The 2016 feature film Hidden Figures, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, introduced the previously untold story of three courageous and brilliant Black women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the 1960s facing racism, as well as sexism.
Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak reveals yet another untold chapter of the history of women in America. This one involves four other women who went to work for the US government during World War II, creating psychological propaganda, known as “black propaganda,” designed “to break the morale” of the enemy Axis soldiers.
In her introduction to Propaganda Girls, Rogak explains that “In essence, black propaganda was a series of believable lies designed to cause the enemy soldiers to lose heart and ultimately surrender...” It consisted of pamphlets, radio broadcasts, fake newspapers, and other campaigns based on “lies, stories, and rumors” regarding the war.
Who were the Propaganda Girls?
The book is divided into four parts, each with a chapter focusing on one of the four women: Betty McDonald, Jane Smith-Hutton, Zuzka Lauwers, and Marlene Dietrich (yes, that Marlene Dietrich).
The women were hand-selected by General William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which Rogak identifies as “the precursor of today’s CIA.” Unlike most men of his generation, Donovan specifically sought to hire women. He was convinced that women “would excel at creating subversive materials.”
Before Donovan tapped her, Betty MacDonald was the society and women’s editor at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. She found this job less than professionally engaging, so she devoted her spare time to learning about Asian culture.
Zuzka Lauwers was born in Czechoslovakia. With a facility for languages, she eventually landed in the Czech consulate in Washington as a ghostwriter, before being hired by Donovan.
Jane Smith-Hutton, married to a diplomat, lived at the American embassy in Tokyo, where she and her family were held hostage for a time. In Tokyo, she became near-fluent in Japanese. That skill, and her desire for revenge, helped her in her work creating black propaganda aimed at Japanese soldiers.
The fourth of the Propaganda Girls was Marlene Dietrich, famous American entertainer and German expat who had great antipathy toward Nazi Germany. She wanted nothing more than to take down the Nazis.
For Rogak, the sexism deeply embedded in the culture in which these four unusual women operated is a significant part of the story. They loved their OSS work but were increasingly stymied by male decision-makers who tried to clip their creative wings, despite their effectiveness.
She focuses on what they endured in the 1940s: low pay and low military rank in comparison to the contributions they were making; having to answer to male superiors who had far less experience in their areas of expertise; and ceaseless frustration at not being recognized.
Rogak characterizes MacDonald, Lauwers, Smith-Hutton, and Dietrich as women who “All had careers that were highly unusual for women in the 1930s and ’40s, and they all yearned to escape the gender restrictions of the day that dictated they are mothers and wives, or teachers or nurses if they absolutely had to work.”
After introducing the four women, the central part of the book describes in detail the black propaganda campaigns they undertook and the risky circumstances they found themselves in, along with the sexism they encountered.
In part four, Rogak devotes a chapter each to what happened to the women after the war. This section lacks the drama of the first three, reading somewhat like an undergraduate research paper, but it does tie up loose ends.
Lauwers was tasked with mounting a music festival in Salzburg, Austria, in the immediate aftermath of the war. She reunited with her parents in Czechoslovakia, moved frequently between Europe and the United States, and eventually settled into a fulfilling life with two serious partners.
Dietrich found the transition to civilian life emotionally challenging. Eventually, she returned to entertaining but always considered the work she did during WW II “the most important work I’ve ever done.”
MacDonald also suffered from a lack of direction and urgency in the immediate post-war period. As soon as she returned to the States, she had “the realization that the autonomy and independence that she had experienced for the last three years was over.”
Smith-Hutton, the only one of the four whose marriage survived the war, spent her war years in Paris as the wife of an American diplomat before returning to the US.
The book closes with an extensive bibliography and more than 250 endnotes. It is due to be released on March 4.
The reviewer is a freelance journalist and expert on the non-Jewish awakening to Torah, happening in our day. She is the editor of Ten From The Nations and Lighting Up The Nations.