Episode 394: Britain’s SOE: Set Europe Ablaze!

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time to World War Two and study a pretty cool artifact of the Great Britain: the Special Operations Executive. Known as the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” and the “Baker Street Irregulars,” the SOE was an “officially unofficial” group of spies and soldiers who had two mandates against the Nazis. Mandate one was to wage guerrilla warfare inside of all occupied territories and help form internal resistance. Mandate two was to spread anti German propaganda and get the locals to hate their Nazi overlords. According to Winston Churchill himself, the SOE needed to go forth and “set Europe Ablaze!” They did all of this quite well.

The SOE was formed in July of 1940, when the Minister of Economic Warfare merged three different intelligence branches into one. Once formalized, they started to recruit and train people who other groups didn’t want. They took convicts, homosexuals, people with bad conduct records in the armed forces, Communists, and people who were Anti-British. On top of that, they took women. Lots of women. They didn’t just let the women serve as nurses or something so mundane; they had women doing the most important jobs from combat missions to key intelligence broadcasts behind enemy lines.

So what kind of shenanigans did the SEO get up to? How about Operation Anthropoid, where they assassinated the man responsible for the final solution against the Jewish people? Or Operation Harling, where they crippled Nazi supply lines through all of Greece and North Africa with just a handful of agents?

They were instrumental on securing victory on D-Day by crippling an entire Panzer division. They destroyed the heavy water facility in the Netherlands, preventing the Nazis from ever developing the Bomb. They even crippled the largest, most dangerous ship in the entire war, the Tripitz. How did they do all this? With crazy gadgets made just for them, improvised weaponry, and no fear of death or capture.

They even carried suicide pills. Whether you prefer your Matt Damon to be John Bourne or Saving Private Ryan, this one has it for you…

Article on SOE Women: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/05/21/special-agents-the-women-of-soe/

Article about some of their missions: https://allthatsinteresting.com/special-operations-executive-missions