June 9, 2022 • 43 mins
Although Nancy Wake began her career as a journalist, her first-hand experience with Nazis compelled her to a new calling: the French Resistance. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the larger-than-life triumphs of the freedom fighter the Gestapo would come to call "the White Mouse," from her early days to her heroic (though, at times, murderous) work to save innocent lives during World War II.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's give a big shout
out to the superhero of our show, Mr Max Williams,
superhero super producer. That's not like a Max shaped foghorn? Yeah,
can you do that again? Max? I'm really interested. Remember
(00:48):
those Rico lock commercials. It's like that. It's kind of
like that. Yeah, it went from foghorn to Rico up,
which I respect. I respect your range as a yodler,
and I still have it. I still have a yodeling episode.
We can too, But I'm ben uh your knoll. And
today we are not talking about yodeling, but we are
talking about a another hero, someone who was so cool
(01:12):
they got a grown up nickname. And I first I realized,
when we're looking at the research nal that that has
for many years been one of my unconscious qualifiers for
someone being a real bad a trying to swing the cursewords.
Uh well, not a bad apple, a bad um that
(01:33):
not a bad antagonist, a bad posterior. I yes, I
see where you're going with this, you tricksy devil. Uh No,
it's true, but an adult nickname is a big deal.
I'm usually nicknames are bestowed upon the youth and then
it sort of carries along with them for the rest
of their lives, oftentimes under duress. If you've ever watched
(01:54):
the series The Wire, you know about Snot Boogie. You
know that's the character who uh the very first scene
talking about snot Boogy posthumously. Um, you know, ran away
with the with the craps money and finally got got shot.
You know, you've done in a million times, but you know,
how do you get a name like snot Boogy? One
day you show up, you don't have a cold, it's cold,
you get a running nose. Next thing you know, you're
snot for the rest of your life. That is unfortunately, Yeah,
(02:16):
exactly boot. There's actually there's a character on the new
character They're all characters on the new uh Jackass movie
named Poopies. Um. Gotta wonder how Poopies came to be
Probably similarly, probably pooped his pants doing some sort of
weird skateboard stunt, but not during the French Resistance. No,
that's exactly right, because I am digressing too far to
the modern day. We are talking about adult nicknames based
(02:39):
on heroic acts of bad posterior heroism. Uh, and today
we're talking about the nickname the white mouse, which sounds
innocuoust doesn't It almost sounds like a diminutive nickname. But
what a white mice really good at doing? Being experimented on?
Sure against their will. But no, we're more talking about
(02:59):
screw worrying around escaping capture, you know, scuttling through secret
tunnels and holes in the wall and evading Nazis. Uh
the karate chopping them in the throat. True story. On
March one, nineteen forty four, there was a French resistance
captain named Henri Tardi Vat and he found a person
(03:20):
named Nancy Wake. Nancy Wake, when he found her, was
tangled up in a tree, and as he was staring
at her hanging askew in the branches of this tree,
he uh basically thought she was very attractive, and he
gave her this line, this pretty cinematic He says, I
hope that all the trees in France bears such beautiful
(03:43):
fruits this year. Player. Uh, yeah, she was. She wasn't
just like posing for for this tude's benefit. She had
gotten entangled in the tree after a parachuting incident. She
was parachuting from a B twenty four umer and was
actually carrying classified documents, and she was on the way
(04:05):
to a local resistance movement group meet up. You know,
I hang, And she didn't have any time for this
fool and his uh and his misogynistic you know advances.
She goes, don't give me that French if while untangling
herself from the tree. At this moment, he realized that
(04:26):
this was no ordinary damsel in distress. Oh very much not.
We're starting this story in media arrest because you know, secretly,
we're also a film studio in our heads. Let's introduce
you real quick to Nancy Wake. She is trained in
hand to hand combat. She knows espionage like the back
of her hand. She's a sabocure. She is also quite
(04:50):
capable of drinking pretty much every dude under the table.
She becomes known as one of the most feared French
distance fighters during the entirety of World War Two. As
a matter of fact, as we'll learn in today's episode,
the Gestapo eventually put her at the top of their
most wanted list. They were gonna pay five million Francs
(05:14):
for her dead or alive. And it's the Gestapo who
gave her the nickname the White Mouse because, as you said, Nol,
she was so talented at evading capture. It might surprise
you hearing this list of bona fides and accolades to
learn that she wasn't always a secret agent. She, as
(05:34):
a matter of fact, started out as a freelance journalist.
I want to give a big shout out to several
of our sources here, big fan of Paul Vitello's work
for The New York Times. Won't give you the title
just yet, but we've got no We've got some great
sources for this. All that's interesting as well, Right, lovely article,
(05:54):
Meet Nancy Wake, the White Mouse of the French Resistance.
No spoilers there, We've already dropped that knowledge on you.
And uh it was Katie Serena who dropped that knowledge
on us via our previous and uh and sorely missed
research associates. Gabe Lousier. Gabe Lousier first of his name.
I don't know why I keep saying that about people,
(06:15):
but Gabe Bluesier is the the nearest and dearest Gabelusier
to our hearts. He is also the host of This
Day in History Class, one of our pure podcasts. So
if you like us miss Gabe, go ahead and check
out his shows. He's doing well. We might even have
him back back with us sooner rather than later. I
(06:36):
don't know, man, he kind of hurt us, dude, he
kind of he kind of broke our hearts. I know.
But that's why. Look, that's why he needs to know
that we're doing well in life. No, we need so
he can see us. All right. I like your style.
I like your style, Ben, But here's the thing. I mean,
this was a woman. If you look at her photo,
(06:56):
you can see it on the olives and all that's
interesting article. A resolutely stunning um woman with poise and
class for days, all the things you described absolutely accurate,
could drink her male counterparts under the table, studied all
of the deadly arts and and subterfuge tradecraft and the like,
(07:17):
but got her start more as like a kind of
um I don't know, Forrest Gump meets Ernest Hemingway kind
of trapesing through history in a in a cool way,
like via a career as a journalist, which is often
we'll find you. As events are unfolding around World War Two,
you find yourself kind of faced with the choices like
do you want to be passive in this in these events?
(07:38):
Do you want to report from the sidelines or do
you dive in headlong? And Nancy Wake chose the latter. Yes,
she absolutely did. Let's learn a little bit more about her.
If you haven't heard of her before, folks, you're in
for a treat. Nancy was born Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Nothing to do with the Nancy Grace you just thought of.
(08:00):
She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on August and
she was one of those kids. This happens all the
time in families. She was one of those kids who
came along way after the rest of her siblings. She's
the baby. She's much younger than her other five siblings.
And pretty soon after she was born, her parents moved
(08:22):
from New Zealand to Australia and they put down their
roots in North Sydney. She did not have the best childhood.
There was a lot of poverty, there was instability. Eventually,
her father, who was also a journalist, abandoned the family.
He walked out. He said he was going to go
film a documentary about the Maori in New Zealand, and
(08:45):
then he left Nancy and her mother and all her siblings.
This is coming from the Jewish Virtual Library, which has
a great overview of Nancy's early life. And there's something
interesting that happens here. Normal. So Nancy and Nancy and
her mom and her siblings are doing their best to
(09:07):
get by in Australia. Nancy goes to school in Sydney,
but then, similar to her father in some ways, she
runs away from home at the young age of sixteen.
That's right, um. But lucky for her, she got a
bit of a windfall two hundred bucks, which at the
time would have been quite a pilot cash. And that
(09:28):
was from her aunt, and she was able to use
this money in order to travel abroad. She went to
New York, she went to London, she went to Paris,
and that's where she found work as a journalist, the
plucky age of twenty oh. Wait, wait, you gotta explain.
We gotta explain this though, right just I think to
give people a sense of two hundred dollars, you and
(09:49):
I travel pretty extensively. I think we need an inflation
calculator let's see New York, London, and Paris on two
hundred dollars. Who is her travel agent? That's amazing. I
need to know this guy. Yeah, this this, this would
have been in the early days of of leisure travel
as well, kind of you know, I mean, and that's like, yeah,
(10:11):
I gotta hear that. We gotta hear some boobs. Let's
get our boots on, all right. So uh, and we're
we're fudging this a little bit. This is not Australian dollars.
We're gonna use us, so it's gonna be a little different.
