The Secret Origins of the SAS

Summary

Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast: The Secret Origins of the SAS

Episode Title: The Secret Origins of the SAS
Release Date: October 30, 2024
Host: History Hit
Guest: Tom Petsch, Author of Speed, Aggression, Surprise: The Secret Origins of the Special Air Service

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Introduction

In the episode titled "The Secret Origins of the SAS", historian Dan Snow delves into the enigmatic life of Brigadier Dudley Clark, an unsung hero whose innovative strategies laid the foundation for the British Special Air Service (SAS). Joined by Tom Petsch, a former British Army soldier and author, the discussion unravels the covert operations and brilliant deceptions orchestrated by Clark that have had a lasting impact on modern Special Forces.

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Early Life and Influences

Dudley Clark's formative years were shaped by dramatic and tumultuous events. As a baby, he survived the Siege of Ladysmith during the Boer War in South Africa, an experience that seemingly left an indelible mark on his psyche. Clark's athletic fervor continued as he joined the Royal Artillery during World War I, albeit briefly due to his young age, before transitioning to the Royal Flying Corps in Egypt. Here, he was profoundly influenced by Lawrence of Arabia, whose charisma and guerrilla warfare tactics inspired Clark's future strategies.

Dan Snow [05:20]: "Clark was completely taken in by Lawrence of Arabia and his ideas about warfare."

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The Birth of the Commandos

With the outbreak of World War II, Clark emerged as a visionary eager to revolutionize British military tactics. Disillusioned by the high casualties of traditional warfare, he proposed the creation of Commando units—small, highly trained groups capable of executing unconventional operations. This idea caught the attention of General Jack Dill, leading to the swift establishment of the Commandos within weeks.

Tom Petsch [05:51]: "Clark goes, look, I've got this idea, we'll create our own insurgency Groups, we'll call them the Commandos. And by lunchtime that day, they're in business."

Despite resistance from the British military establishment, who were skeptical of such unorthodox methods, Clark's proposal gained momentum, especially with the support of Winston Churchill, who recognized the potential of these elite units in turning the tide against the Axis powers.

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Formation and Evolution of the SAS

Clark's ingenuity didn't stop with the Commandos. Recognizing the limitations of sea-based operations due to the dominance of the Luftwaffe, he pivoted towards parachute operations, advocating for small units to be dropped behind enemy lines—a concept that would evolve into the SAS. This transition faced internal power struggles, notably between the RAF and the Army, but ultimately led to the establishment of the SAS in 1940 under the designation Special Air Service.

Dan Snow [08:01]: "Clark created a parachute unit called 2 Commando... when they transferred to the regular army, they became what was called Special Service troops."

The SAS quickly distinguished itself through daring missions and psychological warfare, utilizing deception to mislead German forces about Allied intentions.

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Mastery of Deception: Operation Cascade and Beyond

One of Clark's most notable contributions was his expertise in military deception. Through operations like Operation Cascade, he successfully misled German commanders about the strength and movements of Allied forces. By fabricating fake units, complete with fake tanks and even a lookalike of General Bernard Law Montgomery, Clark caused significant strategic confusion among the Axis powers.

Tom Petsch [23:57]: "Clark tied dyes a load of tents, black ships them up to the front line, sticks like fake guns out of them and puts them all over the place. The German assessment is we have 300 tanks, which we just don't have at all, waiting behind the front line."

These deceptions extended to creating the illusion of air forces and airborne units, further complicating enemy intelligence assessments. Clark's ability to blend theatricality with military strategy, such as cross-dressing for undercover missions, showcased his unique approach to warfare.

Dan Snow [12:52]: "In every play in the military where there's a female role, Clark is doing the female role. He uses women's clothes in the war as part of his disguise."

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Personal Traits and Leadership

Dudley Clark was not the stereotypical military officer. Described as charismatic and Machiavellian, he balanced his flamboyant personal life with strategic military acumen. His penchant for amateur dramatics and cross-dressing not only aided his deception tactics but also reflected his creative and unorthodox thinking.

Dan Snow [09:11]: "Clark's a 40-year-old bomberville, he's a cross dresser... he's very Bright. He's very, very Machiavellian in his thinking."

