating information against the Germans caught the attention of Franz van der Veel, the commander of the Harlem Council of Resistance. He personally visited their house to ask their mother permission to recruit Freddy and Truus to the resistance. Feintje said yes without a second thought. Freddy and Truus were also eager to join up. And so, much like a young Luke Skywalker, the sisters joined the resistance. In a later interview, Freddy would recall the moment that van der Veel told them what their duties would be. Despite the fact that they were at an age when most kids are still afraid to confront schoolyard bullies, the girls were expected to sabotage bridges and railway lines and learn to shoot Nazis. Anyway, Freddy remembered her sister coolly replying, well, that's something I've never done before. Freddy and Truce were two of seven girls recruited by the resistance. At first, they thought they'd be forming a secret army. It turns out their responsibilities were a bit different. They received their training deep in the woods, where the commanders taught them some military techniques, in particular, how to shoot a gun. They also learned to march. When it came time for the first mission, Truus was told to flirt with a young German soldier and ask him to join her for a stroll in the same woods where the girls had trained. As a distraction, the resistance set up a seemingly coincidental run-in with an acquaintance, which was just another resistance soldier. Once the German soldier was distracted, the fatal shot was fired. The entire time this was happening, Freddie was acting as a lookout a few feet away. She described the fateful moment in an interview, saying, that man never knew what hit him. This became the girl's preferred tactic for taking out German soldiers who had overtaken their city. While Freddie couldn't recall how many soldiers' lives she had taken during her time in the resistance, it had a profound effect on her and Truus, as the latter explained in a 2016 interview. It was tragic and very difficult, and we cried about it afterward. We did not feel it suited us. It never suits anybody unless they are real criminals. One loses everything. It poisons the beautiful things in life. As the war went on, the resistance quickly realized that Dutch citizens collaborating with Nazi Germany were a far bigger threat than German soldiers. In a BBC interview with Freddie's son, Klaas Meedekker, he recalls a story his mother told him about a Dutch traitor who was planning on handing over a list with the names and locations of all the Jews in the Netherlands. Freddie approached the traitor on a bicycle in a park and asked what her name was. Once Freddie confirmed she had the right person, she shot her point blank. While their attacks sometimes took place through luring men into the woods by flirting, as the war went on, the Oversthagen sisters became incredibly good shots, taking out Dutch collaborators while racing by on a bicycle. Truus would often ride the bike while Freddie sat on the back and took aim. On top of all the hits, the Oversthagen sisters performed many other dangerous and complicated tasks, including smuggling Jewish children out of the Netherlands to safety, these teenage Oscar Schindlers completed many successful missions, saving an innumerable number of lives. Unfortunately, on one occasion, Truus witnessed a mission fail. As she hid in the grass, she watched as the Germans spotted the Jewish children with searchlights and gunned most of them down. While Freddy and Truus were fearless and more than capable, there was one task they refused during their time in the resistance. The commander had asked them to abduct the children of a high-ranking Nazi official. The sisters knew that if the plan did not go right, the children would have to be killed to keep them from sharing the identity of the Dutch resistance members. They refused the task and told their commanders that committing violent acts against children was something they could not and would not do. Pretty young to have a moral compass in the fog of war. Hannie Schaft joined the resistance with Freddy and Truus in 1943, and the three girls quickly became inseparable. Schaft had left the University of Amsterdam, where she had been studying to be a lawyer because she had refused to sign a pledge of loyalty to Germany, which was the only way she could remain enrolled. Together, the three were unstoppable. Schaft became known as the girl with the red hair because of her bright flaming red hair that made it easy to spot her. Eventually, she dyed her hair black to avoid detection. The Nazis caught Schaft in 1945, just a few weeks before the war ended, and the Netherlands was once again free. She was smuggling an illegal newspaper on her trusty bicycle when the Nazis caught her and tortured her for information, which she did not give. Allegedly, when the German assigned to kill her missed his mark and skimmed her arm, she said, I'm a better shot, before he shot her once more to finish the job. According to a BBC interview with Freddy's son, when the boy was a child, he showed his mother his school's history textbook that contained a photograph of her dear friend, along with a story of the fierce bravery of the girl with red hair. Seeing her friend's name go down in history brought tears to Freddy's eyes. Her son said it was always hard for his mother to live with the fact that she and Truus survived the war, and Schaft did not. After World War II, they each dealt with the massive amounts of trauma in their own ways. And while they led different lives, they always remained close. When asked in an interview if they ever talked about the war with each other, Freddy replied, yes, always. We never had to say, remember when, because it was always at the top of our minds. Freddy got married and had three children. When Truus formed the Hannie Schaft Foundation, Freddy served on the board. Although World War II had ended, Freddy's son Remy said, the war actually lasted 80 years for Freddy. She never stopped talking about her experiences and sharing them with those in her life. Truus got married and had four children. She named her first child Hannie, after her friend and fellow resistance soldier Hannie Schaft, who was executed by the Nazis. Truus processed her experiences by becoming an artist and creating remarkable sculptures. She also became a public speaker who lectured on World War II and anti-Semitism. She published a book in 1982 about her experiences titled Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever. Both Freddy and Truus died at the age of 92, just a few years apart from each other. For a long time, the Oversteyn sisters were overlooked for their valiant war efforts because of their association with communism. They finally received recognition in 2014 with the Mobilisatie Oorlogskruis, or Mobilization War Cross, awarded by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.