Good afternoon, everybody. Or good evening. My name is katie and im part of the event g a staff of politics and prose. What a crowd. Before we begin, let me just go over a few quick things. First please silence your cell phone and other noisemaking devices. We are audio and video recording and you do not want to be the one whose phone goes off on cspan. Second during the question and answer portion to be here everybody, please ask your questions at this microphone that way we can all understand for the recording and for everyone here. And last, please fold up your chairs and place them againstnd something solid. Our staff for me would greatly appreciate that. I am very pleased tonight to introduce lynn olson to politics and prose. The author of last hope island those angry days troublesome young men and citizens of london as well ass several other books and has previously worked as a journalist for the Associated Press and the Baltimore Sun. In her h new book the secret war she tackles the character previously introduced in last hope island. The only woman to serve as resistance during world war ii. Her spy network was the longest lasting and most important of the frenchst resistance most notably supplying information critical to the success of dday. However along with excitement also came danger and suffered many close calls and personal losses in her years as a spymaster. However she always remained dedicated to the ideas of freedom both from German Occupation but also betrayal Patriarchal Society. Olson is at the top of her game giving the renowned beauty and elite who surprised everyone including herself perhaps by becoming one of the most consequential players in m the highstakes spy game of nazi occupied europe. The resolve and extraordinary resources to shine and inspire. This is a fascinating portrait of uncommon audacity. Please join me in welcoming lynn olson. [applause] is this on . I am thrilled. I look aroundok this room and my life goes before me. Politics and prose is and was our neighborhood bookstore when we moved to washington we moved about a mile away, less than a mile away and our daughter at the time was four, five, 6yearsold over here all the time as were we and its my favorite place ince the world. Looking out my life is here. Members of my family, old friends, work associates, new friends and booklovers. Thank you so much for coming tonight. [applause] before i start i want to make one introduction. This is a book about france about the French Resistance and about an extraordinary frenchwoman. When i was doing my research and my writing,de i was blessed with having a colleague and guided in all things french. He as it turned out has become a close friendd and lived in paris for 25 years first as a model and then reporter for time magazine. Her name is vermont and shes standing right over there. [applause] the secret war is the eighth book of history that ive written. Writing history is my second career which i moved into somewhat by accident. My first career was that of a journalist and ive worked with some of you and that capacity. I spent 12 years as a reporter versed with a vap and then for the Baltimore Sun here in washington. Ferguson who is here with my bureau chief. Before and during that time i never had any thought of becoming a historian. I didnt wake up one morning when i was a kid and say i know what i want to do when i grow up i want to write about history. In fact when i went to school and this is probably true for many ofny you, history was the driest subject i could imagine. Memorizing events and dates and kings and generals was and is not my idea of fun but that isnt what it is. Its about people. Think about the word itself. His story, history. It also should be her story but thats another lecture. [laughter] h i work hard to tell the story through people. History after all is made and shaped by people. Coming up p with ideas for books and doing the research i look for characters whove made a difference but have never had much attention paid to them. People that are forgotten heroes. That is a Common Thread in all of my books. They all focus in some way on unsung heroes. People of courage and conscience to help change their country and the world but for various reasons have slipped into the cracks. Since seven of my books deal with war specifically of world war ii, its not surprising most of the heroes of spotlighted up to now were men like john gilbert for example, the American Ambassador to london during world war ii whom i wrote about and citizens of london. The secret war is the exception to the rule. Its about a woman and exception in another way. Its the only book ive written his main focus is on one individual. The others have told sweeping s stories with some aspect of world war ii. The angloamerican alliance and citizens of london or the debate in the country about getting into world war ii in those angry days. Most have huge casts of characters but as much as ive enjoyed writing them ive often felt a great sense of frustration having too dismiss n a few sentences or paragraphs people who inn my mind deserve far more attention than i had a been able too give them and that was especially true for Marie Matalin who i mentioned in my last book my previous most recent book before this last which is about the relationship between britain and the occupied countriesoc of europe. How could one not be fascinated by the story of a beautiful and eloquent young french woman thee mother of twowo Young Children o just happened to be the leader of the largest most important spy network duringim the war. Marie matalin was the only woman to have a major Resistance Organization in france and she took it over in 1941 when she was only 31yearsold. Thats remarkablerk in itself bt what makes it even more fascinating is at that time and to some extent today, france was a deeply conservative Patriarchal Society in which women were largely confined to their domestic roles as wives and mothers. Back then they still did not have the right to vote. Women