ONLY MAKE-BELIEVE by Donal Kennedy

I’ve long suspected that the much-ballyhooed derring-do of Britain’s Special Operations Executive during the 1939-1945  unpleasantness was largely a figment of the imagination and a propaganda production which paled when compared with Laurence Olivier’s HENRY V, filmed in neutral Ireland with Irish Defence Force personnel acting as film extras.

The Official History of The S.O.E. was written by M.R.D. Foot, who had served  with the outfit and dared  not put a foot wrong in its telling. He reveals that Hugh Dalton, Britain’s Minister for Economic Warfare ,had written to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, saying – “We have got to organise movements in enemy occupied territory comparable to the Sinn Fein movement in Ireland.”  Two of the SOE’s organisers, Holland and Gubbins had been Majors in Ireland in 1919 and been impressed by the success of Michael Collins’s fighters.

The Sinn Fein movement in Ireland in 1919 had just submitted candidates to the electorate who had given them 73 of Ireland’s 105 Parliamentary Seats. It seems the SOE did not put a single candidate forward for elections, national or local, in any part of Europe. Nor did it set up a Government, launch a National Loan, set up  courts, or commissions enquiring into national resources, nor send out envoys to engage with the peoples of the world.

So it had nothing whatever in common with the Sinn Fein movement. Its heroes were subject to no Army Council, nor did they enjoy the support of the mass of the people in the places they were active. To this day I do not believe there is any French song to bear witness to their popular appeal. No “Kevin Barry” , no “Boys of Kilmichael” no “Tipperary So Far Away.” Nor do I believe there’s a football club or other sporting body was named in their honour.

The fact is that in 1940 the Germans had defeated the French, who, like the British, had declared war on them in 1939. The French were in no condition to continue fighting and approximately five sixths of French Parliamentarians ordered their forces in France to stop fighting. Some French, and most of the British Expeditionary Force had fled across the  Channel, and an obscure French Officer availed of a BBC microphone to tell his countrymen back home to rally around him.Unfortunately they couldn’t swim .

Though Churchill bellowed that Britain would never surrender, the Germans never asked them to. They were surprised by their easy victory in France and had no plans nor the equipment to invade Britain. In June 1941 Hitler had no fear of Britain and could turn his back on her and launch an attack on an infinitely  bigger territory -THE SOVIET UNION. The British in their hurry to quit France had not destroyed all their equipment, and British trucks were driven by Germans into Russia.