City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Madame Fourcade's secret war, the daring young woman who led France's largest spy network against Hitler, Lynne Olson

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

portraitsillustrationsmaps

index present

non fiction

Madame Fourcade's secret war

bibliography

Lynne Olson

the daring young woman who led France's largest spy network against Hitler

The little-known story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the woman who headed the largest spy network in occupied France during World War II... In 1941 a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization--the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country's conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group's name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah's Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: a tough little animal, unthreatening in appearance, that, as a colleague of hers put it, 'even a lion would hesitate to bite.' No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence--including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on D-Day--as Alliance

Daring young woman who led France's largest spy network against Hitler