Dame Blanche (resistance)

La Dame Blanche ("The White Lady") was a codename for an underground intelligence network which operated in German-occupied Belgium during World War I. It took its name from a German legend which stated that the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty would be announced by the appearance of a woman wearing white.

Network

The Dame Blanche network was founded in 1916 by Walthère Dewé, an engineer in Brussels in a telegraph and telephone company. The decision resulted from the arrest and execution of Dewé's cousin, Dieudonné Lambrecht, who had himself founded an intelligence network codenamed Lambrecht. In order to save the group, Dewé took control and developed it under the name Dame Blanche. The network was known for its high female membership; women may have made up as much as 30 percent of its total personnel.^[1]

The network was at first affiliated to the British military intelligence service Cameron Folkstone. After constant infiltration by German counter-espionage they reverted to MI6 station Rotterdam. There they were handled by Captain Henry Landau. After the First World War head of MI6 Mansfield Smith-Cumming stated that La Dame Blanche supplied as much as 70% of military intelligence not only collected from occupied Belgium and northern France, but in total by all Allied intelligence services worldwide.^[2]

By the end of the war, its 1,300 agents covered all of occupied Belgium, northern France and, through a collaboration with Louise de Bettignies' network, occupied Luxembourg.

During the second German occupation of Belgium in World War II, Dewé used the experience of the Dame Blanche network to start a new network, codenamed Clarence.^[3] He was shot and killed while trying to avoid capture by the Germans in 1944.

A monument to the Dame Blanche resistance organization has been built near the city of Liège.^[4]

References

1. "Walthère Dewé". Les malles ont une mémoire 14-18. Retrieved 2014-04-09.
2. Ruis, Edwin. Spynest. British and German Espionage from Neutral Holland 1914-1918. Briscombe: The History Press, 2016.
3. "Resistance in Belgium in World War Two". 2013-01-23. Retrieved 2014-04-09.
4. "Battlefield Tours". The Belgian Tourist Office – The official website of the Tourism and Convention Bureau of Brussels and Wallonia. Archived from the original on April 13, 2014. Retrieved 2014-04-09.

Further reading

• Decock, Pierre (2011). La Dame Blanche. Un réseau de renseignements de la Grande Guerre. ISBN 9781445297040.
• Decock, Pierre. Revue belge d'histoire militaire, XXVII-3, "La Dame Blanche 1916-1918".
• Landau, Henry. Secrets of the White Lady . New York: G.P. Putnam's & Sons, 1935.
• Proctor, Tammy M. Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2003. 205 pp. ISBN 0-8147-6693-5.
• Ruis, Edwin. Spynest. British and German Espionage from Neutral Holland 1914–1918. Briscombe: The History Press, 2016. ISBN 9780750965064.

External links

• La Dame Blanche at 1914-1918 Online Encyclopedia.