Violette Szabo
Violette Szabo | |
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Croix de Guerre (France) (France)Resistance Medal |
Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo,
Early life
Violette Bushell was born on 26 June 1921 in Paris, France, of parents Charles George Bushell and Reine Blanche Leroy,. After the war the couple lived in London, where Charles worked as a taxi-driver, car salesman and shopkeeper.
During the early 1930s, as a result of the Great Depression, Bushell and her youngest brother, Dickie, lived with their maternal aunt in Picardy, northern France. The family was reunited in South London when Violette was 11 years old.[a] She was an active and lively girl, enjoying gymnastics, long-distance bicycling and ice-skating with four brothers and several male cousins. Bushell was regarded as a tomboy, especially after being taught to shoot by her father; her shooting was reputedly very accurate.[2]
While Bushell had temporarily lost the ability to speak English in Picardy, she quickly relearned the language while attending school in Brixton. There she was reportedly popular and regarded as exotic, owing to her ability to speak another language.[3] Her home life was loving, though she often clashed with her strict father and once ran away to France after an argument. The family, except her monolingual father, would often converse in French.[4]
At the age of 14, Bushell went to work for a French
Second World War
In early 1940, Bushell joined the
He returned to the UK for a brief leave later in the year.After her marriage, Szabo became a
Szabo took a flat in Notting Hill, which was to be her home until she left for her second mission to France in June 1944. On 8 June 1942, she gave birth to Tania Damaris Desiree Szabo[1] at St Mary's Hospital while Étienne was stationed at Bir Hakeim in North Africa. The following day, he took part in a valiant defence against the Afrika Korps, escaping with his battalion from the assault of the 15th Panzer Division on 10 June.[12]
Szabo sent her baby to childminders while she worked at the South Morden aircraft factory, where her father was stationed. During this period, she was informed of her husband's death in action. Étienne had died on 24 October 1942 from chest wounds received while leading his men in a diversionary attack on Qaret el Himeimat, at the beginning of the Second Battle of El Alamein; he had never seen his daughter. It was Étienne's death that made Szabo accept an offer to train as a field agent in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) as her best way of fighting the enemy that killed her husband.[13]
Special Operations Executive
It is unclear how or why Szabo was recruited by
After an assessment for fluency in French and a series of interviews, Szabo was sent from 7–27 August to STS 4, a training school at Winterfold House, and after a moderately favourable report, to Special Training School 24 of Group A at Arisaig in the Scottish Highlands in September and October. Szabo received intensive instruction in fieldcraft, night and daylight navigation, weapons and demolition. Again her reports were mixed, but she passed the course and moved on to Group B.[15]
Szabo was sent to the SOE "finishing school" at
In 2012 Max Hastings wrote that Szabo was "adored by the men and women of SOE both for her courage and endless infectious Cockney laughter", while Leo Marks remembered her as "A dark-haired slip of mischief....She had a Cockney accent which added to her impishness".[19][20] Assessments by her trainers were mixed: "she lacks ruse, stability and the finesse which is required and...she is too easily influenced...[but] she set an example to the whole party by her cheerfulness and eagerness to please".[21]
First mission
Due to the ankle injury, Szabo's first deployment was delayed, but it was during her second course at Ringway that she first met
On the night of 5/6 April 1944, Szabo and Liewer were flown from RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire in a Westland Lysander aircraft and landed in German-occupied France, near the village of Azay-le-Rideau in the heart of the Loire Valley.[24] Her cover was that she was a commercial secretary named Corinne Reine Leroy (the latter two names being her mother's first and maiden names), who was born on 26 June 1921 (her real birthdate) in Bailleul, and who was a resident of Le Havre, which gave her reason to travel to the Restricted Zone of German occupation on the coast.[25]
