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The Spinoff
2 days ago
- The Spinoff
Riding in the shadow of Nancy Wake
Writer Maria Gill follows the trail of the subject of her next book: New Zealand special operations executive in World War Two, Nancy Wake. 9–11 May 2025: In transit I landed in Paris on a Wednesday, trained to Toulouse to meet my 28-year-old son Tristan and his Irish girlfriend Caoimhe (pronounced Queeva) on the Thursday and picked up rental bikes and caught a train to Châteauroux on the Friday. The mission? Retrace part of Nancy Wake's legendary 630-kilometre bike ride through Nazi-occupied France. My upcoming young adult novel on Wake had pulled me deep into her world. And now, I wanted to feel it in my legs and lungs. In 1944, with her resistance network compromised, Nancy set out alone to find a radio operator in Châteauroux. Denis Rake, Nancy's radio operator, had buried the equipment to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. She needed a new drop from London. No backup. No guarantee. Just a bicycle, a forged identity, and the hope that she'd pass as an ordinary French housewife. The next day, we would set off on Nancy's route, reversed to suit our logistics. Not quite authentic, but close enough to follow her path. 12 May: The ride begins In the city centre we cycled along the ring road, the very place where Nancy once hunted for a hunchbacked radio operator. He turned her away, suspecting a trap. Undeterred, she detoured three hours into the Creuse region to find the Free French; resistance fighters loyal to Charles de Gaulle. They relayed her urgent message. We snapped photographs of the town's old gates and cobbled streets, then set off, supposedly for four hours. Our route skipped Nancy's detour through Bourges and Issoudun, as it added 100 extra kilometres on already dangerous roads. Instead we took the so-called shortcut to Saint-Amand-Montrond. Google Maps led us through tractor rutted paths, across flooded dirt tracks, and along glowing fields of rapeseed in bloom. We passed three-house villages, badgers paddling in ponds, and a lone deer in the woods. Then the rain came-cold, heavy, and relentless. We soon discovered that not all raincoats were waterproof. Ten hours later, soaked and mud-splattered, we finally arrived at our lodgings at 9pm. Tristan, clutching a hot chocolate, looked at me and said, 'This is not how I thought I'd spend my last weeks in Europe.' He was nearing the end of a 20-month Navy course. Not quite the send-off he imagined, but unforgettable. 13 May: Montluçon Sunshine greeted us the next day. We cruised along smooth canal paths to Montluçon, where Nancy and her resistance fighters once reclaimed the town from the Germans, only to retreat days later. At a brasserie we ordered drinks, possibly the same one where the owner had shouted to the resistance fighters, 'It's on the house!' Quaint on the outside, more biker bar on the inside, a heavily tattooed, ring-nosed bartender dropped our drinks with a scowl. Needing supplies, we browsed aisles full of cheese, patisseries, and cured meats that begged to be tasted at a local supermarket. A surly shop assistant, with a revolver tattoo behind her ear, slammed our produce onto scales. A far cry from the villagers who once toasted Nancy's bravery. 14–15 May: Resistance strongholds For the next two days, we stored our bikes in the Airbnb's basement and hired a car to take us to key nearby sites where Nancy fought with the resistance. First stop: Vichy, where Nancy had celebrated the war's end, only to learn the gestapo had executed her husband, Henri Fiocca. It was also where Marshal Philippe Pétain led the Vichy regime in the unoccupied southern zone of France after Germany defeated the country. It's now a busy town that has tried to leave its grisly past behind. But it's there if you look close enough. Historic buildings still bear gun-shot pock-wounds. We searched for the manor house where Nancy, fed-up with sleeping in the woods, decamped in the last months of France's war. After circling Fragnes aimlessly, Tristan pulled it up on a virtual Google Map but refused to join us. 'You're trespassing,' he warned. Caoimhe and I ignored him. We strolled down a quiet country lane and found it: a three-storey château with a bell tower, and an air of untouched history. This was where Nancy and her team had launched plans to sabotage German activities, had supplies from England parachuted in, and where she watched the German army march by, worried they would discover them any minute. We snapped a few photos, then slipped away unseen. The next morning, we drove to Cosne d'Allier where Nancy had parachuted into after a six-month spy training course in England. Near the war's end, she returned with the Spanish resistance to blow up a key bridge in this village. Locals gathered dangerously close to watch. Nancy had to wave them back. The villagers clapped when their bridge exploded before their eyes. Today, the town seems unchanged — same tolling bells, same narrow road, but a modern bridge now spans the river. From there, we drove through the ancient oak forest of Tronçais, once a resistance stronghold. Now a plantation, where logging trucks ruck the tracks to ferry logs out. At a nearby lake, we imagined Nancy bathing while Denis Rake stood guard, preventing any of the 8,000 resistance men taking a sneaky look. We ended the day at a winery. After a generous tasting, we asked what we owed. 