"The heinous betrayal of a heroic Second World War woman spy who was executed in a German concentration camp has been revealed in a new book. Diana Rowden, an agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), was dropped into occupied France in June 1943 and worked for the French Resistance. She and a fellow agent planned the destruction of the Nazi-requisitioned Peugeot factory, where tank turrets and aircraft engine parts were made. Hunted at every turn by the Gestapo, Rowden worked tirelessly for the Allied war effort, providing the British military with vital intelligence via secret radio messages. But she was betrayed by one of her own colleagues in the F Section of the SOE and sent to a concentration camp where she was executed by her captors aged 29. Henri Dericourt, the air operations man for France, was actually a double agent working for the Gestapo. He helped them infiltrate her undercover group, which led to her capture. The story of her betrayal is told in depth in Her Finest Hour, The Heroic Life of Diana Rowden, Wartime Secret Agent, by war historian Gabrielle McDonald-Rothwell. Rowden was born in Chelsea in 1915 and in the 1930s worked as a freelance journalist in France. At the outset of war, Rowden stayed in France and signed up for the Red Cross. She helped many people escape from France before the situation got so dangerous for British people that she reluctantly returned to England in mid-1941. She was determined to help out with the war effort in any way, first signing up for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force then being recruited to the SOE, which needed French-speaking agents on the ground ahead if the impending Allied invasion." Betrayal of British woman spy captured by Nazis | Daily Mail Online