Under the code name "Louise", which happened to be her nickname (she was also nicknamed "La P'tite Anglaise", as she stood only 5'3" tall),[26][27] she and SOE colleague Philippe Liewer (under the name "Major Charles Staunton"), organiser of the Salesman circuit, tried to assess the damage made by the German arrests, with Szabo travelling to Rouen, where Liewer could not go as a wanted man (both he and Maloubier were on wanted posters with their codenames), and to Dieppe to gather intelligence and carry out reconnaissance. It soon became clear that the circuit, which originally involved over 120 members (80 in Rouen and 40 on the coast) had been exposed beyond repair. Szabo returned to Paris to brief Liewer, and in the two days, before they were due to depart, she bought a dress for Tania, three frocks and a yellow sweater for herself, and perfume for her mother and herself.[28] While the destruction of Salesman was a heavy blow to SOE, her reports on the local factories producing war materials for the Germans were important in establishing Allied bombing targets.[citation needed]
She returned to England by Lysander, piloted by Bob Large, DFC, of the RAF, on 30 April 1944, landing after a stressful flight in which the plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire over Chateaudun, and Szabo was thrown about the body of the plane. Large had turned off the intercom when attacked and did not turn it back on for the rest of the flight, so when the plane landed heavily due to a burst tyre, and he went to get Szabo out, she (thinking they had been shot down and not having seen her blond pilot) let Large have a volley of abuse in French, mistaking him for a German. When she realised what had really happened, he was rewarded with a kiss.[29][30] Philippe Liewer returned at the same time in another Lysander. On 24 May 1944 Szabo was promoted to Ensign in the FANY.[31]
Second mission
After two aborted attempts, due to stormy weather on the night of 4/5 June and the abandonment of the intended landing ground on 5/6 June by the Resistance reception committee because of German patrols, Szabo and three colleagues were dropped by parachute from a
Upon arrival, she was sent to co-ordinate the activities of the local
Capture and interrogation
At 9.30 am on 10 June Szabo set off on her mission, not inconspicuously by bicycle as Liewer would have preferred, but in a
Their car raised the suspicions of German troops at an unexpected roadblock outside of Salon-la-Tour that had been set up to find Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, a battalion commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, who had been captured by the local resistance.[37][c] When Dufour slowed the car, the unarmed Bariaud was able to escape and later warn the Salesman team of the arrest of his two companions.[citation needed]
According to Minney and Vickers, when they had stopped, Szabo and Dufour leapt from the car, he to the left and she to the right and the cover of a tree, as Dufour opened fire. A gun battle ensued during which a woman emerging from a barn was killed by the Germans. As armoured cars arrived at the scene, Szabo crossed the road to join Dufour, and they leapt a gate, before running across a field towards a small stream.[38] They then ran up a hill towards some trees, when Szabo fell and severely twisted an ankle. She refused Dufour's offer of help, urging him to flee, and, dragging herself to the edge of the cornfield, she struggled to an apple tree. Standing behind the tree, she then provided Dufour with covering fire, allowing him to make his escape to hide in a friend's barn. Szabo fought the Germans for thirty minutes, killing a corporal, possibly more, and wounding some others. Eventually, she ran out of ammunition and was captured by two men who dragged her up the hill to a bridge over a railway. She was hot, dishevelled, and in pain. Szabo was questioned by a young officer whose armoured car had drawn up nearby. She was then taken away. Szabo's captors were most likely from the 1st Battalion of 3rd SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Deutschland (Das Reich Division) whose commanding officer was the missing Sturmbannführer Kämpfe.[citation needed]
In R.J. Minney's biography, as above, she is described as putting up fierce resistance with her Sten gun, although German documents of the incident record no German injuries or casualties. A recent biography of Vera Atkins, the intelligence officer for the French section of SOE, notes that there was a great deal of confusion about what happened to Szabo—the story was revised four times—and states that the Sten gun incident "was probably a fabrication". Szabo's most recent biographer, Susan Ottaway, includes the battle in her book, as does Tania Szabo in hers, and Philip Vickers in his book on Das Reich. Authors Sarah Helm and Max Hastings express doubt about the story of the battle.[39][40]
