Student Presentations
Purpose: Understand the role females played in the intelligence community during World War II. Many women were highly effective espionage and sabotage operatives who worked behind enemy lines in combatant situations. Two of the most effective allied spies during WWII were Vera Atkins and Virginia Hall. As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her women spies who had gone missing in action. Virginia Hall is the only American civilian female to have received the Distinguished Service Cross. Why were women ‘allowed’ to be spies but not considered as serving in combat? What were the roles and images held by society about spies versus the realities of working as an intelligence officer during World War II? Who were Vera Atkins and Virginia Hall? What did they accomplish?
Required
1) Sara Helm. A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of World War II.
"Prologue," pp. 3-21, 48-80.
2) Judith Pearson. Wolves at the Door: A True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy.
Globe Piquot Press (2005).
Supplemental Materials
1) Enemy of the Reich: A Muslim Woman Denies the Nazis in World War II Paris.
An online film, rental $3.99.
2) Terrence McCoy. Agent 'Fifi' : The stunning British spy who seduced secrets of war from her 'prey'.
3) Clare Mulley. The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville. St. Martin's Press, 2013.
4) Deirdre Osborne, "I do not know about politics or governments...I am a housewife: The Female Secret Agent and the Male War Machine in Occupied France (1942-5)," Women: A Cultural Review, 17, #1
(2006) pp. 42-64
5) Carole Seymour-Jones, She Landed by Moonlight: The Story of Secret Agent Pearl Witherington: the Real 'Charlotte Gray.'
Hodder, 2014.
6) William Stevenson. Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II. Arcade, 2011.