Nineteen thirty-seven in Europe found Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany rolling unopposed through the smaller countries of Europe. Colin Gubbins realized that war with Germany was inevitable. He also realized that if Great Britain was to survive as a nation, the next war wouldn’t be won with Britain following any “Marques of Queensberry” rules. It would be a no-holds-barred fight for survival.
I’m Mark Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and Giles Milton in Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat tells the story of men and women who used sabotage, assassinations, destruction, information gathering and general terror on the German war machine in the pursuit of an Allied victory.
Instead of turning to the military, this dedicated band of mavericks turned to creative brilliant thinkers for expertise to not only destroy instruments of war, but create a new kind of equipment suitable for their singular tasks. With no playbook on how this was to be done they drew inspiration from Sinn Fein, T.E Lawrence (of Arabia) and Al Capone. Their goal was to inflict the maximum amount of damage in the shortest time possible.
This is one good example: the British knew that the Germans were producing heavy water, a crucial ingredient to produce an atomic bomb. After the British military failed to destroy the plant, a team from Churchill’s mavericks successfully carried out a raid to destroy Germany’s heavy water plant in Rjukan, Norway, thus forever ending Nazi Germany’s effort to build an atomic bomb.
Many histories of World War II focus on the battles, the generals, or the political intrigue. Giles Milton in Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare recounts stories of World War II that were never talked about or publicized and the secret people who helped win the war.