Violette Szabo was transferred to the custody of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the SS Security Service) in Limoges, where she was interrogated for four days by SS-Sturmbannführer Kowatch.[41] She gave her name as "Vicky Taylor", the name she had intended to use if she needed to return to England via Spain. (Her reason for choosing this name is unknown, but it may have been a play on szabo being the Hungarian word for "tailor".)[42] From there, she was moved to Fresnes Prison in Paris and brought to Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch for interrogation and torture by the Sicherheitsdienst, who by now knew of her true identity and activities as an SOE agent.[citation needed]
Ravensbrück
With the Allies driving deep into France and
From Reims, via Strasbourg, the prisoners went by train to Saarbrücken and a transit camp in the suburb of Neue Bremm, where hygiene facilities were nonexistent, and food was only indigestible bread crusts. After about ten days,[43] Szabo and most of the other women were sent on to Ravensbrück concentration camp for women where 50,000 (out of a total population of 130,000) were to die during the war. They reached Ravensbrück in late August 1944.[44][45]
Although she endured hard labour and malnutrition, she helped save the life of Belgian resistance courier Hortense Daman, kept up the spirits of her fellow detainees, and, according to fellow inmate American Virginia d'Albert-Lake, constantly planned to escape.[46][47] While at Ravensbrück, Szabo, Denise Bloch, Lilian Rolfe and Lake were among 1,000 French women sent to the Heinkel factory at the sub-camp of Torgau. Here they protested and refused to make munitions, and were forced to work in the vegetable cellar outside the camp walls and then to dig potatoes. The British women also made contact with French prisoners at a nearby POW camp who, being better fed, provided them with extra rations and offered to send messages to London with a transmitter they had built (there is no evidence they were successful).[48]
After the Torgau incident, Szabo, Bloch, Rolfe and Lake were part of a group of around 250 prisoners sent back to Ravensbrück on 6 October, where Szabo was put to work in the fabric store.[49] In late October 1944, the protest women were transferred to a punishment camp at Königsberg, where they were forced into harsh physical labour felling trees, clearing rock-hard icy ground for the construction of an airfield and digging a trench for a narrow-gauge railway. Szabo volunteered for tree-felling in the forest, where the trees gave some shelter from the bitter winds (Lilian and Denise were too ill to join her). In the bitter East Prussian winter of 1944, each day the women were forced to stand for Appell (roll-call) in the early morning for up to five hours before being sent to work, many of them freezing to death. Szabo was dressed only in the summer clothes she had been wearing when sent to Germany and the women received barely any food and slept in frozen barracks without blankets.[50][51] According to Christine Le Scornet, a seventeen-year-old French girl whom Szabo befriended, and Jeannie Rousseau, the co-leader of the Torgau revolt, she maintained her morale, was optimistic about liberation and continued to plan to escape.[52] On 19 or 20 January 1945, the three British agents were recalled to Ravensbrück and sent first to the Strafblock, where they were possibly brutally assaulted and then to the punishment bunker, where they were kept in solitary confinement.[53] The women were already in poor physical condition—Rolfe could barely walk—and the abuse finally weakened Szabo's morale.[54][d]
Execution
Szabo was killed in the execution alley at Ravensbrück, aged 23, on or before 5 February 1945. She was shot in the back of the head while kneeling down, by SS-Rottenführer Schult in the presence of camp commandant Fritz Suhren (who pronounced the death penalty), camp overseer and deputy commandant Johann Schwarzhuber, SS-Scharführer Zappe, SS-Rottenführer Walter Schenk (responsible for the crematorium), chief camp doctor Dr. Richard Trommer and dentist Dr. Martin Hellinger, from the deposition of Schwarzhuber recorded by Vera Atkins 13 March 1946.[56] Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe – neither of whom could walk and were carried on stretchers – were shot at the same time, by order of the highest Nazi authorities; the bodies were disposed of in the camp crematorium. Their clothes were not returned to the camp Effektenkammer (property store) as usually happened after executions.[e]
Comparisons
Along with Szabo, Bloch, and Rolfe, one other member of the SOE was also executed at Ravensbrück: Cecily Lefort. She was killed in the gas chamber sometime in February 1945.
