Review by Chris Murray
4 October 2024 – Toronto, Canada
Unleash the Dogs of War: Secret Mission in Support of Operation Crusader.
By Colonel Bernd Horn; Double Dagger, 2022. CAD $25.24
ISBN: 978-1-990644-33-7
The Special Forces concept is so ingrained within the contemporary military mindset that it’s almost taken for granted. It’s easy to forget that this (forgive the repetition) ‘special’ position and indeed, the entire notion of special operations as we think of them is a rather recent development. It was born out of desperation during the Second World War and met with a tremendous amount of resistance and contempt.
It was the British that really pioneered the concept of special operations and with it special operations forces (SOF). The belief in the power of the ‘tip and run’ tactics of guerrilla movements to achieve greater to victory had very recent and legitimate historical foundations. This was something that had come out of experiences facing the volunteer guerilla militia “Kommandos” of the Boer War as well as Britain’s own exploits via T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt in the First World War. During the interwar period these experiences began to coalesce within certain corners of the British establishment into a nascent quasi-legitimate military doctrine, reflected by its manifestation in Sir B.H. Liddell Hart’s The Strategy of Indirect Approach published in 1941 and reprinted in 1942 quite literally entitled, The way to win wars.
The timing of Liddell Hart’s publication was part of a larger shift which was occurring amongst the British. It’s often hard to fully grasp in hindsight just how bleak the situation was for the British and Imperial forces in the months after Churchill came to power. From the threat of invasion and the fall of France to a year later, the British had been driven from Europe and faced a precarious position in the strategically critical North African theatre. With Suez under threat and scant few resources, the only options were blockade and bombing. A third way forward was however emerging. Many young adventures within the British military with a somewhat roguish outlook were spreading a sort of ‘Lawrence Syndrome’ that promoted the disproportionate return promised by small-scale unconventional ‘tip and run’ offensive actions, very much the war from the periphery or the ‘indirect approach’ which the British would later become famously obsessed with.
These early adopters faced tremendous institutional resistance but found a path forward through a combination of desperation and highly placed supporters, like General Wavell, in command of the Middle East who had served with Allenby in the First World War and saw what Lawrence had accomplished, and the most significant and influential, perhaps most ardent, supporter being Churchill himself. His belief in the outsized value of these methods and demand for ‘action this day’ led him, very shortly after becoming Prime Minister to establish the Special Operations Executive tasked with, as Churchill put it with his characteristic flare, ‘to set Europe ablaze’. To put it another way, SOE was to put agents in the field behind enemy lines to foment revolt and take the offensive to the enemy.
This was only one part of the larger move towards special operations. At the same time young British soldiers, many with pre-war expertise in operating in remote regions, were promoting the creation of Commando units of various scales able to waste Axis resources and tie down the Axis forces by compelling them to patrol and defend, while also gathering critical intelligence. This Commando approach gave rise to the smaller forces that have become a near-legendary part of the British Story of the Second World War such as the Long Range Desert Group, the Special Boat Section (SBS) and the Special Air Service (SAS). A small cadre of individuals who moved between these various groups would be responsible, through a painful process of trial and error, largely unsupported and even opposed by the British military establishment, in almost single-handedly developing the modern special forces concept. In the process, they would offer up results difficult to measure but far beyond anything proportionate to their size.
That last statement is one that has taken a long time to become accepted and faced a great deal of resistance and debate (similar to that which faced the creation of these units). Despite the passage of nearly 80 years since the end of the war, our understanding of these developments still occupies only a small and deeply contentious bookshelf in the corner of the library of the Second World War. Indeed, the bulk of the SOE’s records were only made public by the National Archives in 2016. My own work during my PhD on British special operations in Yugoslavia and support for Yugoslav resistance movements found me opening SOE folders for the first time since they were shelved, and I can attest to just how debated and poorly understood the subject remains. To understand all of this, the motivation and nature of these debates, requires a better view of the development of Britain’s special operations. With this in mind, one should look to Colonel Bernd Horn’s newest book by Colonel Bernd Horn, Unleash the Dogs of War: Secret Mission in Support of Operation Crusader published by Double Dagger for a valuable look into the early development of British Special Forces.
Colonel (Retired) Bernd Horn, OMM, MSM, CD, PhD is a former Canadian Armed Forces infantry officer who served as Deputy Commander of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM), Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment and Officer Commanding 3 Commando, the Canadian Airborne Regiment. He is currently the CANSOFCOM Command Historian. Dr. Horn is also an adjunct professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada and a senior fellow at the Joint Special Operations University in Tampa.
Horn’s Unleash the Dogs of War takes readers into a period of the war that can often be brushed over pretty quickly. In many retellings, the years of 1939 to 1941 aren’t given the due attention they really deserve and are instead seen as a precursor for narratives that focus on post-Soviet and American entry. Instead, this period serves as the critical foundation from which all else flows. In chapter 3 of the book Horn is still only in January 1941 and talking about the British fighting the Italians (pre-German). From my perspective, this is excellent and speaks to how much time and attention Horn, appropriately, dedicates to laying critical foundations. In addition, Horn is not just looking to a period that requires better understanding but he’s doing so from the perspective of a region that likewise often gets neglected, or shall we say drowned out in the noise of the larger discussions concerning the war. Even more to the point, Horn is also doing so from an approach (special operations) that also requires a much deeper understanding. In essence, he is accomplishing several tasks at once, all of which are critical to understanding his destination, the special operations missions in support of Operation Crusader, the British plan to raise the Siege of Tobruk and re-occupy Cyrenaica.
