Tim Brady

From Goodreads Giveaway, This was a very absorbing history of the Dutch resistance fighters as personified by 3 young women heroes of that movement. The cruelties inflicted on the Dutch people by the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators was unbelievably harsh, so many people felt no choice but to retaliate in kind, killing their tormentor's where and when they could. There is no right or wrong in this scenario, only the necessity of fighting back. The young women in this history did what they show more thought they had to do, at considerable risk to themselves and their compatriots. There was a price to pay, they became people they couldn't have imagined being before these events, and one paid with her life. A heart rending story of human cruelty destroying lives, even in a good cause against evil. there is no innocence in war, only a hope to bring peace (vain though it is.) show less

Tim Brady’s Three Ordinary Girls follows three teenagers - sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, and Hannie Shaft - as they became part of the Resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in WWII. It’s a fascinating account.

The Oversteegen girls were raised by their mother (the father left when they were young). Their mother had strong left wing political views and was very active in socialist activities. Hannie Shaft’s father was a teacher who continued to work through show more the Great Depression, so, unlike the Oversteegens, he was able to keep his wife and daughter off the dole. Hannie also had strong leftist leanings, studying Marxism as part of her college coursework as the war came to the Netherlands.

At the start of the Nazi occupation the resistance was very loosely organized, and in each town people were figuring out ways to resist on their own. In Haarlem the girls fell in with Frans van der Wiel, who would lead the local resistance. They started with actions like disrupting the speech of the locally installed Nazi leader by getting others to ring their bicycle bells while a compatriot cut the power to the leader’s microphone.

But as the war progressed the actions became much more risky, including bombings and assassinations. The three women were active participants, and in fact were considered key players as they could move about more freely than their male counterparts - the Nazis were less suspicious of young Dutch women than the young men.

I think that’s what Brady means by calling these women “ordinary girls”. Ordinary is how the Nazis viewed them. But the actions they took and the courage they showed were anything but ordinary. They became an important part of their tight knit group of resistance fighters.

Later, as the war in Europe entered its final stages the resistance began to be more organized and the group under Frans began taking direction from a more formal structure organized by the government-in-exile. Tension with those in charge began to arise, partly because the leaders were from the upper class and viewed Frans’ group as filled with lower class people with communist leaning. Neither side trusted the other completely.

Brady’s book covers the war years and after, including the reluctance to credit the socialist leaning members of the Resistance as the Cold War began to set in. Thankfully that is now in the past, and the heroism of all three women is now recognized and acknowledged within the Netherlands. With Brady’s book their story is gaining recognition with a broader audience.

The book is fast paced and graphically detailed. But it moves so fast that, even though Brady lays out all the pieces, the emotional punch inherent in the story doesn’t quite come through the page. So, while I learned a lot and enjoyed the book, it comes in as a Four Star ⭐⭐⭐⭐ read for me. show less

I think maybe this story needs to be retitled to Three Extraordinary Girls. Nothing these young women did was by any stretch of the imagination ordinary. I’ve read a lot of WW11 era stories and I had never heard of this part of the story. So much of the focus in WW11 era novels is focused in Europe generally. The Netherlands suffered immensely during the war, with Nazi soldiers occupying the country for 5 years and the Jewish population being targeted especially viciously and suffering a show more 75 percent reduction over the course of the war. Most famously the Frank’s were outed in Amsterdam and sent off to the concentration camps. For Hannie Schafer, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, their youth was not going to stop them from becoming involved in the Dutch Resistance. These 3 girls threw themselves into every aspect of defying the Nazi’s and they became quite accomplished smugglers, spies and in certain cases they would serve justice via brazen assassinations. Hannie in particular became notorious for her extracurricular activities and her bold, bright red hair. I am a WW11 buff, so I found this story completely fascinating. This is a must for history buffs especially if you are interested in WW11 era tales, but even if you are not this has a wealth of interesting information on the topic of Dutch Resistance fighters. Thank you to Netgalley for the copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. show less

I typically feel a bit guilty when my comments on a book include criticisms of its author simply because reading and critiquing a book are far simpler endeavors than is the writing of one, and the author has spent far more time and effort in the pursuit of his or her goal than I have in mine. On the other hand, I have just expended several days of a definitely finite lifetime in the reading of the book (as well as several dollars in its purchase) so those expenditures may give me some show more license to criticize as well as praise an author's efforts. Allow me to express the praise first, and then we'll come to the reason that I cannot grant Three Ordinary Girls more than three quality stars as well as only a qualified recommendation.

