In the midst of the fury and horror of World War 2, a secret war was waged in the towns, cities and countryside of Europe. Spy games respected neither borders nor neutrality, and the agents that played them knew that if caught, they would be first interrogated, probably tortured, and then either shot or hanged.

The spies of WWII took on assignments that made hearts hammer and palms grow sweaty, but two of them in particular took them on with such cool-headed swagger that their exploits resound with heroism and adventure.

Virginia Hall was a Gestapo-swerving, jail-breaking, one-legged hero who supported the French Resistance until it was finally time to get out of dodge. Dusko Popov was one of the inspirations for James Bond, a Serbian playboy and womanising double-agent who could have changed the course of the entire war. 

Both of them, and all Allied spies like them, fought a different kind of war to the men flying Spitfires or storming the beaches of Normandy, but it was all in the cause of the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s Nazism, and their contribution was just as dangerous and just as great as any soldier, sailor or airman.

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