A Most Ungentlemanly Way of War: The SOE and the Canadian Connection

by Bernd Horn

Created by Winston Churchill to sabotage and subvert the enemy in WWII, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was an innovative and at times infamous group, a band fanatically devoted to the Allied cause and willing to do whatever it took to advance it and hamper the Axis — even operating within North America.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 30, 2016

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a good academic high-level history of the SOE, though a bit heavy on lists. Not surprising, given Horn's background. There is plenty of detail on SOE's bureaucratic/political battles with more conventional military and intelligence interests. It is short at 181 pages. It would have benefited, for a general audience, with more stories of SOE operations in all theatres. The subtitle over-emphasizes the "Canadian Connection", leaving the impression that the book is primarily about that, although Horn does provide good detail on the three main Canadian contributions: Intrepid's organization and interactions with Hoover and Donovan, Camp-X, and some stories of Canadian SO people.
One big plus is that Horn discusses SOE's failures as well as successes, and doesn't diminish German counter-intelligence capability, as some other books on the subject do, such as Max Hastings' "The Secret War". In that, it is a well-balanced work.

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although thorough and well researched, this was a very dry read. I had expected more stories of missions and equipment used, strategies and techniques, but it was more of a run down of people and places, rules, regulations, statistics, and government policy. There was mention of training, but rather than describe the training and people's experiences, it was discussed as 'recruits went to place a to undergo training b which was quite extensive and resulted in c', followed by a list of objectives. Same thing went for equipment, for example, a newer version of a wireless set was mentioned but there was little information on the benefits and how it differed from the old, which would have been interesting. This book would be good for someone writing an essay on the structure and purpose of the SOE and the involvement of Canadians, but for a recreational read out of interest it was boring.