But if we're just pretending these are US dollars, two
hundred dollars in ninety eight would have been the equivalent
(10:34):
of three thousand, three eight one dollars and thirty nine cents.
And let's just you know, okay, maybe that's a little underwhelming,
you might say fair, But let's also picture this very
self possessed and driven young woman, likely just scrapping her
way along. This wasn't like, you know, a windfall that
(10:55):
was going to allow her to live a life of luxury. No,
she had to find in her way to that life
of luxury, and her way to the means of paying
for it, which she did. She got work as a
journalist at age twenty, and this allowed her to travel
and move in some of these more extravagant circles. She
eventually settled in France, where she, you know, like you do,
(11:16):
she married a wealthy industrialist. I love the idea it's
a wealthy industrialist. It's just sort of a type. I
just picture a dude with like mutton chops, like big
gray mutton chops, and like one of those uh what
do you call those beards that kind of were just
like half over the top of your strap, this strappy one.
The strappy beards what do you call those? Are the
ones that are like sort of just the mustache that
go down along the sides but no beard to fill
(11:39):
in in the middle. There is a name for it,
um is Is it a van dyke van something that's
the van dyke is like the soul patch in the
musta what is that called? My My dad rocks that
look all the time, and I just can't remember what
he calls it. And there's well, there's the horseshoe, but
that's not what we're taking about. Mutton chops are what
(12:02):
mutton chops are where the beard is shaved off the ship. Well,
that's its own thing. This is what I'm talking about. Yeah,
it doesn't matter. We're just making up an imaginary wealthy
industrialists pictured Daddy Warbocks. That's what I always think of, right.
It took me forever to realize. The time seems a
little different, but when I was a kid, you know,
I love musicals. It took me forever to realize that
(12:22):
Daddy Warbucks is a is a clear, very on the
nose reference to war profiteers. Yeah, check out our episode
on the creepy and uh controversial history of Little or
Finanny tunes. Uh, you know and all that um. But
last day on this you know the character I'm picturing
(12:43):
the character from the first season of The Mandalorian, the
one who goes like, what does he say? As a catchphrase,
he looks like a weird little monkey guy. He says,
I have spoken. I have spoken, Yes, Koli. For the
first season, he's got that kind of look, that wealthy
industrial industrialist look. If you can see, he's got the
muddon shops and it's really more of like a skin mustache.
(13:05):
But he's kind That's kind of what I'm picturing here.
So okay, well that was a bit of a walk
to get there. But she marries the wealthy industrialist that
allows her to continue, in fact, escalate this kind of
life of luxury. I get you only about twenty years old.
The guy's name, by the way, was Henry Fioca, which
is quite as cool. Yeah, you's to be Henry Focaccia,
(13:28):
like like the bread um. But but alas, and then
that was in nineteen thirty six, which is kind of
crazy because my dad, my parents had me a bit
older but later in life. My dad was born in
nineteen thirty seven, so this is definitely within the span
of people living today. But here's the thing. This is
kind of the moment in nineteen thirty three she begins
(13:49):
to reach that tipping point that I was talking about,
Like do I want to report from the sidelines? Do
I want to be a commentator and sort of like
a passive reporter, or I want to really get involved.
She was working at a as a freelancer for a
Parisian newspaper and she was asked to go to Vienna
to interview the German Chancellor, a guy by the name
(14:11):
of pat af Hitler that that Hitler. It's that that's
the one you're thinking of. And to be clear, you know,
she could have just lived a life of opulent luxury,
but she chose to remain working as a freelancer. And
while she was in Vienna, she saw just atrocious treatment
(14:35):
of Jewish people and she noticed the correlation here. It
was Hitler's followers and disciples who were committing these anti
Semitic crimes. And when I'm saying anti Semitic crime, I'm
not talking about just and this is not to diminish
this in any way. I'm not talking about vandalism. I'm
talking about people being pulled out of buildings and tortured
(14:59):
and beaten in this streets by the Gestapo. And she says, okay,
I know what these people are about. It is my
moral duty to do anything I can to stop the
Nazi Party. She talked about this for the rest of
(15:21):
her life. As she said, this cemented her deep, abiding,
profound hatred for the Nazis, and rightly so go Nancy,
and she decided at that moment it really was kind
of a fulcrum for her. But at that moment she
decided she was going to do whatever was necessary to
(15:43):
stop Nazis, and to stop Hitler in particular. And it
wasn't until several years later that she got her chance
in nineteen forty when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, Belgium
and France. Remember her husband who was sadly not named
Henri Focasha but Fioca. Her husband had enough money that
(16:03):
they could have skaaddle, they could have left France, but
they decided to stay and fight, and they joined the
French resistance in Paris. That's right, the two of them.
I love that, uh, you know, because it's like we're
ragging on this guy for his, you know, very vague
and grandiose title of wealthy French industrialist. But he was
(16:23):
on board. He he was he was gonna put that
money to good use, and and for that I applaud him,
um Mr facaccio Fioca, excuse me. So during this time
they were able to parlay that wealth into things that
would actually help get Jewish refugees across the border. For example,
they bought an ambulance they could use as kind of
a cover for transporting Jewish refugees across the border into
(16:44):
safe territory. She also was in a place of some
level of privilege, as you may guest, but she used
that too great effect as well. The wife of a
very successful, wealthy industrialist was able to move around in
certain circles of the upper echelon, UH, someone who had
the equivalent of a diplomatic past because of her history
(17:08):
as a journalist as well, and had not thus far
to my knowledge, been like outspoken, like writing like hit
pieces on Hitler or whatever. So I think it was
important to kind of maintain sort of a cover in
that respect and use all of these factors UH to
their greatest possible effect. She was friends with the famous
Scottish officer, a guy by the name of Ian Garrow, uh,
(17:29):
and helped him transport military personnel who were stranding in
France back to British soil. So Wake actually worked with
Garrow along with Belgian Major General Albert Marie. I'm gonna say, Gurris, Gorris,
do you e with a little schwa thinging over the
e or the accent r? I s s e H.
(17:51):
And he's Belgian, so I don't know. I'm gonna do
my best there, uh, guerrisa perhaps to help establish roots
UH that could be used to guide French soldiers to safety. Yeah,
it's kind of like an underground railroad. For two years,
the fiocas were working as couriers. They were smuggling supplies
(18:13):
and fake documents, and then later they evolved into that
brilliant ambulance power to Escape network. They didn't always use
the ambulance, but I thought that was such a clever move.
The Gestapo gets wend of this and they they think, Okay,
obviously some of these French locals are not super on
(18:36):
board with our crazy ideas, so we're gonna try to
find and shut down these resistance cells. And they started
going through Nancy Wake's mail, they started posting surveillance agents
at her home. Uh, and they just couldn't really catch
her in. She became the Gestapo's number one most wanted individual.
(19:00):
Have mentioned earlier, she got that five million frank price
tag on her head, and because she became someone on
a most wanted list, her privileged social position would no
longer protect her. And she recounts later how her husband said,
you have to leave just for her safety. He wanted
(19:22):
her to get out, get to get out of France
and leave him behind, and she remembers so heartbreaking. She
remembers going out of the door, saying that she was
going to do some shopping to give the guy plausible
deniability and that she would be back soon. She left
and they never saw each other again. She planned to
(19:42):
travel to Britain. This is where we see the rise
of the White Mouse. She doesn't get out on her
first attempt. People are watching the border. All in all,
she makes six tries to get out of France. She's
trying to cross the Pyrenees into Spain, where she was
taking persecuted people in the past, and she had some
really close calls. Man. She earned the nickname big time
(20:04):
once she was captured by the French Milish believe that's
how you pronounce it um the v she militia and
to lose, and she was held for four days. But
she didn't give up the ghost. She she kept her
mouth shut and she wouldn't give up any of her
colleagues or any of her comrades. Yes, she's very good
(20:25):
at convincing people of untrue things. She gets picked up
by authorities on a train outside of Toulouse, and to
avoid being captured, she oh, man, this is there's a
lot of huts. But here she spends this crazy tale
where she says, you have to let me go, okay,
(20:46):
because I am actually the mistress of one of these guards,
and I know I look like I'm in a disguise,
but it's because I can't let my husband know I'm
sleeping around and the German guards. You know, we don't
have the specifics of what she said, but the German
guards said, oh, okay, well, well hey, we're not We're
not going to snitch on you, you know, Glory, presumably
(21:06):
to like help out their their bros there, bros. Yeah.
