Dame Blanche (resistance)

La Dame Blanche ("The White Woman") 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 Hohenzollen dynasty would be announced by the appearance of a women 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 in 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 had many women, possibly as much as 30%. It supplied as much as 75% of the intelligence collected from occupied Belgium and northern France. 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 German occupation of Belgium during World War II, Dewé used the experience of the Dame Blanche network to start a new network, codenamed Clarence. He was captured and executed by the Germans in 1944.

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