Be more confident, like a WW2 secret agent

0:00Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+. What are you waiting for? Hop on. The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+.

0:41This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt. Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney+. Read PG-13. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans.

1:30Honey, what are you listening to? Mom! Your teen might not share everything with you, but teens share everything with each other. And certain everyday behaviors, like sharing food, drinks, or kisses, could mean sharing bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease, known as meningitis. Although meningitis is uncommon, about 1 in 10 who develop it will die. Ask your teen's doctor about missing meningitis vaccinations. Learn more at meningitis.com. Vaccination may not protect all recipients. Sponsored by GSK. Become a secret agent and throw yourself into life or death situations, because if it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger.

2:08That's not very helpful or practical advice for most of us, but if you do want to build your confidence, my guest in this episode of Life Lessons from History, from History Extra, does think that we can take something from the experiences of Second World War SOE agents and how they grew as people from the challenging situations they found themselves in. My expert is Roderick Bailey and bear with me on this conversation because you don't need to sign up to the Secret Service to take something from what we talk about. My name's Dave Musgrove and the concept of this podcast is simple. I find great historians and archaeologists and ask them to propose a lesson from history that might help us live happier, healthier, better or more productive lives today.

2:48And then we chat about it. It's the history, wellbeing crossover that you didn't know you needed, but hopefully you might enjoy. I'm joined by Roderick Bailey, who's a historian of the Second World War, a military historian who's also written a recent brilliant book on the blood service in the Second World War called The Lifesavers. But he's also written about the SOE in the past. And the lesson that we chatted about on email was that we might build our confidence today by diving into challenging places like a World War II SOE agent did. So Rod, thanks for coming on. Just remind us, what does SOE stand for?

3:27What was the SOE? Yeah, right. So SOE was a secret British organisation. It was set up early in the Second World War to encourage resistance, carry out sabotage in enemy occupied territory. And it did that by recruiting agents who would then send into enemy territory to work with local groups and to do the sabotage that it wanted to get done. It worked around the world, everywhere. A lot of people associate it mainly with Western Europe, France, but it worked everywhere. It worked in pretty much every theatre, occupied territory throughout the Balkans, Burma, Malaya, Poland, all these places. So it was a worldwide global organisation on a scale that some people perhaps might find surprising.

4:06And you've researched specifically the Italian experience in a book you wrote a few years ago. Remind us of the title of that. And have you studied any other aspects of the SOE other than the Italian sword? Okay. Yeah, that was called Target Italy. That was an official history that was commissioned by the UK government to tell the story of what SOE had tried to do against Mussolini's Italy. I've also worked on, I wrote a book about Albania, SOE in Albania. That was my first book. I was based on my PhD. And then I've dipped into it, although I've been a bit sidetracked with medical history for the last 10, 15 years.

4:39I've looked again at medical aspects of SOE's work, the role of British communists working for SOE, things like that. So I do that from time to time in articles which are probably hidden in academic journals that no one's come across. But yeah, I do that. I do that stuff. The stuff we're going to talk about today, actually, really the themes that we're going to talk about really struck me when I was fortunate enough to have a Wellcome Trust Fellowship at Oxford to look at the psychology of what SOE agents were like, what they had to face up to, why they were selected and recruited for what they were done and what they were doing, and also what happened to them afterwards.

5:11What treatments were in place, what happened to them? How do they cope with it? So that brought me into close touch with some of the ideas about throwing yourself into challenging circumstances and benefiting there from, if you like. Is there such a thing as an average SOE agent? Can you sort of characterize the sort of people who went into this? If you drill down, yeah, you can start getting a... It depends where they were going. It depends when they were recruited. So sometimes at the start, when resources were not great, you see all sorts of people being crowbarred in with all sorts of different colourful backgrounds, perhaps not ideal.

5:47When you're looking for people to send into Burma or the Balkans, you're looking for young soldiers, essentially, who are able to handle themselves in a mountain warfare environment. You're not so interested in whether they blend in. As long as they can stay out of reach of the Germans, that's fine. They can wear uniform. That's no problem at all. So essentially there, you want commando-type people who are fit. But you also want somebody who's bright, who can work with local populations, who can stand up for themselves, who can shoulder a lot of responsibility if they're the only person in enemy territory doing this job.

