By Eric Vandenbroeck

The Political Warfare Executive (PWE) And The Special Operations Executive (SOE')

During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate white and black propaganda to damage enemy morale and sustain the Occupied countries' confidence.

The Political Warfare Executive, was developed to conduct psychological warfare against the Nazis. 

Yet of all the secret second world war organizations created on Churchill’s orders to encourage resistance to the Nazis, the F(French) Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) remains the most controversial.

SOE, initially known as SO2, was to absorb the D section set up within the Secret Intelligence Service in April 1938 on the instructions of the chief of SIS, Admiral Sinclair. Its task was to prepare for underground warfare against the Nazis using a combination of sabotage, black propaganda, and political warfare.

By the time it was finally absorbed by the new Special Operations Executive (SOE) in September 1940, Section D had grown to a staff of around 300 paid officers, but this reflected only part of its strength as it operated mainly through agents drawn from partner foreign dissident groups, including those from Austria and Germany. Section D operated across over twenty European countries, mainly in the Balkans, and was based in countries that were, at the time, still neutral. Attention turned in 1940 to encourage the formation of layered systems of resistance organizations in countries about to fall to the Nazis. This principle was extended into establishing a civilian guerrilla organization in Britain (the Home Defence Scheme), to extend the potential of the existing SIS resistance. The War Office greeted Section D’s move into British operations with horror. While ready to encourage the use of illegal francs-tireur abroad, it was deeply opposed to the use of civilian guerrillas in Britain, and it consequently created the Auxiliary Units to support the regular forces during an active military campaign.

Most of the neutral countries in which Section D operated would soon become occupied territories, which fundamentally changed the clandestine warfare landscape. SOE would face new problems of operating from within enemy territory, especially the risk of large-scale reprisals against the civilian population. Unfortunately, the philosophy demanded by Winston Churchill to ‘Set Europe Ablaze’ did not take account of these changed circumstances, and huge casualties would result with, arguably, little strategic result. After the war, there was a tendency to focus on the heroism of individual SOE agents rather than more coldly analyzing the organization's value as a whole. The reverse was the case with Section D, where historians have focused on the supposed failings of the organization, attempting to put the story of SOE in a better light rather than follow the stories of the individuals concerned. It is hoped that the present https://world-news-research article will help in a small way to redress the imbalance.

As the war spread across the globe, overseas headquarters were set up in Cairo and then Algiers, in India, Ceylon, and Australia, with many submissions in other countries, particularly neutral ones. At its peak, some 10,000 men and 3,000 women were working in SOE offices and missions, helping an estimated two to three million active resisters in Europe alone. In 1942, an American counterpart to SOE, the OSS, or Office of Strategic Services, was set up under ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, who had many friends in SOE’s top echelons. After the war, OSS developed into the CIA while Baker Street was closed down, and a few of its functions were absorbed within the Secret Intelligence Service.

SOE was separate from the existing Secret Intelligence Service, which included MI5 and MI6, and charged not with intelligence-gathering but with sparking resistance and carrying out operations in the enemy-occupied territory – ranging from sabotage to attacks on enemy installations and personnel. It also provided an alternative to blanket bombing raids and putting key industrial targets out of action without heavy civilian casualties.

During 1989-90 I had four extensive conversations with Ellic Howe, who was very informed about the Political Warfare Executive. For one, he was the first to ever write about what at the time already was a secret intelligence organization. A lance corporal in the Anti-Aircraft Command at Stanmore, already in September 1941 he had written an article titled "Political Warfare and the Printed Word - a Psychological Study." Considering that the Political Warfare Executive intended to be a covert Intelligence operation, it was no surprise that the PWE asked him to join the organization as such, for which he worked throughout the war. He later wrote a full-fledged book titled The Black Game: British Subversive Operations Against the Germans During the Second World War, published in 1982. And but at the time we had our conversations about it in 1989-90, his knowledge about the intelligence network the PWE was only a part of had deepened considerably. Not surprisingly, Sefton Delmer, who In September 1940, was recruited by the PWE called Ellic Howe a genius.

According to me speaking with Howe it 1989-90, few people were aware of the Special Operations Executive (SOE') during the Second World War. Its various branches were concealed for security purposes. The SOE operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis forces, except where demarcation lines were agreed upon with Britain's principal Allies (the United States and the Soviet Union). It occasionally used neutral territory or made plans and preparations in case the Axis attacked neutral countries. The organization employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, about 3,200 women.

A key motivation existed for forming the new organization. At the time, it was widely assumed that the rapid German advance through the Low Countries and France was only possible because prior subversion had undermined the governments.

The structure of SOE was nothing if fluid. Still, it was broadly divided into operations – including training, signals, and the highly independent and compartmentalized country sections – and those that provided facilities like weapons, supplies, finance, and security.

The best-known of SOE’s operations were organized by its country sections, for France, Poland, Norway, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and others in the European theatre. But the organization aspired to and progressively gained a global reach. As the Japanese threat in Asia became more apparent, an Oriental Mission was secretly established with a Singapore-based base. Still, the role was taken over by Delhi after Singapore fell to the Japanese.

As a better understanding of SOE’s unique brand of warfare developed, the security needs expanded and became more apparent. Still, they always included the physical safety of the organization’s facilities in London, the country, and, eventually, the world. The Section also vetted potential personnel and took steps to maintain SOE’s cover.

At various stages of the war, SOE operated under several deliberately obscure cover names. Depending on who was asking, members of SOE might say they were from the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the Inter-Services Research Bureau, Headquarters Special Training Schools, or MO1(SP). ‘SOE’ was used only by those in the know, like the officers of MI5 or the The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

They should be selected for their skills in foreign languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Norwegian. This was, in any case, a characteristic of all Field Security personnel. Unlike many members of SOE, they were not recruited through an ‘Old Pals’ network but based on their education and language ability.

