Short History Of... - Female Spies of World War Two

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

During World War Two, dozens of British-trained women were deployed as spies and saboteurs, to infiltrate behind enemy lines in Nazi-controlled France. Ranging from housewives to countesses, they were trained as secret agents, and played critical roles to aid the war effort. But who were these women, and how did they find their way into espionage? What did they do undercover, and what were the consequences of capture? And how did those who made it home adjust to life when the war was won?  This is a Short History of the Female Spies of World War Two. Written by Lindsay Galvin. With thanks to Clare Mulley, award-winning historian and broadcaster, and author of The Spy Who Loved. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the 19th of June 1943 in the Loire Valley, a calm, moonlit night in the center of Nazi-occupied France. A small car chugs along a rural road, headlamps illuminating only moths and the occasional swooping bat. The driver, a young forestry official called Pierre Leclerc, sits beside an older woman. In the back sit two strangers. Hearing the men talk quietly to each other, the woman shoots Leclerc a worried glance. The passengers' accents are off. They don't sound native French. This is because they are Canadian and agents of the Special Operations Executive of the United Kingdom, or SOE, the same organization she herself belongs to. Though her codename is Jacqueline, her true identity is Yvonne Rudella, a 46-year-old hotel secretary from London. She is a new grandmother, and a special agent of the SOE.

She's a new grandmother and a special agent of the SOE. Today she's coordinating the arrival of these new agents, who parachuted in only two hours ago, and ferrying them, along with their wireless equipment, to Paris. They approach the small town of Douison and navigate through narrow streets of shuttered stone houses. Leclerc slows. A Nazi roadblock made of old pallets, a few sandbags, and a plank painted with the word HALT has sprung up in the last few hours.

Silently running over their cover stories, the agents assume casual body language as a Nazi officer approaches and taps on the glass. Peering into the open window, he directs them to park outside the mairie, or town hall. Then all four are ordered into the stone building. Inside an older man scrutinizes them and their documents, while uniformed officers talk in a corner. Rudela reminds herself that she

couldn't look less like a spy, with her graying hair and drab clothing. This inconspicuousness has saved them more than once. After a moment, her and LeClaire's papers pass inspection, and they are abruptly dismissed. Leaving their passengers behind, they head back outside. Leaving their passengers behind, they head back outside. With the car running, there's nothing they can do but wait. The minutes tick on, but the Canadians do not reappear. Then, a Nazi soldier strides out of the building, shouting and gesticulating angrily for them to come back in. Bracing herself against the dashboard, Rudella nods to Leclerc, who guns the accelerator.

The pair speed away, tires screeching, leaving the Germans scrambling for their own vehicles behind them. Leclerc pins the pedal to the floor, and soon they're coming up fast on the wooden barricade. Rudela covers her head with her arms as they smash through it. Debris shatters the windscreen, raining glass over them, but Leclerc doesn't slow. From behind them, shots are fired, bullets peppering the car. Rudella turns to glance behind her, but then she slumps, and Leclerc's cheek splatters with warm liquid. He tries to shake her, but she's unresponsive, blood streaming across her forehead. And now, though Leclerc refused to carry the suicide pill he was offered, he realizes he would rather die than be captured. He speeds headlong into the wall of the house opposite.

His body is thrown forward, then back like he's made of rubber. But somehow he survives. His head ringing like a bell and his vision blurred, he kicks open the crumpled door and staggers outside. He starts to run, but within seconds, a bullet pierces his leg, taking him down. Nazi soldiers wrench his arms behind his back and lift him. As he struggles, looking back at the car, he sees another officer open the passenger door and drag Rudela out. Leclerc thinks he must be imagining it, when her lips move and her eyelids flicker.

But despite the bullet to her head, she is alive. The British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, was a clandestine organization that helped change the course of the Second World War. Working alongside the French Resistance, known locally as the Maquis, the British SOE were instrumental in the fight against the Nazis in occupied France. From coordinating parachute drops supplying fresh agents, to using telegraphy equipment, from retrieving and distributing weapons, to sabotaging trains and electric power lines, their work was critical, covert, and incredibly dangerous. If caught, agents were either shot immediately or faced Nazi

interrogation and captivity. Before World War II, women were only deployed in non-combat roles, but the SOE realized that female agents could be especially adept at working behind enemy lines. In all, 39 of the 470 SOE operatives who passed training and infiltrated occupied France were women. And not all of them survived to tell the tale. So who were the women, ranging from housewives to countesses, who were recruited and trained as secret agents? What role did these special agents play? And what were the consequences of their capture? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of the female spies of World War II. It's June 1940, and the French army are in retreat from Hitler's troops that have swarmed across Europe like a plague.

