Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's give a big shout
Speaker 1: out to the superhero of our show, Mr Max Williams,
Speaker 1: superhero super producer. That's not like a Max shaped foghorn? Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you do that again? Max? I'm really interested. Remember
Speaker 1: those Rico lock commercials. It's like that. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, it went from foghorn to Rico up,
Speaker 1: which I respect. I respect your range as a yodler,
Speaker 1: and I still have it. I still have a yodeling episode.
Speaker 1: We can too, But I'm ben uh your knoll. And
Speaker 1: today we are not talking about yodeling, but we are
Speaker 1: talking about a another hero, someone who was so cool
Speaker 1: they got a grown up nickname. And I first I realized,
Speaker 1: when we're looking at the research nal that that has
Speaker 1: for many years been one of my unconscious qualifiers for
Speaker 1: someone being a real bad a trying to swing the cursewords.
Speaker 1: Uh well, not a bad apple, a bad um that
Speaker 1: not a bad antagonist, a bad posterior. I yes, I
Speaker 1: see where you're going with this, you tricksy devil. Uh No,
Speaker 1: it's true, but an adult nickname is a big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm usually nicknames are bestowed upon the youth and then
Speaker 1: it sort of carries along with them for the rest
Speaker 1: of their lives, oftentimes under duress. If you've ever watched
Speaker 1: the series The Wire, you know about Snot Boogie. You
Speaker 1: know that's the character who uh the very first scene
Speaker 1: talking about snot Boogy posthumously. Um, you know, ran away
Speaker 1: with the with the craps money and finally got got shot.
Speaker 1: You know, you've done in a million times, but you know,
Speaker 1: how do you get a name like snot Boogy? One
Speaker 1: day you show up, you don't have a cold, it's cold,
Speaker 1: you get a running nose. Next thing you know, you're
Speaker 1: snot for the rest of your life. That is unfortunately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly boot. There's actually there's a character on the new
Speaker 1: character They're all characters on the new uh Jackass movie
Speaker 1: named Poopies. Um. Gotta wonder how Poopies came to be
Speaker 1: Probably similarly, probably pooped his pants doing some sort of
Speaker 1: weird skateboard stunt, but not during the French Resistance. No,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, because I am digressing too far to
Speaker 1: the modern day. We are talking about adult nicknames based
Speaker 1: on heroic acts of bad posterior heroism. Uh, and today
Speaker 1: we're talking about the nickname the white mouse, which sounds
Speaker 1: innocuoust doesn't It almost sounds like a diminutive nickname. But
Speaker 1: what a white mice really good at doing? Being experimented on?
Speaker 1: Sure against their will. But no, we're more talking about
Speaker 1: screw worrying around escaping capture, you know, scuttling through secret
Speaker 1: tunnels and holes in the wall and evading Nazis. Uh
Speaker 1: the karate chopping them in the throat. True story. On
Speaker 1: March one, nineteen forty four, there was a French resistance
Speaker 1: captain named Henri Tardi Vat and he found a person
Speaker 1: named Nancy Wake. Nancy Wake, when he found her, was
Speaker 1: tangled up in a tree, and as he was staring
Speaker 1: at her hanging askew in the branches of this tree,
Speaker 1: he uh basically thought she was very attractive, and he
Speaker 1: gave her this line, this pretty cinematic He says, I
Speaker 1: hope that all the trees in France bears such beautiful
Speaker 1: fruits this year. Player. Uh, yeah, she was. She wasn't
Speaker 1: just like posing for for this tude's benefit. She had
Speaker 1: gotten entangled in the tree after a parachuting incident. She
Speaker 1: was parachuting from a B twenty four umer and was
Speaker 1: actually carrying classified documents, and she was on the way
Speaker 1: to a local resistance movement group meet up. You know,
Speaker 1: I hang, And she didn't have any time for this
Speaker 1: fool and his uh and his misogynistic you know advances.
Speaker 1: She goes, don't give me that French if while untangling
Speaker 1: herself from the tree. At this moment, he realized that
Speaker 1: this was no ordinary damsel in distress. Oh very much not.
Speaker 1: We're starting this story in media arrest because you know, secretly,
Speaker 1: we're also a film studio in our heads. Let's introduce
Speaker 1: you real quick to Nancy Wake. She is trained in
Speaker 1: hand to hand combat. She knows espionage like the back
Speaker 1: of her hand. She's a sabocure. She is also quite
Speaker 1: capable of drinking pretty much every dude under the table.
Speaker 1: She becomes known as one of the most feared French
Speaker 1: distance fighters during the entirety of World War Two. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, as we'll learn in today's episode,
Speaker 1: the Gestapo eventually put her at the top of their
Speaker 1: most wanted list. They were gonna pay five million Francs
Speaker 1: for her dead or alive. And it's the Gestapo who
Speaker 1: gave her the nickname the White Mouse because, as you said, Nol,
Speaker 1: she was so talented at evading capture. It might surprise
Speaker 1: you hearing this list of bona fides and accolades to
Speaker 1: learn that she wasn't always a secret agent. She, as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, started out as a freelance journalist.
