Women and War - The Crimea to WWII Quiz

Answer: Mary Seacole

Mary Seacole (1805-1881) was the daughter of a Scottish army officer and a free black Jamaican woman. She made the lengthy journey from Panama to the Crimea, via England, to offer convalescent facilities to soldiers. Her 'British Hotel' also provided accommodation for non-combatant visitors to the war zone.

After the war Seacole settled in England where she became a masseuse to the Princess of Wales. Her activities in the Crimea are described in her autobiography 'Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands' (1857).

Answer: Superintendent of Army Nurses

Almost immediately after the commencement of hostilities, Dix (1802-1887) was given charge of all female nurses in the Union armies. She insisted that her nurses be over 30 and of plain appearance.

Dorothea Dix is not to be confused with Dorothy Dix (1861-1951), pen name of American popular advice columnist, Elizabeth Gilmer. This latter Ms Dix is the origin of the term 'Dorothy Dixer', a phrase used in Australia to mean 'a parliamentary question asked by a member of the government so that the minister may give a prepared answer' (http://dictionary.reverso.net/).

Answer: The suffering of Boer women and children in British concentration camps

Hobhouse (1860-1926) travelled to South Africa on behalf of the Women and Children's Distress Fund which she had founded in 1900. She visited several camps and then returned to England to press the British Government for change. Her efforts were only partially successful (a committee was formed to look into the matter) and an estimated 27,000 Boers, mainly women and children, died in the camps of disease, starvation, and inadequate shelter.

Answer: She actively supported the British war effort

Emmeline (1858-1928) and one of her daughters, Christabel, persuaded the WSPU to halt its suffrage campaigns for the duration of the war. There was a rift in the Pankhurst family, however, as her other daughters, Sylvia and Adela were committed pacifists.

Answer: Princess Te Puea Herangi

Te Puea Herangi, CBE (1883-1952), leader of Te Kingitanga (the King Movement) and adviser to her nephew, King Koroki, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George VI in 1938.

The King Movement is based among the Waikato tribes of the North Island of New Zealand, in an area known as the King Country. The first Maori King, Potatau, was chosen in 1858. By the time his grandson, Mahuta, succeeded in 1894, the movement was widely respected and Mahuta became a member of the New Zealand Legislative Council and the Executive Council of Parliament. (www.teara.govt.nz/en/waikato-tribes/)

Dame Whina Cooper ONZ DBE (1895-1994) was a leader of the northern Hokianga people and is perhaps best remembered for leading the 1975 land protest march to the NZ Parliament in Wellington. (www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dame-whina-cooper-1432167.html)

Iriaka Matiu Ratana, OBE (1905-1981) in 1949 became the first female Maori Member of New Zealand's Parliament and was a Labour Party MP for twenty years.

Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, ONZ, DBE, OStJ (1931-2006), the Maori Queen, reigned for over 40 years as leader of Te Kingitanga.

For further reading try 'www.nzhistory.net.nz' or 'www.dnzb.govt.nz'.

Answer: Norfolk, England

The execution of Edith Cavell (1865-1915) by firing squad received widespread coverage in the press and probably harmed the reputation of Germany in the United States, at that time still a neutral country. It is worth noting that although the German military acted quickly to convict Cavell and carry out the death sentence, the German civil governor of Belgium, Baron von der Lancken, had favoured a more lenient approach.

Answer: A woman journalist who enlisted in the British Army

Dorothy Lawrence (1896-1964) alias Dennis Smith, is said to have been the only woman to enlist as a soldier in the British Army in World War I. She served as a sapper in the British Expeditionary Force Tunnelling Company for 10 days in 1915 before turning herself in. To avoid a prison sentence she was forced to promise not to write about her experiences so was unable to publish the newspaper articles she had planned.

Answer: They drove supplies to French hospitals

Stein (1874-1946) and Toklas (1877-1967) obtained a Ford truck which they nicknamed 'Auntie' in honour of Gertrude's Aunt Pauline. 'Auntie' was used to deliver supplies to French hospitals around Paris.

Answer: The founder of the Russian Women's Battalion of Death

Alexander Kerensky, Minister of War following the abdication of the Tsar, authorised Bochkareva (1889-1920) to establish the first female combat unit. In 1918 she travelled to the United States and met with President Woodrow Wilson, whom she asked to intervene in the Russian political situation.

After returning to Russia she was sentenced to death as an enemy of the people and was executed by the Cheka (secret police) in 1920.

Answer: Organising resistance in the ghettos of Poland and Lithuania

Grossman acted as a courier between ghettos and helped establish anti-Nazi resistance. She was active in the uprising in the Bialystok Ghetto, Poland, in 1943. After the war, Haika Grossman (1919-1996) was awarded Poland's highest honour for heroism. She emigrated to Palestine in 1948, and served in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) from 1969-1988. (www.haika.org.il)

Answer: Hanna Reitsch

At the end of the war, Reitsch (1912-1979) was held and interrogated by American intelligence for several months but was eventually released. In the 1950s she set a number of records in gliding championships.

Magda Quandt, nee Ritschel (1901-1945) joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and married Joseph Goebbels in 1931. She and her husband committed suicide in the Führerbunker on 01 May 1945, the day after the suicides of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

Gertraud 'Traudl' Junge (1920-2002) was Adolf Hitler's private secretary from 1942 until his suicide in 1945.

Helene 'Leni' Riefenstahl (1902-2003) was a film director best known for her propaganda films of the Nazi Nuremberg Rally of 1934 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Her work employed ground-breaking film-making techniques.

Answer: Wellington, New Zealand

Australian Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM (1912-) was born in New Zealand and emigrated to Australia with her family in 1914. Wake married a French businessman, Henri Fiocca, just after the outbreak of WWII in 1939. She became a courier for the resistance and was involved in an escape network. Nicknamed 'the White Mouse' by the Gestapo, which posted a reward for her capture, she escaped from France via Spain in 1943. However, her husband was arrested by the Gestapo and killed.

In Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was parachuted back into France in 1944. She coordinated resistance operations and led sabotage missions in Normandy prior to the D-Day landings.

After the war she received official honours from the Governments of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, and from the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association (RSA). Wake remarried and returned to Australia but, as at 2010, was living in London.

Answer: Adolf Hitler

Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, nee Bessie Wallis Warfield (1896-1986), married the former King Edward VIII in 1937. His decision to marry her had led to his abdication of the throne. Mrs Simpson had twice been divorced and, as the British monarch is also head of the Church of England, the Government of the day believed the King's position would be compromised by the marriage. For a dramatised portrayal of their courtship and the constitutional crisis, try the 1978 BBC series 'Edward and Mrs Simpson'.

Answer: Female students and high-school graduates

Many of these women were very young, given the difficulty of their role. Antony Beevor's 'Stalingrad - The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943' (pages 157-159) notes that the commander of the 62nd Army's sanitary company was an 18 year old female medical student.

Answer: An anti-Nazi movement based at the University of Munich

The White Rose, active between 1942-1943, was a movement made up of university students whose resistance primarily took the form of distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. The six principal members of the group, including Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and executed. The students' Professor of Philosophy, Kurt Huber, who had written one of the movement's pamphlets was also killed.

There are several books and films dealing with the activities of the White Rose resistance movement, including the recent German film 'Sophie Scholl - The Final Days' (2005).