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By Root 1710 0

internal defense and unconventional warfare. During World War II, the Germans and Japanese were occupying forces who by and large brutalized the people they occupied. The Jedburgh teams and men like Volkmann and Fertig arrived on the scene to help the locals fight these occupation forces; they provided the training so the people could fight for their own freedom. This is a great advantage, especially when the occupying force is arrogant, vicious, and given to atrocity. Had the German panzer divisions that swept into Russia and the Ukraine not been followed by the butchery of the SS and the Gestapo, the oppressed Russian people might have rallied in support of the Germans. Stalin was anything but a benevolent ruler. The Japanese kicked the white man out of Asia, and ended the exploitation of Asia by the Western colonial powers. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, as the Japanese called their brand of imperialism, might have worked, but they, like the Germans, brutalized the people they conquered. To this day, Japan still lives with its ill-treatment of the Koreans and the Chinese. Insurgency is a much easier business when the occupiers are thugs.

The second advantage Americans enjoyed was that most people genuinely liked Americans. They liked the GIs who fought to repatriate their conquered lands. For the most part, these Americans respected private property and treated the locals humanely. But the locals really liked Americans cut in the mold of Russell Volkmann—men who’d live the austere and dangerous life of a partisan and fight alongside them.

In the Second World War, our behind-the-lines efforts were successful because we helped the locals throw off the yoke of occupation. Let’s fast-forward from World War II, when we were seen as liberators, to today’s war, in which we are engaged in a vicious insurgency. To the extent we are seen as occupiers, or are portrayed as occupiers by al-Qaeda, Al Jazeera, and insurgent groups, our job is that much harder. A recent study of suicide bombers revealed that the common thread that ran through their twisted thinking was their conviction that Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan are an occupying force.

Donovan’s OSS did not survive the war, but the bright and talented men he recruited into his organization did. They went on to form the nucleus of the CIA. Two veterans, Colonel Russell Volkmann and former OSS Jedburgh colonel Aaron Bank, were to figure prominently in the creation of Special Forces. Volkmann, Bank, and a very capable major general on Eisenhower’s wartime staff named Robert McClure were successful in convincing the Army that with nuclear weapons making general war unthinkable, “small wars” were sure to follow. These small wars would need clandestine skills developed in the OSS. Aaron Bank, a veteran Jedburgh who spoke French and German, stood up the 10th Special Forces Group on June 19, 1952, and became the father of Army Special Forces. The 10th focused on Europe, but a few of Aaron Bank’s soldiers operated from offshore islands during the Korean War. There, they helped direct North Korean partisans in the conduct of raids, the harassment of enemy supply lines, and the rescue of downed pilots.

The era between the Korean and Vietnam wars saw the slow but steady growth in the Special Forces. The Army’s Psychological Warfare Center became the U.S. Army Special Warfare School in December 1956. In September 1961, the 5th Special Forces Group was formed with Colonel Leo Schweitzer as its first commander. It was the 5th that managed the bulk of the irregular-force operations during the Vietnam War. But prior to Vietnam, the considerations of the Cold War and our conventional-force battle plans still called for the Special Forces to play only a supporting role in a breakout of Soviet-backed, Eastern-bloc forces into Western Europe. They were to go in behind the lines to conduct sabotage, interdict supply lines, and support partisan operations as needed in territories overrun by the Communists.

There are three relatively modern wars or conflicts that have defined the