On the Lethal Beauty of Hannie Schaft
By Buzzy Jackson
I’ve spent my life justifying my own interest in fashion; I have a Ph.D. and a Lifetime Beauty Insider membership at Sephora; I’m on a perennial quest to find the perfect brick-red lipstick (if it’s too brown, it makes me look cadaverous; too red and I look like a clown). The tension between intellect and aesthetics was not a new phenomenon. But I didn’t fully understand this until I started writing my first novel, To Die Beautiful.
My novel is based on the true story of a young woman named Hannie Schaft, who grew up to be a hero of the Dutch Resistance in World War II. As a young girl, Hannie was a lot like me. She loved books, was a bit shy, more than a little insecure about her looks, and also naive enough to be shocked by the injustices in the world. Her ambition was to be a lawyer for the League of Nations, protecting human rights.
As a teenager, I subscribed to Vogue and stole moments in the cosmetics section of Walgreens pondering how my love life might improve if only I could make my acne disappear and get my hair to curl correctly. In time, I learned not to discuss these important issues with anyone besides other like-minded women; if I brought up the topic of which swimsuit made my butt look cute or the mystery of how to use o.b. tampons when boys or men were present, it would have been met with derision. Caring about these things was dumb. Obviously.
For Hannie—and for me, decades later and continents apart—it took leaving home and going away to college to finally muster the courage to embrace and accept herself. It was there Hannie met two young women who would change her life: Sonja Frenk and Philine Polak, fellow law students and, though it seemed unimportant at the time, the only Jewish friends she’d ever had. The first thing she learned from Sonja and Philine was that it was okay to be smart, ambitious, and care about makeup and fashion, because they did. The second thing she learned was that their lives were in danger.
In May of 1940, the neutral Netherlands was attacked and henceforth occupied by Nazi Germany. Slowly, then at a terrifying pace, they began their campaign to destroy the Jewish population of the Netherlands. Hannie, who had spent her young life devoted to the ideals of the League of Nations—peace, disarmament, and improved global welfare—was appalled and terrified to see this happen in her own home.
In a few short months, Hannie transformed into a radical new version of herself. When the Germans demanded she sign a loyalty oath to the Nazi Party, she refused, quit school, abandoned her lifelong dream of a legal career, and joined the Dutch Resistance. Hannie convinced Sonja and Philine to hide in her parents’ home, and then took the lessons she’d learned from her friends about the power of female friendship and, crucially, the art of fashion and cosmetics, to emerge as a new woman: an armed assassin who used her good looks to lure Nazi officers to their death.
Hannie quickly became one of the Dutch Resistance’s most effective and notorious soldiers. She spoke fluent German and was able to boldly approach and flirt with the enemy in a way the men of the Resistance could not. Although women made up a tiny fraction of the Dutch Resistance, they were often tasked with the most dangerous jobs, such as the transportation of weapons (carrying bazookas in their bicycle baskets was common), placing dangerous homemade bombs in heavily guarded spaces, and getting physically close enough to shoot Nazis point-blank in the chest and then disappear into the night. Hannie did all these things.
As I researched her transformation from schoolgirl to deadly hitwoman, I learned how critical Hannie’s “womanly” interests were to her success. Her attention to fashion, taking the time to doll herself up, and embracing the allure of her striking red hair not only gave her the confidence to embark on a new life, but were essential in convincing her targets that she was someone to be taken seriously. After a series of assassinations, word traveled to Berlin that an unknown woman was destroying the morale of German forces in the Netherlands. Adolf Hitler himself gave the resulting order: “Find the girl with the red hair.” And that’s how she was known until the end of the war—a terrifying, beautiful redhead who was succeeding where Allied forces could not.
Although few of Hannie’s direct quotes survive from that period, one very meaningful exchange was remembered by her Resistance friend and colleague, the brave and highly practical Truus Menger-Oversteegen. One evening, late in the war, they were plotting the assassination of a key Nazi collaborator and Truus was getting impatient with Hannie for taking so long to get ready. “Let’s go,” urged Truus, watching Hannie carefully arrange her hair and makeup.
She turned to Truus and said, “If I’m going to die tonight, I’m going to die beautiful.”
Hannie Schaft is one of the great unsung heroes of World War II. And I think it’s important to acknowledge not only her courageous actions, but the values that made her achievements possible. Hannie was able to become one of the most ferocious Resistance fighters in the Netherlands and an existential threat to Adolf Hitler because she was uninhibited, and embraced all her strengths, marshaling the power of her intellect, bravery, and confidence—including in her own unique beauty—to sabotage the Nazi death machine.
If we’re still surprised today, in the 21st century, that one of the toughest heroes to face down the Nazis was a petite redhead who carried lipstick next to her pistol, it’s only because we still tend to trivialize things that women find important: justice, intellect, and beauty. Each one has its rightful place.
Buzzy Jackson is the award-winning author of three books of nonfiction and has a PhD in History from UC Berkeley. A recent fellow at the Edith Wharton Writing Residency, she is also a member of the National Book Critics’ Circle and writes for the Boston Globe and BookForum. TO DIE BEAUTIFUL is her debut novel.