Download PDF DDay Girls The Spies Who Armed the Resistance Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II Sarah Rose 9780451495082 Books
Download As PDF : DDay Girls The Spies Who Armed the Resistance Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II Sarah Rose 9780451495082 Books
The dramatic, untold true story of the extraordinary women recruited by Britain’s elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II
“Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery)—and all of it true.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake
In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was forced to do something unprecedented recruit women as spies. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.
In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently declassified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflappable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war.
Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high.
Praise for D-Day Girls
“Gripping history . . . thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerizing story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The mission is this Read D-Day Girls today. Not just for the spy flair—code names, aliases, and operating covers—but also because this history feels more relevant than ever, as an army of women and girls again find themselves in a fight for the common good.”—Lily Koppel, author of The Astronaut Wives Club
Download PDF DDay Girls The Spies Who Armed the Resistance Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II Sarah Rose 9780451495082 Books
"In his The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-1945, the always-opinionated historian Max Hastings argues that field intelligence agents in WW2 contributed only marginally to the Allied victory. Regarding the Special Operations Executive, Churchill’s creation, he remarks: “Most accounts of wartime SOE agents, particularly women and especially in France, contain large doses of romantic twaddle.â€
Hastings’s comment struck a nerve with Sarah Rose and she objects as a woman and a journalist. In her Author Note, she says that “twaddle matters†and is the stuff of human experience. As a woman (not a journalist), I think Rose gets it all wrong for a number of reasons. She seems to take Hastings’s remark as disrespectful to the women SOE agents, which is not at all what it was intended to convey. She is also in denial that there are many books and films about WW2 agents in France that are romanticized. I also think that Rose is so defensive about Hastings’s assertion because she has written a work of “romantic twaddle†herself.
Of course the story of the SOE agents in France captures the imagination. Of course we should be impressed by the bravery of the women who volunteered to go behind enemy lines, knowing they risked capture, torture and death. But Rose’s book is written superficially and with much emphasis on the personal, especially the agents’ romantic attachments.
Rose’s narrative is all over the place. It’s never clear what her organizing principle is, or if there is one. She jumps from place to place and agent to agent, not giving a full picture of anybody and leaving us wondering why she included some agents and left out others. She repeats points and she puts thoughts in these women’s heads that she often doesn’t source in her notes.
Although Rose’s writing is easy to read, there are several occasions when she misuses words (e.g., anodyne and fulsome), and constructs puzzlingly self-contradictory sentences, such as when she is trying to describe the German soldiers occupying Paris as being so much better clothed and fed than the natives, but in the same sentence she also describes the soldiers as being hollow-eyed. Huh?
Considering that this is a book that doesn’t seem to know what it’s about, I suppose it’s not surprising that the title and cover belie the book’s contents. The cover shows a beret-wearing woman bicycling through a deserted bombed-out city, as fighter planes fill the sky. When I first saw the graphic-novel look of the cover, it made me wonder if this is supposed to be a young adult book, but it isn’t. On top of that, the depiction makes no sense at all. These SOE agents did bicycle, but it was to create an impression they were just locals going about their daily errands. The woman on the cover has a freaking rifle slung over her shoulders. Out in the open. In the daytime. Argh!
I don’t want to pile on, but I also object to the book’s title. Why, oh why, does Ms. Rose have to call them “D-Day Girls� These were women, not girls. Ms. Rose wants to give them their due, so why would she allow them to be trivialized in the title and the comic-book looking cover? She notes in the book that they referred to themselves as girls, but that was then and this is now. Also, referring to them in the context of D-Day implies that they did nothing until late in the war, when they were working in the field years earlier and most of the book describes events unrelated to D-Day.
Maybe Ms. Rose had no control over the title or the cover art—I sure hope not—but a book with that title and that cover sure looks like the dreaded “romantic twaddle.â€
There are so many better books out there about the SOE and its agents."
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DDay Girls The Spies Who Armed the Resistance Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II Sarah Rose 9780451495082 Books Reviews :
DDay Girls The Spies Who Armed the Resistance Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II Sarah Rose 9780451495082 Books Reviews
- Fascinating and educational, D-Day Girls kept me riveted throughout. Sarah Rose creatively wove previously relatively unknown historical facts with human stories of perseverance and courage. I spent time last year immersed in D-Day and WWII history with a visit to Normandy. D-Day Girls was an intriguing addition to that. Everyone interested in WWII will learn something in this book!
- The author did a masterful job bringing facts and intricacies to light that exposed the big picture.
- In his The Secret War Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-1945, the always-opinionated historian Max Hastings argues that field intelligence agents in WW2 contributed only marginally to the Allied victory. Regarding the Special Operations Executive, Churchill’s creation, he remarks “Most accounts of wartime SOE agents, particularly women and especially in France, contain large doses of romantic twaddle.â€
Hastings’s comment struck a nerve with Sarah Rose and she objects as a woman and a journalist. In her Author Note, she says that “twaddle matters†and is the stuff of human experience. As a woman (not a journalist), I think Rose gets it all wrong for a number of reasons. She seems to take Hastings’s remark as disrespectful to the women SOE agents, which is not at all what it was intended to convey. She is also in denial that there are many books and films about WW2 agents in France that are romanticized. I also think that Rose is so defensive about Hastings’s assertion because she has written a work of “romantic twaddle†herself.
