List of Commando raids on the Atlantic Wall Commando raids during the Second World War became so effective that by October 1942 Adolf Hitler issued the Commando Order , which required the execution of all Commandos captured . The raids were conducted by the armed forces of Britain , the Commonwealth and a small number of men from the occupied territories serving with No . 10 ( Inter - Allied ) Commando during the Second World War . All the operations took place between the Arctic Circle in Norway to the French border with Spain , along what was known as the Atlantic Wall . The raiding forces were mostly provided by the British Commandos but the two largest raids , Operation Gauntlet and Operation Jubilee , drew heavily on Canadian troops . The size of the raiding force depended on the objective . The smallest raid was two men from No . 6 Commando in Operation J V . The largest raid involved over 10 , 500 men in Operation Jubilee . Most of the raids were scheduled to only last overnight , but some , like Operation Gauntlet , were conducted over a number of days . The 57 raids were all between 1940 and 1944 and were mostly against targets in France , which had 36 raids . There were 12 raids in Norway , seven raids in the Channel Islands and one each in Belgium and the Netherlands . The raids met with a mixture of fortunes . Operation Chariot — the raid against dock installations at Saint - Nazaire — has since been called the greatest raid of all . Others , like Operation Aquatint and Operation Musketoon , resulted in the capture or death of all the Commandos involved . The raids ended in mid - 1944 on the orders of Major - General Robert Laycock , the chief of Combined Operations Headquarters . He suggested that they were no longer as effective and only resulted in the Germans strengthening their beach defences , which could be detrimental to Allied plans . Commandos formation . The Commandos were formed after the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940 . Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for a force to be assembled and equipped to inflict casualties on the Germans and bolster British morale . Churchill told the joint Chiefs of Staff to propose measures for an offensive against German - occupied Europe , and stated , " they must be prepared with specially trained troops of the hunter class who can develop a reign of terror down the enemy coast . " One staff officer , Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke , had already submitted such a proposal to General Sir John Dill , the Chief of the Imperial General Staff . Dill , aware of Churchill ' s intentions , approved Clarke ' s proposal . Three weeks later the first Commando raid took place . The raiders failed to gather any intelligence or damage any German equipment ; their only success was in killing two German sentries . In 1940 the call went out for volunteers from among the serving Army soldiers within certain formations still in Britain , and men of the disbanding Divisional Independent Companies originally raised from Territorial Army Divisions who had seen service in Norway . In November 1940 the new army units were organised into a Special Service Brigade under Brigadier J . C . Haydon , with four Special Service Battalions . By the autumn of 1940 more than 2 , 000 men had volunteered for Commando training . There were 19 British Army Commandos formed in the United Kingdom and the Middle East . The No . 10 ( Inter - Allied ) Commando was formed from volunteers from the occupied territories and enemy alien s . In February 1942 the Royal Marines were asked to organise Commando units of their own ; 6 , 000 men volunteered , forming nine Commandos . In 1943 the Royal Naval Commandos and the Royal Air Force Commandos were formed from volunteers from the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force . Also in 1943 , the commandos started to move away from smaller raiding operations . They were being formed into brigade s of assault infantry to spearhead the future Allied landing operations . Of the remaining 20 Commandos , 17 were used in the formation of the four Special Service brigades . The three remaining units , No . 12 , No . 14 and No . 62 Commando s , were left to carry out smaller scale raids . A shortage of volunteers and the need to provide replacements for casualties forced the disbandment of these three Commando units by the end of 1943 . No . 10 ( Inter - Allied ) Commando was left for the task of small scale raiding . No . 10 was the largest Commando and was formed from volunteers belonging to the occupied territories . It could now provide both parachute and canoe trained sub units . The Commandos came under the operational control of the Combined Operations Headquarters . The man initially selected as the commander was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes , a veteran of the Gallipoli Campaign and the Zeebrugge Raid in World War I . Keyes resigned in October 1941 and was replaced by Admiral Louis Mountbatten . The final Commander of Combined Operations was Major General Robert Laycock , who took over from Mountbatten in October 1943 .