Speaker 1: I want to give a big shout out to several
Speaker 1: of our sources here, big fan of Paul Vitello's work
Speaker 1: for The New York Times. Won't give you the title
Speaker 1: just yet, but we've got no We've got some great
Speaker 1: sources for this. All that's interesting as well, Right, lovely article,
Speaker 1: Meet Nancy Wake, the White Mouse of the French Resistance.
Speaker 1: No spoilers there, We've already dropped that knowledge on you.
Speaker 1: And uh it was Katie Serena who dropped that knowledge
Speaker 1: on us via our previous and uh and sorely missed
Speaker 1: research associates. Gabe Lousier. Gabe Lousier first of his name.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I keep saying that about people,
Speaker 1: but Gabe Bluesier is the the nearest and dearest Gabelusier
Speaker 1: to our hearts. He is also the host of This
Speaker 1: Day in History Class, one of our pure podcasts. So
Speaker 1: if you like us miss Gabe, go ahead and check
Speaker 1: out his shows. He's doing well. We might even have
Speaker 1: him back back with us sooner rather than later. I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, he kind of hurt us, dude, he
Speaker 1: kind of he kind of broke our hearts. I know.
Speaker 1: But that's why. Look, that's why he needs to know
Speaker 1: that we're doing well in life. No, we need so
Speaker 1: he can see us. All right. I like your style.
Speaker 1: I like your style, Ben, But here's the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a woman. If you look at her photo,
Speaker 1: you can see it on the olives and all that's
Speaker 1: interesting article. A resolutely stunning um woman with poise and
Speaker 1: class for days, all the things you described absolutely accurate,
Speaker 1: could drink her male counterparts under the table, studied all
Speaker 1: of the deadly arts and and subterfuge tradecraft and the like,
Speaker 1: but got her start more as like a kind of
Speaker 1: um I don't know, Forrest Gump meets Ernest Hemingway kind
Speaker 1: of trapesing through history in a in a cool way,
Speaker 1: like via a career as a journalist, which is often
Speaker 1: we'll find you. As events are unfolding around World War Two,
Speaker 1: you find yourself kind of faced with the choices like
Speaker 1: do you want to be passive in this in these events?
Speaker 1: Do you want to report from the sidelines or do
Speaker 1: you dive in headlong? And Nancy Wake chose the latter. Yes,
Speaker 1: she absolutely did. Let's learn a little bit more about her.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard of her before, folks, you're in
Speaker 1: for a treat. Nancy was born Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Speaker 1: Nothing to do with the Nancy Grace you just thought of.
Speaker 1: She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on August and
Speaker 1: she was one of those kids. This happens all the
Speaker 1: time in families. She was one of those kids who
Speaker 1: came along way after the rest of her siblings. She's
Speaker 1: the baby. She's much younger than her other five siblings.
Speaker 1: And pretty soon after she was born, her parents moved
Speaker 1: from New Zealand to Australia and they put down their
Speaker 1: roots in North Sydney. She did not have the best childhood.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of poverty, there was instability. Eventually,
Speaker 1: her father, who was also a journalist, abandoned the family.
Speaker 1: He walked out. He said he was going to go
Speaker 1: film a documentary about the Maori in New Zealand, and
Speaker 1: then he left Nancy and her mother and all her siblings.
Speaker 1: This is coming from the Jewish Virtual Library, which has
Speaker 1: a great overview of Nancy's early life. And there's something
Speaker 1: interesting that happens here. Normal. So Nancy and Nancy and
Speaker 1: her mom and her siblings are doing their best to
Speaker 1: get by in Australia. Nancy goes to school in Sydney,
Speaker 1: but then, similar to her father in some ways, she
Speaker 1: runs away from home at the young age of sixteen.
Speaker 1: That's right, um. But lucky for her, she got a
Speaker 1: bit of a windfall two hundred bucks, which at the
Speaker 1: time would have been quite a pilot cash. And that
Speaker 1: was from her aunt, and she was able to use
Speaker 1: this money in order to travel abroad. She went to
Speaker 1: New York, she went to London, she went to Paris,
Speaker 1: and that's where she found work as a journalist, the
Speaker 1: plucky age of twenty oh. Wait, wait, you gotta explain.
Speaker 1: We gotta explain this though, right just I think to
Speaker 1: give people a sense of two hundred dollars, you and
Speaker 1: I travel pretty extensively. I think we need an inflation
Speaker 1: calculator let's see New York, London, and Paris on two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Who is her travel agent? That's amazing. I
Speaker 1: need to know this guy. Yeah, this this, this would
Speaker 1: have been in the early days of of leisure travel
Speaker 1: as well, kind of you know, I mean, and that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta hear that. We gotta hear some boobs. Let's
Speaker 1: get our boots on, all right. So uh, and we're
Speaker 1: we're fudging this a little bit. This is not Australian dollars.
Speaker 1: We're gonna use us, so it's gonna be a little different.
Speaker 1: But if we're just pretending these are US dollars, two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in ninety eight would have been the equivalent
Speaker 1: of three thousand, three eight one dollars and thirty nine cents.
