A Lean Year

Abstract

The summer and autumn of 1940 had witnessed grandiose theories about the role of European resistance in winning Britain’s war against the Axis powers; 1941 was to make it plain that there was a considerable distance between the dream and the reality. SOE was not yet operational, and the slow and difficult process of creating the administrative and logistical framework necessary for carrying out its task was to consume most of its energies. It was only in May, for example, that its French section’s first parachuted agent landed in France. As it built up its operational strength and began to flex its muscles, SOE increasingly collided with the interests of other government departments and services. They reacted by trying, in some cases successfully, to limit the nature and scope of its activities. It also became more fully clear in 1941 that if it was to mobilise the occupied nations of Europe, where apathy and confusion were still widespread, SOE would have to deal with the governments-in-exile in London, and that this imposed limits on its power which had not been apparent in 1940. More important in the long run was the fact that by the end of 1941 both the Americans and the Russians were active belligerents and allies. Grand strategy for winning the war was bound to change, and with it the place and role of SOE. Immediately prior to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the concept of a European uprising detonated by small British landings was put forward by a section of the British military planning staff as the only effective means of defeating Germany, clear testimony to the desperate position facing Britain in the first half of the year.