The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 7 - Final Mission

A 1,200 plane, 5,000 ship, 160,000 troop assault (the troop total would be well over ten times that by the end of three months) was the 1944 plan to step onto the shore and battle the Germans on the mainland. Operation Overlord. The greatest difficulty would be to break the initial line of defense and manage to hold it, because otherwise the Allies wouldn't be able to reinforce their troops. German machine gun fire, tanks, and troops darn near everywhere would be doing their best to stop the advance. The faster they could get their men out there once they determined the invasion points for the Allies the easier it would be to take out the force before they got a solid foothold. Both sides were in a battle against time; the Nazis needed to race to the right points on the beach and knock the Allies back before they could secure a base, and the Allies needed to set up quickly to lock down the beach to receive reinforcements. 

A picture of the D-Day landings. It's in black and white,
so you know it isn't a Call of Duty screenshot.

In comes the Ministry. 

In the months prior they had been damaging railways and roads to stop the Nazis from reaching the beachheads. The prevention of movement was always of the utmost importance, as when you're as small a force as they were (about 300 men landed in France from the Ministry) they weren't going to be taking out any part of the army of real significance. They were simply a harassment force.

One of the most effective delay tactics was used against an incredibly effective tank division called Das Reich. Equipped with 1,400 tanks and 15,000 soldiers, the division was led by General Heinz Lammerding, a proven German success story. Cutting his teeth at the eastern front (the scariest front!) he earned two iron crosses. If he was to make it to the beach he would cause a tremendous amount of trouble for the Allied invasion force. His tanks were set to arrive at the beach from their setting off point in only 72 hours. 

Thinking fast, a member of the Ministry came up with a brilliant plan to slow the tank advance. The tanks weren't actually the ones travelling along the roads. Their treads rip roads to pieces, and by the time the back of the line would be pressing forward the roads would be in far too rough of shape to effectively move across. Instead, they were riding atop tank transporters, large trucks used to be softer on the roads but still move the tanks at a good clip. The plan for the sabotage was to sneak into the German camp and plant carborundum, a material that is hard and abrasive enough to scratch any crystal except for diamond, into the pipes of the transporters. In what must have been an exceedingly nervy bit of vandalism, the men managed to take out enough of the transporters to halt the entire force. In turn, they were put on an entirely different route that would take much, much longer.

The modern-day ruins of one of the places Das Reich
mowed through. Sheesh. Looks like Detroit.

But that wasn't all. Along the new tarmac path they had to take, the Ministry would set up well in advance and knock down a few trees to hinder their path. That doesn't initially sound like much, but they would have to bring a vehicle to the front to move the trees that often took as long as four hours to reach it. Shortly down the line they did it again, except this time they had another surprise in store. They set up tank mines, blowing up the tree-removing vehicle and making the road all but impassable. Eventually they got another vehicle to do the job, but not after a great deal of effort and, more importantly, a great deal of time. The group would do the same plan a few more times, causing further delays due to the Germans having to check for mines upon reaching the fallen trees. 

Remember that 72 hour estimated arrival time? All the delays pushed it back to seventeen days. By then the beachhead was secured, and the arrival of General Lammerding's tanks had missed their point of optimal effectiveness. 

Loading a tank onto one of the transporters, a scene
where many "tanks for the help" puns were made.

Once that was done and the Allies were on the march forward, there was little for the Ministry to do. They were a harassment force for an army that was powerful and secured, and when that army was on the run and dwindling they lost their place in the war. In essence, their job was already done by the time the Allies were moving to clean up the last of the Nazi regime. Their role in getting them there, however, was incredible. All in all, they made 1.5 million sticky bombs; one million puffball explosives, two million anti-aircraft frag bombs, and a plethora of booby traps and specialist explosives. It's an amazing total considering the Ministry's annual budget was only £40,000 and consisted of only 250 people at headquarters. 

