Sarah Helm

"...does the precise number of dead really matter? Survivors think names are more important than numbers." The author Sarah Helm didn't write this history as dry facts and figures; she used the names and stories of the women who lived the horrific atrocities found in this book. I borrowed the book from my mother, but then it sat on my night stand for over a year because I knew what would be in it and I had to steel myself for the horror. When I did begin, I read what I knew would be there show more and more horrific details, but I couldn't put the book down many nights. Helm wrote personal stories that drew me in and made me feel like I knew these women; they had become friends of mine. I am greatful to Helm for the incredible work she did to uncover this story that was almost lost to history. The 123,000 plus women who went through Ravensbruck were real, not faceless numbers. show less

An account of the role of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents during the Second World War.
From an award-winning journalist comes this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain’s premiere secret agents during World War II.
As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins show more courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her most cherished women spies who had gone missing in action. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Sarah Helm chronicles Atkins’s extraordinary life and her singular journey through the chaos of post-war Europe. Brimming with intrigue, heroics, honor, and the horrors of war, A Life in Secrets is the story of a grand, elusive woman and a tour de force of investigative journalism.
The book, A Life in Secrets, reveals the utter disregard for human lives through British incompetence and German savagery. On one hand, it highlights the naïve stupidity, the stubborn prejudices and inherent righteousness of the Allies, whilst condemning the evil brutality, the blind faith and the rigid obedience of the German war machine.
Failures and malpractice on both sides led to the unnecessary torture and deaths of individuals who had been led like ‘lambs to the slaughter’ for the sake of the ideological ambitions of those in power.
The book is a gripping exposé of the worst traits of humanity. Sometimes difficult to follow, but reads like a detective story, uncovering clue after clue in addition to false trails. A work of thorough painstaking investigation, providing compelling reading about little known ‘murky’ aspects of the Second World War. show less

It's taken a while for me to figure this out about writing reviews for books I read, but the better the book, the harder it is for me to review it. Do I just say, "Wow, that was great!", and hope the person reading my review just takes my word for it? Not even my wife trusts me that much. So, no. Do I explain in detail why I think it's great, taking page after page to layout the book's many attributes? Nah. I need that time reading more books, and, after all, nobody likes me enough to read show more that much of what I have to say, so, also no. So, what can I say about this epic tome? It is epic, after all. Yet, one look at the book's subtitle, and most people I know wouldn't think twice about reading it, or should I say not reading it. Think Hitler and concentration camp, and I dare say the vast number of American's will think "Jews", "gassing", and probably Auschwitz. Who wants to read nearly 700 pages of assembly-line genocide? The thing is, this book is not even close to being that. First, it is unique, being about the Nazi concentration camp for women. Two, it very quickly fills the reader in on the breadth of depravity the Nazis had for a vast array of non-Jews, or should I say more precisely, non-Aryans, and even Aryans with "worthless lives" and any Aryan who may not support this depravity with full measure of vigor. Third, it acknowledges and points out the reaction within the camp to the various stages of this depravity, without specifying the cause of those stages. Emphasis of the Jewish genocide increased as German armies went toward and into Russia. The emphasis on merely killing anyone unable to walk, came when those Soviet armies won at Stalingrad, stopped Hitler from getting critical access to oil fields and started overrunning other concentration camps besides the women's camp. The author does not cite those events, but the reaction at the camp is obvious. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the author, who did masterful work both in document research and a multitude of personal interviews, lets the reader know in complex, intimate narrative about the persistent, creative, intelligent, empathetic, heroic ways many of the women in this camp, survived, if they could, and helped others survive, if they themselves could not. The idea of women as the "fairer sex" will be forever ripped from your brain, indeed if it was ever there. The deaths of so many of these women, regardless of their religion, nationality, politics, or vocation, is tragic beyond measure, but it was the will of them to withstand, to survive, that deeply colors my view of what the author has written. The book is like a great novel. I expect it to resonate with me not for just a long time, but forever. show less

I came across this book by coincidence—I was looking for books that were part of Waterstoness sale, and saw the mention of the SOE (Special Operations Executive). A quick browse showed that the book dealt with F Section, responsible for agents in France. As I had read (and enjoyed) Tim Powers’s alternative history novel Declare, which is about an SOE agent sent to France, Kim Philby, and some stranger ideas, I was interested in the real history of the organization and eagerly added the show more book to my collection.

Later on that trip, we visited an air museum at Tangmere, which turned out to have been one of the main airfields the SOE used to fly agents into France on Lysander planes.

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Vera Atkins, neé Rosenberg, was a Romanian-born Jew whose German parents had done quite well for themselves. They hobnobbed with the German ambassador, owned a large and successful lumber factory, and were well on their way to leaving their Jewish heritage behind them.

Then came the Nazis, and with them local anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi parties. The Rosenbergs lost everything and had to flee. Vera ended up in England, and was drawn into the Special Operations Executive, a branch of British intelligence run by “amateurs” and dedicated to infiltrating agents into Nazi-occupied Europe.

Vera worked with F Section, which ran the SOE’s operations in France. One of SOE’s more controversial aspects was its practice of sending women into harm’s way, a policy that was most definitely not supported by the more established intelligence agencies (MI6, et al.) or by the military, both of which claimed that there was no legal authority allowing the use of women as spies or combatants. But SOE persisted, and many of their women agents were very successful, leading groups of resistance fighters against the German occupiers, funneling intelligence back to England, and coordinating weapons drops.

But there were many losses, as well. The Germans were able to penetrate many of SOE’s “circuits” throughout Europe, and conducted a number of funkspiel (“radio game”) operations in which German agents pretended to be SOE radio operators, sending false intelligence and collecting arms caches—and agents.

The captured agents were interrogated. Some cooperated, some refused and were tortured, and, eventually sent away to various concentration camps for imprisonment or execution, including many of the women agents.

After the war, the established intelligence agencies closed ranks and pushed for SOE’s closure and the sealing of its files. Vera Atkins felt that her agents, and, especially, “her girls”, deserved credit for their accomplishments, and that those who had disappeared were owed a reckoning. She fought to go to Europe and worked as a war-crimes investigator, interrogating captured Nazis, tracking down and interviewing civilian officials, discovering the horrible fates of many of the SOEs agents, and testifying in the trials of some of the worst Nazi perpetrators.

But who was Vera, really? She kept her past under a tight seal, and Sarah Helm manages to find out at least some of her secrets, presenting a picture of her life that, if not complete, is consistent. show less