ABSTRACT
The year 1943 was altogether more successful. The tide of the European war had just turned, at Stalingrad and Alamein; conformably, the tide of SOE’s affairs in France also began to rise. During these twelve months F, RF, and DF sections were all in difficulties with the Gestapo, which were survived easily enough by DF but which left F’s and RF’s principal field organizations alike leaderless. However, repairs were prompt; by the year’s end both offensive sections had teams that covered the country effectively and knew what to do; moreover, the year’s record in actual sabotage was striking. For the first time SOE could claim that it was making the sort of impression on the enemy high command in France it had been set up to achieve: nevertheless, it was during this year that the most important attempt was made by other services to break up SOE altogether and subordinate it to them. Von Rundstedt recorded 1943 as ‘a serious turning point in the interior situation of France … The organized supply of arms from England to France became greater every month’, and his headquarters was given ‘an impressive picture of the increasing danger to the German troops in the territories of the West. … Not only the murders and acts of sabotage against members of the Wehrmacht, against Wehrmacht installations, railways, and supply lines were on the increase, but in certain districts organized raids of gangs in uniform and civilian clothes on transports and military units multiplied.’ And by the end of the year ‘It was already impossible to dispatch single members of the Wehrmacht, ambulances, couriers or supply columns without armed protection to the 1st or 19th Army in the South of France.’1
