An examination of the SOE, its accomplishments, and the Canadian connection to the organization.
During the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to conduct acts of sabotage and subversion, and raise secret armies of partisans in German-occupied Europe. With the directive to “set Europe ablaze, ” the SOE undertook a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the Nazi Gestapo. An agent’s failure could result in indescribable torture, dispatch to a concentration camp, and, often, a death sentence.
While the SOE’s contribution to the Allied war effort is still debated, and many of its files remain classified, it was a unique wartime creation that reflected innovation, adventure, and a fanatical devotion on the part of its personnel to the Allied cause.
The SOE has an important Canadian connection: Canadians were among its operatives and agents behind enemy lines. Camp X, in Whitby, Ontario, was a special training school that trained agents for overseas duty, and an infamous Canadian codenamed “Intrepid” ran SOE operations in the Americas.
Table of Content
Foreword
Introduction
1 With Backs to the Wall: Taking Back the Initiative
2 ‘Setting Europe Ablaze’: The Creation of the SOE
3 A Man Called Intrepid: The Beginning of the Canadian Connection
4 Out of Europe: BSC and SOE Operations in the Americas
5 Killing Two Birds with One Stone: The Creation of Camp X
6 Shrouded in Secrecy: Training and the Introduction of Hydra at Camp X
7 Down to Business: Operations in Europe
8 “The Simplest Things in War …’: Clausewitzian Frictions
9 Turning Theory to Reality: Canadians on SOE Operations
10 Reckoning: The Value of the SOE in the Second World War
11 Settling Accounts: The SOE at War’s End
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
About the Author
About the author
Colonel Bernd Horn is a retired Regular Force infantry officer and military educator. Dr. Horn has authored, co-authored, and edited more than forty books, including A Most Ungentlemanly Way of War: The SOE and the Canadian Connection and No Ordinary Men: Special Operations Forces Missions in Afghanistan. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.
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