In my experience, whenever one reads or thinks about popular resistance movements in countries occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II, it is the French Résistance that comes to mind. Tim Brady's book, on the other hand, focuses on Netherlanders' Verzet groups. Yes, a noticeable focus generally highlights the actions of three young Dutch women, but the reader learns more about the resistance than just their exploits, including the uncoordinated and sometimes competitive actions of different resistance groups, the perfidy of collaborators, and the opposition of the Dutch government to leftists within the resistance. Reading Brady's book has certainly expanded my comprehension of popular resistance operations beyond the French borders as well as something of the nature of the 1940's Dutch government. For such new knowledge I am grateful and very pleased that Brady has compiled the facts in the book.

Now we come to the critical aspect of these musings. While Three Ordinary Girls deals with what may be an underrepresented historical topic that is worthy of a book or two, I do not find it to be well written. Brady tends to employ expressions and phrases that, while not ungrammatical, are certainly colloquial and even bordering on slang. Such informal usage strikes me as highly inappropriate in a serious study. For example, the author writes of the Nazis “putting the screws” on the Jews, of a soldier giving passing girls “the hairy eyeball,” of Netherlanders “feeling a squeeze” in obtaining food, of Hannie riding her bicycle “on her lonesome,” of leaders being the first to “hightail it” toward safety, of a different leader coming out of his “hidey-hole,” and so forth.

Occasionally, Brady's word choice descends from colloquialisms to degrading insults, creating the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem, which instantly invalidates any statement or implication. This is noticeable in his repeated use of the words Hun and Huns to refer to German soldiers occupying the country. When used to describe modern-day Germans, the word is clearly defined in several sources as contemptuous, insulting, and derogatory. This use of the word is highly objectionable in any book that should concentrate on historical objectivity.

Brady is not above committing a few elementary grammatical erros in his writing either. I was aghast at a sentence on page 92 which reads, “Truus led her German . . . toward the pond where Frans had tested she [sic] and Freddie several months earlier.” Really? A published author does not understand when to use the objective form of a pronoun and when to use the nominative? A bit further on, page 100 distracts readers with this sentence fragment: “Which endangered not only themselves but the families housing the refugees.” A relative pronoun such as “which” can never introduce an independent clause (aka simple sentence). There's another objectionable fragment on page 282 if anyone wishes to find it.

The author isn't through with his disregard of the niceties of standard English. On page 118, we read, “A wrong word said to the wrong person could prompt a late night visit from people who [sic] a citizen of Haarlem did not want to see at his or her door at any time of day.” As the object of the infinitive “to see,” the only acceptable form of the relative pronoun is “whom,” not “who.” The errors keep coming: page 126 tells us that “Trijntje had taken Robbie . . . to visit relatives and lay [sic] low herself. . . .” The writer seems to be ignorant of the quite different verbs “lie” and “lay.”

Brady's spelling can be weak as well. Page 128 misspells Deutschland as Deutchland. Page 141 misspells ensure as insure (or else the author simply does not understand the difference between the two different words). Page 227 claims that the German word for cake is kuch, whereas any literate German would write it as Kuchen.

On at least one occasion, the author is not even sure of the names of historical military units. A sentence on page 171 refers to the “U.S. Ninth Army Air Force.” The official designation was “Ninth Air Force” without either “U.S.” or “Army” as part of the name.

More errors than these exist, but by now even I am tired of pointing them out. As I review these musings, I find myself wondering why I have given this book more than two stars, but, to give the devil his due, the errors may be attributable to an inept proofreader or editor rather than to the author, who may be as embarrassed by them as the reader is distracted. In any event, the writing has been rendered so poorly that it does materially distract from the excellent history conveyed by the text. I do recommend the book for the value of its content if not its narration. If repeated violations of the forms of standard English do not trouble one, then I believe that such a reader will enjoy perusing the book. show less