There’s a fascinating report from the New York Post about a new book covering Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, a French woman who “headed one of the most important resistance networks during World War II and oversaw the collection of crucial intelligence that helped turn the battle’s tide.”
It is noted: “In 1941, Fourcade ascended to command a vast intelligence network in France, overseeing some 3,000 agents and operating in nearly every sizeable town in the country.”
Consider the following from the piece:
“If you’re raised not in your country, you’re raised with this love of an ideal,” Olson says. “She was raised with this love of France as an ideal, of liberty, equality, paternity. And the idea that Hitler would come in and destroy everything she held dear about her country outraged her.”
She and Navarre were soon working to build a network of informers across Europe, and when Germany invaded France in 1940, the group moved completely underground.
In 1942, Navarre was arrested, leaving Fourcade in charge of the network. In order to ensure the continued assistance of British intelligence, which had been providing money and supplies, Fourcade decided to travel to Spain to meet a MI6 representative.
To meet her contact, Fourcade had to be smuggled across the border hidden in a small jute mail sack stuffed into the trunk of an accomplice’s car. She had to contort her 5-foot-6 body into a 2-by-4 bag and remain inside for more than nine hours, in excruciating pain the whole way.
When they reached Spain and she was released, she fainted. Her accomplice revived her in the most French way possible: with a cigarette and a glass of cognac.
Check out this fascinating article, and the book - Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler (Random House) – is on my reading list.
- Ray Keating
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