After suffering devastating losses in the north, France is unable to hold back the advance on Paris. Occupation is inevitable, so on the 22nd of June 1940, the French government signs an armistice, an agreement between warring sides to stop fighting. During negotiations, the country is split in two. The Nazis occupy the northern and western portions of the country. The rest becomes Vichy France, an unoccupied free zone, with a French government adopting a policy of collaboration with the Nazis. France has fallen to Hitler's advance in just six weeks.

It's a catastrophe for the Allies. In response, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill signs off on the creation of a new covert clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. The British intend to plague the occupying Nazis, disrupting communication and destroying infrastructure, empowering the resisting French. Initial SOE recruits are men, drafted in from the existing intelligence services and armed forces, or civilians recommended by word of mouth. To begin with, the organization doesn't even consider the idea of female agents. But the contribution of women to the war effort is already significant. Women currently serve on the home front, up to 80,000 of them in the food-cultivating

land army and in the auxiliary armed forces. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANI, volunteer force, boasts 6,000 women working as nurses, ambulance drivers, and other roles, many under constant threat of enemy fire. And at Bletchley Park, home of the Codebreakers, 80% of staff are female. Claire Mulley is an award-winning historian, broadcaster, and author of The Spy Who Loved. There were also about 160,000 women in the armed forces. So that's in the RENS, Women's Royal Naval Service, the WAF for the Air Force and the ATS. They were clerks, they were driving people around, they were telephonists, they were working radar and plotting the progress of air raids, all of that kind of work.

working radar and plotting the progress of air raids, all of that kind of work. Then you had the ATA, so that is the women pilots. They're also women who are flying the aircraft from the factories to the airfields or back for repairs. And that was flying without radios, without ammunition. That is really dangerous ferry work. The WVS, working in cities, supporting people through the Blitz. It's a huge amount of work actually. It's not long before the SOE also discover the benefits of recruiting women. But its first two female agents don't come to serve through ordinary channels.

Krystyna Starbeck is a Polish-born countess, living in southern Africa with her diplomat husband. When Poland is invaded, the couple immediately head for Britain, so her husband can join the war against the Nazis. But Skarbek isn't going to sit and wait for her husband's return. She locates the supposedly secret offices of the British intelligence service MI6, and demands they make use of her considerable skills. And of course, they immediately said no, because she's a Polish national. You have to be British to serve the British Secret Services.

She says, my mother was born Jewish. I feel very strongly about this. To volunteer to go back into enemy-occupied Poland, as she was, seemed to be suicidal. And above all, she was a woman. And of course, there were no women in this role, so they weren't considering that at all. But she had so many things they needed. She had the language skills, she had the contacts, and she knew how to ski in and out of enemy-occupied territory under the radar. Because before the war, when she'd been a rather bored countess, she used to smuggle cigarettes by skiing across the border, just for kicks. She didn't even smoke. She just did it for the thrill. Just for kicks, she didn't even smoke. She just did it for the thrill. From the first winter of the war onwards,

the adventurous Kristina Starbeck skis through neutral Hungary and over the mountains to Poland. Though she has no official training until much later in the war, she smuggles in money, arms and explosives, and brings back escapees. Valuable intelligence reaches the British, stored ingeniously on microfilm that she keeps in the lining of her ski gloves. Down in Spain, American-born Virginia Hall makes the acquaintance of a British intelligence officer. Hall has studied languages and lived all over Europe, but her ambition to be a US diplomat was thwarted by a hunting injury that left her with a prosthetic left leg.

She served as an ambulance driver for the French army, but made her way to Spain after France was defeated. The British spy she meets here is so impressed by her drive that he recommends her to a colleague in the newly established SOE. At first, the executive intended to use Hall as eyes and ears in occupied France. As a reporter for the New York Post, she has a unique license to interview people and gather information. And though women aren't officially working for the SOE, they teach her code so she can hide covert messages in her newspaper articles. One of her early successes is in breaking 12 French and British operatives out of captivity. Working with a prisoner's wife on her weekly visits, Hall masterminds an escape plan. A tiny file is concealed in a jar of jam, a pair of wire cutters hidden in some fresh laundry, and tins of sardines placed inside hollowed-out books. With bread from the prison canteen, the prisoners make a mold of the lock. laundry and tins of sardines placed inside hollowed-out books.

