What do you think?
Rate this book
SOE: 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. Recruited from remarkably diverse callings, the men and women who were members of this most secret agency in the Second World War lived in great and constant danger. Their job was to support and stimulate resistance behind enemy lines; their credentials fortitude, courage, immense patience and a devotion to freedom. The activity of the SOE was world-wide. Abyssinian tribesmen, French farmers, exiled Russian grandees, coolies, smugglers, printers, policemen, telephonists, tycoons, prostitutes, rubber workers, railwaymen, peasants from the Pyranees to the Balkans, even the regent of Siam - all had a part to play as saboteurs, informers, partisans or secret agents. In this engrossing and illuminating study, the eminent Second World War historian, M.R.D. Foot, sheds light on the heroism of individual SOE agents across the world and provides us with the definitive account of the Executive's crucial wartime work. With an introduction by David Stafford.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
M.R.D. Foot
35 books13 followersMichael Richard Daniell Foot, CBE, TD (14 December 1919 – 18 February 2012) — known as M. R. D. Foot — was a British military historian and former British Army intelligence officer and special operations operative during World War II.
The son of a career soldier, Foot was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he became involved romantically with Iris Murdoch. He joined the British Army on the outbreak of World War II and was commissioned into a Royal Engineers searchlight battalion. In 1941 searchlight units transferred to the Royal Artillery. By 1942, he was serving at Combined Operations Headquarters, but wanting to see action he joined the SAS as an intelligence officer and was parachuted into France after D-Day. He was for a time a prisoner of war, and was severely injured during one of his attempts to escape. For his service with the French Resistance he was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Croix de Guerre. He ended the war as a major. After the war he remained in the Territorial Army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps in 1950.
After the war Foot taught at Oxford University for eight years before becoming Professor of Modern History at Manchester University. His experiences during the war gave him a lifelong interest in the European resistance movements, intelligence matters and the experiences of prisoners of war. This led him to become the official historian of SOE, with privileged access to its records, allowing him to write some of the first, and still definitive, accounts of its wartime work, especially in France. Even so, SOE in France took four years to get clearance.
Foot left the Labour Party while his namesake Michael Foot — to whom he was very distantly related — was leading it, and joined the SDP (Social Democratic Party).
Foot was the great-great-great-grandson of Benjamin Fayle who built Dorset's first railway, the Middlebere Plateway in 1806. Fayle was the great-great-grandson of William Edmunson, the First Irish Quaker.
He was at one time married to the British philosopher Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), the granddaughter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland. Foot's second was wife was Elizabeth King, with whom he had a son and a daughter. In 1972 Foot married Mirjam Romme.
M.R.D. Foot was appointed a CBE in 2001. He also received the Territorial Decoration for Long Service in the Territorial Army.
See also his obituaries at:
1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitu... accessed 26 May 2012.
2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/... accessed 26 May 2012.
The son of a career soldier, Foot was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he became involved romantically with Iris Murdoch. He joined the British Army on the outbreak of World War II and was commissioned into a Royal Engineers searchlight battalion. In 1941 searchlight units transferred to the Royal Artillery. By 1942, he was serving at Combined Operations Headquarters, but wanting to see action he joined the SAS as an intelligence officer and was parachuted into France after D-Day. He was for a time a prisoner of war, and was severely injured during one of his attempts to escape. For his service with the French Resistance he was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Croix de Guerre. He ended the war as a major. After the war he remained in the Territorial Army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps in 1950.
After the war Foot taught at Oxford University for eight years before becoming Professor of Modern History at Manchester University. His experiences during the war gave him a lifelong interest in the European resistance movements, intelligence matters and the experiences of prisoners of war. This led him to become the official historian of SOE, with privileged access to its records, allowing him to write some of the first, and still definitive, accounts of its wartime work, especially in France. Even so, SOE in France took four years to get clearance.
Foot left the Labour Party while his namesake Michael Foot — to whom he was very distantly related — was leading it, and joined the SDP (Social Democratic Party).
Foot was the great-great-great-grandson of Benjamin Fayle who built Dorset's first railway, the Middlebere Plateway in 1806. Fayle was the great-great-grandson of William Edmunson, the First Irish Quaker.
He was at one time married to the British philosopher Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), the granddaughter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland. Foot's second was wife was Elizabeth King, with whom he had a son and a daughter. In 1972 Foot married Mirjam Romme.
M.R.D. Foot was appointed a CBE in 2001. He also received the Territorial Decoration for Long Service in the Territorial Army.
