A Life In Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII | 
 enlarge | Author: Sarah Helm
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 638994
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.7 x 1.7
ISBN: 038550845X
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.548641092
EAN: 9780385508452
ASIN: 038550845X
Publication Date: August 22, 2006
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Product Description
Once rumored to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, Vera Atkins climbed her way to the top in the Special Operations Executive, or SOE: Britain’s secret service created to help build up, organize, and arm the resistance in the Nazi-occupied countries. Throughout the war, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE’s French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France—at least one hundred of whom never returned and were reported “Missing Presumed Dead” after the war. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins’s most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their horrific final journeys. But as the woman who carried out this astonishing search appeared quintessentially English, Atkins was nothing of the sort. As we follow her through the devastation of postwar Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past.
In A Life in Secrets Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera Atkins’s many veils. Drawing on recently released sixty-year-old government files and her unprecedented access to the private papers of the Atkins family, Helm vividly reconstructs a complex and extraordinary life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 I loved every second of A Life In Secrets. May 31, 2008
I loved every second of A Life In Secrets. It was like reading the best mystery, spy novel, espionage thriller, personal history, and WWII fact-finding book all in one volume. In it Sarah Helm tells several stories and unravels many mysteries. The obvious story is that of Vera Atkins and her "missing agents", the women (mostly) and men who were dropped into France and other countries by Britain's Special Operations Executive, formed to help assist underground resistance movements in Nazi occupied countries. These agents were civilians who were hand picked and trained to blend in and do their job, and it was Atkins' job to communicate with their families and make sure they were okay.
The obvious aim of Secrets is Helm's biographical telling of the life and career of Vera Atkins, which partially involves interviews with Atkins herself as well as surviving relatives, co-workers, and friends. Just the recounting is fascinating, as Helms travels all over East and West Germany, Roumania, France, Canada, and England, tracking down her tale. Then we have the chronicles of the missing SOE agents and Atkins' dogged pursuit of their fates, however tragic, made even more interesting when Atkins gets approval to travel to France and Germany. Her stories of attendance at war crimes trials, testimonials from concentration camp leaders, guards, and inmates, and her search for closure amongst the wreckage of post-war Europe are detached enough to be clear and objective yet connected enough to be horrifying.
But the deepest and most interesting mystery turns out to be that of Atkins herself. How did Vera Rosenberg, a Roumanian Jew, become naturalized British citizen and SOE leader Vera Atkins? Why was she so interested in Nazi Germany? What drew her to this work, and especially to her dissection of the ends of the lives of her agents? What secrets was Vera Atkins hiding?
The answers to these questions are surprising and a bit disturbing. The lines between good and bad, collaborator and enemy, friend and enemy are blurred. But in the end I had not only a great respect for Atkins and how she did her job (in more ways than one) but for Helm, who solves several deeply buried mysteries. Highly recommended!
Fabulous! May 5, 2008
The extraordinary life of Vera Atkins- the woman who parachuted female secret agents into occupied France during the war, and then in 1945 made it her personal mission to track down the missing agents and find out the awful truth of what had happened to them. Sarah Helm, the author of A Life In Secrets: The story of Vera Atkins and SOE's lost agents, tells the whole story about the underground and dark side of political intrigues, spies and beyond. A most fascinating book.
An Incredible Achievement March 18, 2008
Numerous interviews with family members and friends, aggressive pursuit of declassified documents and old letters, allow secrets to be revealed in this book. A LIFE IN SECRETS traces the history of special agents parachuted into France during World War II and their fate. The bravery of these people, and especially of the women, should always be remembered.
Secret organizations are secret, their files restricted, purged, and hidden. That makes it especially difficult to trace decisions, responsibilities, and fates. To place credit for the actual heroic achievements and to place blame for mistakes and over-developed egos is exceedingly difficult.
This book is meticulously researched and reconstructed and reveals the facts of agents in World War II yet it evades being tedious. The reader is left to decide the personality and motives of various responsible cadre members and who may be a traitor or not.
There is no doubt as to the achievement of the agents or the author of this superb book. It is an extraordinary book about courageous people in monstrous times.
Respect March 2, 2008
It's one thing to be a trained trooper, heavily armed and supported by your comrades. It's another to be a young female civilian, clandestinely landed or air-dropped into enemy occupied territory. Sarah Helms has written a very personal biography, a page-turner that helps today's interested reader access a facet of the war that hasn't been forgotten because it's never been widely known. The portal is Vera Atkins, the woman behind F section at SOE, who was personally responsible for recruiting, training, dispatching and managing civilian female agents in occupied France. It's an inspiring and byzantine story that takes the reader back to the roots of the 20th century. More immediately it makes you shake your head when you realize that many of these young heroines, idealists all, risked and lost their lives owing to the incompetence and betrayal of their colleagues, as well as the twisted and bestial treatment they received from the men and women they faced in German uniforms. It's comforting to know that at least one person - Vera Atkins - felt a personal responsibility to discover the fate of her female agents. Vera's motivations are sometimes questionable and murky, and the tapestry of her roots and experiences are as complex as the war itself. It would have been useful to read more about the specific training of the agents and have more details of their actions in the field. It's not entirely clear what they were supposed to do and what they actually accomplished. More attention on the issue of whether these women were legally considered spieds or not would have helped. Overall Helms book succeeds because it makes an important chapter of the war accessible to today's reader/student. It makes you want to go out and continuing reading on the subject, but one already suspects that her book is one of the best.
 The Bravery of So Many Unsung Heroes January 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When I think of secret agents from the United Kingdom, normally I think of MI 5 or MI 6. Another agency was created during World War II--and disbanded at its end--called the Special Operations Executive or SOE. This book is about one woman, Vera Atkins, and her work within this branch of covert operations that sent patriotic men and women spies into France to help bolster the work of the French Resistance prior to the 1944 D-Day invasion at Normandy.
It is obvious from the start of the book that author Sarah Helm has done extensive research on Ms. Atkins, piecing together not only her work for the SOE, but also Ms. Atkins' personal life. For example, Helm was tireless in trying to find exact locations of photos taken during Ms. Atkins' childhood in Romania. At the very beginning of the book the author talks about the one and only encounter she had with Vera Atkins.
At the time of the interview, Ms. Atkins was but a few weeks from her 90th birthday, and chose to speak little of her involvement with the SOE. With that as a backdrop, the author used her skill and connections to interview anyone who had worked with or knew Vera Atkins to put together a very interesting story. The book is written in narrative form, but at times Helm drops into the text a snippet from one of these various interviews with survivors from that era. Most of the book is about how Vera Atkins tracked down leads on the agents who didn't return or were presumed dead, because Ms. Atkins felt responsible to give an accurate accounting to the families that were unaware their missing family members were agents.
When reading this book, you are aware that you are reading about British history by a British author. One of the ways that this is evident is by the author's liberal usage of French phrases, some of which are not translated into English. For a British audience this may not be a problem, but for the average American audience, it can be troubling at times.
Armchair Interviews says: A fascinating story about World War II and well worth the time to read.
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