Margrit Bolli

Margrit Bolli (15 December 1919 - 13 October 2017 ) was a Swiss dancer, better known to students of espionage during the Second World War as a radio operator for the "Red Three", the Swiss branch of the so-called "Red Orchestra".

"Red Orchestra" was the umbrella term used by the German security services to identify a widely dispersed network of anti-(German) government resistance activists.

The German authorities, and many commentators following their lead, operated according to the simplifying assumption that the entire "Red Orchestra" was a coherent network directed by Soviet intelligence.

The reality was a little more nuanced, but many of the most effective resistance activists were indeed committed communists, and many did maintain close links to Moscow.

For this, the work of politically engaged radio operators such as Margrit Bolli was vital.

Margareta/Margaret Bolli was born in Basel.

Her father was a known anti-fascist, originally from Italy.

She had trained as a dancer, but was not always able to earn enough to live on simply from her dancing.

An English-language source identifies Bolli at this time as "a twenty-two-year-old Swiss Communist from Basel" and states that Sándor Radó made his approaches to Bolli on the recommendation of the (since 1940, illegal) Swiss Communist Party.

Implicitly, their meeting constituted some sort of a recruitment exercise.

Radó advised his new comrade to learn French and perfect her touch-typing skills.

(As a young woman with an Italian father living in Basel, she was presumably already fluent in Italian and German.) In the words of one source Bolli also, for some time "satisfied [Radó's] amorous needs".

By October 1941 she was working as a waitress at a café in Bern.

According to some sources it was at the café in Bern that she was engaged in conversation by a man who turned out to be Sándor Radó (though he used many names).

Radó was working for Soviet intelligence as organiser of a spy cell known (misleadingly) as "the Red Three".

According to other sources, it was not in Bern that Radó introduced himself to Bolli but, early in 1942, in Geneva, where she was working at the time as a cashier at the "Restaurant Stäffen".

A little later Bolli relocated to Lausanne, a forty minute train ride along the northern lake-shore from Geneva, where during the early part of 1942 she lived for a time with relatives.

Someone else who moved to Lausanne was Alexander Foote, a British veteran of the Spanish Civil War who had grown up in Yorkshire.

He is frequently identified in sources as a "double agent".

He was much prized by his Soviet handlers for his expertise as a radio operator, though in the eyes of admirers he was, in fact, something of an "espionage all-rounder".

Foote had been sent to teach Margrit Bolli his craft.

Topics covered included Morse code and encryption techniques.

Bolli was an enthusiastic and attentive student.

Comrades were reassured, both by her evident commitment to the cause and by her father's political record, that she could be trusted.

Her skills were quickly brought up to standard, and Radó agreed to pay her a monthly salary of 400 francs.

In September 1942 Bolli moved back to Geneva.

The move was prompted by her father's fears of her being caught up in a police search if she remained in Lausanne.

In Geneva she was to work as the fourth (or, by some criteria, third) member of a group of radio operators under the direction of Sándor Radó], who was working at the time under the code name of "Albert".

Bolli was using cover name, "Rosa".

Between October 1942 and March 1943 her work involved receiving and passing on encrypted messages.

Her workplace became a one-room city-centre apartment in a block at "rue Henri Mussard 8", close to the lake.

Her working hours were "principally at night".

Other sources are more specific, stating that she transmitted three times per week night for up to one hour, between midnight and one in the morning.

She used a radio transmitter provided by Radó, which was concealed within the casing of a portable "gramophone".

There were others in Radó's team of radio operators.

Bolli, when she joined, became the third or fourth member of an existing group.

It was probably one of these, Edmond Hamel (cover name "Eduard") who obtained the necessary components from - somewhere - and assembled the radio transmitter without knowing who it was for, and Alexander Foote (cover name "Jim") who installed it in her apartment.

Edmond Hamel and his wife Olga (cover name "Maud") were already using a similar device in their own homebase, a "luxury villa" on the edge of the city.

Positioning the antenna so that it would not be detected, but nevertheless provide a sufficiently powerful signal, was a particular challenge.

Radó and his team evidently had access, between them, to the necessary expertise.