Gaining Momentum: A Book Review of Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady
Three Dutch girls, afforded very little time to grow into women, were outraged by the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. In defiance to the Nazi soldiers bullying their countrymen in the streets, three young women engaged in various resistance activities from the start of the war. Their anonymity, fearlessness, and longing for freedom shaped them into some of WWII’s deadliest assassins and saboteurs. Truus Oversteegen, Freddie Oversteegen, and Hannie Schaft looked back to the burden of their war crimes everyday of their life after the Allie victory in Europe. They solemnly accepted the fallout of their actions and would have done it all over again if called. It was their bold sense of duty, stated in memoirs, interviews, and obituaries, that first drew author Tim Brady to write an account for their war years.
Three Ordinary Girls, by historical nonfiction author Brady, is far from an ordinary story of girls living through WWII. Part Netherland’s history lesson, part account of the RVV (Raad van Vertz/Council of Resistance), and part coloring in the characters of three extraordinary resistance women. Brady weaves together all the critical facts to educate readers on lesser known, albeit equally important, European history.
We live in a world liberated from Adolf Hitler’s Nazism in gratitude to the ultimate sacrifice of millions. When we learn about the heroes of WWII we question ourselves: If anything like this happened in my lifetime could I give my life and will over to the right cause?
It is with that sense of awe and respect, Brady writes about the Oversteegen sisters and Hannie Schaft. While I cannot imagine myself as a great general or nuclear armament officer, I do see myself as a young woman swept up on her bike desperately wanting to protect her cherished home from evil.
The pacing of the book matches the timeline of WWII; slow and fractured beginnings followed by rallying forces that usher in victory. I did not much like the start of Three Ordinary Girls because it dwelled on the backstory of the three main characters. Some readers may enjoy knowing the nuances of Hannie’s school life or Truus’s older sister attitude, but I would have preferred the paradox of starting with a fifteen year old bicyclist yielding a 9mm with deadly accuracy. I can imagine ordinary just fine. I wanted to see how their simple lives freed them to live boldly. Underestimating these girls was a writer’s chance to tell how the position of women during the 1940s came under fire by these girls’ actions.
Brady is a research expert and with a careful eye, a reader can notice his resource list is succinct yet thorough. In preparing Three Ordinary Girls, after finding Freddie’s obituary in The New York Times, he sought out primary and first account resources. The women left behind a wealth of information, unabashedly returning to their dark pasts again and again. Brady recognized in his retelling, the women had wanted the story told in their own words during their lives. So surely they would feel the same way after their passing. His deep respect for their truth is more than evident in his book.
Unlike other WWII narratives, this book took nothing for granted. Small and large battles were explained, personalities identified, and effects of events detailed. I appreciated that as an avid reader of history and believe a newcomer to the genre will too. Brady is a humble author, but don’t let that fool you about his authority in the field.
Three Ordinary Girls is a solid buy and pass along book. As with any WWII history, every human on earth needs to be educated. This book offers a niche view of the war, set exclusively in the Netherlands, without missing the humanness of telling an occupied citizen’s viewpoint. Americans especially need to feel these stories, to sympathize with the heartache felt in Europe. I believe a young person would also enjoy reading this book because the main characters were so young themselves at the height of the resistance.
They say we live in different times where children grow up slower. I don’t believe European children chose to grow up quickly, though. They matured in the gravity of their circumstances. And if we look around our world today, young men and women are fighting evil just like Hannie and Truus and Freddie did without question.
For more books on WWII saboteurs here are a couple of favorites:
