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A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII.
Once rumored to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, Vera Atkins climbed her way to the top in the Special Operations Executive, or Britain’s secret service created to help build up, organize, and arm the resistance in the Nazi-occupied countries. Throughout the war, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE’s French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France—at least one hundred of whom never returned and were reported “Missing Presumed Dead� after the war. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins’s most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their horrific final journeys. But as the woman who carried out this astonishing search appeared quintessentially English, Atkins was nothing of the sort. As we follow her through the devastation of postwar Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past.
In A Life in Secrets Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera Atkins’s many veils. Drawing on recently released sixty-year-old government files and her unprecedented access to the private papers of the Atkins family, Helm vividly reconstructs a complex and extraordinary life.
In A Life in Secrets Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera Atkins’s many veils. Drawing on recently released sixty-year-old government files and her unprecedented access to the private papers of the Atkins family, Helm vividly reconstructs a complex and extraordinary life.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published September 14, 2005
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7054 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Helm
9Ìýbooks149Ìýfollowers Sarah Helm (born 2 November 1956) is a British journalist and non-fiction writer. She worked for The Sunday Times and The Independent in the 1980s and 1990s. Her first book A Life in Secrets, detailing the life of the secret agent Vera Atkins, was published in 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 271 reviews
April 10, 2017
My reading program for this month is to immerse myself in the world of female agents operating in France during WW2. I read one book on the subject which got me more interested in that world. One book, as we know, leads to another. I was overwhelmed by the courage of these women and want to know more about them.
During World War Two, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE's French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France, at least one hundred of whom never returned. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins' most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them: a harrowing trail that leads her to interview Nazi war criminals, sometimes days before their execution and takes her to the concentration camps at Natzweiler, Ravensbruk and Dachau.
This isn’t so much a biography of Vera Atkins, as a biography of the SOE organisation itself and in particular a key moment in its history when everything began to go very wrong. One explanation as to why is very simple: a man called Henri Dericourt, in charge of bringing all mail back to England, was a secret German agent and gave all the mail to the Gestapo before it found its way to London. Except mysteriously he was never prosecuted and there does seem to be a much more complex story going on. That perhaps he was a triple agent, working for MI5 who secretly wanted British agents to be caught as it meant they would pass on false information to the Germans. What this meant was many of the female SOE agents were quickly caught by the Gestapo. That they were sent like lambs to the slaughter.
Vera Atkins herself personifies the huge mystery surrounding this chain of events. She has her own skeleton in the closet. After the war there were some who believed she was working for the Germans, some who believed she was a communist and some who believed she was working for the CIA! When it’s revealed she was a Romanian Jew who went to Belgium in late 1940 on a secret personal mission the intrigue is really cranked up. Before long therefore this book becomes more thriller and investigative journalism than biography. I found it utterly compelling.
As a footnote I was also pleased to read how appalled real female SOE agents and their relatives were by Charlotte Gray, both the novel and film. Sebastian Faulks strikes me as an intelligent man but his premise of a girl going to France to look for love is both a condescending and stereotypically sexist insult to the courageous and selfless dedication to duty of these brave women.
During World War Two, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE's French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France, at least one hundred of whom never returned. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins' most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them: a harrowing trail that leads her to interview Nazi war criminals, sometimes days before their execution and takes her to the concentration camps at Natzweiler, Ravensbruk and Dachau.
This isn’t so much a biography of Vera Atkins, as a biography of the SOE organisation itself and in particular a key moment in its history when everything began to go very wrong. One explanation as to why is very simple: a man called Henri Dericourt, in charge of bringing all mail back to England, was a secret German agent and gave all the mail to the Gestapo before it found its way to London. Except mysteriously he was never prosecuted and there does seem to be a much more complex story going on. That perhaps he was a triple agent, working for MI5 who secretly wanted British agents to be caught as it meant they would pass on false information to the Germans. What this meant was many of the female SOE agents were quickly caught by the Gestapo. That they were sent like lambs to the slaughter.
Vera Atkins herself personifies the huge mystery surrounding this chain of events. She has her own skeleton in the closet. After the war there were some who believed she was working for the Germans, some who believed she was a communist and some who believed she was working for the CIA! When it’s revealed she was a Romanian Jew who went to Belgium in late 1940 on a secret personal mission the intrigue is really cranked up. Before long therefore this book becomes more thriller and investigative journalism than biography. I found it utterly compelling.
As a footnote I was also pleased to read how appalled real female SOE agents and their relatives were by Charlotte Gray, both the novel and film. Sebastian Faulks strikes me as an intelligent man but his premise of a girl going to France to look for love is both a condescending and stereotypically sexist insult to the courageous and selfless dedication to duty of these brave women.
April 6, 2023
Well! What a labyrinthine tale that turned out to be! What begins as a biography of Vera Atkins, who during WW2 worked in “F� (France) section of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, gradually morphs into a piece of investigative journalism, and a pretty fascinating one at that. The book was published in 2005 and much of the research was carried out in the 1990s, so the author had the opportunity to interview some of the elderly survivors of SOE.
The book is organised into 4 parts, beginning with an account of F section’s activities during 1943 and 1944. The account only covers that period because the author concentrates on F section’s female agents, who only began to be used from 1943 onwards. It’s generally an unhappy tale of extensive German penetration of SOE networks, the evidence for which was ignored by the Head of F section, Maurice Buckmaster, who sent more and more agents to France to land straight in the hands of the Gestapo. Buckmaster seems to have been a mixture of naivety, gullibility and incorrigible optimism, in other words completely unsuitable to be a senior Intelligence Officer.
Part 2 goes back in time to cover Atkins� pre-war life, most of which was lived in Romania where she had been born in 1908. She had a German father and an English mother (her original surname had been Rosenberg). The family were secular Jews although they played down their Jewish roots and some converted to Christianity. Of course that made no difference to the Nazis. Atkins and her by then widowed mother moved to Britain in 1937. During WW2 Romania was allied with Germany, and Atkins, as a Romanian citizen, was thus technically an enemy alien. In this context it was extremely surprising she was given a job within a top secret organisation � she might have expected internment. The author suggests that in the 1930s she may have worked for British intelligence in Bucharest. These were amongst a number of things Atkins concealed about her past.
Part 3 covers the immediate postwar period and Atkins� determined attempt to trace what happened to F section’s missing agents, a number of whom had ended up in concentration camps. It seems fairly certain that without her work, we would never have found out the fate of most of these agents. She did make some mistakes though, sometimes trying to get the evidence to fit her preconceptions, rather than letting the evidence lead.
Just when you think the story is winding down, the author looks at Atkins� postwar life back in Britain. Conspiracy theories arose about the wartime disasters of F section, largely based on the idea that no Intelligence Officer could really have behaved as stupidly as Buckmaster. In investigating these suggestions, the author gradually discovers previously unknown aspects to Atkins� life. I don’t normally worry about spoilers in non-fiction, but the author skilfully lets out the information bit by bit, so I think the reader is best left to discover it themselves.
This book is incredibly detailed and exhaustively researched � it gave me a fuller appreciation of just how much time and effort is needed to write a book like this. At times the level of detail had me flagging a bit, but I think it was necessary for the author to show her “workings out� before describing her conclusions.
This is a quite remarkable story, and espionage is a murky business alright. I might leave the last word to former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, who when authorising an official history of F Section, commented that “I doubt in fact, it will ever be possible to establish exactly where praise or blame may have lain in all these intricate clandestine operations.�
The book is organised into 4 parts, beginning with an account of F section’s activities during 1943 and 1944. The account only covers that period because the author concentrates on F section’s female agents, who only began to be used from 1943 onwards. It’s generally an unhappy tale of extensive German penetration of SOE networks, the evidence for which was ignored by the Head of F section, Maurice Buckmaster, who sent more and more agents to France to land straight in the hands of the Gestapo. Buckmaster seems to have been a mixture of naivety, gullibility and incorrigible optimism, in other words completely unsuitable to be a senior Intelligence Officer.
