Fighting for relevance: Economic intelligence and special operations executive in Spain, 1943–1945
This article examines the work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Spain during the latter part of the Second World War. Unlike SOE's broad mandate to sow dissent and disarray in occupied countries, in Spain agents were forbidden from any involvement in direct action and sabotage. Diplomatic concerns, namely the maintenance of Spanish neutrality in the war, overrode all other strategic issues in Iberia. SOE agents and leaders in Madrid, therefore, attempted to create a different role for themselves. Drawing on files released in the Public Record Office in 1998, the article highlights SOE's limited success in the effort to establish for itself a part in the Allied strategic and diplomatic campaign against German wolfram smuggling. Success proved fleeting, however, and SOE's ultimate failure, in the face of hostility from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), to prove its usefulness beyond the wolfram campaign, would lead to its withdrawal from Spain. The story of the SOE in Spain represents, on a small scale, the failure of the organization to find a niche in the British intelligence community after the Second World War.
Nazi Germany's Struggle for Spanish Wolfram during the Second World War
The significance of wolfram (or tungsten) is explicable in terms of its multiplicity of uses. A detailed examination of the properties and uses of this ferro-alloy reveals some interesting facts. Wolfram has the highest melting point of all known metals, possesses a high tensile strength and is very heat resistant. It is normally used in connection with other ferro-alloys to produce tool steel such as high speed steel. This is of special importance in the armaments industry for the production of gun barrels and artillery shells as hard types of steel can be worked on quickly and in large quantities. Germany was apparently the first nation in the Second World War to use wolfram in the production of ammunition which could penetrate steel armour. As wolfram combines hardness with
First Along the River: A Brief History of the U.S. Environmental Movement
Chapter 1: Philosophical Foundations Chapter 2: The 1400s through the 1700s: Inhabiting a New Land Chapter 3: The Early 1800s: Destroying the Frontier Chapter 4: The Late 1880s: Building an Industrial Nation Chapter 5: The 1900s through the 1930s: Beginnings of the Conservation Movement Chapter 6: The 1940s through the 1960s: Prelude to the Green Decade Chapter 7: The 1970s: The Conservation Movement Matures Chapter 8: The 1980s: A Conservative Backlash Chapter 9: The Early 1990s: Government Retrenchment and Public Apathy Chapter 10: The Environmental Movement in the Post-9/11 World Conclusion