SOE - An outline history of the Special Operations Executive 1940-46

SOE, the Special Operations Executive, was a small tough British secret service, a dirty tricks department, set up in July 1940. Its job was to support and stimulate resistance in occupied countries. After the end of the war it was wound up; it has left a dubious reputation. Though SOE’s total strength was never more than 10,000 men and 3200 women — over a third of them active secret agents — it exercised vast influence on the war all over the world. North American newspaper editors, South American businessmen, Spanish smugglers, Abyssinian tribesmen, Norwegian mountaineers, French farmers, schoolchildren and hat-makers, Dutch printers, Belgian, Danish, Czech and Polish railway porters, Greek brigands, Serb, Croat, Slovene and Bulgar peasants, Romanian, Tbrkish and Swedish policemen, Chinese tycoons and guerillas, Naga and Karenni hillmen, Malayan rubber workers, Siamese noblemen — these were some of the groups whose lives were affected, sometimes dominated, by SOE.
This book explains, clearly and readably, how SOE was created and run, the astounding calibre of the men and women who fought in it, what tools they used, how and where they applied them, where they did well and where they did badly. Like any other body of warriors, they made some fearful mistakes. They also displayed, to a most unusual degree, the highest qualities of character, courage, and devotion to freedom.
SOE provides background for a major BBC TV series; it sheds also, in its own right, fresh light on some of the darkest comers of a world war. The tales it tells are true; they far outshine fiction.