The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: unthreatening in appearance, yet a tough little animal that, as a friend 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, showing every German gun emplacement, fortification, and beach obstacle along the Normandy coast. The Gestapo pursued Fourcade and Alliance relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of her three thousand agents. Although Fourcade moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she escaped, once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell ‐ and continued to hold her network together even as it repeatedly threatened to crumble around her.
In a dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the riveting story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself.
Reviews for Madame Fourcade’s Secret War
"At the end of World War II, the triumphant Gen. Charles de Gaulle designated 1,038 people as resistance heroes. Only six of those heroes were women, and Fourcade, who ran the longest-running spy network, was not among them. In "Madame Fourcade’s Secret War," her fast-paced and impressively researched account, Lynne Olson corrects that historical injustice. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade emerges as a vivid and pivotal player in the French Resistance."
‐The New York Times Book Review | Read full review