Introduction: Special Operations Executive – New Approaches and Perspectives

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes These would include inter alia David Stafford, Secret Agent: The True Story of the Special Operations Executive (London, 2002) and Ian Dear, Sabotage and Subversion. The SOE and OSS at War (London, 1996). Nor are these young scholars alone: see the forthcoming work of Suzanne Hall (Nottingham), Ian Hetherington (de Montfort), Alexandra Luce (Cambridge) and Pia Molander (Exeter). Stafford, Secret Agent (note 1); Mark Seaman, The Bravest of the Brave: The True Story of Wing Commander ‘Tommy’ Yeo-Thomas, SOE, Secret Agent, Codename ‘White Rabbit’ (London, 1997); idem, Operation Foxley: The British Plan to Kill Hitler (Kew: The National Archives, 1998) and E.D.R. Harrison, ‘British Subversion in French East Africa, 1941–42: SOE's Todd Mission’, English Historical Review 114 (April 1999) pp.339–69; idem, ‘The British Special Operations Executive and Poland’, The Historical Journal 43/4 (2000) pp.1071–91. Mark Wheeler, ‘The SOE Phenomenon’, Journal of Contemporary History 16 (1981) pp.513–19. W.J.M. Mackenzie, Secret History of SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940–1945 (London, 2000). See Christopher J. Murphy, ‘The Origins of SOE in France’, The Historical Journal 46/4 (2003) pp.935–52; Richard J. Aldrich, ‘Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence since 1945’, English Historical Review 119 (2004) pp.954–64. The problem was not simply one of how to deal with the existence of Britain's secret organizations. See David J. Reynolds, In Command of History. Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London, 2004) pp.23–35. Ernest May, ‘On Writing Contemporary International History’, Diplomatic History 8 (1984) pp.103–13. Charles Cruikshank, SOE in the Far East (London, 1983); idem, SOE in Scandinavia (London, 1986). M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France. An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944 (London, 1966, new rev. edn., 2004); idem, SOE in the Low Countries (London, 2001). We are told that Ian Wood's history of Italy and Mark Wheeler's history of Yugoslavia are some way off. See F.H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War vols.1–3 (London, 1979–1988). For MI9, the escape and evasion organization, see M.R.D. Foot and J.M. Langley, MI9. Escape and Evasion (Boston, 1980); for strategic deception, Roger Hesketh, Fortitude. The D-Day Deception Campaign (London, 2000) and Michael Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War. Volume 5. Strategic Deception (Cambridge, 1990); and for PWE, David Garnett, The Secret History of PWE. The Political Warfare Executive (London, 2002). Sir Edward Hale (Cabinet Office, Historical Section) to Burke St J. Trend (Treasury), 10 June 1959. The National Archive. Public Record Office (hereafter PRO). T220/1388. St Ermin's Press should be applauded for publishing the text in an unabridged form. For a more comprehensive account of SOE's war, readers should consult Mackenzie, Secret History (note 5), M.R.D. Foot's SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive 1940–46 (London, 1984), David Stafford's Britain and European Resistance. 1940–1945. A Survey of Special Operations Executive with Documents (London and Toronto, 1980), whose penetrating insights of the organization and its place in British strategy have more than stood the test of time, Nigel West's Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartime Sabotage Organisation (London, 1992), or the proceedings of a conference on SOE hosted by the Imperial War Museum and scheduled for publication in the near future. It is estimated that SOE personnel in the Far East outnumbered their SIS counterparts by ten to one. For Aldrich's thoughts on ‘historians of secret service and their enemies’, see Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand. Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2001) pp.1–16. One can only guess as to whether SIS's own wartime archive suffered the same fate. Mark Wheeler, ‘The SOE Phenomenon’, Journal of Contemporary History 16 (1981) pp.513–19. The IWM's catalogue, Special Operations Executive: Catalogue of Oral History recordings (London, 1998), though useful, should not be taken as a complete inventory of the museum's holdings. Jay Jakob, Spies and Saboteurs. Anglo-American Collaboration and Rivalry in Human Intelligence and Special Operations, 1940–1945 (London, 1999); Martin Thomas, ‘The Massingham Mission: SOE in French North Africa, 1941–1944’, Intelligence and National Security 11/4 (1996) pp.696–721. For a perceptive new study on the OSS, see Christof Mauch, The Shadow War Against Hitler: The Covert Operations of America's Wartime Secret Intelligence Service (New York, 2003). SOE Personnel Files are filed in PRO. HS9. See, inter alia, Ralph Bennett, Sir William Deakin, Sir David Hunt and Sir Peter Wilkinson, ‘Mihailovic and Tito’, Intelligence and National Security 10/3 (1995) pp.526–28, and, for a more recent assessment, Heather Williams, The Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Yugoslavia, 1941–5 (London, 2002). For a stimulating study of the concept of clandestine diplomacy see Len Scott, ‘Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy’, in L.V. Scott and P.D. Jackson (eds.), Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century. Journeys in Shadows (London, 2004) pp.162–79. Minute by ‘DH44’, 1 December 1942. PRO. HS3/222. For Spain, see Denis Smyth, ‘Les Chevaliers de Saint-George: la Grande-Bretagne et la corruption des généraux espagnols (1940–1942)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 162 (1991) pp.29–54, and Portugal, Neville Wylie, ‘An Amateur Learns His Job’? Special Operations Executive in Portugal, 1940–1942’, Journal of Contemporary History 36/3 (2001) pp.455–571. See Aldrich, The Hidden Hand (note 15) p.76; Spencer Mawby, ‘The Clandestine Defence of Empire: British Special Operations in Yemen 1951–1964’, Intelligence and National Security 17/3 (2002) pp.105–30. For a particularly graphic illustration of this see Matthew Jones, ‘The “Preferred Plan”: The Anglo-American Working Group Report on Covert Action in Syria, 1957’, Intelligence and National Security 19/3 (2004), pp.401–415. See most recently Garnett, Secret History of PWE (note 10), and Michael Stenton, Radio London and Resistance in Occupied Europe (Oxford, 2000). Mackenzie, Secret History (note 5) p.712. See also AD/X1 to D/CE 12 December 1944. PRO. HS8/883. See David Messenger, ‘Fighting for Relevance: Economic Intelligence and Special Operations Executive in Spain, 1943–1945’, Intelligence and National Security, 15/3 (2000) pp.33–54. For these arrangements, see minutes of inter-departmental meeting, 17 October 1944. PRO. HS8/355. Memo, ‘Official History of SOE. Further Report by a Working Party, Secret’, 22 May 1959. PRO. T220/1388. Bickham Sweet-Escott, Baker Street Irregular (London, 1965) p.254. See Robert Bickers, ‘The Business of a Secret War: Operation “Remorse” and SOE Salesmanship in Wartime China’, Intelligence and National Security 16/4 (2001) pp.11–36 See for instance M.R.D. Foot, ‘Was SOE any Good?’, Journal of Contemporary History 16/1 (1981) pp.167–81. Memo by Sir Frank Nelson (CD) 17 February 1941. PRO. HS6/309 SOE France No.1 Vol.2. I am indebted to David Stafford for drawing this document to my attention. There is more than a suspicion that the gusto with which its critics routinely recited its shortcomings reflected institutional pique at the emergence of a new and potent agency, and a desire to mask their own palpable shortcomings and inability to change with the times.