Killing the Enemy

Assassination Operations During World War II

Adam Leong Kok Wey

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781784530723
• eBook ISBN: 9780857729705
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

During World War II, the British formed a secret division, the 'SOE' or Special Operations Executive, in order to support resistance organisations in occupied Europe. It also engaged in 'targeted killing' - the assassination of enemy political and military leaders. The unit is famous for equipping its agents with tools for use behind enemy lines, such as folding motorbikes, miniature submarines and suicide pills disguised as coat buttons. But its activities are now also gaining attention as a forerunner to today's 'extra-legal' killings of wartime enemies in foreign territory, for example through the use of unmanned drones. Adam Leong's work evaluates the effectiveness of political assassination in wartime using four examples: Heydrich's assassination in Prague (Operation Anthropoid); the daring kidnap of Major General Kreipe in Crete by Patrick Leigh Fermor; the failed attempt to assassinate Rommel, known as Operation Flipper; and the American assassination of General Yamamoto.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

The mere mention of Special Operations or leadership decapitation operations in World War II will conjure up images of secretive and high dramatics of commandos in action with a degree of romantic adventurism infused. Although numerous books have been written on the practice of Special Operations during World War II, none have specifically studied the effectiveness of Special Operations conducting leadership decapitation operations in that particular war.¹ The importance of filling this vacuum guided the formation of the two main research objectives of this book, which are: firstly, to analyse the strategic effectiveness of leadership decapitation operations conducted by Special Operations in World War II; and, secondly, to study the tactical effectiveness of Special Operations conducting these operations.²

Four main case studies from World War II, namely the killing of Reinhard Heydrich; the capture of Major General Heinrich Kreipe; the killing of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto; and the attempt to kill or capture General Erwin Rommel, have been used to understand and explain the strategic effectiveness of such operations. This book asserts that Special Operations conducting leadership decapitation operations during World War II yielded strategic effects in raising morale in desperate situations. These strategic effects had important consequences benefitting the political strategy of the belligerents engaged in such operations. In addition it is asserted that Special Operations provided a strong demonstration of the political will to fight in an economical manner. Special Operations were also found to be tactically effective in conducting such operations, but success hinged on a good understanding of how to use Special Operations with excellent support from intelligence.

Strategic theories related to leadership decapitation are discussed and used as a foundation to understand how leadership decapitation achieves its intended result. A general theoretical background is necessary to set the foundation in understanding how leadership decapitation works and how it can be achieved. Although there are no implicit strategic theories solely on leadership decapitation, strategic paralysis theories that have linkages with leadership decapitation are critically examined as a foundation to understand how leadership decapitation could achieve its intended result.³

This book is conceptually influenced by Alastair Finlan's proposal of using Special Forces to conduct a ‘third way of warfare’ – ‘in which opposing political leaders and institutions become the explicit aim of all military efforts from the outset of a campaign’.⁴ Finlan proposed the targeting and killing of the enemy's leaders by Special Forces as a third form of warfare apart from the dual strategies of attrition or annihilation. He posited that killing off or disenabling the enemy's leadership would erode the intelligence and talent of the enemy's political leadership and supreme command. This would potentially disrupt both the political and strategic direction of the enemy in a conflict and facilitate a quicker end to war and avoid bloody battles. This book, however, analyses the effectiveness of this strategy in a broader context, not just limited to the targeting of enemy political leaders but also important enemy military commanders.

James Kiras, in his recent landmark study on the relationship between Special Operations and strategy, tested strategies of decapitation and paralysis utilised by airpower.⁵ He studied the effectiveness of an aerial Special Operation conducting a strategic paralysis operation, the Dambuster raid (Operation Chastise). The Dambuster raid was conceived in order to strike at the enemy's infrastructure and cause strategic paralysis of the enemy's industrial output.⁶ The air raid was conducted by the British Royal Air Force 617 Squadron in 1943 to destroy the Ruhr Valley dams and succeeded in destroying two dams, the Möhne and Eder. The raid, however, did not yield the intended result of destroying the heart of German war production by paralysing Germany's Ruhr industrial area.⁷ Although Kiras mentioned the linkage of Special Operations conducting leadership decapitations in his book, he did not explore it further.⁸ This book covers this crucial gap by analysing the effectiveness of leadership decapitation conducted by Special Operations.

This study of Special Operations will be based on an individual task, which is decapitating enemy leadership, and how it positions itself within the rubric of its related strategy. Special Operations generally have three core areas of tasks, which could be categorised as Direct Action (for example, commando raids and hostage rescue), Unconventional Warfare (which includes working with indigenous forces in hostile areas), and Intelligence Operations (reconnaissance and information operations).⁹ It is not possible to analyse appropriately the whole range of Special Operations’ capabilities and draw conclusions on its general effectiveness.

The value of this book is that it studies the effect of Special Operations conducting leadership decapitation operations at two intrinsic levels of warfare, strategically and tactically. Special Operations functions integrally as a mean and way to meet an end. Each Special Operation has its intrinsic tactical and operational objectives which complement the overarching strategy of a particular campaign regardless if it is a great raid or an unglamorous operation in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of an indigenous group behind enemy lines. In essence, leadership decapitation operations and Special Operations are tactical operations. As strategy is done tactically, effectiveness at the tactical level should be addressed in conjunction with the effects it generates at the strategic level. This subscribes to Clausewitz's view:

Strategy thereby gains the end it had ascribed to the engagement, the end that constitutes its real significance…The significance of an engagement may therefore have a noticeable influence on its planning and conduct, and is therefore to be studied in connection with tactics.¹⁰ (Emphasis in original)

