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Time for another WW2 discussion on a topic that comes up now and again.

So, special forces, were they worth it?

By special forces, I include the following: SAS, Commandos, First Special Service Force, Brandenburg Commandos, Long Range Desert Group, SOE agents, OSS Agents, Abwehr agents, and to a lesser extent, specialist assault troops of the US Rangers on D-Day, and maybe even certain German Paratrooper units in 1940 for attacking Belgian forts. Now, I'm no expert, it's likely that I've missed one or two out. and I admit I have absolutely no idea if the Soviet Union, Japan, Italy, France, or even Poland, had Special Forces. Feel free to make the case for any unit that you think should be in here.

Now, one good argument against Special Forces is the way they stripped men from regular units who would have been first class NCOs and junior officers. And given that WW2 was ultimately decided on battlefields by regular units, or even in the air with strategic bombing, it does seem to be a waste of good fighting men who could have been better employed at the front line. I take nothing away from these brave men, but when you read about the early days of the SAS and some of the debacles that they suffered, you wonder if it was worth it...

What does dakka think?

I think modern warfare... no, sorry, need to start again.

I think the warfare model of WWII required both special forces units and line units. Specialized insertion and operations saved a lot of time and lives, and opened up routes for regular units.

Debacles and losses happen in warfare. That isn't really avoidable, despite press and public scrutiny and opinions. Your soldiers are highly trained and disciplined but so are theirs. At least in wars against other nations with equally modern equipment and tactics.

Voss wrote:
I think the modern warfare... no, sorry, need to start again.

I think the warfare model of WWII required both special forces units and line units. Specialized insertion and operations saved a lot of time and lives, and opened up routes for regular units.

Debacles and losses happen in warfare. That isn't really avoidable, despite press and public scrutiny and opinions. Your soldiers are highly trained and disciplined but so are theirs. At least in wars against other nations with equally modern equipment and tactics.

Yes and No for me. As an example, I was reading about British Commandos in WW2. Hard as nails, those men. But it took months to train them, and a ton of money spent on equipment and transport. And then they spend weeks sitting around doing feck all, because mission after mission is getting scrubbed or plans are being changed, and at the same time, the regular British Army in North Africa is getting an ass whooping from Rommel, and is retreating back to Egypt, and I'm thinking that 2000 crack troops would make a hell of a lot of difference to the 8th Army...

I think WWII, like a lot of wars, involved shifting battlefield dynamics that were often poorly or haphazardly understood by the people fighting it.

Did special forces contribute to the war?

Yes.

US Army Rangers did a lot of stuff in the war that more general troops would have struggled with, particularly at Anzio and Point Du Hoc. Establishing a program to train highly skilled troops for very difficult tasks is basic common sense.

Unfortunately, commanders in the field didn't understand how to use these troops a lot of the time. The 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were squandered in North Africa by poor command decisions and ultimately captured. Even after the successful landings of Anzio, rangers in the First Special Service Force were again squandered, leading to most, again, being captured. The Dieppe raid in 1942 was in most ways an unmitigated disaster. It's only real success was teaching lessons that would come in handy years later during Operation Overlord.

I'm less versed in the history of British Commandos, but what I do know suggest similar events. Highly trained for specialized tasks, and mostly squandered by commanders who didn't really seem to know what to do with them. Similar happened to the US Army Tank Destroyer Force, who never really got used the way they were intended to be.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Voss wrote:
I think the modern warfare... no, sorry, need to start again.

I think the warfare model of WWII required both special forces units and line units. Specialized insertion and operations saved a lot of time and lives, and opened up routes for regular units.

Debacles and losses happen in warfare. That isn't really avoidable, despite press and public scrutiny and opinions. Your soldiers are highly trained and disciplined but so are theirs. At least in wars against other nations with equally modern equipment and tactics.

Yes and No for me. As an example, I was reading about British Commandos in WW2. Hard as nails, those men. But it took months to train them, and a ton of money spent on equipment and transport. And then they spend weeks sitting around doing feck all, because mission after mission is getting scrubbed or plans are being changed, and at the same time, the regular British Army in North Africa is getting an ass whooping from Rommel, and is retreating back to Egypt, and I'm thinking that 2000 crack troops would make a hell of a lot of difference to the 8th Army...

war is 90 % of the time sitting around doing feck all for regular soldiers. Also commandos are like an investment, you want to make sure it's only used when needed. Overall their value is dificult to determine.

