Special Operations Executive in the context of "Yugoslav coup d'état"

The réseau Gloria SMH (Gloria network) was a French Resistance network under the German occupation of France during World War II.

The Gloria network was founded by Gabrielle Picabia, alias "Gloria", who was running it with Jacques Legrand (chemical engineer). It counted among its members Alfred Péron, normalien and English professor at the Lycée Buffon. The network depended on the British Secret Intelligence Service, in conjunction with the SOE. The network's mission was to gather military and naval information about the occupiers. Its members were intellectuals, managers, and artists including an engraver who was very useful for producing false documents.

Reinhard Heydrich, the commander of the German Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a principal architect of the Holocaust, was assassinated during the Second World War in a coordinated operation by the Czechoslovak resistance. The assassination attempt, code-named Operation Anthropoid, was carried out by resistance operatives Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš on 27 May 1942. Heydrich was wounded in the attack and died of his injuries on 4 June.

The operatives who carried out the assassination were soldiers of the Czechoslovak Army who were prepared and trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) with the approval of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, led by Edvard Beneš. The Czechoslovaks undertook the operation to help confer legitimacy on the government-in-exile, and to exact retribution for Heydrich's brutal rule. The operation was the only verified government-sponsored assassination of a senior Nazi leader during the war. Heydrich's death led to a wave of reprisals by SS troops, including the destruction of villages and mass killings of civilians, including the Lidice massacre.

Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, CBE, DSO, FBA (15 November 1907 – 24 March 2001) was a British historian, geographer, classicist and an operative for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied Greece during the Second World War.

Hammond was seen as the leading expert on the history of ancient Macedonia. His trilogy, A History of Macedonia, has been described as the "most celebrated (and partly irreplaceable) work" on the subject. Additionally, he was recognised for his meticulous research on the geography, historical topography and history of ancient Epirus.

Where Eagles Dare is a 1968 action adventure war film directed by Brian G. Hutton and starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. Set during World War II, it follows a Special Operations Executive team charged with saving a captured American General from the fictional Schloß Adler fortress, except the mission turns out not to be as it seems. It was filmed in Panavision using the Metrocolor process, and was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Alistair MacLean wrote the screenplay, his first, at the same time that he wrote the novel of the same name. Both became commercial successes.

The film involved some of the top filmmakers of the day and was shot on location in Austria. Hollywood stuntman Yakima Canutt was the second unit director and shot most of the action scenes; British stuntman Alf Joint doubled for Burton in many sequences, including the fight on top of the cable car; award-winning conductor and composer Ron Goodwin wrote the film score; and future Oscar nominee Arthur Ibbetson worked on the cinematography.

In 1941 when the Axis invaded Yugoslavia, King Peter II formed a Government in exile in London, and in January 1942 the royalist Draža Mihailović became the Minister of War with British backing. But by June or July 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had decided to withdraw support from Mihailović and the Chetniks he led, and support the Partisans headed by Josip Broz Tito, even though this would result in "complete communist control of Serbia". The main reason for the change was not the reports by Fitzroy Maclean or William Deakin, or as later alleged the influence of James Klugmann in Special Operations Executive (SOE) headquarters in Cairo or even Randolph Churchill, but the evidence of Ultra decrypts from the Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley Park that Tito's Partisans were a "much more effective and reliable ally in the war against Germany". Nor was it due to claims that the Chetniks were collaborating with the enemy, though there was some evidence from decrypts of collaboration with Italian and sometimes German forces.

The Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslovenska vojska, JV, Југословенска војска, ЈВ), commonly the Royal Yugoslav Army, was the principal ground force of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It existed from the establishment of Yugoslavia in December 1918 until its surrender to the Axis powers on 17 April 1941. Aside from fighting along the Austrian border in 1919 and 1920 related to territorial disputes, and some border skirmishes on its southern borders in the 1920s, the JV was not involved in fighting until April 1941 when it was quickly overcome by the German-led invasion of Yugoslavia.

Shortly before the invasion, Serbian officers of the Yugoslav General Staff, encouraged by British Special Operations Executive personnel in Belgrade, led a coup d'état against Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and Dragiša Cvetković for adhering to the Tripartite Pact. Beyond the problems of inadequate equipment and incomplete mobilization, the Royal Yugoslav Army suffered badly from the Serbo-Croatian schism in Yugoslav politics. Yugoslavian resistance to the Axis invasion collapsed overnight, primarily due to a large part of the non-Serb population, Croats in particular, being unwilling to offer resistance. In its worst expression, Yugoslavia's defenses were badly compromised on 10 April 1941, when some of the units in the Croat-manned 4th and 7th Armies mutinied, and a newly formed Croatian government hailed the entry of the Germans into Zagreb the same day.

Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo, GC (née Bushell; 26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was a British-French Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War and a posthumous recipient of the George Cross. On her second mission into occupied France, Szabo was captured by the German army, interrogated, tortured, and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed.

The Valençay SOE Memorial is a monument in France to the members of the Special Operations Executive F Section who died working to liberate the country during World War II.

The memorial was unveiled in the town of Valençay, in the department of Indre, on May 6, 1991, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the despatch of F Section's first agent to France.