SOE: everything you wanted to know

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 Vigers, author of books on SOE 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 SOE and we are in such safe hands for this episode because we are joined by Dr. Kate Vigers, 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.

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