Special Operations Executive in popular culture

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation that conducted espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in World War II. It has appeared in popular culture in film, comics, books, and television. In 1981, the official historian of the SOE, Michael R. D. Foot, said that the staff of SOE consisted of about 10,000 men and 3,000 women. Speaking of the women agents in the field, he said, "A few highly accomplished and gallant ones were agents operating in France or Yugoslavia." Foot cautioned that "On these few there is a large popular literature, almost all of it worthless and much of it about the wrong people."[1] The declassification of documents of the SOE beginning in the 1990s will permit more accurate portrayals of agents and their accomplishments.

Comics

Exhibits

Film
  • Now It Can Be Told (aka School for Danger) (1946)
Filming began in 1944 and starred real-life SOE agents Captain Harry Rée and Jacqueline Nearne codenamed Felix and Cat, respectively. The film tells the story of the training of agents for SOE and their operations in France. The training sequences were filmed using the SOE equipment at the training schools at Traigh and Garramor (South Morar) and at Ringway.
The film follows a group of SOE agents (including Robert Beatty, Simone Signoret, Jack Warner and Gordon Jackson), through training in Britain and then on a mission in Belgium. The mission is ultimately successful, despite the fact that one of their number turns out to be a traitor.
A French/Norwegian docu-film titled "La Bataille de l'eau lourde"/"Kampen om tungtvannet" (trans. "The Fight Over the Heavy Water"), featured some of the 'original cast', so to speak. Joachim Rønneberg has stated; "The Fight over Heavy Water was an honest attempt to describe history. On the other hand 'Heroes of Telemark' had little to do with reality."
Based on the book by Jerrard Tickell about Odette Sansom, starring Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard. The film includes an interview with Maurice Buckmaster, head of F-Section, SOE.
The Powell and Pressburger film (released as Night Ambush in the States), based on the book by W. Stanley Moss, starring Dirk Bogarde and Marius Goring. It dramatises the true story of the capture of a German general by Patrick Leigh Fermor and W. Stanley Moss.
  • Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is a well-known classic British-made war-drama set in Burma during World War II, during the construction of the Siam–Burma railway through virgin jungle and endless hills and gorges, using malnourished, mistreated Allied prisoners of war. A counter-story in the film, which collides with the main story at the climax, relates to a mission to destroy the newly constructed railway bridge by a fictitious cloak and dagger sabotage organisation called "Force 316", whose training base is in Ceylon. In fact, this is a thinly-disguised reference to the real-life Force 136, part of SOE, who indeed had wartime jungle-training facilities in Ceylon at M.E. 25—Horona.
  • Carve Her Name with Pride (1958)
Based on the book by R.J. Minney about Violette Szabo, starring Paul Scofield and Virginia McKenna.
Based on a well-known 1957 novel about World War II by Scottish thriller writer Alistair MacLean. It starred Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn, along with Anthony Quayle (the same Anthony Quayle listed above as serving with SOE in Albania) and Stanley Baker. The book and the film share the same basic plot: the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents 2,000 isolated British troops from being rescued, that were holed up on the island of Kheros in the Aegean, near Turkey.
Czech war movie about assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, starring Radoslav Brzobohatý and Jiří Kodet.
Based on an SOE operation to sabotage the heavy water plant at Rjukan, Norway in 1943.
A spy thriller and World War II film, made from a story from Duilio Coletti and Vittoriano Petrilli. It is a highly fictionalised account of the real-life Operation Crossbow, but it does touch on the main aspects of the operation.
A spy film directed by Brian G. Hutton and featuring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Mary Ure. The film's screenplay and eponymous 1967 best-selling novel were written almost simultaneously by Alistair MacLean.
Based upon a true, dangerous operation in May 1942 to drop a small group of Czech and Slovak S.O.E. agents into their own occupied country with the singular deadly mission to assassinate Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's protégé, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor (representing the Nazi protectorate over the Czech puppet-state) of Bohemia and Moravia, hated as The Butcher of Prague. The mission succeeded, but with tragic results.
A docudrama about Nancy Wake's work for SOE, partly narrated by herself.
A television series that was broadcast between 1987 and 1990 featuring the exploits of the women and, less frequently, the men of SOE, which was renamed the 'Outfit'.
Based on a novel by Sebastian Faulks.
Did General De Gaulle tell the whole truth about the French resistance? This is the purpose of this documentary. Jean Marie Barrere, the French director, uses the story of his own grandfather (Robert) to tell the French what SOE did at that time. Robert was a French teacher based in the southwest of France, who worked with SOE agent George Reginald Starr (codenamed "Hilaire", in charge of the "Wheelwright" circuit).
  • The 11th Day (2006)
A documentary film, with recreation, of the Resistance, on the island of Crete, during the Second World War. Includes a detailed interview with Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor with recreation of the kidnapping of German Major General Kreipe.
  • The Bonzos (2008)
A BBC documentary film about the Bonzos, a small team of men, led by Albrecht Gaiswinkler and sent to help rescue Hitler's hoard of looted art—including works by Titian, Tintoretto and Van Gogh—which the Nazis had stripped from Europe's greatest galleries and museums and hidden in a salt mine in the town of Alt Aussee in Austria. Including archive footage, eyewitness testimony and contributions from historians.
  • Churchill's Spy School (2010)[2]
A documentary about the SOE "finishing school" on the Beaulieu estate in Hampshire
  • Les Femmes de l'Ombre
A French film about five SOE female agents and their contribution towards the D-Day invasions.
A film about the formation of a special operations team and their mission to destroy Nazi radar equipment in Norway during WWII.

