Special Operations Executive (SOE)
On June 6, 1944, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, planes, and ships departed from their bases in England bound for the shores of France in what was to be the greatest invasion of all time. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
By the 1930s, Shanghai was already a legend in its own time––the most modern, populous, and decadent city in China. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Although Britain has a number of war museums, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) is acknowledged as the Holy Grail of them all—the one you must visit when in London. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
World War II in the Pacific was fought in thousands of remote locations. The island of Borneo was the site of one of the least known clandestine operations of the conflict, led by an adventurous, but arrogant, anthropologist. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
On May 9, 1940, a black Mercedes automobile drove inconspicuously away from the Reich Chancellery in Berlin and merged with the weekend traffic. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Several Allied operations targeted a single enemy commander: the unsuccessful raid on General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in North Africa to kill the Desert Fox; the assassination of the Butcher of Prague, SS Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich; and the shooting down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane in the sky above Rabaul in 1943. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
By the autumn of 1944, most of Nazi-occupied Europe had been liberated by Allied forces. The conquering armies now faced the invasion of the German homeland. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
By early April 1941, Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel’s German Afrika Korps, combined with Italian units, had cleared the British from Libya except for the seaport of Tobruk. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
On the morning of April 7, 1939, Albania, the smallest of the Balkan countries, was invaded by Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascist Army. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Thailand was perhaps the least known, though surely more scenic and exotic, covert battleground of World War II. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to organize guerrilla resistance against the Nazis, he famously ordered it to set Europe on fire. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
In the late 18th century, the French established Catholic missions in Indochina, and until the 1820s they enjoyed local protection, but after that persecution began and increased steadily, particularly under Emperor Tu-Duc, who reigned from 1847 to 1883 and wanted to stamp out Christianity. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
In the modern era, the majority of those accused of spying have done so for monetary purposes—the quick acquisition of wealth as opposed to ideological or philosophical reasons. Read more
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
When Pearl Witherington Cornioley died quietly in 2008 at the age of 93 in a retirement home in the Loire Valley of France, some who thought they knew her well may have been surprised to learn that she had risked her life during World War II as an agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Read more
