Englandspiel (England Game), or Operation North Pole (), was a successful counterintelligence operation of the (German military intelligence) from 1942 to 1944 during World War II. German forces captured Allied resistance agents operating in the Netherlands and used the agents' codes to dupe the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), into continuing to infiltrate agents, weapons, and supplies into the Netherlands. The Germans captured nearly all the agents and weapons sent by the United Kingdom (Britain). Englandspiel was a "catastrophe" for SOE and the Dutch resistance, "a textbook illustration, the world over, in how not to conduct clandestine work." Fifty-four SOE agents sent from England were captured by the Germans and 50 were executed. The Dutch resistance was substantial in numbers but lacked weapons. If armed, as had been the objective of SOE, it might have played an important role helping the allied military forces in their failed attempt to expel the Germans from the Netherlands in 1944. Background The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was created by the United Kingdom on July 22, 1940, in accordance with Prime Minister Winston Churchill's directive to "set Europe ablaze." The objective of the SOE was to undertake "irregular warfare" with sabotage and subversion in countries occupied by Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. SOE agents in occupied countries allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Section N was created within SOE to deal with the Netherlands. Section N had four chiefs during the war: RV Laming, Charles Blizard (known as Blunt), Seymour Bingham, and RI Dobson. In the words of MRD Foot, official historian of the SOE, Section N was "not always noted for efficiency." The opposite numbers of the SOE leaders in the German-occupied Netherlands were Majors Hermann Giskes of the Abwehr and Joseph Schreider of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service of the SS. The Netherlands presented geographical challenges to the Dutch resistance and the British intelligence agencies wishing to infiltrate agents and supply arms and supplies to the resistance groups. The country was densely populated and lacked forests and mountains where resistance forces could hide; isolated areas suitable for landing aeroplanes or parachute drops of arms and supplies for the resistance were hard to find; the coast was flat and the beaches guarded and often mined by the Germans, offering little opportunity to bring in agents and supplies