Women Spies Who Changed WWII: Background information when reading A Woman of No Importance

Women Spies Who Changed WWII

This article relates to A Woman of No Importance

For a wide array of reasons, the Allied countries recruited many women as spies in WWII. Their first advantage was they could blend in more easily than their male counterparts in the civilian population of a typical town or village. But there was also a growing sense that women were more skilled at being secretive, coy, and courageous. Women rarely spilled secrets via pillow talk, nor were they drunken loudmouths. Their empathy was a plus. They were asked to handle the ground war and deal with volunteer civilians who would naturally come to them when frustrations piled up.

Who were some of these women and what did they accomplish?

Like Virginia Hall, Nancy Grace Augusta Wake came from affluence. She was happily married in Marseille and the last person you would expect to be a spy. Known as 'The White Mouse,' she rescued downed pilots and helped them escape by way of Spain, the same route Hall escaped from once her cover was blown, a treacherous hike through the Pyrenees in winter. Wake was a courier for the French Resistance, and the Nazis desperately wanted to capture her. After the Third Reich put a large reward on her head in 1942, she fled France for Britain where, like Hall, she joined the Special Operations Executive.

She parachuted back into France on March 1, 1944 and ingratiated herself with the Maquis (pronounced maki) resistance movement in southern France, about 7,000 fighters. The Maquis were so feared that the Germans sent in 22,000 to destroy them. But the Germans were defeated, with 1,400 killed in the fighting. Wake's fighters, however, only lost 100 soldiers, a credit to her tactical skills and organization.

Post-war, Wake was awarded the George Medal, the United States Medal of Freedom, the Médaille de la Résistance, and the Croix de Guerre. The accolades were bittersweet. While she had been fighting, her husband was arrested and tortured. The Gestapo demanded he speak of her whereabouts, but he refused and died from the abuse.

The subtle talent of charming men worked wonders for female spies equipped with charismatic gifts. Count Krystyna Skarbek as one of them. She knew her way around a gun, and she was an expert in the fine details of romance. Skarbek left a lot of broken hearts and teary gentlemen who battled for her affection. But she had bigger things on her mind. In December 1939, annoyed that she was not allowed to join the military, she came up with a plan to ski into Poland and relay British propaganda to trick the Nazis.

Once there, Skarbek organized the courier system and reports flowed back from Warsaw to Budapest. She sabotaged communications on the River Danube. She was the longest serving SOE female agent. After the war ended, she was awarded the George Medal, and she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, an award usually handed out to lieutenant colonels. One of her pseudonyms was Christine Granville, which she legally adopted as her own name when naturalized as a British subject in 1946.

Pearl Witherington Cornioley was born and raised in France by British expatriate parents. Her father was an alcoholic who drank most of his money away, leaving Pearl to negotiate with his creditors to keep the family from destitution. On September 22nd, 1943, she parachuted into France and worked for SOE as a courier. In training, her superiors claimed she was "the best shot" they'd ever seen. Her cover was as a cosmetics saleswoman, but what she was really doing was memorizing sensitive information and relaying it back to her London bosses.

Cornioley was the leader of the SOE network codenamed Wrestler. The network grew to 1,500 members of the Maquis resistance. On D-Day (June 6th, 1944), Germans were ordered to attack them, leading to a 14-hour battle. The Germans lost 86 men and the Maquis lost 24, including civilians. She regrouped and organized more attacks on Germans, killing 1,000 while having few casualties on her side.

After the war, when offered a civil citation for her role, she famously said, "There was nothing remotely civil about what I did. I didn't sit behind a desk all day." She later received the Legion of Honour.

Extraordinary is an understatement. Women spies of World War II were not dissuaded by the barbarism of Adolf Hitler. Hitler didn't hinder their desire to fight evil with weapons, secrecy, communications, bravery, nor did he lessen their desire to lead men, all at a personal cost. Women spies were determined to slay the evil empire and everything Hitler represented in the world. There was no mission they wouldn't sign up for as they put morality first, and their individual luxuries and privileges far behind.

A modern creed of female behavior, spoken by former president of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards, appropriately fits the SOE spy. "Don't be patient and wait for someone to ask you, and don't think everyone's going to like you because if you're not pissing someone off, you're probably not doing your job. And that's how change happens, because people are bold and audacious."

Bold. Audacious. They were the saviors of World War II, the female spies who risked their lives.

Photo of Nancy Wake, courtesy of Wikipedia

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to A Woman of No Importance. It originally ran in July 2019 and has been updated for the March 2020 paperback edition. Go to magazine.