Hitler's Most Wanted Woman

The Gestapo printed a wanted poster for "the most dangerous of all Allied spies." The only accurate detail on it was the way she walked. This is Virginia Hall — a banker's daughter from Baltimore with a wooden leg she named Cuthbert. Washington rejected her as a diplomat because of that leg. Berlin put her at the top of its most wanted list because of it. These are her Top 3 legendary operations: running the city of Lyon as a spy network, breaking twelve captured agents out of a Vichy prison from the outside, escaping over a 7,500-foot Pyrenees pass in the snow on a prosthetic — and walking back into France disguised as an old milkmaid to arm three battalions of the Resistance before D-Day. She became the only civilian woman of WWII awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. The Gestapo never caught her. If you love true stories of espionage, intelligence and deception, subscribe to Spymaster Files — history's greatest spies, one file at a time. 📚 Sources • Virginia Hall — Wikipedia • "Virginia Hall: The Courage and Daring of the Limping Lady" — CIA.gov • "A Woman of No Importance" by Sonia Purnell • Distinguished Service Cross citation — public record