Despite his eccentricities, Clark earned the respect of senior officers who valued his innovative solutions to complex military challenges. However, his relentless pursuit of deception sometimes led to friction when operations did not go as planned on the ground.

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Legacy and Post-War Life

After the war, Clark's desire to document his experiences was thwarted by military censorship. His proposed book, "The Secret War", remained unpublished to protect valuable military secrets from Soviet intelligence. Instead, only a limited account was released in his book, "Seven Assignments", leaving many of his contributions in obscurity.

Tom Petsch emphasizes the significance of Clark's work in reshaping modern warfare and the importance of recognizing his contributions.

Tom Petsch [29:53]: "I hope that my book in some small way has lifted his profile. I think he deserves a lot more credit."

Clark's strategies laid the groundwork for future Special Forces operations and highlighted the pivotal role of intelligence and deception in modern military doctrine.

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Conclusion

"The Secret Origins of the SAS" episode sheds light on Dudley Clark's pivotal role in shaping British Special Forces through innovative strategies and masterful deception. His legacy, though long overshadowed by more publicly recognized figures, remains integral to understanding the evolution of modern warfare. Through Tom Petsch's insightful recounting and Dan Snow's engaging narration, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of Clark's military genius and the clandestine operations that have had enduring impacts on global military practices.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dan Snow [05:20]: "Clark was completely taken in by Lawrence of Arabia and his ideas about warfare."
• Tom Petsch [05:51]: "Clark goes, look, I've got this idea, we'll create our own insurgency Groups, we'll call them the Commandos. And by lunchtime that day, they're in business."
• Dan Snow [08:01]: "Clark created a parachute unit called 2 Commando... when they transferred to the regular army, they became what was called Special Service troops."
• Tom Petsch [23:57]: "Clark tied dyes a load of tents, black ships them up to the front line, sticks like fake guns out of them and puts them all over the place. The German assessment is we have 300 tanks, which we just don't have at all, waiting behind the front line."
• Dan Snow [12:52]: "In every play in the military where there's a female role, Clark is doing the female role. He uses women's clothes in the war as part of his disguise."
• Dan Snow [09:11]: "Clark's a 40-year-old bomberville, he's a cross dresser... he's very Bright. He's very, very Machiavellian in his thinking."
• Tom Petsch [29:53]: "I hope that my book in some small way has lifted his profile. I think he deserves a lot more credit."

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About the Hosts and Guest:

• Dan Snow: A renowned historian and the face of History Hit, Dan Snow explores pivotal moments in history to illuminate their impact on the present.
• Tom Petsch: A former British Army soldier and author of "Speed, Aggression, Surprise: The Secret Origins of the Special Air Service", Petsch brings firsthand military experience to his analysis of Clark's contributions.

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Further Listening:

For those intrigued by the origins of Special Forces and military deception, this episode provides a deep dive into the lesser-known aspects of World War II that have shaped modern military tactics. Subscribe to Dan Snow's History Hit for more engaging historical narratives released on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Transcript

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[Tom Petsch]

Hi everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's history. Hit in 1974, an obscure brigadier died. The passing of Dudley Clark was largely unnoticed by the British press and public. But they should have paid attention. Dudley Clark was responsible for some of the most dramatic deception campaigns in the history of warfare. Among other things, the birth of the sas, the Special Air Service, the elite British unit that still forms the core of Britain's Special Forces SF capabilities. Clark had the most extraordinary wartime career. It's a story that he wished to write up in a book called the Secret War, but he was not allowed to publish it. It was thought to contain information so valuable to the new competitors, the new enemy, the Soviets, that its publication was suppressed. And he's been the subject of a book written by Tom Petsch, a former soldier who spent eight years in the British Army. He was both a tank commander and he was a troop commander in the sas. He's written a book called Speed, Aggression, Surprise. The Secret Origins of the Special Air Service. As a baby, Dudley Clark survived the siege of Ladysmith during the Boer War in South Africa. And it seemed like that drama in his life never really let up. He joined the Royal Artillery in the First World War as a teenager was found out to be far too young. He was moved to Egypt for training with the Royal Flying Corps, where he came under the influence of Lawrence of Arabia. He was completely taken in by his charisma and his ideas about warfare. He took part in many forgotten conflicts between the two world wars. And by the time the Second World War broke out, he was the right man in the right place to provide a desperate British government with some wild ideas about to strike back against the dominant Axis. He came up with the idea of the commandos, he came up with the idea of the sas, and he ran some massive deception campaigns right across the Mediterranean, including bringing a lookalike for General Bernard Law Montgomery down to the Mediterranean just as the D Day operation was about to launch in the summer of 1944, confusing the Germans about Allied intentions. He had an extraordinary career, and here's Tom Petsch to tell us all about it. Enjoy.