Other Field Security NCOs departed to take up duties in different areas outside SOE. Not all can be covered here, but a few give exciting insights into the secret world operating in parallel with ‘The Racket,’ as SOE members sometimes call themselves.

Relations between SOE and SIS at the political level were undoubtedly strained, perhaps inevitably given the potentially negative impact of subversion and sabotage on the quiet waters SIS naturally desired in which to fish for intelligence. Add to this the competition for resources like aircraft, and rivalry is almost guaranteed. The SIS leadership seemed to be constantly seeking ways to obstruct its operations.

However, relations were often cooperative at the operational level in the field. Like other elements of the Allied war machine, SOE benefited from the intelligence product produced or coordinated by SIS, including sanitized access to Bletchley Park decrypts of German signals: the Most Secret Ultra product. In turn, SOE contributed intelligence gained as a by-product of its contacts in occupied countries.

A Crossover of personnel also took place, even if those transferred sometimes represented a poisoned chalice. When the D Section of SIS disbanded on the formation of SOE, several members were transferred to the new organization. Others moved in the opposite direction. One person who joined SIS from SOE was Thomas Buck, who moved across in February 1944 and was commissioned. Not surprisingly, the circumstances are shrouded in mystery for a case involving SIS. Buck had joined SOE only six months earlier, so the award of the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours of 1st January 1944 was a reward for his Intelligence Corps service before then, which included Field Security work in Iceland with ‘C Force.’

Soon after SOE was formed, its propaganda arm, ‘Special Operations 1’, was hived off and amalgamated with units from the Ministry of Information and the BBC to become a new independent organization, the Political Warfare Executive. An existing secret department of the Foreign Office, the Political Intelligence Department, was used as cover for PWE, which made its home on the top floors of the BBC’s Bush House. For simplicity, the term SOE is used throughout, although the special operations element of the organization was initially given in 1940 papers when it named SO2.

SOE continued to provide PWE with support in getting agents into and back from the field and with training for its propaganda experts. Many propaganda operations were joint efforts. The training was initially done alongside the rudimentary training in propaganda given to SOE circuit organizers but became the focus of a new school at Woburn. Students learned to broaden their political and social ideas and effectively disseminate them in a confidential environment.

In the comprehensive plan for supporting the Allied invasion of the Low Countries, the political warfare aspects were designed to confuse the enemy and inform the population how they could best protect themselves, oppose the occupiers and aid the Allied invasion.

The fall of France had jolted Britain into seeking all possible ways to prosecute the war against Germany. For the time being, a direct counter-attack on European land was out of the question. Apart from aerial bombardment and anything that might bring America into the war, only indirect means like sabotage and propaganda remained open.

The most common image of SOE is of intrepid agents parachuting into occupied France, and Europe was undoubtedly the main thrust of SOE’s effort. However, the 1939-45 conflict was a world war. From its outset, SOE was an organization with global ambitions. It could soon plausibly claim to have a worldwide political reach.

 

The  Oriental Mission

Planning for the Oriental Mission started in late 1940. Its ostensible role was to collect economic and industrial intelligence throughout the Far East. Its secret purposes were to organize subversive propaganda and covert operations ‘in specific circumstances which may shortly develop.

The leader of the Oriental Mission, former ICI China manager Valentine Killery, had immense difficulty setting the organization up after he and its senior officers arrived in Singapore in April-May 1941, constrained by a shortage of time and ‘much local misunderstanding and opposition from British authorities.

On 10th May 1940, the Phoney War ended abruptly. The German invasion of the Low Countries and France was swift. The British Expeditionary Force was encircled; its evacuation from Dunkirk was completed on 4th June. Ten days later, German troops entered Paris. Southern England was suddenly in real danger.

George Windred joined SOE’s 65 FSS, based in Kingston upon Thames in Surrey, on 24th February 1941. By mid-May, George Windred was on his way to join the Oriental Mission, which was based in Singapore under cover of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. The requirement to prepare for subversive activities in the context of an imminent Japanese threat was a politically controversial topic in the Far East.

Planning for the Oriental Mission started in late 1940. Its ostensible role was to collect economic and industrial intelligence throughout the Far East. Its secret purposes were to organize subversive propaganda and covert operations ‘in specific circumstances which may shortly develop,’ for which it was placed under the control of the Commander-in-Chief Far Eastern Command. However, SOE’s concepts developed for Europe, and the experience gained there did not translate easily to Asia. In contrast to European guerrilla movements determined to disrupt the German occupation, resistance in the Far East was as likely to oppose British, Dutch, and French colonial masters as the Japanese. Physical difficulties faced SOE, too. Operating conditions in the jungle were more severe, the chance of white faces passing unnoticed was more remote, and distances were more significant than in Europe.

The leader of the Oriental Mission, former ICI China manager Valentine Killery. The Mission set up a training school on the south coast of Singapore Island, known as Special Training School 101, and modeled on the SOE schools in the UK. But it focused mainly on training Europeans, having been prohibited by British authorities from recruiting ‘orientals’ from the target countries. George Windred arrived in Singapore to find the Oriental Mission working against the clock to set up ‘stay-behind’ parties in the Far Eastern theatre in the event of Japanese occupation.

George was traveling undercover as a civilian biologist, his Army commission quietly concealed. Despite SOE’s obsession with secrecy, he used his name. He was fortunate that Japanese Intelligence never got around to reading the London Gazette of 6th May 1941, where the award of the King’s Commission and his connection with the Intelligence Corps were recorded.

On the 20th, he traveled by Pan Am California Clipper – the new transpacific flying boat service – to Singapore, alighting at Midway, Wake, Guam, and Manila. As well as carrying passengers in luxury to the Far East, the Clippers provided the most reliable wartime mail service between Britain and Australia.