With bread from the prison canteen, the prisoners make a mold of the lock. Their choir group strategically sings in the evenings to drown out their filing and hammering, as the key is fashioned from the fish tins. In order to communicate final plans with the prisoners, Hall even persuades an elderly wheelchair-using priest to smuggle a wireless set into the prison under his cassock. In the dead of night, the twelve men escape. Hall has organized their getaway driver, safe houses, false papers, and train tickets. When the manhunt has died down, they cross the Pyrenees and eventually make it back to London.

They cross the Pyrenees and eventually make it back to London. Virginia Hall and Christina Skarbek's achievements pave the way for women's active recruitment into the SOE, convincing the men in charge that their skills extend beyond their looks. If Britain didn't feel there was an advantage in recruiting women, they would have only sent out men. So there were very specific reasons for sending women into the field that was related to their gender. Now, mostly when I say this, people are thinking, ah, femme fatales, you know, honey traps. And of course, if women, some of them were very, very beautiful. I have to say a lot of them weren't very beautiful. I think

it's really important that we remember that you don't have to be a beauty to be a really effective SOE agent in the field. It's really got nothing to do with it. Beauty can be an advantage if it means it's another tool that you can use and women would use anything they had, but it can be a disadvantage if it means that your face is more memorable, then that's problematic. So it's not that at all. What it is, you know, women had this superpower in the 1940s. They tended to be overlooked and underestimated, so they were easier to work under the radar. The SOE realised just how well women operatives can disappear into the French countryside.

No one is expecting a shabbily dressed woman on a bike ferrying lunch to farmers in the field to actually be a multilingual, highly trained enemy agent. In London, recruitment begins for F-section in France, where most female agents will be deployed. They're looking for women with bravery, patriotism, and excellent French. One of the first to come to their attention is Yvonne Rudella, who works at a small hotel and club popular with SOE personnel. Noting her self-contained manner and language skills, an agent there passes her name to the officer in charge of recruitment, and soon she joins his small team. Other initial recruits are from diverse backgrounds.

recruits are from diverse backgrounds. Australian Nancy Wake is already working in occupied France on escape lines, helping downed British airmen and escaped POWs out of enemy territory. Paris-born Pearl Witherington fled Nazi occupation to take a desk job in the Air Ministry, where an old school friend, now working for the SOE, recommends her. And Noor Inyat Khan is a multilingual wireless operator who is approached by the SOE recommends her. And Noor Inyat Khan is a multilingual wireless operator who is approached by the SOE after impressing her superiors with her exceptional ability with Morse code. What unites them is their linguistic skill and their ability to operate undetected.

The more unlikely it seems that they are undercover agents, the better. They were fantastically diverse. So you had mothers like Violette Szabo. You had grandmothers. You had two sisters and a brother from the same family. You had women from about 13 different nations, including Russia and Germany. Jewish women like Denise Blosch from Germany. You had women of all faith.

Nora is a Muslim, Sufi Muslim. You had Christians, you had Jewish people, you had people of no faith at all. So all sorts of abilities and disabilities, none of that was relevant. What was relevant was their skills and knowledge and languages. The stakes rise in the theatre of war with the end of the Vichy administration in 1942. France is now occupied in its entirety by the Nazis. Under the Nazi policy of Service du Travail Obligatoire, hundreds of thousands of male French workers are now deported to Nazi Germany to work in forced labor camps. As men disappear from the countryside, male SOE agents

become increasingly conspicuous. Women, in comparison, can be much less noticeable. But to ensure effectiveness, they must also be highly trained. Like everything else in the SOE, training is veiled in secrecy. Country houses are requisitioned all over the United Kingdom, their ample land making it easy to conceal their activities. Some officers quip that SOE stands for Stately Oams of England. When training begins, no allowance is made for the new agents being female or having a civilian background. They received exactly the same training as the men. They did commando training in Scotland, which was both fitness, so the women are ploughing through

the same muddy fields, getting exactly as exhausted. They were trained in armed and unarmed combat. So one of the courses was called a silent killing course, which is learning to kill just with a rope, a commando knife or your bare hands. And that was trained by these two men called Fairburn and Sykes who lent their name to the famous commando knife. And they were former policemen from the Shanghai docks who had learnt dirty fighting. They came over and that's who was training them in knife fighting. They were also trained in parachuting. Of course, there were trade crafts.