The writing is impressive, to the point of pissing me off (I say only half in jest). Horn makes creating a captivating and fast-paced while simultaneously in-depth historical examination looks far easier than it actually is. He covers a lot of ground quickly but in a fulsome and meaningful way that is still easily absorbable. Horn throws a lot at the reader while moving at a brisk pace, but you would never be left trying to keep up with it. One does not need a PhD in the subject to understand Horn, his writing is simple and direct (which I mean as a very high compliment). The narrative he builds with the research he has is impressive. Horn has made excellent use of memoirs and first-hand accounts from the archives to make the reader feel present in events. I love how Horn deftly bounces back and forth from British accounts such as Wavell and Auchenleck to German, like Rommel in telling the story.
In establishing the background Horn manages to give a surface-level but comprehensive (sufficient for his purposes) description of the dynamics occurring between the military in Cairo and the government in London. He does this without getting bogged down in it all, which is very easy to do, take my word for it. Horn also does an admirable job of defending Wavell while highlighting the tension not only between Churchill and the military but also within Churchill’s inner circle, an important point. He may be, at times, betray a certain sympathy for the military’s perspective. At moments his attempt to highlight Churchill’s shortcomings does feel perhaps a little one-sided to me (although, I must stress that he’s correct on all points). This might simply be from his efforts at avoiding getting stuck in the mire I just alluded to. To be completely fair, I have to chuckle out loud writing this (as I’m sure Horn will in reading it) as I am forced to admit that I am almost certainly guilty of the inverse with my focus coming from the political / policy side and feeling a bit of a reflex protectionist impulse concerning Churchill.
I should also note that as the book carries on and Horn moves from setting the scene toward the actual special operations his tenor concerning Churchill shifts. While still, quite rightly, highlighting the problematic nature of Churchill’s insatiable intellectual curiosity and romantic runaway imagination, which led him to be all over the place with ideas, Horn also stresses the importance Churchill played in overcoming the military and acting as the driving force for SOF. Horn does an excellent job at detailing the conflict between Churchill, the War Office and General Headquarters Middle East (GHQME) over the formation of these units which is terribly interesting – they were very unpopular with the military and Churchill had to press hard for it.
In explaining all this a point we are constantly reminded of is that all of this was born from weakness, not a position of strength. Part of this comes from the importance of logistics (or more appropriately the lack thereof) which is made painfully apparent. For the British, the only way to force the Germans on the defensive and slow them down was through irregular warfare, and commando raids. Horn highlights the early failures and trial and error which occurred within special operations initiatives, and the growing pains as they were, which didn’t help their defence with the majority who were opposed to SOF. He has done a terrific job of creating a picture of what the challenges these operations faced be it command resistance, pressure to succeed as those wished to see them fail, the shoestring logistics of it all, and the conditions of these operations they attempted, with a nearly blow by blow replay that is incredibly detailed and engrossing.
Unleash the Dogs of War gives the reader a solid understanding of the considerations at play driving the war in North Africa which appropriately grounds the SOF narrative that’s being developed. For example, setting up the failure of the British to dislodge Rommel with a conventional assault in detail is a valuable block in building the coming SOF attack. This further keeps North Africa contextualized and connected to the other theatres. There is a steady build as the book gets proper into the SOF side of things and Horn takes his time laying out the foundations, stressing how new this all was, and how unpopular, but for a few supporters… until the results started to speak for themselves. Horn also takes time out to explain the dynamics at play in these units and the type of recruit that, for instance, the LRDG looked for and the way discipline was largely self-imposed and informal, yet incredibly effective.
There is no romanticism clouding Horn’s assessment and he casts an objective hard light on the early special operations missions as a bloody mess of trial and error with perhaps even a dash of amateurism, or at least recklessness. However, he balances his approach with building towards the small successes surrounding Operation Crusader to emphasize that what was being accomplished was a small shadow of what was being built. What came out of this community of mislabeled ‘rouge’ professionals speaks more to the rightness of their arguments than anything they achieved. They were, in fact, operating from a position of extreme foresight. Indeed, this value was already beginning to show itself even before the war was over, as Horn tackles in his close.
In describing the order of battle, Horn is quick and precise. Again, his liberal use of personal accounts, expertly and seamlessly woven into the narrative makes these events seem real, like it’s happening in real-time which creates a very engrossing narrative. It truly is a captivating adventure story that rips along at an impressive pace while providing valuable insight and hard-nosed assessments. This was a terrific read that I truly enjoyed. This is a book that I am certain I will find myself referring back to in my own work. I would also argue that it might act as a timely reminder of unconventional means in peer-to-peer warfare given the current state of things.
Unleash the Dogs of War can be purchased here via Amazon, and I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in these subjects, or just someone who enjoyed the recently released SAS: Rouge Heroes, of which there is some overlap but with better depth, and wants a little more.
Feature Photo: Members of “L” Detachment, Special Air Service, just back from a three-month assignment, January 1943 . Wikimedia Commons, 2024.
Inset Photo: Unleash the Dogs of War: Secret Mission in Support of Operation Crusader. Double Dagger, 2024.
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