Why Belgian agents risked their lives spying for Britain

In the chaotic opening months of the First World War, Britain's intelligence services were desperate to learn where the Germans would attack next. Enter the White Lady. As historian Helen Frey explores in this episode of the History Extra podcast, this courageous network of Belgian civilians began spying on German troops from behind enemy lines, and, in the process, changed the course of the war. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Helen tells an extraordinary story of massacres, drug dealing, double crossing, and secret messages encased in potatoes. So Helen, your new book is called The White Lady, the story of two key British Secret Service networks behind German lines.

I wonder if I could start Helen by asking you what was the White Lady? The White Lady, in French, La Dame Blanche, was named after an ancient German legend. And it's fascinating because this legend said if the German army saw the ghostly figure of a white lady on the battlefield, it meant it was about to fall, it was gonna be defeated, and with it the Kaiser and the ruling dynasty of Germany. And so this World War I network, British network with Belgian men and women,

actually named it the White Lady, believing that the information, the intelligence that they were going to send back to London would ultimately bring down the German army. It's wonderful. It is. So tell us how it came about then. I mean who in British intelligence came up with the idea to work with a a network of Belgian agents?

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (25 minutes, 4,178 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.