This is when Wake actually got the nickname Las SuRie
blanche or the white Mouse, because she actually evaded capture
by the Gestapo officers and SS cards multiple times and
would later talk about, you know how she was able
to combine some charm with obviously some true training in
(21:31):
order to find her way out of these tricky situations.
She would say, a little powder and a little drink
on the way, and I'd passed their German posts and
wink and say do you want to search me? Big boy?
I added that part, Uh, Kyle, what a flirtations, little bastard.
I was right, And this is brilliant of Minx. I
love it. Yeah, she's leaning into assumptions and that's a
(21:54):
huge part of social engineering. In tradecraft. She's unassuming. She
looks like a well to do person who is just
kind of like, you know, a little in their cups
and like I live them in in uniform and then boom,
she's accomplished her mission. And so this is how she
escapes through the purities into Spain, and then she makes
(22:15):
it to Britain. And once she gets to Britain, you know,
intelligence agencies at this time are all very deep, deeply
interested in each other and if someone is good enough
to earn a nickname, they probably the other forces probably no.
So the British Special Operations Executive s o E. Says, okay,
(22:37):
White Mouse, we will train you in our arts. In
the art of tradecraft, which is the euphemistic name for spycraft.
She learns how to kill people silently. She learns codes,
she learns correct ways to operate radio. She learns how
to parachute, especially at night, which is how she ended
(23:01):
up within that tree at the beginning of our story.
She knows how to use plastic explosives. She's familiar with
firearms as well as grenades, and all of her training officers. Again,
despite the misogyny of the time, say this lady is
putting the dudes to shame. They're looking around at the
other recruits. They are like, come on, guys, come on,
(23:22):
you can't even rig a little bit of a plastic explosive. Nancy, Nancy,
get back up here, show them, show them how to
do that. She really was like first in her class
and it didn't take too long before she became a
high ranking officer. She organized and ran firearms allocation to
(23:43):
seven thousand, five hundred different people. At this time, once
her training is complete, it's nine and get this, she's
only thirty one years old. What are we doing with
our lives? She's parachuted into France along with four hundred
and thirty and thirty nine other women to prepare for
(24:03):
a little something the Allies like to call D Day. Yeah, yeah,
that's right. That's the same one, the D Day, like
the Adolf Hitler. This is the D Day. These are
not just like adjacent events. Uh. She is in the
thick of it. Her job is to actually organize ammunition drops.
So these are like these air drops that are coming down,
(24:23):
you know with crates. Picture them like kind of raining
from the sky U parachuted crates of very crucial supplies,
including AMMO. She also was responsible for setting up supply
lines and the communications surrounding those supply lines, and also
to organize resistance movement in prep for the actual attack
of D Day. She was not only known for her
(24:46):
widely you know street smarts and ability to evade, capture
and break through umy lines. She also had a lot
of acumen when it came to tactics and and strategy
and and she was used for those skills as well. Yeah, yeah,
she was a tactician. Uh. They carried out Grea attacks
(25:06):
on numerous German forces with her team of seven thousand people.
We're talking about doing damage to twenty two thousand Germans
and burn the supply lines, attacked the infrastructure. This is
very important stuff. She would later go on to say
she didn't like killing people in particular, like she wasn't
(25:29):
sadistic about it. It didn't scratch an itch for her.
But she said, I don't see why we women should
just wave our men are proud, goodbye and then knit
them balaklava's I love the word bala clava. But she
felt like like baklava. I don't know what it's. A
(25:49):
balaklava is the Okay, you know how when we were
doing those bank robberies, we had those knit masks that
we would put over. Yeah, those are bala clavas. Oh
like a ski mask. Yeah yeah, it's like it's very similar.
It has like it's the one with like kind of
one window for an eye or some or you can
show your whole face nask. Yeah, it's like something you
(26:12):
would wear if you know, you were fighting in some
more really cold and you're just like freezing. It's like, okay,
can you get myself covered up as much as possible?
But it also makes you look like a spooky kind
of stalker type. Yeah. Yeah, but you're warm is the
thing they're frowned on today. In fact, a lot of
stores will have signs that say no ski masks allout,
(26:33):
as if that was any question. It is funny how
a garment like that that can becomes not ski stores, though.
I think these stores it's it's it's fair game. Wake
was also her heroism extended onto the the arena of cycling.
She was at half a cycler, and that was a
really nimble way of of kind of using that that
(26:54):
you know, cover that she had, uh and to just
kind of bop around through German checkpoints in order to
established connections with allies London. In particular, she once did
a three ten mile round trip on her bike in
order to replace some codes that had been destroyed during
a German raid um on a post. Without those codes,
(27:16):
there would be no way for them to communicate regarding
re ups on those ammunition drops that we talked about.
So this is like directly pertaining to those kind of
strategy assists that the Wake would offer. But also she
would just goes on the ground getting her hands dirty.
She said the ride took her on seventy one hours
and she went almost NonStop. That is bold and absolutely impressive. Yeah,
(27:43):
and and she also, you know, she got her hands
dirty more ways than one. We mentioned that she didn't
like killing, and then she was not a sadist, but
she did take several people's lives. While she was preparing
for D Day, the White Mouse learned that some of
her some of her soldiers, had captured a young German
(28:04):
spy who was female. And these these men who are
working for I couldn't find it in themselves to kill her.
So wake did it, And later in two thousand and one,
she would tell an Australian newspaper, I was not a
very nice person and it didn't put me off my breakfast.
And if you want another example, let's talk about the
(28:27):
time she killed a guy with her bare hands. This
is the karate chop. Do we mention this part on
air or was this we set it up at the beginning.
The afore mentioned karate chop. Not only not bare hands,
mind you, bare hand, a single handed chop to the neck.
(28:48):
You know, this was something that was taught to them
in training. Um it was a an s S officer
who was about to you know, the equivalent of that
one soldier and uh and and elden ring that will
blow the trumpet and then you know, summon all their homes. Yeah, yeah,
you gotta take them out first before they make the noise.
(29:09):
And nothing like a well placed chop to the neck
to prevent them from sounding that alarm. This is actually
during a raid on a German gun factory, which would
have been a huge strategic value you know target. Um
so once again saving the day with the swift karate
shop killed him Debt. Yeah, it reminds me of very
(29:33):
We've got a quote from her, but it reminds me
very much of that scene in kill Bill where the
bride is buried alive spoilers and has the flashback to
her repetitive punching. God, I wish this was on video.
I'm doing an okay chop, but thank you, many punches
with no real room for a wind up. That was
(29:55):
the part of it. So she got taught. Well here,
let's just do the quote. Let's let her speak for
yourself on this. Yeah. They they taught us this judo
chop stuff with the flat of the hand, and I
practiced away at it, but this was the only time
I used it. Whack and it killed them, all right.
I was really surprised, right, that's I know, we're not
(30:17):
diminishing this at all, but which she says, I was
really surprised. I have this picture of like the flat
judo chop and then look at the hand and going
all right, then sort of like shrug emoji. I mean,
it makes me think of the Star Trek Futurama episode.
There's the end they're all fighting and so they just
normal people and let her Nimoy like goes to like
(30:37):
to the vulcan neck pinch on Bender and he goes,
let's see if this actually works, and it very much
does not work. Yeah, I in my um wilder days
in another life, I remember being very young and I
thought the vulcan neck pinch was a real thing, and
I tried it on someone. It's I must do maybe
(30:59):
just maybe dinner. Right. It's like like the five point
palm exploding heart technique, Bill things. You gotta get all
those pressure points in quick succession, right one, if you
haven't to miss one. We didn't train in the temples
of Shaoland, so it's comment on this stuff. We studied them, Mike, Yes,
(31:25):
So she is doing courageous things and things that make
a huge difference in the resistance effort. In June of nineteen,
the German forces came at her troops on mass and
they lost a hundred of their own folks the French
(31:47):
resistance under under the White Mouse. But they also killed
one thousand, four hundred of the Germans who came after them.