So that's, you know, how to follow and lose a tail, how to pick a lock and do surveillance, all that sort of thing, how to resist interrogation. They'd be woken up in the middle of night by people screaming in German and shouting at them with guns just to test everything. The female SOE agents are nominally enlisted into auxiliaries of the armed forces. In theory, this offers some security under the Geneva Convention, with its protective rules of humane treatment for wounded soldiers in the field. But the women joining the SOE are under no illusions about the risks they face if caught. So they could expect to be caught, arrested, interrogated, probably quite brutally, and executed within six weeks.

And they were all told this and given the option. SOE actually felt that 50% of the agents they sent out would not survive the war. And yet they all volunteered. So I think if there is something they all had in common, it is absolute determination. Because even at the last moment, the women were given the option, you don't have to go in, you're not conscripted, but they all went out. So, of course, yes, they were scared. They were scared for themselves. They were anxious for their families.

But above all, they were determined to play their part. The war escalates even as they train and is present in every aspect of their lives. The enemy is only 20 miles away across the English Channel where the men they love are fighting and dying. Though by the summer of 1941 the Blitz is over and Hitler is turning his attention to Russia in Operation Barbarossa, several British cities have been wrecked by Nazi bombs. Many

of the women have dual nationalities, and their home countries are under brutal occupation. Every British man under 60 is required to do some form of national service, including military service for those under 51. The danger is up close, real, and personal. Their very liberty is under threat. They all felt very differently. They were differently motivated. They came from different differently. They were differently motivated. They came from

different nations. They had different experiences. So some of them, like Christina Skarbek, she was motivated by this really strong sense of patriotism to liberate courageous Poland, who had never capitulated despite being occupied, but also to serve her adopted country. She ended up a British citizen, so to fight for all the allies. Some of them, like Noor Inyat Khan, were motivated by the ethics of the war and their sense of personal responsibility. And some, perhaps Violette Zabo, was motivated by revenge. Her young husband, the father of her young child, had been killed in conflict, and she wanted to go there and do her part against the enemy. and she wanted to go there and do her part against the enemy.

Comprising eight women, the first round of fully trained female SOE agents move to a London flat to await orders. But once they are allocated a mission, there's no time to waste. They are given codenames and cover stories, then promptly deployed. The quicker they leave and the fewer associates aware of the mission, the lower the chance it can be compromised. Romanian-born Vera Atkins is an intelligence officer who has responsibility for the Women SOE Agents. With some experience of working undercover herself,

in the early days of the war she was part of a mission to extract Polish cryptologists from occupied Poland. Now she helps the female SOE agents being shipped out by boat, plane or parachute. During their last moments in England, Atkins is responsible for checking for anything that might compromise their cover. They would go up on the tarmac, They would have to wait in a small barn where they were completely checked again. Some of them found this quite humiliating, but just to check in case there was a label, in case there was a bus ticket or a cigarette in their pocket that would identify them

having come from Britain. If it was a man, Maurice Buckmaster, head of F section, would give them a last gift, something silver like a cigarette holder or a lighter that they could trade if they needed to. Vera Atkins, who managed the women, would perhaps give a brooch she gave Nora Nyakana, a silver brooch of a bird that Nora would wear on her lapel and think of freedom. And then they would climb into their aircraft. The majority of female agents make their way into occupied France by parachute. After the success of Christina Skarbek's unofficial covert work, the skiing Polish countess finally undergoes official SOE training. But though she shows no aptitude for wireless transmitting and hates using firearms,

as a natural sportswoman she's found to be an excellent parachutist during her practice jumps. Now she needs to test her new flight skills in the field. It is a blustery, moonlit July night in the skies over the Vercors Massif, the rugged mountains and plateaus of southeast France. Christina Skarbek, codename Pauline, bounces around in the back of a plane, squashed against her fellow parachutists as it lurches through another pocket of turbulence. As the aircraft creaks and shudders, she tries to get comfortable in her flying suit, pack and harness, and rubber-lined helmet. Beneath the cumbersome kit, Skarbek wears plain, worn-in French clothing so she can disappear into the population upon landing.

