Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady

I am more familiar with the Resistance in WWII from the perspective of people like Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so I was surprised by Three Ordinary Girls. All three of these young women were socialists who despised the Nazis and became spies, saboteurs, and killers. It was interesting to read about these events from a different angle. Tim Brady does an excellent job of telling their story.

The first two girls we meet in this story are Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. Their parents taught them that capitalism was the root of all problems. Both sisters were involved in leftist youth organisations and distributed underground socialist newspapers. When their father left the family, their mother remained committed to the cause. Then, in 1940, the Nazis invaded. Truus was seventeen, and Freddie was fifteen. Now they had a new enemy, a deadly enemy.

The third girl in the trio was Johanna Schaft, now known as Hannie Schaft, the girl with the red hair. Unlike the Oversteegen sisters, Hannie was raised in a prosperous family. Both of her parents were dedicated to the Socialist Party, and Hannie embraced and promoted their beliefs.

Although the sisters did not know Hannie at first, they eventually joined the same Resistance group, one willing to use violence, and became friends. Nervous initially, the girls soon proved their loyalty to the cause and were capable of carrying out tough assignments, including the assassination of Nazis or Dutch collaborators. When asked later about the violence and how she felt about it, Freddie would say that killing those who had betrayed good people was a necessary evil. A soldier does not shoot a human being, but an enemy. She felt no pity for those the Resistance considered necessary to kill.

Three Ordinary Girls depicts the situation in Holland under the Nazis, highlighting the courageous actions and narrow escapes of these teenagers. One of them does not survive the war and is executed by the Nazis. Although recognized for her activities against the Nazis, her burial and grave site became a place of contention between the new government, which wanted to downplay her heroics and the socialists, who wanted to honour them. This is a book well worth reading for those interested in the resistance in Holland from a leftist perspective.

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