Invisible Armies

Aubrey Woolls-Sampson.

All of these special operators made critical use of modern inventions such as the airplane and radio. But they were also inspired by the timeless lessons of history. SOE’s first leaders, the army officers J. C. F. Holland and Colin Gubbins, had fought against the IRA. In addition, Holland had served with the Arab irregulars in World War I and had s

Special Air Service (SAS),

Theodore von Hippel,

Royal Navy

Time and again, guerrilla warfare seemed to be superseded by the “new new thing”—industrial warfare in the 1910s, aerial warfare in the 1930s, nuclear warfare in the 1950s, network-centric warfare in the 1990s. And yet each time it reasserted itself with a vengeance. Since World War II, insurgency and terrorism have become the dominant forms of con

THE BOERS, LIKE many other skilled guerrillas, were masters of mobility.

All of these special operators made critical use of modern inventions such as the airplane and radio. But they were also inspired by the timeless lessons of history. SOE’s first leaders, the army officers J. C. F. Holland and Colin Gubbins, had fought against the IRA. In addition, Holland had served with the Arab irregulars in World War I and had s

Smuts,