Great Britain. Special Operations Executive

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton, by the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia) against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements.

Few people were aware of SOE's existence. Those who were part of it, or liaised with it, were sometimes referred to as the "Baker Street Irregulars", after the location of its London headquarters. It was also known as "Churchill's Secret Army" or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare". For security purposes, its various branches, and sometimes the organisation as a whole, were concealed behind names such as the "Joint Technical Board" or the "Inter-Service Research Bureau", or fictitious branches of the Air Ministry, Admiralty or War Office.

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. The SOE made use of neutral territory on occasion, or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organisation directly employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women.[2]

After the war, the organisation was dissolved on 15 January 1946. The official memorial to all those who served in the SOE during the Second World War was unveiled on 13 February 1996, on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey, by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. A further memorial to SOE's agents was unveiled in October 2009 on the Albert Embankment in London.[3] The Valençay SOE Memorial honours 104 SOE agents who lost their lives while working in France. The Tempsford Memorial was unveiled on 3 December 2013 by Charles, Prince of Wales, in Church End, Tempsford, Bedfordshire, close to the site of former RAF Tempsford. The director of SOE was usually referred to by the initials "CD". Nelson, the first director to be appointed, was a former head of a trading firm in India, a back bench Conservative Member of Parliament and Consul in Basel, Switzerland, where he had also been engaged in undercover intelligence work.[21]

In February 1942 Dalton was removed as the political head of SOE (possibly because he was using the SOE's phone tapping facility to listen to conversations of fellow Labour ministers, [22] or possibly because he was viewed as too “communistically inclined” and a threat to SIS).[23] He became President of the Board of Trade and was replaced as Minister of Economic Warfare by Lord Selborne. Selborne in turn retired Nelson, who had suffered ill health as a result of his hard work, and appointed Sir Charles Hambro, head of Hambros Bank, to replace him. He also transferred Jebb back to the Foreign Office.[24]

Hambro had been a close friend of Churchill before the war and had won the Military Cross in the First World War. He retained several other interests, for example remaining chairman of Hambros and a director of the Great Western Railway. Some of his subordinates and associates expressed reservations that these interests distracted him from his duties as director.[25][26] Selborne and Hambro nevertheless cooperated closely until August 1943, when they fell out over the question of whether SOE should remain a separate body or coordinate its operations with those of the British Army in several theatres of war. Hambro felt that any loss of autonomy would cause a number of problems for SOE in the future. At the same time, Hambro was found to have failed to pass on vital information to Selborne. He was dismissed as director, and became head of a raw materials purchasing commission in Washington, D.C., which was involved in the exchange of nuclear information.[27]


Major General Colin McVean Gubbins, director of SOE from September 1943
As part of the subsequent closer ties between the Imperial General Staff and SOE (although SOE had no representation on the Chiefs of Staff Committee), Hambro's replacement as director from September 1943 was Gubbins, who had been promoted to Major-general. Gubbins had wide experience of commando and clandestine operations and had played a major part in MI(R)'s and SOE's early operations. He also put into practice many of the lessons he learned from the IRA during the Irish War of Independence.[13]