The Incredible British Female Spies of WWII
Set Europe ablaze. Those were the instructions of Prime Minister Winston Churchill when in June 1940, as Hitler stomped across Europe. With the beaten back British forces unable to mount any kind of assault on Europe for the foreseeable future, the newly formed Special Operations Executive, or SOE, would instead work alongside local resistance groups in occupied lands gathering intelligence on the enemy, coordinating operations between resistance cells, sabotaging German equipment and conducting assassinations. It was a dirty but necessary kind of warfare. SOE agents could expect merciless treatment if captured and thus the psychological strain of being constantly on their guard meant only the strongest and toughest of people would do. Because they needed the very best of the best, the SOE didnt have room to discriminate based on gender. What mattered most to them was that any prospective agent was intelligent, resourceful, tenacious, courageous and above all dedicated to eradicating Nazism. In todays
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