So this fighting force, if you look at that ratio,
they are Wu Tang style. Nothing to f with. Um,
we know we tease d Day right. That was June
(32:08):
of nine, and we know that June of n is
also when the actual D Day happens June six. Wait,
we are recording a day after the anniversary of D Day,
and where we are? No, that's true, yeah, seventh, as
we sit here this very day, probably you know, want
(32:30):
I guess one of the most popular dramatizations of D
Day would have been the storming of the beaches in Normandy.
Um in uh, saving Private Ryan the very first opening sequence.
Its fabulous. You really feel like you're there, the shaky
cameras and the bullets whizzing past, and you know, the
absolute chaos of it all. That's not the kind of
(32:50):
I mean, there's certainly chaotic elements to warfare still to
this day, but not quite the same. Um. It was
very much you were just hoping to God that you
didn't catch a bullet in the back of the head,
and then you were just moving forward while your comrades
were falling all around you. And it was a very
hellish situation. And it's it's it's it's a wonder that
(33:10):
we prevailed. It is very much. So let's look at
D Day just a bit and how Nancy Wake plays
into it. So we know that Allied troops, at tremendous costs,
started to force the German army out of France. On
August of that same year, Harris Is liberated and Nancy
(33:33):
Wake leads her troops out to celebrate, but she um
it was not of celebration for her because she knew
ever since she told her husband that she was going
to go shopping and never came back, she knew the
chances of them reuniteteen were very low, and she truly
(33:55):
loved him. She wasn't marrying him for the money, obviously,
and when she got back she learned that he was
indeed dead. A year after she had left France, the
Germans captured in, tortured him, and then killed him because
he refused to give them any information about his wife.
That is one tough, wealthy French industrialist. We should honor
(34:19):
him by referring to him as Amrie from now on,
because the man clearly earned our respect and the respect
of the world, because I mean, back then it was
all about information, and he could have outed his wife
and they could have put an end to her shenanigans,
but they continued, largely thanks to henri Um. So within
a year Germany was done. Three seventy five of the
(34:42):
sixty nine operatives of the s OE in the French
area survived the war. There were thirty nine women operatives,
twelve of which were killed by the Germans and three
who returned after having been i is and and tortured,
most likely for quite some time at Ravens Brook, the
(35:05):
concentration camp. All in all, we had six hundred thousand
French UH citizens who were killed during World War two
and two were killed in prisons and those Hellish concentration camps.
And the number would have been much higher were it
not for Nancy Wake. This is not hyperbole. She saved
(35:28):
thousands of lives. She was awarded many accolades after the war.
The George Medal from the United Kingdom, that's the second
highest civilian honor that Britain will give you, the Medal
of Freedom from the us UH, the Legion of Honor,
the highest military honor from France, along with several other
(35:50):
multiple other honors and awards from various European nations. As
a matter of fact, and this was an interesting detail
to me, he received so many medals for her actions
during wartime that she would later say she lived out
her old Age on the proceeds from their sale, and
to me, that's kind of um, that's kind of sad,
(36:13):
the idea that someone could do so much, could save
so many lives and then has to sell the awards
society gave her. Unfortunately, that's the story of a lot
of of individuals who served their country and come back
home only to realize that like they're sort of conditioned
for a situation that no longer exists, and that they
maybe aren't suited mentally, psychologically, um, for other types of jobs,
(36:38):
for sort of re acclimating to civilian life. And while
that wasn't necessarily the case for Wake, I mean it
kind of was. She refers to this experience like this
in the New York Times article, Uh, it's dreadful because
you've been so busy and then it all just fizzles out.
Actually told that to an Australian newspaper and it was
quoted in the New York Times article that you reference.
(37:01):
She wrote an autobiography called The White Mouse that was
published in UM. And she moved. She remarried, actually, and
she moved to Port Macquarie in Australia, two two miles
north of Sydney, m and she did remarry to a
former POW and English fighter pilot with an awesome name,
(37:23):
John Forward. That sounds like I like that little Figertip
Matt's John Forward. Yeah, it's almost like another Toast of
London type name. Yeah, it really is. So guys, I've
been rewatching BoJack Horseman and it's like, you know, my
fourth rewatch of it. And what I've picked up at
this time is how many times like they have a
(37:44):
little jingle for characters who enter, like recurring characters, and
I just envisioned John Ford would come into the room.
He's like John Ford, Yes, I like it's one of
those uh, you know, we've gone back forth about nominative
determinism before, but names like that that have a direction,
or names that have a verb in them are classic
(38:08):
fighter pilot CEO material. Shout out to my alter ego,
Max Powers Astronaut with a secret thank you, thank you,
thank you, Max Williams, superproducer. We know that she survived
a time and a profession that many people don't a
lot of people who were working in resistance stuff like
(38:29):
this in insurgencies, they are not going to have very
high odds of living out their life in peaceful old age.
But against the odds, once again, the White Mouse does
exactly that. As as we described, she moves to England
in two thousand and one and there she lives pretty
(38:53):
much rent free at the Stafford Hotel in St James Place,
and according to reports, she spends most of her retirement
at the hotel bar with a Gen and tonic. And
then she moves to a retirement home for you know,
for retired veterans servicemen and women in two thousand three,
(39:14):
and she still shows up to the bar because they
make a mean gen and tonic. I guess it's also
very toast of London thing. I would have loved to
have had a drink with Nancy wake uh and just
how to hear some of these stories and it's all
very recent. It wasn't until two thousand eleven that she
passed away um in that nursing home from a chest infection.
(39:35):
And I believe after she passed it kind of came
to light that the royal family was footing some of
the bills for her for her lifestyle. Not that it
was like extravagant or anything, just paying for bar tabs,
I guess, and you know, whatever that's pretty that's pretty posh. Man.
If the royal families pick him up your bar tab,
(39:55):
you must have done something right or drastically evil. Right.
Oh gosh, that might be a different episode. So this
is a story of a real life hero and it
shows us, as we established earlier, how close the past
actually is. I'm not going to bring out that Faulkner
quote again, but he was absolutely right. Instead, maybe we
(40:17):
end on a quote from the first character we met
in today's episode, Our pal on read hard. He survived
the war and he loved talking about Nancy Wake. Here's
this last line. She's the most feminine woman I know
until the fighting starts. Then she's like five minute. I
(40:42):
think he had a crush on her, clearly. I think
most people that she met probably had a crush on her, absolutely,
and I think she probably damn well knew it and
used it to her to her benefit. Um, Nancy Wake,
what a character. The white mouse. I want to read
more about this, this fascinating and being um and again
would have loved to share a Gin and Tonic with her. Yeah,
(41:04):
but I think that's a great place to to to
put a put a pin in this story. There is
a documentary about her that was made by Australian Television
in nineteen seven, but I don't have a title on that. Um.
I think there was. There was a documentary Nancy Wake
code named The White Mouse, and then there was a
TV mini series, right I. I think it was one
(41:27):
of those things where was based on a true story
or inspired by a true story, and they added a
lot of historical liberties, sort of like what we were
talking about with Operation Mincemeat, where they kind of shoehorned
to love story. And yeah, so the TV mini series
was just called Nancy Wake. It ran in Uh it
(41:52):
sounds to me like Henri and Nancy. I think they
were just star crossed lovers who ever quite got their
stars to cross. No, we went a little bit long
on today's episode, but it felt like one story to
us and we didn't want to split it up. We
hope that you have enjoyed the tale of Nancy Wake
(42:12):
as much as we have, and we can't wait to
hear from you about other heroes from the past too.
Maybe haven't quite gotten there do All you have to
do is reach out to us on ridiculous Historians and hey,
while you're on the internet, you can find us not
just as a show, but as individuals. This is true.
(42:33):
You can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am
at how Now Noel Brown, Mr Boland about yourself. Well,
you can get some spoilers for ridiculous history and for
stuff they want you to know various other projects I
work on by going to Instagram where I am as
I like to say, in a burst of creativity at
ben Bowland bow l i N. If you don't sip
(42:55):
the Instagram social media, you can find me on Twitter
as well, where at ben Bulan hs W. Like everybody
else on Twitter, I'm only there because I know Max
Williams is there too. I mean, that's the only reason
to be on Twitter at this point. I've heard I
think Elon Musk said that yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well
he's backing out trying to buy it. Uh. But if
you want to find me on Twitter, you can find
(43:17):
me at at l Underscore Max Williams. That's where you
find all my stuff. And of course thank you to
our super producer, Max Williams. Thank you to our composer
is so nuts. Their show has a composer. It's our
good friend Max's brother, Alex Williams. Keep it in the family.
