Agnes Bernelle

Agnes Bernelle (7 March 1923 – 15 February 1999) was a German actress and singer, who lived in England for most her life. Her family fled Berlin in 1936. She appeared in over 20 films and also made stage and television appearances.

She was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) wartime "Black Propaganda" radio announcer codenamed "Vicki". She became famous for demoralizing a German U-Boat captain who surrendered, due to one of her targeted broadcasts.

She was born as Agnes Elizabeth Bernauer in Berlin.

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, Bernelle was introduced to black propaganda. She was recruited for her perfect German and was suggested by her father, Rudie Bernauer, after he was sourced for his theatrical and German connections, operating under the codename "Vicky". Her radio broadcasts on Deutsche 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.

The most notorious story featured the impressive feat of convincing a German U-boat to surrender by broadcasting a made-up message to the captain, stating that his wife had given birth to twins, when he had not been on leave for more than two years. She would later learn that the man in charge, known to her only as "The Beard", was in fact the British black propagandist Sefton Delmer, her unofficial boss.

Bernelle was married from 1945 to 1969 to Desmond Leslie (1921–2001). Desmond briefly became notorious for assaulting Bernard Levin during a live transmission of That Was The Week That Was in 1962 for writing a hostile review of one of his wife's performances. The show was "An Evening of Savagery and Delight" which had rave reviews at the Dublin Festival but lasted only three weeks at London's Duchess theatre and polarised audiences. On the first night an usherette tipped a tray of hot coffee into Levin's lap, which may have affected his view of the performance. Bernelle bravely posted all the bad reviews along with the good outside the theatre. The couple had three children:

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