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A Life In Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII

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After the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940, Britain knew that it would be fighting again within Europe, but until an invasion could be made by regular forces, a secret war had to be waged. For this purpose the Special Operations Executive was formed, with the object of clandestine insertion of agents to oppose the advancement of the Nazis. It was a perilous assignment, and agents were told to expect a fifty-fifty chance of dying; as it turned out, they fared better, a 75% survival rate. The section of the SOE devoted to activities within France was the assignment of Vera Atkins, where she was staff officer to the head of the section. Atkins was devoted to the highly secret operation, and only recently have the truths about the work of the SOE (including its many failings) emerged. Atkins took many of the secrets to her grave when she died in 2000. Sarah Helm, an investigative reporter, was able to interview her two years before her death. "She didn't tell me much," Helm says. "She never told anybody much." There was, however, quite a story, and it involved Atkins's personal secrets as well as military ones. In _A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII_ (Nan A. Talese / Doubleday), Helm has described her efforts to understand the secrets in a long and frustrating search for what made the brilliant and wary Atkins averse, beyond all callings of duty, to letting some secrets go.

Part of the reason for Atkins's continuing secrecy is that much of what SOE did in the war was disastrous. These were amateurs, and they were playing a dangerous game within the confusion of war. There is no doubt that many of the agents dropped into France did exceptional duty that paid off (as Eisenhower acknowledged) when invasion by the allies started. There is also no doubt that there was cloak-and-dagger bungling seized upon by clever plays by the Germans that resulted in the capture of many of the agents. SOE was also betrayed by its Air Movements Officer, Henri Dericourt, a pre-war friend of the man who was to become the future Gestapo chief in Paris. Atkins was supposed to be the brains of the SOE operation, and Helm is scathing about her boss's continually overoptimistic assessments of mission security. Why did she not take action to make the mission more secure and successful? Helm's remarkable investigations have led to real answers. For instance, Atkins had successfully insinuated herself into England, but she was, through the first part of the war, a citizen of Romania, which is to say an enemy alien (she was also Jewish); she would not have wanted to draw a focus on herself as she worked in SOE. It might seem that Atkins's life has little to redeem it, but she did prove herself immediately after the war, when she spent the months after the capitulation of Germany tirelessly touring the continent and turning up any traces she could of what had happened to the lost agents, with special attention to the women. The Germans had a special term for disposition of captives that they wanted never to be found, _Nacht und Nebel_. Atkins pierced this Night and Fog to find, among other ends, that her agents had been deported to Dachau, strangled, kicked to death, inserted alive into crematoria, or had met other gruesome deaths which she alone had the tenacity to document. She was an intimidating interrogator for the War Crimes investigation unit, and got grudging admiration even from the Abwehr intelligence officer Hugo Bleicher: "She boxed me in with astonishing ease."

Atkins did real service for Britain, and was eventually appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, after she had received the French Legion of Honor. Hers is an ambiguous life, though, and Helm has dug through private, political, and military secrets to present all the contradictions. She has also explained the radio game as played by both sides. There have been many books that explained, for instance, the signal-breaking successes by boffins at Bletchley Park, but the hall-of-mirrors distortions and confusions of the game in the chaos of war were astonishingly complex, and any tally would show that the Germans won the game. Helm has given us a deeply researched portrait of a flawed and sphinx-like heroine, an imperfect but vital effort against the Nazis, and the sad outrages of war.