Part 2 goes back in time to cover Atkins� pre-war life, most of which was lived in Romania where she had been born in 1908. She had a German father and an English mother (her original surname had been Rosenberg). The family were secular Jews although they played down their Jewish roots and some converted to Christianity. Of course that made no difference to the Nazis. Atkins and her by then widowed mother moved to Britain in 1937. During WW2 Romania was allied with Germany, and Atkins, as a Romanian citizen, was thus technically an enemy alien. In this context it was extremely surprising she was given a job within a top secret organisation � she might have expected internment. The author suggests that in the 1930s she may have worked for British intelligence in Bucharest. These were amongst a number of things Atkins concealed about her past.
Part 3 covers the immediate postwar period and Atkins� determined attempt to trace what happened to F section’s missing agents, a number of whom had ended up in concentration camps. It seems fairly certain that without her work, we would never have found out the fate of most of these agents. She did make some mistakes though, sometimes trying to get the evidence to fit her preconceptions, rather than letting the evidence lead.
Just when you think the story is winding down, the author looks at Atkins� postwar life back in Britain. Conspiracy theories arose about the wartime disasters of F section, largely based on the idea that no Intelligence Officer could really have behaved as stupidly as Buckmaster. In investigating these suggestions, the author gradually discovers previously unknown aspects to Atkins� life. I don’t normally worry about spoilers in non-fiction, but the author skilfully lets out the information bit by bit, so I think the reader is best left to discover it themselves.
This book is incredibly detailed and exhaustively researched � it gave me a fuller appreciation of just how much time and effort is needed to write a book like this. At times the level of detail had me flagging a bit, but I think it was necessary for the author to show her “workings out� before describing her conclusions.
This is a quite remarkable story, and espionage is a murky business alright. I might leave the last word to former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, who when authorising an official history of F Section, commented that “I doubt in fact, it will ever be possible to establish exactly where praise or blame may have lain in all these intricate clandestine operations.�
April 27, 2016
An utterly compelling read about Vera Atkins and the female SOE agents she helped send to France. Especially moving is her relentless attempt at the end of the war to discover what happened to those agents who had vanished from all official records. At this point the book becomes a gripping detective story. There's also the mystery of Vera herself, a fascinating woman who gave so little of herself away and destroyed many of her documents. So this fabulously well written and researched book contains mysteries within mysteries within mysteries. If you want a true idea of what these brave women went through I'd definitely recommend this rather than much of the romanticised and patronising fiction written on the subject.
September 17, 2011
This biography of Vera Atkins is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I was amazed at the breadth and depth of Helm's research. I was amazed at the level of incompetence in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), clandestinely established by the British to place saboteurs into Europe.They were engaged in recruiting, and setting up resistance organizations as well as supporting them behind enemy lines. The ability to rationalize away grave mistakes in judgment as the result of the fog of war or inexperience on the part of operatives was mind boggling.
Vera Atkins was born Vera May Rosenberg in Romania in 1908. Her parents who were Jews wanted desperately to be something else. After her father's death she and one of her brothers dropped Rosenberg and took their mother's very English maiden name. She put her past behind her and never spoke of it again.
After Dunkirk the OSE was formed and Vera secured a position in the new agency. She was competent and resourceful, a valuable employee who was promoted inside the agency. It was her job to help recruit, train and send off the operatives. She always took them to the plane that would take them to their assignment. She was the one who knew everyone and everything about their background, training and aliases. She was the one who, after the defeat of the Germans, went to the continent to find out what had happened to the agents who had not returned. She gathered information for the war crimes trials and participated in them as a witness.
After the SOE was shut down she became its publicist and advocated for keeping the heroism of those who died alive. Her role at the SOE shaped the remainder of her life as she was alternately considered both hero and villain, selfish and selfless, patriot and traitor.
Helms does a good job of considering all sides while shedding light on a secret life that remained hidden for over 70 years. A worthwhile read.
Vera Atkins was born Vera May Rosenberg in Romania in 1908. Her parents who were Jews wanted desperately to be something else. After her father's death she and one of her brothers dropped Rosenberg and took their mother's very English maiden name. She put her past behind her and never spoke of it again.
After Dunkirk the OSE was formed and Vera secured a position in the new agency. She was competent and resourceful, a valuable employee who was promoted inside the agency. It was her job to help recruit, train and send off the operatives. She always took them to the plane that would take them to their assignment. She was the one who knew everyone and everything about their background, training and aliases. She was the one who, after the defeat of the Germans, went to the continent to find out what had happened to the agents who had not returned. She gathered information for the war crimes trials and participated in them as a witness.
After the SOE was shut down she became its publicist and advocated for keeping the heroism of those who died alive. Her role at the SOE shaped the remainder of her life as she was alternately considered both hero and villain, selfish and selfless, patriot and traitor.
Helms does a good job of considering all sides while shedding light on a secret life that remained hidden for over 70 years. A worthwhile read.
December 17, 2014
Vera Atkins' core personality seemed as covert as her work in this book, IMHO. It's a decent detailing of the origins of SOE during early days of England's WWII years and of Vera's operation of the SOE's French section. And yet as I have read other non-fiction upon specific agents in this exact circle, I find this particular research work dry and yes, having pieces of interest, but with no solid connecting direction, or "how" of the operation to mesh transitions between individual outcomes. Vera was rather a closed trap far after the fact of war time operations.
The one and only interview that Sarah Helm had with Vera Atkins occurred when Vera was aged, around 90 years old, and brief. Vera died soon after. And that one interview was the most compelling window to the woman who was Ian Fleming's grid for Moneypenny.
The pictures were more revealing than the more than 400 pages. Operational years during wartime is not the onus of the largest majority of those pages. The search for missing women agents that Vera Atkins conducted during the war crimes trial years is the much heavier content of this book. This is just my opinion, but sending so many men and women to their deaths, but especially her "girls"- I believe that search was more for Vera than to give medals to the departed. You can see it in the pictures. Vera's eyes are so, so 1000 year stare and cold. Seriously, I can't imagine how she could train and mentor when she knew the odds of futures. Wireless operators lasted an average of 5 to 6 weeks in France. This also includes some information about the collapsed circles (Kim Philby and other SOE connected were double agents) and much information about the eventual executions in camps for her girls for which she eventually obtained eye witness documentation.
Not a happy life, but beyond any definition of courage to take this task upon your back. Authority toward these outcomes is never given the credit for success toward overcoming pure evil that it deserves. Least of all today.
The pictures were fabulous. I've read entire books upon Eileen Nearne and Violette Szabo- so further pictures of their contacts were intriguing to me. Attractive young women of supreme confidence in movement (NO reactions of fear or confusion ever observed)were chosen for their ability to hide in plain sight. And of course, the language abilities. Most were born or had lived in France most of their lives, or like Vera born in Eastern Europe and were cosmopolitan in culture, speaking 2 or 3 languages beyond their English.
Nora Inayat Khan was the most famous British woman agent in France for which Vera never really found an answer. But it surprised me that she did find facts and witnesses to so many other outcomes. Nora was dark and haunted looking, vampish and not easily forgotten when met, so she was probably shot or killed immediately upon capture.
The one and only interview that Sarah Helm had with Vera Atkins occurred when Vera was aged, around 90 years old, and brief. Vera died soon after. And that one interview was the most compelling window to the woman who was Ian Fleming's grid for Moneypenny.
The pictures were more revealing than the more than 400 pages. Operational years during wartime is not the onus of the largest majority of those pages. The search for missing women agents that Vera Atkins conducted during the war crimes trial years is the much heavier content of this book. This is just my opinion, but sending so many men and women to their deaths, but especially her "girls"- I believe that search was more for Vera than to give medals to the departed. You can see it in the pictures. Vera's eyes are so, so 1000 year stare and cold. Seriously, I can't imagine how she could train and mentor when she knew the odds of futures. Wireless operators lasted an average of 5 to 6 weeks in France. This also includes some information about the collapsed circles (Kim Philby and other SOE connected were double agents) and much information about the eventual executions in camps for her girls for which she eventually obtained eye witness documentation.
