SOE personnel were sent to different Fascist occupied states to cause chaos behind German lines and similarly attempt to discover local resistance groups they could well work with the minute the moment for invasion was here. Theatres of Operation covered France, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Abyssinia and the Far East.

As operatives operated deep in Fascist held territory and they were hired from an assortment of social class and background. The key factors was the possible agent had exhaustive appreciation of the land they might operate in and prepared to pass as a local of that country. Because of this, those with twin nationality were highly fascinating.

The famous plane utilised by the SOE in France was the Westland Lysander. It was a little aircraft which made it be a whole lot more tough to observe and was strong enough to land on makeshift landing strips. It was employed to ferry operatives to and from the UK together with collecting those that wanted to be interviewed in London. Pilots who'd been shot down were also often brought back to the United Kingdom by Lysander.

Among the SOE numbers were also female agents and in the region of 30% of the female personnel sent into France from Section F, didn't survive. The types of operations in each country were various. For example, in Poland, there was little need to help the locals as there was already common loathing of the Nazis. This was compared to areas such as Vichy France which collaborated with the occupying forces and the likelihood of SOE operatives being betrayed was enormously increased.

For the length of World War II, the SOE had employed around 13,000 people who immediately supported or provided somewhere in the area of 1 million agents.

Churchill’s Secret Military played an important part during World War IIin Europe in the years leading up to the Normandy Landings in 1944.