Virginia Hall receiving the Distinguished Service Cross from General Donovan. CIA.
This week, the Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast shares the story of Virginia Hall. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Hall worked as a World War II spy with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She later worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Hall led an extraordinary life. Though she had hoped to become an ambassador, the State Department denied her entry to the Foreign Service twice. Instead, she worked as a clerk for the U.S. State Department and volunteered as a French Army ambulance driver. She spoke five languages, including French.
She met an undercover British agent who connected her with leadership for the SOE. This new ministry had trouble recruiting spies for the German Army. Hall enthusiastically volunteered. She pretended to be a journalist for the New York Post. In truth, she found people in Lyon, France, who would be part of a secret resistance network in occupied France. The network would stockpile weapons and establish safehouses. That way, if Allied forces could invade France, they would have resources at the ready. Hall also sent coded messages back to England within her newspaper articles.
The German Army became obsessed with finding and stopping Hall. One Nazi poster proclaimed her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."
She became so infamous that the SOE insisted she leave Lyon. But Hall was undeterred. She joined the newly formed American OSS to try to convince them that she could return to France—so long as she returned in disguise. You can learn more about Hall's service by listening to the episode.
The episode also mentions a few other spies featured in the Smithsonian's collection—including celebrity chef Julia Child. During World War II, Child filed paperwork for the Office of Strategic Services. Child later donated her kitchen from her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to the Smithsonian Institution. It's part of the collection of our National Museum of American History. Child kept this OSS signaling mirror in her kitchen junk drawer as a reminder of her service.