The Spy Who Loved, by Clare Mulley. S. Martin’s Press, 426 pp., 2013
By David Strom
CHULA VISTA, California — Christine Granville was a British Spy during World War II. She was a woman who loved dangerous adventures who risked her life many times to save others in occupied Nazi territory. Christine challenged the wartime military bureaucracy and sexually challenged men to accept her on her liberal sensual terms.
Christine was born in 1908 Warsaw, which was then Russia, now Poland. Her father, Jerzy Skarbek, a Christian, was not loyal to his wife or family. Jerzy “was the archetypal aristocratic cad and bounder.” He prized the outdoors and treasured the “high life,” which he couldn’t afford. His wife was a rich Jewess that allowed Jerzy to keep up his lavish life style. Jerzy taught Maria Krystyna (Christine) Janina Skarbek to ride horses, ski, and shoot guns, all the skills that she needed and used in her life as a British spy.
Christine was not only athletic but was also a beautiful and intelligent woman. In 1930, she entered the ‘Miss Polonia’ beauty contest. There were seventy entrants and Christine made the short list, but didn’t win. She was “declared a national star of beauty.” That same year she married a wealthy businessman who wanted to settle down and have a quiet family life. It didn’t work out that way. Even though Christine was happy being a well-off woman, she stubbornly refused to settle into the life of a fashionable housewife that her husband desperately wanted. She skied better than her husband or friends, liked the nightlife, and enjoyed taking risks. Christine “satisfied her need for excitement by dodging the border patrols to smuggle cigarettes across the frontier peaks into Poland….”
Christine’s second marriage to Jerzy Gizycki, who she met and married in 1938, led her to England and eventually into her life as a spy. Jerzy was like Count Skarbek, Christine’s father “…handsome, powerful and popular figure, larger than life and not a man to be easily contained, but unlike the count he was intellectually rigorous and had no regard for convention, or prejudice, of any kind.” Jerzy had met his “besherta” but for Christine, her restlessness continued to impel her toward a much more exotic and dangerous life than marriage could offer.
At the time of Germany’s invasion of Poland, Christine and Jerzy were working for Polish Foreign Office in Cape Town, South Africa. Christine and Jerzy worried about family in Poland, especially her mother and siblings. Eager to do something for the war effort, they worked their way back to London in early October 1940. Poland had been defeated with an estimated 200,000 casualties. But Jerzy had no new instructions from the Polish Embassy in London. Neither one could accept the idea of just sitting out the war in London so Jerzy traveled to Paris eager to enlist in the military. He was rejected because of his many skiing injuries and his age, 50 years old. Even the French Red Cross also turned down his offer of assistance. Christine’s concerns for her mother and her young Skarbek cousins in occupied Poland strengthened her resolve to find a way to help in the war struggle.
As a woman, Christine could not be accepted into the active military service but she managed to find her niche to work towards the defeat of the Nazis. Christine “…would soon be employing her gift for languages, her adroit social skills, formidable courage and lust for life directly against the occupiers of her homeland.”
Winning the confidence of the British Secret service was not easy but with her skills and determination, Christine eventually won the support of the bureau. They sent her to France and then on to Hungary. Hungary was a neutral nation at this point in the war. In Budapest she heard Hungarian and Polish spoken by many of the refugees who had fled from the war zones. A minimal goal of this particular mission was to reassure the Polish nation that the British people had not forgotten them and were fighting with them against the Nazis to restore the Polish nation.
While in Budapest she met Andrzej Kowerski, someone she had known while growing up in Poland. Andrzej was a handsome young lieutenant in the Polish army and a ladies’ man. They soon became lovers and their relationship lasted for the rest of their lives. Jerzy, Christine’s husband, was being cuckolded. Andrzej was doing espionage work for the Polish Government in exile and Christine often accompanied him on these dangerous missions. Eventually she made it into Poland.
Skiing across the mountain into Poland during one of the worst snow blizzards of the year, nearly cost Christine her life, along with two of her companions. They found shelter in a mountain cabin but refused to answer several knocks at the door for fear of Nazi patrols. The next morning when the snowstorm had ended, Christine came across two dead skiers huddled together in the snow. She buried them as best she could under leaves and branches from trees. Finally, she traced a cross in the hardened ice, said a few words for the departed and continued on into Poland. Eventually, she learned that thirty others had died that night trying to escape the horror of the Nazi regime.
Once inside Poland, the beautiful spy went to Warsaw and immediately contacted her mother. Her mother was not living in the ghetto but in her family home. Christine learned that the Skarbek cousins were alive and well, her brother was working in the Polish underground and that her mother hoped to remain in her home during the Nazi occupation.
After a couple of days at home, she left her mother who would not be persuaded to leave to continue on with her spy mission in Poland. She set up an underground radio station broadcasting the war news urging Poles to continue their struggle against the Nazis. Christine sent the message about the part Britain was playing in aiding the Polish people to fight against their occupiers. Her work was dangerous but satisfying and emotionally challenging.
While her work was noble and important to the British Intelligence, it did not gain her the confidence of the Polish Government in-exile. They did not trust her, nor would they use her talents to help them in their conflict with the Nazi invaders. The animosity between Christine and the Polish Government lasted throughout the war.
One of her most amazing feats of daring took place in 1944 near the end of the war. On August 13, 1944, Christine learned that three very important operatives in their war against Nazism were captured. One was the head of underground operations for the local area who knew the local resistance leaders and where all the munitions were stored.
By the time Christine had arrived back at base, she knew that all three had been condemned to death. She hoped to get a small commando group organized to raid the garrison where the men were imprisoned. Christine offered to lead them. They refused her offer.
On August 14, 1944, the three men were to be executed. Christine, acting on her own, determined to try and rescue them. She walked into the Gestapo office, charmed her way past the first gatekeeper and got to talk with Max Waem, the head of the local Gestapo. Bribing Waem with the promise of two million French francs and that she would put in a positive word with the Allied High Command about his handing over three captured leaders of the underground to the advancing Allied army. She dared to offer the Nazi Gestapo officers safe conduct, something she had no power over in order to save her colleagues.
Christine’s gutsy rescue of the three men flew over the spy network immediately. She was given many medals from several countries for her bravery and intelligence work. When the war ended, for Christine the most white-knuckle part of her life was over. She loved her work and did not look forward to the “ho-humness” of routine daily life of a single woman.
It was difficult for her to settle into a routine. Christine hated office work or selling clothes. She drifted from job to job finally taking a job as stewardess on an ocean liner. There she met Dennis Muldowney, a seaman. Relations warmed up and they were a couple for the rest of the voyage. By 1952 Christine was tired of the relationship and tried to break it off but Dennis was madly in love with Christine and so he stalked her. Late one night, Christine entered her hotel lobby where Muldowney stabbed and killed her. If he couldn’t have the beautiful and passionate Christine, he made sure that no one could.
The spy Christine Granville was a person who loved one too many. Winston Churchill wrote: “In the high ranges of Secret Service work the actual facts in many cases were in every respect equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama.” This in essence is Christine’s life story.
*
Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at david.strom@sdjewishworld.com