Below is a Pan Am Clipper poster

In Singapore, George maintained his cover as a biologist, working in the College of Medicine on research into controlling destructive pests in stored goods.  Under this guise, he participated in the colonial social life of dinner parties, plentiful food, and copious drink – often at Raffles Hotel – which continued oblivious of the looming Japanese threat.

The Oriental Mission had laid the foundations of organized anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare by groups of both Malay and Chinese origin. Simultaneously, the agents arranged with local villagers for escape routes for British troops cut off by the Japanese advance. Several thousand soldiers escaped via the routes initially laid down by SOE.

After his work in Malaya, George Windred’s next mission was in Thailand (also called Siam).

 

To  Stop The Japanese Advance In Thailand

The degree of support or opposition in Asia for SOE’s Oriental Mission was patchy, depending on personalities in the different countries. Thailand was an ostensibly neutral country.

During the summer, the legal implications of inserting soldiers in civilian clothes were debated. Deployment of more significant numbers – Independent Companies of the type used in the Norway campaign – was considered, but the role was eventually left to SOE’s Oriental Mission.

George Windred, incommunicado in Bangkok and oblivious to the controversy about his presence there, pressed on with recruiting Resistance operatives. In the short time he had available, he may have been able to achieve a little in central and northern Thailand. In southern Thailand, an SOE network had already been built to disrupt tin mining.

The Far East Command had in August 1941 proposed a plan, Operation Matador, to deploy British troops into southern Thailand to deter and, if necessary, defend against a Japanese attack on Malaya. As part of this plan, SOE agents were to disrupt the Japanese advance by demolishing bridges and railways, taking over Phuket airfields, and guerrilla warfare against Japanese units.

The warning signal to activate the SOE agents in Thailand was not given until a few hours after the Japanese had invaded at various points in southern Thailand, less than twenty-four hours after their surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.

The SOE agents could disable a few of Thailand’s tin mines, destroy an electricity power station, cut some telephone lines and occupy Phuket airfield for two days. It was too little, too late. They had expected Thai forces to offer at least some opposition to the Japanese, but Thai resistance lasted only a few hours. Subsequently, the Japanese invaders demanded and received cooperation. Some SOE agents were evacuated with fleeing European civilians; some were killed, and the remainder were arrested by the Thai police and interned. George Windred, not known to be a British officer, was among the latter group. He was captured on 12th December 1941.

Interned Japanese forces used Thailand as a base to advance westwards into Burma and southwards towards Malaya and Singapore. Quickly establishing air supremacy and neutralizing naval opposition by sinking HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, by the end of January 1942, they had driven Allied ground forces out of Malaya. Under aerial bombardment and amphibious assault, the defenses of Singapore held out for a further two weeks. Lieutenant-General Percival surrendered the Allied garrison on 15th February 1942.

Although Thailand had sided with the Japanese, it remained an independent state. About 200 British, American and Dutch internees were rounded up by the Thai police and taken in trucks to the Thammasat University of Moral and Political Sciences near the Chao Phraya River. The students had been moved out.

Internment by the Thai as a civilian represented a far less unfortunate fate than becoming a prisoner of war, or even a civilian internee, under the Japanese, the horrors of which have become well-known. Over 180,000 Asian forced laborers constructed the infamous Thai-Burma Railway, and 60,000 Allied prisoners were forced to work in conditions of starvation and disease. Over 10,000 POWs and ten times as many Asian slave workers died.

Ultimately, the Thai Government cooperated with the Japanese, allowing free passage for Japanese troops to advance on Burma and Malaya. In January 1942, they declared war on the USA and Britain. Britain responded in kind, but the USA ignored the declaration and treated Thailand as a Japanese-occupied territory.

SOE tried to persuade London to soften its line and assist Thai attempts to undermine the Japanese so that American and British clandestine organizations could work together. There was a back story. SOE played a significant part in the formation of OSS and the training of its operatives. In the war's latter years, OSS leader General Bill Donovan and his staff were keen to shake off the ‘junior partner’ image.

 

The India Mission

The uncoordinated approach had its price. Thailand had a substantial underground movement willing to resist Japan, led by a political rival of Phibun, Pridi Phanomyong. Pride made tentative and sporadic contact with SOE and OSS in India and China and with Free Thai movements in the UK and USA. Each of the two Allies had recruited Free Thai volunteers – many of them Thai who had been studying at British or American universities – for infiltration by submarine or parachute into the country.

Following the fall of Singapore and the dissolution of the Oriental Mission, responsibility for Thailand rested with SOE’s India Mission. The Mission was initially based at Meerut, near Delhi in India, but from November 1944 was in Kandy, Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka). By then, it was designated ‘Force 136’ and was much more closely integrated with the military than the Oriental Mission.

From September 1943, the subversive and intelligence activities of SOE, OSS, and SIS in the Far East were at least in theory coordinated – and their competing demands arbitrated – by a division of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten‘s Southeast Asia Command. In effect, though, Force 136 and OSS ran separate and uncoordinated operations in Thailand, characterized by intrigue, suspicion, and duplication of activities.

Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Singapore, September 1945

Action in Thailand at the right time could divert the Japanese from opposing a potential Allied attack in Malaya. The word never came. Following the US use of atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan’s surrender was announced on 15th August 1945.

The demarcation in other theatres between the intelligence role played by SIS and SOE’s subversive activities was much less marked in the Far East. SOE was stronger on the ground than SIS, in Thailand as in other Asian countries, and used these resources to fill a vacuum in intelligence-gathering. The demarcation did not exist in the American equivalent; organisationally, OSS covered both roles.

After his return to the UK, George was able in November 1945, dressed in his uniform as a captain of the Intelligence Corps, to greet his son and wife as their ship arrived in Southampton from Australia.

