When Complexity Costs Lives: Secondary Goals and Compartmentalized Information in the Second World War’s Greatest Raid

Reto Michael Wegmann () and Joshua Lorenzo Newett ()
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Reto Michael Wegmann: University of Lucerne
Joshua Lorenzo Newett: Korean Naval Academy

A chapter in Historians on Leadership and Strategy, 2020, pp 79-92 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract When Churchill had to prevent Nazi Germany’s biggest warship from participating in the Battle of the Atlantic, he decided to not fight the battleship head-on, but to destroy the only dry dock capable of maintaining the ship. For this purpose, an assault force of several hundred British Commandos planned and executed a daring raid in St. Nazaire, France. They planned to use an obsolete destroyer, pack it with explosives, and ram the dock at high speed. They succeeded and indeed destroyed the dock. However, the success came at a tremendous cost in Allied lives, with more than half of the assault force either killed or captured. The chapter analyzes the general situation, the people involved (including Lord Mountbatten, the main leader responsible), the planning process, and the result of the battle, attempting to derive meaningful leadership lessons. The raid was an overall success. Nevertheless, the lessons its losses afford in hindsight are valuable and should not be forgotten. As it turns out, the most important lessons are timeless, too: thinking is to be visionary, plans must be simple, and their execution needs purposeful participants.

Keywords: Complexity; Tirpitz; Commandos; Special operations; WW2; Information sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-26090-3_5

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