Office of Strategic Services
Encyclopedia
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States
intelligence agency
formed during World War II
. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage
activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces
.
and Special Operations Executive
), American intelligence had been conducted on an ad-hoc basis by the various departments of the executive branch, including the State
, Treasury
, Navy
, and War
Departments. They had no overall direction, coordination, or control. The U.S. Army
and U.S. Navy
had separate code-breaking departments (Signals Intelligence Service
and OP-20-G
). Also, the original code-breaking operation of the State Department, MI-8
, run by Herbert Yardley
, had been shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State
Henry Stimson, deeming it an inappropriate function for the diplomatic arm, because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail".
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of Canadian/British spymaster William Stephenson
, the senior British intelligence officer in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt requested that William J. Donovan draft a plan for an intelligence service. Colonel Donovan was employed to evaluate the global military position in order to offer suggestions concerning American intelligence requirements because the U.S. did not have a central intelligence agency. After submitting his work, "Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information," Colonel Donovan was appointed as the "Co-ordinator of Information" in July 1941.
The Office of Strategic Services was established by a Presidential military order issued by President Roosevelt on June 13, 1942, to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. During the War, the OSS supplied policy makers with facts and estimates, but the OSS never had jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities. The FBI
was responsible for intelligence work in Latin America
, and the Army and Navy guarded their areas of responsibility.
From 1943–1945, the OSS played a major role in training Kuomintang
troops in China
and Burma, and recruited Kachin, and other indigenous irregular forces for sabotage as well as guides for Allied forces in Burma
fighting the Japanese Army. Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train and supply resistance movement
s, including Mao Zedong
's Red Army
in China and the Viet Minh
in French Indochina
, in areas occupied
by the Axis powers
during World War II
. The OSS also recruited and ran one of the war's most important spies, the German diplomat Fritz Kolbe
. Other functions of the OSS included the use of propaganda
, espionage
, subversion
, and post-war planning.
The OSS purchased Soviet code and cipher material (or Finnish information on them) from émigré Finnish army
officers in late 1944. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr.
, protested that this violated an agreement President Roosevelt made with the Soviet Union not to interfere with Soviet cipher traffic from the United States. General Donovan might have copied the papers before returning them the following January, but there is no record of Arlington Hall
's receiving them, and CIA and NSA archives have no surviving copies. This codebook was in fact used as part of the Venona decryption effort, which helped uncover large-scale Soviet espionage in North America
.
One of the greatest accomplishments of the OSS during World War II was its penetration of Nazi Germany
by OSS operatives. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian individuals for missions inside Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and Socialist party members, labor activists, anti-Nazi prisoners-of-war, and German and Jewish refugees. At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed almost 24,000 people.
In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services set up operations in Istanbul. Turkey, as a neutral country during the Second World War, was a place where both the Axis and Allied powers sought to set up networks of spies. The railroads connecting central Asia
with Europe
as well as Turkey's close proximity to the Balkan states placed it at a crossroads of intelligence gathering. The goal of the OSS Istanbul operation called Project Net-1 was to infiltrate and extenuate subversive action in the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
Head of operations at OSS Istanbul was a banker from Chicago named Lanning "Packy" Macfarland who maintained the cover story as a banker for the American lend-lease program. Macfarland hired Alfred Schwarz, a Czechoslovakian engineer and businessman who came to be known as "Dogwood" and ended up establishing the notorious Dogwood information chain. Dogwood in turn hired a personal assistant named Walter Arndt and established himself as an employee of the Istanbul Western Electrik Kompani. Through Schwartz and Arndt the OSS was able to infiltrate anti-fascist groups in Austria, Hungary and Germany. Schwartz was able to convince Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Swiss diplomatic couriers to smuggle American intelligence information into these territories and establish contact with elements antagonistic to the Nazis and their collaborators. Couriers and agents memorized information and produced analytical reports; when they were not able to memorize effectively they recorded information on microfilm and hid it in their shoes or hollowed pencils. Through this process information about the Nazi regime made its way to Macfarland and the OSS in Istanbul and eventually to Washington.