The impression one gain from SOE is a pervasive sense of independence and a buccaneering spirit. Instilling a sense of security into this group of loners was one of SOE’s most significant challenges, on a par with defending its existence against its many Whitehall enemies.

The need to keep SOE secure was recognized early. Few helpful precedents existed, so the Security Section’s tasks were ad hoc. Just as for other aspects of SOE – operational planning, intelligence, radio communications – it was only in mid-1941 that the roles and, therefore, the organization's security needs had crystallized sufficiently to enable an adequately structured response.

The Security Section was SOE’s point of contact with MI5, SIS, and New Scotland Yard. This liaison was essential in the early days so that SOE could add to its understanding of how to ‘do’ irregular warfare by learning from those who had the experience of fighting against the Irish Republican Army and the like. More obvious reasons for liaising with the other agencies were, for instance, to find likely candidates for agent duties from among individuals registered as ‘aliens’ and to work together on identifying security risks to the rapidly increasing network of training establishments.

The reorganization and expansion of the Section in July 1941, to reflect the growing security needs, positioned it as part of a new Intelligence and Security Directorate.

In its new form, the Section divided responsibilities into ‘general’ and ‘operational’ security. General security included the range of routine measures that any secret organization might need, but the ‘upstart’ SOE was also required to convince outsiders like MI5 that its security was up to scratch. To find personnel for these purposes, SOE often turned pragmatically to an in-house source of high-quality men trained in intelligence and security.

SOE is often known for its outrageous initiative and intrepid improvisation. But one thing quickly became apparent in the early months of its existence: the key to successful support for resistance movements would be a well-trained body of agents. And if the organization and the agents themselves were to survive, they would have to be both secured in their training and trained in security. By December 1940, plans were already in place for twenty training schools. With the help of the police, sites were identified that could be kept discreet and safe from curious outsiders. Often these were large houses and estates in remote areas. Not for nothing was SOE often known as ‘Stately ’Omes of England’.

All the training phases took place in isolated locations under a mantle of secrecy. The Training Section in London designed and coordinated the various courses but lacked influence in the SOE hierarchy over the relatively autonomous and secretive country sections. So did the Security Section, whose task was to ensure that the training stayed secret and to give the agents the best possible chance of survival in the field.

Beaulieu’s history as a top-secret training establishment for special Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents during World War Two.

Men and women of the European Resistance Movement who secretly trained at Beaulieu to fight their lonely battle against Hitler’s Germany and who, before entering Nazi-occupied territory, found some measure of the peace for which they fought.’

Over 3,000 SOE agents were trained in the dark arts of warfare at Beaulieu before undertaking daring and dangerous missions behind enemy lines.

After specialist training or Beaulieu and the necessary operational briefings at a ‘holding school’, agents were ready for deployment. Most were not deployed immediately, though, and agents might have to wait, tense with anticipation, before the time came for their parachute drop, night landing into a tiny field or sea insertion.

SOE memorial Beaulie

After specialist training or Beaulieu and the necessary operational briefings at a ‘holding school’, agents were ready for deployment. Most were not deployed immediately, though, and agents might have to wait, tense with anticipation, before the time came for their parachute drop, night landing into a tiny field or sea insertion. They could easily stagnate if they were made to wait too long without constructive operational training.

 

Penetration

One of the most significant controversies about SOE has raged over the subsequent decades: to what extent was the organization penetrated by the enemy?

It was undoubtedly ‘penetrated’ by an ally. Apart from Kim Philby, who soon left for SIS, there were several Communist sympathizers among the organization’s ranks.

Security precautions in the SOE headquarters and stations were tight. They were founded on the assumption that enemy agents might watch SOE in Baker Street and elsewhere. SOE staff were not to recognize each other in the street or admit they were part of a secret organization. Country sections kept themselves to themselves. In theory, agents knew each other only by their training alias. Before the war ended, it became almost certain that all German spies arriving in Britain had been imprisoned, executed, or persuaded to act as double agents. Before becoming SOE’s Director of Intelligence and Security, Archie Boyle had been instrumental in defining how widely knowledge of this highly successful ‘double-cross’ system should be shared. The espionage threat in Britain was minimal.

Not so in the field. Soon after the war ended, SOE could put together reports by returning agents, information from locally recruited members of SOE circuits, and interrogation of German counter-intelligence officers and their collaborators to assemble a clearer picture of how successful penetration had been.

Abwehr officer Hermann Giskes wrote after the war about his counter-intelligence success and knew it as Unternehmen Nordpol (Operation North Pole). By capturing a Dutch SIS agent in 1941 with copies of previous messages on his person, the Germans could start deciphering SIS codes, which SOE was also using at the time. The capture of two further SIS agents in early 1942 helped to consolidate this process. A Dutch V-Mann was able to insinuate his way into the SOE sabotage team sent, as part of the ‘Plan for Holland’ agreed between SOE and the Dutch government in exile, to train and equip a Secret Army in the Netherlands. He fed false intelligence to the agents.

Suspicions arose in London from mid-1943, and SOE’s Security Section tried to determine which radio transmitters were under German control. Dick Warden liaised with MI5 and SIS to get to the bottom of the question. But the Dutch Section – partly to investigate the security situation – continued to drop agents, explosives, and arms in Holland into the hands of the waiting Germans.

Only in November 1943 did a message come through from two agents, code-named Chive and Sprout, who had managed to reach the Dutch Legation in Switzerland after escaping from the concentration camp where the captured agents were being held. The two warned that the entire SOE network in Holland was under German control. By the time they reached London after a slow and arduous journey through Spain, Giskes had used one of the captured sets to tell SOE that the pair had gone to the Gestapo. Also, the stories they told interrogators in Spain and after they reached London were inconsistent. Suspected of having faked their escape, they were incarcerated until after D-Day and only later vindicated.