The drab skirt and blouse conceal a loaded revolver, razor-edged commando knife, torch, and the brown cyanide tablet she keeps sewn into a hem. In a money belt, she also carries currency and impeccably forged papers. There's a compass behind her hair clip and a tiny magnifying glass in the end of one of her French-brand cigarettes. Now the RAF dispatch officer staggers along the fuselage towards Skarbek and tells her they're nearing the drop zone. But they're facing gale force winds. When her colleague opens the exit hatch, she narrows her eyes against the blast of cold air. Waved forward by the officer, Skarbek picks her careful way over and sits at the edge of the hatch, swinging her legs down.

The moonlit countryside is only about 200 meters below. Adrenaline lights up every nerve as she watches the light above the opening. It stays on red, then changes. Green. It's now or never. Skarbek drops. She is immediately whipped sideways by the gale. The parachute is rigged to the plane by a line, which opens it for her automatically, but it isn't much use in this wind.

She is thrown around, instantly as wet as a dishcloth, but just manages to catch sight of a church spire. It means she's off course, but that's the least of her worries. The partly open parachute is slowing her fall, but it's also catching gusts. She swings and spins, dangling helplessly from her harness. The drop zone was meant to be a field, but a village now looms below her. If she crash lands among the buildings at this speed, she might not even survive it, and the prospect of capture is even worse. But Skarbek remembers her training, staying

calm, holding her body limp but ready. Then a sudden gust of wind sweeps her past the edge of the village. Fields seem to race towards her, and with her parachute still tangled, she's approaching too fast. She slams into the ground, her ankle twisting in a white-hot burst of pain as she is dragged several meters along, unable to stop. Fumbling at her harness with her gloved hands, she finds the catch and releases the parachute. It's whisked away, and she thumps down hard, finally coming to a stop. Skarbek lies on her back, surrounded by wheat, plain long gone. Though the crops at least partially conceal her, every second she's out here is a risk. Sitting up, she spots a forest at the edge of the field, where she can take cover before making her way to the village.

a forest at the edge of the field where she can take cover before making her way to the village. She touches her ankle. It's sore but not broken and soon she's on her feet. Taking a settling breath, she removes her helmet, takes her compass out from underneath her hair clip and gets to work. After burying her broken revolver, parachute and flight suit in the forest, she hides out until morning. Then, assuming the manner of a local Frenchwoman taking a walk, she strolls out to locate her reception committee. Even with the injury to her ankle, she got off lightly. Another officer jumping from the same plane that stormy night breaks an arm and fractures his skull. from the same plane that stormy night breaks an arm and fractures his skull. Parachute jumps at low altitude behind enemy lines are always hazardous, whatever the weather. Nancy Wake, another of the women who served, she actually was blown into a tree. Her parachute was caught

into a tree and she was left hanging there. But a member of the French resistance came up and she was quite good looking. He was a very charming young man. He said, my gosh, if all the trees in France have such wonderful fruit this year, how lucky we are. And she looked down at him and said, don't give me that, get me out of here. So the women were, they wanted to get on with the job. They weren't there for the flattery or whatever. Australian Nancy Wake goes on to be extremely effective in the field. She organizes and distributes arms for resistance groups, with supply drops parachuted in from England every other night. When her immediate network

is compromised and the wireless operator captured, she cycles 310 miles in 72 hours to reach another technician. During another raid, Wake will kill an SS sentry with the judo chop to the neck that she learnt during SOE training. She later tells an interviewer that she was surprised that it worked. Agents are expected to be able to act alone, but are most effective when part of a team. The SOE network is made up of small cells, or circuits, usually consisting of three agents. The larger the group, the greater the danger, so contacts are kept to a minimum. Each circuit would have a leader, a wireless

transmitter and a courier to move information around. And the women were largely recruited to be wireless transmitters and couriers. They weren't expected to be leaders. But in the field, of course, people are being arrested and taken away and shot often. And so a number of women stepped up. Female SOE officers spend months ferrying messages by bicycle, taking advantage of their anonymity in a rural landscape where many of the men have been forced into labour camps. No matter what the task, they are in constant danger,

as Christina Skarbek knows from her many near misses. She was on the back of a motorbike with a fellow agent going through France, occupied France, and they were stopped. And they had to get off. They were searched. They went all through the man's bags. And she sat there on the verge, playing with some grass, eating the end of it. And then they didn't find anything. So off they went. And in her rucksack on her back, she had a load of hand grenades. She wasn't assessed. I mean, yes, they would both have been shot for that had she had been found. Like any agent, Skarbek demonstrates great ingenuity, using any means possible to protect her missions. When she's arrested, she is suffering

