Dan Snow's History Hit - French Resistance Super Spy

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Today's podcast is about French Resistance spies! Dan is joined by the author Roland Phillips who has uncovered the story of Mathilde Carré who was codenamed agent Victoire and nicknamed La Chatte & who spied for both the French Resistance & the Nazis. In this episode, Roland takes us through a fascinating tale of love, betrayal, espionage, patriotism and cynicism during the Second World War.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking French resistance spies on this podcast. Roland Phillips, wonderful author, very engaging writer, he has uncovered this story. He has researched it in great detail. It's the story of Mathilde Carre, codenamed The Cat, later known as Agent victoire it's a fascinating story of espionage counter-espionage love betrayal patriotism cynicism in the second world war it's super interesting and i'm thrilled to have another wonderful wartime history that reads like a spy novel on this podcast if you'll listen to similar podcasts we got plenty of them let me tell you get, go to History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history, but it's audio and video. Hundreds of hours of history documentaries, many hundreds of podcasts. And you'll be able to binge on historical content until you are satisfied.

But in the meantime, everybody, here is Roland Phillips talking about the cat. Roland, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for asking me along. It's another spy. I mean, I thought we knew all the spies and I thought we knew all these extraordinary stories in the Second World War, but this is just another one.

Where did you find this one? I found this one. I was interested in what it was like because Second World War history, we, the victors, have a lot of heroes. The Germans, the baddies, have a lot of villains. So I was looking for somebody who was more compromised, somebody in France, as Mathilde Carre, my protagonist is, who, in order to survive, had to be both hero and villain. So I was looking at a more complicated way to look at ordinary people in the war. And I stumbled across her. I think her situation was

made yet more complex as a woman rather than the man. And she wasn't anyone who signed up to be a spy. She sort of fell into it through the right motives of patriotism and the excitement of war, and then had to negotiate her way through more than one betrayal and work out her path in the war. And ultimately, I think, perhaps a tragic path. But also, ultimately, I think, perhaps a tragic path. But also, I wanted to wind back, not without the 75 years of hindsight we now have, but actually think, what would it be like to have been that person having to make those choices in a split second, rather than portraying her as when she spied for the Germans bad, when she spied for us good, and just get a bit of nuance into one person's life.

When did her first big choice come? It's 1940. France has fallen, part of it's occupied by the Germans, part of it's under the collaborationist government in Vichy. Why did she have to make a choice in the first place? Why didn't she keep her head down and go about her life? Well, that was really her character, which plays a huge part. France had indeed fallen. She'd been an extremely brave nurse during the battle for France. She was one of only three of her 80 nurses who signed up to have fought through the war. She'd got divorced. She'd decided her husband was a coward for leaving France rather than fighting. She'd fallen pregnant by an airman she was nursing and had lost the baby. She'd put her whole life into

finally having a child, someone she could love, as she put it unconditionally. She miscarried. Her lover had to go off back to the war in Syria and her beloved country had fallen she was about to commit suicide she was in Toulouse which was unoccupied and was about to throw herself into the Garonne when she suddenly had a moment of awakening an epiphany when she said no I what's the point of dying here I shall die in the service of my country. She didn't know how she was going to serve her country. But three nights later, she was in a restaurant in Toulouse, and she always had an eye for a man.

And this man caught her eye, and she caught his. And he said to her, in shocking French, would she teach him better French? And he was a Pole. He was a Polish intelligence officer who had a vision of a huge network, an unimaginable or not imagined network that would be lots of individual cells of spies throughout France, all reporting to one person only in each cell and then reporting to the centre. So none of this network, which grew to be 250 agents or more, would know to whom they were reporting. And when he came clean and said this was his idea, and he wanted her to run the French side of it, because French people wouldn't work for a pole. He was a pole.

She leapt at it. And that's how she became a spy. They set up this huge network, November 1940. It was called Anta Allier. Our spies, MI5 and MI6, said we have no other source of information from occupied France. You have to remember all our soldiers had gone. This defeat had happened in unprecedented time, and we had no spies in France. We had nothing except what came from an anti-Elié. I know that it was obviously extremely serious and lots of

people dying, but there's a kind of romance and excitement in that relationship and that story that's just very compelling, isn't it? Absolutely absolutely and that's what really drew me to her as i mentioned earlier her character she was a passionate figure she hurled herself into whatever she did often regardless of danger to herself there's one moment when she goes to breast so one of the things anter allier did was reported back to england and to the RAF on how effective their bombing raids had been. And we were trying to bomb the dockyards in Brest where the U-boats were being penned. And she went to Brest on the train to report back. And amazingly, she decided it was in the middle of the Blitz. And she decided in solidarity with the British,

