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SOE officers: traitors or inept?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Tuesday, 13th September 2011

  Were there high level British traitors in SOE (Special Operations Executive)? Or were they blunderers who failed to implement their own strict SOE guidelines?
  
  In SOE's F (France) section was Vera Atkins (a jewess born to Romanian/S.African parents but who later adopted the British surname) and her superior, Maurice Buckmaster, the only person who knew her true heritage.
  
  A Timewatch documentary episode about Atkins suggested that she was being blackmailed by German Intelligence (Abwehr), who threatened to slay her Romanian relatives, whom she had visited shortly before she returned to England in 1940. She supposedly raised no objection to her superior's inexplicable ignoring of [captured] agent's deliberate security check omissions (pre-agreed word misspellings or no full stops, etc), as they were trained to do when captured, so SOE unwittingly kept sending women agents to their doom. Was she complicit in treason/collaboration, or simply fearful of her true origins being revealed, and being ousted from SOE?
  
  As many as 11 such SOE women eventually met a grisly end at the hands of the Gestapo/Concentration Camps due to SOE's F [France] section (Buckmaster/Atkins) repeated failures. One very unlikely agent parachuted into nazi-held France was Noor Inayat-Khan, an Indian Princess - clearly a v.brave lady, but who was caught, beaten and shot.
  Four of the above were sent to a concentration camp, injected with lethal poison designed to inflict great pain before death, and their 'corpses' bunged into ovens, but one woman came around at the last minute and clawed her torturer's face before disappearing into the furnace.
  
  Post-war, Atkins certainly was very driven to find the murderers of 'her women', interrogated offenders on the Continent and defended SOE in later years- was she guilt-ridden?
  
  Seymour Bingham, who took over SOE's M section (Holland), continued the unfolding disaster which was unknowingly (to HQ) befalling that section (his predessor unwittingly oversaw the doom of 40+ agents) by also ignoring captured agent's incoming coded warnings as 'errors'. Into Holland went more agents and tons of equipment and money.
  
  Leo Marks, chief cryptologist, brought in during late 1942, continually questioned his superiors regarding their dismissal of strangely-perfect incoming messages from field agents and the string of agents who by their very strict training 'failed' to include their security checks in coded messages to alert HQ of capture, and were repeatedly written off by HQ chiefs as agent 'mistakes'.
  
  No-one questioned why Luftwaffe nightfighters - not normally in those areas- were always waiting for RAF planes taking agents to curiously neat and well-lit field drop zones (the same requested few). Eventually, a shocked and angry RAF refused to continue with the savage losses. Bingham was eventually moved sideways, but the failures continued.
  Marks even received proof -yet again dismissed by most superiors- of German infiltration of M section, by tricking abwehr agents (pretending to be British/Dutch in Holland) to reply with the standard "H.H." (Heil Hitler) to a message he ordered a radio operator agent at HQ to send to the "SOE" radio sets he suspected.
  
  By the war's end, before which an exasperated Marks had finally proved to superiors that Abwehr was controlling no less than 5 radio sets of captured M section SOE agents (despite two escaping Dutch agents even warning SOE in London, but were thrown in British jail due to abwehr's counter-propaganda preceding their arrival!!)-
  
  * over 50 M section agents alone were sent to their doom in Holland,
  * over 80 RAF crew dead and numerous aircraft (The RAF refused to fly these costly missions),
  * 53 radio sets,
  * 500,000 gilder,
  * thousands of guns, ammo and equipment.
  
  Marks, after the war, travelled to meet some of the surviving captured agents forced by Abwehr to send German-dictated messages to SOE (M)'s HQ, but was happy that they were not traitors. But many identifed whom they thought might be.
  
  It is suspected that the Dutch-born Bingham, never brought to book by post-war authorities (as wasn't his predecessor)- may have been a double agent as he was suspected to have a relative who was working for abwehr (German counter-Intell).
  
  Most SOE files were destroyed in 1945, including Marks' letters to his chiefs, others in a fire (hmmm?) and even today many British files involving SOE are still top secret, some even locked until 2031

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Tuesday, 13th September 2011

  I think that at the very least there was ineptness and lack of communication on the Dutch operations, on one operation SOE and MI6 agents were jumping out of the same aircraft and to the same place and didn't know the other was carrying out an operation. There were some very odd examples in the Dutch operations where Van't Sant was dismissed as intelligence chief for the Dutch but continued to send messages out and there was the view from the Americans that he was not prosecuting the war in the Far East, where The Netherlands had at the time colonies. Clearly the security checks in both the French and Dutch operations that agents had been instructed to use if captured or under duress were not acted upon in Britain and one has to ask why. One only has to look at the implications for operation Market Garden.
  
  On Vera Atkins her SOE file clearly states that her movements were restricted until at least 1943, but until her British Nationality file is released by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office then the alleged links to Nazi officials cannot be proved.
  
  I would agree that SOE files are in a number of cases closed until 2031 but anyone can ask The National Archives, Kew, for a review of the files, obviously if the individual is still alive (as many are) then the file would need to remain closed.