from a cough. She decided to make a virtue of her apparent weakness her cough and so on and she bit her own tongue and not a little but hard and repeatedly until it bled and then as she coughed it looked as if she was coughing up blood now this is the symptom of tuberculosis TB and in early 1941 when she'd been arrested there was no cure for this disease it's carried by waterborne droplets. So basically TB and interrogation do not fit well together. The Germans, rightly terrified, decided to throw her out. And therefore she managed, it's one of those rare occasions when somebody actually gets thrown out of interrogation. Every SOE agent is exposed

to extreme risk, but perhaps none more so than the wireless operators. These technicians must maintain a link between the circuit in the field and London. Their special skills make them particularly valuable, as such communication is essential for coordinating resistance. Everything must be arranged through their messages, from details of supply drops to the timing and whereabouts of new agents arriving to sabotage targets. Often the wireless operators, nicknamed pianists thanks to their rapid Morse code abilities, hide their wireless sets at a distance, relocating them for their transmissions. But as the war progresses and the Germans discover more about the SOE's methods, they learn to suspect women as well as men.

With Nazi wireless detection vans searching the countryside for signals, SOE operators can only broadcast and receive for 20 minutes. But even then, they can be unlucky. In 1943, the life expectancy of a wireless operator once deployed is six weeks. The work, lonely and exhausting. Lillian Rolfe was sent out as a wireless transmitter. These are the women who's having to move around carrying this wireless set in a small briefcase. She used to set it up, put the wire up. They had to find somewhere to put it up. She would put it up in a lime tree. She was so exhausted after sending so many messages, signals back and forth that she fell asleep over her set and she was arrested and she was taken away. And I'm afraid to say she was executed. She lost her life for her service. So all of the work

was incredibly perilous. Though it's safer to work in small circuits, some large and complex operations require more agents. A Paris SOE network known as PROSPER is one of the biggest networks, with connections to 60 smaller SOE circuits. PROSPER recruits, organizes, trains and arms French resistance groups all across central and northern France. And it's into this situation that Noor Inayat Khan, formerly of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, or WAF, is flown on the 17th of June, 1943. Noor Inayat Khan. She was actually

an Indian-born princess, born in Moscow, amazing story of hers. And she was serving in the WAF. Her brother had joined the British Air Force. She was based in London, so she joined the WAF. And her speeds for radio transmitting were absolutely fantastic. And this was a real skill the SOE needed. They needed people to transmit from behind enemy lines. And so she was drafted in. She was given the option to volunteer. She was interviewed. And actually, a lot of people thought that she wasn't that suitable. She was quite dreamy. She wrote children's fairy stories, but she was very committed. Kahn lands by plane outside Paris, but she's only transmitting for a week before disaster

strikes. The Prosper network is compromised as a direct consequence of papers seized from two Canadian officers captured in the Loire Valley the night Yvonne Rudela was shot. When a network of this size and reach falls, it falls hard. Over the next three months, hundreds of local agents associated with Prosper are arrested. 167 are deported to Germany and half of these are executed or die in concentration camps. After the wave of arrests, Kahn becomes the only wireless operator in Paris. Knowing she's the sole connection to London for many vulnerable agents still in the field, she refuses the offer to be flown home. But she pays dearly for her bravery.

Khan is captured in October 1943, thought to have been betrayed for cash by someone at her safe house. She's delivered to 84 Avenue Fock, a spacious six-story Parisian townhouse serving as the headquarters of the Gestapo. She actually put up an incredible fight and the officer, even though he had a gun, he had to call for backup.

So three of them came in the end and they took her away to Avenue Foch in Paris. And she attempted to escape twice. You know, the first time she got there, she demanded to go to the bathroom and as a woman, not to have anyone escort her. And she went out the bathroom window, but unfortunately was pulled back in a window further along,

went through one of the offices. Khan is nothing if not persistent. But her second escape attempt will take careful preparation. It is late evening on the 25th of November 1943. Noor Inyat Khan has been imprisoned for a month. Along the fifth floor corridor where she's being kept, another cell door is unlocked. Her heart sinks as she hears its inmate being dragged off for interrogation. It is late at night, but there's no typical working day when it comes to Nazi questioning.