This blog series covers only some of the most interesting stories. I left out some important ones, like the men taking out factories and leading special assaults. I also didn't get a chance to discuss how the American version of the camp, created in Canada to avoid reprisals as America had not yet officially entered the war at the time, laid the groundwork for the CIA. The book I've read for this (mentioned at the bottom) likely didn't discuss every single mission they went on either. That's not to mention all the individual inventions the top of the heap made along the way (Jeffries' submarine bomb had a piece that was critically important in the creation of the first nuke, as well). It's really an incredible amount of work that was put out by such a small team.

That's the thing about World War II. You hear about the big battles, the massive clashes of machines and men, the colossal invasion forces... but within all of those there are these individual stories that are fascinating. My dad mentioned to me how this should be made into a T.V. series, and after all they've done that would be a fitting tribute. It plays so well for it: exciting, individual missions; a cast of eccentric characters; Gubbins hired many female staff, making it so it wouldn't just be a male cast which people would undoubtedly whine about; and all of this with the backdrop of real differences made in World War II. 

Heck, it's got to be better than Young Sheldon. 

---------------------

The information from this blog was taken from Giles Milton's book Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks who Plotted Hitler's Defeat. It's an incredible book, and reads much better than what I've done here. I can't recommend it enough. 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 6 - No Nuke for You

What can you say has significantly changed modern world history that wouldn't be a massive overstatement? I mean really changed it, drastically, the kind that shapes how the future will be. Cars, for sure. The internet, absolutely. Guns, definitely. Television, can't imagine a world without lunchtime Price is Right in my childhood years. It's a small, prestigious club, and undoubtedly World War II brought a new one into membership; nuclear weapons. They're the cause of peace between the great powers ever since, as well as the greatest risk for man's self-destruction. Naturally, the first country to make them has undeniable mega-power, essentially providing them an I-Win button. And darn it if the Nazis weren't close to getting it first.

Looking back on it, it seems like a positive
the Nazis didn't get their hands on one of these.

Germany's push to nuclear weapons was centred in Norway at the Norsk Hydro plant. Here, they had the very important job of creating heavy water (think water post-Christmas dinner), a critical component for making nukes, because science says so. Of course, the plant would be a bit of a fortress itself due to how critical the production facility would be. Three massive, sheer cliffs lined the sides, leaving only one main entrance; a bridge under constant, vigilant surveillance; lights everywhere, making a raid at nighttime no better; two hundred soldiers were garrisoned nearby to provide protection for the scientists. The British had tried to drop men in before simply for recon, but a crash landing made them easy targets and every member of the force was killed, some tortured first. Any frontal assault was out of the question save for bringing a small army. It was a monumental task, but one of the utmost importance.

Gubbins and co. got together a team of Norwegian supermen to do the deed. (It was usually better to get people from the country they were going to, as they felt a closer connection, knew the language, and so on.) Once again, the initial drop went poorly. Being Norway, they were plunged into terribly cold, brutal weather conditions and had to work their way to finding first each other and then shelter. Back home it was assumed that the men were dead, surely killed by the elements long before they even got to the Germans, but they managed to find their way to a cabin and laid low for four days until the storm passed.

A picture of Norsk Hydro heavy water. It looks like water.
It smells like water. It might even be just water. But darn
it, scientists say there's a difference and that's really
bloody important for some reason.

They managed to eventually find their way to Norsk Hydro a little worse for wear. Their plan was simple: there was one clear path to the plant that was heavily guarded and well lit, so they came up with the idea of not taking that path. They decided instead to scale the cliffs, all the way down and all the way back up the other side (remember, these are Norwegian supermen), and sneak into the building. This way they wouldn't alert the garrison that, in all their two hundred men, decided it wasn't a good idea to place a couple of guys on the other side to watch the cliffs. Managing to sneak in, they set off a few explosions on key pieces of equipment that were just small enough to take out some important machinery but not large enough to cause any real commotion. They were halfway up the return side of the gorge before the sirens began to go off. In spite of being armed to the nines, they didn't fire a single shot. It was a brilliantly thought out, precisely executed plan that with hindsight now might have been a completely world-changing moment. Any jokes that were passed around about the effectiveness of the new ministry were pretty well silenced by this point. After all, who is to say how the nuclear weapons program would have went had they not taken out a key component?

I'm low on pictures for the blog this week,
so here's one of Churchill looking
kind of goofy in a helmet. When in doubt,
throw in a Churchill picture.

Of course, back home you would think they'd be all smiles and sunshine at this successful run, but in reality it was much to the contrary the contrary. They were gearing up for another major movement seeing as the Nazis were losing the war at this point and the Allies were about to storm the mainland. Yes, they were still seeing successes left and right (Jeffries had just invented a new torpedo-like bomb that the Americans had used to take out over thirty German submarines, causing Churchill to give him the appropriate name of CD - Chief of Destruction) but they still had plenty more to go. They were soon to drop three-hundred men into France to "stir up resistance, harass enemy movements and tie down as many German divisions as possible." Their initial work was focussed on delaying transportation of weapons and other goods to the beaches of Operation Overlord - the invasion of Normandy. That meant blowing up bridges, taking out train-tracks, and other such delays. The work they did was more effective than what the air forces had done in two months, and cost a fraction of it in terms of manpower and finances.

Nevertheless, troops and goods were still going to get there. What can a few men do to delay a whole Nazi war machine? 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 5 - Assassination

What are the rules of warfare you can't break?

Shooting or otherwise eliminating prisoners. That's something that's frowned upon but... I believe relatively new in the grand scheme of things? Last hundred years or so? Heck, I might be entirely wrong about that. Chemical weapons are banned, we all know that, but again that's last century as well. Bombing hospitals sounds awful, but not sure if it's war-crime-y or not. Really, there are few I know that are set in stone, but I'm sure the Geneva Convention stuff lays it out pretty clearly.

Reinhard Heydrich: Reich Protector,
Holocaust architect, and world record
holder for smallest amount of hair
ever to be parted.

The reason I'm asking is there's a grey area in much of what the Ministry was doing. Much of it (darn near all of it) was decidedly un-British, fueling the fires for all the people that hoped the Ministry would burn to the ground to save the English reputation. One such area was the idea of political assassinations. Is that something that's low on the war-respectability metre, if there was one? Sneaking in and obliterating a main target and sleeking away in the night? The Ministry fell on the side believing it was all part of the game, once more causing a raucous in the more traditional military as they scoffed at the idea. Assassinations were very much on the table. The blowback would be so strong they simply didn't tell M16 what they were doing as it was not going to be received well. Again, the Ungentlemanly would enter the world of the underhanded, backroom machinations that end in bloodshed with little support from the government or military.

As for the target, it couldn't have happened to a worse person. Reinhard Heydrich. The Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He spent some of his time Germanizing the Aryan people there, and the rest of it killing those that weren't. His actions were so astoundingly cruel that Hitler - Hitler! - referred to him as the man with the iron heart. Fortunately for the Ministry he was also perhaps a little cocky. They discovered he went by car to Prague on a regular basis, doing so unescorted save for a driver to demonstrate his lack of fear. What the Allies saw was a lack of preparedness.

The plan was to take two Czechoslovakian men and ambush his vehicle once it was in an empty enough stretch of road. The training was extensive, as well as the planning. They were to be parachuted in with their weapons, befriend the locals, and keep a close enough watch over Heydrich to learn his schedule. To assault the car, they had a new grenade created specifically for it. A tank grenade would have been too heavy, and a regular infantry grenade likely wouldn't have gotten the job done. The people back at Churchill's Toy Shop made them a new one - light enough to throw and heavy enough to do the damage; yet another marvel of engineering that came out of such a small group.

Heydrich, right, seen partying wildly
at a Nazi shindig.

Eventually it was time for the plan to be set in motion, which on the British end was rather simple. They just had to throw the guys out of a plane and let them parachute in. There wasn't much they could do - let alone hear if they survived - as most of these plans went radio silent until they heard back from them again once they escaped. That, or, quite possibly, never hear from them again. Once they were dropped they were on their own, and unfortunately, this time the drop wasn't great. They landed in the wrong spot and one was injured upon landing. Fortunately, they managed to run into some locals who took them in and hid them while they planned. They eventually received a tip that Heydrich was to be leaving for Prague at a specific date and time. It was then they decided they would strike.