Also there are issues with elite units, mostly due to them lacking in line troops, take a look at the Sturmtruppen for Germany in WW1, made up of the Veterans, specially trained and experienced aswell as well motivated. Problem is they were picked out of squads and units lowering the overall quality and the impact they had as a leading figure and teacher in the mostly greener new units.

Also there are programms f.e. that were just bad (Werwolf, cough cough).

 LordofHats wrote:
I think WWII, like a lot of wars, involved shifting battlefield dynamics that were often poorly or haphazardly understood by the people fighting it.

Did special forces contribute to the war?

Yes.

US Army Rangers did a lot of stuff in the war that more general troops would have struggled with, particularly at Anzio and Point Du Hoc. Establishing a program to train highly skilled troops for very difficult tasks is basic common sense.

Unfortunately, commanders in the field didn't understand how to use these troops a lot of the time. The 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were squandered in North Africa by poor command decisions and ultimately captured. Even after the successful landings of Anzio, rangers in the First Special Service Force were again squandered, leading to most, again, being captured. The Dieppe raid in 1942 was in most ways an unmitigated disaster. It's only real success was teaching lessons that would come in handy years later during Operation Overlord.

I'm less versed in the history of British Commandos, but what I do know suggest similar events. Highly trained for specialized tasks, and mostly squandered by commanders who didn't really seem to know what to do with them. Similar happened to the US Army Tank Destroyer Force, who never really got used the way they were intended to be.

Good points. The US Army Ranger specialists who scaled the cliffs at D-Day, were definitely needed, and the British Commandos who blew up St Nazaire Dry docks, went above and beyond.

But these seem to be the exceptions. The assassination attempts on Rommel in North Africa were a shambles, the attack on Reinhart Heydrich almost went horribly wrong, and in many ways it did with the consequences, the Dieppe raid that you mention was a debacle, and the SAS operating in Southern France before D-Day were killed and captured to a man. That was a clusterfeth of epic proportions.

I would argue that the only group that were really worth the money were the Long Range Desert Group. They monitored German convoys, drew up maps, and inserted SAS teams. They were very effective.


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Not Online!!! wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Voss wrote:
I think the modern warfare... no, sorry, need to start again.

I think the warfare model of WWII required both special forces units and line units. Specialized insertion and operations saved a lot of time and lives, and opened up routes for regular units.

Debacles and losses happen in warfare. That isn't really avoidable, despite press and public scrutiny and opinions. Your soldiers are highly trained and disciplined but so are theirs. At least in wars against other nations with equally modern equipment and tactics.

Yes and No for me. As an example, I was reading about British Commandos in WW2. Hard as nails, those men. But it took months to train them, and a ton of money spent on equipment and transport. And then they spend weeks sitting around doing feck all, because mission after mission is getting scrubbed or plans are being changed, and at the same time, the regular British Army in North Africa is getting an ass whooping from Rommel, and is retreating back to Egypt, and I'm thinking that 2000 crack troops would make a hell of a lot of difference to the 8th Army...

war is 90 % of the time sitting around doing feck all for regular soldiers. Also commandos are like an investment, you want to make sure it's only used when needed. Overall their value is dificult to determine.

Also there are issues with elite units, mostly due to them lacking in line troops, take a look at the Sturmtruppen for Germany in WW1, made up of the Veterans, specially trained and experienced aswell as well motivated. Problem is they were picked out of squads and units lowering the overall quality and the impact they had as a leading figure and teacher in the mostly greener new units.

Also there are programms f.e. that were just bad (Werwolf, cough cough).

Slightly OT, but I don't mind, and it's kinda relevant, but wasn't the Storm Troopers biggest problem in WW1 being the lack of vehicles, and not their lack of numbers? They obviously had to travel on foot, which limited their effective distance travelled each day, but had they been motorised, who knows how history could have changed...

Exceptions always stand out in wars. That doesn't mean the rest were useless. Even debacles and reserves have an impact on how things play out.

Your analysis seems to focused on a 'what if' of the narrative of the war, and not the reality as it actually happened.

Elite infantry units are always a difficult thing to use. Even today where they ave never been as useful, they are still difficult to use correctly. The main problem is that the men (and now a handful women) who serve in those units are all exceptional people, they are easily in the top 1% of young adults in terms of athletism and they aren't dull either. Their training takes a long time and they aren't easy to replace so you don't want to sacrifice them uselessly. That means these units will sit in reserve for a large part of any open war conflict. They might become essential to some limited and specialised operation at some point though. In anti-insurgency missions like those modern first world nation participate, they are invaluable and the fact that helicopters and air support are now much more advanced allows such small forces to be used more efficently then in WWII. During the second WW (and a bit in the first where those units started to appear), they proved to be useful. We can't say how an army who would have used those men as junior officers and NCO would have fared (probably fine), but the idea of regrouping them to form units capable of unconventional operations wasn't a bad idea.

