Book Review: Military and Scientific Affairs: SOE in France

DOI10.1177/002070206702200125
Date01 March 1967
Published date01 March 1967
Subject MatterBook Review
BOOK
RRviEws
111
Tizard's
part
in
the
war
effort was
much
more
extensive
and
varied
than
that.
He
gave
vigorous
and
influential
support
to
the
development
of
the
jet
engine,
a
war-time
innovation
second
in
significance
only
to
radar
and
the
uranium
bomb;
he
was both
a
pioneer
in
and
a
successful
salesman
of
operational research,
which,
through
the
application
of
statistical
and
other
scientific
techniques,
helped
decrease
allied losses
to
enemy
submarines and
anti-aircraft
batteries
and
to
improve
bomb-
ing
effectiveness;
and,
by
the
force
of
his
personality
and
the patent
usefulness
of
his
work, he
helped
break
down
that
official
suspicion
of
science
and
scientists
which, in
his
gloomier
moments,
he
feared
might
lose
the
war.
Ronald
Clark's
book,
based
on
five
hundred
files
of
Tizard's
private
papers
which
have not
been
consulted
before,
as
well
as
a
mass
of
other
documentary
material,
gives
a
complete
picture
of
the
man
and his
work,
and
one
that
is
all the
more impressive
because
its
author
has
not sought to leave out
the
blemishes
and
mistakes
of
its
subject.
There
is
no
doubt
that
Tizard
was
often
wrong-in
his
refusal
to
put
much
stock
in
the
belief
(subsequently
proved
true)
that
the
navigation
of
German
aircraft
was
assisted
by
radio
beams,
for
instance,
and
his
scepticism
about
the
feasibility
of
nuclear
weapons
and
about
the
chances
of
a
successful cross-channel
invasion-and
it
is
true
that
some
of
his
errors
were
partly
the
result
of
his
feelings
about
Lindemann.
But
he
was
a
man
of
integrity
who
possessed
the
confidence
of
the
scientific
community
because
its
members
knew
that
his
judgments
were
never
influenced
by
political considerations
and
that
he
was
right
more
often
than
not.
He
may
even
have
been
right
in
the
opinion
that
finally cost
him
the
support
of
the
Air
Ministry-the
view
that
it
would
be
strategically
more
effective to
bomb
German
submarine
bases
than
German
civilians-although
it
is
admittedly
impossible,
twenty
odd
years
after
the
controversy,
to
prove
either
Tizard's
case
or
that
of
his
opponents.
Stanford
Unversity
GORDON
A.
CRAIG
SOE
IN
FRANCE.
An
Account
of
the
Work
of
the
British
Special
Opera-
tions Executive in
France
1940-1944.
By
M.
R.
D.
Foot.
1966.
(London:
Her
Majesty's
Stationery
Office.
xxvii,
550pp.
45/-)
For
a
long
time
the
British
government
was very backward
about
releasing
information
concerning
its
operations
in
enemy-occupied
terri-
tory
in
the
Second
World
War.
This secrecy
was
criticized by
people
who
implied
that
the
object was to
conceal
the
inefficiency
with
which,
they
alleged,
these operations
were
conducted.
We
now
have
a
volume
of
official
history
dealing
with
these activities, though
only
those
that
took
place
in
France.
Some
cynics
will be
heard
remarking
that
it
will
be
a
cold
day
when
we
get
a similar
account
of
events
in
the Nether-
lands,
where
the
British
secret
organization
suffered
its
worst defeats
at
the
hands
of
its
German
opposite
numbers.
However,
we
should
be
grateful for
what
we
have,
and
Mr.
Foot's
book is
usually
interesting
and
often
fascinating.
He
had
wide
but
not
unlimited
access
to
the
surviving
files
of
the
Special
Operations
Execu-

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