Forty-one female Section F SOE agents served in France, some for more than two years, most for only a few months. Twenty-six of them survived World War II. Twelve were executed including Szabo, one was killed when her ship was sunk, two died of disease while imprisoned, and one died of natural causes. Female agents ranged in age from 20 to 53 years.[61]
Awards and honours
Szabo was the second woman to be awarded the
St. James's Palace, S.W.1. 17 December 1946
The KINGhas been graciously pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to: —Violette, Madame SZABO (deceased), Women's Transport Service (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry).
Madame Szabo volunteered to undertake a particularly dangerous mission in France. She was parachuted into France in April 1944, and undertook the task with enthusiasm. In her execution of the delicate researches entailed she showed great presence of mind and astuteness. She was twice arrested by the German security authorities but each time managed to get away. Eventually, however, with other members of her group, she was surrounded by the Gestapo in a house in the south-west of France. Resistance appeared hopeless but Madame Szabo, seizing a Sten-gun and as much ammunition as she could carry, barricaded herself in part of the house and, exchanging shot for shot with the enemy, killed or wounded several of them. By constant movement, she avoided being cornered and fought until she dropped exhausted. She was arrested and had to undergo solitary confinement. She was then continuously and atrociously tortured but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value. She was ultimately executed. Madame Szabo gave a magnificent example of courage and steadfastness.
The
Both Violette and Étienne Szabo were awarded the French Croix de Guerre for their bravery in the field. On 28 January 1947 their four-year-old daughter Tania was presented with Violette's George Cross (gazetted on 17 December 1946) from King George VI on behalf of her late mother. Violette and Étienne Szabo are believed to be the most decorated married couple of the Second World War.[64][65][f]
On 22 July 2015, Violette Szabo's medals and numerous associated items
Museums and memorials
Szabo has no known grave. Her official point of commemoration is the
The Violette Szabo GC Museum[72] is housed in the cottage in Wormelow Tump, Herefordshire,[73] that Violette's English cousins formerly owned, and that Violette would visit before the war to enjoy walks in the surrounding hills. She also stayed at the farm while she was recuperating from her ankle injury and between her two missions to France. Tania Szabo attended the museum's opening in 2000, as did Virginia McKenna, Leo Marks and members of SOE.[74]
The Jersey War Tunnels have a permanent exhibition room dedicated to Szabo.[75]
The Royal College of Music offers an annual award called the Violette Szabo GC Memorial Prize for pianists who accompany singers.[76]
There is a mural dedicated to Szabo in
In 2008, a bronze bust of Szabo by sculptor Karen Newman was unveiled at the Albert Embankment of the River Thames, in front of Lambeth Palace.[78]
At the entrance to Lambeth Town Hall there is a plaque commemorating Szabo's residence in that borough.[79]
There is a memorial to Szabo in Le Clos, close to where the Salesman II team landed on 8 June 1944. She is named on the SOE memorial at Valençay to the agents of F Section who gave their lives for the liberation of France, and also on the memorial to the SOE agents who flew from England but did not return at RAF Tempsford.[80]
There is also a memorial to Szabo at the entrance to the rugby field in the village of Salon-la-Tour, where she was captured.[81]
Media
Szabo's daughter, Tania Szabo, wrote a reconstruction of her two 1944 missions in France with flashbacks to her growing up. Author
Szabo's wartime activities in German-occupied France were dramatised in the film Carve Her Name with Pride, starring Virginia McKenna and based on the 1956 book of the same name by R. J. Minney.[83]
The 2009 video game Velvet Assassin by Replay Studios is inspired by Szabo's life as an allied spy during the Second World War, with the protagonist sharing her first name.[84]
The 2018 ten minute short play, "The Life That I Have", developed for the 365 Days of Women by playwright Libby Mitchell, is inspired by Szabo's last moments and her time in Ravensbrück. It also includes the heroines Vera Atkins, Denise Bloch, and Lilian Rolfe.[citation needed]
In June 2018, her daughter Tania was interviewed about her mother for the Pioneering Women Special airing on BBC's Antiques Roadshow, Series 41.[85]
Notes
- Blue Plaqueunveiled by the Greater London Council in 1981.