she would conduct her investigations speaking in a British accent. I mean, this is utter madness. Needless to say, the Gestapo got to hear of it when she got back to the Gardenoor and found a Gestapo officer saying, I want to ask you some questions. But because of her immense charm and espionage ability, she drew him out, got talking to him, discovered he had an Irish mother. They ended up having dinner together. So once again, she got away with it. She had a lot of the time a charmed life because of her conviction that all would be well. I mean, she was a wonderful character. And on the question of romance, yes, she did have a romance with her Polish co-founder, who was a remarkable man

called Roman Chaniawski, who later became one of the double agents of Operation Overlord in 1944. But they decided that once the network was up and running, they had to live together as brother and sister. How do we have such rich sources about what she was thinking in the decision she took? This was one of the great discoveries. She did publish a book after the war in the 50s, but the real great source for me was a memoir she wrote, if I can wind forwards a bit, what happened to the network was after a year, quite by chance, it was betrayed. There was a conversation in a pub near Cherbourg, where a drunken docker started telling a Luftwaffe man, who'd bought him a few drinks that he had been asked to comment on how much aviation fuel was being used and therefore we could work out how far the planes were flying and so on

and count the planes in and out. And this Luftwaffe man thought this is a bit odd, reported to the Abwehr. The Abwehr in Paris, who would normally have done nothing, they were an idle bunch, this is a bit odd reported the abwehr the abwehr in paris who would normally have done nothing they were an idle bunch this is november 1941 were under pressure to get results so they did send someone to investigate this and eventually they tracked this docker's contacts back to paris and the network after exactly a year was betrayed. And she was arrested on the day they found out about her and told you can either be killed or work for us. And this was the second great choice of her wartime

and one that I feel she was judged later. But I think it gets to the heart of one of the things I wanted to explore in the book is what would you do threatened with death or working for the other side? And many agents and others took the choice to work for the Germans quite simply to keep their jobs, keep their family together, to look after their aged parents, whatever the reason. Anyway, she did become a double agent. They used the network's radio to put out false information and so on.

And after a time, I couldn't believe this when I read it, one of the founders of the resistance heard that her radio was working and came to her and said, I need to get messages back to England. All my radio operators have been killed. He thought he had 10,000 agents at his command. We in England thought he had 25,000 or calculated he had 25,000. And so the nascent resistance had suddenly fallen into her hands. She saw this as an opportunity to do right.

And so then she became a triple agent, extraordinarily enough. The Germans thought she was still working for them. In fact, she was working for this man, Pierre de Vomercourt. And they cooked up this story that she should go to England with him. So the Germans had to allow him to go to England. She should go with him and she would spy for the Germans, so she told them, from the heart of London. They embraced this extraordinarily eagerly, even said she should write a book called 15 Days in London. And when the Navy sent a motor torpedo boat for Mathilde, who by now is known as Agent Victoire, and Pierre de Vomcourt to leave Brittany, February 1942, the Germans were watching from behind the sand dunes.

The Germans were watching from behind the sand dunes. We had no idea here that Pierre de Vomcourt would be a right, because he couldn't obviously say in the messages, by the way, I'm bringing this woman spy for the Germans with me. So she just had to pile on the boat, and we had to say, what on earth are you doing here? And by this time, Mathilde and Pierre were also lovers. so when she arrived in Britain we had to, and this was my other great source, work out was she for real or was she not and so she went through many many debriefings and one of the ways both to occupy her, because de Vincourt had to be kept busy planning the

resistance, and to find out what really went on, was this rather clever intelligence officer who worked for the double-cross committee called Christopher Harmer, suggested she write a memoir of her life and her time in France. And as this was all she had to do, apart from living it up in London, when she went to lots of nightclubs and parties and expensive outings on the British taxpayer's bill, she really went for this and wrote tens of thousands of words, which are now in the National Archives in Paris. So this is how I knew.

I had to sort of aim off a bit because, of course, she was justifying herself to the British. But she wrote this extraordinary full memoir, and that was a very major source. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I'm talking to Roland Phillips about Agent Victoire. More after this.

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or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by HistoryHits. There are new episodes every week. Who would have wanted to be a counter-espionage officer? These people. They're all getting drunk and shagging each other, having a wild old time, working for all the sides. I mean, you're trying to work out who actually is providing useful intelligence. It's exhausting.

Absolutely exhausting. And then within Whitehall, there were further divisions because SOE kept saying to Pierre de Vomkorg, he worked for SOE, said, well, what have you told her? Is it safe to send her back? MI5 were saying, so who do you really work for and what do you know? And MI6 were saying something else. So all the different agencies had different agendas too. And she took up an amazing amount of time. Indeed, the only woman in the double cross committee was a marvellous woman called Susan Barton, who was in fact German. And she was put in as Victoire's housekeeper for a time to keep an eye on her.

And she just wrote a report saying, I cannot but regard this woman as anything other than an expensive nuisance. But we couldn't do anything. I mean, she knew too much on all sides. And we were keeping the deception going and sending back other disinformation to Paris. I mean, it was a real tangle. God, love me. All right. So she eventually does go back to France, does she? Well, what happens then is we have to send de vom call back obviously to get things going in france so we put out various bits on the network saying in fact de vom call's not going back they're going to stay on in england for a bit but we do send him back and he gets caught what happens is he sends a message from vichy France to occupied France, handwritten

message by a courier under his new codename. And quite by chance, this falls into the hands of the Abwehr officer who's set up Victoire in the first place. And he says, I recognize that handwriting. Otherwise, it wouldn't have got to Vomkoourt. So they arrest him, and we stop hearing from him, and eventually have to assume correctly he's been captured, at which point we think the game is up. In fact, de Vomcourt doesn't betray her, but she's useless. And then there's the question of what to do with her. She's a blown agent, we assume. She's a double agent. If we send her back to France pretending she hasn't been blown,

that won't work. If she goes to the Free French, because she has undoubtedly worked for the Germans, they won't have anything to do with her. We simply can't work out what to do with her. And in the end, this is now mid-1942, we imprison her in Aylesbury Prison. We take the view that she worked for the Germans and therefore is an enemy agent. And she is interned, which leads to terrible outrage.

She says, you know, I've saved the Vom Corps. I ran Antorallier, all of which is true. And here I am rotting in prison with a lot of Nazi sympathisers, which she was a really unpleasant bunch of people. But there's nothing we can do. And so she spends two and a half years in Aylesbury Prison and then in Holloway, increasingly ill. in Aylesbury Prison and then in Holloway. Increasingly ill, she's had this high old life in London, made lots of influential friends who were all banned from visiting her. And before the end of the war, after the liberation of France in August 1944, the French realised they need to put their house in order. There have been a lot of

killings, freelance killings of so-called resistors, I reckon 9,000 or 10,000. And this obviously can't go on. So de Gaulle sets up what became known as the Purge Trials. And before the war ends, they're already investigating and trying known collaborators. And she is obviously very, very high high on their list so they demand her back in late 1944 the french and we decide not to send her for two reasons the main one being that

roman chanowski is working for us as i said as a double agent and there's tremendous fear that if he is blown that won't be good but i think behind that was the guilt that she did do remarkable work for us and it would be a really bad time for her to be put on a show trial so we don't in fact send her back until after the war ends in 1945 when we have no option but to send her back so she had 15 months of being an agent a double agent a triple agent this constant peril and then three years of being banged up in prison in shock and grief and she's in quite a bad way when she goes back was it worth way when she goes back. Was it worth it? Did she look back and think, I'm really glad I got some useful intelligence to the Brits about the German occupation? I mean, I always look at these spies and think,

I mean, most of them, did they actually move the needle at all? She definitely moved the needle in the early days around Talia, and she definitely moved the needle in getting de Vomkoor out of the country. If she hadn't been there to get him out, the whole resistance story might have been very different. He had been the one who really set it up. But I think that she certainly felt she made the difference. But at her trial, her trial didn't come around until 1949. None of that difference was taken into account. She was simply tried, and it was in the charge sheet, on the period between her arrest and her leaving for England. So her trial was quite purely for her collaborative time, which was undeniable,

her collaborative time, which was undeniable, and didn't take any account of all that good work she did. And indeed, she was condemned to death initially, and was then reprieved the day before her intended execution, because her lawyer wrote a message to the president, quoting de Vomcourt, who spent the rest of the war in Kold cold hits and was a huge hero to the French, saying that he couldn't have done it without her. And I think that's what reprieved her. Following her acquittal, she never spoke. She became very religious. She gave one interview to a British journalist and then never spoke again. And in fact, it was thought she died in about 1972, but I found her death certificate and she survived into this century. I mean, she so disappeared from life that nobody even knew when she died.

Wow. What a story. Thank you very much, Roland, for resurrecting such a fascinating story from the war. The book is called? The book is called Victoire, a wartime story of resistance, collaboration and betrayal. Good and all. Hitting all the big bases in there. Well done. Thank you very much and good luck with it. Thank you very much for having me on your podcast. Thanks, Dan. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, Thanks, Dan. makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.