See also his obituaries at:
1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitu... accessed 26 May 2012.
2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/... accessed 26 May 2012.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Read
September 25, 2024A good factual overview of SOE operations, notably less sensationalist than many more recent ones, and very well written: it crams in a lot of facts and names but remains highly readable.
Foot, of course, was an intelligence officer who actively served with the French Resistance, and his own feelings come across in moments when he refers to the "pornographers" who dwell on extensive descriptions of Gestapo tortures, or casually notes in an otherwise academic paragraph that the concentration camp guards were "the scum of the earth".
Foot, of course, was an intelligence officer who actively served with the French Resistance, and his own feelings come across in moments when he refers to the "pornographers" who dwell on extensive descriptions of Gestapo tortures, or casually notes in an otherwise academic paragraph that the concentration camp guards were "the scum of the earth".
May 26, 2018
Having just read Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which was a short but exciting book about SOE and many of its characters and missions, I was looking forward to reading this more comprehensive history, written by M.R.D.Foot, a man who, though not in SOE, had rubbed shoulders with them, had participated in missions during World War II and had been interrogated by the Germans, so knew what he was talking about.
This book is certainly more comprehensive than the one mentioned above, but owing to the secrecy surrounding SOE, the political angst that seemed to dog it throughout the war, the competing factions within SOE and between it and the army, the navy, the air force, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and its relationships with the exiled Continental governments, quite a lot of this book is taken up with those machinations, which get a bit heavy at times. Then, just when you get into the exciting bits – the descriptions of missions and how the agents operated, you find that the missions are not described in any detail, which I found disappointing.
This narrative, however, has a much wider scope and covers much more ground, so inevitably cannot go into too much detail about individual missions. It describes a good deal about an agent’s life and the difficulties they faced and also gives far more information about the mistakes and failures that led to so many arrests and several German successes against SOE, as well as its own successes against the Nazis. The most detail concerns activities in France and the Low Countries, though it also gives an overview of SOE’s activities in Scandinavia, Poland, the Balkans, Greece and the Far East.
SOE’s relationships with established guerrilla networks is also examined, and its rationale for seemingly inexplicable contradictions explained. For instance, in Greece SOE avoided helping Communist groups, recognising that their main desire was to take power, not to destroy Nazism. In Yugoslavia, however, SOE supported Tito’s Communist partisans rather than Mihailovic’s Cetniks, mainly because Tito’s men fought the Nazi occupiers regularly and with spirit, causing them problems, whereas Mihailovic was more passive, with more than an eye to the future, when he could use his troops to wipe out Tito, though ultimately he failed in that. Churchill summarised for one officer why this was so – he said that SOE’s mission was to seek out people who were killing or wanted to kill Nazis and to help them kill more – whatever their own political leanings.
I do have an issue with how this book is written – at times it is not very well constructed, which means I had to re-read a few sections to understand what Foot really meant. I recognise, however, that his task in writing a comprehensive history of SOE, its methods and operational experience, was an enormous and incredibly complicated job, particularly as he did not have access to all of the archive when he first published the book – and much of the archive had been destroyed at the end of the war.
Overall, this is a good book and well worth reading if you are interested in the history of this fascinating organisation. If your main interest is in detailed descriptions of the missions, other books do it better and in more readable form.
Four stars.
This book is certainly more comprehensive than the one mentioned above, but owing to the secrecy surrounding SOE, the political angst that seemed to dog it throughout the war, the competing factions within SOE and between it and the army, the navy, the air force, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and its relationships with the exiled Continental governments, quite a lot of this book is taken up with those machinations, which get a bit heavy at times. Then, just when you get into the exciting bits – the descriptions of missions and how the agents operated, you find that the missions are not described in any detail, which I found disappointing.
This narrative, however, has a much wider scope and covers much more ground, so inevitably cannot go into too much detail about individual missions. It describes a good deal about an agent’s life and the difficulties they faced and also gives far more information about the mistakes and failures that led to so many arrests and several German successes against SOE, as well as its own successes against the Nazis. The most detail concerns activities in France and the Low Countries, though it also gives an overview of SOE’s activities in Scandinavia, Poland, the Balkans, Greece and the Far East.
