Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy

by Damien Lewis

Overview

The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022
Vanity Fair, Best Books of 2022
Booklist, Best Books of 2022

Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. 

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. 

In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers—a cover for her spying work—Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served—the US, France, and Britain. 
 
Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541700666
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	610,419
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Damien Lewis is an award-winning writer who spent twenty years reporting from war, disaster, and conflict zones for the BBC and other global news organizations. He is the bestselling author of more than twenty books, many of which are being adapted into films or television series, including military history, thrillers, and several acclaimed memoirs about military working dogs. Lewis lives in Dorset, England.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Preface xv

Chapter 1 A Traitor Unmasked 1

Chapter 2 An Honourable Spy 23

Chapter 3 From Paris With Love 39

Chapter 4 A Most Sensational Woman 51

Chapter 5 The Darkness Descends 61

Chapter 6 It Can't Always Be Caviar 77

Chapter 7 The Enemy At The Gates 93

Chapter 8 The Iron Resistance 107

Chapter 9 Stardom, Her Cloak And Her Dagger 117

Chapter 10 The Black Angel 135

Chapter 11 Invisible Ink And Secret Steamships 151

Chapter 12 On The Gestapo Hitlist 165

Chapter 13 Abandon All Hope 179

Chapter 14 Unbreakable 193

Chapter 15 The Twelve Apostles 206

Chapter 16 Dances With Death 217

Chapter 17 Operation Josephine B 233

Chapter 18 Operation Underworld 249

Chapter 19 Captured, Imprisoned 262

Chapter 20 The Grim Reaper Calls 278

Chapter 21 Lighting The Torch 295

Chapter 22 Die Another Day 308

Chapter 23 Into The Heat And Dust 328

Chapter 24 Liberation Day 339

Chapter 25 A Song For Buchenwald 353

Epilogue 365

Acknowledgements 389

A Note on Sources 397

Selected Bibliography 399

Sources 403

Notes 411

Index 453

Association for the Defence and the Memory of Colonel Remy 467

Editorial Reviews

05/02/2022

After fleeing the poverty and racism of St. Louis, Mo., to seek fame and fortune in Europe, Josephine Baker (1906–1975) gave “the greatest performance of her life” as a WWII spy, according to this scintillating biography. Historian Lewis (Churchill’s Band of Brothers) draws on newly discovered letters and diaries to paint a vivid portrait of Baker as “a chameleon, a rebel, a warrior, and a rule-breaker at heart.” Recruited by French intelligence officials in 1939, Baker’s first assignment was to befriend an attaché at the Italian embassy in Paris and find out if Mussolini planned to form an alliance with Hitler. She also helped determine Japan’s wartime intentions, identified Abwehr agents in Paris, and ferried classified intelligence—written in invisible ink on musical scores—across enemy lines. In addition to her espionage work, Baker flew aid missions to refugees and entertained U.S. troops and dignitaries at the Liberty Club in Casablanca. Lewis stuffs the narrative with intriguing digressions about wartime intelligence activities, including a U.S. plan to help the Mafia smuggle cigarettes into Morocco in exchange for intelligence, and vividly evokes the “intense and tumultuous affair” between Baker and her chief handler, Jacques Abtey. The result is a thrilling espionage story perfect for fans of Lynne Olson’s Madame Fourcade’s Secret War. (July)

Publishers Weekly

06/01/2022

Josephine Baker moved from St. Louis to France in the early 1920s and quickly became a highly successful entertainer, renowned for her costumes and energetic performances. Lewis's (Operation Relentless) biography captures another facet of Baker: her role as a spy for the Allied Forces during World War II. How does a world-famous Black celebrity become a successful intelligence agent? By hiding in plain sight, Lewis argues. Having grown up in American segregation, Baker understood discrimination and instinctively recognized Nazism as an insidious evil. While performing throughout the war, often for British and American troops, Baker worked with her road manager/companion Jacques Abtey to gather intelligence for the Allied Forces, often risking their lives in treacherous settings. Even when gravely ill and confined to a clinic in Casablanca, Baker turned her hospital room into a conduit of information. She and Abtey later earned accolades for their wartime service. VERDICT An extensive, well-researched tribute to Baker's bravery; will appeal to any fan of biographies of outstanding women.—Penelope J.M. Klein

Library Journal

2022-05-06
A breathless, sympathetic chronicle of the wartime exploits of Josephine Baker (1906-1975).

