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This Housewife Became World War II’s Highly Decorated Spy

Khalid Elhassan June 12, 2019 24 min

Odette Hallowes - World War II — Odette Sansom and her daughters. Code Name Lise

4. Love and Capture

Aerial view of Fresnes Prison, where Odette Sansom was held after her capture. Frank Falla Archive

Along the way, a romance began to blossom between Odette and Peter Churchill. Around the same time, the Gestapo, having learned of the presence of an SOE cell and British intelligence officers near Cannes, began intensifying its raids. Amidst mounting pressure, SPINDLE was forced to relocate to the Alpine village of St. Joiroz, near the Swiss and Italian borders. Safety was illusory, however, for sergeant Bleicher had come across a French Resistance member named Marsac, who knew the identity and location of Odette and Churchill. Convincing Marsac that he was an anti-Nazi officer who sought to defect to the British, Bleicher got his captive to reveal Churchill’s location, in order to arrange the “defection”.

Instead, after a brief cat and mouse game with Odette and Churchill, Bleicher arrested them in March of 1943. A quick thinking Odette saved Churchill from torture and execution by falsely informing the Germans that he was related to the British Prime Minister, thus enhancing his value in their eyes as a potential bargaining chip. She also saved herself, by claiming that she and Peter Churchill had been recently married, thus making her a distant in-law of Winston Churchill.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.