Voss wrote:
Exceptions always stand out in wars. That doesn't mean the rest were useless. Even debacles and reserves have an impact on how things play out.

Your analysis seems to focused on a 'what if' of the narrative of the war, and not the reality as it actually happened.

I can buy some of the argument that in warfare, somebody or something has to be the first, be it planes, tanks, submarines, whatever, and yeah, there's always been problems when they first take to the battlefield, as new ideas and technology take time to be properly understood.

But with Special forces, even after 1-2 years of use and deployment in WW2, they weren't getting bang for the buck, as you guys say in America. A lot of British operations were still amateur hour in many respects.

Slightly OT, but I don't mind, and it's kinda relevant, but wasn't the Storm Troopers biggest problem in WW1 being the lack of vehicles, and not their lack of numbers? They obviously had to travel on foot, which limited their effective distance travelled each day, but had they been motorised, who knows how history could have changed...

No the problem was with the troops that came afterwards, which should destroy strongpoints and the lack of supply.

Ironically the first suggestion for a propper tank was by one Burstyn called the Motorgeschütz , he was a AH pioneer and ingenieursoldier


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epronovost wrote:
Elite infantry units are always a difficult thing to use. Even today where they ave never been as useful, they are still difficult to use correctly. The main problem is that the men (and now a handful women) who serve in those units are all exceptional people, they are easily in the top 1% of young adults in terms of athletism and they aren't dull either. Their training takes a long time and they aren't easy to replace so you don't want to sacrifice them uselessly. That means these units will sit in reserve for a large part of any open war conflict. They might become essential to some limited and specialised operation at some point though. In anti-insurgency missions like those modern first world nation participate, they are invaluable and the fact that helicopters and air support are now much more advanced allows such small forces to be used more efficently then in WWII. During the second WW (and a bit in the first where those units started to appear), they proved to be useful. We can't say how an army who would have used those men as junior officers and NCO would have fared (probably fine), but the idea of regrouping them to form units capable of unconventional operations wasn't a bad idea.

The problem with Elite soldiers is, they might win the skirmish 95% off the time, but in conventional warfare, the sheere masses involved lead to bigger less trained Elite infantry out of necessity.
For now as counter insurrgents and anti terrorist duty they are easy to maintain, in a propper battle they are irrelevant, so to speak.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
But with Special forces, even after 1-2 years of use and deployment in WW2, they weren't getting bang for the buck, as you guys say in America. A lot of British operations were still amateur hour in many respects.

1-2 years isn't a lot. In fact, it's very little. After four years, many officers in WWI still struggled to understand the nature of trench warfare. Today, even after more then 20 years, our forces are still improving in counter-insurgency strategies and training. Training againt nuclear and chemical warfare is still very much in development even after 60 years of development and inclusion of women in the ranks is still a thing in progress even after over a decade. The army can be a very slow thing to adapt as its not only a machine, an industry and a fighting force. It's also a culture.

epronovost wrote:
Elite infantry units are always a difficult thing to use. Even today where they ave never been as useful, they are still difficult to use correctly. The main problem is that the men (and now a handful women) who serve in those units are all exceptional people, they are easily in the top 1% of young adults in terms of athletism and they aren't dull either. Their training takes a long time and they aren't easy to replace so you don't want to sacrifice them uselessly. That means these units will sit in reserve for a large part of any open war conflict. They might become essential to some limited and specialised operation at some point though. In anti-insurgency missions like those modern first world nation participate, they are invaluable and the fact that helicopters and air support are now much more advanced allows such small forces to be used more efficently then in WWII. During the second WW (and a bit in the first where those units started to appear), they proved to be useful. We can't say how an army who would have used those men as junior officers and NCO would have fared (probably fine), but the idea of regrouping them to form units capable of unconventional operations wasn't a bad idea.

A good point, a good argument

but I was looking at some interesting stats about WW1 and WW2. Many people talk about the best rifle, the best tank, or whatever, and then you read that 50% of ALL casualties in WW1 were from artillery. 99.9% of soldiers never saw or heard the shell that killed them, for obvious reasons. And it's a similar number for WW2.