Speaker 1: And let's just you know, okay, maybe that's a little underwhelming,
Speaker 1: you might say fair, But let's also picture this very
Speaker 1: self possessed and driven young woman, likely just scrapping her
Speaker 1: way along. This wasn't like, you know, a windfall that
Speaker 1: was going to allow her to live a life of luxury. No,
Speaker 1: she had to find in her way to that life
Speaker 1: of luxury, and her way to the means of paying
Speaker 1: for it, which she did. She got work as a
Speaker 1: journalist at age twenty, and this allowed her to travel
Speaker 1: and move in some of these more extravagant circles. She
Speaker 1: eventually settled in France, where she, you know, like you do,
Speaker 1: she married a wealthy industrialist. I love the idea it's
Speaker 1: a wealthy industrialist. It's just sort of a type. I
Speaker 1: just picture a dude with like mutton chops, like big
Speaker 1: gray mutton chops, and like one of those uh what
Speaker 1: do you call those beards that kind of were just
Speaker 1: like half over the top of your strap, this strappy one.
Speaker 1: The strappy beards what do you call those? Are the
Speaker 1: ones that are like sort of just the mustache that
Speaker 1: go down along the sides but no beard to fill
Speaker 1: in in the middle. There is a name for it,
Speaker 1: um is Is it a van dyke van something that's
Speaker 1: the van dyke is like the soul patch in the
Speaker 1: musta what is that called? My My dad rocks that
Speaker 1: look all the time, and I just can't remember what
Speaker 1: he calls it. And there's well, there's the horseshoe, but
Speaker 1: that's not what we're taking about. Mutton chops are what
Speaker 1: mutton chops are where the beard is shaved off the ship. Well,
Speaker 1: that's its own thing. This is what I'm talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. We're just making up an imaginary wealthy
Speaker 1: industrialists pictured Daddy Warbocks. That's what I always think of, right.
Speaker 1: It took me forever to realize. The time seems a
Speaker 1: little different, but when I was a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: I love musicals. It took me forever to realize that
Speaker 1: Daddy Warbucks is a is a clear, very on the
Speaker 1: nose reference to war profiteers. Yeah, check out our episode
Speaker 1: on the creepy and uh controversial history of Little or
Speaker 1: Finanny tunes. Uh, you know and all that um. But
Speaker 1: last day on this you know the character I'm picturing
Speaker 1: the character from the first season of The Mandalorian, the
Speaker 1: one who goes like, what does he say? As a catchphrase,
Speaker 1: he looks like a weird little monkey guy. He says,
Speaker 1: I have spoken. I have spoken, Yes, Koli. For the
Speaker 1: first season, he's got that kind of look, that wealthy
Speaker 1: industrial industrialist look. If you can see, he's got the
Speaker 1: muddon shops and it's really more of like a skin mustache.
Speaker 1: But he's kind That's kind of what I'm picturing here.
Speaker 1: So okay, well that was a bit of a walk
Speaker 1: to get there. But she marries the wealthy industrialist that
Speaker 1: allows her to continue, in fact, escalate this kind of
Speaker 1: life of luxury. I get you only about twenty years old.
Speaker 1: The guy's name, by the way, was Henry Fioca, which
Speaker 1: is quite as cool. Yeah, you's to be Henry Focaccia,
Speaker 1: like like the bread um. But but alas, and then
Speaker 1: that was in nineteen thirty six, which is kind of
Speaker 1: crazy because my dad, my parents had me a bit
Speaker 1: older but later in life. My dad was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, so this is definitely within the span
Speaker 1: of people living today. But here's the thing. This is
Speaker 1: kind of the moment in nineteen thirty three she begins
Speaker 1: to reach that tipping point that I was talking about,
Speaker 1: Like do I want to report from the sidelines? Do
Speaker 1: I want to be a commentator and sort of like
Speaker 1: a passive reporter, or I want to really get involved.
Speaker 1: She was working at a as a freelancer for a
Speaker 1: Parisian newspaper and she was asked to go to Vienna
Speaker 1: to interview the German Chancellor, a guy by the name
Speaker 1: of pat af Hitler that that Hitler. It's that that's
Speaker 1: the one you're thinking of. And to be clear, you know,
Speaker 1: she could have just lived a life of opulent luxury,
Speaker 1: but she chose to remain working as a freelancer. And
Speaker 1: while she was in Vienna, she saw just atrocious treatment
Speaker 1: of Jewish people and she noticed the correlation here. It
Speaker 1: was Hitler's followers and disciples who were committing these anti
Speaker 1: Semitic crimes. And when I'm saying anti Semitic crime, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about just and this is not to diminish
Speaker 1: this in any way. I'm not talking about vandalism. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about people being pulled out of buildings and tortured
Speaker 1: and beaten in this streets by the Gestapo. And she says, okay,
Speaker 1: I know what these people are about. It is my
Speaker 1: moral duty to do anything I can to stop the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party. She talked about this for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. As she said, this cemented her deep, abiding,
Speaker 1: profound hatred for the Nazis, and rightly so go Nancy,
Speaker 1: and she decided at that moment it really was kind
Speaker 1: of a fulcrum for her. But at that moment she
Speaker 1: decided she was going to do whatever was necessary to
Speaker 1: stop Nazis, and to stop Hitler in particular. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until several years later that she got her chance
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, Belgium
Speaker 1: and France. Remember her husband who was sadly not named
Speaker 1: Henri Focasha but Fioca. Her husband had enough money that
Speaker 1: they could have skaaddle, they could have left France, but
Speaker 1: they decided to stay and fight, and they joined the
Speaker 1: French resistance in Paris. That's right, the two of them.