'You're not in New Zealand now,' the owner said with a grin. 16 May: Sleet and hills Day three in the saddle: Montluçon to Mérinchal. Google Maps again promised a four-hour ride. We should've known better. Our journey included several steep ascents; one reached a height of 1170 metres. I had an electric bike so could inch up the hills. Tristan and Caoimhe were on push bikes. When Caoimhe couldn't continue, I swapped bikes. My legs quivered. My breath rasped. I'd ridden 20 kilometres daily for a year in preparation, but this was exhausting. Darkening clouds then released freezing sleet that lashed our already worn-out bodies just as we discovered we had another flat tyre. Tristan repaired a tube beneath a crooked lean-to, fingers numb. By the time we reached our destination 10 hours later, we were once again soaked to the bone, shaking, and spent. 17 May: A tactical taxi On day four of the cycling trip, Tristan and Caoimhe refused to ride the full route. By then, my son regretted not hiring electric bikes and had developed a strong dislike for Nancy's legacy. We opted for a taxi, cutting through villages that would've taken us three hours on bikes in just one hour. From Ussel, we cycled the last two hours onto Chabrat. The landscape echoed New Zealand: green fields and cream cows. But the similarities ended there. Every village boasted a Notre Dame church and stone houses centuries old. Many were half-abandoned; shuttered shops, crumbling walls, and endless fields of rapeseed, beautiful but reeking like urine. An unpleasant scent that lingered in the air. 18 May: The final push Two brutal 1,200-metre hills stood between us and our final destination in Laroquebrou. From there, a train would take us to our booked accommodation in Aurillac at 4.40pm. Our early departure took us past sleepy villages, down twisting descents, and up two steep hills. At 4pm we arrived early in the town, a rare occurrence. Laroquebrou hosted a castle on a hill, cobblestone streets, every stone soaked in history. Proud of our progress we celebrated with blonde beer and chocolate biscuits on the platform, beside tracks with grass growing through them. We should have paid more attention to that. Tristan checked the schedule. 'Are you sure it's a train we're catching, not a bus?' Sure enough, a bus flew past the train station. He ran after it. It didn't stop. The crushing reality: we'd have to bike another two hours to Aurillac. Caoimhe and I insisted on the car route, thinking it would be faster. The traffic flew past at over 110km/h. We persevered for 30 minutes, but it was too dangerous. Briefly, we considered a slippery quarry route before abandoning it. Reluctantly, we called a taxi. Forty minutes later it arrived, squeezing our bikes on two bike racks, and the car's boot. 19 May: Toulouse, and reflection In Toulouse, we returned our bikes. A friend later asked: 'Do you think you failed, taking taxis?' Not at all. My goal was to see Nancy's roads, feel her journey, and translate that into my novel; now in its second round of editing with One Tree House. Nancy Wake cycled 630 kilometres in 72 hours, with only one night's rest. She had no gears, no GPS, and death looming at every checkpoint. We rode 300 kilometres (not including the taxi miles) over five days. I rode an electric bike, knowing I would slow the team down if I used a push bike too. My son and his girlfriend, thirty years younger than myself, on geared push-bikes, found it tough going. My military son said, 'In wartime, you draw upon hidden reserves. In peacetime, you have choices.' He hoped he could do the same as Nancy under similar circumstances. Our ride wasn't flawless. There were flat tyres, wrong turns, rain, missed buses, and fatigue-fuelled arguments. But we earned every kilometre. We saw France from her pedals – not from a window seat – but with grit and effort. We glimpsed the forests where Nancy hid, the villages that turned a blind eye, and the fields where she raced against death. That's what makes Nancy's feat extraordinary. Following in her tyre tracks, we found respect and connection. It was a way to understand courage through motion. To trace the path of a woman who risked everything for freedom, and to experience just a shadow of her endurance.
Spectator
3 days ago
- Spectator
What history doesn't tell us
The trouble with history is that it is topiary. History is what's left after the unwanted foliage has been clipped and cleared away. The topiary birds, pigs and pyramids are just yew bushes minus the clippings, these forms having emerged from the topiarist's shears. Your yew-based pig is a product of selective disposal, even down to its curly tail. Likewise with a historian's shears. The raw material may be facts (in the words of the 19th-century German historiographer Leopold von Ranke, 'what actually happened') but the history book's account, the shape and meaning we give to an era, relies as much on the happenings we choose to discard as on those we decide to notice. In like manner, Ancient Greek astronomers conjured up fantastical constellations by topiarising the stars. Such thoughts teased me as we walked around the Centre d'histoire de la Résistance in Lyon last week. I do recommend a visit both to this chilling museum dedicated to the Free French resistance during the Vichy years, and to Lyon itself. If your only brush with the city is (as mine had been) a complex motorway bypass to avoid it, then Lyon will come as a revelation. Situated on and to each side of the peninsula formed by the confluence of two great navigable rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, Lyon surpasses Paris (in my view) in its ambience, squares, promenades, boulevards and architecture from every era since the city was established by the Romans as one of their hubs of empire. The climate is mild and the atmosphere warm: classy restaurants and cool bars spill out on to tree-lined pavements.
France 24
09-05-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Remembering Sétif, the VE Day colonial massacres that ‘lost Algeria' for France
On the morning of May 8, 1945, even as revellers thronged the streets of French cities to celebrate the end of World War II, a crowd of around 10,000 people gathered in Sétif, a commercial hub in Algeria 's Constantine region, east of Algiers. The local authorities, in what was then a French département, had authorised a rally to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany, while forbidding any flag other than that of liberated France. Still, some demonstrators showed up waving Algerian flags and singing the patriotic chant ' Min Djibalina ' (From our Mountains), which would later become an anthem of the independence struggle. Some cried 'Free Messali Hadj', calling for the release of a jailed champion of Algerian independence. Others shouted, 'We want to be your equals' and 'Down with colonialism'. Suddenly, 'a policeman shot an Algerian flag-bearer, sparking shock and anger among the crowd, who then turned on the Europeans who were present,' Benjamin Stora, an Algeria-born French historian, said in a 2022 interview with FRANCE 24. Stora, who spent half a century investigating the fraught history between Algeria and its former colonial power, said 'tens of thousands of people' were killed in the ensuing repression, which he described as a weeks-long 'massacre'. 'It was a war of reprisal that lasted practically two months,' he explained. 'We talk about the events of May 8 but in truth the repression lasted through May and June 1945.' 12:16 Algerian nationalists at the time said some 45,000 people were killed in the massacres at Sétif and in the towns and surrounding areas of Guelma and Kherrata, an estimate later adopted by independent Algeria in 1962. French authorities in 1945 put the death toll at 1,500 Algerians and 103 'Europeans', the term used to refer to Algeria's white, settler population. 'Various figures have been put forward,' said Stora. 'US intelligence spoke of 30,000 dead, while historians' estimates range between 8,000 and 20,000 dead. There were summary executions, arbitrary arrests and murders committed by the regular army, but also by European militias (...) The repression was absolutely appalling.' Point of no return A turning point in Algerian history, the Sétif massacres are intimately tied to the end of the World War II, during which General Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces – opposed to Nazi-allied Vichy France – had relied heavily on colonial troops. In the months following the bloody repression, hundreds of thousands of Algerian Muslim soldiers, who had fought with the Allies against Nazi Germany at the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy and during the Provence landings, were gradually demobilised and sent home. 