OSS Invasion of Martha's Vineyard
28 August 2008 Filed in: Charles
Pinck
By Charles Pinck
The Martha's Vineyard Times
August 28, 2008
Earlier this month the National Archives released personnel files from World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Forces, which was founded and led by the legendary Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the only American to receive our nation's four highest military honors. OSS luminaries included famed chef Julia Child, Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche, movie director John Ford, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, actor Sterling Hayden, writer John O'Hara, the artist Saul Steinberg, baseball player Moe Berg, among many others. General Donovan called them his "glorious amateurs."
OSS was a perfect reflection of General Donovan's character: a potent combination of brains, brawn, and bravado. General Donovan encouraged OSS personnel to take risks, frequently telling OSS personnel that, "you can't succeed without taking chances." Leading by example, General Donovan took the same risks himself. Members of OSS volunteered for the most dangerous missions of World War II behind enemy lines to conduct sabotage and guerilla warfare and work with local resistance groups. Their capture by the enemy meant certain death.
Intelligence provided by OSS was critical to the success of Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland, secretly negotiated the early surrender of German troops in Northern Italy. Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat and an OSS asset, provided the U.S. with some of the most valuable intelligence of the war. Some of the most significant contributions came from leading academics in its Research and Analysis division. The Science and Technology branch devised imaginative new weapons and other espionage tools.
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The Martha's Vineyard Times
August 28, 2008
Earlier this month the National Archives released personnel files from World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Forces, which was founded and led by the legendary Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the only American to receive our nation's four highest military honors. OSS luminaries included famed chef Julia Child, Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche, movie director John Ford, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, actor Sterling Hayden, writer John O'Hara, the artist Saul Steinberg, baseball player Moe Berg, among many others. General Donovan called them his "glorious amateurs."
OSS was a perfect reflection of General Donovan's character: a potent combination of brains, brawn, and bravado. General Donovan encouraged OSS personnel to take risks, frequently telling OSS personnel that, "you can't succeed without taking chances." Leading by example, General Donovan took the same risks himself. Members of OSS volunteered for the most dangerous missions of World War II behind enemy lines to conduct sabotage and guerilla warfare and work with local resistance groups. Their capture by the enemy meant certain death.
Intelligence provided by OSS was critical to the success of Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland, secretly negotiated the early surrender of German troops in Northern Italy. Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat and an OSS asset, provided the U.S. with some of the most valuable intelligence of the war. Some of the most significant contributions came from leading academics in its Research and Analysis division. The Science and Technology branch devised imaginative new weapons and other espionage tools.
Read More...
Documents detailing early spy network released
13 August 2008
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT
Associated Press
August 13, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.
They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; Thomas Braden, an author who's "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
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Associated Press
August 13, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.
They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; Thomas Braden, an author who's "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.
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National Archives to Open Official Personnel Files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
08 August 2008
The National Archives will open more than 35,000
official personnel files of men and women who
served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
which was the U.S. wartime intelligence agency
during World War II. The files cover civilian and
military personnel who served and were later
transferred, discharged, reassigned, or died while
in service prior to 1947. These records are
available for research in the textual research room
at the National Archives facility in College Park.
On the day of the opening, the press office will distribute CDs that include selected files of some of the notable people who served in the OSS, including former CIA directors Allen Dulles and William Casey, famed chef Julia Child, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, Arab/Israeli peace negotiator and civil rights advocate Ralph Bunche, and Hollywood actor Sterling Hayden.
The 750,000 pages include initial applications to join the OSS; preliminary training and subsequent work assignments; pay, leave and travel documents; evaluations, basic medical information; and awards, decorations and discharge papers. Occasionally, photographs are included in the application file. Senior officials, officers and men engaged in special combat actions, such as Detachment 101, Jedburghs, X-2, espionage, and major intelligence missions may have citations summarizing those efforts in the files.
Name searches for individuals who served in the OSS can be found online in the Archival Research Catalogue listing for the OSS Personnel Files posted as ARC # 1593270 at http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc.
On the day of the opening, the press office will distribute CDs that include selected files of some of the notable people who served in the OSS, including former CIA directors Allen Dulles and William Casey, famed chef Julia Child, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, Arab/Israeli peace negotiator and civil rights advocate Ralph Bunche, and Hollywood actor Sterling Hayden.
The 750,000 pages include initial applications to join the OSS; preliminary training and subsequent work assignments; pay, leave and travel documents; evaluations, basic medical information; and awards, decorations and discharge papers. Occasionally, photographs are included in the application file. Senior officials, officers and men engaged in special combat actions, such as Detachment 101, Jedburghs, X-2, espionage, and major intelligence missions may have citations summarizing those efforts in the files.
Name searches for individuals who served in the OSS can be found online in the Archival Research Catalogue listing for the OSS Personnel Files posted as ARC # 1593270 at http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc.
