Page 131 - JSOM Fall 2019

Helm S. A Life in Secrets. Vera Atkins and the Miss- Olson L. Madame Fourcade’s Secret War. The Daring
ing Agents of WW II. Doubleday: New York, 2005. ISBN Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network
978-0-385-50845-2. Against Hitler. New York: Random House; 2019. ISBN
978-0-8129-9476-6.
This excellent biography of WAAF
Squadron Officer Vera Adkins high- This is an in-depth biography and re-
lights her deployment to Europe at cord of the largest French network,
the close of World War II to search the Alliance circuit, and the only one
for the many missing SOE agents, run by a woman. It provided the first
many of whom either were in or intelligence reports on Peenemünde,
killed at Nazi concentration camps. thereby revealing the V2 rocket’s
existence. Fourcade’s network was
composed of 3,000 agents, of whom
600 were captured and 450 were exe-
cuted. While a “G Chief” fighting the
Nazis, she had a baby and refused to
play by the rules of the racist, sexist,
and ultimately murderous Vichy patriarchy. She is nearly un-
known as postwar France discounted the role of women in the
resistance.

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