- ^ Vickers provides a useful illustrated narrative of Szabo's second mission and her capture by elements of 'Das Reich'.[32]
- ^ Tania Szabo suggests in her semi-biography of her mother, Young, Brave and Beautiful, p. 389, that the troops may have been SS-Feldgendarmerie from Salon-Le-Tour who were protecting 'Das Reich's' rear
- ^ There is some evidence that Szabo was raped while in German custody but this would have been contrary to usual SS, SD, and Gestapo practice (for all their individual and collective crimes, the men of these organisations regarded themselves as professionals with, however perverted, a sense of honour.)[55]
- ^ Mary Lindell, an escape line organiser also imprisoned in Ravensbrück, believed the three women agents were hanged, as was the usual practice in the camp and their clothes distributed to other prisoners.[57] Vera Atkins's detailed investigations, including interrogations of Suhren, Schwatzhuber and others who were involved in the killings, established the official version of execution by shooting in the back of the neck.[58][59] In 2015, Helm cast doubt on Schwarzhuber's account, suggesting he was trying to give a veneer of dignity to the killings in his interrogations and pointing out that several French agents transported to Ravensbrück along with the three SOE agents, had been executed by hanging shortly before.[60]
- ^ Odette Sansom and Peter Churchill did not marry until 1947 (dissolved 1956)
Footnotes
- ^ ISBN 0-313-32707-6.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 10–14.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 11.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 13–14, 16, 9.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 15–16.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 19.
- ^ "Violette Szabo and Étienne Szabo". Violetteszabo.org. 24 October 1942. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 22–25.
- ^ Grehan & Mace 2012.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 26–29.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 31–35.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 39–40.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 40–43.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 47–49.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 53–60.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 61–63.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 63–65.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 81–82.
- ^ Hastings 2012.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 79.
- ^ Vigurs 2021, p. 38.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 77–79.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Vigurs 2021, p. 125.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 82.
- ^ Binney 2002, p. 220.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38046. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 84–94.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 92–93.
- ^ "Flight Lieutenant Bob Large – obituary". Daily Telegraph. 17 January 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 95.
- ^ Vickers 2000, pp. 97–110.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 105.
- ^ Vickers 2000, p. 102.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 101–105.
- ^ Vickers 2000, pp. 103–105.
- Jersey War Tunnels. Archived from the originalon 29 December 2008. Retrieved 21 November 2008.
- ^ Vickers 2000, p. 105.
- ^ Helm, Sarah (2005), A Life in Secrets, New York: Doubleday, p. 456
- ^ Hastings, Max (2013), Das Reich, Minneapolis: Zenith Press, p. 154.
- ^ Vickers 2000, pp. 108–109.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 110, 115, 173.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 129.
- ^ Michael Berenbaum (2015), "Ravensbrück", Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
- ISBN 9780752487298.
- ^ Minney 1983, pp. 149–158.
- ^ "Violette: A secret story of wartime bravery". thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 9 September 2010.
- ^ Helm 2015, p. 427.
- ^ Helm 2015, p. 431.
- ^ Helm 2015, pp. 523–524.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 143–146.
- ^ Helm 2015, pp. 522–524.
- ^ Helm 2015, pp. 527–528.
- ^ Binney 2002, pp. 241–244.
- ^ Binney 2002, p. 431.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, pp. 152–154.
- ^ Wynne 1961, p. 253.
- ^ Binney 2002, pp. 243–244.
- ^ Helm 2005, pp. 314–315.
- ^ Helm 2015, pp. 525–528.
- ^ Foot, M.R.D. (1966), SOE in France, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, pp. 465–469.
- ^ "George Cross facts". Marionhebblethwaite.co.uk. Archived from the original on 9 September 2018. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ "No. 37820". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 December 1946. p. 6127.
- ^ "Who Was Violette Szabo?". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
- ^ Ottaway 2003, p. 158.
