SOE In France

SOE in France (2005) by M. R. D. Foot

If ever there was a branch of government whose job description could be summarised as “go to occupied Europe, cause trouble, and try not to get caught”, it was the Special Operations Executive. Churchill famously instructed it to “set Europe ablaze”, which is the sort of phrase that sounds magnificent in a Cabinet room and rather more alarming when you are the person being parachuted into France at midnight with a wireless set, a false identity and several Germans taking a professional interest in your whereabouts.

M. R. D. Foot’s SOE in France is one of the classic histories of British clandestine operations in occupied France during the Second World War. Originally produced as an official history, the work examines the organisation, agents, networks, successes, disasters and occasional spectacular acts of courage associated with SOE’s French operations. This 2005 Whitehall History Publishing edition brings back a work that has long been regarded as essential reading on the subject.

SOE agents were sent into France to organise resistance groups, gather intelligence, sabotage railways and factories, arrange weapons drops, transmit information back to Britain and generally make life as inconvenient as possible for the occupying forces. This involved a remarkable mixture of bravery, improvisation, bureaucracy and extraordinary risk. A railway could be blown up in a matter of minutes; obtaining the correct paperwork to explain why someone wanted explosives in the first place was presumably another matter altogether.

Foot does not treat the story as straightforward wartime adventure. The history of SOE in France includes brilliant successes but also betrayal, infiltration, incompetence, personality clashes and catastrophic failures of security. Entire networks were penetrated by the Germans, agents were captured, and wireless operators in particular faced terrifying odds. The romantic image of the secret agent therefore has to share the page with the rather less romantic realities of faulty communications, suspicious neighbours, missing containers, compromised codes and the Gestapo.

One of the strengths of the book is precisely this refusal to turn clandestine warfare into uncomplicated legend. SOE was staffed by extraordinary people, but it was also an organisation created rapidly in wartime and therefore capable of the same confusion, rivalry and administrative eccentricity found in almost any large institution—except that most office mistakes do not normally result in somebody being parachuted into a field near Limoges carrying several thousand francs and a Sten gun.

The French Resistance itself emerges as equally complex. There was no single neat organisation waiting obediently for instructions from London. Resistance groups varied enormously in politics, objectives, discipline and effectiveness, and relations between London, de Gaulle’s supporters, local networks and other Allied organisations could become decidedly complicated. Fighting Nazi occupation was apparently not sufficient reason for everyone involved to stop arguing with one another.

Yet beneath the operational detail lies an extraordinary record of individual courage. Men and women crossed occupied Europe using forged papers, lived under assumed identities, transmitted radio messages while German direction-finding teams searched for them, organised sabotage and sometimes continued working even when they knew their networks had been compromised. Many did not return. Foot’s account ensures that their achievements are recorded without turning them into cardboard heroes.

For readers interested in the Second World War, espionage, intelligence history, the French Resistance, clandestine warfare or the administrative art of organising highly dangerous activities from offices in London, SOE in France remains a substantial and authoritative study. It is detailed, scholarly and considerably more complicated than the traditional version in which somebody in a beret cycles past a German checkpoint carrying explosives disguised as baguettes.

This copy is in As New condition, making it particularly attractive for anyone wanting a clean, well-preserved copy rather than one that appears to have accompanied an agent through several safe houses and an unfortunate encounter with the Wehrmacht.

A serious and important history of one of Britain’s most remarkable wartime organisations, written by one of the foremost historians of SOE and intelligence operations. Ideal for military historians, espionage enthusiasts and anyone who has ever suspected that the phrase “special operations” generally means somebody is about to have an extremely complicated evening.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, where the resistance is ongoing, although mostly against shelf space and rising postage costs.

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