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by David James Wall (U14752090) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011

  Saturday 3rd December, 2011. GMT:1059
  Re: SOE
  With respect; I never took part in the 2nd World War at any level: I was actually born in 1964. However, there are a number of points which my mother 'Mrs Doreen Mary Wall nee. Sellers' was aware during the conflict; which should be stated now:
  a). So called 'SOE' (Special Operations Executive) was more correctly called on FILE; 'SO' (Special Operations): or rather the 'COMBAT Wing. MI6'. You should understand that on the 4th September, 1939; 'MI6' or 'SIS' (Secret Intelligence Service) was muribund. The day Winston Leonard Spencer - Churchill was invited to head the 'National Goverment' in 1940; 'SIS' became operational (which has a bewildered attend ie. 'VENLO'). That day, as far as I am aware, 'SIS' became 3 (three) separate 'DEPARTMENTS'; including 'ESPIONAGE'. 'SPECIAL OPERATIONS' and 'ECONOMIC WARFARE'. As far as 'Special Operations' were concerned; the 'Executive Director' was 'GUBBINS'. There was however 'conflation' which 'GUBBINS' could never understand. He was 'executive order' with regards to 'Special Operations'. He was never 'Special Operations Executive'. A moot point for all concerned at '54 BROADWAY' was that the 'ABWEHER' and the 'ABWER'; 'German Military Intelligence' and 'German Naval Intelligence' respectively: only talked about 'SOE'. This was a 'BONUS' for all concerned with the 'COMBAT Wing. MI6'; which had the 'whip - hand' prior to June 6th, 1944 and the 'Normandy Landings' and for 'Department. E / ESPIONAGE' which was wholly concerned with 'formal undercover penetration of the REICH'. The person 'GUBBINS' privately thanked but never in public for this 'cobble'; was 'Charles DeGualle': who in retrospect knew '!!!! all'.
  b). Noor Inayat - Khan. For the record; this French Section 'wireless operator' was lifted into occupied France in an 'AVRO' Lysander 'stol' (short take off and landing) aircraft flown from RAF Templesford in Cambridgeshire to the ouskirts of Paris where she made her own way into the city centre on of all things, a bus fuelled by propane gas. It should be noted that the wireless set she carried into battle was very, very heavy. There was a reason for this; the battery pack was huge: so that wireless operators did not need to tap into a hotel or poension electricity supply which was monitered at the 'Genorator'. As for the 'AGENT' herself; Noor Inayat - Khan was a problem but also a 'BONUS'. Her father's relationship to the 'Dutch East Indies'; principally 'JAVA' and thus 'Royal Dutch Shell'; who he had worked for as an 'OIL transfer': meant that her position in 'Department E / ESPIONAGE' was critical in the hunt for the 'commerce RAIDER' attend ie. 'ALTMARK / oiler'. For the most part Noor Inayat - Khan worked alone but with access to 'Rue D. / Kregsmarine'. The 'KEY' to that door was 'field agent, espionage agent'; 'SIS / MI6': codename 'REBECCA' - otherwise kown as Doreen Mary Sellers. Doreen and Noor worked the 'Indian FIELD ANGLE' together.

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011

  DJW
  
  I must admit I find some elements of your recent posts intriguing, especially the references to your mother's role in SOE.
  
  However, the Lysander was produced by Westland, not AVRO, Asst Section Officer Khan did, indeed, eneter France in such an aircraft, but from tempsford, surely.
  
  And "The KEY To REBECCA" is a rather indifferent spy thriller by Ken Follett.
  
  LW

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• Message 5

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by David James Wall (U14752090) on Monday, 5th December 2011

  Monday 5th December, 2011. GMT:1033
  Re: Noor Inayat Khan
  With respect; the received history of Noor Inayat Khan 'in action' begins on the night of the 16th - 17th June, 1943. The weird detail is that as far as 'Department. E / ESPIONAGE' was concerned; the date was New Years Eve, the 31st December, 1942. Noor Inayat Khan thus became 'operational' on New Years Day, the 1st January, 1943. There was meaning in this; as most twelve month 'German Military and Naval postings' began on the first day of the new year and Noor Inayat Khan's association with 'Rue D. Kregsmarine' began at 8 o'clock in the evening 'CET' (Central European Time), New Year's day: as dictated by 'higher authority'.
  ps. The real history of Noor Inayat Khan has yet to be written. The real history of 'SIS / MI6': 'Department. E / ESPIONAGE' has yet to be written. Certainly the real history of 'SO' (Special Operations); 'COMBAT Wing. MI6' has yet to be written. The very real problem in unpicking the real history of 'special forces operations' in Northern Europe during the 2nd World War is not just 'SECURE / Detail' but 'counter / FORCE' operations which obscured the real detail up to the present day. In that regard; 'SOE' (Special Operations Executive) was a real problem to 'SIS / MI6' but also a very real 'BONUS' to 'GUBBINS'.

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• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by David James Wall (U14752090) on Monday, 5th December 2011

  Monday 5th December, 2011. GMT:1135
  Re: Noor Inayat Khan
  With respect; however bizarre this may sound; the Noor Inayat Khan who was 'posted' to the 'Rue D. / Kregsmarine', sub - office / 'ABWER', 'German Naval Intelligence / ANDON' on the Rue de Rivoli, Paris: operated under her own name. This was principally because her father was well understood by various people in 'JAVA' who Noor Inayat Khan had met as a child; amongst the Dutch (for wont of a better phrase) 'Ex - pat' community in the Dutch - East Indies.
  ps. As stated elsewhere; the real 'quarry' was the 'ALTMARK / oiler' in the Indian Ocean which maintained the 'commerce / RAIDER'. As to how many 'commerce / RAIDER's' and 'ALTMARK / oilers' there were in the Indian Ocean; that was 'a bone of contention' with everyone in the D.NI (Directorate. Naval Intelligence) who fed on 'Department. E / ESPIONAGE'.

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