About
Romanian-born British intelligence officer who worked in the France section of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. During her time as an intelligence officer, she supplied Winston Churchill with information on the rising threat of Nazi Germany. Her primary role was the recruitment and deployment of British agents in occupied France.
Before Fame
She briefly studied modern languages at the Sorbonne in Paris and attended a finishing school at Lausanne. She emigrated to Great Britain in 1937, where she attended a secretarial training school in London. While in Romania, she made connections with several British Intelligence diplomats who later supported her application for British nationality.
Trivia
She was recruited before World War II by Canadian spymaster Sir William Stephenson of British Security Co-ordination. She was made a Knight of the Legion of Honourby the French government in 1987.
Family Life
She had a German-Jewish father and a British-Jewish mother. She had two brothers. After a relationship with a British pilot who was killed in 1941, she never married. She passed away in June of 2000 after breaking her hip and contracting MRSA in the hospital.
Associated With
William Stevenson wrote the book about her, The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II.
