Abstract
Special Operations Executive (SOE) Crete produced its own written history at the end of World War II, and this has been so widely followed since then that it has become an orthodoxy. What this narrative neglects is the deliberate strategy, engineered by the Cretan section head, Major Jack Smith-Hughes, of isolating and undermining the strongest, best-organized, and most popular resistance organization in Crete, the National Liberation Front (EAM), in favor of the much less popular SOE-created, pro-Royalist organization, the National Organization of Crete (EOK). Only one SOE officer, Major Terence Bruce Mitford, questioned this policy-and this only after he attached himself as British Liaison Officer (BLO) to the armed wing of the National Liberation Front, the National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS) in Western Crete in the final months of the occupation. This article argues that the SOE strategy ensured the inevitability of civil war in Crete following the end of the Nazi Occupation.