Despite the era in which she was born and the tumultuous years yet to come, from the beginning, Fortune seemed to have chosen Hansi Scharff as a bearer of its blessing.
Growing up as the child of a Prussian officer, the woman the world would come to know as Hanns Scharff was fascinated by the military. Although her father never answered her questions about the things he did in his time as an officer, her curiosity refused to be sated by his deflections and excuses. However, when he was called to action alongside his countrymen, he finally relented and told her of what he had done in the line of duty.
When he was finished, she asked him why he would do such things, and he gave her one piece of advice that would stick with her the rest of her life.
“War is neither glorious nor something to be praised. The only reason I fight is to protect the ones I love, and that is something to be proud of.”
Then, he left, and, three years later, he died. He was awarded an Iron, Reuss, and Hanseatic Cross posthumously. She was told to be proud, and she was, but not for the reason many thought.
Continuing her studies in the arts, she also took up learning the ins-and-outs of her family’s textile business, eventually becoming well-versed enough to be promoted to Director of the Overseas Division, sending her on several trips to other countries.
It was on one of these trips that she met the love of her life. Margret Stokes, the daughter of a famous fighter pilot. Having lived a sheltered life in her family’s villa up until adulthood, only going off to Leipzig for schooling, she had never experienced love, let alone a crush, but she somehow knew the moment she met Margret that she had fallen.
However, though sexual relations between women were far less socially damning than those between men, they were still unable to be married in the eyes of the government, which both women desired. Fortunately, Hansi’s sheltered upbringing actually worked to their advantage, and her family was able to help establishing that they had a son rather than a daughter. So, Hanns Scharff was born, and their marriage was secured.
Then, while visiting Greiz, Germany, she, her wife, and three children, became stranded there due to WWII. To their further distress, Hansi was drafted a month after finding work in Berlin, leading her to eventually being deployed to the Russian Front, all the while working to hide her true gender.
Luckily, Margret, knowing the precarious situation her “husband” was now in, realized a way to help. Talking and charming her way into a Berlin general’s office, she was able to convince him that a soldier who was fluent in both English and German was wasted on the Eastern Front. Through her intervention, she was able to get “Hanns” transferred to an interpreter’s company, a place where she would have relatively greater freedom. However, it was not long after she arrived there that she was sent to Luftwaffe Interrogation Center to interpret for the interrogators, a transfer only three people would receive in any given year.
It was here that her “training” in interrogation began.
Though she was an assistant interrogation officer, she never actually was trained to become one, her role almost entirely relegated to interpreter. However, through observation of both interrogator and prisoner, she began to pick up on the subtle cues and tells of both, often able to predict with startling accuracy what they would say next or the breaking points of the prisoner and her superior officer. Without any training or prior study to reveal it, she discovered she had an unknown talent for understanding and observing humans.
It was then, after an unfortunate accident, that Hansi was promoted to interrogation officer, and everything changed from there.
She hadn’t forgotten what her father had told her, and as she watched the forceful violence often used in interrogations to retrieve information, she couldn’t help but feel there had to be a better way to get the information without needlessly hurting those who were protecting their loved ones. So, she decided to put her newfound talents to good use, and, over the next five years, she would develop several strategies and methods of extracting information without harming the prisoner.
Then, in 1948, she was called to testify in the U.S. against one of the prisoners she had interrogated, which she saw as a golden opportunity. While she was there, she made connections with government officials, meeting with those from the USAF and giving lectures on her interrogation techniques and experiences in using them. These newly formed connections helped when she, along with her wife and kids, immigrated to America that same year.
On a whim, while beginning to rediscover her sidelined affection once more for the arts, she decided to write about her experiences and time as an interrogator, portions of the memoirs being sent to and published by a magazine, leading her to be contacted by an author that would eventually release them compiled alongside several letters from her former prisoners and his own research to write a nearly complete biography of “his” life. Though she would go on to create an instantly successful mosaic and furniture business with her daughter-in-law, one still operating in modern times, that biography would cement her place in history.
Hansi didn’t care though. Whether the world remembered her or not, she had protected her family, and she died content in that knowledge.
She was awarded no medals. Her wife and children were proud of her, and not a soul doubted the reason.
Yes. Fortune had certainly smiled down on Hansi.
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Originally Posted by Kabalisto Koga
