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The Section for Destruction (or Section D), originally established as Section IX, was a wartime irregular warfare, guerrilla warfare, destruction, and sabotage unit of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). Its headquarters were originally garrisoned at The Frythe, expanded into Bletchley Park and 2 Caxton Street, moved to 54 Broadway, and finally relocated to the St. Ermin’s Hotel.
The director of Section D was Laurence Grand. In telegrams, his codename was simplified to the letter D, in a similar manner to his boss, who was known as C. In the summer of 1940, Section D was merged with Department EH and the Department of Military Intelligence Research (MI(R)) to become part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). It continued to exist at SOE for several months while being gradually absorbed into the new agency.
Section D suffered only two British fatalities during the war, Norman Hope and Geoffrey Frodsham, but relied heavily on local resistance networks, including Slovenia and Czechs saboteurs who faced far higher risks. The contributions of these non-communist groups were largely erased during the Cold War when their countries under communist rule downplayed the efforts of anti-Nazi forces unaffiliated with their ideology. Some figures, such as Ante Anić and Milko Brezigar, were forced into exile for their wartime associations with British intelligence, while others, like Romanian leader Iuliu Maniu, were imprisoned.
The intelligence officers of Section D differed from the popular image of youthful wartime spies. Most were in their forties, as younger men would have been conspicuous for not wearing uniform. A minority had prior experience in intelligence, but the majority were recruited from business and industry and were granted army commissions to provide both cover and legal status. They were commissioned either on the General List, used for officers not assigned to a specific regiment or corps, or, from July 1940, within the newly established Intelligence Corps.
Many officers were the sons of diplomats or army officers serving in the British Empire, while others, including Basil Davidson and Walter Wren, came from commercial or professional backgrounds. Given the section’s initial focus on propaganda, numerous recruits were drawn from the advertising industry, notably from the J. Walter Thompson Agency, whose managing director, Douglas Saunders, made the firm’s resources available to Section D. Personnel with technical expertise, particularly mining engineers (and their industrial explosives) from Chester Beatty’s Selection Trust Group in the Balkans, were later recruited for sabotage planning and operations.
Early in the war, SIS maintained no formal recruitment process. One of Section D’s administrative innovations was the establishment of the training facility at Brickendonbury. Most recruits joined through personal recommendation from family, social, or educational contacts. Section D also maintained informal links with the newspaper industry, both for low-level intelligence collection and to identify potential recruits. Kim Philby was reportedly recruited after a conversation with the Daily Express war correspondent Hester Harriot Marsden-Smedley, who referred him to Marjorie Maxse, Chief of Staff to Laurence Grand. Philby later became briefly the Director of the schoolhouse at Brickendonbury, which came to be known as the D School. Many officers were educated at Rugby School and Oxbridge.
Section D formed partnerships with Catholic Church, Jews, and Socialism networks, including Hans Ebeling’s Catholic group, Josef Hirschberg Jewish trade campaigns, and members of the exiled Social Democratic Party. Mutual distrust persisted, however, as Section D worried about being exploited by impoverished exile groups seeking funds. Immanuel Birnbaum, for example, a German Social Democrat of Jewish descent, betrayed the Scandinavian Bureau of Section D to the Nazi SD, and the Bureau's leaders who didn't escape were imprisoned or killed.
While Section D officers served on a voluntary basis, technical personnel assigned to the organization’s research and supply facility at Aston House were posted there directly by the War Office.
In 1940, attention shifted toward fostering layered networks of resistance in territories on the verge of German occupation. This strategy was extended to Britain itself with the formation of a civilian guerrilla organization called the Home Defence Scheme, intended to complement existing SIS resistance plans. The War Office, however, viewed Section D’s move into domestic operations with alarm. While it supported the use of irregular fighters abroad, it strongly opposed the idea of civilian guerrillas operating within Britain. In response, the War Office established the Auxiliary Units to provide organized support for regular forces in the event of invasion.
Supporting this development were refugee Norwegian Sailor who escaped to Shetland after the German invasion of Norway in 1940. Mons Storemark, who fled Norway on 9 May 1940 as skipper of the Wailet, brought six refugees to Shetland and soon took part in Section D’s first and second Norwegian expeditions as pilot and skipper. Other early participants included Rubin Langmoe, a Norwegian naval reservist who joined the first Section D expedition with Karl Kronberg, and Otto Ferdinand Aksdal, who escaped from Norway with Olav Leirvåg and also took part in these initial missions.
On the Shetland side, John Scott Ratter, a local grocer and fisherman on the island of Yell, served as Section D’s contact with Norwegian smuggling vessels and maintained a secret explosives store near Whale Firth. His cooperation linked local resources with the emerging network of Norwegian operatives.
The Special Operations Executive was established on 22 July 1940. Initially, SOE functioned as a coordinating body for Section D, MI(R), and Electra House, but only on 16 August did it assume direct control. Section D maintained its separate identity until Laurence Grand’s dismissal on 18 September, and its official re-designation as SO2 occurred on 23 October 1940. In the little over one month that Section D existed after Grand left for India, its acting director was Frank Nelson. Structurally, Section D was divided into overlapping sub-sections with fluid personnel assignments, and many of its code identifiers—such as D/H1 or D/X1—were retained into SOE service.
Because Section D often concealed British involvement, its operations were understated compared with SOE’s later exploits. Accounts of assassination are rare, limited to brief references such as the activities of Yugoslav officer Ante Anić, who helped sabotage German rail transport. When the countries in which Section D operated were occupied, clandestine warfare changed drastically. SOE inherited many of Section D’s missions but faced new moral and strategic challenges, including the devastating reprisals against civilians. Churchill’s order to “Set Europe Ablaze” ignored these consequences, leading to heavy losses with limited strategic effect.
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