Margery Booth: The British Opera Singer Who Became a WWII Spy

Margery Booth, also known as Margery Kallus, was a British-born opera singer who lived a double life as a daring MI6 wartime spy. She successfully filtered Nazi intelligence to Great Britain while performing for Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. Despite her immense bravery, she remained largely uncelebrated and forgotten for decades after World War II. Born on January 25, 1906, in Wigan, Lancashire, Margery Myers Booth possessed a remarkable operatic voice. After training at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she married Dr. Egon Strohmand, from a brewing family in the Black Forest, and moved to Germany in the 1930s. Performing under her married name, her talent as a mezzo-soprano led her to the prestigious Berlin State Opera, where she charmed the Nazi leadership. Adolf Hitler became a personal fan, famously sending her 200 red roses wrapped in a swastika sash after watching her perform at Bayreuth. When World War II broke out, Booth used her proximity to high-ranking Nazi officials to work as an undercover agent for British Intelligence (MI6). She regularly smuggled high-level military data and ciphers out of Berlin. On at least one occasion, a British officer slipped secret documents to her moments before a show; she hid the papers in her underwear and went on stage to sing directly for Hitler. The Nazis allowed her to perform for British prisoners of war at camps like Stalag IIID to boost morale or entice them into joining the British Free Corps, a Nazi propaganda unit. Instead, Booth partnered with a captured British soldier, Quartermaster Sergeant John Brown, who pretended to be a Nazi sympathizer. Together, they compiled records of British traitors working for Germany. In addition to espionage, Booth used her Berlin flat to hide a Jewish woman and help escaped British airmen. Near the end of the war, John Brown’s cover was blown, leading the Gestapo straight to Booth. She was arrested and subjected to brutal torture but remarkably refused to talk. Because the Gestapo could not prove her involvement, they ultimately released her. She managed to flee Berlin during a devastating Allied bombing raid and successfully made it back to Great Britain. Her intelligence proved critical after the war. The names and details she smuggled out served as vital evidence during treason trials at the Old Bailey, which directly led to the conviction and execution of British traitors William Joyce, known as "Lord Haw-Haw," and John Amery. Despite risking her life for her country, Booth received little public recognition after the war. Many of her peers in Britain falsely assumed she had been a genuine Nazi sympathizer because of her close ties to Hitler and her pre-war life in Germany. She eventually emigrated to New York, where she died of illness on April 11, 1952, at the young age of 46. Her heroic exploits only gained widespread public awareness decades later when a collection of historical photos from the Stalag IIID camp surfaced at an auction in 2010.