A small mistake could have devastating results for the individual concerned and hundreds of others. Conspiracy theories have been propounded about the ‘real’ reason the Dutch Section continued sending agents. The story shows that it may be easier to capture agents than to be one, and it has to be seen in the context of MI5‘s success in running over 100 German double agents in Britain. Holland was not the only place where penetration of SOE circuits was successful. It also happened in Norway and Belgium. And in France.

When the fledgling SOE came looking for suitable talent at Winchester for its new Field Security Sections, Ken Macalister was an obvious choice. His proven intelligence and knowledge of French were apparent assets. On 1st February 1941, he became a ‘founder member’ of the second Field Security Section to be formed, No 64, at Guildford, with Teddy Bisset as one of his eleven comrades and a billet with a local family.

Some, particularly those in SIS, suggested that SOE operations before D-Day should cease. This is where the good liaison by John Senter and Dick Warden with MI5 and others in SOE with Military Counter-intelligence paid off. The military recognized that, with support from SOE and OSS, the Resistance in France and the Low Countries might play a significant role in harassing the defending Germans. Warden was responsible for the operational security of all SOE groups operating on the Continent. In particular, the Security Section‘s aim, with MI5’s help, was to ensure that no SOE agents were dropped into occupied territory with the D-Day secret in their heads or anywhere about them.

In response to a directive by Churchill’s Cabinet to prevent information leakage about the invasion, SOE set up a Special Security Panel in mid-April 1944 under Archie Boyle. Its role was to ensure that communications with the field, travel to and from occupied territory, and SOE’s general procedures remained secure during the crucial build-up period. Radio communications were sent in cipher, but senior directors ensured that only essential messages were sent and that code words replaced any potentially hazardous dates and place names. Letters and other physical communications were subject to censorship.

SOE was also responsible for liaison with foreign military missions in London. Associated loopholes, like the carriage of mail for the missions and radio sets in their possession, were closed. To de Gaulle’s annoyance, the Free French were kept in the dark until the D-Day invasion was underway.

The question of travel to enemy-occupied territory by SOE personnel was more difficult. Here a judgment had to be made, usually by Boyle, as to whether a person’s deployment was essential and could not be delayed until after D-Day. Anyone likely to be dropped into enemy territory before D-Day had to be segregated from the Overlord preparations and planning. This was extremely difficult at Beaulieu, near the south coast and surrounded by invasion preparations, so trainees were sent to more remote training schools. Other checks ensured that nobody with Overlord information could get into enemy hands.

As Germany might be expected to try even harder to penetrate Britain by infiltrating double agents, any agents returning or escaping from the enemy territory were subjected to extra interrogation. More generally, country sections were briefed to be especially security-conscious in April and May 1944.

These precautions paid off. The Overlord's secret remained secret. SOE went on to help the Resistance hinder German opposition to the Allied invasion.

Invading In preparation for the landings in France, the secretive isolation of SOE from regular troops had to be relaxed. As 1944 dawned and the Allies prepared to invade northwest Europe, the British 2nd Army and 1st Canadian Army came under General Sir Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. SOE would have to fit into this military structure.

This represented a significant shake-up for SOE, the Security Section, and Field Security personnel. By this stage, the discrete sections of counter-intelligence men – Nos 63, 64, 65, 2, and 84 – had effectively been broken up. NCOs were called on individually as required from a ‘pool’ to accompany parties of agents through training or to investigate breaches of secrecy. This would all have to change if they were to work alongside the conventional forces. So they have formed again into sections.

Most stayed in the UK as 84 (Home) Section. Still, the reconstituted 64 and 65 Sections would operate in the field as Nos 1 and 2 Special Forces Detachments, embedded in the 2nd British and 1st Canadian Armies. A new Anglo-American Special Forces Headquarters would act as the rear link for Special Operations as a whole, with interrogators from the Bayswater Special Section brought in to examine any suspicious characters who might be encountered.

Just because enemy troops in an area have been defeated does not mean the danger has passed. Stay-behind agents and snipers may still be in place, booby traps may have been laid, and confusion will abound. Even in an occupied country, not all of the local population will welcome the liberators. For this reason, every central formation had its own Field Security Section to be the eyes and ears of the civilian population in its area of operations. But the two SOE Sections had a more specialized task. They had a roving brief: to contact the Resistance and SOE agents, to sort out genuine agents from impostors, and perhaps to uncover enemy stay-behind agents. The new role for the men of the 64 and 65 Sections would differ significantly from their previous experience.

Adequately structured training had become a key element of SOE, so the two Sections assembled in February 1944 for that purpose. Few of the original members of 64 and 65 were still in place. John Clark and Dickie Bell joined the new Sections from the pool of Field Security personnel.

The new 65 Section trained at Tyting House near Guildford, until then a miniature version of the Inverlair ‘Cooler.’ Apart from tough infantry conditioning, the NCOs were taught the skills to handle and question suspects and familiarised with the ‘Kardex’, a constantly updated and collated set of reports from SOE agents. Armed with this information, the Sections landed in France a few days after D-Day and moved forward with the advancing troops.

The NCOs included fluent speakers of French, German, Dutch, Flemish, and several other languages. Key members of the Sections kept the Kardex up to date.

The Field Security Officer remained in the picture of the fluid battle lines and deployed operational NCOs to seek out Resistance groups. 65 Section’s first encounter was with a group of Communist fighters in Normandy, led by a formidable woman whose security had been so tight that it did not appear in the Kardex.

Although SOE and OSS were often mutually suspicious in the Far East, the Middle East, and Italy, cooperation between them was somewhat better in North Africa, especially in the Northwest Europe campaign. The Anglo-American nature of the Jedburgh plan was an indication of this and essential in light of the general blending of Allied planning under a single commander, the role that General Eisenhower would eventually take on.

