Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), which conducted sabotage campaigns and supported resistance movements in Axis-occupied Europe and in Asia, is often described as Winston Churchill’s brainchild. But as A. R. B. Linderman reveals in this engrossing history, the real genius behind Britain’s clandestine warriors was Colin Gubbins, a British officer who forged the SOE by drawing on lessons learned in irregular conflicts around the world. Following Gubbins through operations he studied and participated in, Linderman maps the evolution of the SOE from its origins to its doctrine to its becoming a critical institution. Part biography, part intellectual and organizational history, Rediscovering Irregular Warfare is the first book to explore the origins of a substantial force in the Allies’ victory in World War II. Although popular history holds that Britain entered World War II with no prior knowledge of or experience with underground warfare, Rediscovering Irregular Warfare tells us otherwise. Linderman finds ample precedent in the clearly documented work of Gubbins and his fellow clandestine organizers. He traces Gubbins’s career from 1914 through World War I and such irregular conflicts as the Allied intervention in Russia, the Irish Revolution, and conflicts in British India. To these firsthand experiences, Gubbins added the insights of colleagues who had served with him and in Iraq, as well as what he learned from the Second Anglo-Boer War, the Arab Revolt led by T. E. Lawrence, the German guerrilla war in East Africa, the revolt in Palestine between the world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. The two booklets that Gubbins wrote based on his accumulated knowledge offered the first synthesis of British unconventional warfare doctrine: practical guides that emphasized the centrality of local populations; the collection, protection, and use of intelligence; the necessity of cooperating with conventional forces; and the use of speed, surprise, and escape in ambush operations. In 1940, when Gubbins joined the newly created SOE, the experience and know-how codified in his guides formed the basis of Britain’s approach to irregular warfare. The history of the SOE’s doctrinal origins is Colin Gubbins’s story. By telling that story, Rediscovering Irregular Warfare amplifies and clarifies our understanding of the Second World War—and of doctrines of unconventional warfare in the twentieth century.

Today more than one hundred small, asymmetric, and revolutionary wars are being waged around the world. This book provides invaluable tools for fighting such wars by taking enemy perspectives into consideration. The third volume of a trilogy by Max G. Manwaring, it continues the arguments the author presented in Insurgency, Terrorism, and Crime and Gangs, Pseudo-Militaries, and Other Modern Mercenaries. Using case studies, Manwaring outlines vital survival lessons for leaders and organizations concerned with national security in our contemporary world. The insurgencies Manwaring describes span the globe. Beginning with conflicts in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and El Salvador in the 1980s, he goes on to cover the Shining Path and its resurgence in Peru, Al Qaeda in Spain, popular militias in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, the Russian youth group Nashi, and drugs and politics in Guatemala, as well as cyber warfare. Large, wealthy, well-armed nations such as the United States have learned from experience that these small wars and insurgencies do not resemble traditional wars fought between geographically distinct nation-state adversaries by easily identified military forces. Twenty-first-century irregular conflicts blur traditional distinctions among crime, terrorism, subversion, insurgency, militia, mercenary and gang activity, and warfare. Manwaring’s multidimensional paradigm offers military and civilian leaders a much needed blueprint for achieving strategic victories and ensuring global security now and in the future. It combines military and police efforts with politics, diplomacy, economics, psychology, and ethics. The challenge he presents to civilian and military leaders is to take probable enemy perspectives into consideration, and turn resultant conceptions into strategic victories.

Covert operations and ingenious weapons for irregular warfare were developed rapidly, and with great success, by the British during the Second World War, and the story of the most famous organizations involved like SOE, the SAS and Section D of SIS is now well known, but Military Intelligence (Research), the smallest but one of the most influential of these units is relatively unknown. Malcolm Atkin’s intriguing and meticulously researched account describes their role at the heart of the War Office in trying to develop a ‘respectable’ arm of irregular warfare and their innovations ranging from the early Commandos, sticky bombs, limpet mines, booby traps, and even helicopters to the creation of the MI9 escape organization. They were an ‘ideas factory’ rather than an operational body but the book describes their worldwide operations including Finland, Norway, Romania, the Middle East and Central Africa. This is also a story of conflicting personalities between Jo Holland, the visionary but self-effacing head of MI(R) and his ambitious deputy, Colin Gubbins (later head of SOE), and the latter’s private war with SIS.