Not a happy life, but beyond any definition of courage to take this task upon your back. Authority toward these outcomes is never given the credit for success toward overcoming pure evil that it deserves. Least of all today.
The pictures were fabulous. I've read entire books upon Eileen Nearne and Violette Szabo- so further pictures of their contacts were intriguing to me. Attractive young women of supreme confidence in movement (NO reactions of fear or confusion ever observed)were chosen for their ability to hide in plain sight. And of course, the language abilities. Most were born or had lived in France most of their lives, or like Vera born in Eastern Europe and were cosmopolitan in culture, speaking 2 or 3 languages beyond their English.
Nora Inayat Khan was the most famous British woman agent in France for which Vera never really found an answer. But it surprised me that she did find facts and witnesses to so many other outcomes. Nora was dark and haunted looking, vampish and not easily forgotten when met, so she was probably shot or killed immediately upon capture.
March 10, 2023
Not at all what I expected! Unlike the secrecy around Bletchley Park and Enigma, there were few secrets concerning the Special Operations Executive (SOE) where Vera Atkins worked, that weren’t generally acknowledged after the end of WW2. No, the secrets were her personal ones, and Sarah Helm’s meticulous research makes for fascinating reading.
Helm is an investigative journalist and her style is to interleave the history of Vera and the SOE with excerpts from the many interviews she conducted with surviving friends and colleagues. She jumps straight in with minimal introduction, to Vera’s first days with the SOE in the early 1940s. It’s a bit disconcerting if you were expecting a conventional history (as I was), but very effective and makes for engrossing reading; the background being gradually revealed over the later chapters.
SOE was responsible for sabotage behind the German lines and Vera was second in command of the French section. As a result of her immediate superior’s monumental incompetence and willful blindness the SOE committed some huge blunders, leading to many agents being arrested by the Gestapo upon landing in France. That much had already been established not long after the end of the war.
Vera’s role and responsibility in it all was unclear, however; she had proved to be exceptionally level-headed and competent, and was widely praised for her dedication in following up the fates of SOE’s female agents (they almost all were murdered in the most horrible ways).
Vera was actually a Romanian Jew and did not even have British citizenship, something she had had to keep hidden from SOE, and she was deeply indebted to her boss who was supporting her application for naturalisation.
This obviously was a factor in her silence in the SOE fiasco (did she knowingly send agents to their deaths?), though her secret, long after the war ended should no longer have been an issue.
However, she was also obsessive in her need always to be right and never seen to have made a mistake. That led to some awkward incidents that Helm uncovered: Vera once edited a published report to hide the fact that she’d initially made a wrong identification of a dead agent; in the 1970s the original transcript surfaced but Vera never acknowledged her (quite justified) error.
There was something else though, that Helm uncovered and documented in the final chapters. If any of that had emerged during or after the war it would have been hugely damaging.
So Vera Atkins emerges as a deeply conflicted and private woman, and I really enjoyed Sara Helm’s compelling biography, as well as her insightful dissection of SOE’s operations.
The only part I found a bit tedious was the extended section on Vera’s early life in Romania. Though well researched it really didn’t add much � inserted as it was, somewhat incongruously, into the narrative after the end of WW2. But I guess it’s always hard to know what to do with a subject’s childhood.
Helm is an investigative journalist and her style is to interleave the history of Vera and the SOE with excerpts from the many interviews she conducted with surviving friends and colleagues. She jumps straight in with minimal introduction, to Vera’s first days with the SOE in the early 1940s. It’s a bit disconcerting if you were expecting a conventional history (as I was), but very effective and makes for engrossing reading; the background being gradually revealed over the later chapters.
SOE was responsible for sabotage behind the German lines and Vera was second in command of the French section. As a result of her immediate superior’s monumental incompetence and willful blindness the SOE committed some huge blunders, leading to many agents being arrested by the Gestapo upon landing in France. That much had already been established not long after the end of the war.
Vera’s role and responsibility in it all was unclear, however; she had proved to be exceptionally level-headed and competent, and was widely praised for her dedication in following up the fates of SOE’s female agents (they almost all were murdered in the most horrible ways).
Vera was actually a Romanian Jew and did not even have British citizenship, something she had had to keep hidden from SOE, and she was deeply indebted to her boss who was supporting her application for naturalisation.
This obviously was a factor in her silence in the SOE fiasco (did she knowingly send agents to their deaths?), though her secret, long after the war ended should no longer have been an issue.
However, she was also obsessive in her need always to be right and never seen to have made a mistake. That led to some awkward incidents that Helm uncovered: Vera once edited a published report to hide the fact that she’d initially made a wrong identification of a dead agent; in the 1970s the original transcript surfaced but Vera never acknowledged her (quite justified) error.
There was something else though, that Helm uncovered and documented in the final chapters. If any of that had emerged during or after the war it would have been hugely damaging.
So Vera Atkins emerges as a deeply conflicted and private woman, and I really enjoyed Sara Helm’s compelling biography, as well as her insightful dissection of SOE’s operations.
The only part I found a bit tedious was the extended section on Vera’s early life in Romania. Though well researched it really didn’t add much � inserted as it was, somewhat incongruously, into the narrative after the end of WW2. But I guess it’s always hard to know what to do with a subject’s childhood.
August 26, 2016
Vera Atkins, the “spymistress� who sent men and women as agents to France during World War II, was a wealthy Anglophile Jewish woman in Romania who ended up trying to assimilate in England and becoming den mother to a legion of undercover operatives in France. This biography of Atkins is better even than the novels of Alan Furst! The book conveys the author’s heroic effort to discover the truth about Vera’s life and also about the agents, many of whom landed right into the arms of the Germans and eventually died horrible deaths in concentration camps. The book conveys the incredible work involved in Helm's search for Vera's true story (the word “wrest� comes to mind)—the truth is foggy and the evidence receding, but the author plugs away and finds nuggets of it in various places.
There are many memorable characters such as Nora, the fearful yet courageous Indian-Anglo wireless operator and Kieffer, the avuncular German security officer who “played the radio game� against the Allies, and who convinced a number of the captured agents to play along.
Also amazing is the story of Vera’s cousin Fritz and his non-Jewish wife Karen. Karen saved Fritz’s life by appealing to a friend’s husband who was a German official and getting her husband a new passport that didn’t have a “J� for Jew stamped on it. How they ended up in Palestine, what they did there, and Vera's role in their story, are among the hard-won secrets that the author finds for us.
There are many memorable characters such as Nora, the fearful yet courageous Indian-Anglo wireless operator and Kieffer, the avuncular German security officer who “played the radio game� against the Allies, and who convinced a number of the captured agents to play along.
Also amazing is the story of Vera’s cousin Fritz and his non-Jewish wife Karen. Karen saved Fritz’s life by appealing to a friend’s husband who was a German official and getting her husband a new passport that didn’t have a “J� for Jew stamped on it. How they ended up in Palestine, what they did there, and Vera's role in their story, are among the hard-won secrets that the author finds for us.
October 9, 2018
A biography of Vera Atkins, the woman who supervised SOE British secret agents during World War II. Their mission was to infiltrate Nazi occupied France, aid the French resistance, and prepare for D-Day. In rank she was below the SOE commander, Maurice Buckmaster, but in actuality she was the person who kept the agency effective. Buckmaster was a screw-up. Curiously she never tried to undermine him. Atkins was especially effective after the war when she investigated the whereabouts of 100 or so missing agents. Atkins was considered cold and secretive by some but the author did an excellent job suggesting motivations for her behavior.
August 12, 2019
The subject of this book is the woman who became pivotal to the importance of 'F' section, the part of the World War II Special Operations Excutive (SOE) who trained and managed agents to be dropped into France to liaise with and recruit locals, act as couriers or wireless operators and manage circuits of resistence operatives including other SOE personnel. Vera Atkins took a particular interest in the women agents, and her section boss, Buckmaster, was happy to let her get on with it as the use of women in the field was highly sensitive. For a start, they did not have the scanty protection of the Geneva Convention given that they were not military personnel although, for reasons the author explains, they were nominal members of a voluntary organisation attached to the army but not classified as part of it. There was even a reluctance to cover them for welfare or pensions purposes.
