The Politics and Strategy of Clandestine War: Special Operations Executive, 1940-1946

ISBN-13: 9780415391108 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 224 str.

Neville Wylie

Opis

This collection of essays on Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) sets out to meet two discrete objectives. The first is to explore the "non-military" aspects of British "special operations" over the course of the Second World War. SOE was established in the summer of 1940 to "set Europe ablaze," as Churchill memorably put it. This was a task it was meant to achieve by detonating popular resistance against Axis rule, and nurturing "secret armies," which might be capable of providing military and other forms of assistance for British forces when they were once again able to return to the offensive and conduct land operations in Europe. Naturally, most writing on SOE reflects these early priorities and devotes its attention to assessing SOE's contribution to Britain's military effort. Fostering resistance movements in enemy occupied territory was, however, only one aspect of SOE's war. The primary objective of the essays collected in this volume is to highlight the numerous other areas in which SOE was able to contribute to Britain's war effort. As these essays show, SOE played a major role in supporting Britain's political, economic, financial and humanitarian interests, in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific theatres The importance of the collection, however, goes beyond merely illuminating aspects of SOE's work which have largely been overlooked in previous scholarship. More significantly, by situating SOE within the context of Britain's broader political needs, the essays demonstrate the extent to which SOE came to epitomize and embody the range of skills that are found in today's secret service organizations. SOE showed itself capable of operating on a global scale anddeveloping the necessary expertise, equipment and personnel to conduct activities across the whole spectrum of what we have come to know as "covert operations." By bringing SOE's activities into sharper focus and exposing the scale of its involvement in Britain's wartime external relations, the essays echo current thinking on the place of the so-called "secret world" in international politics. As they emerge from the shadows, secret agencies are increasingly being seen not as niche-market service providers but rather as forceful and at times central players in the formation of governments' foreign and security policies. SOE may have worked at the margins of Britain's military effort, but its activities were none the smaller for it, nor any less significant for the history of the Second World War.

Spis treści

1. Introduction: Politics and Strategy in the Clandestine War – New Perspectives in the Study of S.O.E.  2. ‘Of Historical Interest Only’: The Origins and Vicissitudes of the SOE Archive  3. A Glass Half Full – Some Thoughts on the Evolution of the Study of the Special Operations Executive  4. The ‘Massingham’ Mission and the Secret ‘Special Relationship’: Cooperation and Rivalry between the Anglo-American Clandestine Services in French North Africa, November 1942 – May 1943  5. Communist in SOE: Explaining James Klugmann’s Recruitment and Retention  6. ‘Kipling and all that’: American Perceptions of SOE and British Imperial Intrigue in the Balkans, 1943-1945  7. Ungentlemanly Warriors or Unreliable Diplomats? Special Operations Executive and ‘Irregular Political Activities  8. A Succession of Crises: SOE in the Middle East, 1940-1945  9. ‘Toughs and Thugs’: The Mazzini Society and Political Warfare against Italian POWs in India, 1941-1943  10. ‘Against the Grain’: Special Operations Executive in Spain, 1941-1945  11. Special Operations Executive’s Foreign Currency Transactions  Index

O autorze

Neville Wylie is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Nottingham, author of Britain, Switzerland and the Second World War (Oxford, 2003), and editor of European Neutrals and Non-belligerents during the Second World War (Cambridge, 2002). He has written a number of papers on intelligence and special operations, including ‘"An amateur learns his job"? Special Operations Executive in Portugal, 1940-1942’, Journal of Contemporary History 36/3 (2001), 455-471 and ‘SOE and the Neutrals’ in Mark Seaman (ed.), Special Operations Executive (London, 2005).