Both the NY Times (William Grimes) and the Washington Post highly praise this book. It tells the story of two great searches . The first is of the heroine of the book, Vera Atkins who after the War searches in Europe to learn of the fates of the 117 of 400 agents she had helped prepare for their missions of gathering Intelligence for Great Britain against the Nazis. The second is the search of the author Sarah Helm to get the details of the story of her subject, a research which also involved extraordinary effort.
Vera Atkins was the legendary second - in - command of the British Intelligence's F section . Her aplomb, courage and enormous intelligence were a key element in the unit's operation. Her caring for the fates of each and every one of those she discharged on their missions( Including thirty- nine women) was another distinctive element of her character.
A number of her operatives in their memoirs wrote of her, but the major part of her story was unknown until Helm took the job upon herself. She traced Vera Atkins , family background(She was born in Romania as Vera Maria Rosenberg ,and her mother's family ,Etkins, were South African Jews residing in Britain) h and contacts, her network of friendships and connections, and in doing so weaves a fascinating portrait of a true heroine. Atkins lived to be ninety- two but never revealed her story in a full way. Helm who met her only once in 1999 was untiring in her search to get the details of her story , and the key to the mystery of her extraordinary courage and heroism.

I've read a lot about World War II and SOE, and this outshines most books. Ms. Helm puts human faces on the dead and betrayed agents, and doesn't mince words when it comes to skewering those who sent them to their deaths. This is brilliantly researched and written, provoking outrageous anger at the novice spy handlers who ignored numerous warnings that networks had been penetrated and who continued sending agents to horrible deaths in concentration camps. Further, it shows their callous nature in covering up their stupidity and never admitting mistakes. There are many lessons here for today's times. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It will stay with me for a long time.

In "A Life in Secrets," Sarah Helm tells the riveting story of the courageous men and women of the British SOE, the Special Operations Executive, who, during World War II, were parachuted into France, and thence into the arms of the Gestapo. The author also delves into the life of the woman who sent them there, the enigmatic Vera Atkins, who, as a perfect spy, covered her traces so expertly--and so completely--that the biographer has been left with more questions than answers.

Ms. Helm nevertheless engages the reader from the first page, beginning with the recruitment and subsequent departure of the seventeen women and seventeen men who were to serve as organizers, couriers, and wireless transmitter operators of resistance circuits in Nazi-occupied France. After stretching the tension to its limit, she breaks off that narrative thread and weaves in the story of Vera Atkins, who, even though she was a Romanian subject (and thus technically an enemy alien) at the beginning of the war, nevertheless, became a major protagonist in the SOE during the course of the conflict (She was naturalized as a British subject in 1944). By continually alternating the topic between the fate of the agents and the account of the formidable woman who persistently searched for them in bombed-out Germany after the war, Ms. Helm captivates the reader--who must relentlessly follow the increasingly horrific narrative, through the Ravensbrueck, Dachau, and Natzweiler concentration camps--from the first page to the last.

One of the implicit questions the book asks is how, when MI5 was running their deucedly clever and successful "double-cross" system, in which they "turned" numerous Nazi agents parachuted into Britain into double agents, playing the "wireless game" (successfully transmitting disinformation back to the Abwehr), SOE could not catch on to the fact that its own agents had been captured, and that the messages being transmitted back to England were bogus and being run by the Gestapo.

Seems to be another classic case of the left hand of one agency not knowing what the right hand of the other agency was doing!

"A Life in Secrets", in addition to being a multi-faceted portrait of a remarkable woman, and a fascinating mystery, is a searing indictment of bureaucracy. Helm tells the story of many courageous men and women who were betrayed for their bosses' errors. Lower-ranked workers who suspected the mistakes were not allowed to speak up, and even the second-in-command, Vera Atkins, had to hold her tongue for personal reasons uncovered by the author. After the war, the search for survivors was hampered by Allied governments who began wrangling with each other before all the battles were even over.



I had never heard most of these stories before. I had never even known of the existence of SOE, although several books on the group have been written over the years. However, I suspect Helm's is the best. She's a tireless researcher, is unafraid to tell what she believes is the truth about her subject, even when it's unflattering to her main character, and really knows how to tell a story. She parcels out her discoveries for maximum impact, and gives the reader warm, human portraits of most of the characters. She also doesn't fail to describe the impact the war had on the families of SOE agents. The photo section is especially good; Helm takes care to provide an image of almost every person involved.



