Agnes Bernelle

Agnes Bernelle (born Agnes Elisabeth Bernauer; 7 March 1923 – 15 February 1999) was a Berlin-born actress and singer, who lived in England for many years, then Ireland. She appeared in over 20 films and also made stage and television appearances.

Her family fled Berlin in 1936. She was the wartime "Black Propaganda" radio announcer codenamed "Vicki" for the British Political Warfare Executive. During the Second World War, she became involved with top secret British Special Operations radio broadcasts. Transmitting from Woburn Abbey alongside the top secret Enigma project, she was introduced to black propaganda. She was recruited for her native German language skills and was suggested by her father, Rudolf Bernauer, after he was sought out for his theatrical and German connections, operating under the codename "Vicky".

Her radio broadcasts on Deutscher Kurzwellensender Atlantik were bounced over to Germany and primarily were aimed at spreading confusion and lowering morale among German forces, along with being littered with code messages for resistance fighters on the continent disguised as record labels and numbers.An oft-repeated story is that a broadcast by Bernelle caused a U-boat captain to surrender by informing him that his wife - whom he had not seen for two years - had given birth to twins.Bernelle was Catholic. She converted to Catholicism in the mid-1930s along with her father, Bernauer, who was Hungarian and Jewish. Her German mother, Emmy (née Erb), was Protestant.