[Dan Snow]

T minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Tom Petsch]

Tom, thanks very much for coming on the podcast.

[Dan Snow]

No, thank you for having me, Dan. It's great to be here.

[Tom Petsch]

Dudley Clark. We should have heard of Dudley Clark, right? He sounds like he's instrumental in sort of laying the foundations of everything we think of as modern Special Forces.

[Dan Snow]

He is indeed. And actually the reason we've never heard of him is because he was sworn to secrecy after the war and was not able to publish the book he wanted to publish, which was called the Secret War, which would have outlined the creation of Special Forces and then how he used them in deception. But there were little hints. The earliest book about the creation of the sas, which is Virginia Cowles Phantom Major, which is published in the 50s. She has one line in there saying, general Cloud Auchinleck. Turning to David Sterling. To David Sterling, who we assume started the sas, and saying, whatever happens to your project will greatly relieve Clark's burden. So she was aware of it. They were aware of it. It was just a secret.

[Tom Petsch]

And let's go back into his personal history, because the South African milieu is just such an interesting one, right? The end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, the Boer War, so many men who had gone to have very prominent careers in Special Forces, frankly, for the first and Second World wars, emerge from this tough Landscape and political situation.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, I mean, what's interesting about that, of course, Clark was an infant during the Boer War. So the interesting part of that story really is his family were at the Siege of Ladysmith, which was broken by the Boers and then we should have then beaten the Boers. Instead of which they ran off into the veld on ponies, rode around and formed bands called Commandos, which we obviously now know is the name he chose. When he wanted a brand for his special forces in 1940, he chose the name Commandos. And that was his pitch to then Jack Dill, chief in charge of the General Staff. We should have these guys send them back across the Channel and break up the Germans.

[Tom Petsch]

That experience, that memory, even though he was a baby, that memory of the ball, the nature of the fighting, the difficulties caused to regular units by highly trained fighting men with fantastic field craft, bush skills, that was obviously something lingered in his memory.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, I don't think that was the memory. That was the brand name. He chose the Commandos because he needed a name that encapsulated his ideas. His concept, which he developed, it was based on his experiences. So, for example, in the First War, he'd met Lawrence of Arabia. After the war, he'd been a journalist in the Rift War, which is a little known campaign in Northern Morocco in the 1920s, but that was led by a Berber insurgency leader called Abdul Karim. And he went on to become the template for Che Guevara, for Mao Zedong. They all imitated his techniques. Then he was involved in the Palestinian intifada. So when the Arabs revolted. So at the start of the Second World War, he thought rather than fight the Germans face to face direct action, what we should do is something he called subliminal methods. What we need to do is use what I've seen the Arabs do against us. Use what, you know, Abdul Karim was doing with the Berbers, use what the Commandos used against us in the Boer War. Send small groups of men back across the Channel and dissipate the strength of the German army. And that was the pitch that he. The night after the Dunkirk evacuation, you know, when Churchill's giving a speech, you know, wars are what are not won by evacuations. And General Jack Dill, who was a general he'd worked for in Palestine, so both of them knew about, about the pass line insurgency. And Jack deals in the White Office going, look, what are we going to do? How are we going to get back across the Channel? And Clark goes, look, I've got this idea, we'll create our own insurgency Groups, we'll call them the commanders, we'll send them back across the Channel. And of course Dill loves that. And also what he really knows is Winston Churchill, who's an ideas man, will jump on this and he gets him to draft it up that night. Next day, Chief of Staff's meeting. Dill pitches the commando idea and by lunchtime that day, they're in business. Three weeks later they're back across the Channel. Throwing grenades into a hotel in Le Tuque and killing German officers is very crude concept.

