Speaking relatively, few women were recognised for their outstanding bravery during the Second
World War. But one woman, an Allied spy whom the German Gestapo referred to as White Mouse,
would have been weighed down by the medals she was awarded — if she had actually accepted
all of them. If you haven't guessed already, we're referring to the indominable Nancy Wake,
whose actions in the Second World War deserve far more attention than they already get.
Speaking relatively, few women were recognised for their outstanding bravery during the
Second World War. But one woman, an Allied spy whom the German Gestapo referred to as White
Mouse, would have been weighed down by the medals she was awarded — if she had actually accepted
all of them. If you haven't guessed already, we're referring to the indominable Nancy Wake,
whose actions in the Second World War deserve far more attention than they already get.
At this point in time, Hitler was in power, and Nancy was starting to see the consequences of his
soon-to-be calamitous reign. Jews were fleeing Germany, and Nancy became friendly with many of
these refugees. It was when Nancy travelled to Austria in 1934 to sell some articles that she
first saw Jews being persecuted, however. In Nancy's words, "It was in Vienna that I formed
my opinion of the Nazis. I resolved there and then that if I ever had the chance I would do anything,
however big or small, stupid or dangerous, to try and make things more difficult for
their rotten party. [...] More than hatred or anger, I felt a deep loathing for the Nazis."
Back in Paris, Nancy met a Frenchman named Henri Fiocca in 1937 and married him about
a month after the start of the Second World War.
France, which Nancy now considered her home, had not yet felt the unchecked wrath of the
German war machine, but it would, and Nancy's life would be turned completely upside down.
While the Germans blitzkrieged their way into France, Nancy did her part by serving as an
ambulance driver. When France fell, Nancy kept to the shadows and used her charisma
when stealth wasn't an option. In her words, "A little powder and a little drink on the way,
and I'd pass [German] posts and wink and say, 'Do you want to search me?' [...] A
woman could get out of a lot of trouble that a man could not."
Until late 1942, Nancy focused her energy in getting Jews and stranded Allied soldiers
out of France, primarily under the resistance organisation known as the Pat O'Leary Line.
In unison with other escape lines — such as the Comet Line and Shelburne
Escape Line — the Pat O'Leary line helped more than 5,000 Allied military personnel
get out of German-occupied Europe. Nancy's contributions to the the escape line were so
great that she earned a reputation among the Gestapo, who nicknamed her White Mouse and placed
a 5-million-Franc bounty on her head. After the Germans occupied Vichy France in November 1942,
and after her network was all but destroyed by a pair of traitors, Nancy was feeling a little
more heat than even she was comfortable with. She decided she would flee France to Spain, although
her husband would not go with her — a decision he would come very much to regret. After a
series of mishaps and deceptions, Nancy eventually reached Britain, while her husband was captured,
tortured, and executed by the Gestapo. But that wasn't even half of Nancy Wake's incredible story.
While she was in Britain, Nancy joined the Special Operations Executive or simply the SOE, which had
only positive things to say about her, noting that she was a "real bombshell" and an excellent shot
who "put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character." Nancy was taught how
to kill, survive, and handle vital intelligence. By April 1944, she was more than ready for the
field, and the SOE threw her out of a plane over the Auvergne province of occupied France. After
parachuting to the ground, she worked to collect and allocate parachute-dropped war material and
other supplies to the French resistance, all in the lead-up to the Allied invasion of France.
In May, after a resistance organisation she had been working with had decided to mobilise en
masse, and after the Germans handed much of said organisation's backside to it on a silver platter,
Nancy broke stride with the fleeing resistance fighters and went right back at the Germans.
Borrowing a bicycle, she road it some 500 kilometres or 310 miles in 72 hours,
all to retrieve some important radio codes that had been left behind,
and also to find an SOE radio with which she could contact the SOE headquarters back in Britain.
Nancy got a whole lot more blood on her hands after that.
She was involved in several significant altercations with the Germans, during which
she attacked German convoys and staved off German attacks on French resistance camps.
She even participated in a raid on a German HQ which resulted in the deaths of 38 Germans.
On a separate occasion, Nancy found out that some of her men had captured a young female German spy
but hadn't the guts to put her to death. Nancy, a death-machine at this point,
executed the girl herself. Later in life, Nancy said, "I was not a very nice person[,] [a]nd it
didn't put me off my breakfast." She even claimed to have killed an SS sentry with her bare hands,
which is best described, again, in Nancy's own words: "They'd taught this judo-chop stuff with
the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practised away at it. But this was the only time I used
it, [...] and it killed him all right." Following the liberation of France in August, 1944,
Nancy went back to Britain with a slew of new stories under her belt.
After the war, Nancy bounced between Britain and Australia quite a bit, and pursued careers
in both intelligence and politics for a while. Working for the Royal Air Force,
she met an RAF officer and married him in 1957. Retiring to Sydney, Australia, in 1985,
Nancy published her autobiography which took its title from the one the Gestapo had given her — The
White Mouse. Straight after the war, and all the way up until 2006, Nancy was awarded bucket-loads
of medals — some of which she rejected and some of which she sold. Hilariously, she said,
There was no point in keeping [the medals]. I'll probably go to hell and they'd melt anyway." After
her husband perished, Nancy moved to London, where she got tipsy and told war stories
until she died two years shy of a century in August 2011. They never had any children.
If it wasn't already clear at this point, Nancy Wake was quite a character, as well
as of tremendous importance to the Allied cause. While her story has been told time and time again,
we still don't think it gets the attention it deserves, and hope we've done a solid job
relaying it here in this video. But what do you think? Had you heard of Nancy Wake before today?
Do you think she was one of the most audacious female spies of the entire Second World War?
Please share your thoughts down in the comments.