See you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my
(43:44):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's give a big shout
out to the superhero of our show, Mr Max Williams,
superhero super producer. That's not like a Max shaped foghorn? Yeah,
can you do that again? Max? I'm really interested. Remember
(00:48):
those Rico lock commercials. It's like that. It's kind of
like that. Yeah, it went from foghorn to Rico up,
which I respect. I respect your range as a yodler,
and I still have it. I still have a yodeling episode.
We can too, But I'm ben uh your knoll. And
today we are not talking about yodeling, but we are
talking about a another hero, someone who was so cool
(01:12):
they got a grown up nickname. And I first I realized,
when we're looking at the research nal that that has
for many years been one of my unconscious qualifiers for
someone being a real bad a trying to swing the cursewords.
Uh well, not a bad apple, a bad um that
(01:33):
not a bad antagonist, a bad posterior. I yes, I
see where you're going with this, you tricksy devil. Uh No,
it's true, but an adult nickname is a big deal.
I'm usually nicknames are bestowed upon the youth and then
it sort of carries along with them for the rest
of their lives, oftentimes under duress. If you've ever watched
(01:54):
the series The Wire, you know about Snot Boogie. You
know that's the character who uh the very first scene
talking about snot Boogy posthumously. Um, you know, ran away
with the with the craps money and finally got got shot.
You know, you've done in a million times, but you know,
how do you get a name like snot Boogy? One
day you show up, you don't have a cold, it's cold,
you get a running nose. Next thing you know, you're
snot for the rest of your life. That is unfortunately, Yeah,
(02:16):
exactly boot. There's actually there's a character on the new
character They're all characters on the new uh Jackass movie
named Poopies. Um. Gotta wonder how Poopies came to be
Probably similarly, probably pooped his pants doing some sort of
weird skateboard stunt, but not during the French Resistance. No,
that's exactly right, because I am digressing too far to
the modern day. We are talking about adult nicknames based
(02:39):
on heroic acts of bad posterior heroism. Uh, and today
we're talking about the nickname the white mouse, which sounds
innocuoust doesn't It almost sounds like a diminutive nickname. But
what a white mice really good at doing? Being experimented on?
Sure against their will. But no, we're more talking about
(02:59):
screw worrying around escaping capture, you know, scuttling through secret
tunnels and holes in the wall and evading Nazis. Uh
the karate chopping them in the throat. True story. On
March one, nineteen forty four, there was a French resistance
captain named Henri Tardi Vat and he found a person
(03:20):
named Nancy Wake. Nancy Wake, when he found her, was
tangled up in a tree, and as he was staring
at her hanging askew in the branches of this tree,
he uh basically thought she was very attractive, and he
gave her this line, this pretty cinematic He says, I
hope that all the trees in France bears such beautiful
(03:43):
fruits this year. Player. Uh, yeah, she was. She wasn't
just like posing for for this tude's benefit. She had
gotten entangled in the tree after a parachuting incident. She
was parachuting from a B twenty four umer and was
actually carrying classified documents, and she was on the way
(04:05):
to a local resistance movement group meet up. You know,
I hang, And she didn't have any time for this
fool and his uh and his misogynistic you know advances.
She goes, don't give me that French if while untangling
herself from the tree. At this moment, he realized that
(04:26):
this was no ordinary damsel in distress. Oh very much not.
We're starting this story in media arrest because you know, secretly,
we're also a film studio in our heads. Let's introduce
you real quick to Nancy Wake. She is trained in
hand to hand combat. She knows espionage like the back
of her hand. She's a sabocure. She is also quite
(04:50):
capable of drinking pretty much every dude under the table.
She becomes known as one of the most feared French
distance fighters during the entirety of World War Two. As
a matter of fact, as we'll learn in today's episode,
the Gestapo eventually put her at the top of their
most wanted list. They were gonna pay five million Francs
(05:14):
for her dead or alive. And it's the Gestapo who
gave her the nickname the White Mouse because, as you said, Nol,
she was so talented at evading capture. It might surprise
you hearing this list of bona fides and accolades to
learn that she wasn't always a secret agent. She, as
(05:34):
a matter of fact, started out as a freelance journalist.
I want to give a big shout out to several
of our sources here, big fan of Paul Vitello's work
for The New York Times. Won't give you the title
just yet, but we've got no We've got some great
sources for this. All that's interesting as well, Right, lovely article,
(05:54):
Meet Nancy Wake, the White Mouse of the French Resistance.
No spoilers there, We've already dropped that knowledge on you.
And uh it was Katie Serena who dropped that knowledge
on us via our previous and uh and sorely missed
research associates. Gabe Lousier. Gabe Lousier first of his name.
I don't know why I keep saying that about people,
(06:15):
but Gabe Bluesier is the the nearest and dearest Gabelusier
to our hearts. He is also the host of This
Day in History Class, one of our pure podcasts. So
if you like us miss Gabe, go ahead and check
out his shows. He's doing well. We might even have
him back back with us sooner rather than later. I
(06:36):
don't know, man, he kind of hurt us, dude, he
kind of he kind of broke our hearts. I know.
But that's why. Look, that's why he needs to know
that we're doing well in life. No, we need so
he can see us. All right. I like your style.
I like your style, Ben, But here's the thing. I mean,
this was a woman. If you look at her photo,
(06:56):
you can see it on the olives and all that's
interesting article. A resolutely stunning um woman with poise and
class for days, all the things you described absolutely accurate,
could drink her male counterparts under the table, studied all
of the deadly arts and and subterfuge tradecraft and the like,
(07:17):
but got her start more as like a kind of
um I don't know, Forrest Gump meets Ernest Hemingway kind
of trapesing through history in a in a cool way,
like via a career as a journalist, which is often
we'll find you. As events are unfolding around World War Two,
you find yourself kind of faced with the choices like
do you want to be passive in this in these events?
(07:38):
Do you want to report from the sidelines or do
you dive in headlong? And Nancy Wake chose the latter. Yes,
she absolutely did. Let's learn a little bit more about her.
If you haven't heard of her before, folks, you're in
for a treat. Nancy was born Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Nothing to do with the Nancy Grace you just thought of.
(08:00):
She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on August and
she was one of those kids. This happens all the
time in families. She was one of those kids who
came along way after the rest of her siblings. She's
the baby. She's much younger than her other five siblings.
And pretty soon after she was born, her parents moved
(08:22):
from New Zealand to Australia and they put down their
roots in North Sydney. She did not have the best childhood.
There was a lot of poverty, there was instability. Eventually,
her father, who was also a journalist, abandoned the family.
He walked out. He said he was going to go
film a documentary about the Maori in New Zealand, and
(08:45):
then he left Nancy and her mother and all her siblings.
This is coming from the Jewish Virtual Library, which has
a great overview of Nancy's early life. And there's something
interesting that happens here. Normal. So Nancy and Nancy and
her mom and her siblings are doing their best to
(09:07):
get by in Australia. Nancy goes to school in Sydney,
but then, similar to her father in some ways, she
runs away from home at the young age of sixteen.
That's right, um. But lucky for her, she got a
bit of a windfall two hundred bucks, which at the
time would have been quite a pilot cash. And that
(09:28):
was from her aunt, and she was able to use
this money in order to travel abroad. She went to
New York, she went to London, she went to Paris,
and that's where she found work as a journalist, the
plucky age of twenty oh. Wait, wait, you gotta explain.
We gotta explain this though, right just I think to
give people a sense of two hundred dollars, you and
(09:49):
I travel pretty extensively. I think we need an inflation
calculator let's see New York, London, and Paris on two
hundred dollars. Who is her travel agent? That's amazing. I
need to know this guy. Yeah, this this, this would
have been in the early days of of leisure travel
as well, kind of you know, I mean, and that's like, yeah,
(10:11):
I gotta hear that. We gotta hear some boobs. Let's
get our boots on, all right. So uh, and we're
we're fudging this a little bit. This is not Australian dollars.
We're gonna use us, so it's gonna be a little different.
But if we're just pretending these are US dollars, two
hundred dollars in ninety eight would have been the equivalent
(10:34):
of three thousand, three eight one dollars and thirty nine cents.
