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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Jon Henley Europe correspondent

Josephine Baker: the superstar turned spy who fought the Nazis and for civil rights

Josephine Baker entertains troops at a London victory party in 1945.
Josephine Baker entertains troops at a London victory party in 1945. Photograph: Jack Esten/Getty Images

She was, according to US wartime counter-intelligence officer Lt Paul Jensen, “our No 1 contact in French Morocco”, supporting the allied mission “at great risk to her own life – and I mean that literally. We would have been quite helpless without her.”

The British intelligence agent Donald Darling had her down as an especially “cherished agent of [Charles] de Gaulle’s government”. Well aware of her importance, the UK foreign intelligence service MI6 called her “the pet lady agent” of the Free French.

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