Virginia Hall: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy

On this episode of Our American Stories, meet the woman the Gestapo once considered "the most dangerous of all Allied spies." Judy Pearson tells the tale of a woman whose bravery was greater than the collapsing world around her.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from history to business
and everything in between. And we tell your stories too,
because some of our very best have been from the
people who listen to this show, from you. And this
next story, well, it's the story of Virginia Hall. And

(00:33):
she's a World War two spy who overcame both physical
and societal ills during a time when the world seemed
to be tearing itself apart. Literally. Now for her story,
as told by Judy Pearson. Virginia Hall was once asked

(00:56):
why she never told her story. She replied that no
one had ever asked her. In two thousand and three,
I began asking. My quest took me to her niece
in Baltimore newly declassified intelligence records in the National Archives,
then to London, Paris, and across the French countryside. I

(01:16):
conducted countless interviews in English and in French, and read
dozens of personal accounts. What ultimately unfolded was the story
of an incredible woman. She was intelligent, brave, and outspoken.
She was loyal, daring and stubborn, but as a young

(01:40):
woman all of Virginia Hall's energies were directed at becoming
a foreign service officer. At high school graduation, while her
chums were thinking of marriage and families, Virginia announced that
the only way for a woman to get ahead in
the world was with an education. After several undistinguished years
at rad Cliff and Barnard, she went to the Sorbonne

(02:02):
in Paris and then the consualer Academis in Vienna, from
which she graduated in nineteen twenty nine. Back in the States,
now fluent in French and German, she applied to take
the Foreign Service exam. The exam consisted of three parts.
The first was written covering all manner of topics, including

(02:23):
the world history, geography, and sociology. The second tested the
applicant's knowledge of a foreign language. Virginia opted for French,
and the third part of the exam, far more subjective,
gave the examiner the power to judge what kind of
officer the applicant would make. Virginia failed, the exam, took

(02:45):
it again and was failed again. It was nineteen thirty
Women had only had the right to vote for ten years,
and the number of female foreign service officers could be
counted on one hand, gender discriminate nation was hard at work.
She told a family friend that if she couldn't get
into the Foreign Service through the front door, she'd try

(03:07):
going in through the back door, and landed a job
as clerk at the American Embassy in Poland. She once
again applied for the exam, but before she completed it,
she was transferred to the American Consulate in Smyrna now Izmir, Turkey.
Here her life changed forever. On a December Saturday afternoon

(03:30):
hunting expedition with some friends in nineteen thirty three, Virginia's
gun accidentally discharged into her left foot. Despite doctor's best efforts,
gangrene set in, and to save her life, they removed
her leg from the knee down. What might have been
considered by some as a life ending event, Virginia saw

(03:50):
as merely a delay in plans. When she was well
enough to travel, she returned home to Baltimore to recuperate
and be fitted with a seven pound wooden prostesies, and
a year later she was back at work, this time
at the American Consulate in Venice, from which she requested
to take the Foreign Service exam yet again, but this time,

(04:14):
rather than test questions, a letter arrived informing her that,
according to an obscure statute, amputees were not accepted in
the Foreign Service. The letter concluded by politely asking Virginia
not to apply again. She simply wouldn't fit in. As
Hitler began blazing across Europe, a discouraged Virginia Hall left

(04:38):
her consular job and went to France. Here her leg
was not an issue. She was gratefully accepted as a
volunteer ambulance driver for the French Army. Nor was her
leg in issue. Several months later, when in London, she
was approached by a Special Operations Executive employee the SE.

