How one woman betrayed both sides in WWII
Author Roland Philipps Publisher Bodley head Price £20 Released 25 March 2021
Sometimes a story comes along that really is stranger than fiction, one that would test the patience of any reader sitting down to enjoy a spy novel or cinemagoer hoping to lose themselves in some make-believe espionage. Victoire: A Wartime Story Of Resistance, Collaboration And Betrayal is one of those stories and yet, despite its twists and turns, this tale of plot and counterplot, of double agents and dodging the death penalty, is true. It is all the more remarkable for it.
In 1940 Mathilde Carré, codenamed the Cat, worked with an associate to create a sprawling network of Allied intelligence agents in occupied France – the first of its kind. Despite the enormous risks the network’s agents faced, they alone were able to provide on-the-ground information to London. Yet it was an endeavour fraught with unimaginable danger, and even the slightest suspicion of involvement carried with it the risk of torture and death at the hands of German occupying forces.
When those forces discovered
Carré’s role in the network, she agreed to serve as a double agent known as Agent Victoire. When her duplicity was discovered by the SOE she turned double agent once more, giving up her Nazi paymasters. Carré’s last change of allegiances saw her spirited away to London, where she languished in a prison cell before she was deported back to France at the end of the war to face the death penalty. Once again though, the Cat proved that she was too cunning to be so easily silenced.
If all of this sounds like the plot of a novel, it barely scratches the surface of Carré’s remarkable life. She was an enigma to those who knew her and who were never sure if she could be trusted. The seeming ease with which she flip-flopped back and forth between allegiances made her a woman who had to be handled with kid gloves. By turns immensely useful to both the
Axis and Allies, she could be equally as damaging to both.
Yet for all this, in Roland Philipps’ sensitive and authoritative biography, Carré makes for a surprisingly sympathetic if rather mercurial character. What emerges from her story is the fact that, above everything else, she was determined to survive, and Philipps handles her remarkable story with sensitivity, but not without unvarnished honesty. Drawing on a wide range of previously unexplored first-hand material, he paints an evocative picture of a world in turmoil, in which everyone was viewed with suspicion and no association, no matter how close, could be taken for granted.
Victoire: A Wartime Story of
Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal is a remarkable book, and Philipps handles its complexities with masterful aplomb. In a twisted web of espionage and plot and counter-plot, he is the perfect guide. This book will linger with readers long after they have finished it and will no doubt give them cause to think not only about the actions of Agent Victoire, but also how they might have fared had they faced the same impossible choices.