[Tom Petsch]

It also, it's a very, I don't know, it's a transgressive one because the British Empire traditionally has been the force against which insurgencies form, Right? And now here's the British Empire not back on its heels, embracing the tactics, the doctrine of the underdog.

[Dan Snow]

Absolutely. And British staff officers hated the name. They hated the name commandos. They tried to disband the name as fast as they could, which in fact is where the name the SAS comes from. Because Clark created a parachute command. I thought, okay, going over the Channel and boats is great. What would be better? So we parachuted small units into France and they came back by submarine. Because the thing about parachute forces is they're very hard to defend against. You've got to take troops out of the front line and put them behind you to defend strong points, headquarters, fuel dumps, and then that will dissipate the strength faster. So he created this parachute unit called 2 Commando. But there was a bit of a power struggle between the RAF who were training them and the army who wanted to get rid of them because they didn't like the fact that these troops weren't going to get used, basically. So the RAF took command of them. And when they transferred from Two Commando out into the regular army, they became what was called Special Service troops. And a staff officer, probably with glee, typed Special Air Service in brackets in about November 1940. And that was the creation of the SAS back before sterling and everyone arrived on the scene.

[Tom Petsch]

What sort of role did Clark play? Because he was in the prime of life. He was in his early 40s by this point. What kind of leader was he?

[Dan Snow]

So Clark's not your David Sterling, Jock Lewis, Paddy Main, kind of shoot him up kind of guy. He's a 40 year old bomberville, he's a cross dresser, which we can talk about. He loves life, he spends a lot of time in London in the Ritz and places like that. He's a good time guy, but he's very well connected. He's very Bright. He's very, very Machiavellian in his thinking. And the senior officers love him and they go to him with all their problems. So Jack Dill gets him to start the Commandos and then, of course, what we know happens a bit later on or shortly after that is the Commandos basically outgrow their usefulness in Britain because Churchill gets very ambitious for the Commandos. So he wants two parachuting commandos, a flying tank, and we're fast forwarding to the commando raid on Dieppe here, the idea that you can go across the Channel and hold a piece of ground for a period of time. So Clark kind of gets moved out of that job because an admiral takes over. At which point a previous boss of his in Palestine, who's General Archibald Wavell, gets in touch and says, look, the Italians are running around in North Africa. I can't cope. And he knows Clark. So get Clark out here. I need Clark to start deceiving the Italians. And then Clark goes out to Africa to repeat what he's done in Britain, which then leads to the creation of Special Air Service in North Africa.

[Tom Petsch]

So it's actually kind of a second iteration of the Special Air Service, I guess.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, it is. I mean, the story of the creation of the SS is more complex than the one we know from sort of TV recently and the books in that. All those stories start in 1941 with the creation of what's called L detachment SAS. But actually the SAS had carried out a combat operation before that in southern Italy. In early 1941, they were parachuted into southern Italy. So this is the outfit Clark created in the UK to take out an aqueduct. And it wasn't a particularly successful operation. But what Clark had by then done is got to North Africa and he decided that he wanted to create fake airborne forces to threaten the Italians. And the Italians actually thought we had airborne forces because at that point the Long Range Desert Group were running around and no one was quite sure how they were getting behind the lines. The Italians thought it was by parachute and they actually captured a diary. British Intelligence got a diary which said, look, the Italians think we have parachutes. Here's this Italian officer saying, last night British parachutes landed close to our lines. So Clark got that bit of intelligence and then he found out we were going to parachute in southern Italy. He went, hang on, this is brilliant. Because actually, an SAS operation in southern Italy would logically get launched from Egypt. Logically, it's closer. It wasn't. It went from RAF Mildenhall to Malta and then they landed in southern Lyttel, it was an extraordinary long range penetration in those days. So he then creates a fake SAS brigade brigade. And worse than that for Mussolini because his ideas are all about what he calls subliminal, subliminal methods. How can I mess with the end mind of the enemy commander? And he thinks what would terrify Mussolini is if I thought, if I pretend the SAS are training insurgents, so that's Abyssinian, who are Ethiopians, to parachute into southern Italy to start an insurgency. Which is not logical. It's not a logical, but he's playing into the mind of a dictator who's scared, who is persecuted and created a genocide against people. So he stages a fake photo shoot and stages a lot of intricate deceptions to create this illusion. There's an SAS brigade operating in Egypt and then when that real operation goes off, Mussolini freaks out, goes, oh my word, they've really got SAS parachutists in North Africa. They're really training insurgents. They're really going to drop them in southern Italy. It's all fake. The whole thing's fake.