She waits for the noise to recede, then moves over to the wall that separates her from her neighbor, French resistance leader Leon Fay. Between bouts of brutal interrogation, Kahn has been communicating with Fay and Bob Starr, another SOE agent. They have exchanged tiny notes, tucked behind the shared lavatory, and used Morse code through the walls. Now, Kahn starts to tap out what she hopes is her last message to Faye. Tonight is the night.

Above her is the cell's only window, covered by a grid of bars screwed into the plaster. But thanks to Star sneaking her a screwdriver, she's managed to loosen the screws in readiness for her escape. The damaged plaster has been replaced with a mixture of face cream and powder that will be easier to remove at speed. Now, after receiving Faye's reply, she balances on the corner of the metal bed frame to begin the process of picking out the screws. The bed squeaks on the stone floor, and she freezes, listening for footsteps. But no one's coming.

The church bell tolls. It's time. Tying the rope she made earlier from knotted sheets around her waist, she reaches up to the ceiling, gently rattling the grill. But it takes Khan an age to release it. Sweat runs into her eyes, her fingernails are shredded, and her arms shake. But after nearly two hours, she finally works the last stubborn screw loose. She catches the grill as it falls, plaster dust coating her hair. Having already escaped in a similar way from their own cells,

Star and Faye have been waiting anxiously on the flat roof outside. They haul her up, and immediately her lungs are filled with the cool night air. She scans the Paris rooftops, smelling wet tarmac and soot on the breeze. But this is no time to appreciate freedom. Not a word passes between them as they climb down her makeshift rope onto the third floor balcony of a neighboring house. Khan holds a torn cloth against the window to muffle the noise as Faye smashes the glass with his elbow. holds a torn cloth against the window to muffle the noise as Faye smashes the glass with his elbow. They climb over the jagged shards, Star close behind them, into an empty bedroom. They have succeeded in the first part of their escape. Now it's time to split up.

Faye darts through the house and down the stairs, leaving Star and Khan waiting silently in the shadows. When he's had enough time to get out of the building and disappear, they will follow. It's almost Kahn's turn when a wail starts up across the city. It's an air raid. The Allies have chosen this moment to bomb occupied Paris. It's terrible news for the escapees. The Nazi guards always search the cells during an air raid. Kahn creeps through the dark room to the front of the house. Peering around the curtain, she sees Faye running. A shot is fired, and although his hands are raised, the SS guard pursuing him cracks him over the head with the butt of a gun. As Kahn watches on with horror, another guard looks directly up at her. She ducks back from the curtain, but it's too late. She has been seen. Seconds later,

the front door of the house where she and Star are hiding slams open. If it weren't for the air raid, Khan might have achieved this daring escape. Instead, she is recaptured. The Nazis demand her word of honor that she will not attempt to escape again. When she refuses to swear it, her treatment deteriorates. She is moved to a windowless punishment cell, weakened by starvation rations and frequently beaten. But throughout her ordeal, Kahn never gives up SOE information. She was classified as a dangerous prisoner and she was chained so that she couldn't stand upright, chained hand and feet, and eventually sent back to Germany. And she was abused and she was shot in that

prison. And her last words were recorded. Somebody overheard her cry out, liberty, just before they shot her. So, you know, we need to remember the women that managed to survive the war, but also those who lost their lives in their service. As the Allies prepare for D-Day, supply drops increase, equipping and organising local Maki groups to play their part in the seaborne invasion. Fifteen SOE F-Section women are still active in the field. One is in hiding, nursing a baby that resulted from a love affair with a fellow agent. Ten others are languishing in prison after being captured. The consequences were, of course, absolutely appalling. Brutal interrogation, prison, deprivation, possibly removal to a concentration camp, possibly death in that

camp through labor, exposure, starvation, possibly death in that camp via execution, or possibly just being shot in the prison in the first place. I mean, horrendous. Of course, for the women, there was the further peril that some of them were raped before they were executed. Yeah, absolutely dreadful. raped before they were executed. Yeah, absolutely dreadful. On the 6th of June 1944, the Allies invade Normandy in Operation Overlord,

the largest ever seaborne invasion in history. Hours before Allied troops land, the SOE are at their most active, alongside the more numerous and organized French resistance groups. 960 sabotage strikes are made against railways and 32 telecommunications sites are destroyed. This would not be possible without the hundreds of SOE operatives in the field supplying and coordinating the missions. France is liberated by the end of the summer, and the Allies close in on Hitler, but it will take another year for the war to be over. Female SOE agents will operate in the field until the bitter end. Paris-born Pearl Witherington becomes the first woman in command of a circuit.

