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Synopsis
This unique book presents an accurate and reliable assessment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). It brings together leading authors to examine the organization from a range of key angles.
This study shows how historians have built on the first international conference on the SOE at the Imperial War Museum in 1998. The release of many records then allowed historians to develop the first authoritative analyses of the organization’s activities and several of its agents and staff officers were able to participate. Since this groundbreaking conference, fresh research has continued and its original papers are here amended to take account of the full range of SOE documents that have been released to the National Archives. The fascinating stories they tell range from overviews of work in a single country to particular operations and the impact of key personalities.
SOE was a remarkably innovative organization. It played a significant part in the Allied victory while its theories of clandestine warfare and specialised equipment had a major impact upon the post-war world. SOE proved that war need not be fought by conventional methods and by soldiers in uniform. The organization laid much of the groundwork for the development of irregular warfare that characterized the second half of the twentieth century and that is still here, more potent than ever, at the beginning of the twenty-first.
This book will be of great interest to students of World War II history, intelligence studies and special operations, as well as general readers with an interest in SOE and World War II.
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About the Author
Edited by Seaman, Mark
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Special Operations Executive : A New Instrument of War
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Special Operations Executive
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Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War (Studies in Intelligence)
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR006603504
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Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War (Studies in Intelligence)
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paperback. Condition: Good. Our good condition books are generally good for reading but not for gifting or collecting. They could have imperfections such as creasing, fanning, inscriptions, margin notes, yellowing, staining on edge or cover or pages, bumps, scuffs, etc etc (sometimes multiple of these). It's a wide category that encompasses anything that isn't almost-new down to anything that is slightly better than poor. We would NOT recommend gifting Good books - these should be considered reading copies. Our books are dispatched from a Yorkshire former cotton mill. We list via barcode/ISBN so please note that the images are stock images and may not be the exact copy you receive, furthermore the details about edition and year might not be accurate as many publishers reuse the same ISBN for multiple editions and as we simply scan a barcode or enter an ISBN we do not check the validity of the edition data when listing. If you're looking for an exact edition please don't order (at least not without checking with us first, although we don't always have time to check). We aim to dispatch prompty, the service used will depend on order value and book size. We can ship to most countries, see our shipping policies. Payment is via Abe only. Seller Inventory # mon0000079311
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Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War (Studies in Intelligence)
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Special Operations Executive : A New Instrument of War
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Special Operations Executive : A New Instrument of War
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Special Operations Executive - A New Instrument of War
Seller: Crappy Old Books, Barry, United Kingdom
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Paperback. Condition: As New. Mark Seaman?s Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War is about the moment Britain looked at the Second World War, decided ordinary warfare was not quite complicated enough, and created an organisation whose basic working principle was: go behind enemy lines, find brave people, give them explosives, code names and terrible odds, then hope history is grateful later. Thus the SOE entered the stage, not so much a department as a controlled administrative panic with parachutes. The Special Operations Executive was Churchill?s famous instrument for ?setting Europe ablaze,? which sounds splendid until one remembers that fire, once issued as policy, has a habit of involving trains, bridges, wireless sets, safe houses, betrayal, reprisals, forged papers, night drops, blown covers and extremely tense conversations in kitchens. This was warfare by sabotage, resistance, subversion, intelligence and human nerve; a quieter sort of war only in the sense that everyone was trying very hard not to be heard. This volume examines SOE as a new kind of weapon: part military force, part intelligence service, part political gamble, part amateur theatre with live ammunition. It looks at how such an organisation was conceived, organised and used, and how its methods fitted into the wider war. SOE?s business was not simply ?cloak and dagger,? that cosy phrase which makes espionage sound like a dressing-up box. It was logistics, training, radio discipline, networks, explosives, language, trust, secrecy and the constant possibility that one weak link could turn a whole operation into a line in a casualty file. The irony of SOE is that it was both wildly romantic and brutally practical. The romance gives us agents in occupied Europe, night flights, coded messages and resistance cells. The practicality gives us missed drops, broken radios, suspicious neighbours, inter-departmental quarrels, bad weather, inadequate cover stories and the grim discovery that courage does not automatically improve supply chains. Behind every daring operation was a stack of planning, improvisation and institutional squabbling trying to look like strategy. Mark Seaman?s book is for readers who want SOE treated as history rather than costume drama: how it worked, what it was meant to do, how new it really was, and what sort of instrument Britain had made when conventional power alone was not enough. It is a useful corrective to the tendency to turn secret war into sepia glamour. A limpet mine may be romantic from a distance; up close it is mostly metal, timing and consequences. For students of intelligence history, special operations, resistance warfare, Churchill?s war machine, and the murky borderland where policy becomes sabotage, this is a crisp and serious addition to the shelf. It belongs among books that understand the Second World War was not only fought by armies advancing across maps, but by small groups of people carrying things in suitcases that would make customs officers extremely animated. As New copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books. Which is almost suspiciously tidy for a book about clandestine warfare, but there we are: no obvious signs of parachute damage, coded marginalia, or scorch marks from administrative sabotage. A clean copy of a sharp SOE study, ready to infiltrate the military history shelf under perfectly respectable Routledge cover. Seller Inventory # 7149
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Special Operations Executive: A New Instrument of War (Studies in Intelligence)
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Condition: New. pp. 256. Seller Inventory # 26331302
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Special Operations Executive (Studies in Intelligence)
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Condition: New. Seller Inventory # I-9780415384551