Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James

Rogers and we got a fascinating story for you today about Britain's most

decorated spy this is Odetta Sansom, who was the most decorated to buy of any gender during the Second World War.

Her wartime exploits and later imprisonment by the Nazis were honored in the years after the war but recently she's

fallen out of the spotlight. So this is what we like to do on the warfare

podcast. Twice a week I bring you my original warfare episodes but as a bonus once a week I like to reach

into the Dan's Nose History Hit Archives and pull out a history that deserves some attention.

Larry Loftus has written a new book attempting to reinstate Odetta as one of the most celebrated

members of the S.O.E. The Special Operations Executive. that British Sabotage and Espionage Organization.

So here he is, Larry Loftus talking to Dan Snow on Britain's most decorated spy. Mary, great to have you on the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

I said it before and I'll say this again, Larry Second World War you think you know it you

think you've saturated yourself and then another story comes like this out of the blue

and it's just amazing it really is and that's why I say when I give talks about this, I was depressed after I wrote my prior book.

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but into the lion's mouth, which was about disco pop-off, probably the greatest spy in history.

And he had done all these crazy things and he was the inspiration for Bond and he'd warned about Pearl Harbor and I thought I will never ever ever find another character like that, which is so exciting.

And I look for months.

For months on end I looked and could not find anything.

And I'm going through every possible double agent. There's too much already on Garboe and I looked at Brutus and I looked at all these other people.

And then I stumbled across a German book or a book by a German, Hugo Blichier, who was probably history's greatest spycatcher.

And he had broken a big allied, probably the largest allied circuit, spy circuit in France called Inter-Alli.

And he had become almost famous really in German circles because the Abois heard about him

...