The two men planned to lay in wait and attack upon the car's arrival. Unfortunately for them, the target went on a walk with his wife and kids, resulting in an hour long delay of which the assassins didn't anticipate nor understand, making them understandably jumpy. (As a side note, it's really weird when you hear one of these guys has a wife and kids and as a reader you're actively hoping the assassination goes off without a hitch.) Nerves pounding, the assassins finally saw their target. One decided he didn't fully trust the explosive and instead pulled out his gun. When the car was about to pass, he moved to the middle of the street and fired - but the gun didn't go off. It jammed, so much like an exciting plot twist in a movie. Enraged, Heydrich ordered his driver to go and shoot the would-be killer. The other assassin, more trusting of the grenade, tossed it at the vehicle but came up short, hitting the back tire. The explosion was massive, sending shrapnel everywhere, including into the other assassin. Somehow, the grenade didn't manage to kill anyone, ally or enemy. The driver recovered, got out of the vehicle and pulled the trigger on the injured man with the jammed gun - only to discover that his gun jammed as well! Bleeding and in great risk with no weapons to fire, the assassin grabbed a nearby bike and fled. A shooting war broke out with the driver and the remaining assassin, the former pulling out a new pistol. Expecting reinforcements from the Nazi regime due to all the, you know, explosions and gunfire, the last remaining Czech fled as well. 

Heydrich's car, post-bombing. As it turns out,
driving around in a Benz in a bad neighbourhood
would cause you some trouble even back then.

They were to discover later that the shrapnel from the explosion managed to slowly kill Reinhard Heydrich, making for a successful if messy assassination. Sadly, the story doesn't end on a positive note. The two Czechs were under mounting pressure and were eventually found out and killed in a two hour gunfight in a church. In typical Nazi fashion, possible sympathizing villages had their men shot and their women and children gassed. It was an important reminder that while the Ministry was certainly finding successes, there were dire consequences as well.

It was an important lesson to learn. The Ministry had plenty of work yet left to do, and, while I apologize for the rather click-bait style sentence, what would happen next could very well have changed the course of the war.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 4 - Toppling the Tirpitz

The ministry was growing, and new recruits were coming in more frequently than ever. That meant someone had to train these new guys still green in the methods of silence, sneaking, stabbing, and sabotage. Gubbins met with two fellows that were to about to lead a brand new training camp in Scotland for the purposes of providing soldiers for the clandestine war effort. They were two portly men named Eric Sykes and William Fairbairn, both having just come from the rough-and-tumble Shanghai streets fighting against gangs and other tough customers. Both experts in gunplay, they also were trained in martial arts from the place known for martial arts. So, not only could they shoot well, but they were well prepared for those movie moments where two hard to kill people both find themselves unarmed in spite of coming with a personal arsenal and have to duke it out hand-to-hand instead. Excitingly.

If their background wasn't interesting enough, their mannerisms filled the gap. They both had cool nicknames they earned in Shanghai, like the "Shanghai Buster" (Shanghai Shuffler would be way better, and I feel that's a missed opportunity) and "The Deacon" due to one's church-like appearance. Sykes was known for ending every instruction about how to dispatch an enemy with saying "and then kick him in the testicles." They were deliberately brutal, having such training exercises as bringing them to slaughterhouses to stab recently killed animals to get a feel for it before they got to the real thing. It's a good thing they did - they would be putting themselves through much worse real quick.

The Tirpitz, escorted by a number of destroyers. If they
cross paths with your boat, you had better yield the Reich of way.

The highly trained, brutal force of men would be soon put to work against an important target. A gigantic Nazi battleship named the Tirpitz was causing plenty of havoc for the allied war effort in the Atlantic Ocean. Such a powerful ship was too strong to take head on without many casualties, and even then there's a good chance that it would be able to limp back to its captured French harbour of St. Nazaire where it stations and come back just as strong a short time later. Gubbins believed that the best route would be to attack the harbour itself, preventing it from ever being able to lick its wounds and retreat to anywhere other than Germany through waters that were heavily defended by the British.