The book is an account of the author's investigation as well as an account of what both she and Vera found regarding the fate of twelve female operatives who were killed by the Nazis. It also delves into Vera's background. Vera was a very secretive character whose deliberate obstructiveness has led in the past to conspiracy theories as to whether she could have been a Nazi or Soviet agent. Eventually the author draws the conclusion that her secretiveness was more to do with Vera covering her own back as, although not widely known but known to her immediate boss and others, she had been born in Romania and so would have been classified as an enemy alien (such people usually being subject to internment, rather than working in one of Britain's most sensitive secret services organisations). As such, she was dependent on Buckmaster's help in putting forward a successful case for her to be naturalised as a British citizen, and this may explain why she supported him in his 'ostrich head in the sand' behaviour when many others raised doubts as to whether agents had been captured, whether their radios were being operated by the Germans, and whether a particular pivotal agent in France (Henri Dericourt) was actually working for the Germans so that the parachute drops/plane landings of agents sent them into the hands of the enemy. Even after the war, she witheld evidence when Dericourt was on trial in a French court and he walked free. She also had a deeper secret to do with her activities in the early part of the war before joining SOE, which the author eventually uncovers.
The book is an odd mix because it veers firstly from dealing with the 'F' section setup, then back to the author's digging into Vera's early life, and then back to WWII and its aftermath. In fact this switching about of viewpoint happens quite a bit and in two places leads to a lot of repetition about the same events. So it is to some extent a journalistic detective story.
After Germany's surrender, Vera went to Germany and managed to interrogate various Nazi and other people to find out what had happened to what are always known as 'her girls' (which I found a bit irritating). She had to fight for permission to do this, and overcome various obstacles, but it is clear that it was more a case of wanting to close the files tidily. She was never moved by any of the terrible stories she heard - and there are some very harrowing accounts of the women's suffering. Later on, she showed a cold blooded callousness when faced with questions from relatives who were told, to begin with, that the women were known to be alive at certain times, and then told of their deaths, but to refrain from contacting anyone about it except her, and also when she dealt with the queries of grown up children or grandchildren of the dead women in the 1960s onwards. She had an intimidating air which often led such people to feel that they were in the wrong rather than her.
She was mistaken about the fate of one agent, Noor, confusing her from the vague descriptions of witnesses with a local operative Sonya who had behaved very bravely and tried to warn London that Noor was a captive. When she discovered from interrogating captured Germans that the 'fourth woman' in the group horribly killed at one camp could not be Noor who was, at the time, in a different prison entirely, Vera arranged for an official trial transcript to be altered to say that the fourth woman's identity was unknown even when she had actually sworn on oath that she was Noor. It becomes clear that Vera could never admit she was wrong about anything and would rather cover up the truth than own up to a mistake.
Oddly, despite her being given direct testimony from, among others, the head of the SS intelligence section, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), in Paris who had presided over the "radio game" as the Germans called it, she withheld it from the French authorities at the time of Dericourt's trial and also kept to herself the news about Sonya whose relatives were never told what happened to her as she wasn't an actual SOE operative, but 'just' a local recruit.
I found the book uneven because of the switching about and the amount of detail about the journalistic search. There are also points which are just dropped: at one point, the author mentions finding a lot of what look like shopping lists in the papers left by cousins of Vera, with words such as the German for chocolate. A bit later, when describing how one of these cousins was instructed by a representative of German army intelligence (Abwehr) to use code words, including chocolate, for certain military things, in the intelligence they insisted this person should pass to them, we are left to draw our own conclusions about the shopping lists as if the author forgot to explain. And the repetition of certain scenes, with some information in one place and other information in another are irritating and unnecessary.
Perhaps intentionally, the character of Vera herself is rather repugnant. I found her unlikeable and by the end of the book was holding her personally culpable, at least in part, for the deaths of countless agents, both SOE and local French personnel. Hers wasn't the only incompetence - the amount displayed by the bosses not only of SOE but also the higher ups who didn't pass on, for example, the fact that SOE circuits had been "blown" in the Low Countries earlier, is absolutely staggering - but the fact remains that she put her own circumstances first and did not even attempt to suggest to Buckmaster that the various signs that their own networks had been taken over by the enemy should be taken seriously. A colleague of hers who did try to blow the whistle was moved out of the section as being "unnecessarily sentimental" so it seems she valued her job above the lives of the agents.
It is not surprising then, as the author describes, that after the war many people began speculating that the incompetence was really deliberate action, and that agents were betrayed with the intention of delivering false information to the enemy. I don't think this likely with the scale of losses involved, but it is regrettable that it was allowed to go on so long with large numbers of people sent to concentration camps, many of whom died and all of whom endured awful suffering, when it was completely unnecessary. But those who started to write biographies of agents such as Noor, or about other aspects of SOE and who approached Vera were treated coldly or outright misled, as she continued her mission to cover up her own activities early on in the war. And of course she could never admit that SOE or she herself had done anything wrong in sending certain agents at all into the field, for example Noor, whose training was incomplete and who was known to be poor at lying, or another woman with a one year old baby.
Altogether the book forms an account of an area of the war where the authorities did not cover themselves in glory. But partly because I found Vera such an unattractive character and partly due to the muddled sequence which came across as poorly edited I can only award this 2 stars.
The book is an account of the author's investigation as well as an account of what both she and Vera found regarding the fate of twelve female operatives who were killed by the Nazis. It also delves into Vera's background. Vera was a very secretive character whose deliberate obstructiveness has led in the past to conspiracy theories as to whether she could have been a Nazi or Soviet agent. Eventually the author draws the conclusion that her secretiveness was more to do with Vera covering her own back as, although not widely known but known to her immediate boss and others, she had been born in Romania and so would have been classified as an enemy alien (such people usually being subject to internment, rather than working in one of Britain's most sensitive secret services organisations). As such, she was dependent on Buckmaster's help in putting forward a successful case for her to be naturalised as a British citizen, and this may explain why she supported him in his 'ostrich head in the sand' behaviour when many others raised doubts as to whether agents had been captured, whether their radios were being operated by the Germans, and whether a particular pivotal agent in France (Henri Dericourt) was actually working for the Germans so that the parachute drops/plane landings of agents sent them into the hands of the enemy. Even after the war, she witheld evidence when Dericourt was on trial in a French court and he walked free. She also had a deeper secret to do with her activities in the early part of the war before joining SOE, which the author eventually uncovers.
The book is an odd mix because it veers firstly from dealing with the 'F' section setup, then back to the author's digging into Vera's early life, and then back to WWII and its aftermath. In fact this switching about of viewpoint happens quite a bit and in two places leads to a lot of repetition about the same events. So it is to some extent a journalistic detective story.
After Germany's surrender, Vera went to Germany and managed to interrogate various Nazi and other people to find out what had happened to what are always known as 'her girls' (which I found a bit irritating). She had to fight for permission to do this, and overcome various obstacles, but it is clear that it was more a case of wanting to close the files tidily. She was never moved by any of the terrible stories she heard - and there are some very harrowing accounts of the women's suffering. Later on, she showed a cold blooded callousness when faced with questions from relatives who were told, to begin with, that the women were known to be alive at certain times, and then told of their deaths, but to refrain from contacting anyone about it except her, and also when she dealt with the queries of grown up children or grandchildren of the dead women in the 1960s onwards. She had an intimidating air which often led such people to feel that they were in the wrong rather than her.
She was mistaken about the fate of one agent, Noor, confusing her from the vague descriptions of witnesses with a local operative Sonya who had behaved very bravely and tried to warn London that Noor was a captive. When she discovered from interrogating captured Germans that the 'fourth woman' in the group horribly killed at one camp could not be Noor who was, at the time, in a different prison entirely, Vera arranged for an official trial transcript to be altered to say that the fourth woman's identity was unknown even when she had actually sworn on oath that she was Noor. It becomes clear that Vera could never admit she was wrong about anything and would rather cover up the truth than own up to a mistake.