Speaker 1: I love that, uh, you know, because it's like we're
Speaker 1: ragging on this guy for his, you know, very vague
Speaker 1: and grandiose title of wealthy French industrialist. But he was
Speaker 1: on board. He he was he was gonna put that
Speaker 1: money to good use, and and for that I applaud him,
Speaker 1: um Mr facaccio Fioca, excuse me. So during this time
Speaker 1: they were able to parlay that wealth into things that
Speaker 1: would actually help get Jewish refugees across the border. For example,
Speaker 1: they bought an ambulance they could use as kind of
Speaker 1: a cover for transporting Jewish refugees across the border into
Speaker 1: safe territory. She also was in a place of some
Speaker 1: level of privilege, as you may guest, but she used
Speaker 1: that too great effect as well. The wife of a
Speaker 1: very successful, wealthy industrialist was able to move around in
Speaker 1: certain circles of the upper echelon, UH, someone who had
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a diplomatic past because of her history
Speaker 1: as a journalist as well, and had not thus far
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, been like outspoken, like writing like hit
Speaker 1: pieces on Hitler or whatever. So I think it was
Speaker 1: important to kind of maintain sort of a cover in
Speaker 1: that respect and use all of these factors UH to
Speaker 1: their greatest possible effect. She was friends with the famous
Speaker 1: Scottish officer, a guy by the name of Ian Garrow, uh,
Speaker 1: and helped him transport military personnel who were stranding in
Speaker 1: France back to British soil. So Wake actually worked with
Speaker 1: Garrow along with Belgian Major General Albert Marie. I'm gonna say, Gurris, Gorris,
Speaker 1: do you e with a little schwa thinging over the
Speaker 1: e or the accent r? I s s e H.
Speaker 1: And he's Belgian, so I don't know. I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: my best there, uh, guerrisa perhaps to help establish roots
Speaker 1: UH that could be used to guide French soldiers to safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like an underground railroad. For two years,
Speaker 1: the fiocas were working as couriers. They were smuggling supplies
Speaker 1: and fake documents, and then later they evolved into that
Speaker 1: brilliant ambulance power to Escape network. They didn't always use
Speaker 1: the ambulance, but I thought that was such a clever move.
Speaker 1: The Gestapo gets wend of this and they they think, Okay,
Speaker 1: obviously some of these French locals are not super on
Speaker 1: board with our crazy ideas, so we're gonna try to
Speaker 1: find and shut down these resistance cells. And they started
Speaker 1: going through Nancy Wake's mail, they started posting surveillance agents
Speaker 1: at her home. Uh, and they just couldn't really catch
Speaker 1: her in. She became the Gestapo's number one most wanted individual.
Speaker 1: Have mentioned earlier, she got that five million frank price
Speaker 1: tag on her head, and because she became someone on
Speaker 1: a most wanted list, her privileged social position would no
Speaker 1: longer protect her. And she recounts later how her husband said,
Speaker 1: you have to leave just for her safety. He wanted
Speaker 1: her to get out, get to get out of France
Speaker 1: and leave him behind, and she remembers so heartbreaking. She
Speaker 1: remembers going out of the door, saying that she was
Speaker 1: going to do some shopping to give the guy plausible
Speaker 1: deniability and that she would be back soon. She left
Speaker 1: and they never saw each other again. She planned to
Speaker 1: travel to Britain. This is where we see the rise
Speaker 1: of the White Mouse. She doesn't get out on her
Speaker 1: first attempt. People are watching the border. All in all,
Speaker 1: she makes six tries to get out of France. She's
Speaker 1: trying to cross the Pyrenees into Spain, where she was
Speaker 1: taking persecuted people in the past, and she had some
Speaker 1: really close calls. Man. She earned the nickname big time
Speaker 1: once she was captured by the French Milish believe that's
Speaker 1: how you pronounce it um the v she militia and
Speaker 1: to lose, and she was held for four days. But
Speaker 1: she didn't give up the ghost. She she kept her
Speaker 1: mouth shut and she wouldn't give up any of her
Speaker 1: colleagues or any of her comrades. Yes, she's very good
Speaker 1: at convincing people of untrue things. She gets picked up
Speaker 1: by authorities on a train outside of Toulouse, and to
Speaker 1: avoid being captured, she oh, man, this is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of huts. But here she spends this crazy tale
Speaker 1: where she says, you have to let me go, okay,
Speaker 1: because I am actually the mistress of one of these guards,
Speaker 1: and I know I look like I'm in a disguise,
Speaker 1: but it's because I can't let my husband know I'm
Speaker 1: sleeping around and the German guards. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: have the specifics of what she said, but the German
Speaker 1: guards said, oh, okay, well, well hey, we're not We're
Speaker 1: not going to snitch on you, you know, Glory, presumably
Speaker 1: to like help out their their bros there, bros. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is when Wake actually got the nickname Las SuRie
Speaker 1: blanche or the white Mouse, because she actually evaded capture
Speaker 1: by the Gestapo officers and SS cards multiple times and
Speaker 1: would later talk about, you know how she was able
Speaker 1: to combine some charm with obviously some true training in
Speaker 1: order to find her way out of these tricky situations.
