Finest Years (61 page)

Between 1940 and 1943, the highest achievement of SOE in most occupied countries was to keep agents alive and wireless transmitters functioning, with most success in rural areas. The Soviet Union's entry into the war prompted a dramatic accession of strength to Resistance, from Europe's communists. A second critical development in France was Germany's 1943 introduction of massed forced labour, known as the
Service de Travail Obligatoire
, STO. Tens of thousands of young men fled into hiding in the countryside, to the
maquis
, to escape deportation to Germany. They formed bands under leaders of differing and often mutually hostile political hues. Most were preoccupied with feeding themselves through banditry, which enraged its bourgeois victims, rather than with fighting the Germans.
Many French people
asserted bitterly after the war, in private at least, that the Germans behaved better than did communist
maquisards
. There is a widespread delusion that Resistance groups were
commanded by SOE officers, but this was rarely so. Most British agents fulfilled a liaison role, exercising varying degrees of influence upon French group leaders through their control of cash and supply drops.

Above all, until the spring of 1944 Resistance was poorly armed. Only then did the Allies possess sufficient aircraft and weapons to begin equipping
maquisards
wholesale.
A whimsical November
1941 proposal from Lord Cherwell, to drop containers of arms randomly across occupied Europe to encourage spontaneous acts of violence, was rejected as a waste of scarce air resources. Until the last months before liberation, sabotage and guerrilla operations in most European countries—with the notable exception of Yugoslavia, of which more below—were on a relatively tiny scale. The so-called
Armée Secrète
, which recognised the authority of De Gaulle, generally respected instructions from London to remain passive until the approach of D-Day. Communist bands of the FTP—
Franc-Tireurs et Partisans
—adopted more activist tactics, with ruthless disregard for the interests of local people.

Churchill loved to meet British agents and Frenchmen returned from their hazardous missions. He entertained at Downing Street Wing Commander Edmund Yeo-Thomas—‘the White Rabbit'—Jean Moulin and Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie. Such encounters invariably prompted him to urge the RAF to divert more aircraft to aid their struggle. His personal enthusiasm for Resistance was critical in overcoming the scepticism of conventional warriors. It was sometimes said of the ‘Baker Street Irregulars' that Britain was tipped on its side, and everything loose fell into SOE. Many of its personnel, unsurprisingly, were individualists and eccentrics. Their perspicacity often failed to match their enthusiasm. They cherished extravagant faith in their unseen protégés in occupied Europe. A sceptic remarked of Col. Maurice Buckmaster, chief of SOE's French Section: ‘
He believed that all his geese
were swans.'

SOE's most conspicuous security lapse was its failure, despite many warnings, to perceive that the Germans had so deeply penetrated its Dutch operations that almost every agent parachuted into Holland in 1942-43 landed into enemy hands. The revelation of this disaster,
at the end of 1943, precipitated a crisis in the organisation's affairs. Its Whitehall foes, of whom there were many, crowded forward to demand curtailment of its operations and calls on resources. Menzies and his colleagues at SIS argued that the débâcle reflected the chronic amateurishness and lack of tradecraft prevailing at SOE's Baker Street headquarters and pervading its operations in the field. They were by no means wrong. SOE since 1940 had indeed been learning on the job, at severe cost in life and wasted effort. Meanwhile in September 1943, the army's exasperation with SOE's Balkan operations, which it claimed were out of control, caused the C-in-C Middle East to demand that the organisation should be brought under his orders. This issue was still unresolved when the Dutch scandal broke.

On Churchill's return from Marrakesh in January 1944, he found the row appealed to himself. He renewed SOE's mandate (though rejecting its presumptuous demand for a seat on the chiefs of staff committee), confirmed its independence, and ordered the RAF to release more aircraft for arms-dropping. The organisation's internal historian wrote later: ‘
There is no doubt that
, in this critical phase of its development, SOE and the Resistance movements which it led were sustained very largely by the personal influence of Mr Churchill.' The prime minister took the view that SOE's enthusiasm and activism outweighed its deficiencies. It was too late in the war to undertake wholesale restructuring. Much of the criticism of SOE, he believed, derived from Whitehall jealousies. It was impossible to conduct a secret war of such an unprecedented kind without misfortunes which cost lives, as do all mistakes in conflict.