'Upon returning home, Algerians who had fought with the Allies for two or three years were shocked to discover the scale of repression. Many families had been affected, since all the northern part of Constantine province had been bombed, particularly by the air force,' said Stora. Veterans who 'took part in the war effort had thought they would be rewarded. Or at least that their rights would be recognised,' he added. The scale and horror of the massacres perpetrated by police, the army and parts of the settler population persuaded many advocates of Algerian independence that peaceful dialogue was simply not on the agenda in the wake of World War II. Algerian nationalists who had opposed colonial rule since the 1930s soon turned to armed struggle, launching a bloody war of independence in November 1954 that would end nearly eight years later with the departure of over a million French and other nationals who were living in Algeria. Indifference, then ignorance The massacres of May-June 1945 marked a turning point for a generation of Algerians who believed that fighting to liberate France would in turn pave the way for their liberation from colonial rule. In mainland France, however, indifference prevailed. Absorbed by his efforts to rebuild France and restore its standing among the world's powers, Charles de Gaulle devoted just two lines to the subject of Sétif in his memoirs. Two voices attempted to break this deafening silence. One was José Aboulker, an Algerian member of the French Resistance who denounced the massacres in a speech at the National Assembly in Paris in June 1945. The other was Albert Camus, 'who protested vigorously against these massacres, saying that Algerians were considered inferior, as though they were subhumans', said Stora. 'Camus spoke vehemently against the colonial system,' he added. 'He was one of the few French intellectuals, perhaps the only one in 1945, to realise the significance of these terrible events, which would lead to a hardening of Algerian nationalism.' Eighty years on, recognition of this tragic episode is still in its infancy. In 2005, at the request of then president Jacques Chirac, the French ambassador in Algiers, Hubert Colin de Verdière, referred to the 'massacres' of May 8, 1945, as an 'inexcusable tragedy', marking the first such acknowledgement by a French official. On a visit to Guelma University three years later, another ambassador to Algeria, Bernard Bajolet, acknowledged 'the very heavy responsibility of the French authorities of the time in this outburst of murderous madness [which claimed] thousands of innocent victims, almost all of them Algerian.' Referring to the hundreds of Algerians thrown into the town's mountain gorges, Bajolet said the massacres 'insulted the founding principles of the French Republic and left an indelible mark on its history'. 04:45 In April 2015, a French minister laid a wreath in front of a stele commemorating the first Algerian victim of the crackdown on the Sétif protest of May 8, 1945. Three years earlier, former president François Hollande had acknowledged in a speech to the Algerian Parliament 'the suffering that colonisation inflicted' on Algerians. No French president has apologised for the colonial crimes perpetrated during more than a century of French rule over Algeria. Since 2020, May 8 has been known in Algeria as 'National Remembrance Day'. Divided memories French officials' tentative gestures to acknowledge colonial-era crimes in Algeria have so far failed to bridge a deep divide in the way the two countries perceive their shared past. 'The fact that it has taken so long to face up to the reality of colonial rule has only widened this divide,' Stora observed. 'These opposing memories need to be bridged, so that we can move forward together and so that historical memory is not an obstacle to a Franco-Algerian relationship.' Since 2022, Stora has co-chaired a committee of French and Algerian historians tasked with reviewing the countries' shared past and achieving a 'reconciliation of memories'. Its work has been derailed by a resurgence of diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers, inflamed by France's recognition last year of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front. In a recent interview, Stora said the historians' work was effectively at a standstill. 'The commission has not met for a year now,' he said. 'Political issues have interfered with its work.' Meanwhile, a group of French lawmakers led by leftwinger Danièle Simonnet has launched a separate initiative to recognise the 'Other May 8' – a phrase used to refer to the Sétif massacres – as a 'state crime'. 'France has recognised these terrible massacres, but it hasn't acknowledged that this was a state crime,' said Simonnet. 'Sétif was bombarded, it was a massacre on a huge scale, and it's important that we face up to that fact.' A former member of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, Simonnet has set up a cross-partisan group at the National Assembly that auditioned historians and organised a conference on the events of May-June 1945. She is now urging President Emmanuel Macron to directly address the Sétif massacres. 'Many families are still scarred by this history,' she said. 'To move forward together, it would help if the president could put words on what happened, even if it's just a speech.' Simonnet was part of a delegation of French lawmakers who travelled to Algiers on Thursday to attend events marking 80 years since the massacres at Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata. In a message this week, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune framed the commemorations as a matter of national pride and described the events of May-June 1945 as a prelude to Algeria's fight for independence. 'The commemoration of May 8 reflects the Algerians' commitment to freedom and dignity, for which they took to the streets with bare hands to confront an enemy,' Tebboune said, calling French colonialism 'genocidal' and a crime against humanity.