Of course the story of the SOE agents in France captures the imagination. Of course we should be impressed by the bravery of the women who volunteered to go behind enemy lines, knowing they risked capture, torture and death. But Rose’s book is written superficially and with much emphasis on the personal, especially the agents’ romantic attachments.
Rose’s narrative is all over the place. It’s never clear what her organizing principle is, or if there is one. She jumps from place to place and agent to agent, not giving a full picture of anybody and leaving us wondering why she included some agents and left out others. She repeats points and she puts thoughts in these women’s heads that she often doesn’t source in her notes.
Although Rose’s writing is easy to read, there are several occasions when she misuses words (e.g., anodyne and fulsome), and constructs puzzlingly self-contradictory sentences, such as when she is trying to describe the German soldiers occupying Paris as being so much better clothed and fed than the natives, but in the same sentence she also describes the soldiers as being hollow-eyed. Huh?
Considering that this is a book that doesn’t seem to know what it’s about, I suppose it’s not surprising that the title and cover belie the book’s contents. The cover shows a beret-wearing woman bicycling through a deserted bombed-out city, as fighter planes fill the sky. When I first saw the graphic-novel look of the cover, it made me wonder if this is supposed to be a young adult book, but it isn’t. On top of that, the depiction makes no sense at all. These SOE agents did bicycle, but it was to create an impression they were just locals going about their daily errands. The woman on the cover has a freaking rifle slung over her shoulders. Out in the open. In the daytime. Argh!
I don’t want to pile on, but I also object to the book’s title. Why, oh why, does Ms. Rose have to call them “D-Day Girls� These were women, not girls. Ms. Rose wants to give them their due, so why would she allow them to be trivialized in the title and the comic-book looking cover? She notes in the book that they referred to themselves as girls, but that was then and this is now. Also, referring to them in the context of D-Day implies that they did nothing until late in the war, when they were working in the field years earlier and most of the book describes events unrelated to D-Day.
Maybe Ms. Rose had no control over the title or the cover art—I sure hope not—but a book with that title and that cover sure looks like the dreaded “romantic twaddle.â€
There are so many better books out there about the SOE and its agents. - This non-fiction account of the events leading up to D-Day and the year after, read like a novel. We’re allowed to know the British spies on a deeply personal level - and that leads to an eye-opening result - and a great learning experience. The courage these woman had is indescribable.
I had always been led to believe that when the Germans took over France, the French gave up - offering little or no resistance. This account changed my belief. It is true that there was no great battle royal - but what was going on behind the scenes was remarkable. With the help of the British spies, what was a disjointed, unorganized resistance movement became a well-oiled machine and it came into play after the Allied Forces broke through at Normandy. The reason the Allies had an open highway to Berlin, was the French Resistance - who paved the way, blowing up bridges, train stations and supply trains, power plants, and troop movements.
This was an impressively researched book - and a necessary one, to set the record straight! - This is a captivating look into stories of women who helped to win WW II. The author, Sarah Rose, does an excellent job of giving voice to the too often marginalized voices of women who were part of the war effort. As I read this book, I felt as if I was stepping back in time and observing the lives of these heroic, yet also human, women. Rose does a great job of giving enough historical context to follow the historical events and the actions of the women relative to the action. Beautifully crafted, it is a book that deserves a lot of credit for bringing light to the experiences of women during the war.
- “D-Day Girls…†is definite proof that the truth can be as suspenseful, as fraught with danger, and as exciting to read as any fictional thriller. I have savored every page of this book as the tension builds. Young women working underground in Nazi-occupied France certainly got the job done, and it is nice to learn of their courage. So many roles played by women in World War II have been downplayed in light of the horrendous exploits of the military that it is gratifying that they are coming to light for a new generation of readers. This is another book marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, and deals primarily with France prior to the arrival of the troops. It is a fascinating read, and worthwhile as well as timely
- D-Day Girls is certainly an interesting story about a spy network that helped liberate France and win WW2. But one may need some patience with this book because it takes some time for the pieces to come together or at least it did for this reviewer because of the way it kept jumping characters by the chapter. Yes, it eventually comes together in this really fast-paced story of love, espionage, and betrayal, but until everything sets in place, I was left sitting with these fragments of people, events, and actions floating around my head.
When it grabs you though, it doesn’t let go. It’s like you’re on a literary roller coaster from about the midway point until the close of the book. Will they live? Will they die? And what about their lives after the war, if they survive? Those were legitimate questions running through my mind as I was reading, which is very rare for me in a history book. But I think reader opinions on this book will probably be based on how quickly they can become connected with the story.
I’m caught between 3-4 stars here because while it did suck me in, it wasn’t love within the first fifty pages.