Speaker 1: She would say, a little powder and a little drink
Speaker 1: on the way, and I'd passed their German posts and
Speaker 1: wink and say do you want to search me? Big boy?
Speaker 1: I added that part, Uh, Kyle, what a flirtations, little bastard.
Speaker 1: I was right, And this is brilliant of Minx. I
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah, she's leaning into assumptions and that's a
Speaker 1: huge part of social engineering. In tradecraft. She's unassuming. She
Speaker 1: looks like a well to do person who is just
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, a little in their cups
Speaker 1: and like I live them in in uniform and then boom,
Speaker 1: she's accomplished her mission. And so this is how she
Speaker 1: escapes through the purities into Spain, and then she makes
Speaker 1: it to Britain. And once she gets to Britain, you know,
Speaker 1: intelligence agencies at this time are all very deep, deeply
Speaker 1: interested in each other and if someone is good enough
Speaker 1: to earn a nickname, they probably the other forces probably no.
Speaker 1: So the British Special Operations Executive s o E. Says, okay,
Speaker 1: White Mouse, we will train you in our arts. In
Speaker 1: the art of tradecraft, which is the euphemistic name for spycraft.
Speaker 1: She learns how to kill people silently. She learns codes,
Speaker 1: she learns correct ways to operate radio. She learns how
Speaker 1: to parachute, especially at night, which is how she ended
Speaker 1: up within that tree at the beginning of our story.
Speaker 1: She knows how to use plastic explosives. She's familiar with
Speaker 1: firearms as well as grenades, and all of her training officers. Again,
Speaker 1: despite the misogyny of the time, say this lady is
Speaker 1: putting the dudes to shame. They're looking around at the
Speaker 1: other recruits. They are like, come on, guys, come on,
Speaker 1: you can't even rig a little bit of a plastic explosive. Nancy, Nancy,
Speaker 1: get back up here, show them, show them how to
Speaker 1: do that. She really was like first in her class
Speaker 1: and it didn't take too long before she became a
Speaker 1: high ranking officer. She organized and ran firearms allocation to
Speaker 1: seven thousand, five hundred different people. At this time, once
Speaker 1: her training is complete, it's nine and get this, she's
Speaker 1: only thirty one years old. What are we doing with
Speaker 1: our lives? She's parachuted into France along with four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty and thirty nine other women to prepare for
Speaker 1: a little something the Allies like to call D Day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. That's the same one, the D Day, like
Speaker 1: the Adolf Hitler. This is the D Day. These are
Speaker 1: not just like adjacent events. Uh. She is in the
Speaker 1: thick of it. Her job is to actually organize ammunition drops.
Speaker 1: So these are like these air drops that are coming down,
Speaker 1: you know with crates. Picture them like kind of raining
Speaker 1: from the sky U parachuted crates of very crucial supplies,
Speaker 1: including AMMO. She also was responsible for setting up supply
Speaker 1: lines and the communications surrounding those supply lines, and also
Speaker 1: to organize resistance movement in prep for the actual attack
Speaker 1: of D Day. She was not only known for her
Speaker 1: widely you know street smarts and ability to evade, capture
Speaker 1: and break through umy lines. She also had a lot
Speaker 1: of acumen when it came to tactics and and strategy
Speaker 1: and and she was used for those skills as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she was a tactician. Uh. They carried out Grea attacks
Speaker 1: on numerous German forces with her team of seven thousand people.
Speaker 1: We're talking about doing damage to twenty two thousand Germans
Speaker 1: and burn the supply lines, attacked the infrastructure. This is
Speaker 1: very important stuff. She would later go on to say
Speaker 1: she didn't like killing people in particular, like she wasn't
Speaker 1: sadistic about it. It didn't scratch an itch for her.
Speaker 1: But she said, I don't see why we women should
Speaker 1: just wave our men are proud, goodbye and then knit
Speaker 1: them balaklava's I love the word bala clava. But she
Speaker 1: felt like like baklava. I don't know what it's. A
Speaker 1: balaklava is the Okay, you know how when we were
Speaker 1: doing those bank robberies, we had those knit masks that
Speaker 1: we would put over. Yeah, those are bala clavas. Oh
Speaker 1: like a ski mask. Yeah yeah, it's like it's very similar.
Speaker 1: It has like it's the one with like kind of
Speaker 1: one window for an eye or some or you can
Speaker 1: show your whole face nask. Yeah, it's like something you
Speaker 1: would wear if you know, you were fighting in some
Speaker 1: more really cold and you're just like freezing. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: can you get myself covered up as much as possible?
Speaker 1: But it also makes you look like a spooky kind
Speaker 1: of stalker type. Yeah. Yeah, but you're warm is the
Speaker 1: thing they're frowned on today. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: stores will have signs that say no ski masks allout,
Speaker 1: as if that was any question. It is funny how
Speaker 1: a garment like that that can becomes not ski stores, though.
Speaker 1: I think these stores it's it's it's fair game. Wake
Speaker 1: was also her heroism extended onto the the arena of cycling.