6:18Everything falls onto their shoulders. So you're looking for various qualities. Radio operators are an interesting one. You're looking for someone who quite often can do a very technical job, but also is going to be able to cope with sitting in an attic, Parisian garret, for weeks on end and resist the temptation to tear out and indulge in active resistance work, who can quietly sit there, while also dealing with the constant threat of the knock on the door, that fear that the place where you are, you're living for weeks, might suddenly be surrounded and then you're caught. So you're after people who are pretty steely sometimes, who can handle boredom, who are the opposite to that, who will tear into the enemy if you need them to.

7:00So you're after different people. Just men? No, not at all, of course. Yeah, not just men either. So again, the women who were sent into France are quite well known. About 30-odd were sent into France, a few more into Belgium, one or two elsewhere. And again, they were selected for different reasons too. Sometimes they were technically adept at radio operating or something else. Often they were selected because there was a feeling that they would blend in, you know, that the Germans weren't looking for women. So they've already got that in their favour. But also they've got to be cool. They've got to be able to get through roadblocks.

7:31They've got to be able to convince the enemy that they're not who they know themselves to be. And, you know, often they've also got to work with quite high profile, big personalities who are on the resistance side of things and hold their own. So somebody like Nancy Wake, who is this redoubtable Australian, and sort of hard swearing, very tough Australian agent, you know, who's awarded the George Medal. It won't handle, you know, anybody sort of dissenting, whatever. She's a proper leader. But yeah, she has no time for, when she's going through her training, you know, they have to have an interview with a psychiatrist and she has no time for that, just more or less kicks them out of the room.

8:09So, you know, this is what I'm here for. I'm here to get into, go into action. So yeah, they're big personalities who are brought on board to do a job. So just sort of framing in terms of our lesson about people sort of going out of their way to seek challenges, is that part of the psyche of these people then? They were looking for people who sought out trouble or is that kind of the result of what they did? Yeah, not really. I mean, you don't really want someone who's going to seek. You want someone who's going to coolly do the job, not throw themselves into it without taking stock of what the real situation's like.

8:43So there are various qualities that I think are fairly consistent they were looking for. You know, they wanted level-headed people, people who are cool in a crisis. And some of the training was devoted to just that, you know, really testing people, putting a lot of pressure on people and seeing how they were going to cope. But also people aren't going to back down. People are going to make the right sort of decisions in the right time. Some of these things are impossible to simulate in training. You know, there's a very good quote from other psychiatrists who were recruited to oversee a lot of the training, who says, you know, it's only so far we can go.

9:13the knock on the door from the Gestapo, the best thing might be to jump out of the window, but the other thing might be to fire back. And you can't simulate that in training. That's down to the individual. For me, that's actually quite revealing of how farsighted some of the training was. They knew what their limits were. And they knew sometimes that they were making gambles and they were taking risks with what they were doing. And they would never know really how someone was going to cope when they end up at the sharp end. So you mentioned there were psychiatrists reports sort of before they went out in during their training process it sounds like they're also psychiatrist reports when they came back so we kind of know we can we can map their journey right yeah you can some of them there aren't many these are the sorts of things these medical reports are quite often the sorts of document that is deliberately weeded from records at the national archives at the uk where the soe's records are but a fair few of them have slipped through and then you've there are other sources for some of them and yes you can sometimes you're fortunate enough to be able to trace somebody through their training where they're being looked at very closely with a character, personality, psychology is looked at.

10:18And then you can see them when they come back as well, actually, and see what sort of state they're in. Sometimes that gives you limited insights because quite often the psychiatrists are only called in to deal with the problem cases. So those are people who've made it out from enemy captivity who need help. So it's not really done as an academic exercise just to see how anyone's done. it's generally it's done because someone needs some assistance and they need to be put in front of the psychiatrist as a first as urgently as quickly as possible to see how they're coping so that that does happen but relying on there are other sources as well for shedding light on how people cope and how they are when they come back those range from reports written at the time to reports from people who also met them when they came back to memoirs but also to interviews as well.

11:05So the Imperial War Museum has done a lot of interviewing. I've done quite a bit of interviewing for the works that I've done, some of them for the IWM, but some of them for my own work as well. And I've had the opportunity to drill down on some of these themes. And yeah, it's been quite revealing. So let's try and get to the nub of that then. So you've spoken to people who were involved in it, you've studied the reports, and your sense is that some people, and I think not all people, but some people found the experience of being thrust into these very challenging difficult situations beneficial in the long term it gave them confidence to do things that they otherwise wouldn't have done is that is that a correct summation of where we're at yeah yeah that's that's it exactly it's an enriching experience for many i mean it's not you know this is social psychology it's about it's not rocket science really but it's about exposing yourselves to challenges dangers you know discomfort and then your resilience it's like a it's like a muscle, you know, you're strengthening it from, by being exposed to danger and discomfort and you become through mistakes, through experience, you become able to cope better.

