Special Forces History

A top-secret US Army Special Operations unit has been running covert missions all over the world, from leading death squads to the hideout of drug baron Pablo Escobar to capturing Saddam Hussein and, in one of the greatest special operations missions of all time, helping to track down al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden. "The Activity," as it became known to insiders, has achieved near-mythical status, even among the world's Special Operations elite.

1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder 11 Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror.

From the age of 12, Scott Ryder knew he wanted to join the army, and he signed up as soon as he could. After serving as a paratrooper and in East Timor with 3 RAR, he wanted more. He trained all summer and took the grueling selection course for the commandos, earning the prized green beret on his second attempt. Forged in Fire takes us inside the secretive world of the commandos. Ryder shares battlefield stories from his tours to Afghanistan, where his regiment saw some of the heaviest fighting Australian forces have experienced since the Vietnam War.

With a postscript describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan, The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, cold water, and days without sleep?

In June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Lyudmila Pavlichenko left her university studies and ignored the offer of a position as a nurse to become one of Soviet Russia's 2,000 female snipers. Less than a year later, she had 309 recorded kills, including 29 enemy sniper kills. She was withdrawn from active duty after being injured. She was also regarded as a key heroic figure for the war effort.

Tested and effective leadership and teaching advice based on riveting combat stories from a Special Operations veteran. In Leadership and Training for the Fight, MSG Paul R. Howe, U.S. Army Retired, shares ideas on leadership that he has developed through extensive combat experience. Howe tells riveting stories of military operations and analyzes leadership concepts. He also gives advice on how to understand students and how to refine your teaching methods. Written with the unique insight of a Special Operations soldier, this book is the perfect guide for anyone interested in improving leadership skills.

In a top-secret U.S. military experiment, the author was asked to teach Eastern awareness disciplines ranging from aikido to meditation to a group of twenty-five Green Berets. This account chronicles his experiences in the training program and his attempts to revive traditional warriorship in a technological society. In Search of the Warrior Spirit explores the nature of war, the meaning of masculinity, and the need for moral values in the military.

Yevgeni Nikolaev was one of Russia's leading snipers in World War II, and his memoir provides an unparalleled account of front-line action in crucial theaters of war. Nikolaev is credited with a remarkable 324 kills, and his wartime service included time in the siege of Leningrad in 1941/1942. His memoir is not a neutral, apolitical account. As a member of the NKVD, it is not surprising that his memoir is full of historical misinterpretation and justification of the agency's actions.

In this vivid first-person narrative, a Special Operations Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and his commanding general give fascinating and detailed accounts of America's fight against one of the most barbaric insurgencies the world has ever seen. In the summer of 2014, three years after America's full troop withdrawal from the Iraq War, President Barack Obama authorized a small task force to push back into Baghdad. Their mission: protect the Iraqi capital and US embassy from a rapidly emerging terrorist threat.

Rorke Denver trains the men who become Navy SEALs - the most creative problem solvers on the modern battlefield, ideal warriors for the kinds of wars America is fighting now. With his years of action-packed mission experience and a top training role, Lieutenant Commander Denver understands exactly how tomorrow’s soldiers are recruited, sculpted, motivated, and deployed. Now, Denver takes you inside his personal story and the fascinating, demanding SEAL training program he now oversees.

On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment—2 Para—went into action to retake the settlement of Goose Green on East Falkland, where more than 1,000 Argentine soldiers were holding 119 Falkland Islanders—men, women, children and one baby—in squalid conditions. Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest and bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times. This book is the living narrative of the battle told by the very men who fought it.

In April 2021, a Special Forces operator deployed abroad sends an urgent plea: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam, one of the first Afghan National Army commandos trained alongside US Special Forces, is receiving threatening messages from the Taliban. His former commander, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, activates Task Force Pineapple, connecting with fellow special operations veterans and allies to plan a high-risk rescue mission.

On a daring nighttime raid in September 2009, a team of Navy SEALs grabbed the notorious terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, the villainous "Butcher of Fallujah," the mastermind behind the 2004 murder and mutilation off our American contractors. In this no-holds-barred account, bestselling author Patrick Robinson reveals for the first time the entire story, from the night the SEALs stormed the al-Qaeda desert stronghold to the accusations and legaltwists and turns that followed to the cut-and-thrust drama in the court room where the fate of three American heroes hung in the balance.

SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny became a legend in his own time. "Hitler's favorite commando" acquired a reputation as a man of daring, renowned for his audacious 1943 mission to extricate Mussolini from a mountain-top prison. He could be brave and resourceful, but was also a notorious egoist and an unrepentant Nazi until the end of his life. Stuart Smith draws on years of in-depth research to uncover the truth about Skorzeny's career and complex personality.

In Saving Aziz, Chad will give you a behind-the-scenes view of the evacuation efforts that saved thousands from the Taliban during the historic humanitarian crisis following the United States’ hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Even by the standards of the 1970s, even compared to Jar-Jar Binks, the legendary 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special is a peerlessly cringeworthy pop-culture artifact.

In America's new war, the first guns in the fight are special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs, specially trained warriors who operate with precision, swiftness, and lethal force. In the constantly shifting war on terror, SEAL units - small in number, flexible, stealthy, and efficient - are more vital than ever to America's security as they take the battle to an elusive enemy around the globe. This is essential listening for anyone who wants to know what goes into the making of America's best warriors.

As part of an elite special operations unit at the fighting edge of the Global War on Terrorism, Nicholas Moore spent over a decade with the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. In this compelling biography, a detailed narrative of grueling life on the ground combines with accounts of some of the most dramatic search and rescue operations of the period to tell the true story of life on the line in the War on Terror.

Don Brown, a former US Navy JAG officer stationed at the Pentagon and a former special assistant United States attorney, re-creates the wartime action, tells the life stories of the elite warriors our nation lost on that day and tears apart the official military explanation of the incident contained in the infamous Colt Report, which reveals either gross incompetence or a massive cover-up.

Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area’s rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America’s two-decade-long Afghan war.