The problem is the the path to the dock was well defended and not something that could be easily stormed and taken. It would require a fleet, and that was not something that the allied effort could provide, meaning the Tirpitz could run amok. However, there was one other option to reach the dock; a different channel was open once a year due to high tides that led straight to it and was practically unused. The plan was to run an old destroyer in there so packed full of explosives it would set the whole place ablaze, rendering the dock useless. 

The HMS Campbeltown, the boat destined to slam into the dock.
A boattering ram. 

The raid was composed of six hundred men using an old lend-lease boat from the United States as well as a number of transport ships intending to bring the soldiers back after the raid. Filling the whole destroyer with explosives, they timed the detonators on the ship to eight hours from when they left on what was called a pencil fuse. This in itself was risky; a pencil fuse is a detonator that relies on acid slowly and steadily dripping on a piano wire until it breaks through, setting off the explosive. It's super unreliable. A slight disruption or miscalculation could set it off very early or very late, resulting in the ship exploding well before it ever reaches the harbour or well after the Nazis discover it. It had to be timed just right or the results would be catastrophic.

Sneaking through the channel, the boat barely made its way through. The bottom scraped the ground and the men on board feared it just might not make it. One can only imagine the feeling on board; they have an unreliable trigger on a massive, boat-sized explosive, and the darn thing might just get stuck. Lucky for them, it pushed through and the old destroyer found its way into the open water, heading straight towards the dock. They flew a swastika to divert attention for as long as possible, which, as they learned quickly, was not all that long. The ship was quickly found out and the dock started bombarding the boat heavily, but not enough to fully bring it down. 

Oddly enough, this is how things look when they go right for the Ministry
of Ungentlemanly Warfare. I feel there's a "men don't ask for directions"
joke in here somewhere.

Amidst gunfire and explosions, some of which killing those steering the boat, the destroyer managed to reach the dock and slammed heavily into it. It firmly stuck into the caisson (a word I'll readily admit I had to look up, and I'll save you the time by telling you it's the water-proof chamber of a dock) but in order for it to flood properly they had to damage the water pumps inside. The soldiers aboard the boat stormed the dock, firing at the defenders and providing cover for a small team that went underground and searched out the water pumps. Once those were destroyed it was time for a rapid retreat, but the soldiers found the transports to be all but destroyed. The only way out was to run free from the dock and fight through the nearby town, eventually hoping to find their way out. Three quarters of the men were killed or captured, but while the men were being interrogated - and mocked for their foolishness by the Nazis that found them - the explosion went off, completely destroying the dock and obliterating those unfortunate souls that found themselves wandering around confused at the odd raiding tactic of the British troops.

All in all, the raid of St. Nazaire was brutal, swift and effective, wiping out a key dock and rendering the Tirpitz far, far less effective. It was a tipping point, fully bringing many previously skeptical people on board with the new ministry. A traditional assault would have cost countless more lives and have cost far more resources. But there was plenty of fight still in the Nazis, and Gubbins' boys weren't through yet. 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 3 - Expansion and Espionage

After the success of the limpet mine the upstart division of inventors were producing new things left right and centre. They had quite the variety: they produced the first sticky bombs, grenades that glued to tanks and blew shrapnel inside (many thought this too horrible to use, which contributed to much of the blowback on the division); bombs placed under toilet seats; and a bombard, a weapon that essentially shot an explosive barrel to be used against tanks, just to name a few. The lattermost was demonstrated for Churchill himself alongside Charles de Gaulle. Although it almost took off the French general's head, the bombard quite effectively toothpicked the heck out of a tree. Churchill loved it so much he made the inventors an actual division in the hopes of allowing them to circumvent some of the bureaucratic red tape, naming them MD1, the Ministry of Defence.

