History RaeTold

The Short but Murder-Filled Life of Hannie Schaft, or: When the Going Gets Tough, Seduce and Kill a Bunch of Nazis

So look, I’m not in any way arguing that the Second World War was anything other than a pile of horrendous atrocities that we are very likely doomed to repeat in the not-too-distant future. These days, what with the rise of the alt-right, these lines are getting somewhat blurry, so I wanted to confirm a few things before we get started: genocide = bad. Mass murder = bad. Sending teenagers abroad to murder each other in the name of political ideology = bad. Nuking entire cities = bad. Hitler was a fuck. Churchill was also a fuck. Everyone was a fuck and war is terrible.

Yep. Glad we’ve cleared that up.

OK SO THAT BEING SAID. WWII was an absolute mad petri dish of fascinating lunatics that make for excellent stories. Remember Mad Jack Churchill? Fought the Nazis with a set of bagpipes and a broadsword. Bonkers.

Today’s mad wartime bastard is Hannie Schaft. Born Jannetje Johanna Schaft, our girl Hannie was a prominent member of the Dutch resistance who was known, among other things, for seducing and murdering Nazi officers. Because of course.

(I’m not really sure why she changed her name, but I imagine it’s because nobody knows how the fuck to pronounce Jannetje. Yan-ette? Jann-eet-jee? Han-et-yeh? Who fucking knows.)

From the get-go, Hannie was a boss ass bitch. Top of her class at school, she was raised in a super left-wing household that held such radical leftist views as “fascism is bad” and “let’s not do genocide” and “Jews are people”, which obviously landed her in a bunch of trouble later in life.

Bloody liberal snowflakes, amirite?

She went to uni to study law and immediately got into normal student hobbies, like sending care packages to Polish resistance soldiers and stealing ID cards to help smuggle Jewish people out of Nazi Germany. She was nineteen at the time. To put this into perspective, when I was nineteen I was into vodka and bad sex with terrible people and sleeping until 2pm and vomiting into bins (disclaimer to my mum, who reads these: this is obviously a callous lie for the purpose of comedy, I studied very hard and learned many things and formed good and wholesome friendships and ate my vegetables).

There was also some business where they banned Jews from walking in a particular park, so Hannie decided she would also not walk in that park. This was a significantly less effective form of protest than the ID-stealing but hey, at least she was trying.

Hannie’s university career was cut short when the Germans occupied the Netherlands, insisting that all students had to sign a thing declaring loyalty to Hitler, and to spend some time post-grad in Germany learning about fascism and murder. Hannie was having absolutely none of this, and instead dropped out of university.

Again, to put this in perspective, I know multiple people who dropped out of university because they couldn’t get up in time for 10am lectures.

Hannie moved back in with her parents and joined the Dutch Resistance. She started by stealing food vouchers and distributing anti-Nazi newspapers, but was quickly like “yaknow what guys, I’m definitely up for a bit of murder”. She went to her superiors and asked for a gun, and so they sent her on a mission to assassinate a Gestapo officer. So off she went, pointed the gun at the guy and pulled the trigger. Turns out the gun was loaded with blanks and the Gestapo officer was actually another resistance member and it was all an elaborate test of her courage. Hannie, I assume, was furious, because you can’t get someone all riled up for some murder and then blueball them like that. It’s just rude.

From then on, she was a fully-fledged badass. Together with her partners, sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen (top-notch, A+ dystopian teen protagonist names right there), she became one of the most notorious members of the resistance, smuggling weapons, rescuing Jewish kids and blowing shit up. At one point they tried to blow up a power station, in an attempt to really stick it to the Nazis. It 100% didn’t work, but again, at least they tried. 

The main thing that Hannie and the Oversteegen sisters were known for was their seduction/murder setup. They’d pretend to be nice normal sexy German girls (have we all seen the cinematic classic Charlie’s Angels (2000), where Lucy Liu and the two others who are not Lucy Liu briefly dress up as sexy Germans? If not, google it, because that’s what I’m picturing here).

They’d then approach Nazi soldiers and be like “hey there Nazi soldier, as you can see I am an authentic sexy German woman, why don’t we go into this dark and remote part of the woods where nobody is around to hear noises such as gunfire and screaming, and do some sex?” 

Once in the woods with the Nazi, they’d pull a gun and shoot them in the head.

Men are so easy.

The Dutch Resistance Murder Girl Squad also took out several Nazi collaborators, including a hairdresser called Ko Langendijk, who they just shot point-blank in the middle of a crowded street, before sprinting off and hiding out in a hotel. While in the hotel, Hannie took some time out to touch up her makeup because she wanted to “die pretty”. Fucking iconic. They didn’t end up getting caught that day, but I really appreciate her dedication to the Aesthetic nonetheless.

She was also pretty strict within the Resistance. As with any large group, there were your fair share of wankers, and Hannie had a reputation for hunting down and killing any Resistance members who killed innocents or assassinated people without prior authorisation. Our non-partisan hero Hannie was not here for your shit, regardless of your position on the political spectrum. Get it, girl.

During this whole period, Hannie was known as “the girl with the red hair”. This was a very cunning nickname to give herself, because it meant that when the Nazis began looking for her, all she had to do was dye her hair black and SUDDENLY nobody could find her, because the German Secret Service were all, collectively, Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Just to add some weight to the disguise, she also wore glasses, which I assume was the inspiration for Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent. 

Sadly, not long before the war ended, Hannie was arrested during a routine search, during which they found a bunch of illegal newspapers in her bag. Imagine being a mass murderer of Nazis, and then getting arrested for a bunch of copies of fucking Private Eye. Fucking devastating.

Despite her EXTREMELY CUNNING disguise, at least one German officer had remembered to put on his basic common sense hat when he got up that morning, and recognised Hannie as the girl with the red hair. This guy was clearly the fucking Hercule Poirot of the fucking Nazi army.

They shipped our girl Hannie off to a concentration camp but, on the way there, stopped the transportation van in the middle of nowhere and told her get out and start walking through the sand dunes. 

We’ve seen The Great Escape. We all know how this shit ends.

As she walked up ahead, one of the soldiers fired at her, hitting her in the arm and wounding her. Being the fierce-ass boss-ass bitch that she was, Hannie stayed standing, turned around and said “I can shoot better than you”. Fuck you, Nazi soldier. Hannie could fuck you up. Hannie could fuck you all up and then some. Remember that guy she shot in the face in the middle of the street? That could be you.

Anyway, then she was shot in the head by Nazis and died.

I’ll be honest, there’s no way to make a funny out of that. It was super sad. She was only twenty-four.

Tell you what, though. Truus only died two years ago, and Frankie’s still alive. So that’s great. Also, Hitler died horribly.

End on a cheerful note.