The Underground Network Examined

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31197, 22 October 1966, Page 4

The Underground Network Examined

S.O.E. in France: An Account of the work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940-44. By M. R. D. Foot. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. London. 524 pp. Index, Maps and Bibliography.

The Special Operations Executive was a British secret service formed in July, 1940, to encourage underground resistance to the Nazis throughout occupied Europe. It has long been British Government policy that its archives, like those of any secret service, must remain secret. Yet S.O.E. was wound up in 1946 and since then there has been continuing concern expressed, both In Parliament and outside, that there should be an accurate and dispassionate account of its activities. Finally, Mr Harold Macmillan. while Prime Minister, authorised some research in S.O.E. papers, now held by the Foreign Office. In 1960, Mr Foot, an Oxford historian with considerable experience of war time intelligence work (though not in 5.0. E.), was .nvited to undertake a history. The result, “S.O.E. in France,” is one of the last and best of the British war Histories. The author is at pains to make clear that while ;he book was produced with official help it in no way reflects official doctrine. It is a superbly clear, frank, and at times highly critical account of some of the Second World War’s most remarkable operations.

Many S.O.E. activities in France are already widely known from popular accounts by. or about, leading participants. Bruce Marshall’s thriller, “The White Babbit,” R. J. Minney’s “Carve Her Name with Pride,” and Jerrard Tickell’s “Odette” are perhaps the best-known. Many more are listed in Mr Foot’s bibliography, along with brief comments on the accuracy of each. In addition, the adventures of the most famous; agents involved Peter Churchill, Odette Sansom, Jean Moulin, Violette Szabo —are retold in the text as accurately as existing records allow.

For many readers these passages will be the most interesting of all, and some spectacular myths have been destroyed by Mr Foot’s | research. Other more obscure ; reputations have been greatly •nhanced by his rediscovery of acts of incredible courage forgotten in the swamp of wartime secrecy. Of Odette ind Peter Churchill, the most famous agents, he writes: “They found that life (in 1942) could still be easy for people with plenty of money on the Riviera. Consequently they fell out with some of their subordinates. . . . The truth is that the military value of their mission was slight; though this was not wholly their own fault.” A recent report from London says that Mr Churchill has begun legal proceedings against Mr Foot for remarks in “S.O.E. in France.” . Mr Foot’s book will have served a valuable function if. it brings about a re-evaluation I if the work of agents, British I and French, in the under- . ground while many participants and witnesses are still alive. He makes it clear that | many of the stories of torture, particularly of women agents, ’come from the prurient imaginations of authors anxious to make their books sell.” The ghastly published accounts of Violette Szabo’s sufferings Mr Foot describes as “so far as I can ascertain, completely fictitious”: and while not denying that the famous Odette was tortured, he suggests her treatment was far from being as brutal as popular accounts have claimed. “Unfortunately her experiences in Ravensbruck induced in her a state of nervous tension so severe that she had considerable trouble for many months distinguishing fantasy from reality, and it is likely enough that (on her return to Britain) she got the two confused in trying to give an honest account of what she had been through.” These necessarily brief accounts of the deeds of indi-

vidual agents—among whom the heroes far outnumbered the cowards—are only the raw material from which Mr Foot builds up a wider picture of the British involvement in the French Resistance, and the effectiveness of these operations for the war effort as a whole. He has uncovered some hair-raising mistakes—sometimes the result of stupidity, sometimes of treason, and sometimes of the sheer confusion that surrounds all hyper-secret activities. He finds however that these mistakes affected less than five per cent of S.O.E. operations in France and that the organisation’s credit balance is high. Both Allied and German generals have estimated the Resistance shortened the war in Europe by six months. It is for the reader ultimately to decide whether the price paid in human suffering was too high. Mr Foot inclines to the view that it was not; that S.O.E. was a valuable, even a necessary, ingredient of victory; but also that much more could have been done with better planning and foresight in the early days of the war.

“S.O.E. in France” does not purport to be a definitive history of the French resistance movement their origins, rivalries and post-war aims. It presents a London-eye view of their activities, and concentrates on the British efforts to co-ordinate and initiate subversion and sabotage in France after July, 1940. Thus, while there are some references, and some high tributes, to the F.T.P. (Communist) resistance groups these play little part in the narrative for they resisted all attempts by both London, and General de Gaulle, to bring them under external direction.

The climax of resistance operations by all groups came in the weeks after D-Day in 1944 when the Resistance all but paralysed German troop movements and communications over wide areas of France. Before the war was over thousands of resistance workers, including 200 agents trained by S.O.E. for work in France, had passed into German concentration camps. Of that 200 less than 40 returned. But as Mr Foot says.

“the best justification for the war and all its losses, in S.O.E. and elsewhere, was that it destroyed the regime which let these camps exist.” “S.O.E. in France” is an extremely valuable book, recording as it does the successes and failures of a highly-skilled and particularly dangerous aspect of total war. It combines great detail and accuracy with a fluent and easy presentation. It is well-pro-duced and illustrated, and tables and appendices show' such things as the fate of all S.O.E. women agents in France, the extent in detail of industrial sabotage, and the operations and fate of all the curiously code-named underground networks. A set of four detachable maps showing the areas in which these networks operated help the reader through complexities of a very detailed text. It is a model of what a war history should be, and in spite of its author’s carefully dispassionate approach, a deeply moving book. The book is remarkable value for the published price of 455.