Wippl Publishes Review of Stejskal’s Special Forces Berlin
Joseph Wippl, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently published a review of Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the US Army’s Elite, 1956–1990 (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia and Oxford, 2017), the latest book from James Stejskal.
Wippl’s review, entitled “Unconventional Warfare in Post-War Germany,” was published in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence on December 8, 2017.
From the text of the review:
James Stejskal tells the important story of a U.S. Army unit formed in Berlin in 1956 that became a model for the Special Forces that are so prevalent in twenty-first century military strategy and deployment. The 100-man unit was called the Offensive Security Platoon, Det A until 1984, and the Physical Security Support Element until its dissolution in 1990. (I refer to the unit as “Det A” throughout even after its 1984 name change.) Although Det A was initially not popular with a regular Army whose history featured large masses of men in combat, it survived and eventually became an inspiration for the Special Forces units that are now completely accepted and widely deployed.
The purpose of Det A was to use Berlin as a springboard to leap behind enemy lines in the event of a Soviet/Warsaw Pact attack on Western Europe. The city of Berlin was surrounded by Communist East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in which upwards of 300,000 Soviet soldiers were stationed, in addition to the regime’s own troops. The Warsaw Pact forces were poised to rapidly envelop and overwhelm Berlin should they be given the go-ahead. Det A’s mission was to react immediately and seek to engage Soviet forces in unconventional warfare behind their lines. The idea was to send 15-man teams, later reduced to 12, to organize and train up to 1,500 resistance fighters. The dozen-man teams were made up of light and heavy weapons experts, demolitions experts, communicators, and medical personnel. All unit members were cross-trained. The personnel selected for Det A were mainly emigrés, primarily Germans and other Central Europeans who could easily blend in with the population in both Berlin and behind enemy lines. The unit’s members had extensive language capabilities and were familiar with the cultures of the Warsaw Pact countries. Their motivation was often stringent anti-Communism, based on their own experiences and those of their families under Soviet-imposed Communist tyranny in Central Europe.
Wippl is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. He spent a 30 year career as an operations officer in the National Clandestine Service (NCS). Wippl has served overseas as an operations officer and operations manager in Bonn, West Germany; Guatemala City; Luxembourg; Madrid, Spain; Mexico City; Vienna, Austria; and Berlin, Germany.