The.Lost.Women.Spies.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH Movie Subtitles

1 00:00:00,920 --> 00:00:03,020 The Second World War. 2 00:00:03,840 --> 00:00:05,980 France is under Nazi control. 3 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:10,500 The French Resistance fight back against the German invaders. 4 00:00:12,620 --> 00:00:14,580 But they can't do it alone. 5 00:00:17,490 --> 00:00:20,110 British secret agency, the SOE, 6 00:00:20,890 --> 00:00:26,950 send arms, explosives and agents to help them set Nazi Europe ablaze. 7 00:00:29,550 --> 00:00:32,970 But when the Gestapo crack down on mail agents, 8 00:00:34,570 --> 00:00:37,990 Winston Churchill concocts an audacious solution. 9 00:00:39,190 --> 00:00:43,630 He illegally sends certain agents who are banned from the front line. 10 00:00:44,990 --> 00:00:45,430 Women. 11 00:00:46,270 --> 00:00:52,530 Vera, this business of women agents, you understand it must be kept secret at all times. 12 00:00:52,710 --> 00:00:54,410 Most secret. Our eyes only. 13 00:00:55,070 --> 00:00:58,810 Spymaster Vera Atkins is charged with finding women. 14 00:00:59,590 --> 00:01:05,850 Are you prepared to take the fight to the Nazis, behind enemy lines, in occupied France? 15 00:01:06,330 --> 00:01:07,470 As a spy. 16 00:01:09,010 --> 00:01:09,930 Training them. 17 00:01:10,470 --> 00:01:12,660 Good shot. 18 00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:13,580 Yes, sir. 19 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:17,440 And sending these agents behind enemy lines. 20 00:01:18,780 --> 00:01:19,720 Are you ready? 21 00:01:21,320 --> 00:01:23,000 The Nazis won't know what hit them. 22 00:01:29,220 --> 00:01:32,240 But after the war, many are missing. 23 00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:37,920 I'll send them off as long as I can. Go! 24 00:01:39,160 --> 00:01:44,460 Having sent these women to war, Vera makes it her life's mission to find them. 25 00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:47,400 A mission that takes her deep into Germany. 26 00:01:48,960 --> 00:01:51,260 And the horrors of the Nazi regime. 27 00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:53,100 What happened to her? 28 00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:56,040 All three were taken to the crematorium building. 29 00:01:56,700 --> 00:01:57,560 How do you know? 30 00:01:58,420 --> 00:01:59,160 I watched. 31 00:02:00,280 --> 00:02:04,080 But it's only after her death that Vera reveals the secrets. 32 00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:08,920 Behind her lost, women, spies. 33 00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:30,780 In the early 1960s, Tanya Szabo pays a surprise visit to a woman who was once her mother's boss. 34 00:02:33,020 --> 00:02:41,820 A woman, who during the Second World War, was in charge of Britain's first ever female secret agents sent into combat. 35 00:02:44,200 --> 00:02:46,720 Many of whom wouldn't return. 36 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:53,720 I was in my 20s and I was looking forward very much to meeting Vera Hedkins. 37 00:02:56,490 --> 00:03:06,650 A little trembling as well because she was known to be fierce, this very severe lady, the Kensington lady. 38 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:17,640 Vera would not have been at all concerned about how I felt. 39 00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:29,600 But, and certainly in no way whatsoever, did I resent Vera sending my mother off to such 40 00:03:29,600 --> 00:03:33,200 dangerous places on her secret missions. 41 00:03:38,510 --> 00:03:43,610 When war is there, you do what you have to do. 42 00:03:43,610 --> 00:03:53,500 Your mother, when I met her, was 22, recently bereaved. 43 00:04:00,740 --> 00:04:02,220 She wanted action. 44 00:04:06,490 --> 00:04:08,610 She wanted some sort of revenge. 45 00:04:10,700 --> 00:04:14,200 Vera did not easily open up to anybody. 46 00:04:14,780 --> 00:04:21,460 I was very aware of her decided coldness at times. 47 00:04:21,460 --> 00:04:26,300 and then there would be these little chinks and she would open up. 48 00:04:30,090 --> 00:04:32,170 I always drove them to the aerodromes. 49 00:04:35,160 --> 00:04:36,900 Always seemed to be a summer's day. 50 00:04:39,620 --> 00:04:40,460 I saw them off. 51 00:04:45,820 --> 00:04:49,960 When the war ended and they didn't come back, 52 00:04:51,550 --> 00:04:53,110 I went looking for them all. 53 00:04:58,880 --> 00:05:00,720 Missing, presumed dead. 54 00:05:02,750 --> 00:05:04,550 Such a terrible epitaph for anyone. 55 00:05:07,780 --> 00:05:09,420 The admission is surprising. 56 00:05:11,620 --> 00:05:15,000 Very few people outside of Vera Atkins' inner circle 57 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:17,740 knew that after the war, she'd gone looking 58 00:05:17,740 --> 00:05:19,340 for her missing agents. 59 00:05:26,020 --> 00:05:26,940 Excuse me. 60 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:34,280 For Vera, the most important thing that she could do 61 00:05:34,280 --> 00:05:38,680 was to find out exactly what had happened to her agents. 