British Special Operations in the Second World War: By Stealth and Guile

Daring wartime special operations fire the imagination.Stories of secret missions behind enemy lines are the stuff of legends.This is especially true of the many remarkable operations undertaken by British special forces during the Second World War, and these are the subject of Malcolm Atkin's gripping and thought-provoking study.As well as describing the operations themselves in graphic detail, he sets them within their strategic context and looks at how they developed out of the innovative work of Jo Holland of the Military Intelligence (Research) Department of the War Office in 1940.These accounts demonstrate extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice, but the analysis cuts through the drama and does not shy away from considering their impact on the course of the war. Each chapter tells the story of one or more of these special operations, and a broad range of different types of operation are covered.They were carried out by many different units, including the Commandos, Long Range De