The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British covert operations service formed in July 1940 by the amalgamation of three bodies which had been created shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War: Section D of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), which had studied the subject of sabotage and already had some resources in the field in Eastern Europe; EH (named after its headquarters, Electra House, on the Embankment), a semi-secret propaganda section of the Foreign Office set up in 1938 which was later to form the nucleus of the Political Warfare Executive; and Military Intelligence, Research (MIR), which had developed out of the research section of the War Office's general staff and which made a study of guerrilla warfare.¹

SOE was a secret, independent auxiliary service. Departmental responsibility for its work lay not with the Foreign Office, but the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in order to maintain SOE's independence from any of the orthodox services. Its headquarters were at 64 Baker Street, separate from the Ministry in Berkeley Square, and its first Chief Executive Office was H M Gladwyn Jebb (later Lord Gladwyn), a member of the Diplomatic Service. When Jebb returned to the FO in 1942, Sir Frank Nelson became head of SOE, followed by Sir Charles Hambro and then Major General (Sir) Colin Gubbins.

SOE's task, memorably expressed by Prime Minister W S Churchill to the Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton, was to 'set Europe ablaze': to coordinate action against the enemy by means of subversion and sabotage, including propaganda on behalf of the Allied war effort. It had first to identify, train, supply and coordinate the efforts of Resistance groups in Occupied Europe. It had then a twofold purpose: ultimately, to raise secret armies to rise in concert with the eventual Allied invasion; in the meantime, to carry out a programme of sabotage detrimental to the enemy's fighting potential.

SOE was divided into three branches: SO1 (propaganda), SO2 (active operations) and SO3 (planning). Its focus of activity was Europe, but it also operated in Africa and the Middle East. and in the Far East including India. The specific nature of SOE activities varied according to the conditions of Occupation. In France, for example, there was a complex web of classic underground networks and armed Maquis groups; in Yugoslavia and Greece, however, open guerrilla warfare was predominant. SOE was active in every theatre of war until it was disbanded in 1946.

SOE records were never kept systematically. The organisation grew up hastily and piecemeal, and for reasons of security there was no central registry: an attempt to create a central archive was unfinished when the war ended. Some SOE records were destroyed in the face of enemy advance (for example, in Singapore before the Japanese advance), and considerations of storage and handling meant that they were subjected to rigorous 'weeding' at the end of the war. A portion of the SOE archive was also destroyed by fire in late 1945. It is estimated that only some 13% of the original papers have survived these processes of intentional and accidental destruction. Of the papers which remain, arrangement can be haphazard, and material is found in unexpected places.

The first release of SOE records for the years 1940-45 was in June 1993, when files relating to the Far East (Burma, Siam, French Indo-China, Malaya, China, Japan, Afghanistan, India, Australia and Anglo-Dutch Sumatra, together with organisational papers) were transferred to the PRO in class HS 1/1-350. This was followed in June 1994 by papers on Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Scandinavia General), class HS 2/1-272; and in September 1994 by material relating to Africa and the Middle East (Aden/Red Sea, Abyssinia and East Africa, North Africa, West Africa, Arab countries, Cyprus, Egypt, Malta and Tunisia, Middle East general, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tangier and Turkey), class HS 3/1-245. The files on Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union, released in March 1995, are in class HS 4/1-381.²

Some official accounts of SOE's operations in various theatres have already been published under Cabinet Office sponsorship.³ Others are in the course of preparation. In addition, it is planned to release certain other internal accounts of SOE operations to the Public Record Office in due course.

¹A fuller account of the origins and structure of SOE is given in MRD Foot, SOE in France (HMSO, 1966).
²Useful guides to the SOE records in each of the four classes, written by Louise Atherton, are available from the Public Record Office.
³See note 1, and also: Charles Cuickshank, SOE in the Far East (OUP, 1983) and SOE in Scandinavia (OUP, 1986).