Special Operations Executive 1940-1945
William Mackenzie
St. Ermin's Press, N. Pomfret, VT 2003
Paperback $24.95 773 pages maps
K. L. Jamison
At the beginning of WW II, Britain’s Special Operations Executive was founded with the directive to "set Europe ablaze". After the close of WW II a classically trained historian was assigned to write its history. He was hampered in this project by the eccentric, even conflicting filing system employed by the organization. The author largely overcame this difficulty to create a detailed organizational history of British organized unconventional warfare. The work covers only Europe and associated activities in the Middle East.
The work is divided into the early and later parts of the war and details operations in each country. The problems in the early part of the war, when resistance was unpopular, are fundamentally different than those after 1942 when the Allies were winning. The early part of the war was an exercise in avoiding the Special Forces joke of wandering around Europe asking "Anybody wanna be a guerrilla?" Detailed lists of agents, transmitters, and supplies are provided along with the country to which they were delivered. It is immediately obvious that a disproportionate number of handguns were delivered to the various resistance movements. There was an aborted plan to deliver the single-shot Liberator pistols to slave laborers in Germany. Pistols can be provided in large numbers regardless of the delivery system, are easily concealed in occupied territory, and reduce the helplessness of persons wanting to resist.
The problem of introducing radio transmitters into the various nations and finding reliable organizations was not the first problem confronting
S.O.E. The organization was instantly in conflict with traditional intelligence agencies. To introduce agents and supplies into Europe required the cooperation of the Air Force and Navy; after 1941 there was coordination with Americans. Throughout the war, there were coordination problems with governments in exile, who did not necessarily share the same aims as Great Britain. There were also resistance organizations, which did not share the values of the government in exile. With the sole exception of Norway, resistance movements were divided between communist and various flavors of non-communist. Many of these groups, especially the communists, seemed more interested in post-war politics than resistance.
Yugoslavia is a perfect example of the conflicts in resistance movements; breaking down largely between communist Partisans and Royalist
Chetniks. SOE. worked primarily, then exclusively with the Partisans The work provides more grist for the arguments over this decision. While the work credits the Partisan claim that they were fighting while the Chetniks collaborated with the enemy, it provides information to the contrary. The Chetniks were the first anti-fascist guerrillas in Europe, and continued fighting long after their support was cut off. I once met a pilot who had been downed in Yugoslavia late in the war and spent six months derailing trains with the Chetniks until an airstrip could be constructed to take out the large number of allied airmen rescued by
Chetniks. Regardless, the work credits the Partisans with engaging all the enemy units in Yugoslavia. It does admit that most enemy units may have only aspired to mediocre caliber. It evaluates enemy casualties, and finds them unusually low. From the information provided, it appears that the Partisans had a better public relations department, a lesson of some value for current wars.
This history has only just been declassified and sixty years after the events described portions of the work are still classified. A problem with the work is the large amount of explanatory material provided in French, without a translation. This conceit is common among French speakers, who should be cursed with owner manuals written in Tibetan, and not very clear Tibetan at that.
[Webmaster's note: Je pense que la vanité
des Américains dépasse de loin cela du Français. Peut-être le
critique préférerait le texte dans le Coréen--I think the conceit of
Americans far exceeds that of the French. Perhaps the reviewer
would prefer the text in Korean]
