This is why psychological operations and civic affairs[1] have always been part of the special warfare toolkit. It is also why flexibility, resourcefulness, and political savvy were so important to Jack Singlaub, Aaron Bank, and the other Jedburghs. It is also, finally, why governments have come to find more and more uses for military forces that have these and associated capabilities.They are precision instruments, while tanks, artillery, and the other major combat arms are, by comparison, blunt — though far more powerful.
To put it another way: Special operations are conducted against strategic and operational targets that can't be attacked in any other way. A strategic and operational target generally has to do with the center of gravity of an enemy (another term from Clausewitz), and that center of gravity can be physical, psychological, or economic. If conventional weaponry can't deal with it… special operations can.
When a nation finds it has a recurring need for these kinds of forces, then they form them into a special operations branch. During World War II, for example, the British knew they could never slug it out toe-to-toe with the German armies. Their special operations branch was intended to give them a lever that might even up the score.
By way of contrast, the Germans did not institutionalize special operations, and it's a mystery why. It is equally mysterious that, when their armies were defeated, they did not organize guerrilla and partisan resistance to counter the Allied occupation of their country. Though they had extensive experience with partisans in the USSR, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and elsewhere, and knew personally how partisans could make an occupying power suffer, the Germans did not themselves choose to organize such movements.
It is especially puzzling because German commando exploits were among the most daring and resourceful ever conducted. In 1940, for example, the fortress of Eben Emael, in southern Belgium at the junction of the Meuse River and the Albert Canal, was the most powerful fortress in Europe — heavily armored gun turrets above ground, the rest in hollowed-out underground galleries, and manned by 1,200 men. None of the Waginot Line fortifications came close to it. If the Germans hoped to attack west, toward the channel ports, or south, toward France, they had to overcome Eben Emael.
After six months of training in glider operations, as well as on a replica of the fortress itself, eighty German engineer-commandos, commanded by a sergeant, landed on the roof of Eben Emael in nine gliders and launched a carefully orchestrated attack — highlighted by the first-time-ever use of shaped charges in war — that resulted in the capture of the impregnable fortress thirty hours later. Shaped charges focus blast effects in order to penetrate armor, and are now very common in all kinds of anti-armor and deep-penetration-type weapons.
But then when the operation was over, the engineer-commandos went back into the Wehrmacht war machine. The Germans saw no recurring need for a standing special operations capability.
In 1943, after the Allied invasion of Italy, the Italians kicked Mussolini out of power and placed him in exile, under heavy guard, at an isolated mountaintop hotel, where it was believed no conceivable force could rescue him. The only access was by funicular railway. On September 13, however, another daredevil band of German glider commandos, led by one of the greatest of special operators, the Austrian Otto Skorzeny, landed a hundred yards from the hotel, overwhelmed the carabinieri guards, brought in a small Fiescier-Storch aircraft, and spirited the Duce away in it.
The commandos then returned to their regular units.
IN THE WILDERNESS
From 1946 to 1951, the Army maintained an interest in rebuilding an unconventional-warfare capability, and conducted many studies, but not much actually happened. Since there was a Ranger precedent, one study looked at the possibility of starting up a Ranger group that could carry out both a Jedburgh-like teaching-and-training mission and Ranger-type raids. Another study proposed creating a special operations force using refugee soldiers from Soviet satellite countries in eastern Europe, many of whom had extensive unconventional warfare experience fighting the Nazis. These men could join up under the provisions of the Lodge Act, which allowed foreigners to join the U.S. military services and, after two years, be granted citizenship. It would be a kind of American Special Forces Foreign Legion.
Unfortunately, there were at most 3,000 men available for such a unit, which was not enough to do the job (though Lodge Act volunteers later did become a major component of early Special Forces).
Nothing came of any of these proposals.
Like all Jedburghs, Aaron Bank had some familiarity with psychological warfare techniques, such as spreading rumors to build up civilian morale or enemy fears, or to spread false information. However, Bank never imagined he himself would be assigned to a psychological warfare unit. He simply was not trained for it.
Yet that was what happened, early in 1951. Bank, a colonel by then, was with a combat unit in Korea, the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, when he received orders to go back to the States and report to the Psychological Warfare staff in Washington, under Brigadier General Robert McClure.
McClure, a remarkable man, had run psychological warfare (more accurately, created it out of nothing) in Europe for Eisenhower and, after the war, had directed the de-Nazification program for the Allied military government in Germany. The outbreak of the Korean War had pointed up to him the necessity for rebuilding a psychological operations capability.
As Eisenhower's man in charge of psychological war, MeClure had often coordinated his operations with the OSS staff, and had thus come into contact with the OSS Special Operations Branch. He had been impressed with what he saw, and when the time came for him to restart psychological operations, he successfully argued that special operations be included in his team. To that end, McClure teamed Bank with still another remarkable man, a brilliant and highly energetic lieutenant colonel named Russell Volckmann. Their job: to bring special operations back into the Army.
When the Japanese captured the Philippines during the early days of America's involvement in World War II, Volckmann became one of those intrepid Americans who did not surrender. He joined Filipino soldiers and a few other Americans on the island of Luzon in organizing guerrilla resistance to the Japanese. In Bank's words, "When General MacArthur said, 'I shall return,' Russ, who was then a captain, echoed, 'I shall remain'—with MacArthur's blessing." After three years of fighting, their initially small force had grown to something near 15,000 strong — roughly division strength — and had killed or captured many thousand Japanese. When the moment for the Japanese surrender finally arrived, the Japanese commander, General Yamashita, gave it not to MacArthur but to the guerrilla force.
To honor the guerrilla contribution to victory, MacArthur granted Volckmann — now a colonel — a place at the formal surrender table.[2]
Bank, Volckmann, and McClure pooled their experience and research, and sat down to try to resolve the many issues that had long occupied special warfare experts: the Ranger versus special operations/guerrilla support model; problems of command and control, staff, logistics, and field operations; the question of how to use Lodge Act aliens, and so on. These matters would continue to occupy special warfare experts over the next five decades.
1
At one time, CA was thought of as an adjunct to military police — useful once the battle was over and order was being restored. After a war, more than police protection was needed. Later it was realized that CA could be useful during a conflict (Carl Stiner used his CA resources to great effect during the Panama invasion) or even before a conflict begins, to
2
Another well-known Philippine guerrilla, Colonel Wendell Fertig, who had gallantly fought the Japanese on Mindanao, later joined Bank and Volckmann's staff. A pretty good movie was made in the 1950s about Fertig, and you can read about him in our friend W. E. B. Griffin's novel