Star Wars and History

by Nancy Reagin

  One journalist interviewed a miliciana named Carmen, who had been a seamstress in Madrid before the war. She volunteered for the militia, initially planning to do laundry and sewing for the male soldiers, but took a combat role after seeing several comrades killed. A few months later, the same journalist ran into her again and noted that Carmen herself was surprised at how much she had changed, since she had become proficient with a rifle: “Fancy me, a weak woman, and now I can manage a gun with the ease that I used to wield a needle.”7

  After the German invasion of France in 1940, thousands of loyal French citizens joined various Resistance groups dedicated to defeating their Nazi occupiers and those who collaborated with them—among the Resistance groups were more than ten thousand women. Some contributed in very low-key ways: providing food and shelter in “safe houses,” hosting meetings and passing on vital intelligence, and using passwords and code names in order to protect the network, even if they were caught and tortured. The very appearance of normality—doing laundry, minding children—helped disguise many women’s Resistance efforts. In the workplace, female secretaries or low-level civil servants could conceal their contributions to the Resistance, forging identity cards or other paperwork. One secretary made carbon copies of anything “interesting” that she typed, allowing her to tip off the local Resistance if the police were planning a raid.8 Women, in fact, often made up the backbone of resistance movements in France, Italy, and elsewhere in occupied Europe, providing much of the infrastructure for the resistance against the Germans.9

  Because French men were subject to a labor draft and were carefully watched by the government, French women had relative freedom of movement that many used to their advantage. As Brigitte Friang, a Resistance member, later commented, “In the 1940s, we still had the weakness of paying less attention to a woman and a man meeting, in the road, in a restaurant, in trains, than two men meeting.” Young single women were particularly valued in Resistance recruiting as having both the free time and the unassuming status to work for their cause in a variety of roles: serving as couriers, even smuggling goods and people under the authorities’ watch.10 Women’s presence in markets, for example, was seen as normal by the Germans. This meant that women could take on quite risky roles, as one member of the Italian Resistance noted, “Naturally the Germans didn’t think that a woman could have carried a bomb, so this became the woman’s task.”11

  As we saw earlier in the United States during the Civil War, women could play key roles in espionage networks, as well. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, an executive secretary whose boss was arrested by the Gestapo, used the information her employer had gathered before the war to build up one of the most important intelligence networks in occupied France. Her sex protected her from suspicion for a long time; later, even the British authorities were surprised to find out that their main French intelligence chief had been a woman.12

  A group of maquis men and one woman in 1944. Women were a vital minority in the French resistance to the Nazis in World War II.

  At the same time, French women were not expected or welcome in a direct military role, although they were active in the armed forces of several of the other Allies and filled combat roles in the Soviet Union’s military. Charles de Gaulle accepted women into the French military only in order to free up men for combat roles. It was commonly accepted that war was man’s work, and this meant that few women were accepted in the maquis as partisanes, full-time, gun-carrying female fighters.

  Some women persisted against the attitudes and obstacles, among them Georgette Gérard, an athletic engineer who joined the Resistance in 1940 and was one of only two women known to have led a maquis group. Under her direction, they ambushed and sabotaged the Germans so effectively that the Gestapo targeted her directly in the winter of 1943–1944. When she was captured, she was imprisoned by the Germans in Limoges under horrible conditions. The maquis leader survived, thanks to the timely appearance of French liberation forces. Rather like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo breaking into the detention area of the Death Star, French forces freed the prisoners, narrowly averting a massacre of Gérard and her fellow captives.13

  It’s clear that many women performed vital roles in the resistance to oppression, even if they never fired a weapon. Some avoided violence in principle, just as Duchess Satine of the New Mandalorians did during the Clone Wars. At least a few were deliberately sidelined when it came to anything the male leadership felt was unsuitable for women. Others were fully employed in supporting roles. These jobs, often in communication, supply, and transport, were not only key to the success of their resistance movements or rebellions, but, despite being out of direct combat, were still very dangerous undertakings. The Alliance is a perfect example of this: the countless ordinary mechanics, technicians, medics, dispatchers, and other support staff who scramble to evacuate Hoth in the face of an Imperial attack certainly don’t get off easy.

  Even command wasn’t always safe: Leia and other support staff faced danger evacuating Hoth. (The Empire Strikes Back)

  Consider the women of the SOE, Britain’s World War II–era Special Operations Executive. Although many were employed on British soil in war-support jobs as typists, drivers, and clerks, some fifty or so were recruited by Vera Atkins to infiltrate on the continent ahead of the soldiers on D-Day. To recruit and place women in such roles was unprecedented in the British military tradition. There were protests, lawyers for the executive noting women’s particular vulnerability in such situations: “Though all SOE’s agents would be without uniforms and therefore liable to be shot as spies, women agents would have even less legal protection in the field than men.” Nevertheless, dozens of women drawn from various nationalities took up Atkins’s call to form a core of women radio operators and intelligence officers capable of coordinating the Allied invasion with maquis groups on the ground in France.14

  The risks were enormous, and many of the agents were compromised, some immediately on landing in poorly managed parachute jumps. Others were betrayed by double agents within the organizations or captured in Gestapo raids. As the Allied Forces moved across France, making contact with their supporters on the ground, few of these women were still in place with their Resistance groups. Not knowing what happened to these women was too much for Atkins, back in London. In early 1945, she crossed the channel to find out what had happened to her many missing agents, particularly the women who had little to no protection of rank. She worked on the war crimes tribunal and pursued these matters in interrogations, investigations in the concentration camps, and through sheer, dogged determination uncovered the truth. For many of her agents, the trails led only to reports of their deaths.

  Some SOE operatives made it through the war. One such was the Australian Nancy Wake, who had moved to Paris in the 1930s, working as a journalist before she married a Frenchman and joined him in Marseilles. Wake lived through the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940 and soon became involved in the resistance to the German occupation and the collaborationist Vichy government. At first, her contributions seemed minor, at least according to her own memory. She began by providing supplies to the local Resistance group and shelter for Allied soldiers caught behind enemy lines and finally worked as a regular escape courier, assisting people to cross the border into Spain. The Germans dubbed her “the White Mouse” and began to close in on the young married woman. Wake was forced to leave her husband and make the dangerous trek across the Pyrenees into Spain in 1943. Her husband was captured, tortured, and killed by the Germans in retribution.15

  Nancy Wake was a spy, a courier, and a saboteur: one of the Gestapo’s most wanted, due to her work in the French Resistance.

  Within a year, Wake was back in France, parachuted in to assist in running a maquis group. She soon showed herself more than up to the challenge. Hearing a report that thousands of German soldiers were targeting their group, the White Mouse set out with twenty Resistance fighters to relieve their comrades. When some of the teenage maquis fled after
coming under fire, Wake turned into a veritable fury, standing up in the middle of the woods and throwing every foul insult she could muster at the cowards who fled. Shamefaced, most of her soldiers returned, and they were able to save the day.16

  Just as they had in Marseilles, the authorities pursued Wake and the other members of the Resistance. They were always on the run, often evacuating a temporary headquarters location while closely pursued by their enemies. Just as Princess Leia escaped in the withdrawal from Hoth by the skin of her teeth (and the skillful piloting of Han Solo), so, too, did Wake experience the terror of close pursuit. At one point, she was chased out of a maquis headquarters under such a close attack that from her speeding car pursued by a German Henschel, she could clearly see the pilot’s goggles and helmet as he tried to shoot her. A few days later, she carried out an act of everyday heroism none the less remarkable, biking more than three hundred miles in three days to get a new radio and codes for her group after a disastrous withdrawal.