And let's just you know, okay, maybe that's a little underwhelming,
you might say fair, But let's also picture this very
self possessed and driven young woman, likely just scrapping her
way along. This wasn't like, you know, a windfall that
(10:55):
was going to allow her to live a life of luxury. No,
she had to find in her way to that life
of luxury, and her way to the means of paying
for it, which she did. She got work as a
journalist at age twenty, and this allowed her to travel
and move in some of these more extravagant circles. She
eventually settled in France, where she, you know, like you do,
(11:16):
she married a wealthy industrialist. I love the idea it's
a wealthy industrialist. It's just sort of a type. I
just picture a dude with like mutton chops, like big
gray mutton chops, and like one of those uh what
do you call those beards that kind of were just
like half over the top of your strap, this strappy one.
The strappy beards what do you call those? Are the
ones that are like sort of just the mustache that
go down along the sides but no beard to fill
(11:39):
in in the middle. There is a name for it,
um is Is it a van dyke van something that's
the van dyke is like the soul patch in the
musta what is that called? My My dad rocks that
look all the time, and I just can't remember what
he calls it. And there's well, there's the horseshoe, but
that's not what we're taking about. Mutton chops are what
(12:02):
mutton chops are where the beard is shaved off the ship. Well,
that's its own thing. This is what I'm talking about. Yeah,
it doesn't matter. We're just making up an imaginary wealthy
industrialists pictured Daddy Warbocks. That's what I always think of, right.
It took me forever to realize. The time seems a
little different, but when I was a kid, you know,
I love musicals. It took me forever to realize that
(12:22):
Daddy Warbucks is a is a clear, very on the
nose reference to war profiteers. Yeah, check out our episode
on the creepy and uh controversial history of Little or
Finanny tunes. Uh, you know and all that um. But
last day on this you know the character I'm picturing
(12:43):
the character from the first season of The Mandalorian, the
one who goes like, what does he say? As a catchphrase,
he looks like a weird little monkey guy. He says,
I have spoken. I have spoken, Yes, Koli. For the
first season, he's got that kind of look, that wealthy
industrial industrialist look. If you can see, he's got the
muddon shops and it's really more of like a skin mustache.
(13:05):
But he's kind That's kind of what I'm picturing here.
So okay, well that was a bit of a walk
to get there. But she marries the wealthy industrialist that
allows her to continue, in fact, escalate this kind of
life of luxury. I get you only about twenty years old.
The guy's name, by the way, was Henry Fioca, which
is quite as cool. Yeah, you's to be Henry Focaccia,
(13:28):
like like the bread um. But but alas, and then
that was in nineteen thirty six, which is kind of
crazy because my dad, my parents had me a bit
older but later in life. My dad was born in
nineteen thirty seven, so this is definitely within the span
of people living today. But here's the thing. This is
kind of the moment in nineteen thirty three she begins
(13:49):
to reach that tipping point that I was talking about,
Like do I want to report from the sidelines? Do
I want to be a commentator and sort of like
a passive reporter, or I want to really get involved.
She was working at a as a freelancer for a
Parisian newspaper and she was asked to go to Vienna
to interview the German Chancellor, a guy by the name
(14:11):
of pat af Hitler that that Hitler. It's that that's
the one you're thinking of. And to be clear, you know,
she could have just lived a life of opulent luxury,
but she chose to remain working as a freelancer. And
while she was in Vienna, she saw just atrocious treatment
(14:35):
of Jewish people and she noticed the correlation here. It
was Hitler's followers and disciples who were committing these anti
Semitic crimes. And when I'm saying anti Semitic crime, I'm
not talking about just and this is not to diminish
this in any way. I'm not talking about vandalism. I'm
talking about people being pulled out of buildings and tortured
(14:59):
and beaten in this streets by the Gestapo. And she says, okay,
I know what these people are about. It is my
moral duty to do anything I can to stop the
Nazi Party. She talked about this for the rest of
(15:21):
her life. As she said, this cemented her deep, abiding,
profound hatred for the Nazis, and rightly so go Nancy,
and she decided at that moment it really was kind
of a fulcrum for her. But at that moment she
decided she was going to do whatever was necessary to
(15:43):
stop Nazis, and to stop Hitler in particular. And it
wasn't until several years later that she got her chance
in nineteen forty when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, Belgium
and France. Remember her husband who was sadly not named
Henri Focasha but Fioca. Her husband had enough money that
(16:03):
they could have skaaddle, they could have left France, but
they decided to stay and fight, and they joined the
French resistance in Paris. That's right, the two of them.
I love that, uh, you know, because it's like we're
ragging on this guy for his, you know, very vague
and grandiose title of wealthy French industrialist. But he was
(16:23):
on board. He he was he was gonna put that
money to good use, and and for that I applaud him,
um Mr facaccio Fioca, excuse me. So during this time
they were able to parlay that wealth into things that
would actually help get Jewish refugees across the border. For example,
they bought an ambulance they could use as kind of
a cover for transporting Jewish refugees across the border into
(16:44):
safe territory. She also was in a place of some
level of privilege, as you may guest, but she used
that too great effect as well. The wife of a
very successful, wealthy industrialist was able to move around in
certain circles of the upper echelon, UH, someone who had
the equivalent of a diplomatic past because of her history
(17:08):
as a journalist as well, and had not thus far
to my knowledge, been like outspoken, like writing like hit
pieces on Hitler or whatever. So I think it was
important to kind of maintain sort of a cover in
that respect and use all of these factors UH to
their greatest possible effect. She was friends with the famous
Scottish officer, a guy by the name of Ian Garrow, uh,
(17:29):
and helped him transport military personnel who were stranding in
France back to British soil. So Wake actually worked with
Garrow along with Belgian Major General Albert Marie. I'm gonna say, Gurris, Gorris,
do you e with a little schwa thinging over the
e or the accent r? I s s e H.
(17:51):
And he's Belgian, so I don't know. I'm gonna do
my best there, uh, guerrisa perhaps to help establish roots
UH that could be used to guide French soldiers to safety. Yeah,
it's kind of like an underground railroad. For two years,
the fiocas were working as couriers. They were smuggling supplies
(18:13):
and fake documents, and then later they evolved into that
brilliant ambulance power to Escape network. They didn't always use
the ambulance, but I thought that was such a clever move.
The Gestapo gets wend of this and they they think, Okay,
obviously some of these French locals are not super on
(18:36):
board with our crazy ideas, so we're gonna try to
find and shut down these resistance cells. And they started
going through Nancy Wake's mail, they started posting surveillance agents
at her home. Uh, and they just couldn't really catch
her in. She became the Gestapo's number one most wanted individual.
(19:00):
Have mentioned earlier, she got that five million frank price
tag on her head, and because she became someone on
a most wanted list, her privileged social position would no
longer protect her. And she recounts later how her husband said,
you have to leave just for her safety. He wanted
(19:22):
her to get out, get to get out of France
and leave him behind, and she remembers so heartbreaking. She
remembers going out of the door, saying that she was
going to do some shopping to give the guy plausible
deniability and that she would be back soon. She left
and they never saw each other again. She planned to
(19:42):
travel to Britain. This is where we see the rise
of the White Mouse. She doesn't get out on her
first attempt. People are watching the border. All in all,
she makes six tries to get out of France. She's
trying to cross the Pyrenees into Spain, where she was
taking persecuted people in the past, and she had some
really close calls. Man. She earned the nickname big time
(20:04):
once she was captured by the French Milish believe that's
how you pronounce it um the v she militia and
to lose, and she was held for four days. But
she didn't give up the ghost. She she kept her
mouth shut and she wouldn't give up any of her
colleagues or any of her comrades. Yes, she's very good
(20:25):
at convincing people of untrue things. She gets picked up
by authorities on a train outside of Toulouse, and to
avoid being captured, she oh, man, this is there's a
lot of huts. But here she spends this crazy tale
where she says, you have to let me go, okay,
(20:46):
because I am actually the mistress of one of these guards,
and I know I look like I'm in a disguise,
but it's because I can't let my husband know I'm
sleeping around and the German guards. You know, we don't
have the specifics of what she said, but the German
guards said, oh, okay, well, well hey, we're not We're
not going to snitch on you, you know, Glory, presumably
(21:06):
to like help out their their bros there, bros. Yeah.
