Book Review - Elite Fighting Forces by Jeremy Black (ed)
Written by: Jeremy Black
Thames and Hudson, London, 2011,
ISBN 9780500251768, 208 pp
Reviewed by: Lieutenant Colonel Ben Pronk
In his seminal A Little History of the World, Ernst Gombrich condenses the entire story of human existence into a couple of hundred pages of beautifully composed text, written to be easily understood by children. In many ways, this appears to be what Jeremy Black and his contributing authors have attempted to do in Elite Fighting Forces. Largely, they have succeeded, however the very nature of this format will likely prove unsatisfying for the reader seeking serious military history.
Large, glossy and full of colour pictures, Elite Fighting Forces looks like a coffee table book and is perhaps best approached as such. Outlined in chronological order, each of its fifty-two chapters contains a brief, yet detailed synopsis of the history of an elite unit. The contributing authors boast impressive academic credentials and, while the nature of this compilation demands brevity, the depth of knowledge is obvious—the short paragraph on the reorganisation of Alexander’s armies, for example, would have been impossible to write without an academic’s understanding. As such, Elite Fighting Forces invites the reader to pick it up, read one or two chapters, and walk away with a good overview of the forces in question, and perhaps even a piqued interest to research further.
The analyses also provide some interesting parallels with the contemporary environment. Then, as now, when employed in role, elite forces can produce disproportionate results. Oda Nobunaga’s samurai victory against seemingly overwhelming odds during the Battle of Okehazama in 1560 serves as an excellent example of this, and conforms almost perfectly to the theory of relative superiority proposed by current commander of US Special Operations Command William McRaven in his 1995 work Spec Ops. Conversely, episodes such as the defeat of the Teutonic knights at the Battle of Tannenberg by the numerically superior Polish and Lithuanian armies, and the ineffectiveness of the First World War German Stormtroopers when employed in conventional roles, should reinforce the dangers of using elite forces outside their areas of expertise. Similarly, attempts to rapidly increase the size of elite forces without due regard to the high standards required of such troops are cited as contributing to the downfall of the Praetorian Guard, the Ottoman Janissaries and Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, and doubtless serve as the basis for the modern American ‘SOF Truth’ that special operations forces cannot be mass produced. Finally, the preponderance of mercenary forces amongst elites throughout history is also worthy of note. As globalisation threatens the pre-eminence of the Westphalian nation-state, and private security companies come to play an ever-increasing role on the modern battlefield, it is interesting to speculate whether organisations like Academi (formerly Xe Services/ Blackwater) might evolve into contemporary versions of the fourteenth century Almogavers—soldiers for hire in a dollar-driven environment of fluid loyalties.
I harbour two main criticisms of Elite Fighting Forces. Firstly, the nature of its compilation means that, read cover to cover, the volume is somewhat unsatisfying. It is not that the book is entirely without continuity—Black has gone to great lengths to ensure that style and tone are consistent between chapters, and there is some cross-referencing between units. What Elite Fighting Forces lacks however, is a strong unifying theme. While I know full well from my limited forays into doctrine-writing that gaining consensus on the definition of ‘elite’, ‘unconventional’, or ‘special’ forces is nigh on impossible, I found Black’s definition of elite forces (‘those elements of a power’s armed forces singled out in some way as special fighting groups for a particular task’) to be particularly vague. By this rationale, could not almost any fighting unit be considered elite? And indeed, in many cases, I found myself questioning whether the subject units were in fact elite by design or whether they were simply existing units that performed particularly well under difficult circumstances (the Vikings, the fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain and the Soviet Shock Armies of the Second World War serving as examples). This disparity of represented forces, combined with the lack of continuity that a unifying theme might have provided, renders Elite Fighting Forces a collection of interesting vignettes rather than a comprehensive analysis of the continuous development of elite forces from ancient times to the modern day.
Secondly, the informed military reader is likely to find the chapters on contemporary special operations forces lacking. Like the rest of the volume, these pieces are written by academics rather than practitioners; this results in a well researched, but rather ‘hearsay’ account of these forces. This is perhaps best exemplified by the complete lack of reference to modern US Tier One special operations units, surely the most advanced, and arguably most effective, elite force ever fielded.
Despite these flaws, Elite Fighting Forces is an informative and enjoyable compilation that would make an appropriate, if not necessarily essential, addition to your military history library—or, indeed, coffee table.
