Marie-Madeleine Fourcade.
“YOU WILL ORGANIZE the underground side.”
Marie-Madeleine couldn’t believe her ears. Commandant Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, who was affectionately known to his friends and coworkers as Navarre, had just told her to organize a massive French spy network. Marie-Madeleine knew how important Navarre thought espionage was; she had worked as his main assistant in the publication of a magazine that was devoted to spying. Navarre was convinced that it was the most effective way to win the war he was certain was overshadowing Europe. When Hitler took control of Austria and part of Czechoslovakia—the Sudetenland—in 1938, Navarre’s magazine, L’ordre national, reported on all of Hitler’s actions and also predicted, quite accurately, what he would do next.
Running L’Ordre national almost single-handedly for Navarre was one thing; organizing a huge network of spies, mostly men, was an overwhelming thought. “But Navarre,” Marie-Madeleine cried, “I’m only a woman!”
“That’s another good reason,” he replied. “Who will ever suspect a woman?”
Marie-Madeleine continued to protest: “I’m very afraid I won’t be able to live up to what you expect of me, Navarre. This job is terrifying. I’m hardly 30, and you’re asking me to command hardened old campaigners like yourself. I’d rather serve in the ranks [than be in charge].”
There was a long silence. Navarre stopped walking about the room, sat down at his desk, and began to write something on a piece of paper. Marie-Madeleine looked at the back of his neck. It showed a wound from his recent involvement in the Battle of France. The injury was still unhealed. She thought of the other battles he had fought, some during the previous World War and some that he had not fought with guns but with truth and integrity, battles that had cost him dearly. If she didn’t accept this work, would she be giving him another wound?
“You don’t think that someone else …?” she began hesitantly.
Without turning around, he replied, “No. I can’t trust anyone but you.”
Marie-Madeleine took a deep breath. “I’ll try not to let you down. I accept.”
Navarre turned around and handed her the paper he had been writing on. It contained her orders, and she was to memorize them. They would be used to fight Hitler’s occupation of France.
Her first mission was to divide the unoccupied zone of France (the southern region known as Vichy) into sections and to recruit and send agents into these sections. These agents would then watch German troop movements, both on land and sea, and send the information back to headquarters. Navarre would decide which information was important enough to forward to the French Resistance headquarters in London. This network of spies, headed by Navarre and organized by Marie-Madeleine, was called Alliance. (Later, it was called Noah’s Ark.)
Marie-Madeleine was starting to feel fairly confident in her work for Alliance when she suddenly discovered that her job title had changed drastically. Navarre had been arrested! He was sentenced to two years in prison by the Vichy government, headed by Marshal Petain. Up until this moment many in France, and even some in Alliance, had believed that Petain might have been secretly working with General de Gaulle, the head of the French Resistance in London, even as he pretended to oppose him. But when Navarre was sentenced to two years in prison, all hope was gone. Some members of the were now confused. Who was the man to be trusted, Petain or Navarre?
NOAH’S ARK The spies in Alliance had code names composed of letters and numbers (such as ASO 43 and PLU 122) that would hide their true identities. One day some of Marie-Madeleine’s files, which included some of these code names, fell into enemy hands. While pondering this catastrophe on a train ride, Marie-Madeleine dozed off and dreamily pictured each agent as a particular animal. The very tall agent sitting across from her suddenly became Giraffe. Another agent, who had huge ears, became Elephant. The airmen would all be named after birds; the agents watching the ports would be fish. She named herself Hedgehog. From that time on, Alliance was often referred to as Noah’s Ark.
Marie-Madeleine hadn’t the slightest doubt about the answer to this question. Petain had condemned General de Gaulle to death and had made a bargain with the Germans. Navarre, on the other hand, she would trust with her life. And now he was putting his trust in her, only in a greater way. She knew exactly what Navarre’s trial and sentence meant to her: the work and safety of the Alliance members—3,000 spies—would be on her shoulders for the duration of the war. She would also have sole responsibility for deciding which pieces of information were important enough to send to the French Resistance offices in London. There was no question of stepping down. She was determined to continue the work of Alliance.
The Alliance spies were so numerous and so successful that they eventually came to the attention of the Germans. Many Alliance agents were captured and interrogated, and unfortunately, some of them surrendered information. Names were given out. The Germans were on the lookout for those in high positions in the network; if they could find them and get them to talk, Alliance might be destroyed.