 

Camp X

The history of the development of OSS, the predecessor of today’s Central Intelligence Agency, reveals an uneasy relationship with SOE. At first, ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, the originator and director of OSS was pleased to accept the support and expertise of the Brits. In turn, SOE leaders did all they could to support Donovan’s battles for political survival in Washington. OSS agents attended SOE training in the UK and were ‘customers’ for training at Special Training School 103, or ‘Camp X’. This private training school for clandestine operations was set up in Canada by Sir William Stephenson’s British Security Co-ordination (BSC), the New York-based representatives of SIS and SOE, and run jointly by BSC, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian military.

American suspicion of British colonial goals met perhaps subconscious assumptions by the British of their superiority. In many areas, the two Allies operated separately amid mutual distrust. Unlike the demarcated British arrangements, OSS covered intelligence-gathering and subversion in its Secret Intelligence (SI) and Special Operations (SO) divisions, which liaised with SIS and SOE, respectively. As D-Day approached, cooperation had of necessary to improve. Initially known as SOE-SO, the combined headquarters became the Special Forces Headquarters. But the Jedburghs represented combined operations at the level of individual soldiers.

Jedburgh teams had already been planned in 1942, but it was tested in early March 1943 through a major exercise in southern England. Exercise Spartan was a full-scale rehearsal of an Allied invasion of the Continent. To support the ‘invasion’, groups of ‘Resistance fighters’ were established a few weeks before the exercise in ‘safe houses’ in towns behind ‘enemy’ lines – such as Aylesbury, St Neots, and Bedford – with whom the Jedburghs were to make contact. Exercise Spartan gave SOE – under its military cover name MO1(SP) – a chance to show the regular forces how Resistance groups could be used to support the invasion.

 

Jedburghs receive briefing in a London flat, 1944:

Each Jedburgh team included an officer of SOE or OSS, an officer of the country concerned, and a radio operator. They deployed and fought in uniform. So SOE and OSS were, to some degree, cooperating. In all, 100 teams were formed and trained at Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire, mainly for France but some also for Belgium and the Netherlands. Each group would be received by an SOE agent or an inter-Allied mission already in place and work with them to equip the maquisards for action against German forces.

As planning developed, the increased strength of the Resistance and SOE networks led to a change of role for the Jedburghs. Instead of strengthening the Resistance in Normandy to support the bridgehead, they were to be used, as William Mackenzie puts it, as a flexible ‘strategic reserve’ to reinforce the Resistance anywhere in France it might be required, perhaps for long periods. They would occupy a position intermediate between SOE’s long-term workers and the ‘striking parties’ provided by the SAS’. The French Jedburghs were deployed more or less according to this plan, with some teams chafing at the bit as they waited for weeks after D-Day. In Belgium, the few Jedburgh teams were not used; the Allied advance was too rapid. In the Netherlands, the opposite was the case; Jedburghs operated behind enemy lines for long periods as the Allies advanced slowly northwards and eastwards.

Liberating The story of the D-Day landings, the Allied difficulty in breaking out of the Normandy beachhead, the advance across France, and Charles de Gaulle’s triumphal entry into Paris are well known. Less familiar is the role played by the under-equipped Resistance as it rose to overthrow the oppressors in the towns and villages of France, often aided and supplied by SOE agents. Militarily, this was perhaps not hugely significant. Historians have argued over this question. The Resistance cut railway lines, disrupted communications, and harassed troops moving to defend against the Allied invasion, particularly the SS Das Reich Division. It diverted German forces from the defensive effort into internal security and psychologically impacted the occupiers’ self-confidence. In terms of French self-esteem, it was highly significant and probably defined post-war France.

 

Operation Dragoon

In mid-August 1944, while the Allied forces in northern France struggled to overcome German defenses, Eisenhower launched the delayed invasion of southern France. This was Operation Dragoon, a push northward by American and French forces. Operation Dragoon (initially Operation Anvil) was the code name for the landing operation of the Allied invasion of Provence (Southern France) on 15 August 1944.

John Oughton, formerly a Field Security NCO with 64 Section but now a major, joined the No 4 Special Forces Unit for the operation, providing liaison with the Resistance behind enemy lines for the United States 7th Army. The maquis could harass the retreating Germans and fill the vacuum left as they departed.

De Gaulle was determined that La Résistance would be seen as a purely French affair. F Section and its agents had little interest in post-war French politics beyond ejecting the Germans. For de Gaulle and his followers, the question of who would rule France was central. To this end, as soon as Paris was liberated, he insisted that F Section agents must leave the country, even though former members of the Resistance were optimistic about SOE’s role and highly grateful for British support. General Eisenhower’s Headquarters, SHAEF, soon moved forward to Versailles. Into this political minefield tiptoed SOE staff who needed to establish a forward headquarters, a ‘Paris Mission’, with the aims of identifying and ‘paying off’ F Section’s Resistance circuits and, more importantly, continuing the clandestine war against Germany, Italy and Japan.

Dick Warden, who had been the crucial link with MI5 on the tricky cases of German penetration, was sent to SOE’s Paris Mission, also known as Military Establishment 24, with a security and counter-intelligence brief. He played a part in the liquidation[51] of SOE’s circuits in France. He worked closely with the French Deuxième Bureau, the French intelligence service, and the counter-intelligence section of SIS, in the confused environment of post-liberation Paris and throughout the country.

French citizens were short of food, the country lacked infrastructure and medical support, and former Resistance fighters accused the Allies of involvement with former collaborators. Banditry continued in the regions, and pockets of support for Germany remained in some French official and commercial organizations.

France may have been liberated, but the fighting was over. The country remained at war. Within weeks of La Libération, SOE was working with the DGER (Direction générale des Études et Recherches – French intelligence agency) to set up an agent training school at Rambouillet near Paris. Centre 20, as it was known, was intended to prepare agents to operate in Indochina and Germany, mostly those who had already received SOE training in the UK or at the Massingham base near Algiers.

