U.S. Army Special Warfare Its Origin

Colonel Paddock traces the origins of Army special warfare from 1941 to 1952, the year the Army’s special warfare center was established. While the Army had experience in psychological warfare, the major recent U. S. experience in unconventional warfare had been in the Office of Strategic Services, a civilian agency, during World War II. Many army leaders, trained and experienced in conventional warfare, hesitantly accepted psychological warfare as a legitimate weapon in the Army’s wartime arsen