‘In God We Trusted, In China We Busted’: The China commando group of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)

Abstract

In the summer of 1941, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Chinese government began a joint intelligence and special operations project called the China Commando Group. It was meant to be a grand scheme of military operation designed to benefit both the British and the Chinese in their common objective of thwarting the aggressive Japanese advances in Asia. Yet the China Commando Group evolved into a fiasco that lasted only eight months. The demise of the China Commando Group is a story that epitomizes the complex environment in which the war was fought on the East Asian mainland. This article tells a tale of policy failures in London, a thick cloud of mutual suspicions between Britain and Nationalist China, and the chasm between colonial and nationalist mindsets which led to the bitter end of the China Commando Group.