Special Operations Executive

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Members of the SOE, in Southern France, in 1944

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

One of the organisations from which SOE was created was also involved in the formation of the Auxiliary Units, a top secret "stay-behind" resistance organisation which would have been activated in the event of a German invasion of Britain.

Few people were aware of SOE's existence. Those who were part of it or liaised with it 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". Its various branches, and sometimes the organisation as a whole, were concealed for security purposes 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 countries or former countries occupied by or attacked by the Axis forces, except where demarcation lines were agreed with Britain's principal Allies (the Soviet Union and the United States). It also 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 just over 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women.^[1]

After the war, the organisation was officially dissolved on 15 January 1946. A memorial to SOE's agents was unveiled on the Albert Embankment by Lambeth Palace in London in October 2009.^[2]

Special Operations Executive Media

Major General Colin McVean Gubbins, director of SOE from September 1943
SOE memorial plaque in the cloister of Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, unveiled by Major General Gubbins in April 1969.
B MK II receiver and transmitter (also known as the B2 radio set)
Audience in demolition class, Milton Hall, circa 1944
Westland Lysander Mk III (SD), the type used for special missions into occupied France during World War II.
Maquisards (Resistance fighters) in the Hautes-Alpes département in August 1944. SOE agents are second from right, possibly Christine Granville, third John Roper, fourth, Robert Purvis.
Memorial to Polish Members of the Special Operations Executive, 1942–1944, at Audley End House
Mauthausen concentration camp, memorial plaques behind the Prison Block marking the spot where the ashes of the executed Englandspiel SOE agents are buried
Englandspiel memorial plaques behind the Prison Block of the Mauthausen concentration camp
The car in which Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated