Jean Moulin (20 June 1899 – 8 July 1943) was a high-profile member of the French Resistance during World War II. He is remembered today as an emblem of the Resistance, owing mainly to his role in unifying the French resistance under de Gaulle and his courage and death at the hands of the Gestapo.
Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress who came to be known in various circles as the "Black Pearl," "Bronze Venus" and even the "Creole Goddess". Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, Josephine later became a citizen of France in 1937. She was fluent in both English and French. In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence as an “honorable correspondent”. Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. She specialized in gatherings at embassies and ministries, charming people as she had always done, while gathering information. Her café-society fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats, and to report back what she heard. She attended parties at the Italian embassy without any suspicion falling on her and gathered information. When the Germans invaded France, Baker left Paris and went to the Château des Milandes, her home in the south of France. She housed friends who were eager to help the Free French effort led by Charles de Gaulle and supplied them with visas. As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe, visiting neutral nations such as Portugal and some in South America, carrying information for transmission to England, about airfields, harbors, and German troop concentrations in the West of France. It would be written in invisible ink on Josephine’s sheet music
Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo née Bushell, (26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was the daughter of an English father and French mother, and widow of a French army officer killed in action in North Africa in 1942, who served during World War II as an SOE agent on two missions in occupied France. On her second mission she was captured by the Germans, interrogated and tortured, and deported to Germany where she was eventually executed at Ravensbrueck concentration camp.