Charles de Gaulle, pictured with the head that the
members of MD1 would enthusiastically
note wasn't accidently blown off by a bombard while
demonstrating a new weapon. Also pictured:
the most French looking man to ever have existed, right
down to the moustache and the air of snootiness.

Soon, they were allowed to hire 3,000 men, spending much of their resources training the new recruits in all sorts of underhanded fighting. It was often pretty dreadful stuff; one of the ideas was to castrate the Nazi captures and send them back as a method of demoralizing the troops - which, I'll admit, would certainly have the intended effect. Naturally, the type of men to be hired for work like this were frequently criminals and the like, which often would go head-to-head with the brass. One of the officers, for example, played a prank on a generals who thought his training base was impregnable. The officer managed to sneak in and set off an explosive during one of his lectures. It might have been all in good fun, but considering their reputation, it probably set them back a step.

Nevertheless the camp stayed alive, and Churchill tasked the men with preparing for the would-be invasion of Britain. Of course, it ultimately never happened due to the Battle of Britain going in the allies' favour. That meant that they got to turn their sights overseas with the main focus being undermining the Nazi power on the mainland to prepare for the eventual invasion. But before they could get going, they ran into a snag - their headquarters got bombed.

They looked around for a new spot and settled on the Firs. The new location was actually a large house a rich man was selling on the market, which, much to the man's dismay, they confiscated for the purposes of winning the war (he eventually got it back, but not after blowing up most of his lawn, I would assume). The more reserved, classic British nicknamed it "Churchill's Toy Shop" in mockery. Personally, I like the name. It sounds very Willy Wonka-esque, but with a flare for the explosive. And with fewer Oompa Loompas, which is a win for everyone. From here, Churchill dubbed his new group the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare", and told the men to "now set Europe ablaze," using words that are almost comically distinct in the Churchill manner.

The Firs: a most lovely backdrop for the production of
hidden toilet-seat mines and discussions of Nazi castration.
Apologies for the use of the word "castration" now three times
in this blog. Blame history.

With the new change of location came a change in personnel. Gubbins, the tough-as-nails Scotsman, was put in charge of operations and immediately set to work hiring whomever he pleased. He happened to hire almost exclusively women to work in the office, not because he wanted to fool around (at least not entirely, as he was a renowned party animal) but because he simply trusted them more. And he would need that trust, because they were about to undertake their first major espionage operation.

In Pessac, France, there sat a massive electrical transformer. While the power station was itself unimportant, it fueled a submarine factory not far away, meaning that the disruption of the power grid would in turn halt the flow of boats that were of massive consequence in the ongoing ocean battles with the Nazis bent on sinking supplies bound for the warfront. After going for a practice run on a nearby, similar friendly factory they went to work at infiltrating the real thing. After they were parachuted in with their explosives, they found there to be a wall along the perimeter, and while it was shorter than expected the whole thing was lined with sentries.

The whole thing could never have worked without Churchill.
You need a man that would hold a Sten gun with the
same childlike delight of a boy holding a puppy to so
enthusiastically campaign for this stuff.

Fortunately, guard duty is exceedingly boring, and one could imagine that if you went to war to be a soldier you're signing up for the glory of battle (at least the imagined promise of it) rather than standing beside an empty field guarding a big electrical facility. It's hardly a war story to write home about. The espionage force, composed of a small team of the Free French resistance fighters working for Gubbins, watched the sentries for days to discover that those forces of boredom were becoming strong, and complacency had long since set in. They would often leave their posts early, often before midnight. The leader of the operation, Sergeant Forman, simply hopped the fence and unlocked the main gate. They walked right in and found it to be deserted, empty due to the belief in an electrical plant not being the target of parachuting resistance fighters. They planted multiple limpet charges and blew multiple transformers to smithereens, resulting in removing the factory from production for almost a year. The saboteurs got the heck out of there and managed to escape, leaving the guards to be executed for their lack of diligence - as well as a harsh curfew and imprisonment for many of the French people living in Pessac.

The operation was a massive success, and as a result the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was further proving its worth. With Churchill by their side and successes coming through, clandestine warfare was on the up and up.

Even if it wasn't very British.