The Girl Scouts, or Girl Guides, have been
around for just over 100 years.
You probably think of them as smiley campers,
selling cookies and earning badges, but I’m
going to tell you a different story.
Today, let’s talk about their always bright,
do good deeds motto, and what happened when
the world went into chaos.
Let’s talk about the Girl Guides in the
Second World War.
Hi, I’m Tristan Johnson and you’re watching
Step Back History.
Since 1910, the Girl Guides have given young
girls a way to make the world a better place
through community action, service to others,
education, and advocacy.
They began as a protest when in 1909 a group
of girls arrived at a Boy Scout Rally in the
UK and declared themselves to be Girl Scouts.
The founder of the Boy Scouts agreed, and
a year later, the Guides were formed.
They began in the UK but quickly spread to
Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand,
and South Africa.
By 1912 they had spread further, including
the beginning of the Girl Scouts in the United
States.
Today, there are Girl Guides or Girl Scouts
in over a hundred countries.
The future looked bright for the Girl Guides,
though not all was well in the world.
Two years after the founding of the Guides,
the world plunged into chaos.
An assassination crashed the house of cards
keeping the European empires at peace.
They enlisted millions of men, and with the
aid of mechanization, unleashed the most brutal
war machine ever known to humankind.
Weapons capable of destruction at a scale
never seen before, trench warfare, and fighting
nearly across the globe defined what we call
today the First World War.
The Girl Guides had a minor role in the conflict,
but to a much smaller degree than they would
have decades later.
In the UK, the British security service MI5
used Scouts as messengers.
Don’t worry, not on the battlefield, at
least I hope not.
However, in 1915 they replaced the Boy Scouts
with Girl Guides.
According to an internal document, MI5 preferred
to enlist the help of young girls over young
boys because they “proved more amenable
and their methods of getting into mischief
were on the whole less distressing.”
This was the only record I can find of using
the Girl Guides during the first World War.
After four, long, bloody years the war was
over.
The entire world was reorganized, international
organizations were formed, all in the hopes
that nothing on this scale would ever happen
again.
Well, I think we all know how well that went.
In 1939, after a series of land grabs, the
British finally decided to declare war on
Germany in response to their invasion of Poland.
The Second World War would end up costing
tens of millions of lives, displace many more,
and completely upend the world order all over
again.
Like the conflict before, this would be a
total war.
It would not be won with fancy tactics on
battlefields but at a much larger scale.
Entire economies with the resources of numerous
allies and colonial subjects threw everything
they had into the meat grinder of war.
Young men enlisted in huge numbers, factories
turned from making household objects to weapons
in order to feed the insatiable maw of war.
The British also engaged Japan, as the Japanese
Empire invaded China and a large number of
other Pacific and East Asian countries.
The Japanese conquered large swaths of Chinese
territory, including a lot of places where
British and American people lived.
This clash of empires seems like a very odd
place for Girl Guides to be.
However, when researcher Janie Hampton was
working on a book about the history of the
Girl Guides she found a strange journal entry:
"We sang our song yesterday.
And it went, 'We might have been shipped to
Timbuktu.
We might have been shipped to Kalamazoo.
It's not repatriation, nor is it yet starvation.
It's simply concentration in Chefoo."
The Guides sang this for a Christmas show
in 1942 in a place called Weisien.
Weisien is a concentration camp, one of many
built for captured American, British, and
European civilians living in China.
About 150 children were captured with teachers,
but no parents.
Don’t let the cheeriness of the song fool
you.
Rumours about atrocities like the Rape of
Nanking were well known to the prisoners,
and many prayed at night for nothing but a
quick death.
People died of starvation in these camps.
Imprisoned monks would sneak in eggs, and
the Guide leaders would crush up the shells
into powder and make the girls eat it for
calcium.
So what do you do in such a hopeless situation?
I guess you earn some badges.
The leaders turned activities like collecting
scraps of coal to stay warm and eating disgusting
food into games.
They even enforced table manners, sang guide
songs, and insisted on good hygiene.
All while surrounded by guard dogs and men
with rifles.
