We will probably never know the truth. Many of the relevant SOE files were destroyed in a fire in 1945. Some of the MI6 files will be opened in the 2040s, under the Hundred-year Rule. Perhaps they will contain a clue.
Francis Suttill was posthumously awarded the DSO. His name appears on the SOE memorial at Valençay in France.
M. R. D. Foot’s SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive is the official history of the organization and still the most important, although it does tend to go for breadth over depth of analysis. For a very personal analysis of what lies behind Prosper’s death, Prosper: Major Suttill’s French Resistance Network is written by Suttill’s son, also called Francis.
If Prosper really was betrayed as part of an Allied deception, it was part of Operation Fortitude, a huge, ambitious and ultimately astonishingly successful plan to misdirect Germany as to the location of the invasion, pointing them towards Calais (and, to a lesser extent, Norway). The most important part of the operation rested on the Double Cross system – German agents in Britain who were really working for MI5 and subtly disinforming Berlin. Germany sent a number of agents into Britain by parachute or via neutral third countries, but Britain found them all and they were given the choice of turning double or trial and execution as spies. A number of those who were part of Double Cross had volunteered to the German intelligence services specifically to betray them to the Allies.
The other main plan was the creation of a fake army, the First United States Army Group. It consisted entirely of a small number of men deemed medically unfit for combat, blow-up tanks and plywood aeroplanes. Radio chatter to and from it was faked. And when D-Day eventually came, dummies were dropped by the RAF and USAF to send the German defenders to the wrong beaches.
Ben Macintyre’s Double Cross is a fine, very accessible narrative of the use of the double agents.
Wilhelm Canaris is a difficult figure. An early supporter of Hitler as a man who could rebuild Germany’s nation and military, he later refused to let the Abwehr be used for the Holocaust – in fact recruiting a number of Jewish agents in order that they could escape using Abwehr papers. He was deposed after the Gestapo became aware of his connection to anti-Hitler plots and was later taken to a concentration camp, where he was executed by strangulation. But let us not whitewash his early support for Nazism, when it was clear where the movement was heading.
Biographies of Canaris are few and far between. Hitler’s Spy Chief by Richard Bassett is as good as any but is unable to give many insights into the man, rather than his work.
Otto Skorzeny was in charge of Operation Griffin, a pet plan of Hitler’s to defend against the Allied invasion using English-speaking troops in American uniforms. It was deployed during the Battle of the Bulge, the last German counter-offensive against the invasion, but failed largely because the Germans could find too few men who could speak good English and too little captured materiel. The operation was soon detected by the Allied command and its main effect was to slow some of the Allied advance, as extra security was introduced, such as asking unrecognized soldiers about their favourite baseball teams.
Operation Jericho was a daring RAF raid against Amiens prison. Extraordinary footage of the raid can be watched online, as can the 1941 film Target for To-Night, which focuses on ‘Pick’ Pickard. The rallying speech Pickard gives in this book before Jericho is the one he gave that morning.
Amiens prison was a strange target. Quite why the RAF would hit it is open to question. It is possible that the plan was part of Fortitude, to make the Germans believe that a high-value agent or Resistance leader – ‘terrorists’, as the Gestapo usually referred to them – was in the prison, again making them focus on the nearby Pas de Calais as the invasion point, or it may have been to boost Resistance morale.
The Jail Busters by Robert Lyman is a strong narration of the story, with discussion of the motivation behind the raid.
The assault on British and Canadian troops practising beach landings is based on Exercise Tiger, a disastrous April 1944 training exercise for American troops designed to introduce them to amphibious assault. Many were killed by friendly fire on the first day, after confusion about the start time of the exercise. Hundreds more perished the following day, when nine German E-boats attacked the exercise convoy. Overall, more than seven hundred men lost their lives. The affair was covered up in order to save the morale of the other troops who were destined for D-Day.
The Finishing School is back to being Beaulieu, a fine country house with an excellent museum about the SOE agents who trained there.
The London Cage is now the Russian embassy.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, as ever, to my agents, Simon Trewin and Jon Wood, and editor Joel Richardson. Advice was sought and freely given by Juliette Pattinson at the University of Kent; Thomas Weber at the University of Aberdeen; and James Daly at the D-Day Museum, Portsmouth. Ed Latham’s feedback on the story was invaluable, and Katharina Neureiter made sure my German language made sense.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published by Michael Joseph, 2020
Copyright © Gareth Rubin, 2020
Material taken from Special Operations Executive manual for new recruits:
How to be an Agent in Occupied Europe, Crown copyright 1943. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3. o.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Images: © Arcangel and © Shutterstock
Retouching by Lee Gibbons
Author photo: © Paul Ceely
ISBN: 978-1-405-93064-2
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PART ONE CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
PART TWO CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
PART THREE CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
HISTORICAL NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COPYRIGHT