This is a short but powerful biography of a British spy in World War II, a woman, whom not many people know about but who was instrumental in aiding the French resistance in Nazi occupied France, outwitting the Gestapo and doing so usually alone against overwhelming odds. The book was originally written in 1989 by Rubeigh James Minney (aka R. J. Minney) and republished as a Kindle edition in 2013.
Her name was Violette Szabo, and Minney describes her as follows: "She had no discernable talents. There were no early signs of her being a prodigy either as a pianist or painter, a singer or a dancer. She had beauty, a haunting beauty, though she did not exploit it. But there were qualities, noticeable only to a few, which, in a moment of crisis and peril, made her resolute, fearless, unresponsive under agonizing torture, so that in Britain's proud story she has her place as a heroine."
The girl who would grow up in Britain after spending her first nine years in Paris loved Mata Hari, the famous World War I spy, and spy stories in general. She had at an early age a "capacity for sympathy and a tenderness which constantly showed itself, and she was able to remain perfectly calm and self-possessed when others were flurried and distracted." As a teen-ager experiencing her first air raid as the Battle of Britain was starting, she refused to go to a shelter and stayed in a tent outside exclaiming: "You've got to take a chance in life. All life is a chance really."
She initially joined an anti-aircraft battery in October 1941 until she became pregnant and delivered a girl named Tania. After her husband was killed in the Battle of El Alamaine in Egypt in 1942, she was determined to take on the Third Reich. So, she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the secret spy group established by Winston Churchill to infiltrate France and "set Europe ablaze!"
Szabo's valiant effort at defeating Hitler's Germany is an inspirational story. She was secretly flown twice into enemy-occupied France on missions that were crucial to the Allied victory. Those who fought against her admired her courage. In Salon-la-Tour, the town where she fought, "even now they talk of that heroic day when `la petite Anglaise' held four hundred Germans of the Das Reich SS Panzer division at bay, with complete disregard of all personal risk." She was awarded the George Cross posthumously in 1946 for her bravery, the first British woman ever to receive it. She was also awarded the Croix de Guerre posthumously in 1947 by the French government. Violette Szabo was only 23 years old when the Nazis shot her dead and burned her body in a crematorium at Ravensbruck after putting her through unfathomable tortures in which she revealed nothing, defiant to the end.
This riveting story about a British and Allied patriot is highly recommended.
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Top reviews from other countries
Mrs. S. Franklin
Excellent book from an excellent seller.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 7, 2023
Amazon Customer
Thank you for this being available on Kindle
Reviewed in Australia on August 21, 2019jenny norman
A very factual account
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2014