The German Gestapo named her the most dangerous spy in France and did everything they possibly could to locate and eliminate her. She created one of the largest and most effective resistance movements in France, of which she was the leader. She enlisted a wide variety of French people to aid in acquiring information about German troop movements: French police officials, prostitutes, nuns, merchants and criminals. Hall was tasked with sending information back to England detailing German troop strength and movements in France as well as establishing French Resistance groups.
Virginia Hall worked for the British Secret Service (British Special Operations Executive Services) from 1939-1942 and for the American SecretSservice (Office of Strategic Service) from 1943 until after the end of the war. The result is a remarkable biography of a woman who broke barriers for women and helped win World War II. She spent more than three years searching through documents in England and the United States relating to the activities of Virginia Hall as well as interviewing people in France who had known her. Sonia Purnell is an award-winning British author. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.īased on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall-an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity.The book, A Woman of No Importance The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell is the true story of an American woman, Virginia Hall, who lived, survived and even excelled in the 'man's world' of espionage and war in France during World War II. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown.
Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and-despite her prosthetic leg-helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies.
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