And then you look at WW2 Commandos, and the time and effort needed to bow up a fuel dump along the French coast by Commandos, and I'm thinking that in a total war situation, it doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

I totally buy the argument of small groups operating ahead of the main force: Germans capturing Belgian forts in 1940, or German Commandos capturing key bridges in the early days of Barbarossa, and then waiting for the Panzers to turn up to relieve them...

But some Special Forces missions in WW2 were pure crackpot, and the net result was highly trained and capable troops spending a lot of time in a POW camp, and I'm thinking what a waste.

I think they were (and are) worth the effort

in WWII especially they were pretty low in numbers so although the individuals involved would have been decent NCOs if left in place its not as if even a significant minority were pulled out of regular units

although I agree with you that there were not used terribly effectively in many cases (I'd say the LRDG in North Africa was one of the successes especially where they were let go to basically design their own role)

and in modern armies special forces of all sorts give a reason for people to work a lot harder to try and get in (and since lots don't you end up with a better trained and experienced regular force too)


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and they're just the sort of troops you'll reach for in a high risk high reward situation where a success (tricky thought it would be to achive) would make a real difference in time/lives saved

which tends to lead to an apparent high failure rate and death/POW status for the troops involved, but even so if only 1 in 10 of the opps work you're probably 'up' overall


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also i'd suspect that even historically we only hear about the big special forces successes not the smaller but equally important ones,

but hear about all the occasions when they failed simply because they are so often in pretty crazy opperations

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I think they were (and are) worth the effort

in WWII especially they were pretty low in numbers so although the individuals involved would have been decent NCOs if left in place its not as if even a significant minority were pulled out of regular units

although I agree with you that there were not used terribly effectively in many cases (I'd say the LRDG in North Africa was one of the successes especially where they were let go to basically design their own role)

and in modern armies special forces of all sorts give a reason for people to work a lot harder to try and get in (and since lots don't you end up with a better trained and experienced regular force too)


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and they're just the sort of troops you'll reach for in a high risk high reward situation where a success (tricky thought it would be to achive) would make a real difference in time/lives saved

which tends to lead to an apparent high failure rate and death/POW status for the troops involved, but even so if only 1 in 10 of the opps work you're probably 'up' overall


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also i'd suspect that even historically we only hear about the big special forces successes not the smaller but equally important ones,

but hear about all the occasions when they failed simply because they are so often in pretty crazy opperations

Ironically, the LRDG only happened because of an accident of fate: the founder missed his boat, got stuck in Cairo, and was spotted by someone who knew General Wavell, and the rest is history...

in terms of demolition of targets, yes. one specialist unit could blow up a target that bombing raids would have to drop hundreds of bombs to hit.

The Abwehr were utterly [Expletive Deleted]ing useless. SOE were very necessary. Ditto SMERSH.

I don't know enough to venture an opinion on the others.

I may have missed it (just skimmed above posts) but the various raider units in the Pacific did a fantastic job of keeping Japanese land forces occupied and messing up logistics lines which greatly enabled the over all island hopping campaign.

Some of the UDT and other beach reconnaissance teams REALLY did a lot, helping to determine suitable landing approaches and clearing obstacles and such.

I'm a fan. Just the threat of a commando or SAS or other group operating tied up lots of German security forces to guard potential targets.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
The Abwehr were utterly [Expletive Deleted]ing useless. SOE were very necessary. Ditto SMERSH.

I don't know enough to venture an opinion on the others.

In all honesty, I'm not 100% sure about the Abwehr. Were they bad because they were genuinely incompetent, or were they deliberately bad, because a lot of them were anti-Nazi, and thus, deliberately screwed up?

I don't know...


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 CptJake wrote:
I may have missed it (just skimmed above posts) but the various raider units in the Pacific did a fantastic job of keeping Japanese land forces occupied and messing up logistics lines which greatly enabled the over all island hopping campaign.

Some of the UDT and other beach reconnaissance teams REALLY did a lot, helping to determine suitable landing approaches and clearing obstacles and such.

I'm a fan. Just the threat of a commando or SAS or other group operating tied up lots of German security forces to guard potential targets.

I forgot about the Pacific.

But to address your point about German security forces: from what I've read, most of them seemed to be second or third line units, or injured soldiers getting back in the saddle, so if Commandos are tying these guys down, is it a great loss to the Germans? Fair enough if it were quality divisions, but green troops? . I'm not totally convinced by that argument.

