What do you think?
Rate this book
Mission Europe: The Secret History of the Women of SOE
The remarkable history of the women who worked for Special Operations Executive across occupied Europe
In the wake of the Nazi invasion of Europe, the tentative sparks of resistance in occupied countries were fanned by Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Across the continent, SOE recruited women to “set Europe ablaze.” Working as secret agents and saboteurs, these individuals bolstered resistance from within and provided much needed support and weapons. F Section’s actions in France are renowned, and today some operatives have become household names. But what happened to the women who worked outside France and those who were locally recruited?
In this gripping account, Kate Vigurs tells the stories of the lesser-known women who worked across Europe, from the Netherlands to Belgium and Poland to Denmark. She explores too the lives of Jewish agents recruited in Mandate Palestine for missions in Eastern Europe. These are stories of trial and error, escape and even execution. Mission Europe examines why women were recruited, analysing their successes and contributions―and celebrates the ordinary women who did extraordinary things.
In the wake of the Nazi invasion of Europe, the tentative sparks of resistance in occupied countries were fanned by Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Across the continent, SOE recruited women to “set Europe ablaze.” Working as secret agents and saboteurs, these individuals bolstered resistance from within and provided much needed support and weapons. F Section’s actions in France are renowned, and today some operatives have become household names. But what happened to the women who worked outside France and those who were locally recruited?
In this gripping account, Kate Vigurs tells the stories of the lesser-known women who worked across Europe, from the Netherlands to Belgium and Poland to Denmark. She explores too the lives of Jewish agents recruited in Mandate Palestine for missions in Eastern Europe. These are stories of trial and error, escape and even execution. Mission Europe examines why women were recruited, analysing their successes and contributions―and celebrates the ordinary women who did extraordinary things.
- GenresHistory
368 pages, Hardcover
First published May 13, 2025
7 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 24, 2025
Special Operations Executive was formed in 1940 with one principal task: to ‘set Europe ablaze’. Agents, trained often in Britain but also elsewhere, would go out to the occupied countries of Europe to help win the war against the Nazis from within, to ‘co-ordinate all action by way of subversion and sabotage against the enemy overseas’. They would help native resistance groups, provide training and funding, set up information networks, produce anti-Nazi propaganda, and develop escape lines for prisoners of war and other persons fleeing the Nazi machine, among many other activities. They were an essential part of the war effort.
In the years since many of SOE’s extant files were declassified, people have begun to realise this. Interest has picked up, especially where it relates to F Section – the SOE section that covered occupied France. Indeed, Kate Vigurs’s first book, 'Mission France', is one of those that has raised awareness beyond the few household names who had gone public last century, rejuvenating the field and drawing the attention of a new generation with spellbinding, detailed, and sometimes harrowing stories of the women involved there.
But F Section was only one small cog in a very big machine. The rest are too unknown, too overlooked, and too misunderstood. Until now.
Vigurs’s new book, 'Mission Europe', addresses this significant gap with style, sympathy, and skill. This is no mean feat. Researching just one of the female agents who worked for SOE is difficult enough, given the sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental destruction of official files and the secretive nature of the work. Then extend that to operatives working in six countries, each with vastly differing experiences, and with each country's varying collective levels of guilt for collaboration – or pride in resistance. Unsubstantiated rumours and myths that have nevertheless become ‘truths’ built around certain women present another challenge, one that must be approached with tact and consideration. Sorting through the jumble, discovering enough information for a paragraph, let alone a biography, deciphering fact from fiction, and arranging it all into a coherent narrative is more than most authors could manage.
But Vigurs, like the women about whom she writes, has a particular set of skills – and she uses them to the fullest here. The meticulous care taken over the research – much of which was funded through the Special Forces Charity – shows. Commonly held fallacies are flipped, wrongs are righted, and the women emerge from the shadows as fully formed people, with faults and foibles as well as with strength and spirit.
More than this, however, Vigurs is a superb storyteller. She understands that to describe the whole in one go would be too much, too confusing – particularly for those whose knowledge of the Second World War is limited primarily to the experiences of Britain, America, the Holocaust, and perhaps France. So, she doesn’t. Every country has its own, complete account, told chronologically. In the space of one or two chapters apiece, her female agents are brought to life within their own context, surrounded by their particular dangers and opportunities, and supported – or undermined – by those around them. Vigurs’s voice is descriptive, evocative, and clear. But so are those of the women she describes. From a distance of eighty years, much of which clouded by the fog of secrecy and misinformation, this is a sublime achievement. Vigurs’s aim was to address an imbalance, to detail the experiences and missions of the women who worked for SOE across Europe. She has done more than this: she has brought each agent back to life.
In the years since many of SOE’s extant files were declassified, people have begun to realise this. Interest has picked up, especially where it relates to F Section – the SOE section that covered occupied France. Indeed, Kate Vigurs’s first book, 'Mission France', is one of those that has raised awareness beyond the few household names who had gone public last century, rejuvenating the field and drawing the attention of a new generation with spellbinding, detailed, and sometimes harrowing stories of the women involved there.
But F Section was only one small cog in a very big machine. The rest are too unknown, too overlooked, and too misunderstood. Until now.
Vigurs’s new book, 'Mission Europe', addresses this significant gap with style, sympathy, and skill. This is no mean feat. Researching just one of the female agents who worked for SOE is difficult enough, given the sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental destruction of official files and the secretive nature of the work. Then extend that to operatives working in six countries, each with vastly differing experiences, and with each country's varying collective levels of guilt for collaboration – or pride in resistance. Unsubstantiated rumours and myths that have nevertheless become ‘truths’ built around certain women present another challenge, one that must be approached with tact and consideration. Sorting through the jumble, discovering enough information for a paragraph, let alone a biography, deciphering fact from fiction, and arranging it all into a coherent narrative is more than most authors could manage.
But Vigurs, like the women about whom she writes, has a particular set of skills – and she uses them to the fullest here. The meticulous care taken over the research – much of which was funded through the Special Forces Charity – shows. Commonly held fallacies are flipped, wrongs are righted, and the women emerge from the shadows as fully formed people, with faults and foibles as well as with strength and spirit.
More than this, however, Vigurs is a superb storyteller. She understands that to describe the whole in one go would be too much, too confusing – particularly for those whose knowledge of the Second World War is limited primarily to the experiences of Britain, America, the Holocaust, and perhaps France. So, she doesn’t. Every country has its own, complete account, told chronologically. In the space of one or two chapters apiece, her female agents are brought to life within their own context, surrounded by their particular dangers and opportunities, and supported – or undermined – by those around them. Vigurs’s voice is descriptive, evocative, and clear. But so are those of the women she describes. From a distance of eighty years, much of which clouded by the fog of secrecy and misinformation, this is a sublime achievement. Vigurs’s aim was to address an imbalance, to detail the experiences and missions of the women who worked for SOE across Europe. She has done more than this: she has brought each agent back to life.
September 28, 2025
Fascinating topic and much needed account of remarkable women who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) the service that Churchill wanted to set Europe ablaze and in their different ways they did. The author is to be complimented on bringing into the public eye women whose courage would be news to many of us. Even better is her research allows the reader to have a broader impression of the extent of these women's contribution all over Europe. France has often been the focus for writing about the SOE globally speaking but here we discover heroines in Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and the Palmach, Jewish agents born in Europe who emigrated to Palestine but who wanted to do something to put a spoke in the wheels of the Holocaust. Hannah Szenes, Sara Braverman and Haviva Reik. They were to be infiltrated back into their countries of origin. Two did not survive, one only because her mission was called off.
Sadly despite the topic and the research I found the writing style stilted and sometimes over written, or stating the obvious. As an example: "Only a few days earlier, it had served as the partisan HQ where she had been helping refugees and Allied airmen. Now it was Gestapo HQ, and there would be no one there to save them."
Nevertheless it is still worth a read if only to marvel at their courage -- though less sure whether it was necessary to include those whose missions never happened regardless of being trained by the SOE, and the final poem by one of the doomed agents is rather moving and an apt way to end the review given Churchill's ambition for the SOE:
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame
Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart
Blessed is the heart with with strength to to stop its beating for honour's sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Sadly despite the topic and the research I found the writing style stilted and sometimes over written, or stating the obvious. As an example: "Only a few days earlier, it had served as the partisan HQ where she had been helping refugees and Allied airmen. Now it was Gestapo HQ, and there would be no one there to save them."
Nevertheless it is still worth a read if only to marvel at their courage -- though less sure whether it was necessary to include those whose missions never happened regardless of being trained by the SOE, and the final poem by one of the doomed agents is rather moving and an apt way to end the review given Churchill's ambition for the SOE:
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame
Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart
Blessed is the heart with with strength to to stop its beating for honour's sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
August 31, 2025
Following on from her first book, Mission France, in Mission Europe Dr Kate Vigurs tells the story of the Women of SOE who were sent to or recruited in mainland Europe. Each chapter covers a different agent and their stories of are brilliantly told with tales of intrigue, danger horror and in some cases tragedy. While some of the names are familiar others are less well known but no less important for that. Superbly researched and written this is a groundbreaking book that covers an important but often overlooked chapter in Second World War history, its a must for any reader with an interest in the war in Europe. I heartily recommend it.
July 15, 2025
This is the book I’ve been searching for for a long time. I am fascinated by the women who served in the SOE during WWII. I’ve really wanted details of training, recruitment, missions, capture, failures and triumphant successes. Mission Europe tells the whole story and includes narratives about courageous women (and men) who put themselves in danger throughout Europe, not just France. Beautifully researched. Very readable. I loved listening in audible.
September 15, 2025
Interesting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews