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Hello and welcome to another World War II podcast I'm Angus Wallace. I have enough

of a back catalog of podcasts now that some topics brush into one another.

Hopefully it makes them more enjoyable. From my point of view, it

certainly makes it more fun to do and I think they have a greater depth. This is one

such topic. We're looking at women in the Secret Services, the OSS and S.O.E. during the war.

Women played a crucial role, a number operating in the field as agents where it was easier for them to blend in occupied countries

than perhaps young men of military age. I'm joined by Greg Lewis. With Gordon

Thomas he is the author of Shadow Warriors of World War II, the daring women of the

OSS and S.O.E. Greg, thanks for joining me. If we start before the war, had women been employed by the Secret Services?

No they hadn't really I mean there is a history of women involved in spying I

suppose going back to certainly the American Civil War, the first

World War, but the actual recruitment of women as agents by British Secret Service hadn't been done in any real capacity in the

way that it was in the Second World War. At the start of the war you've got the

military and the intelligence services you know women aren't on their

radar at all you know if you'll put your sort of social history hat on for a moment you

know women in the early part of the 20th century, they're very much in their home

or they're in somebody else's home as domestic servants, you know? You know, when this is first

discussed whether women should be used as agents.

...