BOOK REVIEW: Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler
By Lynne Olson
Reviewed by Nada Bakos
Nada Bakos is a former CIA Analyst and author of the book, The Targeter: My Life in the CIA Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House
In 1941, Marie Madeleine Fourcade joined the French resistance and became la patronne—the boss of the largest allied spy network in France. Lynn Olson writes of how the unlikely spy built her impressive network to include 3000 agents at the height of the war. Fourcade’s network known to the French resistance as the ‘Alliance’, focused gathering intelligence on German troop movements, V1 and V2 rockets, airfields, and submarine movements. The information was shared with American and British intelligence services, yet both intel services didn’t know who was at the helm of the network for nearly a year. Fourcade was concerned that both intel services wouldn’t take their intelligence seriously if they thought a woman was calling the shots.
The Gestapo eventually pieced together information on her network. Her agents used animal names as their nom de guerre, so the Gestapo referred to her alliance network as ‘Noah’s Ark’. Fourcade chose ‘Hedgehog’ for herself, the little animal that appears to be non-threatening yet when challenged, is formidable in a fight. Fourcade’s appearance was the opposite of the hedgehog. At the age of 31, Olson describes Fourcade as being known for her beauty and glamor, the chic Parisienne also hailed from a wealthy, yet somewhat unconventional family. At the start of the war, Fourcade was married to her first husband and had two children, as she took on a leadership role, she wouldn’t see them for years at a time. In the middle of the war, she fell in love with her fellow agent and French Air Force pilot, Leon Faye. Fourcade became pregnant with Faye’s child, never giving up her clandestine role, her life was clearly hectic and complicated.
Throughout the book, the reader is held at arms-length, only able to know Fourcade from afar. Was it because she was part of an intelligence network, living a clandestine life without revealing details or is it because, as a woman, historians did not capture her contributions? Fourcade described herself as, “the wife of an officer, the mother of a family, a member of no political party and a Catholic.” Female resistance leaders were acutely aware of society’s expectations for women, minimizing their own accomplishments lest they appear boastful. Yet, even with access to Fourcade’s diary, Olson doesn’t really give us a sense of who Fourcade is as a person and what pushes her to continue her work.
In some ways, not much has changed for women in the spy business since Madame Fourcade embarked on a career leading a spy network against Hitler in occupied France. Colleague’s, prospective recruits and the public are often surprised when a woman is revealed to have been working in a clandestine role. Madame Fourcade’s experience was no exception.
Olson continuously reminds us of the danger and sense of fear that Fourcade and her agents experienced throughout the war. Fourcade was captured twice, both times managing to escape. Once by stripping naked and sliding herself between the bars of the jail cell.
Of the 3000 agents in her network, 500 of them were tortured and executed over the course of the war.
In the autumn of 1943, the Gestapo started to unravel resistance networks throughout France, some were completely annihilated. The Alliance partially survived thanks to Fourcade’s reaction. She immediately sent urgent messages to her sectors to not communicate with one another by radio.
An all too familiar tension that continues to exist today among so many intelligence agencies is the relationship between field and headquarters. Fourcade experienced this tension firsthand. The author shares with us that a Colonel once told Fourcade that each bit of information, dry as it appeared on paper, “represented a wealth of suffering.” Fourcade felt some of the French and British officials who received the intelligence reports from the Alliance network seemed to have little concern for the human operatives. Fourcade felt this intensely when she discovered a months-old radio message had been lingering in files about a spy who could be infiltrating her network by the name of Jean-Claude. “Marie Madeleine felt a chill. The Alliance protection team had no member named Jean-Claude. But it did have a Jean-Paul, who was a deputy.”
Through Fourcade’s experience we are reminded of how many people are involved in taking on national security and intelligence challenges. It’s not one person or one story, it’s a large group of individuals dedicated and striving to achieve one mission. Fourcade’s determination to overcome mounting obstacles and challenging a well-organized adversary with a loosely connected network that was not formally trained, reflected a level of dedication the best intelligence operatives possess.
After the war, Fourcade became a member of the French Parliament and dedicated her time to recovering benefits for members of her beloved Alliance network and for family members of those who were executed. Many women, whose husbands were executed, were destitute without money to feed their families. Fourcade also held gatherings for her network’s survivors for years.
It’s somewhat easy to get lost in the myriad of characters that Olson introduces, or the extraneous details that don’t seem to always connect to the overall story. With dogged attention to detail, Olson takes us on Fourcade’s journey, giving us an inside look at life in the French resistance, and most importantly, a woman in the leadership of the resistance who was overlooked in previous history books.
Madame Fourcade's Secret War earns an impressive 3.5 out of 4 trench coats.
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