  Wake’s drive and persistence were stunning. Just as the Alliance leaders did with Yavin 4, Wake soon appropriated an old residence (the Château de Fragnes, near Montluçon) as new headquarters for her Resistance group. Where the Rebel Alliance used that vantage point to take down the Death Star, the maquis attack was almost as spectacular. They destroyed the nearby Gestapo headquarters in a tightly organized operation where every member, including Wake herself, raced in at midday to leave a hand grenade in each room, surprising the unaware staff with their sudden arrival and shocking mission. The resulting explosions utterly demolished the headquarters.17

  Armed and Dangerous

  Resistance fighting could get dirty—and not just literally, as when Princess Leia takes a slide into a garbage masher in the Death Star. Sometimes, desperate times called for desperate measures, up to and including assassination. In the Bible, you can read of the daring Jewish widow Judith, who figuratively cut off the head of the Assyrian army threatening her town when she killed the general, Holofernes. Sometimes the assassinations were much more calculated and crass. In Attack of the Clones, the Separatist leader, Count Dooku, puts a bounty on Padmé that is taken up by the bounty hunter Jango Fett, who in turn employs Zam Wesell. In the guise of a human woman, Zam has established herself as a formidable assassin. Her final target eludes her, however: Zam fails to kill the senator. Instead, she is captured by Obi-Wan and Anakin. Before the bounty hunter can reveal her secrets, she is silenced by Fett.

  Not every assassin was in it for the money. Charlotte Corday was a principled assassin during the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century. Originally a true believer in revolution, Corday became disenchanted as the revolutionary regime became increasingly radicalized and devoted to terror and oppression. She determined to strike a blow against these policies by assassinating Jean-Paul Marat, a journalist and a revolutionary leader. On July 13, 1793, Corday succeeded in her plan, stabbing Marat while he was in his bath. Some considered Corday a heroine, but few would publicly support her during the worst excesses of the Revolution’s radical phase. Corday expressed no remorse for her assassination but faced her judges with a calm satisfaction that she had rescued France from a force for evil.18 A speedy trial by the government resulted in her execution: more legal than but just as lethal as Zam Wesell’s end outside a seamy Coruscant dive.

  Obi-Wan Kenobi frequently tangles with women who are as dangerous as Corday, even if they sometimes fight on his side. The Zabrak bounty hunter Sugi leads a band of mercenaries during the Clone Wars and reluctantly teams up with the Jedi when they face a common enemy. Sugi is violent, especially fond of her powerful rifle and vibroblade to settle conflicts, but also intensely honorable. When offered more money to switch sides in a conflict, she instantly refuses, considering the proposed deal an insult to her code of conduct.

  Charlotte Corday believed Marat’s death would free France from revolutionary terror in 1793.

  Asajj Ventress versus Luminara Unduli and Ahsoka Tano: women warriors fight for and against the Republic. (The Clone Wars)

  Zam Wesell isn’t the only Separatist female assassin. In The Clone Wars, we meet Asajj Ventress, who is apprenticed to Darth Tyranus, Count Dooku’s secret Sith identity, during the Clone Wars and who frequently battles the Jedi in her missions. Early in the wars, Dooku dispatches her to either free or permanently silence the Trade Federation viceroy Nute Gunray after the Jedi captures the Neimoidian. In the resulting battle, featured in “Cloak of Darkness,” she faces down one of the most formidable Jedi fighters, Luminara Unduli, and only Ahsoka Tano’s timely intervention saves the day. Ventress is renowned as an assassin but, unlike Corday, fails in her chief target: she repeatedly seeks to slay Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the Jedi Master survives her attacks and schemes.

  Disguise was another important tactic in a resistance fighter’s arsenal. Many women resorted to the obvious disguise of dressing as a man. In fact, that was one of the chief charges against Joan of Arc in her heresy trial. Dressing as a man was illegal in many jurisdictions, right up to the twentieth century. When Princess Leia infiltrates Jabba’s palace on Tatooine disguised as Boushh, she is unrecognizable. The unisex outfit and the muffling helmet make it impossible to distinguish her real identity as she works to free Han Solo from his carbonite bondage. Something must have given her away, of course, because when she releases Han, Jabba and his court are waiting to confront them both. Relying on disguise was risky business but a risk that was worth taking, just as much for those seeking to free their comrades from Gestapo jailers as for Leia, Chewbacca, Luke, and Lando working to rescue Han from Jabba.