[Tom Petsch]

And is that you mentioned as a cross dresser? He was, he loved drama, he loved taking part in amateur dramatics. He cross dresses that. Is this one of the great examples of these? Well, these hugely creative eccentric minds finding their role, having their moments in this war of deception.

[Dan Snow]

Absolutely. I'm convinced he would have been a filmmaker, screenwriter had he not been in the military. His brother, in fact Tibby Clark, became an Oscar winning screenwriter for the Ealing comedies. So but he, Clark, if you look, he was into amateur dramatics. If you look at photographs in his family files, in every play in the military where there's a female role, Clark is doing the female role. He's in the dress, you know, at Sandhurst and everywhere. I think he loved women and he loved women's clothes. And the problem that he hit on was he was using women's clothes in the war as part of his disguise. Quite often he went undercover and he was picked up in Madrid. This is where people who do know this story will know there's a picture of him in a dress and him in a suit. And that was in Madrid where he was trying to deceive the Germans about the timing of an attack in the desert, which was called Operation Crusader. And he kind of went in there loan and he got picked up in a dress. And of course then, you know, the proverbial hit the fan because Churchill went, what's this guy doing? You know, he, Churchill knows exactly who he is. He's been captured by the fascist Spanish police, they have to hand him back. But at that point, Churchill wants him back in the UK to face the music. General Cloud Auchinleck, who's his commander in Cairo, wants him back out there. And Churchill wins. And in that tussle, he's shipped back to face the music in the uk, which in those days would have been risky because, you know, if they confused cross dressing with homosexuality, so he could have faced a jail sentence, he could have been cashiered, anything. But as luck would have it, he was being shipped back to the UK when the ship was taken out by a torpedo. He was rescued, sent back to Gibraltar, but didn't tell anyone. He survived, got on a Catalina flying boat and flew back through the gale that Sir David Stirling parachutes into the desert. Now his fake SAs are becoming real as he flies through this gale back to Cairo. And then of course, when he gets back to Cairo, General Claudette doesn't care if he wears a dress. He just thinks he's doing a brilliant job.

[Tom Petsch]

That is amazing. I love that. And one of the reasons that Wavell loves him, presumably, is this extraordinary moment, his kind of first big success, which is also a bit of a failure. This fake invasion of Italian Somaliland.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, absolutely. So Wavell's problem is he's putting out fires all around the Mediterranean, all around North Africa. The Italians have got too many troops. The first thing he gets Clark to do is create a fake invasion force of East Africa, which is incredibly successful but slightly misfires because the Italians think they're really coming, then start to move their troops in an unexpected direction. So it's a brilliantly successful deception that causes the British a few problems. But it clearly indicates to Clark that he can sell into the Italians the idea that we have forces we don't have and we're moving forces in a direction that we're not doing. And then that will lead shortly to the creation of the Special Air Service Brigade.

[Tom Petsch]

You listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about the man behind the birth of the sas. More coming up.

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[Dan Snow]

Did you get those social media posts.

[Tom Petsch]

Scheduled for the seal migration?

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[Tom Petsch]

