The Operatives

Special Operations Executive — also known as the Firm — was established on July 22, 1940, a calamitous year that saw the Battle of Britain, the defeat of Norway, and the fall of France. SOE’s mandate was to support local resistance networks and carry out espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance operations in German-occupied territory. Or, as Winston Churchill commanded, “Now go set Europe ablaze.”

M. R. D. Foot documented the history of the British spy agency in several books beginning in the 1960s; the historian David Stafford has since produced several more. His Ten Days to D‑Day: Countdown to the Liberation of Europe, from 2003, paints a vivid and broad canvas of the organization and the individuals who played key roles in preparing the conditions for the Allied invasion of France. But it was only in 2019 that the journalist Nahlah Ayed began to understand SOE’s unique role in the Second World War — and the significant contributions of women in the...