SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940-1944 (review)

SOE in Francefirst appeared in 1966 (amended in 1968) as an official British government publication, at a time when documentation on World War II clandestine operations was hard to come by. Michael Foot, a well-qualified academician (University of Manchester) who had had war experience with SAS (Special Airborne Service), agreed to undertake the task of explaining what SOE was and what it did. Although hampered by incredible restrictions from officialdom, he nevertheless had exclusive access to SOE archives and to the official in-house history written by W. J. M. Mackensie, later edited by Foot and published in 2000. (Reviewed in JMH65 [October 2001]: 1134–35.) Publication of SOE in Francerepresented a first acceptance by a major government that under special circumstances (in this case French concerns), the thirty-year closure rule regarding sensitive archives was not sacrosanct. (In the United States the War Report of the OSSwas not released until 1975.)

The rights for the official British edition were later transferred to other publishers; but while SOE in Francehas been available, it has been difficult to find. Thus it was agreeable news to learn about five years ago that Foot had received a grant which would enable him to bring out a revised version of his book. There was plenty of new material available: in the last thirty years, hundreds of books and articles have appeared, the SOE archives have been opened, and some significant related works, like the official volumes on British Intelligence, have become available.

The present volume, however, is not to be considered a revision in the sense of including many changes and additions: it is a reprint of the original version with occasional inserted comments along with a brief addition to the original preface and an updated bibliography. For example, SOE in Francecontained only one brief chapter devoted to ways by which agents were transported to and from the continent by sea. This subject has now been covered in great detail by Sir Brooks Richards in his monumental Secret Flotillas(London, 2001). As there was no reason for Foot to alter his short account, he simply inserts two paragraphs (p. 60 and comment in the Appendix, p. 397), bringing Richards's work to the reader's attention. More significant is his reaction to a volume on signal intelligence by one of SOE's cryptographers. Foot writes (p. 98): "I refer interested readers to Leo Marks's Silk and Cyanide[London, 1998], subtitled 'The Story of SOE's Code War', in which they can read the coding officer's only too precise descriptions of the faults that attended the poem code system SOE had taken over from SIS, and how Marks arrived at his great professional triumph: he reinvented the one-time pad, an unbreakable coding system first invented by the Germans in the 1920s."

One could have hoped that Foot, with so many World War II interpretations in the last thirty years, might have added a new epilogue or revised his final chapter, "Strategic Balance Sheet." However, he leaves the 1966 text intact. Indeed, in his preface the author remains adamant in his attitude toward French reactions: "This book has always seemed quixotic to the French historians who have read it; the new edition makes no attempt to correct this tone" (p. xiii).

New readers may wish to examine the bibliography for some trenchant remarks on studies that have appeared since the original edition: for example, on Daniel Cordier's Jean Moulin(Paris, 1990–93), "impeccable massive biography;" on P. A. Wilkinson & J. B. Astley, Gubbins and SOE(London, 1993), "indispensable." He also calls attention to the invaluable proceedings of five French conferences (1993–95) collectively entitled "La Résistance et les Français," that in...