local population. Stewart Menzies, head of the SIS, thought the SOE consisted of upstarts and amateurs and he recorded his opinion that difficulties would follow if two sets of agents worked independently in the same territory. 4 Even RAF Bomber Command and its head, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, is said to have disapproved of the SOE. Harris’s preferred method in the war was bombing the Germans into submission and he did not like to spare his aircraft for clandestine activity. The problem was that the SOE was heavily dependent on the other services. It needed boats from the Admiralty to ferry agents across to the Continent, weapons and ammunition from the Army and aircraft from the RAF to drop agents and supplies. In the early years, most requests were turned down and the SOE had fewer planes, less finance and little equipment with which to ‘set Europe ablaze’. The SOE also had to share the same wireless operators as the SIS and this led to considerable confusion in the early years as messages were sometimes delayed. It was only in 1942 that the SOE acquired the right to build its own sets, use its own codes and run its own network.
These were not problems that would daunt Dalton. He set to work building the core team. The SIS had a dirty-tricks department called Section D (D for destruction) which had thought of imaginative schemes like destroying Romanian oil fields, blocking the Danube and sabotaging iron ore exports from Germany. But these had not yielded results. In the autumn of 1940, D-section was formed into a new department known as SO2 and placed under Dalton. This was done without consulting the SIS chief, Stewart Menzies, which angered him further. There was also a small subdivision of Military Intelligence called MI (R) which was planning paramilitary action. This was transferred to the Ministry of Economic Warfare. A third group attached to the Foreign Office called Electra House, which dabbled in subversive propaganda, was also handed over to Dalton. In the initial years, the SOE fused the work of all three departments and used their resources to get their plans on the road. Interdepartmental rivalry with the SIS remained high.
Dalton, an old Etonian, worked on the old-boy network and recruited many bankers and influential lawyers from Section D. These included Charles Hambro of the banking family, who had powerful connections in Sweden, George Taylor, a ruthless Australian with business interests around the globe, and a banker from Courtaulds. In the early years of SOE it looked very much like a gentleman’s club from the city and legal world. The SOE was divided into three sections – SO1 for propaganda, SO2 for active operations and SO3 for planning. 5
By October 1940 it had extended its offices from the grubby St Ermin’s hotel. Although it retained the first three floors of the hotel it now moved its main base to 64 Baker Street, further down the road from 221B, home of the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Later it took over Norgeby House, 83 Baker Street, and then the top floor of Michael House, the corporate headquarters of Marks & Spencer at 82 Baker Street, which housed the cipher and signals branches. SOE officials from now on came to be known as the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’, borrowing the phrase from Arthur Conan Doyle who used it in his detective stories. 6 The SOE had different sections dealing with the occupied countries. It soon established offices around the world from Istanbul and Cairo to Delhi, Algiers, Kandy, Brisbane and New York.
All branches of the SOE had the same aim: aiding resistance movements in occupied countries through acts of sabotage. From Delhi, the SOE sent agents into Burma to counter the Japanese, from Cairo they armed resistance groups in North Africa and Italy. The Balkan theatre covered Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania, the Western European section covered France, Netherlands and Belgium and the Mediterranean theatre covered Greece, Italy and Spain. The SOE
These were not problems that would daunt Dalton. He set to work building the core team. The SIS had a dirty-tricks department called Section D (D for destruction) which had thought of imaginative schemes like destroying Romanian oil fields, blocking the Danube and sabotaging iron ore exports from Germany. But these had not yielded results. In the autumn of 1940, D-section was formed into a new department known as SO2 and placed under Dalton. This was done without consulting the SIS chief, Stewart Menzies, which angered him further. There was also a small subdivision of Military Intelligence called MI (R) which was planning paramilitary action. This was transferred to the Ministry of Economic Warfare. A third group attached to the Foreign Office called Electra House, which dabbled in subversive propaganda, was also handed over to Dalton. In the initial years, the SOE fused the work of all three departments and used their resources to get their plans on the road. Interdepartmental rivalry with the SIS remained high.
Dalton, an old Etonian, worked on the old-boy network and recruited many bankers and influential lawyers from Section D. These included Charles Hambro of the banking family, who had powerful connections in Sweden, George Taylor, a ruthless Australian with business interests around the globe, and a banker from Courtaulds. In the early years of SOE it looked very much like a gentleman’s club from the city and legal world. The SOE was divided into three sections – SO1 for propaganda, SO2 for active operations and SO3 for planning. 5
By October 1940 it had extended its offices from the grubby St Ermin’s hotel. Although it retained the first three floors of the hotel it now moved its main base to 64 Baker Street, further down the road from 221B, home of the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Later it took over Norgeby House, 83 Baker Street, and then the top floor of Michael House, the corporate headquarters of Marks & Spencer at 82 Baker Street, which housed the cipher and signals branches. SOE officials from now on came to be known as the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’, borrowing the phrase from Arthur Conan Doyle who used it in his detective stories. 6 The SOE had different sections dealing with the occupied countries. It soon established offices around the world from Istanbul and Cairo to Delhi, Algiers, Kandy, Brisbane and New York.
All branches of the SOE had the same aim: aiding resistance movements in occupied countries through acts of sabotage. From Delhi, the SOE sent agents into Burma to counter the Japanese, from Cairo they armed resistance groups in North Africa and Italy. The Balkan theatre covered Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania, the Western European section covered France, Netherlands and Belgium and the Mediterranean theatre covered Greece, Italy and Spain. The SOE
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