Author’s Note: This BBC series was produced in the early to mid-1970s in the left-leaning UK. It has taken me around 18-months or more to work my way through the many discs. As a child, I was riveted once a week to each episode as it appeared on terrestrial TV. Now, nothing is perfect and this series was conceived during the “Cold War” period. The scripts are a mixture of fact and fiction – often depicting real events integrated with a strong dose of artistic licence. Many episodes are factual and biographical – whilst others are metaphorical and approximate. The US, however, insisted (post-1945) that the USSR must be historically and ideologically misrepresented at every turn. Essentially, after the Soviets won WWII – the US declared there was no difference between Stalin and Hitler – which is an ahistorical lie. This attitude does permeate this series in-part as the Belgian (Brussels) “Resistance” (the “Life-Line”) is portrayed as refusing to work with the “Communists”. This is the case even though the British MI9 demand that they do so due to the effectiveness of Communist organisation and its trustworthiness (The UK and USSR were allies during WWII). Occasionally, to placate London, the Belgian “Line” does act in parallel with the Communists – but usually engineers these encounters so that the Communists are ultimately betrayed and killed by the Nazi Germans. The “Line” is comprised of petty bourgeois hotel, restaurant, and cafe owners, etc, and these people refuse to relate to unionised workers. The series conforms to Cold War sentiment as the Belgians are depicted as confronting the Nazi Germans and subtly resisting their allies – the Communists. And yet in reality, it was the Communists who carried-out most of the fighting, took most of the risks, and suffered the highest casualty rates. The Communist Party of France was funded and directed, in-part, from the USSR and the UK. I would say the series treads an ideological tightrope very successfully. The height of the rather silly anti-Soviet script writing appears in Series 2, Episode 2, entitled “Russian Roulette”. This story supposedly depicts two airmen (from the Soviet Red Airforce) shot-down over Eastern Germany during 1943. There were Soviets raids over Germany (Berlin) as early as 1941 – but these were flown by highly patriotic Soviet Pilots who caught the Nazis totally by surprise – with the Red flyers returning safely home (with no losses). Interestingly, from a “disinforming” point of view, the Soviet Red Airforce did not carry-out any bombing-raids over Nazi Germany during 1943 – instead concentrating all their resources on ousting of the Nazi menace out of the USSR. The two Soviet airmen depicted in this episode were NOT shot-down and over Germany in 1943 as claimed in the script – and are creations of pure anti-Soviet fiction. The script writers have these two men behave in a childish and unrealistic manner (the two actors may not be ethnic Russian) – and speak a gibberish type of Russian not spoken in the USSR (their behaviour is “disjointed”, “ethereal” – perhaps even “inhuman”). The rather stupid storyline is that these two men were shot-down over Germany whilst Hitler’s regime was still very strong and robust, and that they “walked” across Central, and West Germany (?) evading every type of Nazi police, paramilitary, and military unit, making it into Nazi-occupied Europe (all on their own without the help of anyone else), before miraculously arriving in Belgium – all on foot! A horrible older “White Russian” character informs the cast (and audience) that these men would rather walk thousands of miles than be returned to the USSR as a POWs – where they would be “shot”! Of course, this is an entirely “racist” depictions of Soviets, Russians, and Slavs (the USSR was comprised of 15 countries populated by various ethnicities – including Chinese-looking Asians). This is a common US (disinformation) trope during the Cold War and typical of how contemporary thinking is retroactively inserted into historical narratives and projected backwards into time – as if the imagined (embedded) events actually happened in a material sense (which they did not). Soviet Red Airforce Pilots were incredibly brave and dedicated to the USSR – many of them members of the Communist Party. In this way, using the method of continuous misrepresentation, the younger generation is brain-washed into believing that anti-Soviet lies are true. All this is rather like how “belief” is manufactured within theistic religion. It must be “true” because we are told it is true – and we are punished if we “disbelieve” or “see through” the deception. To my mind, not even the Nazi Germans in their most manic of moments would concoct such a ludicrous storyline for their spies – as nobody would believe it and the operaives would soon be easily caught. ACW (13.9.2026)
In the UK, when most of the British establishments were “Socialistic” – there used to be numerous British-made historical docu-dramas more or less wall-to-wall. British school-children were made well-aware that a great war had occurred – and that a “new” UK had emerged out of it. Much of British society had been Socialistically transformed by the 1945-1950 incumbent Labour Party. Of course, this was a bourgeois view of Socialism – but we knew we were NOT American – and we were blessed to know what Socialism is and was! The US and EU today is slowly taking this Socialism from us – and is taking away our British identity. Meanwhile, US Serviceman walk freely around large sections of the UK – with our military controlled not from London – but from Washington! Today, the UK is being settled by Neo-Nazi populations (such as Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Polish, and Latvians, etc) that are shifting British culture ever further to the right. This is a disgraceful development! We also see an incumbent Labour Party leaving these White fascists in place in the UK – whilst mass deporting Brazilian men, women, and children (who have done nothing to no one) – including young Brazilian children born in the UK (having their UK Citizenship illegally annulled)! Fascism is well and truly living amongst us today in the UK – and this is why watching programmes such as the “Secret Army” is educationally important as part of a fight-back!
The BBC TV series entitled “Secret Army” first aired between September 7th 1977 – December 15th 1979. It was repeated many times down throughout the 1980s – and has appeared on satellite and cable TV from the 1990s onwards. The series is ostensibly set in Belgium – which serves as part of a far-broader escape network linked to France and other places. The “Marquis” (French Resistance) was led by the Communist Party of France – and was armed and funded by the Soviet Union. The “Marquis” was active between 1940-1944 – and fully supported the Allied war effort against the Nazi Germany invasion of France and the French (“Vichy”) collaborators. Downed British, American and other Allied Airmen were routinely rescued by “Marquis” operatives – all armed-workers co-ordinated through the Unions – and returned to England or other areas of safety. The Marquis also carried-out highly dangerous sabotage and assignation activities against the occupying Nazi Germans. When caught or betrayed – these workers were routinely tortured and then executed – usually in public for maximum effect. These French volunteers became heroes not only in France – but around the world!
After the war, the US invaded and occupied France and forced the restored-bourgeois government to systematically destroy the reputation and structure of the Communist Party of France. This ten-year process (1944-1854) is recorded in Alexander Werth’s book etitled “France 1940-1955”. Werth has spent WWII with the Soviet Red Army in the USSR between 1941-1945 – but he could read, write, and speak fluent French and spent much of his life in that country – being an expert in its political system, culture, and socio-economic system. The US broke-up and destroyed the Marxist-Leninist French Unions post-1944 and replaced these with their Trotskyite (fascist) variants. Furthermore, by propagating lies about the Marquis – giving the false impression that it was as bad as the Nazi Germans it opposed – the originally good attitude of the French general public was slowly brainwashed against it. Today, series like this are rarely aired on TV as the US agenda is to prevent any working class development in the Socialist direction. The preventing of Socialist education is the key to stopping the working class developing the strength to look after its own affairs and initiate a Revolution.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 