Thus, in the last months before liberation, relatively large quantities of arms—though pathetically small quantities of ammunition—began to reach resisters. The British estimated that some 35,000 active
maquisards
were in the field, though De Gaulle claimed a strength of 175,000 for France's secret army. SOE believed that its
parachutages
provided weapons for 50,000. The intoxicating confidence thus created persuaded some groups to conduct disastrous pitched battles with the Germans. At Montmouchet on 20 May 1944 the regional
Armée Secrète
commander, Emile Coulaudon, ordered
a mass concentration of his groups, 6,000 strong. On 10 June the Germans attacked them. At least 350
maquisards
perished, while the remainder dispersed and fled. Local communities suffered devastating reprisals.

Another act of folly, the brief liberation of the town of Tulle in the Corrèze by the communist FTP for a few hours on 9 June, caused SS Panzergrenadiers to hang ninety-nine innocent hostages from the lampposts in reprisal for the alleged Resistance massacre of the elderly Wehrmacht reservists who had garrisoned the town. At Oradour-sur-Glane next day 642 men, women and children were slaughtered, in reprisal for the abduction by
maquisards
of a popular SS battalion commander. That day from London General Pierre Koenig, commander of the
Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur
, ordered a ‘maximum brake on guerrilla activities'. Such a demand was at odds both with the mood of the moment and all previous briefing. It created confusion in the ranks of Resistance. On 17 June, Koenig issued a new order: ‘continue elusive guerrilla activity to the maximum', while avoiding concentrations. This did not prevent the madness of the Vercors on 21 July, where 640
maquisards
and 201 local civilians were killed as the Germans assaulted another ill-judged gathering of resistance forces.

Around 24,000 FFI fighters died during the struggle for France. Thousands more, most of them civilians, perished in reprisals and executions of prisoners, for instance 11,000 in and around Paris, 3,673 in Lyons, 2,863 in the Limoges area, 1,113 in Lille, and similar proportions in lesser cities, together with thousands of others deported to German concentration camps, from which most never returned. It seems doubtful whether it was useful or prudent to arm the French Resistance on a large scale. Churchill's enthusiasm caused the
maquis
to become dangerous enough to enrage the Germans, but insufficiently powerful to defend themselves or their communities. Most
maquisards
had only pistols or Sten sub-machine guns, with two or three magazines apiece. They lacked heavy weapons, ammunition and radio communications for sustained or large-scale engagements.

The courage and sacrifice of those who supported the Resistance,
or even withheld support from Vichy, deserves the profound respect of posterity. But the moral achievement must be detached from cool analysis of the military balance. Post-war claims for the damage inflicted on the enemy by the French Resistance and its SOE sponsors were grossly exaggerated, as German war diaries make plain. Resistance historians, for instance, have claimed that the
maquis
inflicted hundreds of casualties upon the 2nd SS Das Reich armoured division on its march from southern France to Normandy in June 1944.
German records, by contrast
, reveal only thirty-five killed. The impact of
maquis
attacks on German communications that summer was infinitesimally smaller than that of Allied air attacks. Resistance fulfilled a striking moral function, especially important in resurrecting the post-war self-respect of occupied nations. But one of the best historians of the period, Julian Jackson, has written: ‘
In the history of France
, Resistance is more important as a social and political phenomenon than a military one.'

The Balkans, however, were different. There, the terrain was much more favourable to guerrilla warfare. In Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia and also Italy, the prime minister perceived political circumstances and military opportunities which might yield dramatic benefits. New Zealand premier Peter Fraser urged caution on Churchill, sensibly observing that the Balkans was a region ‘
of seething factions
, who would turn to whoever would give them most support'. But the prime minister believed that local passions could be harnessed to Allied purposes. It was often remarked by critics that the enthusiasm of the prime minister and SOE's agents reflected a ‘T.E. Lawrence complex', wild delusions about the prospect that a few personable British officers might influence the behaviour of entire Balkan societies in support of British foreign policy objectives. American suspicions that imperialistic motives underpinned SOE caused Roosevelt in October 1943 to advance to Churchill a clumsy request, swiftly dismissed by the prime minister, for Colonel Donovan of the American OSS to assume authority for all Allied special operations in the Balkans.

From 1943 onwards, SOE lavished much effort upon Mediterranean
countries, with mixed results. Some of its most flamboyant British officers, men such as Billy Maclean and David Smiley, were dropped into the mountains of Albania to work with local partisans. Almost without exception they loathed the country and its people. They found the Albanians far more eager to accept weapons and to steal equipment and supplies than to fight the Germans. ‘
How pleased I shall be
to return to civilisation again,' a British officer confided to his diary, ‘to be among people one can trust and not to be surrounded by dirt, filth and bad manners…It is not as if one was doing anything useful here or could do so. There is so little charity among these people that they cannot believe anyone would come all this way just to help them…They are boastful and vain with nothing to be boastful or vain about. They have no courage, no consistency and no sense of honour.'

Enver Hoxha, the Albanian communist leader who dominated guerrilla operations, was chiefly concerned to secure his own power base for a post-war takeover. It is easy to see why the Albanians, mired in poverty and a struggle for existence, showed so little enthusiasm for supporting the activist purposes of British missions. Guerrilla activity provoked the Germans to reprisals which SOE's teams were quite incapable of deflecting. Young British officers in Albania hazarded their own lives with considerable insouciance. Local peasants, however, saw their homes, crops and families imperilled, for no discernible advantage save to pursue a misty vision of ‘freedom'. Beyond a few useful acts of sabotage, in Albania the military achievements of Resistance were slight.

Throughout the Balkans, internal political rivalries dogged British efforts to mobilise societies against their occupiers. In Greece and Crete, the population was overwhelmingly hostile to the Germans. The country had a long tradition of opposition to authority. Unfortunately, however, Greek society was racked by dissensions, the ferocity of which bewildered British officers thrust into their midst. There was no love for the king, nor for the Greek exile government backed by Churchill. Each guerrilla band cherished its own loyalties. Col. Monty Woodhouse, one of the most celebrated SOE officers
who served among the Greeks, reported to Cairo: ‘
No one is ever free
from the struggle for existence; everything else is secondary to it. That is why no one outside Greece can speak for the Greeks.' The British, on instructions from Cairo and ultimately from Churchill, were predisposed to support royalists. When Napoleon Zervas, leader of the relatively small republican group EDES, told SOE in 1943 that he backed the restoration of King George, he was rewarded by receiving twice the arms drops provided to the communists of EAM/ELAS, even though the communists were six times more numerous, and were doing all the fighting. Zervas repaid British largesse by establishing a tacit truce with the Germans, and biding his time to pursue his own purposes.
As so often in occupied Europe
, political and military objectives pulled British policy in different directions.

In 1944, realities on the ground seemed to make it essential to provide arms to the communists of ELAS, only some of which were employed against the Germans. Monty Woodhouse was recalled to Britain during the summer, and visited Churchill at Chequers to make the case for sustaining aid to ELAS. Woodhouse told the prime minister that if supplies to the communists were cut off, ‘I very much doubt whether any of my officers will get out of Greece alive.' Churchill brooded for a moment, then took Woodhouse by the arm and said, ‘Yes, young man, I quite understand.' As the British officer left Chequers, the prime minister said at parting: ‘
I am very impressed
, and oppressed and depressed.' Albeit hesitantly, Churchill directed that aid to the communists should be maintained. British agents strove to persuade the Greeks to make common cause, but mutual hatreds were too strong. Moreover, every Resistance attack on the Germans provoked reprisals on a scale as dreadful as those in Russia and Yugoslavia, overlaid upon widespread starvation.

Nevertheless, Resistance in Greece became a more widespread popular movement than in Western Europe. Some spectacular acts of sabotage were carried out by SOE teams, notably the 1942 destruction of the Gorgopotamos viaduct. But ‘
pundits overestimated
what guerrillas could achieve', in the words of Noel Annan, who served
on the joint intelligence staff of the Cabinet Office. He asserts that such successes as the destruction of the Gorgopotamos came too late to be strategically useful, and made the planners in London over-optimistic. ‘It took months for our liaison officers to persuade ELAS to blow up the bridge. Had it been destroyed earlier it would have cut one of Rommel's supply lines when he stood at El Alamein. But it was not…The difficulties with ELAS should have warned the Foreign Office that ELAS's first objective was less to harass the Germans than to eliminate other guerrilla forces and their leaders.' Nick Hammond, a British officer with the Greeks, wrote afterwards: ‘
Armed resistance in the open
countryside is something rarely undertaken. Only men of extreme, even fanatical enthusiasm will undertake the initiation and leadership of such a resistance, because it invites terrible reprisals on one's family, friends and fellow-countrymen.'