didnt have the right to vote in france during world war ii. It wasnt until 1944 after paris had been liberated that they finally were given that right. Marie matalin rebelled against that restrictive view of women and spent all her life refusing to let men dictate what she could do. She had a strong well into a taste for risk and adventure. Quality isnt often seen in young frenchwoman from young to the families like hers. But then again, few had the kind of unconventional background and upbringing that she did. Her father was a shipping executive and she was born and spent much of her childhood in shanghai. Within the early years of the 20th century was considered the essence of mystery and excitement. It was an open city that meant you didnt have to have a visa or passport together. They were crammed ranging from white russians fleeing from the bolsheviks to chinese warlords and revolutionaries to american and european gangsters, spies and drug smugglers. Not to mention International Arms dealers. Marie matalin the loved every minute of living there. As a teenager she her mother and her two siblings moved to paris after her father died suddenly of a tropical disease. But she never lost her taste for the unconventional. At the time of the french capitulatio in 1940 kammerer Marie Matalin embodiedsh everything about women that the government of marshall detested. She was sober keep it from her army officer husband. I should mention marion at the age of 17, very handsome i think that he was the captain of the Time Military intelligence officer. Theye, immediately had two children and she decided in her mid20s that she had enough of him and was very conservative on how a wife should behave so she picked up her children and moved back to paris whereupon she learned how to fly a plane. She bought a car at the time women did not know how to drive much less by a car. She participated in car rallies during that time and again it uwas very unusual. So all of that proved she had a minde of her own and ambitions that stretched far beyond housekeeping and she had giving up taking care of her children to resist. After the war broke out she became the deputy to the founder founders of an infant spy map to work. Another army officer was also Marie Matalins longtime mentor. When he was captured in 1941 she took over command of the group one of the top agents said she was young and very beautiful but there was b unmistakable aura of authority about her. When we were in paris last year the son of another of the key people in the network told us she never operated according to the societys rules. She followed her own rules. Basically she acted like a man. Although the groups official name was alliance they called it no was arc because the agency is where the names of animals and birds as their codenames. Marie matalin had come up with that idea and assigned each agent, not all i will talk later but many of her agents his or her code name. Many g were given the names of proud and powerful members like wolf, lion, tiger, elephant, fox to name just a few. But for her own code name, she chose hedgehog. [laughter] on the surface at least to me, that seemedd a rather odd choic. As you knowkn it is a bright eyd little animal with prickles all over its body and it was and is a beloved figure in classic childrens books and now it is a wonderland for example they are used as croquet balls by the queen of hearts. Beatrice is a story about peter rabbit one of the most enduring characters as a hedgehog who was based on potters own hedgehog and i discovered that in the uk at least having a hedgehog as a pet is very popular. There is a lot of pet hedgehogs. [laughter] but the unassuming appearance is deceiving. When its challenged by an enemy it rolls up in a tight little ball that causes the spines on its body to point out words. At that point as a friend of Marie Matalins once said it becomes a tough little animal lion would hesitate to bite. Alliance operated through almost france and numbered more than 3,000 agents and was the Largest Network in the country. I want to make it clear these were not trained as spies. They were ordinary french citizens that came from all classes of societies, workers and businessmen, policemen, soldiers and sailors, government clerks, shopkeepers, bus drivers, fishermen members of the french aristocracy and most famous child actor in france. What they were doing was crucial much more so than therk work of other resistance groups. Beforeth i go any further i want to explain there were basically three different kinds of resistance activities in france. One was the kind you hear about most that specialized in sabotage and other forms of open rebellion against the nazis. Those are the people that the special operationsns executives worked with. A second strand of resistance activity escaped has also receivedha considerable attentin in books and films. But as the stories are neither of them played a Critical Role in winning the war. A saboteurs and other resistance fighters were importantr after dday that they did little to obstruct the germans before them. Escaped networks did heroic work smuggling out airmen and other servicemen outth of occupied france and back to freedom but the contribution to victory was small. By contrast, the third strand of activity espionage was vitally important to the allied cause from the first day of the war to the last. In order to plan both defensivee and offensive military operations against the germans, allied commanders were dependent on spies in france and the rest of occupied europe to inform them where the enemy was and what he was doing. France was particularly important and allied and dozens of other Intelligence Networks that need. O meet from 1940 when the alliance was created until the war in europe ended in may of 1945, Marie Matalin and her colleagues had a flood of top level intelligence about a huge array of German Military secrets ranging fromop troop movements and the location of airfields and defenses to submarine failing schedules. It was the occupied country and most of the german planes bombing those cities, london and the others coming into the german submarines that were sinking the british merchant ships were based in france. In order to fight back early in the war it was vital that they know everything they can about the operations. And it was important later in the war again because of france where the allies were going to land in order to take back europe. So they needed to know everything they could do both of beaches on which they were going to land on june 6th 1944. The agents would provide the allies with a 55foot long map of the beaches and roads on which the allies would land showing every german gun and placement. That just imagine 55foot long would be the basis of the maps of the troops that carry. You might ask how difficult not only with the frenchth but the british. They worked extremely closely with mi six. The answer to that is they had no idea that the person who took over from the creator of alliance was a woman. For almost a year. She kept her identity secret because she was convinced of they would never accept the idea and she probably was right in that so she thought she had to prove herself and alliances before her identity was revealed and it was finally revealed in november 1941 almost six months later she was smuggled into spain in a diplomatic mailbag because she had no papers obviously. And at the beginning of decembee to death and then presented herself in madrid before and was a totally british mi six official. Elegant blonde and couldnt believe that she was the head of alliance. But she didnt have to worry that much because although there was some grumbling from british officials when they found out they could not argue with her accomplishments and those of alliances. As the war continued, they set out to crush the group playingma such a major role helping to ensure the defeat. Of the 3,000 agents, nearly 500 were arrested, tortured and executed over the course of the war including m the man that she loved and by whom she had a child in the middle of the war. All this was agony for her. She wasst a strong tough leader but also prided herself on forming close personal relationships with her top lieutenants and other members of her neck. There was an extraordinary sense of communitymu between her much more so than of the resistance networks. One thing i try to do in the book is depict what the daily life was like for people that were actually in the resistance because i dont think that most really do that and so there was a lot of fear and terror. They live every day in fear of being arrested because of the incredible dangerous activity that they were doing. Each time i experienced the feeling. I was dying of grief. Throughout she also was on the run from the gestapo as she femoved her Head Quarters every few weeks changing her hair clothing and identity. Shewi was captured twice in fact and managed to escape once in an incredible scene that my husband insists on telling everybody that asks about the book quite rightly. She managed to hold the network together even as it threatened to crumble around her. Hers is an extraordinary story ends is the story of alliance bit as remarkable as they are both she and her network remainvirtually unknown today. As you know since the war thereve been floods of books and films about the French Resistance its going to the utresistance networks they talkd about earlier. One of the reasons was the secrecy of the wartime operations. Not much material is available about them in the historical archives. She wouldnt work for the french for most of the war she insisted on working only for and with the british. He is famous for saying what is and for me is against me so he considered alliance to be if not an enemy he certainly wasnt happy at all that it was independent in terms of its operations and for that reason so they were the people that went down in the early history. Of that number 1,038, 1,032 were meant to so we come to the third and most important reason included were three male members of alliance, three of the top deputies. Also chosen was her estranged husband a free french officer who had commanded a regiment during the landing in Southern France in august of 1944. Others named were leaders of the various resistance movements among them the chief of the Intelligence Network second only to the alliance but Marie Matalin wasnt one of the six women awarded the honor. Most had beenes associates of te male Movement Leaders who are close allies. The only woman who would actually been areas of the students were unparalleledel was not judged worthy of the honor. The omission of the small number of women named reflected what had prevailed during the war among the free french and most resistance leaders. They were like the rest of the society and the men thought and women stayed home. Inan the words of one french historian, discrimination based don the notion of inequality between the sexes was a solidly rooted in the resistance as one historian put it just as the businesses recruited personnel for positions like switchboard operator or receptionist women and girls were brought into the resistance to be careers and liaison agents get boil it may have been regarded as subordinate they were important and extremely dangerous jobs. Female resistance were aware of their societys norms of acceptable behaviorer for them d other women and is the result during and after the war minimized the importance of theiror achievements and neededo manage credit. As the historian has written those who had done the least often spoke the most was a rather humble land leading selfdescription to have led a large and important resistance network. Her words fail to capture her uniqueness before, during and after but they capture the attention between her actions and societal expectations continue to underplayed the extent and importance of the participation. Even they tended to shy away from highlighting atypical women whose work as the leader of a military Int