However, regardless of whether the tactical operations fail or succeed, they will still have strategic effects, intended or unintended.¹¹ The impact of these strategic effects provides context to understand how Special Operations or leadership decapitation operations yield strategic utility and contribute to the overall strategic performance of the polity utilising such operations.¹² This also addresses the gap that Special Operations are often mistakenly treated as a tool exclusively for either tactical purposes or strategic purposes. As Colin Gray stated:

Some readers may find it hard to believe that a subject as popular among military authors and journalists as SOF [Special Operations Forces] and SO [Special Operations], and especially their equipment and tactical methods, should be close to naked of strategic analyses.¹³

There exists a huge body of literature on the history of Special Operations units, their operations and tactics, but a detailed analysis on how these relate to strategy is still lacking. There are a few works that have contributed to the broader study of mapping Special Operations with strategy, the latest being the aforementioned works by Alastair Finlan and James Kiras.¹⁴ This book complements these works and is a continuation of an attempt to put Special Operations on a more solid theoretical footing.

The practice of leadership decapitation by Special Operations in World War II also sparked a ‘renaissance’ on the utility of using such operations to advance a state's foreign policy without direct intervention of military armed forces. A fine example is the wide practise of such operations to remove state leaders using covert Special Operations by the United States government, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. The successful attempts by the United States covert usage of leadership decapitation (using non-violent means), such as in Iran and Guatemala,¹⁵ pointed to the continuation of such conceptual practice sparked off in World War II.

This book, however, does not claim that there is an explicit causal chain from the events of World War II to similar practice after World War II, but the similar general nature of such operations practised after World War II do point to a plausible influence. Furthermore, the importance of learning the lessons from World War II also provides a guide to the general nature of such operations, still contemporarily practised and termed as targeted killing. The next section lays out the key definitions of Special Operations, leadership decapitation, strategic effectiveness, and tactical effectiveness used in this book.

Definitions

What are Special Operations?

Special Operations have existed in its conceptual form since ancient military history was first recorded.¹⁶ The practice of Special Operations-like concepts has vast historical antecedents, for example from ancient Greek military history,¹⁷ through the middle ages,¹⁸ from the Seven Years War to the Napoleonic Wars,¹⁹ in the American Revolution (War of Independence, 1775–82),²⁰ and the American Civil War (1861–6).²¹ Due to the sheer length of the history of Special Operations practice, there is a plethora of definitions explaining what Special Operations are. These definitions can be divided into two categories; one based on a rigid assumption that Special Operations are what a Special Operations unit does, and the second on a broader definition of what a Special Operation is and a suggestion of who should conduct it. Ohad Leslau, an independent international affairs researcher, writing on Israeli Special Operations shares a similar view. He stated that there are two approaches to studying Special Operations; the first looks into ‘organization, equipment, selection and training of SOF [Special Operations Forces], to distinguish them from regular units’.²² The second focuses on ‘the uniqueness of the SOF's operations and objectives’.²³

One of the key definitions based on a Special Operations organisation can be traced to one of the largest employers of Special Operations units, the United States armed forces. The official definition of Special Operations in the United States military today is identified by the Doctrine for Joint Special Operations (JP 3–05) as:

Special operations are operations conducted in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments to achieve military, diplomatic, informational, and/or economic objectives employing military capabilities for which there is no broad conventional force requirement.²⁴

Other authors that defined Special Operations in a similar vein were Kiras,²⁵ Robert Spulak. Jr,²⁶ and William McRaven.²⁷ An example of a broader definition based on Special Operations' unique capabilities as opposed to an organisation is Luttwak, Canby and Thomas' study on Special Operations, A Systematic Review of ‘Commando’ (Special) Operations 1939–1980,²⁸ in which Special Operations was defined as, ‘…self-contained acts of war mounted by self-sufficient forces operating within hostile territory’.²⁹ Colin Gray points out that the most useful definition of Special Operations is based on Maurice Tugwell and David Charters's, which is also a broader definition based on the uniqueness of Special Operations;

Small scale, clandestine, covert or overt operations of an unorthodox and frequently high-risk nature, undertaken to achieve significant political or military objectives in support of foreign policy.³⁰

Finlan, writing on Special Forces, gives an interesting recommendation for a term that may clarify the confused state of Special Operations' definitions:

A better term, however, that would avoid much of the confusion would be ‘Different Forces’ because difference, in terms of relationship with strategy and its underlying nature, is the watermark of Special Forces and best guides their employment in war.³¹

Finlan points out that most of the misunderstanding and miscomprehension of Special Operations is due to the connotation of the term ‘special’, which had given it a false assumption that what Special Operations does is special and performed by ‘special men’. The association with the term ‘special’ had further alienated the Special Operations community from the wider conventional military forces. Finlan's proposed term of ‘Different Forces’ may be able to repair the current state of confusion.

The late M.R.D. Foot, a prominent Special Operations Executive (SOE) historian and ex-SAS intelligence officer during World War II, managed to provide a useful working definition of Special Operations,

They are unorthodox coups, that is, unexpected strokes of violence, usually mounted and executed outside the military establishment of the day, which exercise a startling effect on the enemy; preferably at the highest level.³²

Foot's definition concisely sums up Special Operations' most important ingredients for its operational success and survival, which are surprise and unexpected acts of warfare. For the purpose of this research, this author used Foot's definition of Special Operations, which has more utility in explaining the distinct nature of Special Operations without being obstructively narrow in its focus.³³

What is leadership decapitation?

This book, for speci...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Strategies of Leadership Decapitation, Strategic Logic, and Nexus with Morale
• 3. ‘Hitler’s Hangman’ Butchered – Operation Anthropoid
• 4. Case Study of the Kidnap of Major General Kreipe in Crete
• 5. The ‘Yamamoto Mission’
• 6. Operation Flipper (and Operation Gaff)
• 7. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back cover