Noor Inayat Khan: the forgotten Indian princess who fought Nazis

To celebrate 100 years since British women were given the right to vote, The Telegraph – alongside the Mayor of London’s#BehindEveryGreatCityCampaign – is running a weekly series.

‘Hidden Credits’ looks back and celebrates individual women who have smashed glass ceilings, helped change society for the better and given the UK’s capital something to boast about.

On September 13 1944, Noor Inayat Khan, aged 30, lay dead on a stone floor at Dachau concentration camp, the first SS-run camp for "political prisoners" under Hitler's regime. With the word "liberté" still on her lips, she had just been executed with a shot to the head. 

In the lead up to this moment, Khan had faced 10 months of starvation and torture at the hands of ruthless Gestapo guards, who had arrested her a year earlier after she was betrayed by a Frenchwoman.

Those responsible for her death only knew her as Nora Baker, a British spy. This was far from the full story.

Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan was born January 1 1914, in Russia, to an American mother and Sufi musician and mystic father of royal descent; his great-great-grandfather had been Tipu Sultan, the 18th Century Muslim ruler of Mysore who refused to submit to British rule and was killed in battle in 1799.

The eldest of four children, Khan grew up in the suburbs of Paris, at "Fazal Manzil" House of Blessing, and described as kind, vague and of an artistic nature. But with the sudden death of her father in 1927, she suddenly found herself having to step into his shoes, as head of the family.

Yet, she followed her artistic nature and, during the Thirties, studied music at the Paris conservatory and child psychology at the Sorbonne, later becoming a talented writer and broadcaster of children's stories.

But in 1939, Khan’s fate took a turn, when she trained as a nurse with the French Red Cross for the war effort. Though a Muslim Sufi pacifist, when Germany invaded France in June 1940, she vowed to "to thwart the aggression of the tyrant" and escaped to England.

There, Khan quickly began to set her vow in motion by volunteering for the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). And with her advanced radio skills and bilingualism, she was noticed by the elite Special Operations Executive (SOE) and recruited as a secret agent in 1942.

Though some SOE trainers doubted her suitability for espionage and tried to stifle her progression, Khan proved them wrong when she became the first female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France in 1943.

During the chaotic summer that year, 29-year-old Khan found herself practically in charge of the broken Prosper network of resistance communications in Paris, dodging between safe houses and outwitting the Gestapo, all while transmitting messages with speed and accuracy.

Recalling her endeavours during this hostile time, biographer Shrabani Basu notes how Khan "single-handedly did the work of six radio operators."

Despite suspicions that the network had been infiltrated by a Nazi spy, Khan refused to return to Britain and persisted in her efforts to rebuild the network, which was famously tasked by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze". With this tenacity, Khan was able to run a cell of spies across Paris for three more months, frequently changing her appearance and alias.

She was betrayed in October 1943 - it is thought by Renée Garry, the sister of her first contact in Paris - and captured by the Gestapo. She made several attempts to escape, which led her captors to brand her as "highly dangerous".

After spending months in solitary confinement in Germany’s Pforzheim prison, where she refused to reveal any information, Khan was transferred, with three other female SOE agents, to Dachau.

Khan ultimately gave her life for a country to which she had no natural affinity, and did so as a devoted supporter of Indian independence and believer in freedom, not fascism.

Basu notes, “For her to come into this world on the front line, taking on the Gestapo, showed her inner strength and her courage, her immense courage and resilience.

"Two and a half million Indians volunteered for the war effort and it was the largest single volunteer army. I think we must not forget their contribution. Noor was part of this".