Reviews

When Britain had its back against the wall after the fall of France in the summer of 1940, it organized the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to conduct intelligence operations and guerrilla warfare against the powerful Axis forces that occupied Europe. This easy-to-read work recounts the history of its establishment, the intense bureaucratic infighting over its leadership, and the hazardous missions its agents undertook around the world. Numerous excerpts from veterans' memoirs are interwoven throughout the text to provide a human flavor to what could have been a dry recitation of events. A former diplomat and project director at the Centre for Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Stafford wrote this book to accompany last summer's BBC2 television series on the same topic. This work nicely complements Stafford's earlier Britain and European Resistance, 1940-45 (o.p.). Suitable for the World War II collections in public and academic libraries, where it should be placed alongside M.R.D. Foot's SOE in France (o.p.). Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

With James Bondesque devices, disguise and sabotage, secret agents became Britain's weapon against Germany after Britain's troops were forced off the continent. In Secret Agent: The True Story of the Special Operations Executive's Covert War Against Hitler, British wartime intelligence operations expert David Stafford (Churchill and the Secret Service, etc.) gives a thorough history of the British government's subversions of German incursions. The book, which includes a map and 38 b&w photographs, accompanies a BBC documentary produced last spring. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.