While it was officially put together in July 1940, the SOE (Special Operations Executive) had been created in 1938 with the merger of three current, key sections immediately after Germany annexed Austria. Churchill's Secret Army was directed to "Set Europe Ablaze".
SOE operatives were sent to different Nazi occupied countries to cause chaos behind German lines and furthermore attempt to discover local resistance groups they could very well work with the minute the moment for invasion was here. Theatres of Operation covered France, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Abyssinia and the Far East.
As agents operated deep in occupied countries and they were recruited from a range of social group and background. The principle prerequisite was that the would-be operative had in-depth awareness of the state they would operate in and able to pass as a local of that country. That is why, agents with dual nationality were highly coveted.
The renowned plane utilized by the SOE in France was the Westland Lysander. It was a small airplane which made it a great deal more challenging to observe and was sturdy enough to land on makeshift landing strips. It was used to ferry agents to and from the Britain along with collecting men and women who needed to be interviewed in London. Pilots who had been shot down were also typically brought back to the Britain by Lysander.
Amid the SOE group were also female agents and around 30% of the female operatives delivered into France from Section F, did not survive. The types of operations in each region were wide ranging. For example, in Poland, there was limited need to stir up the local population as there was already common hatred of the Nazis. This was in comparison to areas such as Vichy France where some locals worked with the Germans and the probability of SOE operatives being betrayed was considerably increased.
For the duration of World War II, the SOE had made use of around 13,000 people who directly supported or provided somewhere in the region of 1 million operatives.
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The SOE played a major part during
World War II mainly in Europe but in other areas of the world too.
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