(05:00):
This undercover paramilitary organization had been created by Winston Churchill too,
as he said, set Europe ablaze. The current war was
unlike any other. The Allies needed extraordinary warfare in the
form of espionage and sabotage. Escaping French military had told

(05:21):
the British that there were many in France who would
be willing to rise up against the Nazis given enough
organization and arms. Leaders who could be infiltrated into the
country were needed, and Virginia fit the bill. The Brits
didn't give a hoot about her gender. In fact, it
was believed that women would make the best spies. This

(05:42):
doesn't surprise those of us who are women, but it
was a revelation to the men. Furthermore, men were being
whisked to Germany as laborers. A man on the streets
in France needed reasons for being there, but a woman
didn't and could travel about more easily. Nor did the
Brits care. How many limbs Virginia had lost. Her disability

(06:05):
was unknown to most. She walked only with a slight limp.
At the SOEES training camps, Virginia learned things her Baltimore
contemporaries would never have imagined. I had the good fortune
to interview one of the instructors while I was in London.
Leslie Fernandez, taught s OEE recruits, including Virginia, physical combat,

(06:28):
in other words, how to kill. And Virginia wasn't shown
any favoritism because of her missing leg. She wouldn't have
accepted it anyway. The only training she didn't receive was
in parachuting, the primary means by which agents were infiltrated.
It was nineteen forty one and America had not yet
entered the war, Virginia would be free to enter France

(06:51):
as a non combatant, which she did, using journalism as
her cover. And when we come back, we'll continue this story,
Virginia Hall's story, the Spy with the Wooden Leg, and
to hear about her grit, her perseverance, and rising above

(07:13):
the odds. Where we love stories like this. The Spy
with the Wooden Leg continues after these messages. Folks, if
you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that

(07:35):
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu

(07:55):
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories.
And when we left off, Virginia Hall was sneaking into

(08:15):
France back in nineteen forty one, not a time actually
to be going into France, and she was posing as
a journalist to act as a British intelligence operative. Let's
return to the author, Judy Pearson. I spent hours digging
through the British National Archives at Q and the Imperial

(08:37):
War Museum archives in London, both of which were rich
in material. I heard the oral histories of those recruited
agents who had daringly dropped into occupied France where Virginia
and others awaited them. When I arrived in France, after
spending several days digging through the archives in Paris, I
rented a car and took off across the country to

(08:58):
visit firsthand all of the cities Virginia had worked from.
She was ultimately sent to Lyon, the center of resistance
activities in unoccupied France, so I went to Lyon as well. There,
under her journalism cover, while ostensibly collecting information for newspaper articles,

(09:18):
Virginia was also collecting information about Nazi activities. Her flat,
innocently appearing as that of a hard working writer, was
the clearing house for every British agent who was sent
to central France in nineteen forty one. Through Virginia, they
were able to connect with fellow agents and contact others

(09:42):
to help them, they collected counterfeited money and wireless radios
needed to perform their work. When they were captured and imprisoned,
Virginia worked on their escapes. She organized her own group
of resistance members in Lyons and had contacts in Marseilles
and at the Spanish border, two places from which people
could disappear should the need arise. She and her group

(10:06):
saved innumerable lives of both downed Allied pilots kneading passage
out of France and agents who were being hunted by
the Gestapo. But it wasn't long before Virginia herself became hunted.
Klaus Barbie, later known as the Butcher of Lyons, spread
the word that a lady with a limp, an Englishman

(10:27):
or a Canadian, was wanted in connection with espionage activities.
His posters announced that Virginia was the most dangerous of
all Allied spies and that everyone should help him find
and destroy her. Virginia's exodus across the Pyrenees Mountains, the
rugged chain that separates France from Spain, was in November

(10:50):
nineteen forty two. The cold and rigorous march would have
been exhausting for anyone, but dragging a seven pound wooden
leg through the snow made it all the more difficult
for Virginia. She hadn't dared tell the guide about her leg.
He was already grumbling because she was a woman. At
one point she was able to Radio London to tell

(11:12):
them she was on her way out of France. She
mentioned that Cuthbert, her clever nickname for her leg, had
become quite tiresome. The recipient of the message, ignorant of
the leg's name, wired back that if Cuthbert had become tiresome,
she should have him eliminated. At the end of the
grueling thirty mile journey, Virginia was arrested in Spain for

(11:36):
not having papers. She was imprisoned for six weeks, released
only after her former cellmate, a Barcelona prostitute, was able
to get word to the British Consulate that she was
being held. By the time Virginia had returned to England
in early nineteen forty three, a new intelligence organization had