And coming back to one of my original questions to everybody, because there's a lot of knowledgeable folk on dakka, but did the Russians, the Japanese, or the Italians have Special Forces in WW2? I know the Italians had them in WW1.


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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
in terms of demolition of targets, yes. one specialist unit could blow up a target that bombing raids would have to drop hundreds of bombs to hit.

I'm usually wrong on these things

but I can't think of many vital targets that were blown up by Special Forces in WW2 from either side.

The Italian special forces were, from what I remember, excellent throughout all of WW2; overall Italy's problem seemed to be that they had potato-tier commanders commanding excellent soldiers. Their scuba divers both before and during the war were top of the line, and I seem to remember something about Italian mountain troops performing well in the Caucasus, although I can't find anything right now with a quick Google.

Then there's Company Linge, the Norwegian commando-trained resistance fighters. The heavy water saboteurs who hit Rjukan are the most famous, but Jan Baalsrud takes the cake. Just read his Wikipedia page, the stuff he lived through is just stupid. There's an excellent 2017 Norwegian movie on his mission ("The 12th man") which is a good watch, but I thought it was heavily embellished until I read a book on the guy. Sure, he didn't actually succeed with his mission, but he became a symbol of the Norwegian resistance.

If we count various engineer companies as some sort of special forces, the poor sods who swam ashore ahead of D-day to clear obstacles and mines surely count. They cleared the way in a way thav no one else could.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
but I was looking at some interesting stats about WW1 and WW2. Many people talk about the best rifle, the best tank, or whatever, and then you read that 50% of ALL casualties in WW1 were from artillery. 99.9% of soldiers never saw or heard the shell that killed them, for obvious reasons. And it's a similar number for WW2.

Sorry to be flippant, but kind of hard to ask a dead guy if he saw or heard the shell that killed him.

With regard to the troops, the threat that they were there, effective or not, meant they had value in existing. The enemy troops were then worrying about what might be out there rather than on the job to hand.

I also think that there is bias in your question. It is human nature to dwell upon the things that went wrong rather than right and so by your initial post seem to support that theory.

For example the commando raid on the docks. Those men went in knowing that they were unlikely to escape or survive, yet they went in and completed their mission, but you seem to view this as a failure because many, almost all of them never returned. Whereas I would view that as a success.

After the debacle that was the trench warfare of WW1, commanders were trying something new, and as such some worked and some failed.

Just to check on your viewpoint, Op Market Garden, Allied failure or German success?

Yes, of course.

Now, they were worthwhile not necessarily because they were effective during WW2, but because they laid the foundation for further development of SOF across the world of which the British SAS became the template. Secondly, I think the TME (time, money, effort) expended during WW2 is probably overestimated. Did the SAS even number 1000 men at its peak during WW2? 2000? For comparison, 2.9 million men served in the British Army throughout WW2. I don't think the TME cost of 1000-2000 men on operations, even if they were all complete failures, mattered in the big picture. Operation Market Garden alone was a bigger loss in terms of wasted TME than all the allies SOF operations and training combined. I think that overall there was more TME wasted on training an excessive number of paratroopers instead of utilizing them as standard rifleman than there was wasted on SOF.

The Long Range Desert Group and the SAS were highly effective compared to cost in the desert war.

I wouldn't account for the argument that Special Forces members could have been more effective when used as NCOs in regular units. Considering that the Special Forces saw much more action than the regular troops. A man undertaking a mission would be much more use than one serving as an NCO in a unit which hardly saw combat (considering the ratio of men who didn't fire a shot in WWII).

Special Forces laid the way for the infantry. Without them the ground campaigns would have had more obstacles to overcome. They shouldn't be viewed as a separate entity, or one which could be substituted. Rather both have value, and should be used in tandem in larger campaigns.

Of course outside of those missions supporting other units, there was also scenarios which effected the overall war by themselves. I.e. the sabotage of German heavy water production. At a strategic level these groups could influence the war on a different scale. Regular infantry on the ground aren't worth much if someone's sabotaged their AA defence and they're bombed by a plane, or if the enemy kills them - or destroys their capital - with an atomic bomb. A hand full of men can leak the location of hidden submarine docks and prevent the destruction of ships at sea, or misdirect the enemy into thinking you'll attack in one location, whilst leaving the true site undefended. Etc.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The Italian special forces were, from what I remember, excellent throughout all of WW2; overall Italy's problem seemed to be that they had potato-tier commanders commanding excellent soldiers. Their scuba divers both before and during the war were top of the line, and I seem to remember something about Italian mountain troops performing well in the Caucasus, although I can't find anything right now with a quick Google.