According to records from the camp, the Guides
provided stability, and morale to many of
those imprisoned, and as you might remember
from my video about the HMS Jersey, in these
conditions, sometimes clinging to happiness
and normality is the thing that lets you survive.
In other places, the Girl Guides performed
unimaginable acts of bravery and helped with
the war effort.
Part of the Girl Guide vow is to serve your
country, and many of the Guides took this
vow to heart.
They risked life and limb for the war effort.
The Girl Guides quickly found work to do in
the Second World War.
They picked up their jobs with MI5, running
messages for them.
The motto of ‘Be Prepared’ was also taken
to the extreme.
In 1942, the Guides started the Guide Emergency
Committee.
They prepared for the aftermath of the war,
working with groups like the Salvation Army,
the Quakers, and the Red Cross.
Other Guides joined a group called the Guides’
International Service, which involved intense
physical training.
They raised money and 100 trained Guide volunteers
followed the British Army to set up field
hospitals and canteens.
Highlights of their contribution include caring
for 1,700 starving people in Rotterdam and
helping tackle an outbreak of typhoid in war
ravaged Germany.
They were also among the first civilians to
arrive at the Bergen-Belsen concentration
camp and they were tasked with delousing the
inmates.
Some ran a refugee camp in Greece.
One Greek woman spotted a Guide named Alison
Duke’s uniform, and embraced her shouting,
“The Guides from England!
You’ve come!
You’ve come!”
Guides even performed acts of heroism in the
darkest corner of the war, the ghettos and
camps of the German Reich.
Most brave of all were the Guides who joined
up with the Polish resistance under Nazi occupation.
The Nazis banned the Girl Guides, turning
them into an underground organization.
These girls would rescue children from the
ghettos in Warsaw, Vilnius and Bialystok.
They snuck food to prisoners in Auschwitz.
They would go onto the roofs of houses to
shovel off the incendiary bombs while other
guides waited in the street with sand to put
them out.
Some Guides worked in children's homes as
nurses.
They would turn old linens into bandages and
give out food.
One guide company organized over 15 auxiliary
hospitals and refugee centres in places like
schools, cinemas, and centres for lost children.
They opened kitchens that fed up to 600 children
a day, sometimes even crossing enemy lines
to feed soldiers.
Through all this heroism, the girls always
were at risk of capture and execution.
Two Guides that helped a British soldier escape
a prison camp were captured at the border
of Yugoslavia.
Their names were Olga Prokopowa and Maria
Jasinska, one was beheaded, the other hanged.
Two other girls were captured by the Germans
distributing illegal literature and died in
Auschwitz.
A group of Silesian Guiders monitored the
radio and produced an underground newspaper.
Three of those girls were captured and they
too died at Auschwitz.
The Guides today don’t have a war effort
to participate in, but they still do a lot
of impressive stuff.
In 2009 they raised a million British pounds
for Changing the World to help communities
in places like Bangladesh, Chile, and South
Africa.
Girl Guides have swum across the English Channel,
sailed around the UK, and even made it to
the base camp of Mount Everest.
The organization to this day fosters what
they call girl greatness.
They help millions of young girls build the
confidence and skills to become the future
leaders of this rock.
I know it’s not fair for me to gush so much
for such an organization, but I really feel
like the Girl Guides get overlooked, or seen
as something old fashioned and lame.
I think that their story in the Second World
War shows just how much heroism can come from
young ladies, and I think we could stand to
hear a few more stories like that.
Hey folks, if this is your first time here,
be sure to subscribe down and click the bell
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video.
I also want to let you guys know that in October
I’ll be recording an interview with Dr Christina
Lee, a professor of Viking Studies at the
University of Nottingham, who found a potential
antibiotic looking at ancient remedy books.
I made a video about it that you can check
out here.
If you have anything you want us to talk about,
leave a comment, or send me a tweet, or somehow
get it in front of my face.
Before I go, I’d like to thank my Patrons
here, as well as Don and Kerry Johnson for
their generous support.
And of course a special thank you to Ines
from Draw Curiosity and the legendary Hbomberguy
for helping class up the quotes.
Thanks for watching, and tune in next week
for more Step Back.
