Margery Booth, daughter of Levi and Ada Booth, was born in 1905 in Wigan, Lancashire, England. She was an English opera singer who, having married German Dr. Egon Strohm, emigrated to Germany and became a British spy. She met Adolf Hitler and sang at a British prisoner of war camp.
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At the outbreak of World War II the Nazi's mistakenly trusted her, sending her to Freigegeben (Open Prison) Stalag III-D, a camp for potential recruits to the British Free Corps. There she worked with British agent and prisoner John Brown to obtain details of traitors.
On one occasion she sang before Hitler just after a British officer had hidden secret documents in her dress; Hitler subsequently sent her red roses wrapped in a Swastika flag. In early 1944, she was arrested by the Gestapo as a suspected spy, and although tortured, did not reveal any information. Upon her release she made her way west, and was liberated in Germany by the advancing US Army.
After the war, information she provided was used to convict both Lord Haw Haw and John Amery, both of whom were hanged for treason. She then returned to London, but was professionally rejected as producers mistakenly concluded that she had been a Nazi, and was offered no work. Emigrating again to New York, on arrival she was referred to a doctor who diagnosed her with terminal cancer. She died in obscurity in New York from complications of cancer in 1952.
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