Its mission, as captured in a well-known quote usually attributed to Churchill, was to “set Europe ablaze.” With formidable sabotage makes an attempt together with the profitable Operation Postmaster – a 1942 mission to undermine and disrupt Axis provide strains within the Gulf of Guinea – it arguably lived as much as its goal.
Formally established on 22 July 1940, SOE would go on to help resistance actions throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, destabilise enemy provide strains and collect intelligence essential to Allied victories.
However it additionally did one thing few wartime businesses had beforehand thought of. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Dr Kate Vigurs explains the way it skilled ladies to kill with their naked palms.
The delivery of SOE
SOE rapidly grew to become a thorn within the aspect of Nazi occupation forces. It operated individually from, and infrequently in rigidity with, Britain’s extra conventional intelligence businesses. Such rivalries have been notably acute with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), which prioritised quiet statement over motion.
SOE’s remit was “totally different from that of the Secret Intelligence Service. SOE are over there blowing issues up and taking pictures issues down,” explains Vigurs, “and SIS are going, ‘Shhh… we’re spying over right here.’”
This rivalry mirrored a deeper rigidity in Britain’s warfare effort – between conservative, hierarchical considering and the necessity for unconventional, usually improvised resistance. SOE leaned onerous into the latter, each attracting and focusing on mavericks and risk-takers from throughout the waning British empire.
However by a ways, amongst its most radical improvements was the inclusion of girls as combat-trained discipline brokers.
How SOE skilled its feminine brokers to kill
Not like most wartime organisations, SOE skilled its feminine recruits for a similar type of harmful missions given to males. Ladies have been taught sabotage methods, marksmanship, wi-fi operation and lethal close-combat strategies designed for silent execution.
“They have been skilled in one thing referred to as silent killing… how you can use their naked palms,” says Vigurs. “Naked palms is good as a result of in the event you’re caught with weapons, you have to clarify it away. But when you know the way to do a great karate chop or kick to the cods, you realize you are doing effectively.”
This lethal skillset was taught in distant nation homes throughout Britain, together with Arisaig Home within the Scottish Highlands, the place brokers underwent weeks of bodily and psychological conditioning.
Measurement or power was irrelevant to the talents being taught, explains Vigurs, that means that women and men may play an equally lethal function. What mattered was the component of shock and decisive precision.
As former agent Pearl Witherington instructed Vigurs, “It’s not how onerous you hit them, my expensive, nevertheless it’s the place you hit them that counts.”
A unique fashion of spy community
SOE started as a casual membership. Lots of its early male brokers have been recruited by way of private connections or public-school ties. However because the warfare expanded, so too did its method.
Ladies usually entered by way of much less typical means, with abilities similar to data of international languages qualifying them to affix the ranks.
“My favorite story a couple of girl being recruited,” says Vigurs, “is she’s at a celebration… she dropped a ebook, picked it up… began studying it out loud in French… earlier than she is aware of it, she’s at an SOE interview.”
As soon as recruited, most ladies have been skilled for 2 of probably the most perilous roles: wi-fi operator or courier.
“Wi-fi operator; a really, very lonely job… the Germans are on the market listening,” Vigurs explains. “They’d one thing referred to as a direction-finding van, which may triangulate on a sign in 20 minutes… the life expectancy of a wi-fi operator was six weeks.”
As a result of ladies have been typically excluded from census lists for compelled labour in occupied nations, they may transfer extra freely, making them invaluable as undercover brokers. However their work was no much less harmful. Many needed to carry false id papers, miniature explosives and radio units disguised as suitcases or farm tools, growing their dangers ought to they be stopped and searched.
And Vigurs additionally states that these ladies didn’t essentially know what organisation they have been being recruited into – a tactic used to retain the secrecy of the organisation. “Generally they instructed them, typically they didn’t.”
Exploding rats and hatpin daggers
Complementing its different strategies, SOE’s wartime toolkit featured an unimaginable array of units.
“SOE produced a wild and great catalogue of weaponry and explosives… Beneath the Pure Historical past Museum, that they had a set of all these items. The heads of state and potential brokers may go and take a look at and choose [from].”
Amongst its more unusual innovations, says Vigurs, was the exploding rat.
“Take a rat, scoop out its insides, stuff it with plastic explosive… depart useless rat mendacity round. Nobody’s going to assume twice… you would possibly choose it up, throw it into the furnace — growth.”
Different devices included incendiary cigarettes, daggers hidden in hatpins, and the Wellrod pistol, a silent weapon fitted with rubber wipes to muffle the shot – perfect for assassinations.
These mirrored SOE’s core philosophy: that resistance to the Nazi occupation of Europe required ingenuity and a willingness to embrace distinctive concepts.
The loss of life and disbandment of SOE
The dangers that many SOE brokers took have been immense, and lots of vanished throughout their missions. Because the warfare ended, Vera Atkins, a senior intelligence officer in SOE’s French ‘F-Part’, made it her private mission to hint the destiny of those unaccounted-for brokers.
“She had a listing of 118 brokers who had gone lacking. She discovered 117,” says Vigurs. “With the ladies, there are 13… 12 have been within the focus camp system and have been both executed or died on account of their therapy.”
Amongst these misplaced have been Noor Inayat Khan, Violette Szabo and Odette Sansom: ladies who had survived brutal coaching, parachuted into occupied France, and coordinated resistance cells earlier than being captured, tortured or executed.
SOE was formally disbanded in 1946, months after Churchill left workplace. Its work was deemed too secret and too politically delicate to proceed exterior of wartime.
However from the planning of D-Day to the empowerment of native resistance fighters throughout Europe, SOE left behind a string of spectacular strategic victories, in addition to a legacy of feminine heroism that has lengthy gone unrecognised.
Finally, although the story of SOE is usually “perceived as glamorous,” says Vigurs, there’s far more work to be carried out in telling the tales which were hidden from view that obscure nice adversity and sacrifice. “Generally what you discover will be uncomfortable. It may possibly problem the obtained narrative of the final 80 years.”
Dr Kate Vigurs was chatting with Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Hearken to the full conversation. She is the writer of Mission Europe: The Secret Historical past of the Ladies of SOE (YUP, 2025)