(11:56):
been born. Its name was the Office of Strategugic Services
the OSS. It was patterned after the SE with one exception.
It was pure bread American, led by a hero from
World War One named General wild Bill Donovan. Virginia was
desperate to get back into the fight, and transferring to

(12:18):
the OSS made sense since she was an American, but
there was a concern she was now a hunted woman
whose sketched picture had been spread throughout France. A return
could only be facilitated if she were disguised that of
an old peasant woman fit the bill. On her second

(12:43):
trip to occupied France, Virginia's intelligence and ingenuity served her
and saved her many times. This time she acted as
her own radio operator, setting up numerous resistance cells. Three
months after returning to Rants, the greatest armada the world
had ever seen crossed the Channel for the D Day landings.

(13:05):
When the signal was given, her resistance cell went into action,
cutting off Nazi supply lines and disrupting their communications, all
in a successful effort to aid the Allied invasion of Europe.
By the fall of nineteen forty four, all of France
was liberated. During Virginia's second stint in the country, she

(13:28):
had had the pleasure of leading fifteen hundred resistance volunteers
who killed one hundred and fifty Nazis and captured five
hundred more. Her team had sabotaged numerous transportation and communication links.
Virginia's leadership in sang Froi was not only admired, it
became legendary. They called her Lamdan the Madonna virg was

(14:00):
awarded the Member of the British Empire, the French Quadrigerrevech Palm,
and the American Distinguished Service Cross, the only woman in
World War Two to receive that American distinction. But Virginia
wasn't interested in accolades. She wanted to continue her work
in espionage. Although the OSS had been dissolved, Virginia was

(14:23):
one of the first women on board the new intelligence agency,
known as the Central Intelligence Group. It became the Central
Intelligence Agency in December nineteen forty seven. But the new
world of intelligence was very different from the one Virginia
had previously been a part of. Communism was the enemy now,

(14:44):
and as one observer put it, Joseph Stalin made Hitler
look like a boy scout. Virginia wanted desperately to become
an operative again, willing to undergo whatever training was necessary,
But at the advanced age of forty one, she was
looked upon as old school. Her skills were outdated, and
her aggressiveness was offensive to the younger men who were

(15:07):
her superiors. Her experience was dismissed as not pertinent. After
all she'd been through and all the sacrifices she had
gladly made. Once again, Virginia Hall didn't fit in. Virginia

(15:27):
had married Paul Goyot in nineteen fifty, a French American
she had met toward the end of the war. She
accepted mandatory retirement from the CIA in nineteen sixty six,
and she and Paul moved to a farm in Barnestown, Maryland.
They raised poodles, gardened and grew old together. Virginia died

(15:47):
in nineteen eighty two, and Goyo followed five years later.
She was never bitter about the fact that her career
hadn't begun or ended as she would have liked rather.
Virginie and You chose to remember the magnificent days in
the Middle, the days when her clever mind and brave
heart helped defeat fascists bent down world domination. And a

(16:20):
special thanks to Judy Pearson. And by the way, her
book about Virginia Hall was called Wolves at the Door,
The True Story of America's Greatest Female spy and I
had never heard that story, and I'm a big World
War two buff and it doesn't get better than a
story like that. I mean, the woman accidentally shoots her

(16:42):
foot off and for most people that's it. She gets
turned down once twice, but is determined to be a
member of the Foreign Service, eases her way into France
when most people will be running from France as the
Nazis coming up occupy the country, and ultimate le Klaus
Barbie the Butcher, has her as the most wanted person

(17:06):
in the Nazi regime when it comes to spies. Certainly,
what an impact she had her life, What an example,
and by the way, to be the only woman to
win the American Distinguished Service Cross. I don't know why
more of us don't know this story, but that's what
we do here on our American stories. And my goodness,

(17:27):
what Judy Pearson did hear? The author? I mean, she
literally walked in Virginia Hall's shoes, traveled all over Europe
just to honor her story. And these are the kind
of writers and researchers we love to put on the
show Virginia Hall story, the Spy with a wooden leg
here on our American stories,