While the OSS "Dogwood-chain" produced a lot of information, its reliability was increasingly questioned by British intelligence. Eventually by May 1944 through collaboration between the OSS, British intelligence, Cairo and Washington the entire "Dogwood-chain" was found to be unreliable and dangerous. Planting phony information into the OSS was intended to misdirect the resources of the Allies. Schwartz's "Dogwood – chain" which was the largest American intelligence gathering tool in occupied territory, was shortly thereafter shut down.
In 1942, a young physician named Christian J. Lambertsen invented the first Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
(SCUBA) and demonstrated it to OSS – after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy – in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C. The OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Lambertsen to lead the program and build up the dive element of their maritime unit.
, on September 20, 1945, the 33rd U.S. President Harry S Truman signed an Executive Order which came into effect as of October 1, 1945. Thus in the following days from September 20, 1945 the functions of the OSS were split between the Department of State and the Department of War
. The State Department received the Research and Analysis Branch of OSS which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service or (IRIS
) and headed by U.S. Army Colonel Alfred McCormack. This was later renamed the Bureau of Intelligence and Research
.
The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence
(SI) and Counter-Espionage
(X-2) Branches, which were then housed in a new office created for just this purpose—the Strategic Services Unit
(SSU). The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder
(formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) as the director to oversee the liquidation of the OSS, and more importantly, the preservation of the clandestine intelligence capability of the OSS.
In January 1946, President Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) which was the direct precursor to the CIA. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO). Next, the National Security Act of 1947
established the United States's first permanent peacetime intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency
, which then took up the functions of the OSS. The direct descendant of the paramilitary component of the OSS is the Special Activities Division
of the CIA.
(then known as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area) was the site of an OSS training camp that operated from 1942 to 1945. Area "C", consisting of approximately 6000 acres (24.3 km²), was used extensively for communications training, whereas Area "A" was use for training some of the OGs. Catoctin Mountain Park
, now the location of Camp David
, was the site of OSS training Area "B." Congressional Country Club
(Area F) in Bethesda
, MD was the primary OSS training facility.
The London
branch of the OSS, its first overseas facility, was at 70, Grosvenor Street, W1.
The Facilities of the Catalina Island Marine Institute
at Toyon Bay on Santa Catalina Island, Calif., are composed (in part) of a former OSS survival training camp.
The National Park Service commissioned a study of OSS National Park training facilities by Professor John Chambers of Rutgers University.
Camp X
, near Oshawa
, Ontario
, Canada
, where an "assassination and elimination" training program was operated by the OSS. It was dubbed "the school of mayhem and murder" by George Hunter White who trained at the facility in the 1950s.
on August 14, 2008. Among the 24,000 names were those of Julia Child
, Arthur Goldberg
, Saul K. Padover
, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
, Bruce Sundlun
, and John Ford
. The 750,000 pages in the 35,000 personnel files include applications of people who were not recruited or hired, as well as the service records of those who were.
, a graduate of Princeton University
and Columbia Law School
, was recruited by Nelson Rockefeller
(the coordinator of the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs) and then by the OSS in 1943 because of his language skills. He spoke unaccented German, as well as Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, and Latin, in addition to English. He was given the code name "Remus", was assigned to the Secret Intelligence
branch, and took part in missions in the Caribbean, South America, France, and England. He was also involved in the Balkans Campaign, parachuting into Yugoslavia to evaluate the various resistance groups operating against the Nazis, and determining after meeting with him that Tito
's were the most effective. He next dropped behind German lines in occupied Norway, where he met with Free Norwegian guerrillas and gathered information leading to the destruction of a German plant being used to develop atomic weapons.
Later, he was briefed in nuclear physics
, provided a Beretta
revolver and a cyanide pill (to kill himself if necessary), and sent to Zurich, Switzerland posing as a Swiss physics student. His instructions were to attend a December 1944 lecture at the Technische Hochschule
there by Germany's top nuclear scientist who was heading their atomic bomb project, Werner Heisenberg
, to an audience filled with Nazi agents. His orders were to kill the scientist if he determined that the Germans were far along in their efforts to build an atomic weapon. He determined the scientist was not a threat. President Roosevelt was pleased with the conclusions of his report.
On another mission, he disguised himself as a Nazi German officer in order to enter a munitions plant in Italy, to determine if new weapons were being developed there. He also parachuted behind German lines a number of times, in order to gain intelligence.
Berg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
, but declined to accept it as he was told that upon accepting it he would be forbidden from saying what he had done to deserve the award. He is also the only former Major League Baseball player whose baseball card is displayed at CIA headquarters.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
intelligence agency
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
formed during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
.
Origins and activities
Prior to the formation of the OSS (the American version of the British Secret Intelligence ServiceSecret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
and Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
), American intelligence had been conducted on an ad-hoc basis by the various departments of the executive branch, including the State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, Treasury
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...
, Navy
United States Department of the Navy
The Department of the Navy of the United States of America was established by an Act of Congress on 30 April 1798, to provide a government organizational structure to the United States Navy and, from 1834 onwards, for the United States Marine Corps, and when directed by the President, of the...
, and War
United States Department of War
The United States Department of War, also called the War Department , was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army...
Departments. They had no overall direction, coordination, or control. The U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
and U.S. Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
had separate code-breaking departments (Signals Intelligence Service
Signals Intelligence Service
The Signals Intelligence Service was the United States Army codebreaking division, headquartered at Arlington Hall. It was a part of the Signal Corps so secret that outside the office of the Chief Signal officer, it did not officially exist. William Friedman began the division with three "junior...
and OP-20-G
OP-20-G
OP-20-G or "Office of Chief Of Naval Operations , 20th Division of the Office of Naval Communications, G Section / Communications Security", was the US Navy's signals intelligence and cryptanalysis group during World War II. Its mission was to intercept, decrypt, and analyze naval communications...
). Also, the original code-breaking operation of the State Department, MI-8
Black Chamber
The Cipher Bureau otherwise known as The Black Chamber was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, and a forerunner of the National Security Agency...
, run by Herbert Yardley
Herbert Yardley
Herbert Osborne Yardley was an American cryptologist best known for his book The American Black Chamber . The title of the book refers to the Cipher Bureau, the cryptographic organization of which Yardley was the founder and head...
, had been shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Henry Stimson, deeming it an inappropriate function for the diplomatic arm, because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail".
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of Canadian/British spymaster William Stephenson
William Stephenson
Sir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC, DFC was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid...
, the senior British intelligence officer in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt requested that William J. Donovan draft a plan for an intelligence service. Colonel Donovan was employed to evaluate the global military position in order to offer suggestions concerning American intelligence requirements because the U.S. did not have a central intelligence agency. After submitting his work, "Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information," Colonel Donovan was appointed as the "Co-ordinator of Information" in July 1941.
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. During the War, the OSS supplied policy makers with facts and estimates, but the OSS never had jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities. The FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
was responsible for intelligence work in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, and the Army and Navy guarded their areas of responsibility.
From 1943–1945, the OSS played a major role in training Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
troops in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and Burma, and recruited Kachin, and other indigenous irregular forces for sabotage as well as guides for Allied forces in Burma
China Burma India Theater of World War II
China Burma India Theater was the name used by the United States Army for its forces operating in conjunction with British and Chinese Allied air and land forces in China, Burma, and India during World War II...
fighting the Japanese Army. Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train and supply resistance movement
Resistance movement
A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...
s, including Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's Red Army
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army is the unified military organization of all land, sea, strategic missile and air forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLA was established on August 1, 1927 — celebrated annually as "PLA Day" — as the military arm of the Communist Party of China...
in China and the Viet Minh
Viet Minh
Việt Minh was a national independence coalition formed at Pac Bo on May 19, 1941. The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China...
in French Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
, in areas occupied
Military occupation
Military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory passes to a hostile army. The territory then becomes occupied territory.-Military occupation and the laws of war:...
by the Axis powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The OSS also recruited and ran one of the war's most important spies, the German diplomat Fritz Kolbe
Fritz Kolbe
Fritz Kolbe was a German diplomat who became America's most important spy against the Nazis in World War II.-Career:Fritz Kolbe was born in Berlin...
. Other functions of the OSS included the use of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
, subversion
Subversion
Apache Subversion is a software versioning and a revision control system distributed under a free license. Developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation...
, and post-war planning.
The OSS purchased Soviet code and cipher material (or Finnish information on them) from émigré Finnish army
Finnish Army
The Finnish Army is the land forces branch of the Finnish Defence Forces.Today's Army is divided into six branches: the infantry , field artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, engineers, signals, and materiel troops.-History of the Finnish Army:Between 1809 and 1917 Finland was an autonomous part of...
officers in late 1944. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr.
