Good Assassins

iHeart True Crime
  • 4.8 (3.3K)
  • TRUE CRIME
  • SERIES

Season 2 is the unbelievable but true story of the greatest spy of World War II. The Nazis don't know her name, but they want this woman dead. A mysterious agent is strategically dismantling their violent grasp on France and not only leading her own resistance factions but inspiring others. The Gestapo sends their devious double-agent, the priest Robert Alesh, to hunt down The Limping Lady before she threatens their entire push for Western Europe. But Virginia Hall was tougher and more resilient than they ever expected. Season 1 was a Top 10 hit with millions of listeners, making it one of the Top 20 new podcasts of 2021. Bestselling author and journalist Stephan Talty returns with Season 2 of Good Assassins: the dramatic story of a different kind of spy. Written by CD Carpenter (“American Hostage”) and produced by the award-winning team at Diversion Audio.

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  1. EPISODE 1

    1. The Greatest Spy of WWII (Season 2)

    The story of one of the most consequential spies in American history. Her name was Virginia Hall, and she was known to the Nazis as "The Limping Lady." The Nazis called her “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.” From spy to resistance leader, her story is a thrilling tale of a woman whose efforts in the face of fascism, racism, sexism, and ableism saved thousands of lives.

    33 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    2. The Death of Old Lives (Season 2)

    Virginia Hall enlists in France's organization that provided medical assistance to French soldiers on the battlefield. It would be a grueling endeavor. Virginia is given basic medical training, learning how to apply tourniquets and bandages on some of the worst wartime injuries recorded in human history. They were supposed to work in the echoes of gunfire, long after the battle was over, but she often found herself closer to firefights and exploding shells than she expected. Virginia was given a job as an ambulance driver and stationed near the Maginot Line. She was to witness hell.

    26 min
  3. 3. The Priest (Season 2)

    EPISODE 3

    3. The Priest (Season 2)

    A Nazi spy is tasked with uncovering underground Allied resistance networks. He was favored by the SS as a top hunter. Robert Alesh was a Luxembourger priest better known in France by his alias: "Father Robert Ackuin." The raids, arrests, and executions that Alesh’s treacherous work made possible set British intelligence back months. Alesh’s time as a priest served him well in his search for Jews and the Allied spies. Alesh begins working for one of the most evil men in history: the head of the Nazi Gestapo in Lyon, France: Klaus Barbie. Alesh receives his first hard evidence of the existence of “The Limping Lady,” the Allied spy running prison breaks and sabotage operations. So Robert Alesh and Virginia Hall begin a game of cat and mouse.

    32 min
  4. 4. Spy Games (Season 2)

    EPISODE 4

    4. Spy Games (Season 2)

    Virginia Hall joins the UK's spy agency, the Special Operations Executive. The SOE was created to "set Europe ablaze" and wreak havoc on the battlefield: sabotage plus a little espionage, paramilitary operations, make things blow up.

    36 min
  5. 5. Enemy Territory (Season 2)

    EPISODE 5

    5. Enemy Territory (Season 2)

    Robert Alesh’s hunt for “The Limping Lady” brings him to the doorstep of Resistance operative Dr. Jean Rousset. Alesh tricks the doctor into believing he is a new courier for the French Resistance. In reality, he was a Nazi spy working directly for infamous SS officer Klaus Barbie.

    29 min
  6. 6. Spy Versus Spy (Season 2)

    EPISODE 6

    6. Spy Versus Spy (Season 2)

    Virginia Hall had been expecting company. One of the Resistance leaders in France had informed her of a new courier that could be of use to HECKLER, Virginia’s faction of the Resistance. But what Virginia didn’t know was that the courier was Robert Alesh—a Nazi operative who had managed to infiltrate the Resistance while posing as a priest. Right away, Virginia suspected something was off.

    27 min
  7. 7. Escape into the Mountains (Season 2)

    EPISODE 7

    7. Escape into the Mountains (Season 2)

    Virginia Hall’s identity was exposed. Now she had to get out of France and into Spain, and that meant an excruciating climb over 30 miles of tumultuous mountain terrain. Virginia knew that attempting the trek alone would mean death, especially given that she’d be hiking with her prosthetic leg. Luckily, Perpignan, the town she’d landed in, had a Resistance contact she knew fairly well. A man known to her by his codename: Gilbert.

    30 min
  8. 8. Return of The Limping Lady (Season 2)

    EPISODE 8

    8. Return of The Limping Lady (Season 2)

    Virginia Hall’s prison cell in northeastern Spain was something out of a nightmare. Hall imagined the moment in which the Spanish police would hand her over to the Gestapo and their glee at having finally captured "The Limping Lady." Hall knew the Nazis wouldn’t risk letting her escape. They’d transfer her to a secret facility, interrogate her, torture her, and kill her. Or sometimes the Nazis kept their prisoners alive and attempted to leverage them against the Allies. Months of psychological torture would give way to more physical punishments. Dousing with freezing water. Electric shocks. Beatings and cutting. This was the way of the Nazis. Virginia's Hall's American nationality was maybe the one thing that could save her. In late 1942, Spain was still considered technically neutral in the war. The Spanish dictator Francisco Franco had offered Hitler Spain’s allegiance in return for aid in nation-building. There was a division of Spanish volunteers fighting for the German army, but Spain still remained reluctant and fickle.  Andrew Orr says, "Franco's regime is ideologically complex and people still fight over whether or not it was fascist or just really authoritarian and traditionalist. Regardless of how anyone's individual sees it, the regime was very friendly to Nazi Germany and especially fascist Italy because Italy and Germany had backed Franco in the civil war. So Spain tended politically to like the Axis powers a lot." But Virginia Hall’s capture by the Spanish was too big a threat to the British. Hall knew too much, and the Nazis could assume that the British would change battle strategy once the Special Operations Executive, Hall’s intelligence agency, discovered she’d been captured. Hall’s information would be useless to the Axis Powers, and so she was as good as dead.

    35 min
  9. 9. Agents of Sabotage (Season 2)

    EPISODE 9

    9. Agents of Sabotage (Season 2)

    Virginia Hall was back in occupied France, but she was no longer working for the British. She was an agent of the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. Virginia was living in the farmhouse of a respected Resistance leader. She was spending her existence in disguise as an old woman, decked out in multiple wool skirts, makeshift prosthetics, and dyed gray hair; all the while constantly walking by wanted posters stapled around town with sketches of The Limping Lady. But this new life promised Virginia something she’d been waiting for since she’d had to flee France almost 18 months earlier: the opportunity to take the fight directly to the Nazis.

    40 min
  10. 10. The Boy Who Shot the Nazi (Season 2)

    EPISODE 10

    10. The Boy Who Shot the Nazi (Season 2)

    Kristallnacht was the violent uprising against German Jews in November 1938 that was the opening to the eventual genocide of six million Europeans Jews—and then millions of others—during World War II. This final episode of Good Assassins Season 2 tells the story of Herschel Grynszpan, the young man whose story is at the dead center of the Holocaust. He became an assassin, and the assassination he committed on November 7, 1938 in Paris is the spark that set off the inferno that was the Nazi Holocaust. In 1938 Herschel Grynszpan was just 17 years old.

    38 min
  11. Trailer: Good Assassins Season 2

    SEASON 2 TRAILER

    Trailer: Good Assassins Season 2

    This season of Good Assassins is the dramatic story of a different kind of spy: the greatest spy of World War II. A mysterious agent is strategically dismantling the Nazis’ violent grasp on France. They send a devious double-agent to hunt down “The Limping Lady” before she threatens their genocidal plans. But Virginia Hall was tougher than they ever expected. With deep archival research, rare primary source tape, expert interviews, powerful recreations, and a heavy dose of thriller, author and journalist Stephan Talty is back with Good Assassins: Season 2. Run for your life. Learn more at diversionaudio.com/good-assassins See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1 min
See All Season 2 (11)

Trailers

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Season 2 is the unbelievable but true story of the greatest spy of World War II. The Nazis don't know her name, but they want this woman dead. A mysterious agent is strategically dismantling their violent grasp on France and not only leading her own resistance factions but inspiring others. The Gestapo sends their devious double-agent, the priest Robert Alesh, to hunt down The Limping Lady before she threatens their entire push for Western Europe. But Virginia Hall was tougher and more resilient than they ever expected. Season 1 was a Top 10 hit with millions of listeners, making it one of the Top 20 new podcasts of 2021. Bestselling author and journalist Stephan Talty returns with Season 2 of Good Assassins: the dramatic story of a different kind of spy. Written by CD Carpenter (“American Hostage”) and produced by the award-winning team at Diversion Audio.

Information

  • Channel
    iHeart True Crime
  • Creator
    iHeartPodcasts and Diversion
  • Episodes
    26
  • Seasons
    2
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    2025 iHeartMedia, Inc. © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from iHeartMedia
  • Show Website
    Good Assassins
  • Provider
    iHeartMedia + Entertainment, Inc

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