The immediate threat of a German invasion in 1940, following the debacle of the French and the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, threw many in Britain into panic. Fortunately there were some in the British government, secret services and the armed forces that, even in the 1930s, had taken the Nazi territorial aspirations more seriously. In 1938 the War Office, exasperated with the air of 'appeasement' emanating from the Cabinet, ordered the Director of Military Intelligence to create a unit that would carry out research into the tactics and organisations needed in the event of an invasion. The man chosen to head this unit was an RE officer, Lt Col. John Charles Francis Holland.
His unit was named Military Intelligence (Research) - MI(R) - and was soon to rapidly expand as the imminence of war became more obvious. A close military associate, Major Colin McVean Gubbins MC (later Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, DSO), Royal Artillery, was the most significant early appointment to MI(R), for he was to command Auxiliary Units from inception in June 1940 until his transfer to SOE on 18th November 1940.
Through a military and Intelligence fraternity, Holland and Gubbins secretly recruited potential specialists in guerilla warfare from personal knowledge or indirect recommendation. MI(R) drew up a shortlist of around 1,000 'potential recruits for unlikely projects' - civilians and service personnel thought suitable for subversive and irregular warfare.
Holland and MI(R) are credited not only with the development of SOE, but also Independent Companies - later called Commandos; secret Continental escape routes for shot-down aircrew (MI.9); certain aspects of 'strategic deception (MI.10); the use of helicopters as modern army 'cavalry'; and a blueprint for the obscurely named 'GHQ Auxiliary Units'.