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During the World War II, many women became secret agents operated in Nazis occupied Europe to "set Europe ablaze".
Here are some examples.

Odette (Marie Céline Hallowes): Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in WWII. She was sent to be a courier for the Résistance in occupied France. In 1943, she was arrested, tortured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived and testified against the camp staff at the Nuremburg trials. After WWII, Odette was dedicated to preserve the memory of her fellow female agents that sacrificed themselves during the war.

Elaine Madden: one of the two female SOE agents to parachute into the Nazis-occupied Belgium. After SOE, Elaine volunteered for the Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force (SAARF) to find surviving SOE agents, Belgian political prisoners and resistance workers in Nazis concentration camps.

Krystyna Skarbek (Christine Granville) : Polish aristocrat who volunteered herself as a British secret agent going on undercover missions in Nazis-occupied Europe. Churchill called her "my favourite spy" because she obtained evidence of German invasion of the Soviet Union when the two countries supposedly agreed to a non-aggression pact. Once she escaped a German offensive by hiking almost 70 miles

Hannah Szenes (Senesh): She was a Jewish poet immigrated to Palestine in 1939. Four years later, she was recruited for a paratrooper spy mission. In 1944, she was parachuted by the RAF into occupied Hungary. Caught at the border, she was tortured but remained silence. Given the chance to beg for a pardon in November 1944, Szenes chose death by firing squad.

Josephine Baker: African American dancer, singer, actress, and civil rights activist, Josephine found fame and a home in France. She was "the star France wanted, and the spy France needed". During WWII, she joined the French Resistance and used her celebrity status to smuggle messages in her lyrics that were sent back to France. She was also the only female speaker at the March on Washington in 1968, where she honored women civil rights activists.

Alime Abdenanova: a Crimean Tatar scout in the Red Army during World War II. After German occupation of Crimea in 1943, she led her reconnaissance group to collect intelligence about the positions of German and Romanian troops. She was arrested, tortured and executed in 1944. When Stalin deported Crimean Tatars from their homeland, her surviving family members were all deported to Uzbekistan.

Further reading about female spies

The Spy Museum has an exhibition called "This Sisterhood of Spies", which celebrates the women "using everything in their power to gain information, and risking it all for a cause they believed in."

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