Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
4.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
The incredible untold story of WWII's greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue
Britain's Special Air Service-or SAS-was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II's African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel's desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war material. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS's remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in the Africa and then on the Continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow.
Bringing his keen eye for psychological detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to SAS archives to shine a light inside a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy. The result is not just a tremendous war story, but a fascinating group portrait of men of whom history and country asked the most.
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Reviews for Rogue Heroes
7 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Outstanding review of one of the most elite forces In military history. Formed by a bunch of brave and eccentric men, the SAS wrote the very first books of this unconventional type of warfare. Me McIntyre nails it again with this excellent and well researched book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Very listenable if gossipy history of the sas during ww2. As as an entertainment it is interesting but as a history it is poor with many innuendos and unsourced “it was believed” and “some thought that...” frequently spoiling the factual narrative. Add a very labored effort to reorient the leading personalities sexually as in “some believed he was homosexual” or “his blatant heterosexuality may have been a cover for suppressed homosexual urges dah dah dah” and it became at times very hard to throw off the sense of being fed a hidden gay agenda. The narrator is excellent and overall it is an enjoyable if unreliable glimpse at ‘the regiment’ in embryo.