16. From Cultural Icon to Resistance Heroine
When WWII began, French intelligence recruited Jazz Era icon Josephine Baker, AKA the “Creole Goddess”, “Black Pearl”, and “Bronze Venus”, who by then was a naturalized French citizen. In the 1930s, she had voiced support for Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, so when the Axis overran Franc in 1940, they assumed she was sympathetic to their cause. They were mistaken.
Baker took advantage of the occupiers’ trust and exploited her fame to charm Axis officials at social gatherings, in order to collect information. As an international entertainer, she had an excuse to travel, and she did, smuggling coded messages, written in invisible ink on her music sheets, between the French Resistance and the Allies.