Specially requested by the French to be the key British officer at Centre 20 was Robert Searle, the former member of 63 FSS whom they had known and trusted at Massingham. The French were keen to establish an equivalent of ‘Club des Pins’ in the Paris region. Agents would be trained to undertake sabotage, contact French prisoners-of-war, and launch coup de main raids in Germany. Some of them were trained at Rambouillet. Others with less experience were sent for training in England.

Selected to accompany the French students through their training in England and Scotland was Arthur Hodson, who had joined SOE as a Field Security NCO in March 1943, a married man in his 40s with three children. He had been a ‘portrait painter of private means’ in civilian life and had lived in France from 1922 to 1940. Before being commissioned, he had featured in a somewhat irregular visit’ to the Beaulieu Finishing Schools for clandestine operations.

Presumably, as a security check, Lance-Corporal Hodson ‘was able to travel [to Beaulieu] as a phony officer and remain there for two days before anybody discovered his presence.’ He was a mature man with a pleasant personality, and these attributes led to his promotion.

About two dozen French agents completed training, but few embarked on operations. The lack of any effective anti-Nazi movement in Germany meant that no prospect existed of supporting the resistance. Because of this constraint, SOE in London was dubious about the feasibility of the French plans. The French actions might also cut across SOE’s existing Germany and Austria operations: the work of X Section, which had been focusing on Germany since November 1940.

 

X Section

Geoffrey Spencer had a decade of experience in Germany. The son of a Lancashire cotton representative, he had attended school in the Rhineland town of Krefeld. The family left Germany in 1936 on the ‘advice’ of the Gestapo, and Geoffrey joined the British Army. His fluency in German initially went unnoticed, and he was assigned to the Royal Artillery, but he was eventually transferred to the Intelligence Corps.

In September 1941, he was plucked from training at Winchester to join Field Security at SOE. He first worked as a security NCO with a maritime focus for two years. In the far north of Scotland, he was responsible for securing the ‘Shetland Bus,’ the deceptively flippant name given to the dozens of night trips made by volunteer Norwegian sailors in small boats to occupied Norway. Spencer did not just remain ashore; he later told his son how seasick he had been.

On the Dorset coast of southern England, he was attached to Gus March-Phillipps’ Small-Scale Raiding Force, which mounted ‘pinprick’ raids on the coast of occupied France to capture prisoners, gain intelligence and add to German confusion and anxiety. Apart from this, he did his share of ‘nannying’ budding agents through their paramilitary and undercover courses.

After being sent for officer training, he returned to SOE with ‘pips’ on his shoulders in February 1944, at first to be the Field Security Officer covering a clutch of Special Training Schools and secret research establishments in southern England. It was only as D-Day approached that his native-standard German was employed in the SOE Section, where it had probably always belonged.

The German, or ‘X’, Section had been formed in November 1940 by taking on board the few German operatives of Lawrence Grand’s Section D of SIS. It consisted of four officers covering Germany and Austria in the early days. In addition, two Field Security NCOs were commissioned to conduct officers for German-speaking agents through their training: Lieutenants Russell and Keir.  Both were founder members of 63 Section in January 1941, commissioned after a few months into X Section.

SOE’s Balkans operations were run from Cairo. This attempt to drop agents into Austria failed, but Keir stayed in the Middle East to represent the German Section. There, he worked in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and eventually Italy, recruiting and training agents and planning and dispatching operations.

The directive for the German Section included infiltration of saboteurs, dissemination of propaganda produced by the Political Warfare Establishment, and encouragement of passive resistance and sabotage by Germans and, particularly, by the millions of foreign workers in Germany. But the problem for the German Section was entirely different than those dealing with occupied countries; Germany was a much harder nut to crack. Opponents of Hitler’s regime were brutally suppressed. The very effective populist campaign in the 1920s and 30s, the Nazi Party’s control of the education system, youth movements, police and armed forces, the removal of liberal politicians and activists into concentration camps or their flight into exile: all saw to it that little potential for subversion existed. SOE even treated peace feelers from apparently well-meaning Germans with great caution, on strict advice from the Foreign Office.

‘X’ worked with other departments like the French and Polish Sections to infiltrate organizers among Germany's 8 million forced foreign workers. Apart from this and acts of sabotage by agents who have usually dropped alone, the Section focused on attempts to undermine German cohesion and will to fight.

For much of the war, this meant various types of often bizarre ‘black’ propaganda using material prepared by PWE. Malingering and desertion by German soldiers were encouraged by leaflets and bogus radio stations. As a form of administrative sabotage, millions of false ration cards were dropped to disrupt the German economy. Flyers and stickers were distributed to undermine the morale of U-boat crews. A subversive bogus edition of the Frankfurter Zeitung was distributed. Forged documents were circulated to foment division and suspicion among senior Nazis, including a postage stamp showing a portrait of Heinrich Himmler instead of Adolf Hitler. Geoffrey Spencer worked on many of these schemes, even doing a little forgery. He and his colleagues recognized that the chances of an uprising in Germany were minuscule, but took the long view and stayed in contact with – mostly exiled – opposition groups as a resource for any post-war scenario.

As it was almost impossible to build clandestine networks in Germany, X Section operated mainly from neutral countries neighboring the Reich: Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. By the spring of 1944, SOE was solidly established at Monopoli in southern Italy. Groups had moved forward from Algiers and Cairo with a small but complete agent training apparatus, a cooperative SIS document-forging facility nearby, and a substantial clandestine transport system into northern Italy and Yugoslavia. It made sense to mount operations into Germany, especially Austria, from here.