Italian troops are always confusing, in part cause I'm unaware of anyone who extensively researched them by their own words. Most sources on them that come up in English language history books is the opinion of others, Germans, Brits, Americans, or Frenchmen. And everyone had wildly different, or even contradictory, opinions on the quality and ability of Italian soldiers during the war. About the only thing that remains consistent is that "the commanders sucked." Kind of a big hole in the current record of the war.

If you want to know if Special Forces were 'worth it', I'm pretty sure France would tell you that they were very helpful.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

In all honesty, I'm not 100% sure about the Abwehr. Were they bad because they were genuinely incompetent, or were they deliberately bad, because a lot of them were anti-Nazi, and thus, deliberately screwed up?

I don't know...

Obviously I don't know either, but the evidence seems to suggest to me that they were just completely and abjectly terrible; that they never, ever got a handle on Soviet counter-intelligence efforts.

I also have a hard time with the idea of them 'throwing' the war to the Soviets. Anti-Nazi is a far, far, far cry from 'pro-Soviet'.

My understanding of the Abwehr is that the organization was crippled by a mix of overt political interference and low moral. The organization, without and within, suffered from the political directives of the Nazi party getting in the way of good intelligence gathering. Hitler and OKW had little interest in listening to realistic concerns. In turn, the Abwehr at times operated more as an ideological arm than an intelligence gathering organization despite the apparent concerns of its own leadership. Reports would be issued that read like SS propaganda rather than useful intelligence. This in turn demoralized much of the organization's staff, who never seemed to really have their hearts in it.

There's kind of weird point where it's not really clear who the problem was, because no one seemed to like what was coming out of the organization and no one seemed to be interested in working against it, so it's really kind of fuzzy where the specific issue lay.

I think there are more severe cases of this, but it's one of the facts of life with any military career. Ideally special forces produce an effect far beyond their size would suggest, and that was arguably the case most often. The units were small enough to not jeopardize the well-being of the normal military (often the special forces soldiers would go on to have a great impact improving the normal military afterwards as instructors, future etc.)

Training does take time and costs money, but your end goal is high performance. Consider combat aviators - who, at least currently - are massively time consuming and expensive to train. Imagine all of the time and cost of losing a single twin-seat modern combat aircraft, perhaps on its first flight. That's a catastrophic loss of time and materiel, but wouldn't say it wasn't worth the risk in most situations.

You don't "not" train someone to do something special because they may not be worth it. You do it, because they may be worth it. With special forces, so much that is learned trickles down into the normal military and then becomes a facet of modern combat that we take for granted, even if its impact isn't clearly stated.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

In all honesty, I'm not 100% sure about the Abwehr. Were they bad because they were genuinely incompetent, or were they deliberately bad, because a lot of them were anti-Nazi, and thus, deliberately screwed up?

I don't know...

Obviously I don't know either, but the evidence seems to suggest to me that they were just completely and abjectly terrible; that they never, ever got a handle on Soviet counter-intelligence efforts.

I also have a hard time with the idea of them 'throwing' the war to the Soviets. Anti-Nazi is a far, far, far cry from 'pro-Soviet'.

Tha Abwehr was full off Anti Hitler personell, mostly of the Old Elites, frankly they doing a bad job like losing V2 plans,etc. is to be expected if a organisation is made up out of Elites and groups that stand against your plans.
However the Abwehr isn't really a special force and more along the line of a Secret service / inteligence service.



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 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding of the Abwehr is that the organization was crippled by a mix of overt political interference and low moral. The organization, without and within, suffered from the political directives of the Nazi party getting in the way of good intelligence gathering. Hitler and OKW had little interest in listening to realistic concerns. In turn, the Abwehr at times operated more as an ideological arm than an intelligence gathering organization despite the apparent concerns of its own leadership. Reports would be issued that read like SS propaganda rather than useful intelligence. This in turn demoralized much of the organization's staff, who never seemed to really have their hearts in it.

There's kind of weird point where it's not really clear who the problem was, because no one seemed to like what was coming out of the organization and no one seemed to be interested in working against it, so it's really kind of fuzzy where the specific issue lay.

Also manpower issues, a lot of promising people would rather go to the SD: which was the party equivalent to the Abwher, which also got more ressources.

I'm not alleging that the Abwehr were not anti-Nazi, just that anti-Nazi and pro-Soviet are, even today, miles and miles and miles apart.