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Gestapo's enemy number one dies age 98
Source: Agencies |
August 9, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AUSTRALIAN Nancy Wake, who as a spy became one of the Allies' most decorated servicewomen for her role in the French resistance during World War II, has died in London at the age of 98.
Dubbed "the White Mouse" by the German Gestapo during the war, Wake died on Sunday in a nursing home.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: "Nancy Wake was a woman of exceptional courage and resourcefulness whose daring exploits saved the lives of hundreds of Allied personnel and helped bring the Nazi occupation of France to an end."
Trained by British intelligence in espionage and sabotage, Wake helped to arm and lead 7,000 resistance fighters in weakening German defenses before the 1944 D-Day invasion. While distributing weapons, money and code books in Nazi-occupied France, she evaded capture many times and reached the top of the Gestapo's wanted list, according to her biographer, Peter FitzSimons.
FitzSimons said: "They called her the la Souris Blanche - the White Mouse - because every time they had her cornered she was gone again. Part of it was she was a gorgeous-looking woman. The Germans were looking for someone aggressive, a man with guns, and she was not like that."
France gave her with its highest military honor, the Legion d'Honneur, as well as three Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance. The US awarded her its Medal of Freedom, and the UK gave her the George Medal. In 2004, she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.
She was born in the New Zealand capital of Wellington in 1912, the youngest of six siblings. Wake became a nurse before an inheritance from an aunt enabled her to fulfill her dream of traveling to New York, London and Paris.
She studied journalism in London and after interviewing Adolf Hitler in Vienna she committed herself to bringing down the Nazis.
According to her wishes, Wake's body is expected to be cremated and her ashes scattered at Montlucon in central France, where she took part in a 1944 attack on the local Gestapo headquarters.
Dubbed "the White Mouse" by the German Gestapo during the war, Wake died on Sunday in a nursing home.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: "Nancy Wake was a woman of exceptional courage and resourcefulness whose daring exploits saved the lives of hundreds of Allied personnel and helped bring the Nazi occupation of France to an end."
Trained by British intelligence in espionage and sabotage, Wake helped to arm and lead 7,000 resistance fighters in weakening German defenses before the 1944 D-Day invasion. While distributing weapons, money and code books in Nazi-occupied France, she evaded capture many times and reached the top of the Gestapo's wanted list, according to her biographer, Peter FitzSimons.
FitzSimons said: "They called her the la Souris Blanche - the White Mouse - because every time they had her cornered she was gone again. Part of it was she was a gorgeous-looking woman. The Germans were looking for someone aggressive, a man with guns, and she was not like that."
France gave her with its highest military honor, the Legion d'Honneur, as well as three Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance. The US awarded her its Medal of Freedom, and the UK gave her the George Medal. In 2004, she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.
She was born in the New Zealand capital of Wellington in 1912, the youngest of six siblings. Wake became a nurse before an inheritance from an aunt enabled her to fulfill her dream of traveling to New York, London and Paris.
She studied journalism in London and after interviewing Adolf Hitler in Vienna she committed herself to bringing down the Nazis.
According to her wishes, Wake's body is expected to be cremated and her ashes scattered at Montlucon in central France, where she took part in a 1944 attack on the local Gestapo headquarters.
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