Politics of Strategic And Clandestine War Specialoperations Executive, 1940-1946

This collection of new essays on the Special Operations Executive (SOE) sets out to explore the '¬~non-military' aspects of British special operations in World War II. SOE was established in summer 1940 to '¬~set Europe ablaze', by detonating popular resistance against Axis rule and nurturing '¬~secret armies'. Based on original archival research, these essays highlight for the first time the numerous other areas in which SOE contributed to the war effort and show that it played a major role in supporting Britain's political, economic, financial and humanitarian interests globally. By situating SOE within the context of Britain's broader political needs, these essays also demonstrate the extent to which SOE came to epitomise the skills found in today's secret service organisations. SOE showed itself capable of operating on a global scale and developing the necessary expertise, equipment and personnel to conduct activities across the whole spectrum of what we have come to know as '¬~covert operations'. By bringing SOE's activities into sharper focus and exposing the scale of its involvement in Britain's wartime external relations, this book echoes current thinking on the place of so-called '¬~secret world' in international politics. This book will be of much interest to students of SOE, intelligence studies, World War II and military history in general. Neville Wylie is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. His most recent publications include Britain, Switzerland and the Second World War (2003) and European Neutrals and Non-belligerents during the Second World War (2002).Wylie, Neville is the author of 'Politics of Strategic And Clandestine War Specialoperations Executive, 1940-1946', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415391108 and ISBN 0415391105.