At least four books are in print under the title They Fought Alone. The best-known was the work of Col. Maurice Buckmaster, who led the French section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) from March 1941 to the end of World War II. Journalist and broadcaster Charles Glass, author of the most recent addition to this list, acknowledges his considerable debt to Buckmaster, opening each new chapter with a quote from the colonel’s book. But, unlike others that share the title, Glass’s is an account about the wartime experience of just two SOE agents, George Starr (1904-80) and his younger brother, John (1908-96). In this book, Glass tells the brothers’ amazing stories. They bring fodder to both sides in the ongoing debate about the impact of the SOE and that of the French Resistance. Did the French Resistance make a difference? That’s the question at issue.
Two brothers, contrasting stories
The Starr brothers had grown up in France and spoke the language fluently. When war broke out, John lived in Paris, George in Belgium. They both fled to England, where the new SOE recruited them to parachute into France. Their charge was to organize and support French partisans to sabotage and harass Nazi and collaborationist French forces.
John Starr
John Starr actively served in France from July 1942 until August 1943. He organized and led the Acrobat network in Dijon in eastern France. But a Frenchman he had recruited betrayed him—the experience of many other Allied agents in France—and he was wounded and captured by the Germans then. By all accounts, Starr betrayed no other agents to the Germans. But he lived in comfort with his captors at Gestapo headquarters in Paris.
There, he used his skills as a commercial artist to draw maps and diagrams illustrating the scope of partisan activities throughout France. (The information on which he based the maps came only from the Germans.) His attempt to escape failed. Starr remained a prisoner in France and Germany for the duration of the war, lastly in the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the war, both the British and the French prosecuted him for collaborating with the Nazis.
George Starr
Meanwhile, by contrast, his older brother George operated successfully behind German lines in France from November 1942 to September 1944. He built and led the vast partisan network codenamed Wheelwright in southwest France. Starr rescued from imprisonment about 50 important resistance leaders and Allied airmen shot down over France. In the final year of the war, following the Normandy invasion, he helped lead the liberation of the region. He played a leading role in harassing the elite Nazi panzer division Das Reich, slowing its advance to Normandy for two crucial weeks. Starr rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, one of only three SOE agents so honored. And he received the French Croix de Guerre, the British Military Cross and Distinguished Service Order (DSO) as well as the American Medal of Freedom.
They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France by Charles Glass (2018) 336 pages ★★★★☆
Did the SOE and the French Resistance it armed have a material effect on the war?
Debate continues among close observers of World War II in France about the effectiveness of the French Resistance. In the aftermath of the war, General Dwight Eisenhower famously praised its efforts. Others, most prominently Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery (who was notorious for disagreeing with Eisenhower at every opportunity), downplayed the Resistance’s impact. But it’s possible the two men had in mind two very different aspects of the Resistance’s operations.
Until the spring of 1944, the French Resistance was never a united force. Maquis bands operated largely on their own, often entirely ignorant of other anti-Nazi forces active nearby. And political differences divided them. They were united only in opposing the collaborationist Vichy regime of General Philippe Pétain.
- The most aggressive fighters were loyal to the Communist Party and, indirectly, to Joseph Stalin. They were responsible for a great many of the attacks on Nazi troops and officials from 1941 to 1944—attacks which almost invariably triggered retaliation that cost many civilians’ their lives.
- Another large group of resistantes answered to General Charles de Gaulle and the Free French organization he headed. For the most part, they came to the fight much later than the Communists, flocking to the Resistance only as the end of the war came into sight. And the lion’s share of their effort was directed at helping clear the way for the Normandy Invasion.
- A third force within the Resistance were those non-Communist patriots who answered not to General de Gaulle but to his rival, General Henri Giraud and his French Committee of National Liberation.
Contrasting views of the impact
When General Eisenhower praised the French Resistance, he had in mind its extensive effort to sabotage the French railway network and harass the movement northward toward the Normandy beaches of the powerful German forces located in the south. By nearly all accounts, the Resistance played a significant role in preventing Nazi forces (most prominently the Das Reich division) from reaching the beaches in time.
To be charitable, Field Marshal Montgomery might have been thinking of Resistance efforts to “set Europe ablaze” (to borrow Winston Churchill’s familiar phrase). That effort was mixed at best. And the consequences for France’s civilian population were deplorable. Vindictive Gestapo officers, SS, and Wehrmacht troops as well as the Vichy milice massacred thousands of men, women, and children. 642 died in one village alone. And the impact on German and French collaborationist operations was minimal until the closing months of the war in France. The impact of SOE operations in France must be viewed in that context.
About the author
Charles Glass has reported for both US and British publications and broadcasters from the Middle East. (From 1983 to 1993, he was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent.) Glass specializes in that area and in the Second World War. He is the author of nine books, chiefly about those two subjects. They Fought Alone is his third book about World War II.
Glass holds dual US/UK citizenship. He was born in Los Angeles in 1951. He is the father of three sons and one daughter and has two stepdaughters. Glass lives in France, Italy, Britain, and Lebanon.
For related reading
For information and insight about the Resistance in World War II, see Good books about the French Resistance and 10 true-life accounts of anti-Nazi resistance.
Germany’s Das Reich panzer division plays a large role in George Starr’s story. For an account of its homicidal sweep through France, see: Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 by Max Hastings (Down in the weeds with the French Resistance).
You might also find relevant sources at:
- 10 top nonfiction books about World War II
- Good books about the Holocaust
- 7 common misconceptions about World War II
- The 10 most consequential events of World War II
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