12:13And I think it, and it shows people what they're capable of so that they, next time they're in a situation like that, they feel, you know, they've got more confidence behind them. They're able to handle themselves better and they can handle that situation and themselves better. And you can see that you can see it sometimes in the documents where people come back you know are stronger personalities quite often they are you know there's a lot of confidence to them sometimes a lot of overconfidence when they come back so people debriefing them remark on it that people are you know perhaps larger than life when they come back and that they need to let off steam and these sorts of things as well and they're not interested really in having to write reports for example and do mundane things they just want to go out and tackle something else and others want to get straight back in again so yeah there's there's definitely an element of that i guess so there There must be a line and there must be quite a few people who came back with serious mental health conditions and what we would describe as PTSD.

13:05Yeah, that's it. I think there's no question about that. As I mentioned, the psychiatric reports, those are almost exclusively on people who've struggled. You've also got plenty of memoirs and accounts of people whose lives have been ruined. Often there's a definite connection between those who are captured because the plight and the experience of an SOE agent in enemy hands is very different to that of a conventional a soldier caught on a conventional battlefield. You had very few protections. Invariably, any protections you had were taken away. So there'd be brutal interrogations. This is common wherever you were in the world.

13:40Although those captured in Western Europe quite often faced the prospect of a concentration camp and or execution. And as you can imagine, those who experienced those and successfully survived, a great many were affected by that for the rest of their lives. Whether they found these things enriching, there are glimpses in the occasional memoir that people drew strength from these, that it had shown them that there are quotes about people seeing the worst of human life, but also the best of it. So those who you're imprisoned alongside will show you what courage is and what sacrifice is. And that's against the appalling treatment meted out by the enemy.

14:22But equally, there are people who come back from less traumatic experiences, who come back having done something, having lived on their own wits and experiences and strengths and skills for sometimes months on end, sometimes years in enemy territory. Places like the Balkans, you drop somebody into there, you can't get them out again for months and months because there's no way of getting them out. They go in by parachute. So they're there for ages. And they come out, you know, sometimes they go in sort of young men, you know, old children sometimes. and then you know some of them are teenagers when they go in but they are tough when they come out you know they've shown themselves what they're capable of they've seen things that they never have come across before and there can be terrific camaraderie in those situations there are friendships that are forged which last there are you know i've i couldn't couldn't possibly count them and people i've interviewed who are still in touch with who were still in touch with colleagues from the war were numberless the bonds that are forged are extremely strong and that also forges connections, which are then useful post-war.

15:22Sometimes people are well connected, so you benefit from that. But you've also shown people, prospective employers, what you're capable of. Quite often people still have looked through personal papers, and sometimes you find letters of reference written for them in 1945, 46, where it's more or less spelled out by a senior SOE staff officer, precisely what this person's done. And wouldn't they be good for this particular job? It's that sort of thing. And quite a few go into jobs which are comparable. Some of them stay in the army. A fair few go into the intelligence services because they've shown that they can do that sort of thing.

15:54But equally, we touched on it already, there is a sweet spot. It is a mixed picture. And there are people who can't cope and there's a lot of drinking amongst some of them and health problems and things like that and sometimes short lives. I suppose unless the global situation deteriorates even further than it is now, most of us aren't going to be invited to parachute into occupied Italy and carry out some crazy scheme. So how is this going to help us today if we work in a bank? I mean, all it does is what's impressed me all along. It just underlines for me and has always just what can come from putting yourself into an unusual environment, just challenging yourself, taking on something that you're not familiar with, going into your discomfort zone, getting out the comfort one, doing something unusual, not, and I should say, not to the extreme, obviously.

16:49I mean, as I said, there is a sweet spot here. But the idea of testing yourself, of making yourself more resilient, we hear a lot about resilience today. But this is all about that. It's all about, I mentioned that muscle, that experiencing something that's difficult and challenging and sometimes unpleasant. You can grow from that. And I think, and certainly for me, I have taken, personally taken life decisions, some not wholly sensible ones, but some life decisions where, with a deliberate view to getting myself out of a comfort zone. And I've done that consciously as a consequence of having met some people, having seen how their lives have been enriched by doing the same, admittedly in a more extreme way than I've ever done it.

