Marie-Madeleine Fourcade is a World War II hero not many Americans may be aware of.
American author Lynne Olson is looking to change that by unearthing the story of the unsung hero in her latest book called Madame Fourcade’s Secret War.
“She was the only woman to head a major resistance organization in occupied France during WWII. It was a spy network,” Olson said. “There was never much detail about her life, including her escape from a jail cell. I just wanted to know more about her and that is what really got me going in doing a book about her.”
Olson will be discussing her latest book about Fourcade on May 13 at the Princeton Public Library, which is located on 65 Witherspoon St.
No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence, including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on the D-Day invasion, showing every German gun emplacement, fortification and beach obstacle along the Normandy coast, according to Olson.
Her network’s name was Alliance, but the German Gestapo dubbed it Noah’s Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases.
“Agents were given animal or bird code names, which was Fourcade’s idea. She was the one who handed out most of the codenames, for example like zebra, elephant or tiger,” Olson said. “Fourcade chose Hedgehog for herself. She saw herself as looking unthreatening like a hedgehog, but was actually quite threating when it came down to it as hedgehogs are when they roll up into a ball with all their spikes.”
She also said Fourcade was different to other women in the movement because she was in a leadership position.
“Most of the women in the resistance movement were not in leadership position. Part of the reason was because back then, France was a conservative society,” Olson said. “Women were considered to be subordinates. The French resistance movement was just as sexist as the rest of society.”
It was also very rare for Fourcade to be in the position she was to lead at her age, according to Olson.
“She was only 31 years old when she became a leader of Alliance, the network she led during the war. She was very young and different. She refused to allow men to tell her what to do,” she said. “She was that way all her life.”
Olson said she believes that men in her organization were able to follow her because she had a strong aura of authority.
“She was also very devoted to her agents and treated them like members of her family. Fourcade was very courageous with her agents, where she would be in the field with them. She shared the dangers and the risks with the people under her leadership,” she said.
According to Olson, Fourcade was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she escaped, once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell. She was then still able continue to hold her network together.
“This book is about a lot of things politics, government and military history, but it is most importantly an adventure story. This is a story about one woman’s courage, as she was put in very difficult situations throughout WWII. Fourcade risked her life everyday. This was my most enjoyable book to do,” Olson said.
For more information about the book signing and discussion at the Princeton Public Library, visit princetonlibrary.org.