Special Operations Executive - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Film

• Now It Can Be Told (aka School for Danger) (1946)

Filming began in 1944 and starred real-life SOE agents Captain Harry Rée and Jacqueline Nearne. The film tells the story of the training of agents for SOE and their adventures in France. The training sequences were filmed using the SOE equipment at the training schools at Traigh and Garramor (South Morar) and at Ringway.

• The Fight over the Heavy Water (1948)

A French/Norwegian black and white docu-film titled "La Bataille de l'eau lourde"/"Kampen om tungtvannet" (trans. "The Fight Over the Heavy Water"), featured some of the ‘original cast’, so to speak. Joachim Rønneberg has stated; "The Fight over Heavy Water was an honest attempt to describe history. On the other hand 'Heroes of Telemark' had little to do with reality."

• Odette (1950)

Based on the book by Jerrard Tickell about Odette Sansom, starring Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard. The film includes an interview with Maurice Buckmaster, head of F-Section, SOE.

• Ill Met by Moonlight (film) (1957)

The Powell and Pressburger film, (released as Night Ambush in the States), based on the book by W. Stanley Moss, starring Dirk Bogarde and Marius Goring. It dramatises the true story of the capture of a German general by Patrick Leigh Fermor and W. Stanley Moss.

• Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is a well-known classic British-made war-drama set in Burma during World War II, during the construction of the Siam–Burma railway through virgin jungle and endless hills and gorges, using malnourished, mistreated allied prisoners of war. A counter-story in the film, which collides with the main story at the climax, relates to a mission to destroy the newly-constructed railway bridge by a fictitious cloak and dagger sabotage organisation called 'Force 316', whose training base is in Ceylon. In fact, this is a thinly-disguised reference to the real-life Force 136, part of SOE, who indeed had wartime jungle-training facilities in Ceylon at M.E. 25—Horona.
• Carve Her Name with Pride (1958)

Based on the book by R.J. Minney about Violette Szabo, starring Paul Scofield and Virginia McKenna.

• The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Based on a well-known 1957 novel about World War II by Scottish thriller writer Alistair MacLean. It starred Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, along with Anthony Quayle (the same Anthony Quayle listed above as serving with SOE in Albania) and Stanley Baker. The book and the film share the same basic plot: the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents 2,000 isolated British troops from being rescued, that were holed up on the island of Kheros in the Aegean, near Turkey.

• Moonstrike (1963)

A BBC television drama series comprising self-contained episodes of SOE's work in occupied Europe.

• The Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Based on an SOE operation to sabotage the heavy water plant at Rjukan, Norway in 1943.

• Operation Crossbow (1965)

A spy thriller and World War II film, made from a story from Duilio Coletti and Vittoriano Petrilli. It is a highly fictionalised account of the real-life Operation Crossbow, but it does touch on the main aspects of the operation.

• Where Eagles Dare (1968)

A spy film directed by Brian G. Hutton and featuring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Mary Ure. The film's screenplay and eponymous 1967 best-selling novel were written almost simultaneously by Alistair MacLean.

• Operation Daybreak (1976)

Based upon a true, dangerous operation in May 1942 to drop a small group of Czech and Slovak S.O.E. agents into their own occupied country with the singular deadly mission to assassinate Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's protégé, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor (representing the Nazi protectorate over the Czech puppet-state) of Bohemia and Moravia, hated as The Butcher of Prague. The mission succeeded, but with tragic results.

• Nancy Wake Codename: The White Mouse (1987)

A docudrama about Nancy Wake's work for SOE, partly narrated by herself.

• Wish Me Luck (1987)

A television series that was broadcast between 1987 and 1990 featuring the exploits of the women and, less frequently, the men of SOE, which was renamed the 'Outfit'.

• Charlotte Gray, (2001)

Based on a novel by Sebastian Faulks.

• Churchill's Secret Army

A three-part Documentary series about the SOE broadcast on Channel 4 in 2000 .

• Foyle's War, episode "The French Drop" (2004)

Foyle, a detective in England during WWII, investigates what turns out to be domestic activity of the SOE. The series is known for its attention to historical detail, and many aspects of the real-life SOE are shown.

• Robert and the Shadows, French Documentary on "France Television" (2004)

Did General De Gaulle tell the whole truth about the French resistance ? This is the purpose of this documentary. Jean Marie Barrere, the french director, uses the story of his own grand father (Robert) to tell the French what SOE did at that time. Robert, was a french teacher based in the south west of France and he worked with the famous SOE agent George Reginald Starr (Hilaire, Wheelwright circuit).

• The 11th Day (2006)

A documentary film, with recreation, of the Resistance, on the island of Crete, during the Second World War. Includes a detailed interview with Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor with recreation of the kidnapping of German Major General Kreipe.

• The Bonzos (2008)

A BBC documentary film about the men sent to rescue Hitler's hoard of looted art—including works by Titian, Tintoretto and Van Gogh—which the Nazis had stripped from Europe's greatest galleries and museums and hidden in a salt mine in the town of Alt Aussee in Austria. Including archive footage, eyewitness testimony and contributions from historians.

• Churchill's Spy School (2010)

A documentary about the SOE "finishing school" on the Beaulieu estate in Hampshire

• Les Femmes de l'Ombre

A French film about five SOE female agents and their contribution towards the D-Day invasions.

• Age Of Heroes (2011)

A film about the formation of a special operations team and their mission to destroy Nazi radar equipment in Norway during WWII.

Literature

• Author Ian Fleming, who knew both Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins, is reputed to have used at least parts of them to create "M", and "Miss Moneypenny" in his James Bond books. In his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, Fleming is said to have based the "Vesper Lynd" character on the SOE agent, Christine Granville. Other agents that Fleming used for his Bond character were Duane Hudson and Andrew Croft. Chief of SOE Technical Branch and later GS Branch MI6, Charles Bovill was represented in the Bond books as 'Q'.
• Tim Powers' Declare and Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives. Fictional versions of SOE turn up as the organisation in charge of occult activities in these books.
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
• Jackdaws by Ken Follett. Felicity Clairet, a female SOE agent leads an all women team into France to blow up a telephone exchange.
• Night of the Fox, Cold Harbour and Flight of Eagles by Jack Higgins.
• The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin features an SOE agent based on Noor Inayat Khan.
• The Secret Army by Robert Muchamore features Air Vice Marshal Walker who is the Head of the SOE.
• Double Cross Blind by Joel Ross, an American helps a female SOE agent stop a Nazi plot that could turn the tide of the war.
• Tamar by Mal Peet, about the life of fictional SOE agents in the Netherlands during the Hunger Winter.

Other media

• In the 2003 video game Secret Weapons Over Normandy, the main protagonist, James Chase, is a member of the Battlehawks, an elite RAF squadron assigned to the SOE.
• The 2009 video game The Saboteur, which takes place in German-occupied Paris circa 1940, revolves around Sean Devlin, an analogue of real SOE agent William Grover-Williams. Devlin is depicted, however, as a member of the French Resistance, who works unofficially for the SOE in exchange for information. In addition, supply crates from the SOE are hidden all over Paris and serve as an in-game "collectible".
• A Secret Army Exhibition at Beaulieu in Hampshire, UK tells the story of the British and overseas members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) who completed their secret training at the Beaulieu ‘Finishing School’ during World War ll.