Women in British Intelligence during the World Wars

Women played a wide range of roles in intelligence during both world wars, although much of their work remained obscured by secrecy, assumptions about administrative labour and the later emphasis placed on male officers. Their contributions ranged from clerical and analytical work to clandestine field operations.

Women ran or supported resistance networks and escape lines, interpreted aerial photography, handled communications, interrogated prisoners and maintained the administrative systems on which intelligence organisations depended. In occupied Europe, women carrying reports or sheltering Allied personnel faced imprisonment and execution if discovered.

Helen Fry’s Women in Intelligence brings these different forms of work into a single history, arguing that women were not peripheral helpers but central participants in the intelligence machinery of the two world wars.