Let'S come on to that now because then people have seen this recently in today. I've heard about this on the podcast, but also seen it on big smash hit TV shows and stuff. So it's May 1941. Clark comes across David Sterling who's a frustrated he was a commando, right? So he was a product of an earlier Clark idea.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. So the commandos that Clark has left the commandos behind in England, they are commanded by Admiral. They've outgrown his initiative. So the commandos are not really now what I'd call a special force. They're big battalions, brigade groupings. Churchill wants them sailing around and smashing up German Italian coastlines and he ships out a group of them under command of a guy called Bob Laycock to North Africa to carry out those sort of operations. The problem is by the Time they get to the Mediterranean, the Luftwaffe are completely dominant. So the commanders cannot go by sea. Their ships get blown up. And this leads to a group of them who are nicknamed the Blue Bloods, the eight Commando, who are basically Bob Laycocks, recruited them through the club Whites in London. They're his mates. They're people like George Delico, David Sterling, Karen Mather. The fittest man off the boat, by his own description is a guy called Jock Lewis who has no time for the rest of them. And we know that he is instrumental in creating the real SAS anyway. But yes, David Stone's kicking his heels. Jock Lewis realizes that we're not going to get behind the lines on boats. The timeline is difficult because we don't have actually diaries to support this. But from what happens, it looks like Jock Lewis first goes to Bob lacock and goes, can I parachute? Now, the thing about Bob Laycock, Bob Laycock at that time is working with Clark. They are in a CO located headquarters virtually and Bob Laycock clearly goes to Clark. Can we get some parachutes? Now Clark is faking the SAS and he's only too happy to sponsor Jock Lewis to carry out, you know, a parachute training jump because he wants real parachutists parachuting over Cairo. He's already got fake parachuters parachuting over Cairo, now he wants real ones. So the parachutes Jock Lewis uses belong to something called K Detachment, sas. A little bit complicated, but that is a fake outfit that fakes balsa wood gliders and throws bundles out of airplanes. And it's Jock Lewis who goes up to a place called Fooker Airfield to carry out that jump. However, Sterling gets in on this act, presumably through the Shepherd's Hotel network. And he also goes up there, having spoken to Clark. And the two of them then become instrumental now in creating the real unit, the real sas.

[Tom Petsch]

And so this is a strange story, isn't it? It's a unit that comes into being initially as a deception, as a complete fake.

[Dan Snow]

And if you look at the first meeting of the sas, so Sterling drafts up a memo which is actually in Clark's ABEAM file. So that's the fake SAS file, which is the pitch for the SA sas. And the primary purpose of the sas, what's becomes called L Detachment is it's a training outfit. Clark doesn't give us stuff. Whether this outfit ever carries out an operation. What he wants is the illusion that we are training parachutists outside Cairo. And so then there's a meeting in General Headquarters, Cairo, attended by Clark and Sterling, in which this discussion goes ahead, you can imagine staff officers going, oh we can't support this, you know, all this sort of rubbish. The RF don't know anything about it. It's a typical sort of high up staff officer type meeting of the era where everyone's trying to block the creation of the sas. But in that meeting what's very clear that has been sponsored is that a training unit is going to get created. It's going to carry out parachute training down by Suez and that's what's going to happen. Sterling obviously has greater ambitions and that then leads to what then happens next.

[Tom Petsch]

And then once the SAS comes into existence again, a bit like the commanders, does it outgrow Clark fairly soon? Does he lose any kind of operational control over them?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, so the operational control, and this is very really important for Special Forces. Operational control always rests with the Force Commando. So from the day that Clark walks into Jack Dill's office in Whitehall to the day that he creates the SAS with General Claude Auchinleck in Stirling, in Cairo, the control of the Special Force is always with the force commander. And really that is something I think people don't fully comprehend is the idea that what's important about this unit is it's really tough. Yes, they're really tough and obviously we go on to have selection things like that. But what's unique about a Special Force is its command and control, that it's a strategic unit. So you're right, the command rests with the force commander. Clark is still heavily involved though in terms of using their operations in deception and also sometimes where they are going to carry out operations.

[Tom Petsch]

And so he's watching his baby grow and develop and leave home. What else is Clark up to? He does this extraordinary, another big deception campaign, doesn't he, in North Africa, is it OP Cascade?

[Dan Snow]

Yes. So what Clark realizes straight away, having created the SAS brigade and got the Germans to swallow the fact we have roughly 500 parachutists, 1,500 glider troops in North Africa. So they've swallowed this. It appears in Germans intelligence and Axis intelligence, so the Italians believe it. He thinks, well this is good. What would be better is to build this out. How about some fake tank regiments? So he rolls out three. Basically what happens in the war is every time there's a crisis, British command go, Clark, get over here. So they, Rommel's advancing and Clark gets called to the office, goes we've got to stop him. We can't stop him, Clark, what can you do? Clark goes, well I could Create some fake RTR units, Royal Tank Regiment units, stick them behind the front line. That might slow him down. It's a bit of a rush job. He can only build 150 fake tanks. But then he thinks, well, hang on, the Germans hide their Panzers in Bedouin tents, so if they do that, they might believe we do the same. So he tie dyes a load of tents, black ships them up to the front line, sticks like fake guns out of them and puts them all over the place. And the German assessment is we have 300 tanks, which we just don't have at all, waiting behind the front line. And the indication is Rommel stops his advance onto Brooke. And Clark, in his own assessment, thinks that might be because of his deception. I think he's possibly right.

