The Autobiography of Australia’s Wartime Legend

The seventh book in this year’s Siblings’ Book Club was (unsurprisingly) another WWII option. There’s something about the era that pulls us all in, and maybe it’s simply that we’re all ultimately products of that greatest generation.

The French Resistance

This book has almost nothing to do with America’s role in the Second Great War, which is actually pretty refreshing! Too often the stuff we read comes from the American’s perspective—not that it’s a bad perspective to have, of course, but when the Victor writes the history books, there’s always the chance that some of the facts might be…slightly disingenuous. This book written by an Australian woman who fought against the Nazis alongside the French Resistance definitely gives us Americans a new perspective on events.

Here’s an analogy for you. I’ve been helping my neighbor do some logging in the woods this year, and when he cuts down a 100-year-old tree, he does so in a special way. He pulls out the initial front wedge, of course, and then chops off the side roots. But then he takes his 3-foot blade and guts the interior of the tree, poking the blade in one side, moving it around, and then doing that again 5-6 times elsewhere. What we see on the outside are mere cuts, but this process completely weakens the interior of the tree. Then, with just a few inches of cutting in the back, the entire beast goes “POP!” and falls exactly where he’d planned (most of the time).

This gutting of the interior is what the French Resistance was to the Nazi control of France, while the American invasion of Normandy on D-Day was that final few-inch cut before the “POP!” and fall. What little could be seen of the French efforts was truly debilitating to the German Army and success couldn’t have been had without it.

Nancy Wake’s Epic Role

Nancy Wake’s role in these efforts were apparently epic, though few on this side of the pond have ever heard of her. From the outset, we get a sense that she’s like any college-aged party girl who wants to see the world. As best as the 1930s could allow, she traveled, slept around, and spent every evening and early morning in the clubs enjoying life. Her favorite haunt was Paris, and it was here that she learned well the language and culture. But Paris isn’t France, as she expounds in Chapter 2, and soon she fell in love not merely with the City of Love’s nightlife, but with the nation as a whole:

Many foreigners think Paris and the Parisians are typical of France. They are not. Paris is the most beautiful city and Parisians are delightful. I love the city for all it represents and all it has given the rest of the world, just as I love Parisians for their charm, wit and culture. But there is another France as I discovered when I travelled all over the country, not as a tourist, but as one of the people.

She spent much of her time learning about this country with a French girl named Stephanie—with whom she eventually has a falling out and never saw again. At first, I was curious as to why she spent so much time talking about this girl who had virtually no role in the War: was her purpose to highlight a secret crush between the two that Nancy never spells out? But as I made my way through the book, I got a different sense: rather than being some latent same-sex romantic, Stephanie was Nancy’s University. More than just a BFF, Stephanie was Nancy’s Professor. All that Nancy learned about the French (including French cuisine and life in the countryside) she gained from her years with Stephanie. I’m sure that if Hollywood ever does finally make a war epic about “The White Mouse,” it will turn out to be a bisexual blockbuster, but I honestly don’t think that’s the case.

As Nancy continued her life in France, the sirens of war began their blaring. The Nazis eventually invaded France, and many Frenchmen made peace with the invaders for the sake of sparing their lives. Many others, however, did not, and these brave individuals made up the Resistance. Nancy eventually found her way here, and with the connections she had made through the years was able to secure provisions and supply the Resistance with much needed ammunition and communication.

The majority of the book thereafter constitutes names, places, events, scrapes, and victories that she experienced in her efforts to help the French people fight off the invaders. Her role, of course, wasn’t an easy one, as she relates here:

For weeks now I had been subjected to more than my fair share of drama. I had been forced to flee from home, separated from my beloved husband and my darling Picon, made six fruitless journeys to the Pyrenees, been thrown into prison and kicked around, jumped out of a moving train, been fired at by a machine-gun, sprinted to the top of a mountain, lost my jewelry, walked for five nights, been starved for eight days, and infected with scabies. There was no way I was going to let the little matter of a password deter me at this stage of the game. (83)

Women of World War II

I read this book shortly after reading for the first time The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. Both were women actively resisting the evils of Nazi invaders, in Holland and in France. Both sought to help the oppressed, the Jews and the French. Both suffered loss and their own versions of hardship, be it survival a death camp or getting shot at every single day. Both came out the other end fit enough to tell their stories in books and speeches, and both serve as inspiration to women and men alike for their strength and heroism.

There is a key difference between the two women, however, that I think it worth noting. While Nancy wake considered herself Gnostic, Corrie ten Boom was lifelong Christian. The evidence of their beliefs can be seen not so much in how they endured the trials of war but how they managed life in the aftermath. Whereas Corrie ten Boom helped purchase a defunct death camp and turn it into a refugee center for the suffering and spent her final decades traveling the world to tell her story and point people to Christ, Nancy Wake spent her next decades trying to get her story made into a movie. Corrie ten Boom became a prolific author of devotional books and even into her 80s painfully maintained her speaking engagements. Nancy Wake spent multiple pages telling how, even in her 60s’, she beat a journalist at a drinking game and none was the wiser when she publicly accepted an award the next day.

These differences could be chalked up to personality and opportunity, I suppose, and I probably wouldn’t have noted it, if it weren’t for another aspect about which both women write: how do they respond to the former-Nazi soldiers they might meet once the War is long over? From one, the response is a determined anger, loathing, and hatred. From the other, the response is similarly anger and fear, but emotions that also transform into love and even forgiveness. I’ll quote each author’s remarks in this matter:

From Nancy Wake:

I have returned to Germany many times since their defeat. They have worked hard to rebuild their Fatherland. It is a lovely country to visit and although I am quite happy to be friendly with some young Germans I keep well away from the older generation in case I become involved with some ex-Nazi. I will never be able to forget the misery and death they caused to so many millions of innocent people; the savage brutality, the sadism, the unnecessary bloodshed, the slaughter and inhuman acts they performed on other human beings. I am inclined to feel sorry for the young Germans of today, knowing how utterly miserable I would be if I was descended from a Nazi.

From Corrie ten Boom:

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s plain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing, “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. (The Hiding Place, 238)

While both of these responses begin the same way, the endings differ vastly. Without minimizing at all the atrocities of war, Corrie ten Boom hits on a something profound, something highlighted in The White Mouse merely by its absence. There’s an essential difference between the one who forgives and the one who cannot, and it doesn’t lie in the magnitude of either the victim’s pain or the abuser’s atrocities. The difference lies in the power through which they live life. While the one living in her own strength viewed the crimes of the Nazis as an immovable mountain and almost a disease that infects even the next generation, the one who’s given her life to Christ allows his love to flow from within. With a single handshake, her blinding hatred turned into love for her enemy (Mat. 5:43-44). The sneering guard became a brother (Eph. 2:13; 1John 3:1, 10). The sins of the past were not forgotten but nailed to the cross of Jesus (Ps. 103:12; Col. 2:14).

Conclusion

The White Mouse and the story of Nancy Wake is amazing for sure and well worth the read by any WWII buff (if you can find it). I hate to minimize the woman’s heroism with the comments above, but I do hope to point out the difference between a life lived for self and a life handed over to God through Christ. It’s the very essence, in fact, of the message of Ecclesiastes, which is a book worth exploring!

Hatred and bitterness are killers—slower of course than the front lines of a Nazi invasion or the gas chambers at Ravensbrück, but killers, nonetheless. You, Reader, are living one of these two lives, within the loving forgiveness of God’s hands or outside of it. Perhaps today you’ll allow Nancy’s and Corrie’s stories to lead you to the better of these two lives.

©2022 E.T.