Speaker 1: She was at half a cycler, and that was a
Speaker 1: really nimble way of of kind of using that that
Speaker 1: you know, cover that she had, uh and to just
Speaker 1: kind of bop around through German checkpoints in order to
Speaker 1: established connections with allies London. In particular, she once did
Speaker 1: a three ten mile round trip on her bike in
Speaker 1: order to replace some codes that had been destroyed during
Speaker 1: a German raid um on a post. Without those codes,
Speaker 1: there would be no way for them to communicate regarding
Speaker 1: re ups on those ammunition drops that we talked about.
Speaker 1: So this is like directly pertaining to those kind of
Speaker 1: strategy assists that the Wake would offer. But also she
Speaker 1: would just goes on the ground getting her hands dirty.
Speaker 1: She said the ride took her on seventy one hours
Speaker 1: and she went almost NonStop. That is bold and absolutely impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and she also, you know, she got her hands
Speaker 1: dirty more ways than one. We mentioned that she didn't
Speaker 1: like killing, and then she was not a sadist, but
Speaker 1: she did take several people's lives. While she was preparing
Speaker 1: for D Day, the White Mouse learned that some of
Speaker 1: her some of her soldiers, had captured a young German
Speaker 1: spy who was female. And these these men who are
Speaker 1: working for I couldn't find it in themselves to kill her.
Speaker 1: So wake did it, And later in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: she would tell an Australian newspaper, I was not a
Speaker 1: very nice person and it didn't put me off my breakfast.
Speaker 1: And if you want another example, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: time she killed a guy with her bare hands. This
Speaker 1: is the karate chop. Do we mention this part on
Speaker 1: air or was this we set it up at the beginning.
Speaker 1: The afore mentioned karate chop. Not only not bare hands,
Speaker 1: mind you, bare hand, a single handed chop to the neck.
Speaker 1: You know, this was something that was taught to them
Speaker 1: in training. Um it was a an s S officer
Speaker 1: who was about to you know, the equivalent of that
Speaker 1: one soldier and uh and and elden ring that will
Speaker 1: blow the trumpet and then you know, summon all their homes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta take them out first before they make the noise.
Speaker 1: And nothing like a well placed chop to the neck
Speaker 1: to prevent them from sounding that alarm. This is actually
Speaker 1: during a raid on a German gun factory, which would
Speaker 1: have been a huge strategic value you know target. Um
Speaker 1: so once again saving the day with the swift karate
Speaker 1: shop killed him Debt. Yeah, it reminds me of very
Speaker 1: We've got a quote from her, but it reminds me
Speaker 1: very much of that scene in kill Bill where the
Speaker 1: bride is buried alive spoilers and has the flashback to
Speaker 1: her repetitive punching. God, I wish this was on video.
Speaker 1: I'm doing an okay chop, but thank you, many punches
Speaker 1: with no real room for a wind up. That was
Speaker 1: the part of it. So she got taught. Well here,
Speaker 1: let's just do the quote. Let's let her speak for
Speaker 1: yourself on this. Yeah. They they taught us this judo
Speaker 1: chop stuff with the flat of the hand, and I
Speaker 1: practiced away at it, but this was the only time
Speaker 1: I used it. Whack and it killed them, all right.
Speaker 1: I was really surprised, right, that's I know, we're not
Speaker 1: diminishing this at all, but which she says, I was
Speaker 1: really surprised. I have this picture of like the flat
Speaker 1: judo chop and then look at the hand and going
Speaker 1: all right, then sort of like shrug emoji. I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of the Star Trek Futurama episode.
Speaker 1: There's the end they're all fighting and so they just
Speaker 1: normal people and let her Nimoy like goes to like
Speaker 1: to the vulcan neck pinch on Bender and he goes,
Speaker 1: let's see if this actually works, and it very much
Speaker 1: does not work. Yeah, I in my um wilder days
Speaker 1: in another life, I remember being very young and I
Speaker 1: thought the vulcan neck pinch was a real thing, and
Speaker 1: I tried it on someone. It's I must do maybe
Speaker 1: just maybe dinner. Right. It's like like the five point
Speaker 1: palm exploding heart technique, Bill things. You gotta get all
Speaker 1: those pressure points in quick succession, right one, if you
Speaker 1: haven't to miss one. We didn't train in the temples
Speaker 1: of Shaoland, so it's comment on this stuff. We studied them, Mike, Yes,
Speaker 1: So she is doing courageous things and things that make
Speaker 1: a huge difference in the resistance effort. In June of nineteen,
Speaker 1: the German forces came at her troops on mass and
Speaker 1: they lost a hundred of their own folks the French
Speaker 1: resistance under under the White Mouse. But they also killed
Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred of the Germans who came after them.
Speaker 1: So this fighting force, if you look at that ratio,
Speaker 1: they are Wu Tang style. Nothing to f with. Um,
Speaker 1: we know we tease d Day right. That was June
Speaker 1: of nine, and we know that June of n is
Speaker 1: also when the actual D Day happens June six. Wait,
Speaker 1: we are recording a day after the anniversary of D Day,
Speaker 1: and where we are? No, that's true, yeah, seventh, as
Speaker 1: we sit here this very day, probably you know, want
Speaker 1: I guess one of the most popular dramatizations of D
Speaker 1: Day would have been the storming of the beaches in Normandy.
Speaker 1: Um in uh, saving Private Ryan the very first opening sequence.
Speaker 1: Its fabulous. You really feel like you're there, the shaky
Speaker 1: cameras and the bullets whizzing past, and you know, the
Speaker 1: absolute chaos of it all. That's not the kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, there's certainly chaotic elements to warfare still to
Speaker 1: this day, but not quite the same. Um. It was
Speaker 1: very much you were just hoping to God that you
Speaker 1: didn't catch a bullet in the back of the head,
Speaker 1: and then you were just moving forward while your comrades
Speaker 1: were falling all around you. And it was a very
Speaker 1: hellish situation. And it's it's it's it's a wonder that
Speaker 1: we prevailed. It is very much. So let's look at
Speaker 1: D Day just a bit and how Nancy Wake plays
Speaker 1: into it. So we know that Allied troops, at tremendous costs,
Speaker 1: started to force the German army out of France. On
Speaker 1: August of that same year, Harris Is liberated and Nancy
Speaker 1: Wake leads her troops out to celebrate, but she um
Speaker 1: it was not of celebration for her because she knew
Speaker 1: ever since she told her husband that she was going
Speaker 1: to go shopping and never came back, she knew the
Speaker 1: chances of them reuniteteen were very low, and she truly
Speaker 1: loved him. She wasn't marrying him for the money, obviously,
Speaker 1: and when she got back she learned that he was
Speaker 1: indeed dead. A year after she had left France, the
Speaker 1: Germans captured in, tortured him, and then killed him because
Speaker 1: he refused to give them any information about his wife.
Speaker 1: That is one tough, wealthy French industrialist. We should honor
Speaker 1: him by referring to him as Amrie from now on,
Speaker 1: because the man clearly earned our respect and the respect
Speaker 1: of the world, because I mean, back then it was
Speaker 1: all about information, and he could have outed his wife
Speaker 1: and they could have put an end to her shenanigans,
Speaker 1: but they continued, largely thanks to henri Um. So within
Speaker 1: a year Germany was done. Three seventy five of the
Speaker 1: sixty nine operatives of the s OE in the French
Speaker 1: area survived the war. There were thirty nine women operatives,
Speaker 1: twelve of which were killed by the Germans and three
Speaker 1: who returned after having been i is and and tortured,
Speaker 1: most likely for quite some time at Ravens Brook, the
Speaker 1: concentration camp. All in all, we had six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: French UH citizens who were killed during World War two
Speaker 1: and two were killed in prisons and those Hellish concentration camps.
Speaker 1: And the number would have been much higher were it
Speaker 1: not for Nancy Wake. This is not hyperbole. She saved
Speaker 1: thousands of lives. She was awarded many accolades after the war.
Speaker 1: The George Medal from the United Kingdom, that's the second
Speaker 1: highest civilian honor that Britain will give you, the Medal
Speaker 1: of Freedom from the us UH, the Legion of Honor,
Speaker 1: the highest military honor from France, along with several other
Speaker 1: multiple other honors and awards from various European nations. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, and this was an interesting detail
Speaker 1: to me, he received so many medals for her actions
Speaker 1: during wartime that she would later say she lived out
Speaker 1: her old Age on the proceeds from their sale, and
Speaker 1: to me, that's kind of um, that's kind of sad,
Speaker 1: the idea that someone could do so much, could save
Speaker 1: so many lives and then has to sell the awards
Speaker 1: society gave her. Unfortunately, that's the story of a lot
Speaker 1: of of individuals who served their country and come back
Speaker 1: home only to realize that like they're sort of conditioned
Speaker 1: for a situation that no longer exists, and that they
Speaker 1: maybe aren't suited mentally, psychologically, um, for other types of jobs,
Speaker 1: for sort of re acclimating to civilian life. And while
Speaker 1: that wasn't necessarily the case for Wake, I mean it
Speaker 1: kind of was. She refers to this experience like this
Speaker 1: in the New York Times article, Uh, it's dreadful because
Speaker 1: you've been so busy and then it all just fizzles out.
Speaker 1: Actually told that to an Australian newspaper and it was
Speaker 1: quoted in the New York Times article that you reference.
Speaker 1: She wrote an autobiography called The White Mouse that was
Speaker 1: published in UM. And she moved. She remarried, actually, and
Speaker 1: she moved to Port Macquarie in Australia, two two miles
Speaker 1: north of Sydney, m and she did remarry to a
Speaker 1: former POW and English fighter pilot with an awesome name,
Speaker 1: John Forward. That sounds like I like that little Figertip
Speaker 1: Matt's John Forward. Yeah, it's almost like another Toast of
Speaker 1: London type name. Yeah, it really is. So guys, I've
Speaker 1: been rewatching BoJack Horseman and it's like, you know, my
Speaker 1: fourth rewatch of it. And what I've picked up at
Speaker 1: this time is how many times like they have a
Speaker 1: little jingle for characters who enter, like recurring characters, and
Speaker 1: I just envisioned John Ford would come into the room.
