5/16/2024 0 Comments Women secret agents ww2When the Allies landed, SOE struck with venom. Finest hourīy D-Day on 6 June, 1944 SOE had become a feared organisation that could strike the enemy anytime, anywhere.Īgent networks now stretched across Occupied Europe, linked to an army of resistance fighters. The Abwehr were a deadly foe, but not as ruthless as the Gestapo or the SS Sicherheitsdienst, who tortured their victims before execution. Dozens of agents fell straight in to enemy hands as result - most were eventually shot. In Holland the Abwehr played the Englandspiel - 'the match against England' - by controlling the wireless traffic of a captured SOE operator. The Germans knew that W/T operators were the weak link in the chain of any agent network. One example is the sending of a supply train, loaded with tanks, to the wrong destination - using only a forged document. To avoid retribution, SOE carried out 'invisible sabotage', which left no trace and implicated nobody. After the killing of Heydrich, the SS exterminated 5,000 men women and children in two villages near Prague. Often SOE operations resulted in reprisals against the local population. Norway 1943 - SOE agents destroyed the heavy water plant at Vemork, ending the Nazi atomic bomb programme.Greece 1942 - SOE agents blew up the Gorgopotamos rail bridge, which carried vital supplies for Rommel's desert army.Czechoslovakia 1942 - an SOE hit squad assassinated Himmler's deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, with a grenade.This operation led to hundreds more in Europe and in the Far East against the Japanese. News of this triumph reverberated throughout Whitehall and put SOE firmly on the map - proving that you did not need a squadron of bombers to disrupt the German war machine. ![]() ![]() The precision blast crippled work at a vital U-boat base in Bordeaux, and brought the all-electric railways in this region to an abrupt halt. SOE's first headline success came in June 1941 when agents blew up the Pessac power station in France with a few well-placed explosive charges. SOE agents destroyed the heavy water plant at Vemork, ending the Nazi atomic bomb programme They wanted to win the war by bombing Germany to its knees.īut with Churchill as their guardian SOE survived and lived to fight another day. ![]() SIS did not want SOE disrupting their agents intelligence-gathering operations by blowing up bridges and factories.īomber Command also despised SOE and resented having to loan aircraft for 'unethical' clandestine missions. Head of the SIS, Sir Stewart Menzies, stated repeatedly that SOE were 'amateur, dangerous, and bogus' and took it upon himself to bring massive internal pressure to bear on the fledgling organisation. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - now known as MI6 viewed SOE with great suspicion. Other branches of this backroom operation included the False Documents Section where agents collected their bogus identities and even a fashion company that outfitted agents with suits and dresses cut to the Continental style. One tree trunk mould might conceal radio equipment but another shaped like a piece of camel dung hid a booby trap that could blow the tyre off an enemy truck.
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