No Small Achievement: Special Operations Executive and the Danish Resistance 1940-1945

by Knud J.V. Jespersen, Christopher Wade (Translator)

No Small Achievement follows the build-up of the Danish Section with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the top-secret sabotage organization, which was part of the resistance movement in WWII. On the basis of archives just accessible in London it has finally been possible to describe the Danish Resistance Movement during the Second World War from an English point of view. From the beginning of 1940 the Special Operations Executive developed from an idea into a world-wide organization of about 13,000 men and women of whom about 5,000 were active behind enemy lines. The intention was that the organization should support the resistance movements in the occupied territories as part of Britain's struggle for survival against Hitler's Germany. Denmark, at first, was not too keen on resistance and this book follows the laborious build-up of the Danish SOE Section from a few isolated acts of sabotage into a comprehensive resistance movement. The book contains a total evaluation of the SOE activities in Denmark from the summer 1940 to the dissolution of the organization in the autumn of 1945.

672 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2002