How will these resources help you?

Until recently, war history was usually about male combatants, with women being designated to merely supportive roles, or else portrayed as victims. Certainly, spies and secret agents were usually assumed to be men. However, the demands of the Second World War led to gender norms being challenged and moderated. Women were employed in traditionally male industries, joined a number of services, such as the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and the Women’s Royal Service, and volunteered for civil defence and other war work. They were not expected to fight but to support the armed forces and their country’s war effort. However, in 1941 Winston Churchill set up the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to spy, sabotage, distribute propaganda and work with local resistance groups in German-occupied Europe. The SOE has enjoyed a great deal of publicity, but books about the organisation have often presented it only as a white, male, political and military organisation. These resources about the many women who risked and sacrificed their lives with the SOE address that misconception, and also offer new insights into the complexities of gender relations during the Second World War.