The Guardian
08-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Allies at War by Tim Bouverie review – a revelatory study of second world war alliances
Can anything new be said about the second world war? Unexpectedly the answer is yes. Here are just a few of the surprising facts that I learned from this revelatory book. The Belgian army in 1940 was twice the size of the British Expeditionary Force. (The US army in 1940 was smaller still, smaller than those of Portugal or Sweden.) Almost all the French troops evacuated at Dunkirk chose to be repatriated rather than join the Free French. In 1942 pro-Russian feeling in Britain was so strong that War and Peace became a bestseller. Even in January 1945 the Japanese still had 1 million troops in Manchuria. The Indian prophet of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, considered Hitler 'not as bad as he is depicted'. And so on. Tim Bouverie has reverted to a traditional form to present the past afresh. His focus is not on the battlefield, nor on the Home Front, but on the relations between the allies who opposed Hitler. In the foreground are the leaders, especially Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, of course; but there are also walk-on parts for the foreign ministers, the ambassadors, the emissaries and others who participated in their discussions. This is a work of old-fashioned diplomatic history, which provides new perspectives on subjects that seemed familiar. One of its merits is to present the choices that faced the allied leaders as they appeared at the time, rather than with the benefit of hindsight. The first such alliance was between Britain and France, which declared war on Germany in September 1939 to honour their joint guarantee to Poland, though neither did much to prevent Poland from being overrun. The Anglo-French strategy was to bring Germany to its knees by means of a blockade. Fearful of reprisals, the RAF dropped leaflets rather than bombs on the enemy. The 'phoney war' ended when the Germans suddenly invaded France in the spring of 1940. Churchill had expected the front to stabilise, as it had done in 1914, but instead the German Blitzkrieg split the allied armies in two. France was defeated, and Vichy France became neutral, indeed a potential enemy. Britain fought on alone against the axis powers of Germany and Italy, which had entered the war as France was collapsing. Bouverie stresses the moral authority that Britain gained from defying German hegemony, even when the struggle seemed hopeless, while not neglecting 'the shame and guilt' felt by the British as they abandoned the Greeks to axis occupation. The painful decision to attack the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir rather than allow it to fall into German hands convinced Roosevelt of Britain's determination to continue. Churchill knew that Germany could not be defeated without US help. Early in 1941 the American, British and Canadian staffs met to agree plans for the US to enter the war. At the outset the British found their US allies 'hopelessly disorganised', but the creation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff provided the structural basis for 'the most integrated and successful military alliance in history'. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Newfoundland to agree an 'Atlantic Charter'. Although willing to provide succour, the US president was unwilling to commit himself further. Bouverie makes the important point that in the US, unlike in Britain, elections continued throughout the war. Then as now, the US public was isolationist in mood, wary of foreign entanglements. Only in December 1941, after the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, was the US dragged into the conflict. Hitler helpfully declared war on the US in solidarity with its Japanese allies. By this time, Germany had invaded Russia, which became the third member of the 'Grand Alliance'. The 'Big Three' of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met for the first time in Tehran towards the end of 1943. This conference led to some incongruous exchanges, especially in the evening. When Churchill remarked that the political complexion of the world was changing and even Britain was becoming 'a trifle pinker', Stalin rejoined that this was 'a sign of good health'. The old anti-Bolshevik crusader then drank a toast to the 'proletarian masses', prompting Stalin to raise his glass 'to the Conservative party'. Churchill praised Roosevelt as 'the truest friend… the greatest man I have ever known'. Nevertheless, differences between them remained, one being their contrasting attitudes to France. Churchill insisted that France should be restored to its position as a great power after the victory. He recognised from the start that Charles de Gaulle, though often exasperating, was 'the man of destiny'; in contrast, the Americans continued to lend legitimacy to the collaborationist regime at Vichy until it collapsed, while treating De Gaulle and the Free French forces as 'a band of nuisance rebels'. The Russians were able to exploit the divisions between the western powers. Roosevelt mistakenly believed he could handle Stalin, rather as the current president seems to believe that he can handle Putin. Sometimes he dealt with Stalin without consulting or even informing his closest ally. The British resented US criticism of their empire. Taxed by a New York hostess about the plight of the 'wretched' Indians, Churchill asked, mischievously: 'To which Indians do you refer? Do you by any chance refer to the second greatest nation on Earth, which under benign and beneficent British rule has multiplied and prospered exceedingly, or do you mean the unfortunate Indians of the North American continent, which under your administration are practically extinct?' Black American GIs, who had to endure a colour bar at home, were welcomed in Britain. Bouverie quotes a West Country farmer who, on being asked what he thought of the visitors, replied that he got on very well with Americans, 'but had no time for the white men they had brought with them'. Bouverie's commentary is fair and his judgments judicious. Though he has obviously undertaken a vast amount of research, he never becomes overwhelmed by his material. On the contrary, his book is enjoyable to read. He writes lucidly and lightens his weighty subject matter with well-chosen vignettes – for example, describing how, at a critical conference in June 1940, the British liaison officer Major-General Edward Louis Spears snapped his pencil in frustration at French expressions of defeatism. Bouverie's first book, Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War, published in 2019, was a dazzling debut. Allies at War fully confirms the promise shown by its predecessor. Adam Sisman's most recent book is The Secret Life of John le Carré (Profile) Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler by Tim Bouverie is published by Bodley Head (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Guardian
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Josephine Baker: the superstar turned spy who fought the Nazis and for civil rights
She was, according to US wartime counter-intelligence officer Lt Paul Jensen, 'our No 1 contact in French Morocco', supporting the allied mission 'at great risk to her own life – and I mean that literally. We would have been quite helpless without her.' The British intelligence agent Donald Darling had her down as an especially 'cherished agent of [Charles] de Gaulle's government'. Well aware of her importance, the UK foreign intelligence service MI6 called her 'the pet lady agent' of the Free French. Before the second world war, Josephine Baker had been 'the Black Venus': the world's first female superstar of colour, dancing the Charleston dressed in nothing but pearls and a banana skirt, parading her pet cheetah, scandalising and delighting le Tout-Paris. After the war, Baker became a prominent and outspoken US civil rights campaigner, famously speaking with Martin Luther King Jr at the 1963 March on Washington and adopting 12 children from eight countries to live with her in her chateau in the Dordogne. During it, she was a spy. Shrouded in the fog of war, then recounted afterwards – often unreliably - in the memoirs of people (including Baker herself) with a story to spin, the entertainer's wartime exploits have long been a subject for speculation and mythmaking. But a new account, working from contemporary, often unused sources, has uncovered evidence that Baker was not only a highly effective agent but was also using the same celebrity that provided the perfect cover for her espionage as a powerful means to promote the cause of equal rights. 'Looking at her life through the prism of the war really helps us understand who she was, and to make sense of what she did later on,' said Hanna Diamond, a professor of French history at Cardiff University and the author of Josephine Baker's Secret War, which is published on Tuesday. 'The war was so important; it's the missing piece of her puzzle. She [Baker] was amazingly well equipped to be a spy; a performer, through and through. Her motivation came from the huge debt she felt to France, which had made her a star – and it had its roots in the racism she grew up with.' Born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1906, Baker left school at 12 and in 1921 was cast in an early all-Black musical on Broadway. Four years later, she won a place in a Paris show, La Revue Nègre, and set sail for France. She swiftly became a huge star. By 1939, when she was recruited by Jacques Abtey, an initially sceptical French intelligence agent who would become her handler and on-off lover, Baker was Europe's highest paid entertainer and one of its best-known female celebrities. Abtey taught her the tricks of the spy trade, such