One day a fellow agent, nicknamed Grand Duke (“Night Owl”), visited Marie-Madeleine and warned her that the Nazis were going to make a thorough search of the town for members of the French Resistance on the following day. He asked her where she was hiding all of her communications. When she showed him, he realized that she was holding more than enough evidence to prove she was high in the chain of Alliance command. If this information were found, Marie-Madeleine would certainly be arrested, interrogated, and eventually killed. He urged her to leave with him immediately.
Marie-Madeleine almost thought he was joking. She told him that they had plenty of time, since the raid was not until the following day, and that he should pick her up at eight o’clock the next morning.
Grand Duke agreed to that plan and left. Shortly afterward, Marie-Madeleine heard a commotion in the main entrance of the apartment building; her door was still open. It was the Gestapo, and they were headed right for her apartment! She tried desperately to shut and bolt the door, thinking that it would give her a few minutes to jump out the window and escape into the courtyard. But it was too late. Soon, there were two dozen Gestapo agents in her room, demanding to know where Grand Duke was.
Marie-Madeleine pretended to be angry at this intrusion, and when they asked her why she had tried to shut them out, she answered that if she’d known they were the Gestapo, she would have opened the door right away. She was such a good actress that they nearly believed her. Some of them left to search elsewhere in the building. Marie-Madeleine was hoping that those who remained would not notice her gathering up crucial Alliance messages from the table and throwing them quickly under the couch.
While the Gestapo agents searched her apartment, Marie-Madeleine tried to stay calm, asking them casually what they were hoping to find.
The leader spoke up and described Grand Duke to her. He said Grand Duke was a very important spy in a certain spy organization that they hadn’t yet been able to destroy. The name of the spy organization was Alliance.
Marie-Madeleine inwardly froze. She tried very hard to stay calm. The search was almost over, and the Germans were about to leave. Just then, one of them noticed something under the couch. He went down on all fours and pulled out the communications Marie-Madeleine had shoved under there. Marie-Madeleine was immediately arrested.
As she packed her bag for the prison, Marie-Madeleine desperately tried to think of a way to prevent Grand Duke from coming to her apartment the next morning and falling into the trap the Gestapo would surely set for him. There was only one way she could warn him, she thought, as she was driven to the prison. She must escape that night and reach his house before he came to pick her up at the apartment the next morning.
The Germans left her alone in her cell. She looked at the bars that guarded her window. She tried to push her head through gaps. She noticed that her head fit through one gap in the bars but not the rest. She undressed, held her dress in her teeth, and began to push herself out between the widest gap in the bars. First her head went through. Then, one shoulder squeezed through. Squeezing her hips through was extremely painful, but soon she was free and dropped to the ground outside.
“Wer da?” (“Who’s there?”), she heard a guard say. She lay flat and still as he flashed his light over the area. When his light flashed off, she crawled away on all fours, put on her dress, and ran. By dawn, she came into the center of the town, where she could hear dogs barking in the distance. Her escape had surely been discovered! All the roads would soon be closed. There was a bridge she needed to cross, but it would now be carefully guarded. How would she be able to warn Grand Duke in time?
She wandered about desperately until she came to a field where some old peasant women were gleaning (gathering grain) just below the bridge she needed to cross. Marie-Madeleine joined them. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the soldiers on the bridge, pacing back and forth and stopping every woman who tried to cross, demanding identification papers. The soldiers ignored the women in the field below, Marie-Madeleine included. She managed to regain the road farther down, gleaning her way past the bridge and the soldiers.
She arrived at Grand Duke’s home just minutes before he left for hers. She had saved him from certain arrest.
Shortly after her escape, Marie-Madeleine met a French man from the area who explained to her the thing that had most puzzled her about her escape from the prison. He told her that when he and his friends built the local prison and the cement that held the bars was still fresh, they would push one of the bars just a little. They called it the bar of freedom.
Marie-Madeleine managed to keep Alliance going strong until the end of the war, providing the Allies with not only invaluable information regarding German troop movements, the location of weapons arsenals, and the nature of the new German Vergeltungswaffen (“vengeance weapons”)—the V-1 buzz bombs and the V-2 rockets—but also a detailed map showing the locations of German defenses on part of the Normandy coast that the Allies used when they invaded Nazi-occupied France on D-day, June 6, 1944.
After the war, Marie-Madeleine was given numerous awards, including being made a member of the Légion d’honneur by the French government and a member of the Order of the British Empire. She also became a member of the European Parliament. In 1968, she wrote a memoir called Noah’s Ark (L’Arche de Noé) detailing her work in Alliance.
LEARN MORE Noah’s Ark by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974 English translation).
Women in the Resistance by Margaret L. Rossiter (Praeger Publishers, 1986) contains a section on Marie-Madeleine Fourcade.