How do you set about training a secret agent? What kind of people were recruited and trained to kill and sabotage so they could be dropped into Nazi occupied territory in World War Two? And what happened to them after their active service was over?
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a clandestine Allied organisation set up by Winston Churchill in the Second World War to carry out sabotage and encourage resistance behind enemy lines in Europe, the Balkans and the Far East. Warfare of this type was unconventional, solitary and dangerous.
By the end of the war, the SOE had recruited and trained more than 9,000 operatives - men and women of multiple nationalities - who were expected to endure, for prolonged periods, conditions of extreme physical and psychological difficulty and threat, where the consequences of failure could be catastrophic.
Drawing on pioneering research, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, among previously untapped sources, ranging from declassified SOE files to psychiatric records and interviews with survivors, The Making of a Secret Agent reveals how the SOE addressed the impact of the psychological stresses to which its operatives were exposed. It unearths the processes by which candidates were selected for clandestine operations, including the contributions of professional psychologists and psychiatrists and the application of pioneering methods of testing and assessment.
Through vivid personal testimony of the agents and those who worked with them, this book illuminates the degree to which those processes were effective in identifying people capable of coping and working well in the field. And it reveals for the first time the support forthcoming for SOE operatives who returned from their harrowing missions in enemy territory.