The first complete biography of Britain’s WWII spymaster presents an intimate look at his life and career, as well as an insider’s look at the SOE. Major General Sir Colin Gubbins was the driving force behind Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the secret military organization established by Winston Churchill in 1940. First as its Operations and Training Director, and then its Commander, Gubbins orchestrated every aspect of the SOE’s worldwide covert operations. Though Gubbins made enormous contributions to Allied victory, his life and work have remained shrouded in secrecy until now. With copious research and unprecedented access to family archives, biographer Brian Lett reveals the war hero’s early experiences in the Great War, as well as in Russia, Ireland, Poland, and as Head of British Resistance. The result is a fascinating biography that reveals as much about SOEs extraordinary activities as it does about the man who inspired and commanded them.

The first book-length account of a story too long overlooked Claro Solis wanted to win a gold star for his mother. He succeeded—as did seven other sons of “Little Mexico.” Second Street in Silvis, Illinois, was a poor neighborhood during the Great Depression that had become home to Mexicans fleeing revolution in their homeland. In 1971 it was officially renamed “Hero Street” to commemorate its claim to the highest per-capita casualty rate from any neighborhood during World War II. Marc Wilson now tells the story of this community and the young men it sent to fight for their adopted country. Hero Street, U.S.A. is the first book to recount a saga too long overlooked in histories and television documentaries. Interweaving family memories, soldiers’ letters, historical photographs, interviews with relatives, and firsthand combat accounts, Wilson tells the compelling stories of nearly eighty men from three dozen Second Street homes who volunteered to fight for their country in World War II and Korea—and of the eight, including Claro Solis, who never came back. As debate swirls around the place of Mexican immigrants in contemporary American society, this book shows the price of citizenship willingly paid by the sons of earlier refugees. With Hero Street, U.S.A., Marc Wilson not only makes an important contribution to military and social history but also acknowledges the efforts of the heroes of Second Street to realize the American dream.

The hero of the War of 1812, the conqueror of Mexico City in the Mexican-American War, and Abraham Lincoln’s top soldier during the first six months of the Civil War, General Winfield Scott was a seminal force in the early expansion and consolidation of the American republic. John S. D. Eisenhower explores how Scott, who served under fourteen presidents, played a leading role in the development of the United States Army from a tiny, loosely organized, politics-dominated establishment to a disciplined professional force capable of effective and sustained campaigning.

Unlikely Warriors is the story of Benjamin Henry Grierson, Civil War hero and postwar commander of the Tenth Cavalry "Buffalo Soldiers," and his family on the western frontier. In 1863, Colonel Grierson led a cavalry brigade of 1,700 men on a daring raid through Mississippi, which helped Ulysses S. Grant launch his successful campaign against Vicksburg. In the army reorganization of 1866, Grierson accepted an appointment as colonel of the Tenth Cavalry, a command of white officers and black enlisted men. In this biography, William and Shirley Leckie explore three generations of Grierson's family, and for this edition they include a new preface on recent interest in the Buffalo Soldiers.

Jeb Stuart, leader of the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia, earned the admiration of his enemies during the first three years of the Civil War. Famed for his daring ride around McClellan during the Peninsula Campaign, and his raid behind Union lines in Virginia and into Maryland and Pennsylvania, he was a legend long before he was killed at Yellow Tavern in 1864.

The 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy made headlines by officially downgrading terrorism as a national security priority in favor of "inter-state strategic competition." Many interpreted the statement as signifying a return to "conventional combat," yet a closer reading suggests that even state-based competition is likely to be "irregular." Much like insurgent adversaries, states blend separate instruments of power to offset military weakness, weaponize narratives to ease strategic progress, and exploit social and political contradictions to undermine and divide target societies. The effort to understand this approach has generated new jargon-"hybrid war," "the gray zone"-yet the United States and the West in general struggle to overcome their entrenched presumptions about war. Such confusion constitutes an upstream source of analytical friction with implications for how strategy is conceived and implemented. Based on the pedagogical approach of the College of International Security Affairs within the National Defense University, this article presents an analytical framework to assess and respond to irregular threats. Though terminological precision and analytical frameworks are no panacea for the malaise facing Western strategy, it is an indispensable starting point for all that must follow.

"Paul Hutton’s study of Phil Sheridan in the West is authoritative, readable, and an important contribution to the literature of westward expansion. Although headquartered in Chicago, Sheridan played a crucial role in the opening of the West. His command stretched from the Missouri to the Rockies and from Mexico to Canada, and all the Indian Wars of the Great Plains fell under his direction. Hutton ably narrates and interprets Sheridan’s western career from the perspective of the top command rather than the battlefield leader. His book is good history and good reading."–Robert M. Utley