SOE’s relationships with established guerrilla networks is also examined, and its rationale for seemingly inexplicable contradictions explained. For instance, in Greece SOE avoided helping Communist groups, recognising that their main desire was to take power, not to destroy Nazism. In Yugoslavia, however, SOE supported Tito’s Communist partisans rather than Mihailovic’s Cetniks, mainly because Tito’s men fought the Nazi occupiers regularly and with spirit, causing them problems, whereas Mihailovic was more passive, with more than an eye to the future, when he could use his troops to wipe out Tito, though ultimately he failed in that. Churchill summarised for one officer why this was so – he said that SOE’s mission was to seek out people who were killing or wanted to kill Nazis and to help them kill more – whatever their own political leanings.
I do have an issue with how this book is written – at times it is not very well constructed, which means I had to re-read a few sections to understand what Foot really meant. I recognise, however, that his task in writing a comprehensive history of SOE, its methods and operational experience, was an enormous and incredibly complicated job, particularly as he did not have access to all of the archive when he first published the book – and much of the archive had been destroyed at the end of the war.
Overall, this is a good book and well worth reading if you are interested in the history of this fascinating organisation. If your main interest is in detailed descriptions of the missions, other books do it better and in more readable form.
Four stars.
June 29, 2024
Another book on a to-read list prompted by History Channel (or Viasat History, never sure when one of them is serious and when talk about aliens and conspiracy theories), this one by the series Secret War. This book gives rather detailed insight into the way SOE operated and with what equipment. However, when it comes to the action - missions and agents themselves - the TV series are much more detailed (not surprising, perhaps, since the book was first written in the 80s).
All in all, fine, though at moments very slow read.
All in all, fine, though at moments very slow read.
November 17, 2012
A rather disjointed book, names and events just seem to appear out of any context which makes it somewhat difficult to follow.
I also found the author's style rather less than flowing, I found myself having to re-read sentences to get their meaning.
That said, the story is a fascinating one and well worth the effort to read.
I also found the author's style rather less than flowing, I found myself having to re-read sentences to get their meaning.
That said, the story is a fascinating one and well worth the effort to read.
July 23, 2022
Anyone ready to use the word ‘turd’ in a textbook gets my vote: an item of ‘wayward genius’ was ‘an explosive turd: imitation horse, cow, camel or donkey droppings with an explosive filling fired by a pressure switch’. This is followed by the explosive rat in the chapter headed ‘Devices and methods’. The chapter is a detailed overview of the SOE’s equipment, much of which required great ingenuity, but included also the development of more regular items such as the Sten submachine gun.
This is a very thorough study of the Special Operations Executive from a variety of angles. It’s not a chronological study, which would be extremely difficult to do. One of the things you learn quickly once you start looking into the complex world of covert activity is how multi-dimensional it is. So Foot’s approach is to take different strands in the SOE’s development and to give each a chapter.
Inevitably this means doubling back, and there’s plenty of cross-referencing. But better that than a narrative which moves forwards by jumping from place to place. Of the book’s eleven chapters, only one – Chapter Ten, admittedly a much longer one than the others – deals with the activities of the SOE in the field. The rest detail other aspects of the organisation such as questions of control, how agents were recruited and trained, and what equipment was devised, as mentioned above.
Foot’s original edition appeared in 1984, and though much information on the SOE has been released subsequently, his work remains a very useful introduction to the subject. Certainly there seems to have been a good deal of information available to him at the time, irrespective of official papers coming into the public domain. Foot refers extensively to others’ works published already which give a lot of the necessary detail. But it’s his understanding of the nature and character of the SOE which brings this material together into a valuable study.
Foot may not have been with the Special Operations Executive, but he served during the war with the Special Air Service. He knows from first-hand experience how covert military operations worked – or failed to work – at the time, and this gives his study authenticity. The reader gets the sense that a revised edition would add more incidental detail, but could not improve on the overall picture given in this study.
In the final chapter, Foot asks what the SOE actually achieved. This is a difficult question to answer, since the often improvised nature of SOE activity and the shifts of political emphasis and control in the many theatres of operation mean that success and failure are well mixed up in the story. But for Foot, the SOE provided a foundation for covert activity, and it enhanced the activity of resistance to the Axis forces across Europe and into Asia.
Moreover, by providing ‘a series of sublime examples of how men and women can behave right out at the margin of endurable existence’, the story of the SOE has the positive result of having ‘enriched the human stock of brave and noble ways to behave’.
While therefore it is impossible to ask for instance whether the SOE provided value for money, in today’s way of measuring success, it certainly proved a useful presence. Indeed, it might have gone on to provide a foundation for covert activity during the Cold War had it not been for Clement Attlee and his fears of ‘a British Comintern’.
