Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network
In 1941. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, a 31-year-old Frenchwoman born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast Allied spy network in occupied France — the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine, as I write in Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, was tailor-made for the job.
No other French resistance network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence to the Allies as did Marie-Madeline’s group, which was called Alliance. The Gestapo pursued its three thousand agents relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of them, including Marie-Madeleine’s lover. Although she moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape — 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.
