John Findlay's Reviews > Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

After the first few chapters of this book, I was ready to slog through it and give it a mediocre rating. But the final 75% was well worth it. The stories were amazing, all the more because they were true and because they helped the Allies win WWII. The history of British Special Forces is told in scintillating form. Initially a group of about six gentlemen were recruited to find ways to harass the Germans by fighting a guerilla war. At the time, this was viewed as crude and illegal, even though the Germans and others were already doing it. But the agency grew throughout the war, and had the support of Churchill, and ultimately gained the respect of all who encountered it. It became the model for the American CIA. They developed many weapons that were widely used throughout the war, and they were trained in killing techniques and survival. Many of the chapters are devoted to some of the more renowned missions that the group participated in, and they were amazing. For example, they destroyed the heavy water plant that Hitler had built in Norway, thus slowing the development by the Germans of an atomic bomb. The eliminated a huge drydock in the Atlantic, preventing the Germans from using their largest battleship. They blew up railroad trestles used to provide supplies to Rommel in North Africa. They continuously harassed and delayed the reinforcement troops headed towards Normandy after D-day. They assassinated a Nazi leader in Czechoslovakia. The leader of the group, Colin Gubbins, was widely decorated after the war for the role that he and his unconventional warfare group had played. He always felt that saboteurs and guerillas were far more effective than brute force approaches, such as aerial bombing, because they could be so much more precise in hitting their targets. Upon finishing this book, one is convinced that WWII could not have been won without this highly trained, well-supplied, and overwhelmingly brave group of unconventional soldiers.