Foot’s study is thus a painstaking assessment of the Special Operations Executive from all the angles the reader might wish. Certainly it repays return visits, and provides the springboard for further, more specialised research. His style is accessible, and there is much to enjoy in his descriptions and commentaries. Though it’s crammed with detail, it’s by no means a dry work.
This is a very thorough study of the Special Operations Executive from a variety of angles. It’s not a chronological study, which would be extremely difficult to do. One of the things you learn quickly once you start looking into the complex world of covert activity is how multi-dimensional it is. So Foot’s approach is to take different strands in the SOE’s development and to give each a chapter.
Inevitably this means doubling back, and there’s plenty of cross-referencing. But better that than a narrative which moves forwards by jumping from place to place. Of the book’s eleven chapters, only one – Chapter Ten, admittedly a much longer one than the others – deals with the activities of the SOE in the field. The rest detail other aspects of the organisation such as questions of control, how agents were recruited and trained, and what equipment was devised, as mentioned above.
Foot’s original edition appeared in 1984, and though much information on the SOE has been released subsequently, his work remains a very useful introduction to the subject. Certainly there seems to have been a good deal of information available to him at the time, irrespective of official papers coming into the public domain. Foot refers extensively to others’ works published already which give a lot of the necessary detail. But it’s his understanding of the nature and character of the SOE which brings this material together into a valuable study.
Foot may not have been with the Special Operations Executive, but he served during the war with the Special Air Service. He knows from first-hand experience how covert military operations worked – or failed to work – at the time, and this gives his study authenticity. The reader gets the sense that a revised edition would add more incidental detail, but could not improve on the overall picture given in this study.
In the final chapter, Foot asks what the SOE actually achieved. This is a difficult question to answer, since the often improvised nature of SOE activity and the shifts of political emphasis and control in the many theatres of operation mean that success and failure are well mixed up in the story. But for Foot, the SOE provided a foundation for covert activity, and it enhanced the activity of resistance to the Axis forces across Europe and into Asia.
Moreover, by providing ‘a series of sublime examples of how men and women can behave right out at the margin of endurable existence’, the story of the SOE has the positive result of having ‘enriched the human stock of brave and noble ways to behave’.
While therefore it is impossible to ask for instance whether the SOE provided value for money, in today’s way of measuring success, it certainly proved a useful presence. Indeed, it might have gone on to provide a foundation for covert activity during the Cold War had it not been for Clement Attlee and his fears of ‘a British Comintern’.
Foot’s study is thus a painstaking assessment of the Special Operations Executive from all the angles the reader might wish. Certainly it repays return visits, and provides the springboard for further, more specialised research. His style is accessible, and there is much to enjoy in his descriptions and commentaries. Though it’s crammed with detail, it’s by no means a dry work.
January 10, 2021
MRD Foot’s SOE is an historians overview of the secretive Special Operations Executive. Coming into existence in 1940 and being shuttered in 1946, the SOE oversaw a multitude of covert operations of irregular forces, local resistance fighters and partisans. Based in London with region HQ’s across the globe from Cairo, Ceylon, to Brisbane.
SOE was so secretive that many in the British High Command were not even aware of its existence, and those that did often felt it was staffed with renegades up to no good, ungentlemanly warfare. In reality, it was largely staffed by officers schooled in the British public school system and populated with a list of characters drawn from the old boys network including Eton and Oxford.
Foot, himself an experienced clandestine warrior of which includes service in the SAS, does a very good job of collecting and condensing extremely hard to find source materials (locked up in secret for at least 50 years) and embellishing the somewhat dry fact of matter archive materials with personal accounts drawn from numerous interviews with those who were there.
Whilst small in number, the SOE trained, equipped, armed and inserted countless warriors and patriots into occupied France, the lowland countries, the Balkans, Italy, Burma and as far abroad as China, Malaya and Indonesia.
This account covers the establishment of SOE, the key leaders and then goes into further detail about the basics of spy craft, a number of key operations and their outcomes as well as a description of SOE operations and effectiveness during the war.
It provides an excellent overview and introduction to SOE and references a number of detailed accounts by other historians and former operatives. One particular anecdote sums up nicely how indeed irregular SOE operations and agents were. In this case, two young girls aged 16 and 14 drained the grease from the axles of rail cars used to transport the SS Panzer divisions tanks. In this case they inserted carborundum liquid which resulted in the axels ceasing. The net result was the delay of an SS Panzer division by 17 days to enter the battle to resist allied forces after D-Day.