Edward Stettinius, Jr.
Edward Reilly Stettinius, Jr. was United States Secretary of State under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, serving from 1944 to 1945....
, protested that this violated an agreement President Roosevelt made with the Soviet Union not to interfere with Soviet cipher traffic from the United States. General Donovan might have copied the papers before returning them the following January, but there is no record of Arlington Hall
Arlington Hall
Arlington Hall was a former girl's school and the headquarters of the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service cryptography effort during World War II. The site presently houses the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, and the United States National Guard Readiness Center. It...
's receiving them, and CIA and NSA archives have no surviving copies. This codebook was in fact used as part of the Venona decryption effort, which helped uncover large-scale Soviet espionage in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
.
One of the greatest accomplishments of the OSS during World War II was its penetration of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
by OSS operatives. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian individuals for missions inside Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and Socialist party members, labor activists, anti-Nazi prisoners-of-war, and German and Jewish refugees. At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed almost 24,000 people.
In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services set up operations in Istanbul. Turkey, as a neutral country during the Second World War, was a place where both the Axis and Allied powers sought to set up networks of spies. The railroads connecting central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
with Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
as well as Turkey's close proximity to the Balkan states placed it at a crossroads of intelligence gathering. The goal of the OSS Istanbul operation called Project Net-1 was to infiltrate and extenuate subversive action in the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
Head of operations at OSS Istanbul was a banker from Chicago named Lanning "Packy" Macfarland who maintained the cover story as a banker for the American lend-lease program. Macfarland hired Alfred Schwarz, a Czechoslovakian engineer and businessman who came to be known as "Dogwood" and ended up establishing the notorious Dogwood information chain. Dogwood in turn hired a personal assistant named Walter Arndt and established himself as an employee of the Istanbul Western Electrik Kompani. Through Schwartz and Arndt the OSS was able to infiltrate anti-fascist groups in Austria, Hungary and Germany. Schwartz was able to convince Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Swiss diplomatic couriers to smuggle American intelligence information into these territories and establish contact with elements antagonistic to the Nazis and their collaborators. Couriers and agents memorized information and produced analytical reports; when they were not able to memorize effectively they recorded information on microfilm and hid it in their shoes or hollowed pencils. Through this process information about the Nazi regime made its way to Macfarland and the OSS in Istanbul and eventually to Washington.
While the OSS "Dogwood-chain" produced a lot of information, its reliability was increasingly questioned by British intelligence. Eventually by May 1944 through collaboration between the OSS, British intelligence, Cairo and Washington the entire "Dogwood-chain" was found to be unreliable and dangerous. Planting phony information into the OSS was intended to misdirect the resources of the Allies. Schwartz's "Dogwood – chain" which was the largest American intelligence gathering tool in occupied territory, was shortly thereafter shut down.
In 1942, a young physician named Christian J. Lambertsen invented the first Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
Scuba set
A scuba set is an independent breathing set that provides a scuba diver with the breathing gas necessary to breathe underwater during scuba diving. It is much used for sport diving and some sorts of work diving....
(SCUBA) and demonstrated it to OSS – after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy – in a pool at a hotel in Washington D.C. The OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Lambertsen to lead the program and build up the dive element of their maritime unit.
Transformation into the CIA
One month after the war was won in the Pacific Theater of OperationsPacific Theater of Operations
The Pacific Theater of Operations was the World War II area of military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, a geographic scope that reflected the operational and administrative command structures of the American forces during that period...
, on September 20, 1945, the 33rd U.S. President Harry S Truman signed an Executive Order which came into effect as of October 1, 1945. Thus in the following days from September 20, 1945 the functions of the OSS were split between the Department of State and the Department of War
United States Department of War
The United States Department of War, also called the War Department , was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army...
. The State Department received the Research and Analysis Branch of OSS which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service or (IRIS
Iris
Iris commonly refers to:* Iris , part of the eye* Iris * Iris , a feminine given name* Iris , a Greek goddess* Iris , a genus of flowering plantsIris may also refer to:-Places:...
) and headed by U.S. Army Colonel Alfred McCormack. This was later renamed the Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
The Bureau of Intelligence and Research is an intelligence bureau in the U.S. State Department tasked with analyzing information. Originally founded as the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services , it was transferred to the State Department at the end of World War II...
.
The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence
Secret Intelligence Branch
The Secret Intelligence Branch of the United States' Office of Strategic Services was a wartime foreign intelligence service responsible for the collection of human intelligence from a network of field stations in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East....
(SI) and Counter-Espionage
Counter-Espionage
-Cast:* Warren William as Michael Lanyard* Eric Blore as Jamison* Hillary Brooke as Pamela Hart* Thurston Hall as Insp. Crane* Fred Kelsey as Detective Wesley Dickens* Forrest Tucker as Anton Schugg* Matthew Boulton as Inspector J...
(X-2) Branches, which were then housed in a new office created for just this purpose—the Strategic Services Unit
Strategic Services Unit
The Strategic Services Unit was an intelligence agency of the United States government which existed in the immediate post-World War II period. It was created from the Secret Intelligence and Counter-Espionage branches of the wartime Office of Strategic Services.Assistant Secretary of War John J...
(SSU). The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder
John Magruder (Brigadier General)
John Magruder was a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army. Among his offices was that of Deputy Director for Intelligence for the Office of Strategic Services....
(formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) as the director to oversee the liquidation of the OSS, and more importantly, the preservation of the clandestine intelligence capability of the OSS.
In January 1946, President Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) which was the direct precursor to the CIA. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO). Next, the National Security Act of 1947
National Security Act of 1947
The National Security Act of 1947 was signed by United States President Harry S. Truman on July 26, 1947, and realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II...
established the United States's first permanent peacetime intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, which then took up the functions of the OSS. The direct descendant of the paramilitary component of the OSS is the Special Activities Division
Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Division is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as "special activities"...
of the CIA.
Facilities
Prince William Forest ParkPrince William Forest Park
Prince William Forest Park was established as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area in 1936 and is located in southeastern Prince William County, Virginia, adjacent to the Marine Corps Base Quantico. The park is the largest protected natural area in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region at...
(then known as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area) was the site of an OSS training camp that operated from 1942 to 1945. Area "C", consisting of approximately 6000 acres (24.3 km²), was used extensively for communications training, whereas Area "A" was use for training some of the OGs. Catoctin Mountain Park
Catoctin Mountain Park
Catoctin Mountain Park, located in north-central Maryland, is part of the forested Catoctin Mountain ridge that forms the eastern rampart of the Appalachian Mountains...
, now the location of Camp David
Camp David
Camp David is the country retreat of the President of the United States and his guests. It is located in low wooded hills about 60 mi north-northwest of Washington, D.C., on the property of Catoctin Mountain Park in unincorporated Frederick County, Maryland, near Thurmont, at an elevation of...
, was the site of OSS training Area "B." Congressional Country Club
Congressional Country Club
The Congressional Country Club is a country club and golf course in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Congressional opened in 1924 and has hosted three U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship, and is an annual stop on the PGA Tour, with the AT&T National, hosted by Tiger Woods. The tournament was first...
(Area F) in Bethesda
Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...
, MD was the primary OSS training facility.
The London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
branch of the OSS, its first overseas facility, was at 70, Grosvenor Street, W1.
The Facilities of the Catalina Island Marine Institute
Catalina Island Marine Institute
The Catalina Island Marine Institute is a non-profit educational program run by Guided Discoveries on Santa Catalina Island, California.It is the host to approximately 15,000 students a year, who visit it in school-organized trips and summer camps...
at Toyon Bay on Santa Catalina Island, Calif., are composed (in part) of a former OSS survival training camp.
The National Park Service commissioned a study of OSS National Park training facilities by Professor John Chambers of Rutgers University.
Camp X
Camp X
Camp X was the unofficial name of a Second World War paramilitary and commando training installation, on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada...
, near Oshawa
Oshawa
Oshawa is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the Lake Ontario shoreline. It lies in Southern Ontario approximately 60 kilometres east of downtown Toronto. It is commonly viewed as the eastern anchor of both the Greater Toronto Area and the Golden Horseshoe. It is now commonly referred to as the most...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, where an "assassination and elimination" training program was operated by the OSS. It was dubbed "the school of mayhem and murder" by George Hunter White who trained at the facility in the 1950s.
Personnel
The names of all OSS personnel and documents of their OSS service, previously a closely guarded secret, were released by the US National ArchivesNational Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...
on August 14, 2008. Among the 24,000 names were those of Julia Child
Julia Child
Julia Child was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for introducing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which...
, Arthur Goldberg
Arthur Goldberg
Arthur Joseph Goldberg was an American statesman and jurist who served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Supreme Court Justice and Ambassador to the United Nations.-Early life:...
, Saul K. Padover
Saul K. Padover
Saul Kussiel Padover was an historian and political scientist at the New School for Social Research in New York City who wrote or edited definitive studies of Karl Marx, Joseph II of Austria, Louis XVI of France, and three American founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and,...
, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. was an American historian and social critic whose work explored the American liberalism of political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"...
, Bruce Sundlun
Bruce Sundlun
Bruce Sundlun was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as 71st Governor of Rhode Island from 1991 to 1995. He was Rhode Island's second Jewish governor, and the only Jewish governor in the United States during his two terms...
, and John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
. The 750,000 pages in the 35,000 personnel files include applications of people who were not recruited or hired, as well as the service records of those who were.
Moe Berg
Major League Baseball player Moe BergMoe Berg
Morris "Moe" Berg was an American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II...
, a graduate of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
and Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...
, was recruited by Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
(the coordinator of the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs) and then by the OSS in 1943 because of his language skills. He spoke unaccented German, as well as Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, and Latin, in addition to English. He was given the code name "Remus", was assigned to the Secret Intelligence
Secret Intelligence Branch
The Secret Intelligence Branch of the United States' Office of Strategic Services was a wartime foreign intelligence service responsible for the collection of human intelligence from a network of field stations in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East....
branch, and took part in missions in the Caribbean, South America, France, and England. He was also involved in the Balkans Campaign, parachuting into Yugoslavia to evaluate the various resistance groups operating against the Nazis, and determining after meeting with him that Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
's were the most effective. He next dropped behind German lines in occupied Norway, where he met with Free Norwegian guerrillas and gathered information leading to the destruction of a German plant being used to develop atomic weapons.
Later, he was briefed in nuclear physics
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...
, provided a Beretta
Beretta
Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta is an Italian firearms manufacturer. Their firearms are used worldwide for a variety of civilian, law enforcement, and military purposes. It is also known for manufacturing shooting clothes and accessories. Beretta is the oldest active firearms manufacturer in the...
revolver and a cyanide pill (to kill himself if necessary), and sent to Zurich, Switzerland posing as a Swiss physics student. His instructions were to attend a December 1944 lecture at the Technische Hochschule
Technische Hochschule
Technische Hochschule is what an Institute of Technology used to be called in German-speaking countries, as well as in the Netherlands, before most of them changed their name to Technische Universität or Technische Universiteit in the 1970s and in the...
there by Germany's top nuclear scientist who was heading their atomic bomb project, Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
, to an audience filled with Nazi agents. His orders were to kill the scientist if he determined that the Germans were far along in their efforts to build an atomic weapon. He determined the scientist was not a threat. President Roosevelt was pleased with the conclusions of his report.
On another mission, he disguised himself as a Nazi German officer in order to enter a munitions plant in Italy, to determine if new weapons were being developed there. He also parachuted behind German lines a number of times, in order to gain intelligence.
Berg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
, but declined to accept it as he was told that upon accepting it he would be forbidden from saying what he had done to deserve the award. He is also the only former Major League Baseball player whose baseball card is displayed at CIA headquarters.
Branches
- Censorship and Documents
- X-2X-2 Counter Espionage Branch-Origins :The head of the Office of Strategic Services , William Donovan, created the X-2 Counter Espionage Branch in 1943 to provide liaison with and assist the British in their exploitation of the ULTRA program’s intelligence during World War II...
(counterespionage) - Research & Analysis
- Morale Operations BranchMorale Operations BranchMorale Operations was a branch of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. It utilized psychological warfare, particularly propaganda, to demoralize the German forces in Europe.- Origins :...
- Foreign Nationalities
- Operational Group Command
- Field Experimental Unit
- Special Projects
- Maritime Unit
- Special Operations
- Secret Intelligence
Detachments
- OSS Detachment 101OSS Detachment 101Detachment 101 of the Office of Strategic Services operated in the China Burma India Theater of World War II. On January 17, 1946, it was awarded a Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation by Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote, "The courage and fighting spirit displayed by its officers and men in...
: Burma - OSS Detachment 202: China
- OSS Detachment 303: New Delhi, India
- OSS Detachment 404: attached to British South East Asia CommandSouth East Asia CommandSouth East Asia Command was the body set up to be in overall charge of Allied operations in the South-East Asian Theatre during World War II.-Background:...
in KandyKandyKandy is a city in the center of Sri Lanka. It was the last capital of the ancient kings' era of Sri Lanka. The city lies in the midst of hills in the Kandy plateau, which crosses an area of tropical plantations, mainly tea. Kandy is one of the most scenic cities in Sri Lanka; it is both an...
, CeylonSri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the... - OSS Detachment 505: Calcutta, India
US Army units attached to the OSS
- 2671st Special Reconnaissance Battalion
- 2677th Office of Strategic Services Regiment
In popular culture
- The 1946 Paramount film O.S.S.O.S.S. (film)O.S.S. is a 1946 war film starring Alan Ladd, Colton Winters and Geraldine Fitzgerald about the Office of Strategic Services....
, starring Alan LaddAlan Ladd-Early life:Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh Ladd and Alan Ladd, Sr. He was of English ancestry. His father died when he was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter...
and Geraldine FitzgeraldGeraldine FitzgeraldGeraldine Fitzgerald, Lady Lindsay-Hogg was an Irish-American actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Early life:...
, showed agents training and on a dangerous mission. Commander John Shaheen acted as technical advisorTechnical advisorA technical advisor is an individual who is expert in a particular field of knowledge, hired to provide detailed information and advice to people working in that field...
. - The 1946 film 13 Rue Madeleine13 Rue Madeleine13 Rue Madeleine is a 1947 World War II spy film starring James Cagney, Annabella and Richard Conte.The title refers to the Le Havre address where a Gestapo headquarters is located.-Plot:...
stars James CagneyJames CagneyJames Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
as an OSS agent who must find a mole in French partisan operations. Peter Ortiz acted as technical advisor. - The 1946 film Cloak and Dagger stars Gary CooperGary CooperFrank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
as a scientist recruited to OSS to exfiltrate a German scientist defecting to the allies with the help of a woman guerrilla and her partisans. E. Michael BurkeE. Michael BurkeEdmund Michael Burke was a U.S. Navy Officer, O.S.S. agent, C.I.A. agent, general manager of Ringling Bros...
acted as technical advisor. - The 1957 book You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger by Roger Wolcott HallRoger Wolcott HallRoger Wolcott Hall was an American Army officer and spy in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and the author of a humorous memoir of his experiences in the Office of Strategic Services , entitled You’re Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger...
is a witty look at Hall's experiences with the OSS. - Author W.E.B. Griffin's Honor BoundHonor Bound seriesThe Honor Bound series is a World War II thriller series by W.E.B. Griffin, with the latest three books co-authored by William E. Butterworth IV . The series takes place mostly in Argentina, but also deals with internal struggles within the Nazi Party as the war escalates...
and Men At War series revolves around fictional OSS operations. - The O.S.S. was a featured organization in DC ComicsDC ComicsDC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
, introduced in G.I. CombatG.I. CombatG.I. Combat is a long-running comic book series published first by Quality Comics and later by National Periodical Publications, which was the primary company of those that evolved to become DC Comics.-Publication history:...
#192 (July 1976). Led by the mysterious Control, they operated as an espionage unit, initially in Nazi-occupied France. The organization would later become Argent. - In the WolfensteinWolfenstein (series)Wolfenstein is a franchise of World War II fantasy-themed computer and video games first developed by Muse Software and followed up by id Software...
series of video games, the main character is a member of a fictional organisation called the OSA (Office of Secret Actions),which is inspired by the OSS. - Most games in the Medal of HonorMedal of Honor (series)Medal of Honor is the name of a series of first-person shooter games set in World War II, with an October 2010 reboot based on the conflicts of present day Afghanistan. The first game was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts in 1999 for the PlayStation game console...
video game franchise feature a fictional OSS agent as the main character. - In the Season 6 X-Files episode "Triangle", the woman from the 1939 scenes portrayed by Gillian AndersonGillian AndersonGillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
as ScullyDana ScullyFBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
is a member of OSS. - In the 2006 film2006 in film- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...
The Good ShepherdThe Good Shepherd (film)The Good Shepherd is a 2006 spy film directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, with an extensive supporting cast. Although it is a fictional film loosely based on real events, it is advertised as telling the untold story of the birth of counter-intelligence in the...
Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Skull and BonesSkull and BonesSkull and Bones is an undergraduate senior or secret society at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. It is a traditional peer society to Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head, as the three senior class 'landed societies' at Yale....
recruit who joins the OSS to help with a mission in London. He quickly gains rank as the head of the newly formed CIA's Counterintelligence service. - The OSS is referenced in the 2007 film Smokin' AcesSmokin' AcesSmokin' Aces is a 2006 crime film, written and directed by Joe Carnahan. It stars Jeremy Piven as a Las Vegas magician turned mafia informant and Ryan Reynolds as the FBI agent assigned to protect him...
. - In the 2008 film2008 in filmThis is a list of all major films made in 2008.-Highest-grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2008...
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it is indicated that Indiana Jones did work for the OSS, attaining the rank of Colonel. - In the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds by Quentin TarantinoQuentin TarantinoQuentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
, the "basterds" are members of OSS, although no such OSS unit existed. - A French pulp fiction series OSS 117OSS 117OSS 117 is the codename for Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, a fictional secret agent initially from the pen of the prolific Jean Bruce. Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is described as being an American Colonel from Louisiana of French descent...
, by author Jean BruceJean BruceJean Bruce born Jean Brochet on 22 March 1921 was a prolific French popular writer who died in 26 March 1963 in a car accident. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Jean Alexandre, Jean Alexandre Brochet, Jean-Martin Rouan, and Joyce Lindsay....
, follows the adventure of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117, a French operative working for the OSS. The original series (four or five books a year) lasted from 1949 to 1963, until the death of Jean Bruce, and was continued by his wife and children until 1992. Numerous movies were made in the 1960s, and in 2006 a nostalgic comedy was made, celebrating the spy movie genre, Cairo, Nest of Spies, with Jean DujardinJean Dujardin-Life and career:Dujardin was born in Rueil-Malmaison. Dujardin first became famous on the French talent show Graines de star in 1996 as part of the comedy group Nous C Nous, formed by members of the Carré blanc theater. From 1999 to 2003 he starred in the French version of the comedy television...
playing OSS 117. A sequel followed in 2009 called OSS 117: Lost in Rio (original title in French: OSS 117: Rio Ne Répond Plus). - The 2008 film Flash of Genius is about famed American inventor and OSS veteran, Robert KearnsRobert KearnsRobert William Kearns was the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper systems used on most automobiles from 1969 to the present. His first patent for the invention was filed on December 1, 1964....
.
See also
- Special Operations ExecutiveSpecial Operations ExecutiveThe Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
- X-2 Counter Espionage BranchX-2 Counter Espionage Branch-Origins :The head of the Office of Strategic Services , William Donovan, created the X-2 Counter Espionage Branch in 1943 to provide liaison with and assist the British in their exploitation of the ULTRA program’s intelligence during World War II...
- OSS Detachment 101OSS Detachment 101Detachment 101 of the Office of Strategic Services operated in the China Burma India Theater of World War II. On January 17, 1946, it was awarded a Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation by Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote, "The courage and fighting spirit displayed by its officers and men in...
operated in the China Burma India Theater of World War IIChina Burma India Theater of World War IIChina Burma India Theater was the name used by the United States Army for its forces operating in conjunction with British and Chinese Allied air and land forces in China, Burma, and India during World War II...
. - Special Forces (United States Army)
- ParamarinesParamarinesThe Paramarines was a short-lived specialized unit of the United States Marine Corps, trained to be dropped by parachute. The first Paramarines were trained in October 1940, but the unit was disbanded in 1944...
- Operation HalyardOperation HalyardOperation Halyard, also known as the Halyard Mission, was the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines during World War II. A total of 512 allied airmen who had been downed over Nazi-occupied Serbia were rescued by Serbian Chetniks, led by General Draža Mihailović...
- Operation PaperclipOperation PaperclipOperation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...