3. Torture
The Germans refrained from mistreating Peter Churchill, based on their belief that he was a blood relation of Winston. As a mere in-law of the Prime Minister, however, Odette was on shakier grounds, and the Germans were willing to torture her into spilling secrets. What they most wanted to know was the identity and location of SPINDLE’s radio operator. A captured radio operator was considered a prize jewel, because by turning one, Allied intelligence could be manipulated. In 1942, the Germans had captured and turned an SOE radio operator in the Netherlands, and got his handlers in London to radio information that led to the dismantling of virtually the entire local SOE. Worse, they got the British to parachute dozens more SOE agents into the waiting arms of German intelligence.
Odette knew the location of SPINDLE’s radio operator, Adolphe Rabinovitch, but she adamantly refused to tell. At Fresnes Prison outside Paris, she was interrogated over a dozen times by the Gestapo, who scorched her back with red hot irons, and pulled out all of her toenails. She screamed in agony, but insisted that she knew nothing about Rabinovitch. In between the torture sessions, sergeant Bleicher played good cop, by visiting her in prison, and inviting her on outings to Paris, to attend concerts and dine in restaurants with him, in a bid to get her to talk. She did not bite.