Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War

This book presents a unique assessment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and brings together leading authors to examine the organization from a range of key angles. Since the contributors presented their papers at the first international conference on the SOE at the Imperial War Museum in 1998, the release of many records has allowed them to develop the first authoritative analyses of the organization's activities. Their original papers are here amended and enriched to take account of the full range of SOE documents that have been released to the National Archives. The fascinating stories they tell range from overviews of work in a single country to particular operations and the impact of key personalities. SOE was a remarkably innovative organization; it played a significant part in the Allied victory while its theories of clandestine warfare and specialized equipment had a major impact upon the post-war world. As SOE proved that war need not be fought by conventional methods and bysoldiers in uniform, the organization laid much of the groundwork for the development of irregular warfare that characterized the second half of the twentieth century and that is still here, more potent than ever, at the beginning of the twenty-first. This book will be of great interest to students of World War II history, intelligence studies and special operations, as well as general readers with an interest in SOE and World War II.