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Author: Rogak, Lisa

Biography: historical, political & military

Published on 6 March 2025 by Footnote Press Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 240 pages
224 x 143 x 23 | 348g

This is the incredible untold story of four women who helped win World War II by generating a wave of black propaganda.

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

Members of the Office of Strategic Services, their task was to create a secret brand of propaganda produced with the sole aim to break the morale of Axis soldiers. Working in Europe, across enemy lines in occupied China and in Washington D.C., Betty, Zuzka, Jane and Marlene forged letters and ‘official’ military orders, wrote and produced entire newspapers, scripted radio broadcasts and songs and even developed rumours for undercover spies and double agents to spread to the enemy. And outside of a small group of spies, no one knew they existed. Until now.