How extraordinary! They were only 14 and 16.

The Teenage Girl Gang That Seduced and Killed Nazis

Freddie and Truus were, for a time, the only two women in the seven-person rebellion dubbed the Haarlem Council of Resistance. After being recruited by commander Frans van der Wiel in 1941, the two learned the basics of sabotage, picking up tricks like how to rig railways and bridges with dynamite so travel paths would be cut off; how to fire a weapon; and how to roam undetected through an area peppered with Nazi soldiers. The latter ability was a result of their appearance. With her hair in braids, Freddie was said to have looked as young as 12 years old. Few soldiers took notice of the two girls as they rode bicycles through occupied territory, though they were secretly acting as couriers, transporting paperwork and weapons for the resistance. The duo burned down a Nazi warehouse undetected. They escorted small children and refugees to hiding spots and secured false identification for them, which they considered of paramount importance even as Allied bombs went off overhead.

But the resistance had one other job for them, one Freddie later described as a “necessary evil.” They were tasked with murdering Nazi officers and their Dutch collaborators because no one would likely see them coming.

Some of Freddie and Truus’s assignments involved acting as bait. Once, while Freddie stood as a lookout, Truus entered a restaurant and struck up a conversation with a high-ranking SS officer. While flirting with him, she asked him to go for a walk in the woods. Once they were isolated, Truus and her companion bumped into a man along the same path. Unknown to the Nazi officer, the man was a resistance member. He proceeded to execute the officer and leave him in a hole that had been dug earlier.

Freddie and Truus soon graduated to eliminating their own targets, which Freddie would later describe as “liquidations.” Sometimes the girls would ride a bicycle, Truus pedaling while Freddie shot from the back. They also followed the officers home to ambush them while their guard was down. While they considered the work necessary, it was difficult for the girls to accept. Sometimes, Freddie said, she would shoot a man and then feel a strange compulsion to try to help him up.

Read on: [mentalfloss.com]