  Not every disguise was so inspiring. Many women working for a resistance cause disguised themselves in humble ways: as servants, laborers, schoolgirls, and occasionally prostitutes or mistresses. These disguises couldn’t have always been easy to bear, just as when Ahsoka Tano wears a slave collar in an undercover operation during which Anakin and Obi-Wan pose as slavers.

  Women of the French Resistance employed disguises to aid in their Resistance work. Sometimes they needed to improvise even further when the disguise fell through or didn’t bring the desired results. That was the case for Lucie Aubrac, one of the earliest organizers of the resistance against the Vichy regime. She raised a family while editing a journal for the Resistance and founding a hit squad devoted to rescuing captured comrades. In 1943, the mission became personal. Her husband and coleader, Raymond, had been captured by the authorities. Raymond was destined for cruel torture at the hands of the infamous Klaus Barbie. Knowing that certain death awaited her husband, Aubrac sprang into action. She scouted a nearby hospital, where she pretended to be a doctor. In a smock and wearing a stethoscope, Aubrac was able to rescue several of their agents and acquire a sample of live typhus bacteria. She planned to infect Raymond with candies containing the typhus in order to prevent his torture and execution, but that plan fell through, and Raymond’s transfer to Germany loomed. Forced to improvise, Aubrac and the rest of her hit squad intercepted the prison van transporting her husband. Three German guards died, and thirteen prisoners, including Raymond, were freed, due to their rescuers’ daring act of disguise and cooperation.19

  Leia employs a key resistance tactic when she infiltrates Jabba’s palace in disguise. (Return of the Jedi)

  Resistance: Something Old and Something New

  Women have contributed to resistance movements from ancient times to the modern day and in increasing numbers. In the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920, women supported the revolution with supplies, safe houses, and reporting, and some, such as Dolores Jiménez y Muro, worked their way up to be at the heart of the resistance fight.20 The numbers and the importance of women in rebellion continue to grow. By some estimates, as many as two-thirds of the Sandinistas fighting in Nicaragua in the 1970s were women, and this wasn’t only at the lowest level. Four of the seven military commanders at the fight for León in 1979 were female. Prominent in the Sandinista leadership was Commander Two, Dora María Téllez,
only twenty-three years of age when she became a spokesperson of the revolution.21

  When resisting an invading force or an oppressive regime, women often practice subversive acts that are concealed within the performance of traditional roles: providing food and safe houses for the maquis, typing up useful forgeries and carbon copies of secret documents, or smuggling bombs in a marketing basket. Yet war, revolution, and political upheaval also offer women an opportunity to escape the constraints of tradition in support of their cause. Just as Leia sheds the garb of a princess and disguises herself as a male bounty hunter, so Joan of Arc was able to don armor and lead troops against the English. During the Clone Wars, Sugi is a mercenary leader who ruthlessly executes a pirate who threatens her crew. Ahsoka is assigned to Anakin as his Padawan, in hopes that responsibility for her will temper Anakin’s impulsive and rash ways. Instead, while fighting for the Jedi Order against the Separatists, Ahsoka is even more reckless than her Master. Lucie Aubrac rescued her husband from the Gestapo, and Charlotte Corday carried out a carefully planned assassination in order to save innocent lives—all “unfeminine” feats that could never have occurred in peacetime. Sometimes women started in a more traditional expression of resistance support and ended up in combat, such as Carmen the Spanish seamstress who became a militiana. In both supporting and leading roles, women are now integral to every modern revolution, something that Princess Leia and other women of the Star Wars galaxy would have appreciated.