S8 Ep549: 2. Philps highlights Alice Moats, a socialite turned war correspondent. Defying British embassy orders to evacuate, "Mozy" stayed in Moscow and connected with Polish General Anders. Her story exposes the Soviet betrayal of Polish officers while providing

This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batch with Alan Filps. The book is the red hotel.

It's an icon of architecture in Moscow. It's still there. It's being renovated today

in the 21st century. But in 1941 to 1945, it was the headquarters of the media that was

allowed into Moscow to tell the story that Moscow wanted to hold. One of those media stars,

newspaper stars, correspondents, journalists, was a debutant who was as bad as far from Charlotte

Haldane and a hard-nosed reporter as you can get. A debutant named Alice Moats, who was called

affectionately Moatsy by everybody. I learned from Alan Filps, the author, that she was engaged

eight times, never married, and enjoyed herself. She had a wonderful war, but at some point,

was Moscow being besieged by the German army. The British ambassador takes it upon himself,

a personal mission to make sure that Alice leaves and nothing bad happens to her. Otherwise,

FDR and her parents will never forgive the British Empire. Who is Alice Moats, Alan?

Alice Moats was a wealthy socialite, very well educated. I think she spoke apart from English,

definitely Spanish, French, German, and Unshore Italian. Before the war, she conceived

a strange idea to invite herself to Moscow. She knew the ambassador there and he said,

yes, come along, come along, Alice, I'm sure it'll be fine. But when she turned up, she thought,

I see all these journalists are here, I'm going to become a war correspondent too. And people

said to her, excuse me, Alice, your literary output is so far constricted to a book called

No Nice Girl Swairs, which is a sort of a tongue-in-cheek guide to manners from a world-tier-wide

socialite. And she said, no, if these people can be to walk our respondents, I can too. And they

also poo-poo, that's never going to happen. Anyway, the embassies, the British and the American embassies

wanted all the women or what were known at the time as the embassy wives to leave Alice,

hid wherever she could. She managed to find refuge in a British embassy annex where she just wanted

around with a bag of clothes and slept wherever she could. Eventually, she managed to persuade

Claudia's magazine to get her a press card. And so she was allowed to say much to the intense

annoyance of the British ambassador, who seems to have spent more time than anyone can imagine

dealing with this difficult woman as he described her. Yes, I had the image as a reading or book

Alan of one of those comedies or plays where the ambassador, I believe his name was

stuttered, is pursuing Alice across the stage quite indifferent to the tragedy going on behind

them or the war fighting or the evacuation of the city. And Alice is changing clothes and hiding

from him. He pursues her all the way. I think he pursues her all the way to Turkey to Tehran,

as I recall. He gets quite elaborate. I imagine they're pursuing each other in heaven. He was

to a certain extent. Alice is like the fool in a Shakespeare tragedy. She provides some light

entertainment, but also exposes the folly of the actions of grander people than her. And with

the private income, of course, she's perfectly able to do that. One quick minute for Alice,

she does meet a Polish general, Anders, who was brought by the Soviets to raise a Polish regiment

or division to fight the Germans. And at that point, Alice had struck gold. I don't know whether

all these years later, people remember it, but it's a window on how the Soviets were trying to

use the very people they so badly abused. It wasn't until the 1990s that we knew about the execution

of Anders' colleagues in the Polish army, all of that. Alice turned that up and was part of that

conversation. And I'm very thankful for your revelation about how Alice, even though we could

regard her as a light entertainment, did connect with one of the ongoing tragedies of the 21st

century, the murder of those Poles by order of the Kremlin. Alice, Alan Filps is the author.

The book is the red hotel. We've introduced the Western heroines. Now we're going to the Russian

heroines. I'm John Bachelors. You're listening to CBS Eye on the World with John Bachelors.

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