Special forces: facts & fiction
Commando operations tend to stimulate our imagination (at least in Western societies). Like intelligence services, with which they are closely interwoven, the missions of special military units such as the U.S. Navy Seals or the British Special Air Service have been a popular subject not only for the film industry, but also for the computer games industry in particular, for decades. While classic war films and games have faded into the background, plots involving special operations continue to enjoy unbroken popularity. This is demonstrated by classic films and blockbusters such as The Wild Geese, Inglourious Basterds or, more recently, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Many people are obviously fascinated by a small unit acting on its own in hostile territory against a usually overpowering enemy, often under time pressure – the perfect ingredients for Hollywood and others. In addition, the members of special units are usually not only elitist and daring, but often also rebellious and even crazy. In contrast to “normal” battles and the regular everyday life of soldiers, these are “special” and “unique” stories, at least in the public perception, that are worth telling – and are undoubtedly often mythically exaggerated.
However, commando operations – restricted to a limited area and carried out by a small force over a relatively short period of time in order to achieve a disproportionately large strategic and political impact using covert and unconventional combat methods with relatively few resources – are not a modern phenomenon. They can be traced back to antiquity and the Middle Ages. The most prominent, albeit probably fictitious, example is the Trojan horse, with the help of which a daring band of Greek warriors finally succeeded in conquering Troy, which had been besieged in vain for over ten years. The – albeit temporary and very fatal – liberation of Balduin II, king of the Crusader state of Jerusalem, from the hands of a Turkish emir by a troop of loyal Armenian subjects in 1123 can also be categorised as a commando operation. The founding father of modern special units is probably the British officer Robert Rogers, who specialised in irregular warfare against the French enemy with the outfit named after him in the French and Indian War, the North American part of the Seven Years’ War in the mid-18th century. The fact that Roger’s Rangers were something special within the British Army was evident from their appearance alone: in contrast to the regular units fighting in rigid battle order with their red coats, they wore green uniforms adapted to the theatre of war, which were far better suited to fighting in the densely forested regions of northeastern North America.
Despite Roger’s successes – U.S. special forces such as the Army Rangers and the Green Berets see their roots in his unit – commando operations remained a marginal military phenomenon for the next 200 years, which is reflected not least in the literature available on the subject. It was not until the Second World War that they would unfold their full effect, and this was certainly the case for all warring parties. On the German side, Otto Skorzeny should be mentioned first and foremost in this context, who created his myth as the “most dangerous man in Europe” with the liberation of the previously deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was imprisoned on the Gran Sasso d’Italia in Abruzzo, in September 1943 – Unternehmen Eiche. Other and sometimes less well-known operations by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS include Unternehmen Mammut to prepare an anti-British uprising in northern Iraq, Unternehmen Atlas to gather intelligence in the British Mandate of Palestine, and the attempt to make the Rhine bridges impassable for the advancing Allies in the spring of 1945 through sabotage carried out by frogmen. The plan to assassinate Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin during the Tehran Conference in late autumn 1943, which was titled Unternehmen Weitsprung but was ultimately never put into action, probably never existed, even though a number of books sometimes claim otherwise.
However, it was the British who were the first to take up the subject of “special operations”, and also in the most extensive way, probably out of strategic necessity. After the German Wehrmacht had overrun half of Europe and France had capitulated within a few months of the start of the war, Great Britain had its back to the wall despite its imperial resources. Prime Minister Churchill was aware of the fact that his country – also in view of the less than glorious evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk at the beginning of June 1940 – had to utilise every opportunity to inflict damage on the German Reich – also in accordance with the credo of “disproportionately great strategic and political effect with relatively little expenditure of resources”. This led to the founding of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) the following July, to which British director Guy Ritchie set a not entirely serious and dramaturgically strongly exaggerated memorial in the aforementioned The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Despite being historical comedy, the film’s title still reflects the character of the new organisation, which was not subordinate to the War Office but to the Ministry of Economic Warfare and was intended, in Churchill’s words, to “set Europe ablaze” by means of subversive warfare. But it was not the only push in this direction, as the army itself also took steps to install “a reign of terror” on the European coasts – as the Prime Minister also demanded of the General Staff after the lost Battle of France – and thus make life difficult for the German troops there. This was not only due to military considerations, but was also intended to boost the morale of the British population by making them realise that the British military were not yet finished after the disaster in France.