William Donovan and Special Operations
01 August 2008 Filed in: Bob
Bergin
by Bob Bergin
Special operations conducted by the OSS during World War II were the foundation on which the U.S. Special Forces were built, and the basis for the special operations conducted by U.S. forces today. The Special Operations (SO) Branch was one of two major divisions created by William Donovan when he organized the OSS. Donovan’s thinking on the role and the nature of special operations is as relevant today as it was in the early days of World War II.
A July 30, 2008 Washington Post article “Strategy against Al-Qaeda Faulted” cites a major new Rand Corporation study critical of the course the U.S. is following in what has become known as the “war on terrorism”. The study advocates that terrorists should be described as criminals, not warriors, and argues that the fight against terrorists is better waged by law enforcement agencies than armies. According to the Post, the authors of the study say that “when military forces are needed, the emphasis should be on local troops, which understand the terrain and culture and tend to have greater legitimacy. In Muslim countries in particular, there should be a ‘light military footprint or none at all.’”
Donovan’s thinking was most recently expressed by Major General John K. Singlaub in an interview published in the November issue of WWII History. Singlaub was a young OSS officer when he parachuted into German-occupied France in 1944 to organize, train and lead a French Resistance unit. Later he was sent to China to train Vietnamese guerrillas to operate in Japanese-occupied Indochina.
Singlaub commented on William Donovan’s thinking about special operations even before the U.S. became directly involved in World War II: “President Roosevelt had authorized William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who later conceived and organized the OSS, to go to Great Britain in 1940 to look into things like espionage that we didn’t know very much about. Donovan came back and tried to introduce the American leadership to what he called ‘the fourth dimension of warfare’. The first and second dimensions were land and naval warfare; the third, air warfare, was introduced in World War I. The Fourth dimension, Donovan said, was to organize the enemy’s rear areas to our advantage. The idea was to help people under German occupation and use them to achieve our objectives. It’s what my group was heading for.”
Later in the same interview, when asked what most struck him as he looked back over a long and eventful career, Singlaub said: “It’s clear that Donovan really understood that Special Operations were to be conducted as unconventional warfare. We were given a mission and sent off to it with resources we had, whether we were in occupied France, China, or Vietnam. We went in with very small teams. The concept was that we would train the indigenous people and let them conduct the operations. Today we’re losing that. The emphasis now seems to be on direct action – to launch an attack with our own highly trained people to kill the enemy or kick down doors. There seems to be too much emphasis on the direct action part of special operations – rather than keeping our own participation low, and training the indigenous people to do the job.”
Special operations conducted by the OSS during World War II were the foundation on which the U.S. Special Forces were built, and the basis for the special operations conducted by U.S. forces today. The Special Operations (SO) Branch was one of two major divisions created by William Donovan when he organized the OSS. Donovan’s thinking on the role and the nature of special operations is as relevant today as it was in the early days of World War II.
A July 30, 2008 Washington Post article “Strategy against Al-Qaeda Faulted” cites a major new Rand Corporation study critical of the course the U.S. is following in what has become known as the “war on terrorism”. The study advocates that terrorists should be described as criminals, not warriors, and argues that the fight against terrorists is better waged by law enforcement agencies than armies. According to the Post, the authors of the study say that “when military forces are needed, the emphasis should be on local troops, which understand the terrain and culture and tend to have greater legitimacy. In Muslim countries in particular, there should be a ‘light military footprint or none at all.’”
Donovan’s thinking was most recently expressed by Major General John K. Singlaub in an interview published in the November issue of WWII History. Singlaub was a young OSS officer when he parachuted into German-occupied France in 1944 to organize, train and lead a French Resistance unit. Later he was sent to China to train Vietnamese guerrillas to operate in Japanese-occupied Indochina.
Singlaub commented on William Donovan’s thinking about special operations even before the U.S. became directly involved in World War II: “President Roosevelt had authorized William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who later conceived and organized the OSS, to go to Great Britain in 1940 to look into things like espionage that we didn’t know very much about. Donovan came back and tried to introduce the American leadership to what he called ‘the fourth dimension of warfare’. The first and second dimensions were land and naval warfare; the third, air warfare, was introduced in World War I. The Fourth dimension, Donovan said, was to organize the enemy’s rear areas to our advantage. The idea was to help people under German occupation and use them to achieve our objectives. It’s what my group was heading for.”
Later in the same interview, when asked what most struck him as he looked back over a long and eventful career, Singlaub said: “It’s clear that Donovan really understood that Special Operations were to be conducted as unconventional warfare. We were given a mission and sent off to it with resources we had, whether we were in occupied France, China, or Vietnam. We went in with very small teams. The concept was that we would train the indigenous people and let them conduct the operations. Today we’re losing that. The emphasis now seems to be on direct action – to launch an attack with our own highly trained people to kill the enemy or kick down doors. There seems to be too much emphasis on the direct action part of special operations – rather than keeping our own participation low, and training the indigenous people to do the job.”