Note: the three little dashes on the puzzle –functions for clearing the puzzle, zooming in and out and printing and down loading the hard copy of the puzzle solution.
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements during World War II.
SOE personnel operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis powers, except where demarcation lines were agreed upon with Britain’s principal Allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. 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, of whom 3,200 were women.[2] Both men and women served as agents in Axis-occupied countries.
The organisation was dissolved in 1946. A memorial to those who served in SOE was unveiled in 1996 on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey by the Queen Mother, and in 2009 on the Albert Embankment in London, depicting Violette Szabo.[3] The Valençay SOE Memorial honours 91 male and 13 female SOE agents who lost their lives while working in France. The Tempsford Memorial was unveiled in 2013 by the Prince of Wales in Church End, Tempsford, Bedfordshire, close to the site of the former RAF Tempsford.
History
Origins
The organisation was formed from the merger of three existing secret departments, which had been formed shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Immediately after Germany annexed Austria (the Anschluss) in March 1938, the Foreign Office created a propaganda organisation known as Department EH (after Electra House, its headquarters), run by Canadian newspaper magnate Sir Campbell Stuart. Later that month, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) formed a section known as Section D (the “D” apparently standing for “Destruction”)[4] under Major Lawrence Grand, to investigate the use of sabotage, propaganda, and other irregular means to weaken an enemy. In the autumn of the same year, the War Office expanded an existing research department known as GS (R) and appointed Major J. C. Holland as its head to conduct research into guerrilla warfare.[5] GS (R) was renamed Military Intelligence (Research) (MI(R)) in early 1939.
These three departments worked with few resources until the outbreak of war. There was much overlap between their activities. Section D and EH duplicated much of each other’s work. On the other hand, the heads of Section D and MI(R) knew each other and shared information.[6] They agreed to a rough division of their activities; MI(R) researched irregular operations that could be undertaken by regular uniformed troops, while Section D dealt with truly undercover work.[7][8]
During the early months of the war, Section D was based first at St Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster and then the Metropole Hotel near Trafalgar Square.[9] The Section attempted unsuccessfully to sabotage deliveries of vital strategic materials to Germany from neutral countries by mining the Iron Gate on the River Danube.[10] MI(R) meanwhile produced pamphlets and technical handbooks for guerrilla leaders. MI(R) was also involved in the formation of the Independent Companies, autonomous units intended to carry out sabotage and guerrilla operations behind enemy lines in the Norwegian Campaign, and the Auxiliary Units, stay-behind commando units based on the Home Guard which would act in the event of an Axis invasion of Britain, as seemed possible in the early years of the war.[11]
Formation
On 13 June 1940, at the instigation of newly appointed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lord Hankey (who held the Cabinet post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) persuaded Section D and MI(R) that their operations should be coordinated. On 1 July, a Cabinet level meeting arranged the formation of a single sabotage organisation. On 16 July, Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, was appointed to take political responsibility for the new organisation, which was formally created on 22 July 1940. Dalton recorded in his diary that on that day the War Cabinet agreed to his new duties and that Churchill had told him, “And now go and set Europe ablaze.”[12] Dalton used the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence as a model for the organisation.[13][14][15]
Sir Frank Nelson was nominated by SIS to be director of the new organisation,[16] and a senior civil servant, Gladwyn Jebb, transferred from the Foreign Office to it, with the title of Chief Executive Officer.[17] Campbell Stuart left the organisation, and the flamboyant Major Grand was returned to the regular army. At his own request, Major Holland also left to take up a regular appointment in the Royal Engineers. (Both Grand and Holland eventually attained the rank of major-general.)[17] However, Holland’s former deputy at MI(R), Brigadier Colin Gubbins, returned from command of the Auxiliary Units to be Director of Operations of SOE.[16]
One department of MI(R), MI R(C), which was involved in the development of weapons for irregular warfare, was not formally integrated into SOE but became an independent body codenamed MD1.[18] Directed by Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Millis Jefferis,[19] it was located at The Firs in Whitchurch, Buckinghamshire and nicknamed “Churchill’s Toyshop” from the Prime Minister’s close interest in it and his enthusiastic support.[20]
Leadership
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 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]
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]