Oddly, despite her being given direct testimony from, among others, the head of the SS intelligence section, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), in Paris who had presided over the "radio game" as the Germans called it, she withheld it from the French authorities at the time of Dericourt's trial and also kept to herself the news about Sonya whose relatives were never told what happened to her as she wasn't an actual SOE operative, but 'just' a local recruit.
I found the book uneven because of the switching about and the amount of detail about the journalistic search. There are also points which are just dropped: at one point, the author mentions finding a lot of what look like shopping lists in the papers left by cousins of Vera, with words such as the German for chocolate. A bit later, when describing how one of these cousins was instructed by a representative of German army intelligence (Abwehr) to use code words, including chocolate, for certain military things, in the intelligence they insisted this person should pass to them, we are left to draw our own conclusions about the shopping lists as if the author forgot to explain. And the repetition of certain scenes, with some information in one place and other information in another are irritating and unnecessary.
Perhaps intentionally, the character of Vera herself is rather repugnant. I found her unlikeable and by the end of the book was holding her personally culpable, at least in part, for the deaths of countless agents, both SOE and local French personnel. Hers wasn't the only incompetence - the amount displayed by the bosses not only of SOE but also the higher ups who didn't pass on, for example, the fact that SOE circuits had been "blown" in the Low Countries earlier, is absolutely staggering - but the fact remains that she put her own circumstances first and did not even attempt to suggest to Buckmaster that the various signs that their own networks had been taken over by the enemy should be taken seriously. A colleague of hers who did try to blow the whistle was moved out of the section as being "unnecessarily sentimental" so it seems she valued her job above the lives of the agents.
It is not surprising then, as the author describes, that after the war many people began speculating that the incompetence was really deliberate action, and that agents were betrayed with the intention of delivering false information to the enemy. I don't think this likely with the scale of losses involved, but it is regrettable that it was allowed to go on so long with large numbers of people sent to concentration camps, many of whom died and all of whom endured awful suffering, when it was completely unnecessary. But those who started to write biographies of agents such as Noor, or about other aspects of SOE and who approached Vera were treated coldly or outright misled, as she continued her mission to cover up her own activities early on in the war. And of course she could never admit that SOE or she herself had done anything wrong in sending certain agents at all into the field, for example Noor, whose training was incomplete and who was known to be poor at lying, or another woman with a one year old baby.
Altogether the book forms an account of an area of the war where the authorities did not cover themselves in glory. But partly because I found Vera such an unattractive character and partly due to the muddled sequence which came across as poorly edited I can only award this 2 stars.
September 14, 2020
Covert operations in World War II are still shrouded in mystery. What really happened? What cover stories still exist to this day?
This is a great read for anyone interested in peeling back some of the mystery. I recommend it, along with Bodyguard of Lies.
One has to remember that brutal sacrifices were made for the "greater good." One question that still lingers for me is whether certain individuals and teams were sacrificed deliberately as part of a disinformation campaign. I don't think we'll ever really know, but that doesn't take away from the courage of those who parachuted into enemy territory.
This is a great read for anyone interested in peeling back some of the mystery. I recommend it, along with Bodyguard of Lies.
One has to remember that brutal sacrifices were made for the "greater good." One question that still lingers for me is whether certain individuals and teams were sacrificed deliberately as part of a disinformation campaign. I don't think we'll ever really know, but that doesn't take away from the courage of those who parachuted into enemy territory.
January 6, 2018
Engrossing book.
Re-read. There is quite a bit in here about how to do research and about conflicts that we have with our heroes. It really is an entertaing book about a quest, more than a biography.
Re-read. There is quite a bit in here about how to do research and about conflicts that we have with our heroes. It really is an entertaing book about a quest, more than a biography.
January 24, 2017
Got to page 100 and I am so bored. My goodness I just could not get into this book at all. I tried and really wanted to be amazed and awed. Didn't happen....
February 17, 2014
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII is a book about journeys. A lot of journeys. Firstly it is the author Sarah Helm’s journey to discover the real Vera Atkins who she met only once in 1998. She initially came to see Atkins about the agents but found that to understand what happened to the agents she needed to understand Vera Atkins herself, a woman who said of her Romanian past: “It is something on which I have closed the book. I have closed the book on many things in life.�
We discover how SOE was created and how Vera was recruited. In very readable prose Helm explains the workings of SOE and the climate of the times. When after the war more than a hundred SOE agents hadn’t returned Vera begins a journey to find out what happened to them.
We learn how Atkins took care of each of the female recruits in turn, including checking what they were wearing, their cover story and in many cases escorting them to the airfield to see them off. Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo (the mother of a small child) were favourites. Helm interviews former SOE agents and staff at SOE headquarters in Baker Street to find out more about the elusive Vera Atkins and the agents. A former filing clerk in MI5 tells Sarah, “They were all told it was life and death but it didn’t seem to bother them.�
Helm then writes about many of the female SOE agents including Yvonne Rudellat, Nora Inayat Khan, Violette Szabo and others. She also investigates the disaster of the Prosper Circuit of F Section and explains the system by which the radio operators kept in touch with SOE headquarters at Orchard Court. And then of course there is Charles Buckmaster and Henri Dericourt. And Vera’s silence just when she should have been speaking up.
By September 1944 with Paris back in the hands of the Allies Vera Atkins begins her task in earnest. It is three months since the Normandy landings but still over a hundred agents are missing. This is the part of the A Life in Secrets I really wanted to read about - the fate of the missing agents, including thirteen women. And I definitely wasn’t disappointed! Helm’s skilful and thorough investigations of Vera’s own investigations - her trips to Germany to interview Germans who had captured and killed the agents, is unputdownable, particularly the problems Atkins encountered in identifying the fourth woman who died at Natzweiler. The details are sometimes horrifying but the women’s bravery in the face of appalling treatment and death is beyond words.
There are also the journeys made by the relatives of the dead agents in search of what really happened to their loved ones. Soon after the war parents, brother and sisters turned up at Vera Atkins doorstep looking for the truth. In the sixties, the sons, daughters, nieces and nephews sought Vera out, including Tania Szabo, Violette Szabo’s daughter.
In the latter part of the book Helm travels to Romania to uncover the real Vera Atkins and a mysterious mission she undertook early in the war. One goodreads reader commented that there was just too much information towards the end of this book about Vera Atkins herself. I disagree. Without revealing more, all I can say is that the key to understanding what happened to F Section is, I believe, hidden in Vera Atkins’s past.
We discover how SOE was created and how Vera was recruited. In very readable prose Helm explains the workings of SOE and the climate of the times. When after the war more than a hundred SOE agents hadn’t returned Vera begins a journey to find out what happened to them.
We learn how Atkins took care of each of the female recruits in turn, including checking what they were wearing, their cover story and in many cases escorting them to the airfield to see them off. Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo (the mother of a small child) were favourites. Helm interviews former SOE agents and staff at SOE headquarters in Baker Street to find out more about the elusive Vera Atkins and the agents. A former filing clerk in MI5 tells Sarah, “They were all told it was life and death but it didn’t seem to bother them.�
Helm then writes about many of the female SOE agents including Yvonne Rudellat, Nora Inayat Khan, Violette Szabo and others. She also investigates the disaster of the Prosper Circuit of F Section and explains the system by which the radio operators kept in touch with SOE headquarters at Orchard Court. And then of course there is Charles Buckmaster and Henri Dericourt. And Vera’s silence just when she should have been speaking up.
By September 1944 with Paris back in the hands of the Allies Vera Atkins begins her task in earnest. It is three months since the Normandy landings but still over a hundred agents are missing. This is the part of the A Life in Secrets I really wanted to read about - the fate of the missing agents, including thirteen women. And I definitely wasn’t disappointed! Helm’s skilful and thorough investigations of Vera’s own investigations - her trips to Germany to interview Germans who had captured and killed the agents, is unputdownable, particularly the problems Atkins encountered in identifying the fourth woman who died at Natzweiler. The details are sometimes horrifying but the women’s bravery in the face of appalling treatment and death is beyond words.
There are also the journeys made by the relatives of the dead agents in search of what really happened to their loved ones. Soon after the war parents, brother and sisters turned up at Vera Atkins doorstep looking for the truth. In the sixties, the sons, daughters, nieces and nephews sought Vera out, including Tania Szabo, Violette Szabo’s daughter.
In the latter part of the book Helm travels to Romania to uncover the real Vera Atkins and a mysterious mission she undertook early in the war. One goodreads reader commented that there was just too much information towards the end of this book about Vera Atkins herself. I disagree. Without revealing more, all I can say is that the key to understanding what happened to F Section is, I believe, hidden in Vera Atkins’s past.
January 17, 2016
Great Britain formed the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as a reaction to the Panic of 1940, in order to execute espionage activities behind enemy lines. In 1942, Col Collin Gubbins received unofficial authority to send women into combat zones as couriers. It was thought Nazis would be less likely to bodily search women and women could devise logical explanations as to why they were on the move as opposed to men who would be readily searched and conscripted. Women were so successful in their roles as couriers that eventually the decision was made to send them in as wireless operators as well.
Helm focuses on the life of Vera Rosenberg, aka Vera Atkins, one of the original members of the SOE. She rose through the ranks from a secretary to become a handler of the women eventually sent into war. Vera's rise in the organziation is unlikely not only because she is a woman, but because she is a Romanian national
(an enemy nation to England) and a Jew. Vera came to know each woman and sent them off personally as often as possible. At the conclusion of the war, Vera undertook a one woman mission to learn the fate of each agent lost and secured honors for their deaths where she could. But, Vera was a complex woman herself and eventually questions emerged reagarding her motivations towards these agents.
It is hard not to be attracted to the stories of the women who served the SOE. As one put it to Helm during an interview, "Just that they were fascinating creatures. To be prepared to do what it was they went to do." (pg 63). My first introduction to the women of SOE was reading Jackdaws about ten years ago. I have tried to read more about these fascinating women. Most of the literature focuses on salacious aspects of some of the women's lives. To date this is the best work regarding this subject I've read. Helms does a great service by adding to the annals of history a work that looks critically at the organization responsible for the lives of the brave women. Further, Helm, with great respect and sensitivity, honors the lives of the women who willingly gave their life under horrendous circumstances to advance the cause of her country. Finally, Helm painstakingly, almost parallel to Atkins' mission for each of her 'girls', uncovers a fascinanting life that Atkins, quite obviously, intended to be left uncovered.
I don't know that I would recommend this work for everyone, but to the WWII enthusiast this is a must read. If you are also interested in strong woman characters in history I think this is a good read. The agents, although playing a smaller role, are absolutely fascinating. One of the most interesting cases is Nora Inayat Khan, who is technically a princess by lineage, and her brother studied music under Stravinsky (sorry, but The Firebird is my all time favorite ballet, so this got my attention). Nora was the first female wireless operator to be sent behind enemy lines and her tale is particularly harrowing.
It is hard to tell whether Atkins is, herself a heroine or not. Helm gives the reader an abundance of evidence regarding this woman for each reader to draw his or her own conclusion. Maybe the best answer is she was a very complex woman. That is what makes her, after all, human
Helm focuses on the life of Vera Rosenberg, aka Vera Atkins, one of the original members of the SOE. She rose through the ranks from a secretary to become a handler of the women eventually sent into war. Vera's rise in the organziation is unlikely not only because she is a woman, but because she is a Romanian national
(an enemy nation to England) and a Jew. Vera came to know each woman and sent them off personally as often as possible. At the conclusion of the war, Vera undertook a one woman mission to learn the fate of each agent lost and secured honors for their deaths where she could. But, Vera was a complex woman herself and eventually questions emerged reagarding her motivations towards these agents.
It is hard not to be attracted to the stories of the women who served the SOE. As one put it to Helm during an interview, "Just that they were fascinating creatures. To be prepared to do what it was they went to do." (pg 63). My first introduction to the women of SOE was reading Jackdaws about ten years ago. I have tried to read more about these fascinating women. Most of the literature focuses on salacious aspects of some of the women's lives. To date this is the best work regarding this subject I've read. Helms does a great service by adding to the annals of history a work that looks critically at the organization responsible for the lives of the brave women. Further, Helm, with great respect and sensitivity, honors the lives of the women who willingly gave their life under horrendous circumstances to advance the cause of her country. Finally, Helm painstakingly, almost parallel to Atkins' mission for each of her 'girls', uncovers a fascinanting life that Atkins, quite obviously, intended to be left uncovered.
I don't know that I would recommend this work for everyone, but to the WWII enthusiast this is a must read. If you are also interested in strong woman characters in history I think this is a good read. The agents, although playing a smaller role, are absolutely fascinating. One of the most interesting cases is Nora Inayat Khan, who is technically a princess by lineage, and her brother studied music under Stravinsky (sorry, but The Firebird is my all time favorite ballet, so this got my attention). Nora was the first female wireless operator to be sent behind enemy lines and her tale is particularly harrowing.
It is hard to tell whether Atkins is, herself a heroine or not. Helm gives the reader an abundance of evidence regarding this woman for each reader to draw his or her own conclusion. Maybe the best answer is she was a very complex woman. That is what makes her, after all, human
July 25, 2016
Another book that passed me by on its original publication but which proves that there are still things left to discover about the 2nd World War. In this case, Sarah Helm delves into the operations in occupied France by the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E). In particular, she tries to piece together the story of Vera Atkins, who worked at the S.O.E. Office in London recruiting agents to be parachuted into France to collect intelligence and support the resistance. She took particular responsibility for the young women agents, some of them mothers with small children.
Although there have been books previously written on the S.O.E. Operations and films made about heroic female agents (most famously 'Carve her Name with Pride' about Violette Szabo), there are still mysteries surrounding these events. Like all secret organisations, S. O.E.'s operations were kept under wraps for many years, especially it's use of women agents.
Sarah Helms' depth of research and wide-ranging interviews with survivors makes for a story told with a mass of detail but which reads like a murder mystery. Its fascination lies in her dual investigations ; firstly, recreating Vera Atkins own investigation after the war into what happened to her female agents and, secondly, into the background and motives of the mysterious Miss Atkins herself. Both sets of stories are gripping.
Although there have been books previously written on the S.O.E. Operations and films made about heroic female agents (most famously 'Carve her Name with Pride' about Violette Szabo), there are still mysteries surrounding these events. Like all secret organisations, S. O.E.'s operations were kept under wraps for many years, especially it's use of women agents.
Sarah Helms' depth of research and wide-ranging interviews with survivors makes for a story told with a mass of detail but which reads like a murder mystery. Its fascination lies in her dual investigations ; firstly, recreating Vera Atkins own investigation after the war into what happened to her female agents and, secondly, into the background and motives of the mysterious Miss Atkins herself. Both sets of stories are gripping.
October 28, 2014
This is a very astounding book; another look behind the curtains of the S.O.E and the "brains" of the "F" section, Vera Atkins. I have read several books regarding the activities of England's super secret sabotage department, but this one surprised me for several reasons, the foremost being the character of Vera Atkins herself. In the other books I have read Atkins is usually painted in saintly hues but here we find a totally different persona, one who probably had feet of clay with a will of ruthless steel and frigid ice in her veins; or not, depending on the situation and the person telling their tale. At any rate, this Vera Atkins is very much not the one created for public consumption by Atkins herself and pretty much accepted as fact by the general public.
Motivations for behavior always seem muddled and at one time may seem very noble and self sacrificing and at others the epitome of hubris and aggrandizing. Vera Atkins was not a simple, single faceted person.
The very last thing that confounded me was that in a book that involved the re-telling of the S.O.E story there is not one mention of Nancy Wake who unbelievably must have had no contact or interaction with Atkins - which is sort of hard to believe since this basically is the history of "F" section.
Motivations for behavior always seem muddled and at one time may seem very noble and self sacrificing and at others the epitome of hubris and aggrandizing. Vera Atkins was not a simple, single faceted person.
The very last thing that confounded me was that in a book that involved the re-telling of the S.O.E story there is not one mention of Nancy Wake who unbelievably must have had no contact or interaction with Atkins - which is sort of hard to believe since this basically is the history of "F" section.
January 27, 2015
This is truly a book of contrasts. Here is a story that needed to be told, and which required the skills of a terrier of a competent and persistent investigative journalist to breathe life into it. Yet this book largely, but not wholly, reads as though the author struggled to sift and piece her material together to her satisfaction, let alone that of her editor.
However, I am glad that Ms Helm fully engaged in that struggle, because overall her text really is very well worth sticking with. Yes, there were times when I found it easy to close and lay this book aside; though there were other times when I simply couldn’t put it down. Background informs foreground, perspective fleshes out consequences. The line between humanity and inhumanity is frighteningly narrow.
30 Sep 2012
However, I am glad that Ms Helm fully engaged in that struggle, because overall her text really is very well worth sticking with. Yes, there were times when I found it easy to close and lay this book aside; though there were other times when I simply couldn’t put it down. Background informs foreground, perspective fleshes out consequences. The line between humanity and inhumanity is frighteningly narrow.
30 Sep 2012
May 11, 2008
Ooof - this is a long, detailed, sometimes disturbing but always fascinating account of Vera Atkins' work with female SOE agents both during the war, and after. She spent a great deal of time post-war tracking down and interviewing witnesses on both sides of the war who could provide details of her missing female agents, and their ultimate demise.
March 8, 2009
An excellent book and well worth reading. Vera Atkins was indeed an enigma but this book tries to dispell some of the myths. What can't be denied is the work Vera Atkins put in after the war to find the missing female SOE agents that didn't return home.
September 24, 2019
Fascinating, absorbing read - also maddening. Atkins, Buckmaster, Bodington and Co in the F Section of the SOE are the epitome of ineptitude, and given that the lives of SOE agents were literally depending on their decision making, that is tragic indeed. I was shocked to read that after all of the training of these agents, the SOE administration violated the very rules they taught, and a lot of what was taught was not put into practice by the agents in the field, directly leading to their capture, torture and death. It is difficult even now to resist suspecting them of treason - they sure seemed to be acting more in support of the Germans than England.
Atkins is the main focus of Helm's work, and the author comes to a pretty benign conclusion as to Atkins's motives, but I wasn't convinced. I found her to be an utter control freak who was loathe to acknowledge any errors of her own judgment, and willing to loyally cover up the horrendous decisions of superiors in the SOE, a devastating combination for someone with charge over agents being dropped into such a perilous situation. And frankly, not that different than the conduct of many in the Nazi machine (I was only following orders...not my fault). None of that changed postwar, as evidenced by her repeated smearing of agents' reputations to authors who were getting too close to uncomfortable facts, blackballing of agents on their return to England from concentration camps, and her failure to help families of deceased agents gain some closure when she had the power to do so. That behavior was unconscionable, and kept me from believing that a noble motive toward her family was the true reason behind her behavior. That just doesn't wash for me.
I also didn't understand Vera's obsession with Khan over the other agents, and why it was so important to figure out the exact wheres and whys, given how she treated the information after she finally obtained it. Her corresponding disinterest in Sonia was bizarre as well.
Those poor agents - especially the women, who were unofficially participating, with the corresponding absence of protection, pension, etc. that came with that status. But the men too - how they sat with their captors and heard their own SOE playing right into the hands of the Germans is beyond me; I would have been suicidal (and homicidal on my return to England, if I had made it back).
Enough - my blood is starting to boil again.
Helm's research was outstanding, but still had to deduct a star because I couldn't support letting off the major players at the SOE the way Helm ultimately does.
Atkins is the main focus of Helm's work, and the author comes to a pretty benign conclusion as to Atkins's motives, but I wasn't convinced. I found her to be an utter control freak who was loathe to acknowledge any errors of her own judgment, and willing to loyally cover up the horrendous decisions of superiors in the SOE, a devastating combination for someone with charge over agents being dropped into such a perilous situation. And frankly, not that different than the conduct of many in the Nazi machine (I was only following orders...not my fault). None of that changed postwar, as evidenced by her repeated smearing of agents' reputations to authors who were getting too close to uncomfortable facts, blackballing of agents on their return to England from concentration camps, and her failure to help families of deceased agents gain some closure when she had the power to do so. That behavior was unconscionable, and kept me from believing that a noble motive toward her family was the true reason behind her behavior. That just doesn't wash for me.
I also didn't understand Vera's obsession with Khan over the other agents, and why it was so important to figure out the exact wheres and whys, given how she treated the information after she finally obtained it. Her corresponding disinterest in Sonia was bizarre as well.
Those poor agents - especially the women, who were unofficially participating, with the corresponding absence of protection, pension, etc. that came with that status. But the men too - how they sat with their captors and heard their own SOE playing right into the hands of the Germans is beyond me; I would have been suicidal (and homicidal on my return to England, if I had made it back).
Enough - my blood is starting to boil again.
Helm's research was outstanding, but still had to deduct a star because I couldn't support letting off the major players at the SOE the way Helm ultimately does.
September 11, 2019
This book is the true story that partially serves as the underlying theme of the book, Lost Girls of Paris. After reading that book, I wanted to learn more about the real people that actually served as spies in France during World War II. As I read A Life in Secrets, however, I realized that the story portrayed in Lost Girls is only one small part of Vera Atkins life story. This book is actually a biography of Atkins whole life.
This book does not disappoint, as it fills in many of the gaps that Janneff's book failed to explain. Yet it also gave me a greater understanding of the woman behind the story, and helped me to understand the difficulties that many Jews went through during WWII. In order to protect their family, Atkins, her mother, and her brothers changed their names, and rarely talked about their past lives, even to their family members.
Helm's breathtaking narrative transports the reader back in time to an era when men and women were not considered equals in most careers. Vera Atkins was one of those women who stood out in the crowd, made her career her life, and found a place in the annals of history. She was very wise and extremely shrewd, and it seems that spent her whole life keeping her life a secret, just like the title indicates.
Helm goes back and forth between the events that Atkins lived through during WWII, and Helms' own journey to uncover Atkins' personal story. The result is a narrative that shows the reader who Atkins was, while at the same time, intricately describes the world of espionage. The end of the book is especially interesting as Helm maps out how she had to literally piece together Atkins' life story, interviewing many different people to verify different stories that she had heard throughout her research.
Atkins was extremely focused, working for years to do right by the people, both men and women, who gave their lives for the cause in France, helping the Allies to win the war. She made sure to find out the truth so that families could finally know that truth about their loved ones.
This book does not disappoint, as it fills in many of the gaps that Janneff's book failed to explain. Yet it also gave me a greater understanding of the woman behind the story, and helped me to understand the difficulties that many Jews went through during WWII. In order to protect their family, Atkins, her mother, and her brothers changed their names, and rarely talked about their past lives, even to their family members.
Helm's breathtaking narrative transports the reader back in time to an era when men and women were not considered equals in most careers. Vera Atkins was one of those women who stood out in the crowd, made her career her life, and found a place in the annals of history. She was very wise and extremely shrewd, and it seems that spent her whole life keeping her life a secret, just like the title indicates.
Helm goes back and forth between the events that Atkins lived through during WWII, and Helms' own journey to uncover Atkins' personal story. The result is a narrative that shows the reader who Atkins was, while at the same time, intricately describes the world of espionage. The end of the book is especially interesting as Helm maps out how she had to literally piece together Atkins' life story, interviewing many different people to verify different stories that she had heard throughout her research.
Atkins was extremely focused, working for years to do right by the people, both men and women, who gave their lives for the cause in France, helping the Allies to win the war. She made sure to find out the truth so that families could finally know that truth about their loved ones.
August 30, 2014
This book is a mess. The author presents seemingly random bits of evidence and anecdotes, switching from her own experience in retracing the steps of Vera Atkins and Vera Atkins' journey to discover the fates of F section SOE agents. I found the author's tale of her journey to Vera Atkins' childhood home especially out of place and unnecessary. I assume the author was attempting to present similarities between her experience of trying to discover details of Ms. Atkins' early life and Ms. Atkins' experience of discovery after the war. The author's journey was valueless compared to Ms. Atkins', added nothing interesting to the story of Ms. Atkins' life, and frankly was uninteresting.
Vera Atkins may well have been reserved, cold, and unknowable. The author fails to paint her portrait thus with any courage, nor presents enough information to offer a different perspective with any conviction. She leaves the reader with no more clarity at the end of the book than at the beginning.
After that, the book is just poorly organized. It appears the author either ran out of time to deliver the final version or the editor ran out of interest in coaxing together a readable volume. Or perhaps both author and editor are generally incompetent. I believe the latter circumstance to be the case.
Vera Atkins may well have been reserved, cold, and unknowable. The author fails to paint her portrait thus with any courage, nor presents enough information to offer a different perspective with any conviction. She leaves the reader with no more clarity at the end of the book than at the beginning.
After that, the book is just poorly organized. It appears the author either ran out of time to deliver the final version or the editor ran out of interest in coaxing together a readable volume. Or perhaps both author and editor are generally incompetent. I believe the latter circumstance to be the case.
May 15, 2014
I'm giving this book three stars because the author has obviously done a beautiful job of researching this story. However, the book didn't really engage me at all. For some masochistic reason I felt compelled to finish every last word, like maybe, just maybe I will find something in this book that proves useful to me later...why do I do that to myself? The main character of the book, Vera Atkins, seemed unlikeable, cold, and even callous. Helm explains at the end of the book the hidden events in her life which may have caused these traits, but it I found it difficult to have any sympathy for her.
More sensitive readers should be warned: There are some grisly details, especially in the war crimes investigation section. At one point, Helm spends about 60 pages on a particularly heinous crime against four of the agents.
More sensitive readers should be warned: There are some grisly details, especially in the war crimes investigation section. At one point, Helm spends about 60 pages on a particularly heinous crime against four of the agents.
June 8, 2010
This is the true story of Britain's Special Operations Executive and how, after World War II, its "spy mistress" went in search of her missing agents. Clearly, "A Life in Secrets" has all the makings of a great book, but it never quite engaged me. For one thing, the protagonist, the austere, self-absorbed Vera Atkins, is not very likable. Plus, the SOE -- sort of a kid sister to MI6 -- was filled with incompetents at the staff level, and this is the reason so many of Atkins' agents went missing. Author Sarah Helm did some admirable research, but she tries to tell too many stories, and it all becomes a muddle. I ended up using the index to skip forward and find out what happened to those agents I found most interesting.
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September 5, 2010I am an ambiguous admirer of Vera Atkins and, after reading this book, a huge admirer of Sarah Helm. This is a harrowing book, a war history as well as a biography, and the amount of detective work Helm’s done in pulling together the story of Atkins’s life—as WELL as retracing Atkins’s steps in some of her OWN detective work—is tremendous. I’m a little envious! (from a time and money point of view). I’m also agog at the gargantuan task Helm has done in putting all this minutiae together to make it not only readable, but riveting.
January 29, 2016
A fascinating account of Vera Atkins lone search through the chaos of Allied Occupied Germany, to find out what had happened to the 12 missing female agents that had been dropped behind enemy lines , that Vera had helped to prepare for their missions.
March 20, 2024
This book was very boring, in my opinion. But, I am so glad Sarah Helm did the research and wrote down this history of the underground work !! I have read several books about other groups and am always fascinated at the women who were so brave. I still wish I knew more about those who vanished. And more about if Vera was a secret Russian spy.
December 8, 2020
An intriguing book to read . This year I have read all about the women of the SOE during WW11. Vera Atkins name appears in most books so I needed to read more of this remarkable person. What she did for those missing agents was truly remarkable. May have to read the Spymistress at some stage to follow up some unanswered questions.
October 28, 2013
Conventions, especially in the fantasy genre, have a strange side effect on my life. Well other than the direct effect of following people attending them and reading up on all the happenings (I mean, really who thought cons would be cool one day?) they have the other impact of making most of my favorite authors write their next books very slowly.
This leads to me outreading their series, deterred at starting other ones, and suddenly developing an uncharacteristic streak of enjoying non fiction. On my recent rampage through literary fact I was somewhat deterred. Many books were just not interesting. Poorly written. BORING.
Enter Sarah Helm and a book about SOE's French section in WW2. I suppose it is rather apropos that I finished in time for Halloween as the contents of this book are incredibly haunting. I find my mind meandering to the tales of the horrors of this war, and the fate that many of the SOE agents - in particular the women - endured.
Helms herself refreshes my belief in non fiction. She writes not only from Vera's perspective, but from her own, and is self aware of her bias-ness, her interest, her limitations in researching certain aspects. She is clear and precise and thoughtful and because of this, I understood Vera and got a sense of what she would be like to talk to and be in the same room with. But Helm skillfully weaves not only a fact filled history but a mystery with tension and peril as she takes you through Vera's life.
But mostly I encourage everyone to read this to learn about so many unsung heroes and their bravery during such an awful war. The worst part of reading it was how little people were aware of these men and women, what they suffered and how much pain and sorrow many went through to gain us a slight upper hand. I won't lie, this is a very hard book to read. Often provided me some nightmares, and I am still finding my mind wandering to the plights and secrets of these stories and lives.
This leads to me outreading their series, deterred at starting other ones, and suddenly developing an uncharacteristic streak of enjoying non fiction. On my recent rampage through literary fact I was somewhat deterred. Many books were just not interesting. Poorly written. BORING.
Enter Sarah Helm and a book about SOE's French section in WW2. I suppose it is rather apropos that I finished in time for Halloween as the contents of this book are incredibly haunting. I find my mind meandering to the tales of the horrors of this war, and the fate that many of the SOE agents - in particular the women - endured.
Helms herself refreshes my belief in non fiction. She writes not only from Vera's perspective, but from her own, and is self aware of her bias-ness, her interest, her limitations in researching certain aspects. She is clear and precise and thoughtful and because of this, I understood Vera and got a sense of what she would be like to talk to and be in the same room with. But Helm skillfully weaves not only a fact filled history but a mystery with tension and peril as she takes you through Vera's life.
But mostly I encourage everyone to read this to learn about so many unsung heroes and their bravery during such an awful war. The worst part of reading it was how little people were aware of these men and women, what they suffered and how much pain and sorrow many went through to gain us a slight upper hand. I won't lie, this is a very hard book to read. Often provided me some nightmares, and I am still finding my mind wandering to the plights and secrets of these stories and lives.
June 27, 2014
A LIFE IN SECRETS is a book whose story should be told. It's predominantly about British spies during WWII, and a spy mistress (Vera Atkins) with secrets of her own. Working closely with the female spies sent to France on behalf of the Allies, she went to great lengths to determine the fates of those whom she prepared for espionage.
Atkins herself was quite a character, and I enjoyed reading about the challenges she faced to get her job, do her job, and to survive within the British establishment. (She was not British.)
I must admit that the degree of detail in this book, although necessary for credibility, gets a little tedious. Explanations about causes of death in the concentration camps are unpleasant. (No surprise there.) The author's efforts to discover Atkins' past, which she carefully hid, make for a fascinating journey.
This isn't normal book-club fodder (and I don't mean that critically) by any means. But if you're interested in espionage in WWII, or in the history of spy craft, A LIFE IN SECRETS might be a really enjoyable read for you.
Recommended for those who love books about historic espionage and WWII.
Atkins herself was quite a character, and I enjoyed reading about the challenges she faced to get her job, do her job, and to survive within the British establishment. (She was not British.)
I must admit that the degree of detail in this book, although necessary for credibility, gets a little tedious. Explanations about causes of death in the concentration camps are unpleasant. (No surprise there.) The author's efforts to discover Atkins' past, which she carefully hid, make for a fascinating journey.
This isn't normal book-club fodder (and I don't mean that critically) by any means. But if you're interested in espionage in WWII, or in the history of spy craft, A LIFE IN SECRETS might be a really enjoyable read for you.
Recommended for those who love books about historic espionage and WWII.
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