In the summer of 1940, Paris fell under Nazi occupation. German soldiers marched through the boulevards, and swastika flags replaced the vibrant café illuminations that had defined the City of Light.
Yet, the beautiful Josephine Baker continued to captivate the French capital.
Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, she was an African American dancer and singer who had risen to stardom in Europe during the 1920s.
To the Nazis, she appeared as little more than an entertaining celebrity, fixated on glamour, performances, and luxury.
This was a grave error on their part.
Baker deeply opposed the Nazis’ ideology of racial superiority, brutality, and discrimination, views shaped by her own experiences of racism in the United States.
When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, she was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, France’s military intelligence agency, as an “honourable correspondent”. She agreed without hesitation, driven by loyalty to the country that had embraced her.
As part of the French Resistance, Baker operated openly rather than in secrecy. She frequented high-society gatherings at embassies and salons, mingling with Italian diplomats, Japanese officials, and German officers.
These figures spoke candidly in her presence, sharing details of military strategies, troop positions, and alliances.
Baker committed this intelligence to memory, then relayed it to her contacts.
Smuggling the information posed significant risks, with borders tightly controlled and luggage routinely inspected. However, her status as an international star allowed her to travel extensively with trunks of costumes and stacks of sheet music.
She concealed sensitive data by writing it in invisible ink on her sheet music, which appeared innocuous to inspectors.
Her fame often spared her thorough searches; border guards frequently requested autographs instead. In this way, she transported crucial intelligence across Europe and into North Africa, where she also entertained Allied troops, sometimes performing atop military vehicles in the desert while clad in elegant attire.
During the war, Baker suffered a severe illness, likely peritonitis, which hospitalised her in Casablanca from 1941 to 1942. Even then, she persisted, using her recovery period to host Resistance meetings.
After the war’s conclusion in 1945, France recognised her contributions. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance, and General Charles de Gaulle named her a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, the nation’s highest civilian honour.
Baker passed away on 12 April 1975, at the age of 68, following a cerebral haemorrhage. Her funeral at L’Église de la Madeleine in Paris drew over 20,000 mourners, and she received full French military honours, including a 21-gun salute.
She was the first American-born woman to be accorded such a tribute.
Josephine Baker’s story illustrates a profound truth: underestimation can prove to be a formidable adversary’s undoing.
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