Women in World War II: The Spies They Never Saw Coming

Left to right, Noor Inayat Khan (Imperial War Museums), Josephine Baker (Library of Congress), and Virginia Hall (Lorna Catling Collection).

Josephine Baker, an American vaudeville performer turned glittering star of Paris, was at the peak of her fame in 1939 when the Nazi regime began its stranglehold on Europe. But then came an offer that changed her life.

Like Baker, Virginia Hall, an American who lost a leg in a hunting accident, and Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim pacifist, weren’t prototypical spies. And that was exactly the point. In this digital program marking Women’s History Month, learn how they turned prejudice and society’s low expectations of women into weapons that hid their critical work to defeat the Nazis.