62 00:05:39,840 --> 00:05:44,160 Long after the war ends, Vera still keeps hold of files 63 00:05:44,160 --> 00:05:50,040 on her former agents, locked away like all her secrets. 64 00:05:56,350 --> 00:06:03,520 In later life, she moves from Kensington to Winchelsea in Sussex, taking her closely guarded 65 00:06:03,520 --> 00:06:04,560 files with her. 66 00:06:06,600 --> 00:06:10,480 On the 24th of June, 2000, Vera Atkins dies. 67 00:06:12,290 --> 00:06:18,180 She announces, through her sister-in-law, that her treasured and secret files have all 68 00:06:18,180 --> 00:06:21,080 She's now moved to her sister-in-law's shed in Cornwall. 69 00:06:24,370 --> 00:06:27,310 Journalists begin investigating the files. 70 00:06:28,150 --> 00:06:31,270 What is quite clear is that after the war, 71 00:06:31,370 --> 00:06:33,290 when SOE was being closed down, 72 00:06:33,490 --> 00:06:36,790 basically everything that had happened that SOE had been involved in 73 00:06:37,010 --> 00:06:39,130 was going to be just completely hidden. 74 00:06:39,970 --> 00:06:43,130 The British government destroyed many files 75 00:06:43,130 --> 00:06:45,070 relating to their women agents. 76 00:06:46,450 --> 00:06:48,430 But Vera's survive. 77 00:06:49,950 --> 00:06:52,350 I mean, to be honest with you, she shouldn't have kept them. 78 00:06:52,690 --> 00:06:56,190 That was illegal, even then, to keep official documents, 79 00:06:56,350 --> 00:06:57,490 especially secret ones. 80 00:06:58,390 --> 00:07:04,130 But she wanted the story to be told by someone at some point. 81 00:07:05,190 --> 00:07:09,110 The files contain the revelation that, after the war, 82 00:07:09,770 --> 00:07:13,210 Vera went looking for all her lost women spies. 83 00:07:13,210 --> 00:07:18,520 She definitely felt responsibility to her female agents, 84 00:07:18,940 --> 00:07:22,840 and that must have completely haunted Vera for the rest of her life. 85 00:07:25,690 --> 00:07:31,450 In the files are page after page detailing the lives and codenames 86 00:07:31,450 --> 00:07:36,010 of Britain's first-ever female agents sent to the front line. 87 00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:40,960 One agent in particular catches the eye. 88 00:07:41,980 --> 00:07:44,320 Noor Enyat Khan's training record is terrible. 89 00:07:44,320 --> 00:07:50,080 She was not seen as a competent agent at all and as a result she was not 90 00:07:50,080 --> 00:07:54,160 recommended to go to France by her instructors. But Vera Atkins sent her 91 00:07:54,160 --> 00:08:03,180 anyway. Why did Vera send Knorr behind enemy lines against the advice of others? 92 00:08:05,060 --> 00:08:08,740 All Vera's private files suddenly become available. 93 00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:15,700 Private files that reveal the true story of Britain's lost women spies. 94 00:08:19,020 --> 00:08:24,680 But also the shocking story of the one woman whose job it was to send them into battle. 95 00:08:25,680 --> 00:08:26,980 Vera Atkins. 96 00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:36,380 It's a story that begins in France in 1940. 97 00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:52,660 Nazi Germany has invaded and taken over the north of the country and Hitler has 98 00:08:52,660 --> 00:08:56,780 set his sights on Britain as the next target for Nazi invasion. 99 00:09:02,380 --> 00:09:07,100 In France, an underground force of French fighters called the Resistance 100 00:09:07,100 --> 00:09:10,020 tried to stop the Nazis at any point they can. 101 00:09:11,040 --> 00:09:13,060 They commit acts of sabotage. 102 00:09:14,220 --> 00:09:18,320 They attack soldiers. And to do this, they need help. 103 00:09:19,480 --> 00:09:24,140 They need organisational skills, they need weapons and they need money. 104 00:09:25,160 --> 00:09:29,240 They need all the help they can get to stop the Nazi threat. 105 00:09:29,240 --> 00:09:39,920 This support is provided by a British secret agency known as the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. 106 00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:47,640 SOE was sanctioned by Prime Minister Winston Churchill as early as 1940. 107 00:09:48,340 --> 00:09:54,380 It was unofficially known as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. 108 00:09:54,380 --> 00:10:06,200 And the whole idea was literally to set Europe ablaze and disrupt the Nazi war machine. 109 00:10:07,820 --> 00:10:14,760 Churchill wants to frustrate the Nazis in France, and also help the resistance to launch 110 00:10:14,760 --> 00:10:23,480 mass sabotage attacks against the Germans ahead of D-Day, whenever the Allied invasion 111 00:10:23,480 --> 00:10:25,000 of France will take place. 112 00:10:31,320 --> 00:10:36,820 The department responsible for this is SOE's France, or F, section. 113 00:10:40,690 --> 00:10:43,350 Head of F section is Maurice Buckmaster. 114 00:10:45,110 --> 00:10:48,410 He's an unlikely choice for a top job at SOE. 115 00:10:50,510 --> 00:10:57,710 Buckmaster served in military intelligence, but he knows nothing about sabotage. 116 00:10:58,490 --> 00:10:58,870 Sir. 117 00:10:58,870 --> 00:11:04,550 He had no experience whatsoever in training people for guerrilla warfare. 118 00:11:05,190 --> 00:11:09,230 Schedule a supply drop to Acrobat for the 22nd. 119 00:11:09,830 --> 00:11:10,550 Yes,...