- Dix Noonan Webb. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
- ^ "Auction report Lot 1". Dix Noonan Webb. Archived from the original on 23 July 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
- ^ Ashcroft, Michael. "Why I am proud to add the Violette Szabó medal group to my collection". Conservative Home. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
- ^ "Violette Szabó's George Cross goes on display at Imperial War Museum London" (PDF). IWM. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
- ^ "Second World War secret agent's George Cross goes on display at Imperial War Museum". ITV News. 7 October 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
- ^ "Brookwood 1939–1945 Memorial". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
- ^ "The Violette Szabo GC Museum". www.violette-szabo-museum.co.uk. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
- ^ "The Violette Szabo GC Museum". Geograph.org.uk. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ "Opening of the Violette Szabo museum". Powell-pressburger.org. 24 June 2000. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ H8 2016.
- ^ "RCM Prizes available in 2008" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ "Unveiling of the Violette Szabo mural at Stockwell". Powell-pressburger.org. 15 January 2001. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ "Secret agents' memorial unveiled". BBC. 4 October 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2018.
- ^ "Memorial Plaque, Violette Szabo, Lambeth Town Hall". Landmark.lambeth.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
- ^ "RAF Tempsford". bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk. 22 June 2019. Retrieved 6 February 2024.
- ^ France, Centre (20 June 2015). "La commune a honoré la mémoire de Violette Szabo, en présence de sa fille, 71 ans après…". www.lamontagne.fr. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
- ^ "Heroines of WW2: the Special Operations Executive". The Gazette. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
- ^ Eddie Dyja. "Carve Her Name With Pride (1958)". BFI. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
- ^ "Velvet Assassin (Preview): Suede Stealth". Game Informer. No. 184. August 2008. p. 68.
- ^ "BBC One – Antiques Roadshow, Series 41, Pioneering Women Special". BBC. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
References
- Binney, Marcus (2002). The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War. London: Hodder & Stoughton. OCLC 909670893.
- Foot, M.R.D. "Szabo, Violette Reine Elizabeth", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004: rev. edn 2008)
- Grehan, John; Mace, Martin (2012). Unearthing Churchill's Secret Army: The Official List of SOE Casualties and Their Stories. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military. OCLC 854974853.
- OCLC 971264716.
- Helm, Sarah (2005). A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE. New York: Little, Brown. OCLC 60667111.
- Helm, Sarah (2015). If This is a Woman; Inside Ravensbrück, Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women. New York: Little, Brown. OCLC 900098728.
- "Hohlgangsanlage 8". Jersey War Tunnels. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
- Minney, R. J. (1983) [1956]. Carve Her Name With Pride. Portway books. Bath: Chivers. OCLC 11231432.
- Ottaway, Susan (2003). Violette Szabo: The Life That I Have. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books. OCLC 745919954.
- Szabó, Tania (2007). Young Brave and Beautiful: The Missions of Special Operations Executive Agent, Lieutenant Violette Szabó, George Cross, croix de guerre avec Etoile de bronze. distributed by Tania Szabó. St Helier: Violetteszabo.org. OCLC 463466356. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
- Vickers, Philip (2000). Das Reich: 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' – Drive to Normandy, June 1944. Battleground Europe. London: Leo Cooper. OCLC 911034745.
- Vigurs, Kate (2021). Mission France: The True History of the Women of SOE. New York: Yale University Press. OCLC 2020949525.
- Wynne, Barry (1961). No drums, No Trumpets: The Story of Mary Lindell. London: A. Barker. OCLC 11535763.
External links
- Violette Szabó GC site built by Tania Szabo, the daughter of Violette
- Violette Szabo Museum
- Special Operations Executive Agents in France – Nigel Perrin's profile of Violette Szabo
- Carve Her Name with Pride at the British Film Institute
- Carve Her Name with Pride at IMDb
- Les Fernandez – Daily Telegraph obituary of the man who trained Violette Szabo
- Violette Szabo Blue-plaque at English Heritage.org
- Violette Szabo.site built in English and French by Geoffroi Crunelle