She works with four large Maquis groups, providing weapons and sabotage training. She works with four large Maquis groups providing weapons and sabotage training. In September 1944, she leads 800 Maquis into battle against 4,000 Germans. They liberate the Loire Valley town of Valençay, killing 180 of the enemy against 21 losses of their own. By the end of the war, Witherington is promoted to the rank of flight officer. Cruelly, Yvonne Rudela dies of typhus and dysentery in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a few days after the Allied liberation. Later in 1945, Vera Atkins travels to Germany to numerous camps and prisons interviewing officers. Germany to numerous camps and prisons, interviewing officers. She takes it upon herself to trace the deaths of the 118 SOE officers who were killed. Thirteen of them were women. Atkins persuades

the War Office that these women need to be recorded officially as killed in action. But the awarding of medals to women is controversial, with the general public unaware women had been active in armed combat at all. In 1946, three female agents received the George Cross, two of them posthumously. Pearl Witherington is awarded the Civil MBE, as opposed to Military, but she turns it down, stating that there was nothing civil about what she did. but she turns it down, stating that there was nothing civil about what she did. The SOE has done its work. Now Europe must put out its fires and prepare to rise from the ashes of war. After the Second World War, SOE was actually disbanded. And in America, they had an organization called the OSS, which was inspired and set up with a help of the SOE. And that went on to become the CIA, but SOE itself was disbanded. But of course,

those people, some of them unfortunately were retired, but some of them went on and still worked in that field. And a lot of the lessons, a lot of the work from that was reused and is still being used today, like some of the training and so on. Virginia Hall, the US reporter with the prosthetic leg, goes on to have a long, successful career with the CIA. Christina Skarbek, the intrepid Polish countess, works as a steward on board a passenger liner, but is tragically murdered in 1952 by a co-worker who becomes her stalker. A biography is written about Nancy Wake, known as the White Mouse, the name given to her by the Nazis, infuriated by their inability to catch her.

She gives various TV interviews, in which she demonstrates the mindset of the remarkable agents of the SOE. I must admit, some people don't believe me, but I can honestly say that I was never afraid. I was too busy to be afraid. And my hatred for the Nazis was very, very deep. Very deep indeed. Some never speak of their experiences during the war. In a time when post-traumatic stress disorder is not a recognised condition,

they cope with their memories as best they can. Certain former SOE agents attract publicity, but often the focus is the more salacious elements of their interrogation and torture, instead of the high rates of mission success. So I still read books that are now written about the women of SOE and it starts, we must write about this woman, we were drawn to her by her beautiful smile. It drives me insane. These women served along, they were selected, recruited, trained alongside the men. They were put into the field. There were male radio transmitters, there were female radio transmitters. Often the women, they weren't really recruited to be leaders of circuits,

but they stepped up and did that role and they did it really effectively. And what we need to be talking about is the real contribution these women made to the Allied war effort. You know, Christina Skarbek was the longest serving agent, male or female, during the war and one of the most high achieving. And yet we hardly know her name. So that's one myth I'd like to debunk. It's not about beauty, it's about results. After all, two-thirds of the female SOE agents did return

home. Some continued careers, some had families, some did both. But what these women have in common is the sheer peril to which they willingly exposed themselves for the greater good. And it was their effectiveness under unimaginable pressure that helped to change attitudes towards women in combat forever. The best people in any field are the ones we should recruit, and they may be women. They might have better skills in languages, in some technical work. They might have the experience of that particular region you're needing to serve in. They might be able to blend in better. It doesn't matter if they're male or female,

but it does matter that you allow yourself to recruit from the biggest pool possible to get the best people to serve. And it's because women served in roles directly on the front line or behind enemy lines through the SOE that there is a legacy that they are now used more widely.

Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the Golden Age of Athens. Thinking about what we're calling the golden age of athens seems to me to have value because it makes us think about what is it that we should do when we really are successful when we have more than we used to when we can share more than we could before. Knowing how human life is unpredictable, then what should we be thinking about? And how should we be treating ourselves and other people? The Golden Age shows us that when you are successful, you should be grateful, but you should also have forethought.

That's next time.