This is when Wake actually got the nickname Las SuRie
blanche or the white Mouse, because she actually evaded capture
by the Gestapo officers and SS cards multiple times and
would later talk about, you know how she was able
to combine some charm with obviously some true training in
(21:31):
order to find her way out of these tricky situations.
She would say, a little powder and a little drink
on the way, and I'd passed their German posts and
wink and say do you want to search me? Big boy?
I added that part, Uh, Kyle, what a flirtations, little bastard.
I was right, And this is brilliant of Minx. I
love it. Yeah, she's leaning into assumptions and that's a
(21:54):
huge part of social engineering. In tradecraft. She's unassuming. She
looks like a well to do person who is just
kind of like, you know, a little in their cups
and like I live them in in uniform and then boom,
she's accomplished her mission. And so this is how she
escapes through the purities into Spain, and then she makes
(22:15):
it to Britain. And once she gets to Britain, you know,
intelligence agencies at this time are all very deep, deeply
interested in each other and if someone is good enough
to earn a nickname, they probably the other forces probably no.
So the British Special Operations Executive s o E. Says, okay,
(22:37):
White Mouse, we will train you in our arts. In
the art of tradecraft, which is the euphemistic name for spycraft.
She learns how to kill people silently. She learns codes,
she learns correct ways to operate radio. She learns how
to parachute, especially at night, which is how she ended
(23:01):
up within that tree at the beginning of our story.
She knows how to use plastic explosives. She's familiar with
firearms as well as grenades, and all of her training officers. Again,
despite the misogyny of the time, say this lady is
putting the dudes to shame. They're looking around at the
other recruits. They are like, come on, guys, come on,
(23:22):
you can't even rig a little bit of a plastic explosive. Nancy, Nancy,
get back up here, show them, show them how to
do that. She really was like first in her class
and it didn't take too long before she became a
high ranking officer. She organized and ran firearms allocation to
(23:43):
seven thousand, five hundred different people. At this time, once
her training is complete, it's nine and get this, she's
only thirty one years old. What are we doing with
our lives? She's parachuted into France along with four hundred
and thirty and thirty nine other women to prepare for
(24:03):
a little something the Allies like to call D Day. Yeah, yeah,
that's right. That's the same one, the D Day, like
the Adolf Hitler. This is the D Day. These are
not just like adjacent events. Uh. She is in the
thick of it. Her job is to actually organize ammunition drops.
So these are like these air drops that are coming down,
(24:23):
you know with crates. Picture them like kind of raining
from the sky U parachuted crates of very crucial supplies,
including AMMO. She also was responsible for setting up supply
lines and the communications surrounding those supply lines, and also
to organize resistance movement in prep for the actual attack
of D Day. She was not only known for her
(24:46):
widely you know street smarts and ability to evade, capture
and break through umy lines. She also had a lot
of acumen when it came to tactics and and strategy
and and she was used for those skills as well. Yeah, yeah,
she was a tactician. Uh. They carried out Grea attacks
(25:06):
on numerous German forces with her team of seven thousand people.
We're talking about doing damage to twenty two thousand Germans
and burn the supply lines, attacked the infrastructure. This is
very important stuff. She would later go on to say
she didn't like killing people in particular, like she wasn't
(25:29):
sadistic about it. It didn't scratch an itch for her.
But she said, I don't see why we women should
just wave our men are proud, goodbye and then knit
them balaklava's I love the word bala clava. But she
felt like like baklava. I don't know what it's. A
(25:49):
balaklava is the Okay, you know how when we were
doing those bank robberies, we had those knit masks that
we would put over. Yeah, those are bala clavas. Oh
like a ski mask. Yeah yeah, it's like it's very similar.
It has like it's the one with like kind of
one window for an eye or some or you can
show your whole face nask. Yeah, it's like something you
(26:12):
would wear if you know, you were fighting in some
more really cold and you're just like freezing. It's like, okay,
can you get myself covered up as much as possible?
But it also makes you look like a spooky kind
of stalker type. Yeah. Yeah, but you're warm is the
thing they're frowned on today. In fact, a lot of
stores will have signs that say no ski masks allout,
(26:33):
as if that was any question. It is funny how
a garment like that that can becomes not ski stores, though.
I think these stores it's it's it's fair game. Wake
was also her heroism extended onto the the arena of cycling.
She was at half a cycler, and that was a
really nimble way of of kind of using that that
(26:54):
you know, cover that she had, uh and to just
kind of bop around through German checkpoints in order to
established connections with allies London. In particular, she once did
a three ten mile round trip on her bike in
order to replace some codes that had been destroyed during
a German raid um on a post. Without those codes,
(27:16):
there would be no way for them to communicate regarding
re ups on those ammunition drops that we talked about.
So this is like directly pertaining to those kind of
strategy assists that the Wake would offer. But also she
would just goes on the ground getting her hands dirty.
She said the ride took her on seventy one hours
and she went almost NonStop. That is bold and absolutely impressive. Yeah,
(27:43):
and and she also, you know, she got her hands
dirty more ways than one. We mentioned that she didn't
like killing, and then she was not a sadist, but
she did take several people's lives. While she was preparing
for D Day, the White Mouse learned that some of
her some of her soldiers, had captured a young German
(28:04):
spy who was female. And these these men who are
working for I couldn't find it in themselves to kill her.
So wake did it, And later in two thousand and one,
she would tell an Australian newspaper, I was not a
very nice person and it didn't put me off my breakfast.
And if you want another example, let's talk about the
(28:27):
time she killed a guy with her bare hands. This
is the karate chop. Do we mention this part on
air or was this we set it up at the beginning.
The afore mentioned karate chop. Not only not bare hands,
mind you, bare hand, a single handed chop to the neck.
(28:48):
You know, this was something that was taught to them
in training. Um it was a an s S officer
who was about to you know, the equivalent of that
one soldier and uh and and elden ring that will
blow the trumpet and then you know, summon all their homes. Yeah, yeah,
you gotta take them out first before they make the noise.
(29:09):
And nothing like a well placed chop to the neck
to prevent them from sounding that alarm. This is actually
during a raid on a German gun factory, which would
have been a huge strategic value you know target. Um
so once again saving the day with the swift karate
shop killed him Debt. Yeah, it reminds me of very
(29:33):
We've got a quote from her, but it reminds me
very much of that scene in kill Bill where the
bride is buried alive spoilers and has the flashback to
her repetitive punching. God, I wish this was on video.
I'm doing an okay chop, but thank you, many punches
with no real room for a wind up. That was
(29:55):
the part of it. So she got taught. Well here,
let's just do the quote. Let's let her speak for
yourself on this. Yeah. They they taught us this judo
chop stuff with the flat of the hand, and I
practiced away at it, but this was the only time
I used it. Whack and it killed them, all right.
I was really surprised, right, that's I know, we're not
(30:17):
diminishing this at all, but which she says, I was
really surprised. I have this picture of like the flat
judo chop and then look at the hand and going
all right, then sort of like shrug emoji. I mean,
it makes me think of the Star Trek Futurama episode.
There's the end they're all fighting and so they just
normal people and let her Nimoy like goes to like
(30:37):
to the vulcan neck pinch on Bender and he goes,
let's see if this actually works, and it very much
does not work. Yeah, I in my um wilder days
in another life, I remember being very young and I
thought the vulcan neck pinch was a real thing, and
I tried it on someone. It's I must do maybe
(30:59):
just maybe dinner. Right. It's like like the five point
palm exploding heart technique, Bill things. You gotta get all
those pressure points in quick succession, right one, if you
haven't to miss one. We didn't train in the temples
of Shaoland, so it's comment on this stuff. We studied them, Mike, Yes,
(31:25):
So she is doing courageous things and things that make
a huge difference in the resistance effort. In June of nineteen,
the German forces came at her troops on mass and
they lost a hundred of their own folks the French
(31:47):
resistance under under the White Mouse. But they also killed
one thousand, four hundred of the Germans who came after them.
So this fighting force, if you look at that ratio,
they are Wu Tang style. Nothing to f with. Um,
we know we tease d Day right. That was June
(32:08):
of nine, and we know that June of n is
also when the actual D Day happens June six. Wait,
we are recording a day after the anniversary of D Day,
and where we are? No, that's true, yeah, seventh, as
we sit here this very day, probably you know, want
(32:30):
I guess one of the most popular dramatizations of D
Day would have been the storming of the beaches in Normandy.