Speaker 1: He's like John Ford, Yes, I like it's one of
Speaker 1: those uh, you know, we've gone back forth about nominative
Speaker 1: determinism before, but names like that that have a direction,
Speaker 1: or names that have a verb in them are classic
Speaker 1: fighter pilot CEO material. Shout out to my alter ego,
Speaker 1: Max Powers Astronaut with a secret thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, Max Williams, superproducer. We know that she survived
Speaker 1: a time and a profession that many people don't a
Speaker 1: lot of people who were working in resistance stuff like
Speaker 1: this in insurgencies, they are not going to have very
Speaker 1: high odds of living out their life in peaceful old age.
Speaker 1: But against the odds, once again, the White Mouse does
Speaker 1: exactly that. As as we described, she moves to England
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one and there she lives pretty
Speaker 1: much rent free at the Stafford Hotel in St James Place,
Speaker 1: and according to reports, she spends most of her retirement
Speaker 1: at the hotel bar with a Gen and tonic. And
Speaker 1: then she moves to a retirement home for you know,
Speaker 1: for retired veterans servicemen and women in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: and she still shows up to the bar because they
Speaker 1: make a mean gen and tonic. I guess it's also
Speaker 1: very toast of London thing. I would have loved to
Speaker 1: have had a drink with Nancy wake uh and just
Speaker 1: how to hear some of these stories and it's all
Speaker 1: very recent. It wasn't until two thousand eleven that she
Speaker 1: passed away um in that nursing home from a chest infection.
Speaker 1: And I believe after she passed it kind of came
Speaker 1: to light that the royal family was footing some of
Speaker 1: the bills for her for her lifestyle. Not that it
Speaker 1: was like extravagant or anything, just paying for bar tabs,
Speaker 1: I guess, and you know, whatever that's pretty that's pretty posh. Man.
Speaker 1: If the royal families pick him up your bar tab,
Speaker 1: you must have done something right or drastically evil. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, that might be a different episode. So this
Speaker 1: is a story of a real life hero and it
Speaker 1: shows us, as we established earlier, how close the past
Speaker 1: actually is. I'm not going to bring out that Faulkner
Speaker 1: quote again, but he was absolutely right. Instead, maybe we
Speaker 1: end on a quote from the first character we met
Speaker 1: in today's episode, Our pal on read hard. He survived
Speaker 1: the war and he loved talking about Nancy Wake. Here's
Speaker 1: this last line. She's the most feminine woman I know
Speaker 1: until the fighting starts. Then she's like five minute. I
Speaker 1: think he had a crush on her, clearly. I think
Speaker 1: most people that she met probably had a crush on her, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I think she probably damn well knew it and
Speaker 1: used it to her to her benefit. Um, Nancy Wake,
Speaker 1: what a character. The white mouse. I want to read
Speaker 1: more about this, this fascinating and being um and again
Speaker 1: would have loved to share a Gin and Tonic with her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that's a great place to to to
Speaker 1: put a put a pin in this story. There is
Speaker 1: a documentary about her that was made by Australian Television
Speaker 1: in nineteen seven, but I don't have a title on that. Um.
Speaker 1: I think there was. There was a documentary Nancy Wake
Speaker 1: code named The White Mouse, and then there was a
Speaker 1: TV mini series, right I. I think it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where was based on a true story
Speaker 1: or inspired by a true story, and they added a
Speaker 1: lot of historical liberties, sort of like what we were
Speaker 1: talking about with Operation Mincemeat, where they kind of shoehorned
Speaker 1: to love story. And yeah, so the TV mini series
Speaker 1: was just called Nancy Wake. It ran in Uh it
Speaker 1: sounds to me like Henri and Nancy. I think they
Speaker 1: were just star crossed lovers who ever quite got their
Speaker 1: stars to cross. No, we went a little bit long
Speaker 1: on today's episode, but it felt like one story to
Speaker 1: us and we didn't want to split it up. We
Speaker 1: hope that you have enjoyed the tale of Nancy Wake
Speaker 1: as much as we have, and we can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear from you about other heroes from the past too.
Speaker 1: Maybe haven't quite gotten there do All you have to
Speaker 1: do is reach out to us on ridiculous Historians and hey,
Speaker 1: while you're on the internet, you can find us not
Speaker 1: just as a show, but as individuals. This is true.
Speaker 1: You can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am
Speaker 1: at how Now Noel Brown, Mr Boland about yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: you can get some spoilers for ridiculous history and for
Speaker 1: stuff they want you to know various other projects I
Speaker 1: work on by going to Instagram where I am as
Speaker 1: I like to say, in a burst of creativity at
Speaker 1: ben Bowland bow l i N. If you don't sip
Speaker 1: the Instagram social media, you can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: as well, where at ben Bulan hs W. Like everybody
Speaker 1: else on Twitter, I'm only there because I know Max
Speaker 1: Williams is there too. I mean, that's the only reason
Speaker 1: to be on Twitter at this point. I've heard I
Speaker 1: think Elon Musk said that yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: he's backing out trying to buy it. Uh. But if
Speaker 1: you want to find me on Twitter, you can find
Speaker 1: me at at l Underscore Max Williams. That's where you
Speaker 1: find all my stuff. And of course thank you to
Speaker 1: our super producer, Max Williams. Thank you to our composer
Speaker 1: is so nuts. Their show has a composer. It's our
Speaker 1: good friend Max's brother, Alex Williams. Keep it in the family.
Speaker 1: See you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.