![]() ![]() She went from being in charge of around 20 Maquis to 3,500. That didn’t deter volunteers from flocking to her, especially as it seemed more and more possible that the resistance efforts might get rid of the Germans once and for all. Her photograph ended up on German posters that promised a reward of 1 million francs. She lived in the woods and organized drops of supplies and explosives to arm the Maquis. So she took control of a swath of territory that she called the “Marie-Wrestler circuit,” after two of her code names, Cornioley wrote in her book, Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent. And then she is like five men.”Īfter a few months, Pearl’s main radio operator was arrested. According to Braddon’s Nancy Wake, one of the Maquis called her “the most feminine woman I know-until the fighting starts. She participated in raids and killed Germans with her bare hands. She won over local clan leaders with her know-how and became the administrative head of around 7,000 fighters, coordinating secret nighttime airdrops of weapons, explosives, and supplies. She became ensconced with the Maquis, the guerrilla resistance army pocketed through some of Southern France’s more rugged terrain. Then she parachuted straight back in to France. 1 most-wanted fugitive, with a price of 5 million francs on her head.Īfter being arrested and then escaping to Britain, Wake joined the S.O.E. The Gestapo was soon buzzing about “the White Mouse,” a woman who was helping hundreds of downed Allied servicemen and would-be political prisoners escape to England via Spain and the Pyrenees (which Wake claimed to have walked 17 times). Wake spread her husband’s wealth as far as she could, and inadvertently started running a sort of underground railway from her flat in Marseille. She was a horrendous driver, but very determined. Since France had almost no ambulances, she made him buy her one, according to Russell Braddon’s Nancy Wake: SEO’s Greatest Heroine. She told her devoted husband, Henri, that she would become an ambulance driver. ![]() However, when war came, Wake didn’t shy away. She married a wealthy man in Marseille, and was accustomed to breakfasting in a large bath with champagne and caviar on toast. They agreed.Īfter the war, Krystyna led a somewhat aimless existence, and was eventually stabbed to death by another obsessed admirer.įrom Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Imagesīorn in New Zealand in 1912 and raised in Australia, Nancy Wake’s life couldn’t have been sweeter. The Allies had just landed over the course of three hours, she convinced the guards that the only way they might receive mercy would be to release the prisoners. Now that she knew where he was located, she entered the prison and told the guards that she was related to a senior British diplomat. She once saved the life of one of her lovers, Francis Cammaerts, by skulking around the prison where he was being held and singing one of their favorite tunes, until she heard him sing it back. Krystyna became a vital part of the resistance, smuggling intelligence out of Poland to the allies, using her wits to evade capture and execution over and over again-including the time she bit her own tongue bloody to fake tuberculosis. Though her Jewish blood meant that she would never fully be accepted by the Polish aristocracy, Krystyna’s love for Poland never wavered. Krystyna craved danger, even as her very existence was perilous: her mother was a fabulously wealthy Jewish banking heir. It was the coldest winter in memory-German patrols found so many bodies in the following spring thaw that they doubled their patrols the following winter. She convinced the Olympic skier Jan Marusarz to escort her over the Tatras mountains from Hungary. Churchill made sure Donovan spent substantial time with Vera, according to Spymistress. Roosevelt sent his head of intelligence, William Donovan-the future creator of the C.I.A.-to scout the situation on the ground in Europe. Roosevelt, but it was well known the Americans were deeply against entering another world war-especially with Britain’s gloomy prospects. Churchill had secretly been in contact with Franklin D. When Churchill was brought back to power to steel England against imminent German invasion, Vera was assigned to a high-ranking position in the Special Operations Executive, also known as “Churchill’s secret army.” In spite of the S.O.E.’s success, England still needed American support. In the years leading up to the war, she smuggled information to Churchill as he railed against Hitler’s regime in political exile-while the nervous English government tried to quiet him, believing Hitler’s promise not to invade. Vera Atkins was Jewish (her real name was Rosenberg), a fact she didn't readily disclose to the high-ranking anti-Nazi bureaucrats she worked with. ![]()
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