Editing Special Operations Executive (section)

===Aims===
As with its leadership and organisation, the aims and objectives of SOE changed throughout the war, although they revolved around sabotaging and subverting the Axis war machines through indirect methods. SOE occasionally carried out operations with direct military objectives, such as [[Operation Harling]], originally designed to cut one of the Axis supply lines to their troops fighting in North Africa.{{Sfn|Hastings|2015|pp=260, 267}} They also carried out some high-profile operations aimed mainly at the morale both of the Axis and occupied nations, such as [[Operation Anthropoid]], the assassination in Prague of [[Reinhard Heydrich]]. In general also, SOE's objectives were to foment mutual hatred between the population of Axis-occupied countries and the occupiers, and to force the Axis to expend manpower and resources on maintaining their control of subjugated populations.{{Sfn|Hastings|2015|p=260}}

Dalton's initial statement about outline of methods to be used by SOE's was "industrial and military sabotage, labor agitation and strikes, continuous propaganda, terrorist attacks against traitors and German leaders, boycotts and riots."<ref name="Foot">{{cite journal |last1=Foot |first1=Michael R. D. |title=Was SOE any Good? |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=January 1981 |volume=16 |issue=1 |page=169 |doi=10.1177/002200948101600110 |jstor=260622 |s2cid=161440851 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260622}}</ref> Dalton's early enthusiasm for fomenting widespread strikes, civil disobedience and sabotage in Axis-occupied areas{{Sfn|Wilkinson|Astley|2010|p=80}} had to be curbed. Thereafter, there were two main aims, often mutually incompatible; sabotage of the Axis war effort, and the creation of secret armies which would rise up to assist the liberation of their countries when Allied troops arrived or were about to do so. It was recognised that acts of sabotage would bring about reprisals and increased Axis security measures which would hamper the creation of underground armies. As the tide of war turned in the Allies' favour, these underground armies became more important.{{sfn|Hastings|2015|p=279}}