Tangled Webs: Knitting for espionage During Times of Conflict

When people think about espionage, the James Bond archetype usually comes to mind – mysterious aliases, cool cars, cold indifference, and nifty gadgets. What they don’t think about are the more common ways in which actual secret agents have conducted operations throughout history.

Knitting for a cause

During both World Wars, knitting was a popular form of espionage among female spies, allowing them to transmit messages under the guise of something seemingly benign. This was at a time when society largely (and incorrectly) perceived women as unimposing and subordinate to their male counterparts.

Intelligence organizations were quick to exploit this public underestimation of women. Throughout World War I, European powers employed elderly Belgian matriarchs to transmit valuable information about the adversary. These women would intentionally alter their knitting patterns to encode messages about enemy troop movements. They would then pass their coded garments to resistance fighters, who could decipher the information and use it to their advantage.

The simplicity and universality of knitting made it an effective medium for encoding messages in binary, where a dropped stitch might mean a zero and a textured bump might correlate to a one. Spies of the past were known for incorporating these simple patterns into garments and textiles to convey details about positions, combat plans, and other operational intelligence.

Famous knitting spies

No story would be complete without its cast of characters. During each World War, a handful of women stood out for the unique tactics they utilized while knitting as spies. History has recognized these individuals as truly exemplary in their efforts and courage.

Phyllis Latour Doyle

Phyllis Latour Doyle was a British secret agent during World War II. She spent her time in service knitting as a cover, passing code in secret. But her journey was more than fiddling on a porch at home. She parachuted into occupied Normandy in 1944, and once there, spent her days riding about on a bike, flirting with German soldiers, and covertly collecting intelligence. At day's end, Doyle would take to her needlework, etching what she learned into fabric.

Elizabeth Bentley

American Elizabeth Bentley built up quite a post-war reputation as a knitting spy. Her actions, however, were not on what many would consider the “right side” of history.

She operated two separate espionage rings responsible for regularly relaying damaging information about the United States back to officials in Moscow. Bentley even went so far as to smuggle sensitive documents in her knitting bag to and from drop points connected to the Kremlin.

Madame Levengle

A third maven of the craft went by the name of Madame Levengle, and her ruse involved a more complicated form of spycraft. Levengle would sit at her window watching troop movements while knitting, as her children listened for their mother's foot taps. These taps would indicate troop movements, which the children would then translate to writing and subsequently pass off to the Allies. 

Historical recruiting efforts

Many nongovernmental organizations promoted knitting as a patriotic pastime during the wars. The American Red Cross marshaled an intense marketing campaign, calling upon women to take up knitting as a way of creating clothes for soldiers on the front lines. In reality, these calls to action were cleverly disguised ways to recruit mothers, sisters, and wives as spies against the Germans. 

Concealed communication today

The practice of using knitted goods to convey codes and signals is an example of steganography, the word used to describe hiding messages within innocuous-looking items. Steganography is still employed today when traditional communication channels are compromised or under surveillance. 

In more modern applications, steganography is used regularly on the digital frontier. Cyber hackers use “covered” communication to transmit malicious code, tunneling protocols, or display instructions, sight unseen. A simple example might look like one terrorist sending attack coordinates to another using an image instead of text to avoid detection.

Conclusion

Like knitting, any humdrum task can be used to disguise espionage in plain sight. While modes of communication have grown increasingly sophisticated, sometimes the simplest ones remain the most effective, especially among spies.

To read more about knitting agents of the 20th century, click here: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-wartime-spies-who-used-knitting-as-an-espionage-tool?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

To learn about codes and signaling still in play today, check out this article from the Central Intelligence Agency: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/smoke-and-mirrors-the-magic-of-spycraft/