Soe The Special Operations Executive 19401946 Mrd Foot by M.r.d. Foot 9781448104017, 1448104017 instant download after payment.

"It is impossible to imagine M.R.D. Foot's position as the pre-eminent historian of SOE ever being challenged''                                                                                                                                                  - Antony Beevor

SOE, the Special Operations Executive, was a small, tough British secret service, a dirty tricks department established in July 1940 and encouraged by Mr Churchill to 'Set Europe ablaze'.

Recruited from all over the Commonwealth and beyond it was a remarkably diverse group of men and women of all ages and intellects who were members of this most secret of wartime agencies and who lived in great and constant danger from the moment they arrived in their assigned zone of operations, which ranged from occupied Europe out to the islands around Singapore. Their job - as saboteurs, informers, partisans, couriers or secret agents - was to support and stimulate resistance behind enemy lines; their credentials were undeniable acts of fortitude and courage along with immense patience and an utter devotion to their assigned goal. Many of those captured were tortured in unspeakably sadistic ways before being executed or sent to Concentration Camps in Germany where the majority of those taken (in particular the Women Agents) were murdered days or weeks before the war in Europe finally ended, their bodies burnt to ash and reduced to clouds of smoke. Almost all were defiant to the very end. The Japanese were just as brutal in their treatment of SOE Prisoners with ritual beheadings often carried out after capture, at the end of lengthy torture sessions.&