Description:
They were told that the only crime they must never commit was to be caught. Women of enormous cunning and strength of will, the Shadow Warriors' stories have remained largely untold until now. In a dramatic tale of espionage and conspiracy in World War II, Shadow Warriors of World War II: The Daring Women of the OSS and SOE unveils the history of the courageous women who volunteered to work behind enemy lines.
Sent into Nazi-occupied Europe by the United States' Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), these women helped establish a web of resistance groups across the continent. Their extraordinary heroism, initiative, and resourcefulness contributed to the Allied breakout of the Normandy beachheads and to the eventual victory over Hitler. Young and daring, the female agents accepted that they could be captured, tortured, or killed, but others were always readied to take their place. So effective did the female agents become in their efforts, the Germans placed a price of a million francs on the heads of operatives who were successfully disrupting their troops.
Review Quotes: "The riveting stories of the courageous British and American female special agents rattle out in quick-fire bursts from these pages. But what gives this book weight is the interweaving of the SOE and OSS narratives, all to much divorced in histories of the secret war." --Clare Mulley, author of The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Livesof Christine Granville and The Woman Who Saved the Children