[Tom Petsch]

It's extraordinary, isn't it? And we know from the American Civil War and first and particularly second World War with the deception campaign before D day, the giant fake army group in Kent did deceptions, could have a very real impact on the course of the war.

[Dan Snow]

And this was a bit of a discovery in my research because I did not know this cascade is basically the start of what becomes the 12th Army. So the 12th army, at the time of the invasion of Sicily, we pretend we have a fake army. Well, Clark starts that in 1941 and he builds more and more units. It gets out of hand. He has to send out memos around the Mediterranean to tell everyone which fake unit is where. He has a monthly distribution of where the fake unit the Germans are going. Why haven't they used their parachute division, division of parachute? Why is that still in the eastern Mediterranean? So cut to, like Operation Mincemeat, which we know about, which is the deception of the body to deceive the Germans that we are not going to land on Sicily. That is part of a much bigger deception. Because what's really important is that it's believable that we can land in Greece at the same time as the Western Mediterranean. And that is all Clock's fake army. Fake army, fake double agents. And he's got Special Forces running around, the SBS are up in Peloponnese busting stuff up. The RF are gunning down shipping around the Greek islands. He sends an SAS team into Sardinia. So, like, Sardinia is part of the deception. So that's all great. So he draws all the attention away from Sicily. He doesn't really agree with Mincemeat because he thinks the problem with mincemeat is the Germans are going to twig the moment we go ashore. They've been duped, which they do. But what's great about his deception is Hitler still believes we're going to go to Greece and he sends Rommel down there even after we're ashore in Sicily. And that's Clark's deception. What started with the Cascade.

[Tom Petsch]

Yeah, there must be some senior officers who just thought this man Clark is running amok. You can't start armies. And I mean he's like pulling the strings right across the Mediterranean. He must have been in a way, quite a difficult figure to manage.

[Dan Snow]

This is the interesting thing because obviously there are difficult figures in this story. You know, Sterling's obviously an absolute maniac in terms of he's all over the shop. But Clark's not like that. You look at. I think the senior officers just know that he is the man to go to for the alternative solution for the indirect approach for what he calls his preliminary methods. So if you take an example of like after we land in Italy, Alexander is then stuck. We get stuck at the southern heel of Italy basically that winter. And they call in Clark, they go, well, we've got to land in Anzio, Clark, what can we do? And Clark goes, well, logically you wouldn't land in Anzio, you'd land further north. So I'll fake an invasion of the north of it, Italy. And he plays directly into the hands of the Germans. Because Rommel's own assessment is we will cut Italy off across the Po Valley, which is right at the north of Italy and that will circumvent the whole war in Italy. Basically we'll just take out the whole of Italy out of the war. And because the Germans often Clark's plans are better than the real plan. So Anzio is a one step deal. Clark steps one step further and Rommel thinks we're going to go to the top. So the Germans buy that, they move all their forces north. And of course we know, we go ashore Anzio for two days, nothing happens. The Germans are in the wrong place. Now we know that all goes wrong because we don't move. But that's not Clark's fault. And I think there's a thing where Clark must have had got frustrated because he delivers these solutions, these amazing deceptions and then on the ground they get slightly messed up because nobody moves quite fast enough. Not as fast as his mind does anyway.

[Tom Petsch]

It's interesting that Clark is good at using the assessments of the enemy to provide them with evidence for those.

[Dan Snow]

Yes. And he says the Germans are easier to deceive than the Italians. Probably because the Italians you know, Machiavelli was an Italian. So the Italians are much more suspicious than the Germans. I think what's good about the Germans assessments they quite like. For example, there's another fake he does early in the war where he promotes a brigadier to a general. Well, in the German intelligence assessment, a general commands a division. You would not promote a man to a rank he does not hold for troops, he doesn't command. And this guy was the commander of Cyprus. But Clark knows he commands virtually nothing. But he makes him a general because that's going to work in the Germans minds. And similarly, he creates a fake Monty. You know, I was Monty's double, was one of Clark's plays again in Italy.

