Anita Malavasi’s first delivery was salt. In the fall of 1943, she brought a packet of it into the mountains outside the city of Reggio Emilia, in northern Italy, to supply a growing group of soldiers lacking food staples. These fighters were the anti-fascist Resistance—men who’d deserted the armies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and were preparing to fight for freedom.

Though Mussolini had been voted out of power that July, Italy was still firmly under German control, and Nazis were killing or deporting any dissident they came upon. Once 22-year-old Malavasi was comfortable sneaking salt past German checkpoints on her bicycle, she started ferrying illicit publications to the mountains, as well as clothes and food. She wore low-cut, fitted dresses and flirted to disarm Axis officers.