Rather than crafting a conventional biography, Lewis concentrates on the wartime years, creating a heroic portrait of the selfless, brave, somewhat reckless, pioneering, unswervingly patriotic spy for the Allies who was active even before the Nazi occupation of Paris, where she lived and worked. In a suspenseful, serpentine narrative, the author piles on the detail about Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service in France, an agency that worked closely with the Deuxième Bureau, France’s counterespionage service. All were locked in an intelligence battle with the Abwehr, “Nazi Germany’s much expanded intelligence service,” which “sought to overwhelm and subvert her enemies.” Baker, who had been performing in Paris since the early 1920s—after fleeing her impoverished Jim Crow youth in St. Louis and experiencing further hardship in New York City—was running her own club, Chez Josephine, and hobnobbing with admirers of all nationalities. Due to her line of work, she was effective in feeling out the allegiances of significant figures from Italy, Japan, and Spain without raising suspicion. Baker’s Deuxième Bureau supervisor, Capt. Jacques Abtey, also became her lover. “Theirs would prove an intense and tumultuous affair,” writes Lewis, “but one with a special magic all of its own.” After being forced to retreat during the occupation, they worked in various remote locales and slipped effortlessly across national borders. Lewis shows readers how Baker’s difficult life experiences served her well as an agent. “Josephine had never once had it easy,” he writes. “At every stage she had had to fight, to graft and to work unbelievably hard to get ahead. Josephine was blessed with a core of steely fortitude—an unbreakable spirit that was hard wired into her soul.” The author also explores how her wartime work profoundly affected the rest of her life, imperiling her health but also setting her on the postwar course of civil rights activism.

A complex, entertaining story of intrigue and sangfroid involving a beloved, courageous hero.

Kirkus Reviews

Damien Lewis chronicles [Josephine Baker] with much fresh detail… What most beguiles us today is the sense that a proud revolutionary lurked beneath the winsome savage, the snowy smile. Spycraft wasn’t so much what Baker did as who she was.”—The New Yorker

“Mr. Lewis is a prolific author of wartime histories and novels…Agent Josephine is a fascinating story, thoroughly researched and richly detailed…written in the breathless style of a thriller.”—Wall Street Journal

“Damien Lewis journeyed down the rabbit hole of arcane European archives to piece together the elusive tale of Josephine Baker’s French espionage service during World War II. The result, which evokes the sensuous glamour of Baker’s expatriate superstardom, is 400 pages of bravery and heroism that read like a spy novel you can’t put down.”—Vanity Fair

“[E]ntertaining… Mr Lewis has researched his story thoroughly over the course of a decade, and tells it like a fast-paced spy thriller.”—The Economist

“Lewis writes with a flair for hard-boiled drama, sharing insights into the clandestine world of espionage and its nests of expert, aristocratic spymasters; hard-living, shrewd field agents; and debonair mafiosos with their hideous henchmen…. Agent Josephine is a wonderful addition to the canon of World War II stories.”—Shelf Awareness

“In the compelling ‘Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy,’ Damien Lewis sheds light on the performer’s remarkable espionage work, demonstrating that Baker’s global fame often provided the perfect cover for her perilous clandestine activities.”—Christian Science Monitor

“Lovers of glamor, history, and intrigue will love this biography of Josephine Baker."—St. Louis Magazine

“Lewis provides a rollicking, energetic commentary on Baker’s adventures.”—Booklist, *starred review*