Helm's research is impressive; the endnotes show that her work depended mainly on original interviews and private papers. This is not a rehash of previously published material. "A Life in Secrets" is an important contribution to WWII literature, and a memorial to little-known people whose bravery should be admired.

The story about Vera Atkins and her agents sent to occupied Europe was most interesting -- what brave people they all were. Vera Atkins was determined to find what happened to those lost agents who did not return. After the war, she deligently went to France, Belgium and Germany to pick up leads, so that she could tell their families the true answers. She was a wonderful organizer and had great responsibility for a woman (at that time). The reader will enjoy the tales and photographs, even though the ending was very sad for many of them.

The Washington Post wrote of this book "Brilliant .... One can only admire the way that Helm put together all the pieces of the puzzle." Well said.
I cannot think of another book that I have read in a long time that is as well put together, interesting and amazing .... and yes, brilliant! The author Sarah Helm did not leave a rock unturned in her research and the result is (again) amazing, and all this and not a dry sentence or a boring paragraph in sight.
As an aside. I observed that one reviewer has given this book one star. I could not believe this was possible, and I am glad to find out the reviewer actually recommends the book, so there must be a mistake with the stars.

A real eye opener of the happenings and mistakes of ww2.. It was better than reading a mystery . Its hard to believe that people can make mistakes that cost lives...I loved the book and recommend it for all ww2 readers and mystery readers. wonderful ....

The real heroine of this book, I believe, is the author. This is not so much a biography as a gripping detective story. Sarah Helm's account of her determined pursuit of the complex secrets behind the life history of Vera Atkins, a woman who gave very little away, and who, it turns out, had every reason for concealing her past, is fascinating and very well written. I don't think its appeal is limited to WWII buffs - Sarah Helm delves into a murky world of conflicting loyalties and motivations that has plenty of contemporary parallels, from Vietnam to Iraq. For someone like me, brought up on the legends of the heroism of SOE's agents in France, it comes as a shock to learn just how many were tragically betrayed and dropped into the waiting arms of the Gestapo. The amateurism of Britain's spymasters, who were given endless clues that their networks were compromised, is almost beyond belief. Having read this, I am more than ever thankful that my own father (English but brought up in Paris and completely bilingual) was rejected by SOE for "looking too English"!

Vera Atkins' life wasn't inherently obscure, because of her work during and after WWII, but she took pains to hide much of her life story. Atkins' obfuscations might have worked better if savvy journalist Sarah Helm had not come along while Atkins' family and associates were still alive to be interviewed. Helm was intrigued rather than stymied by the gaps in Atkins' life story, and she doggedly hunted out enough information to fill in most of them.

Helm's research work had to go far beyond the ordinary. She describes delving through boxes in back garden storage sheds, tracking down aging associates, and journeying to isolated areas of Eastern Europe. The tenacious skill Helm needed to unravel the Vera Atkins story adds resonance to the facts that Helm uncovered.

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is therefore the story of two searches: Atkins' postwar search to learn the fate of missing SOE agents, and Helm's search to learn the full story of Atkins' life. Helm didn't learn everything, which she makes clear. She does a good job of synthesizing the known facts to shed light on some of the mysteries about Atkins' conduct during and after the War.

Helm also starkly describes the stunning incompetence of the SOE management during the War. Blithely ignoring a series of signals from agents in the field (France) that could not have been stronger, the men at the top of SOE refused to see that the agents had been captured by the enemy, and failed to suspect a traitor in their midst. Therefore, SOE kept parachuting new agents into France - straight into German hands and almost certain death. I had to re-read those paragraphs again to be sure I hadn't misunderstood - a credit to Helm's simple writing, which described the facts without amateurish editorializing.

Now that I've read this book I plan to re-read a few biographies of SOE agents, including The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy(about Virginia Hall), because I have learned so much about SOE from Helm by reading "A Life in Secrets."