[Tom Petsch]

Well, to tell us about that, what's he do? He creates a lookalike from Montgomery.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, he's in a cinema again in Italy. This is just after he's created the Anzio fake landings. And then he's in a cinema, he's watching, I think it's called Three Grades Past Cairo. And he sees on the screen a Royal Tanks officer. Bloody hell, that looks like Montgomery. I could cast him, have him wander around the Mediterranean and around the time the Normandy lands. They probably buy that. And they do. Clark meets him in Gibraltar and makes sure that the major German spy in Spain is in the embassy as he arrives. So Montes cortege pulls into the British Embassy and the spy runs out to tell the Germans that Montes just arrived in the Mediterranean. They're definitely landing in the Med first. And then that story runs and then he has to hide him and smuggle him back to England. But that is a true story and that was Clark.

[Tom Petsch]

I imagine the post war Clark's life would have been rather boring.

[Dan Snow]

I think it was. And also I think sadly frustrating because he's done all this great stuff. And he does publish one book which is called Seven Assignments. Some of that is redacted. So he goes in that book, he goes on a mission to a neutral country which everyone assumed was Spain was actually Ireland. And that book stops in 1940 when this starts to get really interesting. And he wants to write a subsequent book called the Secret War. And he's prevented from doing it by the War Office. They go, no, we want this for the Russians. And it's a bit like the Enigma code, which is the fact we broke the Germans code that wasn't declassified until the 1970s. And neither was Clark stuff. But it was never really published. No one wrote about it, no one assessed it. And so he just got frustrated watching Operation Mincemeat become a movie. It was back then called the man who Never Was. And then he sees the Montes double. That actor writes a book, then it becomes a movie. And he's just sitting there on the sidelines going, well, this is my stuff, and it's all coming out that I'm getting no credit.

[Tom Petsch]

Well, I'm glad that he's now getting the credit he deserves. I mean, this is just a great example of a historian going back and reviving people's reputations in the past who died in obscurity.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, I mean, I hope that my book in some small way has lifted his profile. I think he deserves a lot more credit. And also, hopefully things will spin out. More books, more films, whatever comes from this, it'd be great to see more of him.

[Tom Petsch]

Tom, can I ask a question? You were a tanky, you served in tanks, but you're also in sf. We're so obsessed with people like Clark and Sterling and Special Forces during World War II. Do we forget about the poor buggers who drove tanks from A to B? It's all very well with the deception and this, that and the other, but someone's got to drive a tank up a beach and secure some territory. Right. And fight for that hilltop town in Sicily or grab hold of those day one objectives in Normandy. How do you feel having lived both those two roles in the armed forces? Where's the balance? How should we think about the Second World War?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, I think people are attracted to the very interesting, glamorous Special Forces role. People love the spies, but in a way, Clark's own story, I mean, the reason he created all of this was he had lost a lot of friends in the First World War, so he wanted to avoid the mass character of the First World War. So his whole idea here was to do things a different way. Rather than fighting directly against the Germans, he thought he could save the lives of the tankers of the infantry going ashore, Anzio and Sicily by using these indirect methods. So that was his entire motivation. So kind of what I think is we obviously want to commemorate, we want to talk about the tank commanders. But this was a revolution in warfare that occurred during the Second World War. This was a completely new way of fighting wars. And if you look at what happened post war, Special Forces became the main play, really. And deception, because we couldn't have big standing armies. Governments don't like putting boots on the ground. That's a terrible idea, generally, anyway. And Special Forces and deception operations have become much more popular politically. So, yeah, it's an interesting question, Dan.

[Tom Petsch]

Well, Tom, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. What is the book called?

[Dan Snow]

It's called Speed Aggression Surprise, the Secret Origins of the sas.

[Tom Petsch]

Thank you very much indeed, Tom, for coming on.

[Dan Snow]

Thanks, Dan. Thanks very much. To get people excited about Boost Mobile's.

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