Some one recently told me that American spies in Germany were often discovered because of the way they ate - specifically, that they’d cut their food, then put down their knife and switch their fork from the left to the right hand before eating. Good germans (or Europeans in general?) would simply continue eating with their left hand.
Dunno about your question, but if they wanted to not have their spies discovered that way, they could just use left-handed spies. I’m left-handed, and I eat like a good German, though I’m a 'merkin.
here you would normally keep both in your hands, unless you are eating something like rice or macaroni where there is no conceivable use for a knife. Upending your fork and shovelling it in with your left is vulgar, using the right is OK.
I’ve never heard the spy claim. I suspect that it is the sort of thing that someone extrapolated from a few European/American table encounters without actually having any evidence that it ever happened.
For one thing, the “American” style of eating was not even universal within the U.S. during WWII. My Dad used to tell the story of the guy who came back from leave, having picked up the “American” style at camp, who reported that the first time he swapped hands to use his knife and fork, his father looked down the table and asked “Do you want to do that dance, again?”.
And, of course, when the Yanks entered the war, a certain amount of their early training was handled by Brits who would have commented on the peculiarity.
Is it possible that some OSS operative somewhere brought down heat by eating “wrong”? I suppose so. However, I doubt that it was a common occurrence.
May i jsut say how impressed I am at the lovely logical simplicity of the suggestion of simply using left-handed spies.
Wanted - spies
Must speak excellent German
Must be left-handed.
I have no experience in the spy trade but am pretty sure the folks training the spies might have pointed out that wort of detail.
(I’d make a terriblel spy, as I remember a German family thinking me very strange because I ate roast chicken witih a knife and fork instead of the more practical, but more casual method of simply picking it up in my paws. Another career I can’t have, then.
I see a slight problem with this story. A convincing spy probably was native speaker. Very, very few people master a language so well that it doesn’t give them away more easily than table manners ever could. We are talking about a country with extremely few foreigners and more formal etiquette than today in an era before supermarkets, self-service gas stations, ATMs and so on. You just couldn’t do anything without talking to people all the time. So we need someone who speaks perfect German but grew up in a household with American table manners. That’s certainly possible but not exactly the norm.
I have heard another variation on this concerning British spys and crossing the road. Because we drive on the opposite side to the rest of Europe a pedestrian in the UK has to first look right before crossing, instead of left. The story goes that a sharp eyed German officer in Paris noticed a man looking the “wrong” way and arrested him. Might be an urban myth but it might be true.
This was a scene in the recent movie "Charlotte Grey. Did they take it from real life? Or did they pull a Ronald Reagan? Even if true, I’m inclined to think that it didn’t occur ‘often.’
The version I heard had to do with which end of a slice of pie you start from, the pointed (middle) end or the crust. Does anyone know if this at least plausible? (i.e. whether Germans really start from one end, and Americans and/or Brits start from the other.)
I’ve heard this told as a true story, but one has to keep in mind that this was supposed to have been a single incident. One sharp-eyed Gestapo agent sitting in a cafe spotted a “peasant” handling his eating utensils in a manner more consistent with American table manners than European. Said peasant, upon investigation, turns out to be a downed American pilot in disguise. This story should not be taken as evidence that observing cutlery usage was official Gestapo policy. It merely serves as an example of the sort of innocuous thing that can given someone away as a foreigner. Like the suspicious investigator in The Great Escape who speaks English to an escaped POW to catch him off guard. Or the French-speaking American agent who (according to the story) was caught when a Gestapo thug stepped hard on his foot – he said “ouch” instead of the more typically French “aiii”. I read a novel wherein a German spy in the U.S. is given away when he orders breakfast in a diner and doesn’t know what French toast is. You just never know what might give you away. Makes you appreciate the dangers faced by covert agents every minute they spend in enemy territory.
I’d consider the story implausible for the following reason: Foreigners who have been living for years in Germany, who are perfectly accultured and who are very fluent in German still tend to have a recognizable accent, which can be readily distinguished from the finite number of regional accents. The accent of a native speaker of English speaking German is really distinctive. That, not table manners, would have done those notional spies in.
It worked the other way round as well. This is a true story:- two German spies who had just been landed on the south coast of England knocked on the door of a pub at 8 o’clock in the morning and asked for a glass of cider. Of course if they should have known that the pubs did not open till at least 11 o’clock. The landlord got suspicious and contacted the police. They were arrested and ( I think ) executed.
That said, don’t forget that the U.S. in the 1940s was still a heavily immigrant society. Many homes had a immigrant parent or grandparent who still spoke the native language, complete with authentic regional accent. The children who grew up in those homes would pick up “proper” pronunciation and inflection far more naturally than someone who had simply learned German (or Italian, Polish, Danish or any of the other languages Allied spies were using) in school.
I’m sorry but this seems too obvious to me. It assumes that we use US citizens as under cover agents in foreign countries. I think it more likely that we use turncoat natives in such situations.
Of course this could be the first time I’ve been wrong in a century or so.
Ooh, that was good one! IIRC, the Gestapo guy ended their conversation by saying (in English) “Good day!” The escaping POW instinctively responded with something like “You too, pal.”
:smack:
It was a dirty trick, but a freakin’ brilliant one.
Hm, american here, and i eat the crust first, point last - especially my favorite pumpkin pie…though I will confess to making pumpkin custard to avoid eating crust at all=) [besides, with splenda and no crust it fits atkins better=)]
