On October 21, 1940, when the Blitz—the German bombing of British cities—was in full swing, Winston Churchill gave the following speech over BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) radio to any people in Nazi-occupied France who might be listening:
Frenchmen! For more than 30 years, in peace and war, I marched with you and I am marching still along the same road. Tonight I speak to you at your firesides wherever you may be, or whatever your fortunes are…. Here at home in England, under the fire of the Boche, we do not forget the ties and links that unite us to France …
Here in London, which Herr Hitler says he will reduce to ashes and which his airplanes are now bombarding, our people are bearing up unflinchingly. Our air force has more than held its own. We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.
Remember we shall never stop, never weary, and never give in, and that our whole people and empire have vowed themselves to the task of cleansing Europe from the Nazi pestilence and saving the world from the new Dark Ages. Do not imagine, as the German-controlled wireless tells you, that we English seek to take your ships and colonies. We seek to beat the life and soul out of Hitler and Hitlerism—that alone, that all the time, that to the end …
Good night, then: sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.
Vive la France!
It was necessary for the British prime minster to remind the French of their countries’ mutual ties: a few months earlier, beginning on May 26, 1940, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)—trained British soldiers who had come to assist France against the German invasion during the Battle of France—evacuated for Great Britain via the shores of Dunkirk, leaving France to fight Germany alone. Although the BEF, much smaller than the French army, had been overwhelmed by the Germans, many French people felt betrayed by Operation Dynamo, the British evacuation from Dunkirk. They felt even more betrayed when, shortly after the French had surrendered to the Germans on June 22, 1940, the British sunk a powerful fleet of French ships near Algeria after the French navy refused to surrender them—killing more than 1,000 sailors in the process—in order to prevent Germany from using the ships to invade Britain.
France and Britain had been allies—if somewhat mistrustful ones—during World War I and had simultaneously declared war on Germany when the Nazis had invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. But by the time Churchill delivered his encouraging speech, many of the French saw Britain as a traitor, and because most of Europe lay in the shadow of the swastika, Churchill’s words of hope seemed empty. However, at that moment, the British prime minister was preparing to offer those in Nazi-occupied countries more than just words: he had already given the go-ahead to an organization that would help them fight their Nazi oppressors.
A few months earlier, on July 16, 1940, when the Battle of Britain—the air war between the German Luftwaffe and Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF)—had begun in the skies above Britain, Hitler had issued an official directive called Operation Sea Lion, ordering the invasion of Great Britain. That same night, Winston Churchill summoned his minister of economic warfare, Hugh Dalton, and famously directed him to “set Europe ablaze” with an organization, initially planned by the government of the previous prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, that would locate, assist, supply, and train willing resisters within occupied countries by sending them British-trained agents who were native speakers of the occupied country, or who could pass as such. The organization was to be top secret, and it wasn’t until years later that most people discovered its name: the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
However, those within the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 or SIS) found out about it almost immediately and were very critical of the new organization. They were afraid that the SOE’s main objectives—sabotage of the German war machine—would adversely affect MI6’s quiet gathering of information. And because the need to fight the Nazis from within the occupied countries was urgent, SOE agents trained for a relatively short period of time, causing MI6 to brand it unprofessional and amateurish, an opinion that was initially shared by the other branches of the armed services. This was a problem, especially at first, because the SOE would have to depend on the other branches for supplies and transportation.
Referred to during the war as the Inter-Services Research Bureau, the SOE was headquartered at 64 Baker Street in London, near the address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and the SOE agents were sometimes referred to as the Baker Street Specials or the Baker Street Irregulars, named after some street children employed by Holmes to secretly ferret out information. That nickname called attention to the irregular type of warfare SOE agents would collectively engage in; that is, warfare generally conducted outside the activities of the regular armed forces—the destruction of munitions factories and communication lines, guerilla warfare, assassination, and harming the morale of the enemy—anything that would disrupt and hinder the German war machine occupying much of mainland Europe.
The SOE had different sections named for the country that particular section was supporting. The largest section—the one that eventually contained the largest number of SOE agents—was the French, or F Section: any Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe would necessarily begin with France, just across the channel from Great Britain. After its surrender to Germany, France had been divided into two zones: the northern and western “occupied zone” (where the Germans were more visibly in charge) and the southern “free zone.” The free zone was controlled by a puppet government of Nazi Germany under Marshal Pétain, the beloved French military hero from World War I. His headquarters were in the town of Vichy, and so the southern region was referred to as Vichy France during the war.
Resistance was slow to begin in France, especially in the southern section, where initially the Germans were not as visible and so the reality of occupation not as noticeable as it was in the north. But resistance to the occupying Germans and to the Vichy government grew when they instituted, first, a tradeoff of French POWs for French workers to toil in German munitions factories and, second, the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), a subsequent and increasing demand for an enormous number of French factory workers to be sent to Germany. The result was large groups of young men fleeing into rural areas and forming into bands eager to fight the Germans. They were called Maquis, named after a dense plant formation that grew wild on the French island of Corsica. Many of these groups were eventually recruited, organized, supplied, armed, and trained by the SOE.
French politics were severely divided before the war, and the resistance groups that formed—including the Maquis—during the occupation reflected those divisions. The armed branch of French Communists was called the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (Free Fighters and Partisans), or the FTP. At first, French Communists weren’t terribly interested in resisting the German occupation, as they saw the war as a conflict between imperialistic countries. But after Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, the Communist-based Maquis groups became very eager to fight the Germans.
On the other end of the political spectrum was the Armée Secrète, the AS, which was composed largely of former members of the defeated French army who were loyal to General Charles de Gaulle, a French military leader who had been opposed to the armistice (the official surrender) with Germany and who eventually became an inspiring figure to many French people during the occupation. General de Gaulle broadcast radio messages of resistance from his headquarters in London, where he also led a fighting force called the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) along with his own section of the SOE called the RF Section. The RF agents were nearly all French citizens, and this section was created by the SOE specifically to answer to de Gaulle’s headquarters. (De Gaulle went so far as to insist that the SOE not recruit any native French men or women into the SOE F Section, and while this was not followed consistently, the SOE did attempt to avoid the RF Section in France as much as possible.)
Although there were serious attempts to unify the various strands of the French Resistance, the political situation remained somewhat complex throughout the war. It was into this complicated state of affairs that the first F Section agent of the SOE was parachuted into central France on the night of May 5-6, 1941. In the end, more than 400 SOE agents were sent into France during the course of the occupation, and 39 of them were women.
Pearl Witherington was one of these women. Although the SOE trained her to be a courier for a Resistance circuit called the Stationer network, nothing but her own strength, intelligence, and determination could have prepared her for the drastic change in roles that occurred while she was working in occupied France, a change that has made her one of the most celebrated female agents in SOE history.
