Special Operations Executive.

Format:

Book

Series:

Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence, An Intelligence Empire.

Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence, An Intelligence Empire

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain. Special Operations Executive--Archives.

Great Britain.

Intelligence service--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Intelligence service.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (968 files)

Place of Publication:

Farmington Hills, Mich. : Gale, 2021.

Summary:

These are the records of the Ministry of Economic Warfare and the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which functioned during the Second World War to promote sabotage and subversion, and to assist resistance groups in enemy occupied territory. Established in 1940, SOE was initially divided into three branches: SO 1 (propaganda); SO 2 (active operations - this branch was subsequently split into groups dealing with geographical areas of operation) and SO 3 (planning). In August 1941, the bulk of SO 1 was transferred to the newly created Political Warfare Executive, under the control of the Foreign Office, where it was amalgamated with parts of the Foreign Publicity Department of the Ministry of Information and the European Section of the BBC. This left SOE as a purely planning and operations organisation, which is how it remained until it was disbanded in 1946. During this time, the principal focus of SOE's operations was on occupied Europe, but it also operated with varying degrees of intensity in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East.

Notes:

Date range: 1935-1988.

Reproduction of the originals from The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom).

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.