Wonder Woman of the Week: Vera Atkins

This week's Wonder Woman is a historical figure as significant as Eisenhower, Patton, or Montgomery in the overall scope of personalities responsible for the downfall of Nazi Germany. Her name is not known by most, and certainly not taught in schools, for a number of reasons; but her role in the Western Theatre of World War II would establish a deciding factor in the Allied victory. Vera Atkins managed a massive British spy network in occupied France during the war and was responsible for killing and stopping the German advance in Europe. Her story began with the German invasion of France, so put on the 007 theme for this one.

After France surrendered to Germany in 1940, the French resistance forces went underground and the British spies prepared for the most difficult task of the war- survival. German counterintelligence forces were experts at locating and identifying Allied spies. Vera Atkins was tasked with coordinating intelligence forces of British MI6 and French Resistance throughout France's time under German occupation. Most of Atkin's spies were women and would later gain the nickname "Atkin's Girls" and often used their gender to gain roles as housemaids for their target Nazi officers. Atkin's Girls would relay information heard around the homes to the French Resistance who could later ambush German forces and assassinate officers.

After Allied Forces liberated Paris in 1944- and later the rest of France- Vera Atkins was tasked with locating her agents, most of whom had been killed in action within a month of activation as spies. Atkins was so intent on finding the location of fifty-one spies missing-in-action that she personally snuck into Nazi Germany to discover the fate of her agents. During her time in Germany, Atkins and fellow agents began discovering the horrors which Nazi forces inflicted on their own people during the war- along with prisoners of war captured from Allied forces.

When the war in Europe ended in 1945, Atkins applied pressure on MI6 to open part of the Nuremberg Trials to discovering the fates of agents still unaccounted for. Atkin's post-war work would help discover the fate of nearly all of her spies during the war- most of whom were either directly executed or killed via prisoner-of-war camps and concentration camps.