The SIS and SOE in Norway 1940-1945: Conflict or Co-operation?

Abstract

There is a historical consensus that the Secret Intelligent Services (SIS) and Special Operations Executive (SOE) were from the summer of 1940 locked into a conflict at the highest level, based on rivalry and jealousy, and which at times threatened the very existence of the SOE. It has also been claimed that the operational priority given to the SIS along Norway’s west coast significantly restricted SOE operations into the country. However, examination of the SOE archives now available at the Public Record Office in London and at the Norwegian Resistance Museum in Oslo appear to show that at a sectional and operational level within Norway the relationship between the SOE and SIS was not fraught with the same difficulties. These files also appear to indicate that the SIS operational priority had very little impact on SOE operations. The archives provide numerous examples of co-operation between the two organizations that operated extensively in Norway from the summer of 1940. They exchanged intelligence, shared clandestine radio stations, and used the same fishing boats to transport agents to Norway; several SIS agents moved on to work for the SOE. Both organizations from an early stage, in order to recruit Norwegian agents, were also required to work with the Norwegian authorities based in London. It was a relationship more often built on co-operation than conflict.