The potential for anti-Nazi movements was greater in Austria than in Germany, especially as the tide of the war was seen to be turning. SOE operations in Austria were stepped up. The first major effort, Operation Clowder, attempted overland operations starting in the winter of 1943-44 from a forward base in the Slovenia region of Yugoslavia as guests of Tito’s Communist partisans, although stirring up Austrian resistance was not a high priority for the Yugoslavs. Clowder aimed to set up a series of despatch posts to infiltrate Austrian agents and British officers into Austria.

Soon after Geoffrey Spencer joined the German Section in the autumn of 1944, its status changed dramatically. With France liberated, German forces in retreat in the Low Countries, and the Allies’ sights set on a rapid victory, Colin Gubbins ordered that subversive action into Germany must have priority over other SOE activity and that other sections should render all assistance. X Section became the German Directorate, led by Major-General Gerald Templer, who had been forced to give up command of an armored division after being injured by a land mine. The resources available and the tempo of planning and operations increased dramatically. With hindsight, this effort was too little too late, but the Directorate’s energy was maintained until the end.

The western German city of Aachen was in Allied hands from October 1944. In addition to opening up a supply of German uniforms and identity documents for agents, it provided new opportunities for so-called administrative sabotage. Thousands of genuine blank clothing cards were dropped in the Düsseldorf area after being obtained in Aachen on 2nd November 1944 by Special Patrol Unit 22 under Lieutenant-Colonel Hazell. This SOE unit had moved forward with the advancing front after being formed to ‘liquidate’ – that is, administratively decommission – Polish Resistance networks in northern France. With considerable difficulty, Hazell negotiated with the American occupiers of Aachen to be allowed to search for documents. Subsequently, SPU 22 searched other captured cities but focused on infiltrating agents through the Allied lines in cooperation with the Special Forces Detachments.

A Special Training School in Bellasis House, on Box Hill near Dorking, had been a holding depot for various nationalities, including the Czech SOE agents who assassinated Reinhardt Heydrich in Prague in 1942. Now, though, it served as a school that trained German prisoners of war with anti-Nazi sympathies to return to their homeland as SOE agents. These were the so-called ‘Bonzos,’ of whom more later. 

Gilbert Smith served as an interrogation and security officer at STS 2 and was very effective in the role, but ill health caused a move to the Section’s headquarters in London. There he prepared and mounted operations on Germany for others to implement.

 

Keeping Company

Back to those agents under training.  Every cohort of trainees had one or more Field Security NCOs accompanying them through each training phase, with language skills appropriate to the target country. As Anelyf Rees put it in his 1944 report on SOE’s Field Security personnel, these NCOs had been plucked out of Intelligence Corps training, hand-picked not just for their knowledge of the particular languages and countries, but also for their ‘natural faculty for assessing another man’s character correctly, quickly and without prejudice’. As far as possible, the NCOs participated in every aspect of the training, working alongside the students inside and outside the classroom. They tried to be helpful and encouraging, assisting with language difficulties and personal issues. Even so, their primary purpose could not be hidden. Students, and the country sections to which they belonged, often resented the intrusion. Trainees compared Field Security to the Gestapo. A negative attitude toward their security ‘advisors’ cost some of them dear when encountering the real Gestapo.

The more challenging paramilitary training in northern Scotland brought less obvious issues to the surface in those who had survived the preliminary training.  Corporal Arthur Ronnfeldt, who had joined SOE as a Field Security NCO in October 1942, reported on a potential Dutch agent that he was ‘inclined to be rather noisy when he first arrived,’ had ‘confidence in his abilities’, perhaps ‘greatly strengthened by his former experiences as a Dutch mounted policeman, after the occupation of his country,’ when he had ‘found it very easy to hoodwink the Boche’. He was also ‘very fond of the society of women’ and sometimes a little unsteady on his feet when returning home. ‘He may have to be watched for over-confidence, was Ronnfeldt’s judgment, although after the man’s engagement to a female agent, he seemed ‘to have become a reformed character’.[30] His confidence may have been dented when he was found to have a severe fear of heights and had to be helped down from the high-level training apparatus. When he got to the parachute training school at Ringway – like many with vertigo – he found traveling in an aircraft and jumping from it less of a problem.

By the time the students moved on to the Group B schools at Beaulieu, the presence of the accompanying Field Security NCOs was largely unnecessary. The students who had survived the earlier training had proved themselves. They also had an apparent understanding of what they were letting themselves in for. Trainee agents were taught about enemy counter-intelligence services and the police forces of occupied countries. They learned how to concoct cover stories, blend in and not appear conspicuous, maintain constant vigilance, and plan for unexpected emergencies.

By the time the students moved on to the Group B schools at Beaulieu, the presence of the accompanying Field Security NCOs was largely unnecessary. The students who had survived the earlier training had proved themselves. They also had an obvious understanding of what they were letting themselves in for. Trainee agents were taught about enemy counter-intelligence services and the police forces of occupied countries. They learned how to concoct cover stories, blend in and not appear conspicuous, maintain constant vigilance, and plan for unexpected emergencies.

Field Security NCOs would play the part of clandestine contacts or observe the trainees’ behavior. The Security Section had also secretly employed Christine Chilver, an intelligent, astute, and attractive 22-year-old agente provocatrice, to cover Fifi. Posing as a French journalist, she would start a conversation with the trainee agent in a hotel bar, establish a relationship and report on how much she had learned about his or her real identity.

Each agent’s mindset and behavior parallelled the often-contentious relationship between the Security Section and the various country sections. It was difficult for an agent to strike the right balance between security and effective action. M R D Foot quotes one SOE operative’s principle: ‘Caution axiomatic, but over-caution results in nothing done.’ ‘Those who bothered incessantly about security survived’, suggests Foot, ‘but few of them had much beyond survival to their credit. To strike and then to survive in the real test’  Few achieved this balance.

 

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