Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

From parachuting into occupied France to silent assassinations and sabotage tools like exploding rats. Many missions of the

Special Operations Executive during the Second World War sound like the events of a high-octane spy

thriller. In today's episode, Dr Kate Weigers, author of books on S.O.E. including Mission France and Mission Europe,

answers listener questions on the men and women who were trained up to take on dangerous

secret missions in Nazi occupied Europe. She was talking to Eleanor Evans.

Today we are talking about S-O-E and we are in such safe hands for this episode because we are joined

by Dr Kate Beigers, who is the author of many books including her latest Mission Europe, which

is about the women of SOE. Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having

me. I'm looking forward to it. Me too. We've got some really great questions. But to kick us off,

let's start with the very basic one

of what was SOE and how was it formed? So SOE stands for Special Operations Executive. There has been a lot

said about it being Churchill's Secret Army and all this kind of stuff. So there were forebears of SOE. There were various organisations that had already

been around that were kind of sucked up into it, including Section D, who were responsible for

destruction. There was a lecturer house who did black propaganda. And it's also worth saying already

at this point that the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, were already in existence.

So they were already there with their intelligence gathering and spying. They'd been around since before the First World War.

SOE erupts onto the stage, really, after the fall of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg

in May of 1940. The idea is being bandied around the war office. And when Winston Churchill comes to

office, it's kind of expedited. And the official stamp is given on the 22nd of July

1940 with the remit of sabotage and subversion and to set Europe ablaze. It's a wonderful

expression. I've never found it written anywhere, official, but that's reputedly what Churchill

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