“Fascinating and riveting. What a story! It has never been told properly, if ever, before now. I know Josephine would be very proud of how she is portrayed.”—Jean-Pierre Reggiori, Josephine Baker’s dance partner

“Damien Lewis’s ten years of research into Josephine Baker’s world as an operative for the allies during WWII takes her story to new heights. Escaping from the legend of a scantily clad singer/dancer who entertained the world, wartime Agent Josephine shines as bright as a beacon, shimmering with defiance, fierce in loyalty to her adopted France, and fully engaged in the collection and passage of intelligence. The love story that serves as a backdrop to her exploits resonates profoundly.”—Jonna Mendez, author of The Moscow Rules

“Astonishing. Exhilarating. Agent Josephine captures the indomitable spirit of Josephine Baker. Under the dark skies of WWII, Josephine stared down the German occupation of France to become a master spy, risking her life in service of the French Resistance and the British Secret Intelligence Services—all while expressing the depth and wholeness of her character as a loyal friend and captivating entertainer. Working beyond the limits of endurance, she inspired diplomats, statesmen, spies, Moroccan Berber chieftains and battalions of allied troops to fight the Nazis and their ideals. Josephine’s odyssey calls to the resilience and creative tenacity that hides within all of us and bursts forth in the souls of a chosen few in extreme circumstances. Gripping as a thriller and superbly written. Everyone should read it.”—Scott Lenga, author of The Watchmakers

“An eye-opening, pulse-quickening, richly-written history (and if Hitchcock was around today, he would be jostling to make the film). Josephine Baker led a wartime double life of extraordinary jeopardy: in public, a hugely-loved world-famous stage star; in the shadows, a formidably courageous secret agent fighting Nazis for the resistance and for MI6. Lewis’s needle-sharp narrative—swooping from the valleys of France to the exquisite palaces of north Africa, patterned with nerve-tautening escapes, betrayals, romance and near-death encounters, amid vividly conjured landscapes—is jagged with suspense. Yet he also writes with great warmth and sensitivity, creating a powerfully moving portrait of a woman who fought prejudice and hate in all its forms.”—Sinclair McKay, author of Dresden and Berlin

“Damien Lewis has devoted considerable time and diligent research to revealing the real Josephine Baker.”—Book Reporter

“Rather than crafting a conventional biography, Lewis concentrates on the wartime years, creating a heroic portrait of the selfless, brave, somewhat reckless, pioneering, unswervingly patriotic spy for the Allies…A complex, entertaining story of intrigue and sangfroid involving a beloved, courageous hero.”—Kirkus

“A thrilling espionage story.”—Publishers Weekly, *starred review*

From the Publisher

Regrettably, the narrator of this audiobook is not the British actor featured in WOLF HALL and HOMEFRONT, but a prolific British author of military and dog-themed titles. Neither has he, equally regrettably, enlisted a professional narrator to present his history of American singer-dancer Josephine Baker’s career as an anti-Nazi operative during WWII. Instead, most regrettably, Lewis has undertaken the task himself even though he lacks the skills of pacing, shaping, and enunciating his words. He recites in an even, uninflected, highly measured voice. The adventures of a beautiful, talented woman of color who is running secrets under the noses of the Gestapo sound like a story that can’t fail. But it’s one that hasn’t yet found its voice. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JULY 2022 - AudioFile

Regrettably, the narrator of this audiobook is not the British actor featured in WOLF HALL and HOMEFRONT, but a prolific British author of military and dog-themed titles. Neither has he, equally regrettably, enlisted a professional narrator to present his history of American singer-dancer Josephine Baker’s career as an anti-Nazi operative during WWII. Instead, most regrettably, Lewis has undertaken the task himself even though he lacks the skills of pacing, shaping, and enunciating his words. He recites in an even, uninflected, highly measured voice. The adventures of a beautiful, talented woman of color who is running secrets under the noses of the Gestapo sound like a story that can’t fail. But it’s one that hasn’t yet found its voice. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JULY 2022 - AudioFile