Titans of History

In fourteen separate interrogations in Fresnes Prison in Paris, as her toenails were torn out and her spine branded with a red-hot iron, Odette refused to alter her story, or to reveal the identities or whereabouts of two other SOE officers the Gestapo were determined to find. Sticking obdurately to the quickly fabricated story that she was married to Peter Churchill, she insisted that she, not Churchill, was the leader of the group. She managed to convince her interrogators of the truth of this by agreeing that she, rather than Churchill, should be shot. As a result, Churchill was only interrogated twice. Odette was sentenced to death.

In 1944 she was transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was to be executed. That she survived was partly down to the fact that she and Churchill had convinced the Gestapo that his uncle was the British prime minister, Winston Churchill. Nevertheless, Odette was held in solitary confinement and treated brutally. When the Allies landed in France, she was kept in complete darkness for three months as a punishment. But believing her to be well connected, the camp commandant used Odette as a hostage when he fled before the advancing Red Army. As soon as they reached Allied lines, Odette denounced him.

Odette emerged from prison gaunt, ill and, in the words of a doctor’s report, “in a state of high nervous tension due to maltreatment.” Yet in the years after her release she refused ever to indulge in bitterness or recrimination and instead devoted herself to working with charities dedicated to healing the physical and mental wounds of war. She made an emotional return to Ravensbrück in 1994 to unveil a plaque to her SOE comrades who had died there.

Odette was awarded the George Cross, England’s highest nonmilitary honor, and appointed to France’s Légion d’honneur. She was idolized in the press, and her actions were immortalized in the 1950 film Odette. But she remained a self-effacing heroine, stating that she accepted the George Cross only on behalf of all those who had fought in the war, adamant that it was the luck of her survival, and not any particular bravery, that had secured it.

Odette married Churchill in 1947, but the marriage was not a success. She was, however, blissfully happy with her third husband, Geoffrey Hallowes, another ex-SOE man, until her death in 1995.

She ranks with other female heroines of the Second World War, who also worked for SOE: Violette Szabo who parachuted into France, but was captured and survived weeks of Nazi torture before being executed; Hannah Senesh, Hungarian Jewess, poet and spy who, captured in Hungary, withstood torture and was shot; and the New Zealander Nancy Wake, who parachuted into France and survived the war after killing Germans with her own hands. The Germans called her the White Mouse. She was the most decorated woman of the Second World War.

JFK

1917–1963

Democracy is a difficult kind of government. It requires the highest qualities of self-discipline, restraint, a willingness to make commitments and sacrifices for the general interest …

John F. Kennedy, speech in Dublin (June 28, 1963)

The 35th president of the United States was a gifted and charismatic man, the youngest—after Teddy Roosevelt—to reach the White House, and the only Roman Catholic to do so. In the three short years of his presidency he gave America and the world a vision of a peaceful and prosperous future. His assassination in 1963 was met with grief across the globe.

John F. Kennedy was the son of Joe Kennedy, a ruthless self-made business tycoon who had made fortunes in whiskey during the Prohibition era and in movies and real estate afterward. As President Roosevelt’s ambassador to London, he was discredited by becoming a shameless appeaser of Nazi Germany. But his children overcame this stain on the family’s reputation to become almost American royalty. His son John (Jack) Kennedy joined the US Navy in September 1941, shortly before the USA joined the war, and went on to serve in the Pacific theater. He was decorated with the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for saving the crew of his PT (patrol torpedo) boat after it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands.