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Heroes from History People Really Don’t Appreciate Enough

Khalid Elhassan November 10, 2020 32 min

William Colby - William J. Donovan — William Colby (oak leaves on cap) with OSS personnel and Norwegian Resistance members in Norway. Special Operations

32. The Betrayal, Arrest, and Trial of Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell’s efforts to help others were honorable, but also illegal under the laws of war. The Germans suspected Cavell, but could pin nothing on her, until she was betrayed by a collaborator. She was arrested on August 3^rd, 1915, and imprisoned for ten weeks – the last two in solitary confinement.

In depositions to the German authorities, Cavell confessed. She admitted to having sheltered about 60 British and 15 French soldiers, plus over 100 Belgian and French civilians of military age, then helped smuggle them across the border. Her admission to having helped enemy soldiers escape to a country at war with Germany sealed her fate. Tried before a military tribunal, Cavell was convicted and sentenced to death.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.