17:30But yeah, it's always impressive to meet these people. I'd really like to know about these ill-judged life decisions you've embarked upon. Well, that's probably the one. I joined reserves, then went to Afghanistan, thinking that it would enrich myself. Looking back on it, it's probably not the most intelligent thing I've ever done, because my career was as a historian. And if that had gone wrong, then that's a pretty sharp end to something I was quite enjoying. but I did it to try and to test myself and try and learn a bit more about myself and see how what this world is all about and it accomplished all of those and yeah I made it through but it's it's um which was which was you know it wasn't wasn't really dangerous but it was um yeah certainly something unusual and uncomfortable at times so hang on you signed up to the reserves and went to Afghanistan because you had spoken to some SOE agents in the course of your historical there's no question well yeah because it's it's with yeah I got to know them quite well and when you're hanging out with them and they ask you know what if you know have you done anything similar?

18:27Have you done anything similar? No, of course I haven't. Nor have I ever done anything like that. But this was an opportunity. I did feel there was a slight credibility issue going on here where everyone was very polite. Everyone was very nice, but it always came up. You know, it's like, so have you done anything? Have you joined, been in the army? No. And I thought if I was going to make a career of writing about these things, I ought to do something. And it did seem, I mean, it was vastly out of my comfort zone, academic ivory tower. But without doubt, it was hugely enriching. Apart from anything else, you had to get fit, but also it just throws you into situations that you've never never been in before so yeah it ticked all the boxes that's great that's that's very inspiring in itself when i was a younger man i used to i used to be quite keen on adventure sports i used to do a lot of white water kayak and i remember i was i got myself sort of stuck on top of a water pool somewhere in canada once and was basically either had to go down the waterfall or climb up a ravine it was quite a scary situation i often draw on that as they're like i put myself in that position you know know foolishly it was entirely my my own fault uh and i had to get out of it and i whenever i have to do something a bit difficult i do tend to draw on that so maybe that's in some way uh equivalent but i wonder is this kind of basically this is the ethos of the duke of edinburgh award and i don't know presumably there's there's similar schemes around the world but the duke of edinburgh award in the uk is basically for young people teenagers they have to go out and they hike and camp and kind of do stuff that they wouldn't have to do in their day to day that's basically kind of what we're about right that is a that is a great example yeah that's great maybe i should have just done that but it would have been great i would have enjoyed that but yes that's exactly that and that is challenging that is hard for a lot of people that's very different to to what they what they might be accustomed to but as a as a step to doing something that's that's a really good one yeah no doubt okay well that is absolutely excellent this is a brilliant lesson and i you know it's great that we can learn from these people who who who suffered you know but a lot of them suffered immensely from the experiences they had in the war but i guess when it comes to if If you were involved in something like that, it has to be formative, doesn't it?

20:21Yeah, I should say, it doesn't have to be a war. It doesn't have to be this sort of thing. It's just getting out and doing things. And there's no question that this defined everyone's, you know, this is a defining moment in all the lives of these people, that it was an extraordinary opportunity, that some of them saw it as, to do something exciting and different. There was duty, there was patriotism, there was, you know, hatred of the end. These were also factors, of course, at play. and these all drive people through as well. You know, it's not one big picture. It's not all the same. What motivates people, what keeps people going and how people react.

20:57But there's one common thing and I would say this is mainly about interviewing people later when they've had time to reflect on their lives 40, 50, 60 years later and look back on it and see how some decisions made when they were young have benefited them. Benefited them, and I should say that, you know, underline that. And these, of course, were survivors. You know, these were survivors who've, at the end of their careers and things, there's no question that they'd grown as people from the experience that they'd had. Okay, so to sum up, the lesson is, build your confidence by putting yourself in a situation you're not comfortable with in the spirit of an SOE agent.

21:32You don't actually have to go to war, as you've said, but in the spirit of those people who did put themselves in harm's way for the good of the rest of us, I guess. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Try things, look for mild discomfort, I suppose. Try to find difficult situations to put you in. Not too difficult. I'm not recommending anything here. But I think just to test yourself is how you grow. So we've gone from the start of this, of joining SOE to experiencing mild discomfort at the end. But I think the sentiment still stands, and I appreciate it. Rod, Roderick Bailey, thank you very much. That's an excellent life lesson.

22:09I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do let me know what you think, and do check out my sub stack at History Extra, lifelessons.substack.com and let me know at lifelessons at historyextra.com if you have any comments on this life lesson whether you employed the advice in your day to day and if you have an idea for a future life lesson from history that I could investigate