SOE in France

Appendix A:

Sources

 

(I) ARCHIVES

Toynbee quotes Hancock's remark to a conference in Holland in the late forties ‘that the volume of official documents produced by the United Kingdom Government and its agencies during the six war years, 1939–45, equalled, in cubic content, the volume of all previous archives of the United Kingdom and of its constituent kingdoms England and Scotland that had survived down to the date of the outbreak of war’.¹ But only a few pebbles in this mountain pile of documentation were contributed by SOE; for unless a secret service remains secret, it cannot do its work. As it has to remain secret, it ought not to keep any sort of records in the field. Even at its home base, security risks are not needlessly multiplied ...