Um in uh, saving Private Ryan the very first opening sequence.
Its fabulous. You really feel like you're there, the shaky
cameras and the bullets whizzing past, and you know, the
absolute chaos of it all. That's not the kind of
(32:50):
I mean, there's certainly chaotic elements to warfare still to
this day, but not quite the same. Um. It was
very much you were just hoping to God that you
didn't catch a bullet in the back of the head,
and then you were just moving forward while your comrades
were falling all around you. And it was a very
hellish situation. And it's it's it's it's a wonder that
(33:10):
we prevailed. It is very much. So let's look at
D Day just a bit and how Nancy Wake plays
into it. So we know that Allied troops, at tremendous costs,
started to force the German army out of France. On
August of that same year, Harris Is liberated and Nancy
(33:33):
Wake leads her troops out to celebrate, but she um
it was not of celebration for her because she knew
ever since she told her husband that she was going
to go shopping and never came back, she knew the
chances of them reuniteteen were very low, and she truly
(33:55):
loved him. She wasn't marrying him for the money, obviously,
and when she got back she learned that he was
indeed dead. A year after she had left France, the
Germans captured in, tortured him, and then killed him because
he refused to give them any information about his wife.
That is one tough, wealthy French industrialist. We should honor
(34:19):
him by referring to him as Amrie from now on,
because the man clearly earned our respect and the respect
of the world, because I mean, back then it was
all about information, and he could have outed his wife
and they could have put an end to her shenanigans,
but they continued, largely thanks to henri Um. So within
a year Germany was done. Three seventy five of the
(34:42):
sixty nine operatives of the s OE in the French
area survived the war. There were thirty nine women operatives,
twelve of which were killed by the Germans and three
who returned after having been i is and and tortured,
most likely for quite some time at Ravens Brook, the
(35:05):
concentration camp. All in all, we had six hundred thousand
French UH citizens who were killed during World War two
and two were killed in prisons and those Hellish concentration camps.
And the number would have been much higher were it
not for Nancy Wake. This is not hyperbole. She saved
(35:28):
thousands of lives. She was awarded many accolades after the war.
The George Medal from the United Kingdom, that's the second
highest civilian honor that Britain will give you, the Medal
of Freedom from the us UH, the Legion of Honor,
the highest military honor from France, along with several other
(35:50):
multiple other honors and awards from various European nations. As
a matter of fact, and this was an interesting detail
to me, he received so many medals for her actions
during wartime that she would later say she lived out
her old Age on the proceeds from their sale, and
to me, that's kind of um, that's kind of sad,
(36:13):
the idea that someone could do so much, could save
so many lives and then has to sell the awards
society gave her. Unfortunately, that's the story of a lot
of of individuals who served their country and come back
home only to realize that like they're sort of conditioned
for a situation that no longer exists, and that they
maybe aren't suited mentally, psychologically, um, for other types of jobs,
(36:38):
for sort of re acclimating to civilian life. And while
that wasn't necessarily the case for Wake, I mean it
kind of was. She refers to this experience like this
in the New York Times article, Uh, it's dreadful because
you've been so busy and then it all just fizzles out.
Actually told that to an Australian newspaper and it was
quoted in the New York Times article that you reference.
(37:01):
She wrote an autobiography called The White Mouse that was
published in UM. And she moved. She remarried, actually, and
she moved to Port Macquarie in Australia, two two miles
north of Sydney, m and she did remarry to a
former POW and English fighter pilot with an awesome name,
(37:23):
John Forward. That sounds like I like that little Figertip
Matt's John Forward. Yeah, it's almost like another Toast of
London type name. Yeah, it really is. So guys, I've
been rewatching BoJack Horseman and it's like, you know, my
fourth rewatch of it. And what I've picked up at
this time is how many times like they have a
(37:44):
little jingle for characters who enter, like recurring characters, and
I just envisioned John Ford would come into the room.
He's like John Ford, Yes, I like it's one of
those uh, you know, we've gone back forth about nominative
determinism before, but names like that that have a direction,
or names that have a verb in them are classic
(38:08):
fighter pilot CEO material. Shout out to my alter ego,
Max Powers Astronaut with a secret thank you, thank you,
thank you, Max Williams, superproducer. We know that she survived
a time and a profession that many people don't a
lot of people who were working in resistance stuff like
(38:29):
this in insurgencies, they are not going to have very
high odds of living out their life in peaceful old age.
But against the odds, once again, the White Mouse does
exactly that. As as we described, she moves to England
in two thousand and one and there she lives pretty
(38:53):
much rent free at the Stafford Hotel in St James Place,
and according to reports, she spends most of her retirement
at the hotel bar with a Gen and tonic. And
then she moves to a retirement home for you know,
for retired veterans servicemen and women in two thousand three,
(39:14):
and she still shows up to the bar because they
make a mean gen and tonic. I guess it's also
very toast of London thing. I would have loved to
have had a drink with Nancy wake uh and just
how to hear some of these stories and it's all
very recent. It wasn't until two thousand eleven that she
passed away um in that nursing home from a chest infection.
(39:35):
And I believe after she passed it kind of came
to light that the royal family was footing some of
the bills for her for her lifestyle. Not that it
was like extravagant or anything, just paying for bar tabs,
I guess, and you know, whatever that's pretty that's pretty posh. Man.
If the royal families pick him up your bar tab,
(39:55):
you must have done something right or drastically evil. Right.
Oh gosh, that might be a different episode. So this
is a story of a real life hero and it
shows us, as we established earlier, how close the past
actually is. I'm not going to bring out that Faulkner
quote again, but he was absolutely right. Instead, maybe we
(40:17):
end on a quote from the first character we met
in today's episode, Our pal on read hard. He survived
the war and he loved talking about Nancy Wake. Here's
this last line. She's the most feminine woman I know
until the fighting starts. Then she's like five minute. I
(40:42):
think he had a crush on her, clearly. I think
most people that she met probably had a crush on her, absolutely,
and I think she probably damn well knew it and
used it to her to her benefit. Um, Nancy Wake,
what a character. The white mouse. I want to read
more about this, this fascinating and being um and again
would have loved to share a Gin and Tonic with her. Yeah,
(41:04):
but I think that's a great place to to to
put a put a pin in this story. There is
a documentary about her that was made by Australian Television
in nineteen seven, but I don't have a title on that. Um.
I think there was. There was a documentary Nancy Wake
code named The White Mouse, and then there was a
TV mini series, right I. I think it was one
(41:27):
of those things where was based on a true story
or inspired by a true story, and they added a
lot of historical liberties, sort of like what we were
talking about with Operation Mincemeat, where they kind of shoehorned
to love story. And yeah, so the TV mini series
was just called Nancy Wake. It ran in Uh it
(41:52):
sounds to me like Henri and Nancy. I think they
were just star crossed lovers who ever quite got their
stars to cross. No, we went a little bit long
on today's episode, but it felt like one story to
us and we didn't want to split it up. We
hope that you have enjoyed the tale of Nancy Wake
(42:12):
as much as we have, and we can't wait to
hear from you about other heroes from the past too.
Maybe haven't quite gotten there do All you have to
do is reach out to us on ridiculous Historians and hey,
while you're on the internet, you can find us not
just as a show, but as individuals. This is true.
(42:33):
You can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am
at how Now Noel Brown, Mr Boland about yourself. Well,
you can get some spoilers for ridiculous history and for
stuff they want you to know various other projects I
work on by going to Instagram where I am as
I like to say, in a burst of creativity at
ben Bowland bow l i N. If you don't sip
(42:55):
the Instagram social media, you can find me on Twitter
as well, where at ben Bulan hs W. Like everybody
else on Twitter, I'm only there because I know Max
Williams is there too. I mean, that's the only reason
to be on Twitter at this point. I've heard I
think Elon Musk said that yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well
he's backing out trying to buy it. Uh. But if
you want to find me on Twitter, you can find
(43:17):
me at at l Underscore Max Williams. That's where you
find all my stuff. And of course thank you to
our super producer, Max Williams. Thank you to our composer
is so nuts. Their show has a composer. It's our
good friend Max's brother, Alex Williams. Keep it in the family.
See you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my
(43:44):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
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