Violette Szabo was a crack British agent who fought against the Nazis before being captured and executed. Her daughter has issued a heartfelt message as war rages again in Europe
The daughter of one of Britain’s greatest wartime heroines has issued a stark warning we are headed towards another global catastrophe.
Tania Szabo says she fears Word War 3 is a genuine prospect thanks to current conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and because we are failing to learn from our past. Tania is the daughter of Violette Szabo, a British agent who parachuted into Occupied France in World War Two and fought against Nazi forces before ultimately being captured, tortured and executed.
There are modern day parallels with the oppression and dictatorships her mother fought so bravely against, said Tania. “Just think of those people in Ukraine, millions of them, they’ve lost their homes, they’re being killed, wounded. “Syria is the same thing. all those people left with nothing, they’ve lost everything.
“We need to learn to do differently, we are passing now towards further war, the Third World War, if we are not careful. “We need to do something to stop these crazy men who think they are the best in the world. They are just megalomaniacs, crucially, they couldn’t give a damn: ‘So what if that little person is affected?’, this is their attitude. These are little people suffering to them.”
Tania, who as a little girl accepted one of the UK’s highest bravery medals on her mother’s behalf from King George VI, issued her warning at the Liberation Route Europe Forum, a networking event of organisations dedicated to commemorating and learning lessons from the history of World War Two.
She said that placing importance and value on everyone was the way to tackle ideas of hatred and the power mad, particularly by focusing on victims of previous conflicts: “Each of us through our lives needs to remember people.” Paying tribute to the goals of LRE at the forum in Krakow, Poland, Tania added: “This is a wonderful organisation, the things it is doing and I’d never heard of it till a couple of weeks ago. And I’d like to say thankyou.”
Tania grew up in Stockwell, south London, where her mother – a dual British-French citizen, was from and now lives in Builth Wells, Wales. Violette married an officer in the Free French Army during the war but tragically he died at the battle of El Alamein, in North Africa in 1942, early in their marriage. Tania said: “It was very sad. They were still in the flush of first romance. But a little seed dropped, which happened to turn out to be me.”
Violette joined Britain’s Special Operations Executive, as Tania said “to avenge her husband” and was trained as an agent, in all kinds of skills including unarmed combat, tracking and killing. She undertook missions in France, working with the French resistance against the Germans. It was in the summer of 1944, while fighting to stop the progress of an SS panzer division heading from the south to combat the Allied invasion of Normandy, that Violette was taken prisoner and dragged to Gestapo headquarters.
Relating her mother’s capture and handover to the infamous Nazi secret police, Tania broke down as she ruefully remarked: “She didn’t go for tea and biscuits.” Following torture and interrogation, Violette was transferred to a concentration camp. Fellow inmates related how she retained her defiant sprit, even performing a morale-boosting comedy Lambeth Walk when they were forced to stand at attention for hours. But ultimately Violette and two other British female agents were shot dead by guards at an execution in the last months of the war. She was just 23.
Violette was posthumously awarded the George Cross, which Tania accepted on her behalf as a four-and-a-half year old girl, wearing the dress her mother had bought her on an earlier visit to Paris. Violette was played by actress Virginia McKenna when her story was told in the film “Carve Her Name With Pride” and Tania has written her own book about her mother’s exploits, entitled in different editions ‘Young, Brave and Beautiful’ and ‘Violette: The Missions of SOE Agent Violette Szabo GC’.
Tania said telling her mother’s story, particularly during the run up to the VE Day commemorations is “certainly a privilege”. The 80th anniversary of VE Day is a central part of LRE’s Europe Remembers campaign. The organisation’s mission is to ensure the lessons of the war remain visible, accessible and relevant for future generations. It brings together a vast network of events, digital storytelling and public engagement, in particular using the routes that forces from west, south and east took to overcome Nazi Germany – highlighting areas of historical note and the people who took part in the battle for liberation.
Retired languages translator Tania, 82, again drew the connection of why it is important to learn from the past, particularly with regard to the perilous state the world currently finds itself in, saying: “My mother was fighting for freedom, and just wanted us to be free and in a democracy. No matter how poor a democracy is, it’s better than all the rest.”
She added: “Putin has already used delaying tactics to gain more leverage in his grab through the war of Ukraine with Donald Trump tacitly backing him. Already the US has some of its freedoms stripped away by the unelected ‘heiling’ Elon Musk.” Tania, who has previously lived in the US, said Trump and his team were “eroding America”, and said: “I have researched Trump for years from his childhood up and it is not favourable. We desperately need to step up our vigilance.”
To find out more about the LRE Foundation, its network of trails throughout Europe, projects, events and educational resources, go to: www.liberationroute.com