Literature
  • Ian Fleming, who knew both Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins, is reputed to have used at least parts of them to create "M", and "Miss Moneypenny" in his James Bond books. In his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, Fleming is said to have based the "Vesper Lynd" character on the SOE agent Christine Granville. Other agents that Fleming used for his Bond character were Duane Hudson and Andrew Croft. Chief of SOE Technical Branch and later GS Branch MI6, Charles Bovill, was represented in the Bond books as "Q".[3]
  • Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
  • Tim Powers' Declare and Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives. Fictional versions of SOE turn up as the organisation in charge of occult activities in these books.
  • Jackdaws by Ken Follett. Felicity Clairet, a female SOE agent, leads an all-women team into France to blow up a telephone exchange.
  • Night of the Fox, Cold Harbour, and Flight of Eagles by Jack Higgins.
  • The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin features an SOE agent based on Noor Inayat Khan.
  • The Secret Army by Robert Muchamore features Air Vice Marshal Walker as the head of the SOE.
  • Tamar by Mal Peet, about the life of fictional SOE agents in the Netherlands during the Hunger winter.
  • Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. Two young women, an SOE agent and her pilot, are stranded in occupied France.
  • Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères (English: The Final Days of Our Fathers) by Joël Dicker follows a number of recruits in F section through their training and action in France.
  • Magic Tree House series Danger in the Darkest Hour by Mary Pope Osbourne has Teddy and Kathleen, the friends of protagonists Jack and Annie be SOE agents. After Kathleen gets trapped behind enemy lines shortly before D-Day, Jack and Annie must rescue her and ten children she found in an orphanage in France.
  • Goodnight from London by Jennifer Robson has Capt. Bennett, a main character, serving with the SOE.
  • The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff is about female agents in France who were lost in action.

Television
A BBC television drama series comprising self-contained episodes of SOE's work in occupied Europe.
An Australian television miniseries on F Section Nancy Wake starring Noni Hazlehurst based on the 1956 biography by Russell Braddon. Released as True Colors in the States and purchased by British Thames Television. Nancy was a consultant, after the script had been written, and also made an appearance as Madame Fouret. Originally to be an 8-hour resistance story, it was changed to a 4-hour love story and due to the budget scenes were cut, which disappointed Nancy, and she was never pleased that the script was not a true depiction.
An Australian television miniseries on Operation Jaywick the SOE sponsored raid by Australian Z special commandoes on Japanese shipping in Singapore harbour.
  • Churchill's Secret Army (2000)
A three-part documentary series about the SOE broadcast on Channel 4.[4]
A BBC docudrama about SOE's Operation Foxley.
Foyle, a detective in England during WWII, investigates what turns out to be domestic activity of the SOE. The series is known for its attention to historical detail, and many aspects of the real-life SOE are shown.
Foyle, now working for the British Security Service in the years after World War II, investigates the numerous deaths of female agents of the SOE in France.
A Norwegian/Danish/British production detailing the German nuclear weapon project and covers the sabotage operations conducted against the Heavy Water plant in Vemork. The show depicts Operation Freshman and Operation Gunnerside and focuses on the role of Leif Tronstad.

Video games
  • In the video game Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (2003), one of the main characters, Major Phillip Bromley, is a member of the SOE.
  • In the video game Secret Weapons Over Normandy (2003), the main protagonist, James Chase, is a member of the Battlehawks, an elite RAF squadron assigned to the SOE.
  • The video game The Saboteur (2009), which takes place in German-occupied Paris circa 1940, revolves around Sean Devlin, an analogue of real SOE agent William Grover-Williams. Devlin is depicted, however, as a member of the French Resistance, who works unofficially for the SOE in exchange for information. In addition, supply crates from the SOE are hidden all over Paris and serve as an in-game "collectible".
  • The video game Velvet Assassin (2009) was inspired by the life of Violette Szabo.
  • The video game “Call of Duty: WW2” (2017) contains a mission in which the player fights alongside two members of the S.O.E.
  • The video game Sniper Elite 4 (2017) establishes series protagonist Karl Fairburne as a British SOE operative, despite having been depicted as an American OSS operative in previous games.

References
  1. Foot, Michael R. D. (Jan 1981), "Was SOE Any Good," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 16, No. 1, p. 174
  2. "Churchill's Spy School (2010)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  3. Forbes, Andy (9 May 2001). "Obituaries: Charles Bovill". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  4. "Churchill's Secret Army (TV series)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
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