The Secret History of SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940-1945

At the end of World War II, the Cabinet Office commissioned an eminent academic, Professor William Mackenzie, to undertake a comprehensive secret history of Special Operations Executive. This document is declassified for the first time.

At the end of World War II, Britain’s Cabinet Office commissioned an eminent academic, Professor William Mackenzie, to undertake a comprehensive secret history of Special Operations Executive. Given access to both personnel and surviving wartime files, Mackenzie’s report was be used by intelligence agencies in a future conflict, its audience the very elite of Whitehall insiders. Now, for the first time, this highly classified document has been made available. Who were the agents parachuted in Germany? What became of schemes designed to protect Gibraltar from a Spanish invasion? Why did so many circuits suffer enemy penetration? Where was SOE’s sabotage really effective? When did SOE decide to collaborate with the NKVD and infiltrate Soviet spies into Eastern Europe? What is the truth behind SOE’s policy to back Tito in Yugoslavia? These and hundreds of other wartime mysteries are packed into the pages of a truly astonishing, wholly authentic story. The Secret History of SOE is one of the most intriguing, compelling, and controversial World War II documents ever to be declassified.