as using invisible ink, but it was Baker's far-reaching fame – which meant everyone, everywhere wanted to meet her – and easy charm (which ensured they also talked freely) that were her real espionage assets. From early 1941, Baker, under the aegis of the French secret services, travelled from Marrakech, where she was based, to Lisbon, Madrid, Seville and Barcelona, and round north Africa, giving concerts, attending receptions – and gathering and passing top secret information to allied agents. She proved expert enough at it to be awarded, after the war, the resistance medal and, belatedly, the Légion d'honneur with the military Croix de guerre. Although precisely what was in the notes that she carried – often pinned to her bra – was, in many cases, officially unrecorded and remains unknown, Diamond's research suggests that on several occasions it proved hugely valuable, and was sometimes critical. Previously unused sources show, for example, that after the allied landings in north Africa in 1942, Baker and the local leaders she had cultivated played a crucial role aiding US counter-intelligence in Morocco, identifying Nazi spies and allowing hundreds of arrests. 'We now know she continued as a key intermediary between the French, Americans and Moroccans through 1943 and 1944,' Diamond said. 'We've long known a little about her allied spying activities. But this role as a vital go-between is new.' Similarly, contemporary sources show Baker's well-documented postwar anti-racism campaign was already underway in the early 1940s. Her tours of US army camps across north Africa brought her face to face with the racial segregation she had left behind in 1925. Press interviews from the time make her motivations for performing very clear: 'I am doing all I can to help win the war effort,' she told the Chicago Defender in 1943, but also 'to make people generally more appreciative and kinder to my race'. Gaining acceptance from the troops for whom she was singing and dancing was about promoting racial tolerance at home, Baker told the Palestine Post that same year: 'Every success that I have counts for my coloured brothers in America.' In north Africa, Baker performed, unusually, for unsegregated US troop audiences. Playing to British forces, she also personally endured ugly racist remarks, apparently from South African troops, UK armed forces entertainments officer Henry Hurford Janes recorded. The question was existential, Diamond said. 'Discrimination was behind her decision to stay in France. In Paris, she had distanced herself from the other African-American exiles. She wanted to be French and when the war came, unlike others who left France, she stayed to support her compatriots.' Baker refused to perform in occupied Paris, however, moving to the Dordogne days before the Germans arrived and, later, on to Vichy-controlled Morocco. Her 1937 marriage to Jean Lion, which made her a French citizen, reinforced her views. Lion was Jewish and Baker helped his family escape the Germans. 'She knew very well, at first hand, what Nazi racism meant,' Diamond said. By contrast, her ardent Gaullism – she corresponded frequently with the general long after the end of the war, the book reveals – and idealisation of France meant she kept largely quiet when its north African colonies strived for independence. In 2021, Emmanuel Macron decided Baker should become the first Black woman to enter the Panthéon in Paris, the mausoleum for France's 'great men'. The French president referenced her wartime activities – which were a revelation to many. 'In France,' Diamond said, 'she is mainly known as a music-hall star, and in the US as a civil rights activist.' A whole chapter - the spying missions, the concerts that raised large sums for the resistance, her subsequent uniformed service in the French air force – was far less familiar. Having begun her research 'somewhat sceptical', Diamond said she finished it 'convinced Baker actually was really very valuable. She may not always have known what she was transmitting, but she did what she was told, and she did her best.' The picture that emerges, Diamond said, is of 'an incredibly able, shrewd, committed' Black woman who 'saw very clearly that she could exploit her celebrity for a cause and, often with very great courage, then just went ahead and did so'. During the war, Baker mobilised her talent as a performer, on and off stage, for Free France. After it, she applied what she had learned, effectively harnessing her celebrity to protest against the racial segregation policies of her native country. 'Knowing more about her wartime experiences helps us see how she herself came to understand what she could achieve,' Diamond said. 'It was the war – the intelligence work and the performing – that made her aware of her power.' Josephine Baker's Secret War: the African American Star Who Fought For France And Freedom is published by Yale University Press