SOE was so secretive that many in the British High Command were not even aware of its existence, and those that did often felt it was staffed with renegades up to no good, ungentlemanly warfare. In reality, it was largely staffed by officers schooled in the British public school system and populated with a list of characters drawn from the old boys network including Eton and Oxford.
Foot, himself an experienced clandestine warrior of which includes service in the SAS, does a very good job of collecting and condensing extremely hard to find source materials (locked up in secret for at least 50 years) and embellishing the somewhat dry fact of matter archive materials with personal accounts drawn from numerous interviews with those who were there.
Whilst small in number, the SOE trained, equipped, armed and inserted countless warriors and patriots into occupied France, the lowland countries, the Balkans, Italy, Burma and as far abroad as China, Malaya and Indonesia.
This account covers the establishment of SOE, the key leaders and then goes into further detail about the basics of spy craft, a number of key operations and their outcomes as well as a description of SOE operations and effectiveness during the war.
It provides an excellent overview and introduction to SOE and references a number of detailed accounts by other historians and former operatives. One particular anecdote sums up nicely how indeed irregular SOE operations and agents were. In this case, two young girls aged 16 and 14 drained the grease from the axles of rail cars used to transport the SS Panzer divisions tanks. In this case they inserted carborundum liquid which resulted in the axels ceasing. The net result was the delay of an SS Panzer division by 17 days to enter the battle to resist allied forces after D-Day.
January 8, 2021
Few people knew as much about the highly-secretive SOE - whose task, according to Churchill, was to 'set Europe ablaze' - as M.R.D. Foot. This short book is an introduction to the work of the estimated 15,000 SOE operatives, many of them female, who fought a secret war against Germany, Italy and Japan across three continents. In his attempt to be both comprehensive and brief, Foot clearly struggles. Most sections of the book, especially the final chapters detailing SOE operations across the various war zones, feel too brief. He complains about how much remains secret (the book was published in 1984), how much was destroyed and how much information was never committed to paper. Years after this book appeared, there were new revelations, some spectacular ones too, including the secret plan to kill Adolf Hitler. One wonders what other secrets lay hidden in the archives, or which were buried with the men and women who carried those secrets to their graves.
March 5, 2018
Considered an authoritative voice on the program, this volume is a broad overview of the formation and missions of the Special Operations Executive. Foot was one of the first historians to be granted access to the files that documented the wartime efforts of the SOE. These brave men and women played a vital part in the war effort, and their collaboration with American forces (the OSS) led to the eventual formation of the CIA.
Definitely a good place to begin, because the more you read the more you'll want to investigate.
Definitely a good place to begin, because the more you read the more you'll want to investigate.
March 13, 2018
Despite the fact this book is mostly twenty years old and the author was not privy to material now released, it was a pretty thorough account of the SOE. There is a good section on the development of the SOE at the start. The remainder is divided by section and theatre to give a history of SOE's activities during WW2. It finishes with the disbanding. I enjoyed the read, the politics was a little boring but that is just my personal taste. I would recommend to anyone with an interest in WW2 and clandestine warfare.
September 26, 2018
Such an odd book.
The subject is fascinating but the writer often failed to engage me. I ended the book feeling unsatisfied but not able to put my finger on exactly why. It may be that it is because I took so long to read it - I tended to pick it up before bed and read for ten or twenty minutes - and the fact that I had to keep referring to the glossary to remind me what each acronym or set of initials stood for maybe broke the flow of the narrative. Whatever it was, I feel that I will have to read it again in the near future and, possibly, amend this review.
The subject is fascinating but the writer often failed to engage me. I ended the book feeling unsatisfied but not able to put my finger on exactly why. It may be that it is because I took so long to read it - I tended to pick it up before bed and read for ten or twenty minutes - and the fact that I had to keep referring to the glossary to remind me what each acronym or set of initials stood for maybe broke the flow of the narrative. Whatever it was, I feel that I will have to read it again in the near future and, possibly, amend this review.
October 27, 2021
I've read a lot of biographies about or by former SOE agents, and I'm always impressed and inspired by those brave women and men. Reading Foot's book, humbly called "an outline" of the history of S.O.E. offers a great depth to when reading about individuals in the resistance work. I can whole heartedly recommend it. Michael Foot writes personally and often with a witty humour.
August 4, 2018
An informative read if not an entertaining one.
July 12, 2020
Great.
March 25, 2023
Bit long but kinda interesting.
December 4, 2015
This is a fabulous book ... maybe the best on the SOE, its founding, training, and operation. Loved it.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews