How the Women of the SOE Were Made to Wage War: A Brief Account of Noor Inayat Khan’s Experience as a Biracial Female SOE Agent

Abstract

During the Second World War, thousands of individuals served with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret organization within the British army; and many of them were women. SOE agents carried out clandestine tasks of espionage and sabotage throughout Nazi occupied Europe. The war created various opportunities for women to join the war effort and the SOE was one of the few that allowed women to use the realities of their sex to succeed in their work. Although femineity often aided female agents in their work, it was simultaneously an extra disadvantage they learned to navigate. Particularly unique in her work with the SOE was British Indian agent Noor Inayat Khan. In addition to the difficulties Inayat experienced as a result of her gender, she carried the hardships of her race. Fascinatingly, in the same way female agents triumphed their femineity, Inayat Khan was aided by her experience as a woman of color. This article explores the ways in which Inayat Khan wielded both her femineity and racial identity as strengths, despite the disadvantages they often presented, as an SOE agent.