The Chicago Tribune - One More Mission
The leader of a secret squad in World War II makes sure his men finally get their due
By Allan Johnson,
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
April 11, 2004
It was the summer of 1944. Chicago's John Giannaris and his detail of 22 men were staging sneak attacks and other covert operations against the Nazis in a rugged area of Greece.
Meanwhile, German troops were burning out villages in the area, and "there was a lot of barbarism," Giannaris said. "I saw mass graves. It was terrible."
When Giannaris got word the Nazis were again on the move against villagers, he decided "to inflict some damage. . . . "
Few may know of the top-secret exploits of people like 83-year-old Giannaris, who at the time was on detached service as a lieutenant from the Army with the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II precursor of the CIA.
A new book reveals some of those missions, but former agents discussed them openly at Chicago's Pritzker Military Library in Streeterville recently.
As part of the program, Giannaris presented--60 years after the fact--the Bronze Star to Chicagoan Hercules Sembrakis, 88, a native of Greece and one of the men he led on a fateful "mercy mission," according to Patrick O'Donnell, author of "Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of WWII's OSS."
"Instead of the dead of night, blowing things up, they saved people," O'Donnell said of Giannaris' team, calling it the most successful unit in Greece.
Giannaris and his men, a mix of Greek guerrillas and Greek-Americans, crawled for four hours at night toward the German encampment. Finally, Giannaris saw lit cigarettes about 20 yards off.
"Now we knew where the road was"--a road the team lined with mines after the Germans went on a maneuver. As Giannaris' men withdrew, they were somehow detected. . . .
"Everything in this book is basically the war on terror," O'Donnell said. "What we are using today stems from what these guys did."
Gary native Spiro Cappony, 80, is the only surviving OSS member of his four-man team that was involved in what was called, in Cappony's honor, the "Chicago Mission": a plan to blow up bridges that carried German shipments of chrome for airplane parts in 1944.
"We were young and really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into, but we knew we had a job to do," said Cappony. Along with destroying bridges and other structures, his team fought German soldiers, escorted refugees and performed other tactics.
For Cappony, talking about his mission represents the "debriefing" he never received.
"The mission was so secret, so involved with the Turkish government, they just told us to hush it up," he said.
The Nazis lobbed mortar and artillery fire in the suspected direction of Giannaris' team. But the squad was able to slip away. "Nobody got hurt, fortunately," Giannaris smiled.
The German convoy couldn't make the same claim, thanks to the land mines and an attack from guerrillas working with Giannaris' men.
But the mission became more perilous the next day, when Giannaris saw villagers clambering up a hill. . . .
The OSS, created in 1942, was made up of people with no background in covert operations.
"All these guys, none of them are professional spies," O'Donnell said. "They all got recruited as ordinary Americans that did extraordinary things."
The OSS disbanded in 1945, only to be "refloated" a few years later as the CIA, O'Donnell said. Many former OSS operatives joined, but not Giannaris or Cappony.
Cappony, who had been on loan from the Navy, returned to Indiana to run his family's restaurant. He worked for the Pentagon during the Korean War, and later went into construction. He lives in Griffith, Ind., with his wife, Martha.
Meanwhile Giannaris went into private business, and even spent 10 years as a professional gambler. He now lives in Elk Grove Village with his wife, Guohong.
Giannaris has spent the last few years working his way through the military bureaucracy to get medals for his men. He got Bronze Stars for all of them, and he plans to present them to either the men themselves or their survivors. Sembrakis is the first.
"I always hid under the cover of darkness, the element of surprise," Giannaris said. But a nighttime mission wasn't an option this time.
His group shot at the Germans to keep them at bay while shepherding about 200 refugees, who were being routed from their village by the Nazis, to safety. . . .
Giannaris stood on a stage in front of a small audience during the talk he and O'Donnell gave at the Pritzker Library, 610 N. Fairbanks Ct.
O'Donnell told how his book "is about heroes, and there's a lot of heroes here today," and Giannaris detailed the Greece mission and his time in the OSS, nicknaming it "Oh So Secret."
Giannaris then presented Sembrakis with his Bronze Star for "heroism and fighting behind enemy lines."
Sembrakis said something in Greek, and Giannaris translated with a smile: "`Whatever he says is a lie.'"
Sembrakis playfully punched Giannaris, who responded with a kiss on the cheek.
Sembrakis then looked at his medal, and frowned.
The operatives escorted the refugees to their base camp.
"We didn't have full rations, but from our meager rations we shared," Giannaris said.
"One morning we had slept on the ground and this little girl--apparently she asked who was in charge--she came over and presented an egg to me."
When the villagers wanted to return to their homes, Giannaris opposed the idea, figuring the Nazis had probably booby-trapped them. But then he remembered the little girl's act of gratitude, and decided to take a few guerrillas for a "de-booby-trap" mission . . . which was a success, allowing the villagers to go back home. ...
While O'Donnell was taking questions, Giannaris and Sembrakis engaged in a somewhat heated discussion in English and Greek.
Giannaris--who never put himself up for a Bronze Star ("It's for them. I wanted them to get it")--explained that Sembrakis was angry about his old commander's selflessness: "[He asked], `Where's yours?'"
Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune
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The Washington Times - "Shadow war" survivors
By David Drebes,
The Washington Times
March 5, 2004
Espionage was the profession of a group of about 40 men and women, now in their 80s and 90s, who gathered yesterday at the International Spy Museum in Northwest to swap tales of intrigue. These former World War II spies fought a "shadow war" as operatives in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Fairfax resident Lloyd Smith was one of the local residents in attendance who had risked his life in covert missions.
Mr. Smith, now 85, single-handedly rescued 26 nurses and medical personnel from enemy territory after their plane disappeared over Albania in November 1943. "I was to get them before the Germans could," he said.
Armed with a pistol, Mr. Smith infiltrated the country, avoided German patrols and convinced local forces that he was on a mission of human compassion. With the help of guides, he located the missing party outside the city of Kue.
Yesterday, holding a scrapbook on his lap, Mr. Smith pointed to a yellowed photograph of 13 nurses posing on their getaway boat. "They were beautiful," he said, grinning.
Mr. Smith was among 300 former OSS agents interviewed by author Patrick O'Donnell for his new book, "Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of WWII's OSS." Mr. O'Donnell signed copies of his book while its subjects caught up on old times.
Seated next to the author was former George Washington University professor Edward Weismiller, the first agent to control a double agent in occupied Europe.
Now 85 and suffering from glaucoma, he was a young Rhodes scholar poet when he joined the OSS in 1943 and set the standard for counterspy work.
"It's the work of professional lying, and apparently it was easy for me," Mr. Weismiller said. "Poetry is the work of telling the truth - it was a paradox in my life."
His casework with Juan Frutos, a German spy code-named "Dragoman," is still studied by intelligence agencies.
"It's a textbook case," Mr. O'Donnell said.
Counterintelligence involves knowing how to mix truth with lies to throw off the enemy, and requires thorough planning to be successful.
Through Dragoman, Mr. Weismiller misled the Germans about Allied operations in Cherbourg, France, and even learned the identities of other German spies in the region.
"It sounds simple, but you're creating an entirely new set of reality for that agent that has to be reality for the Germans. If he got one fact wrong, then Dragoman's cover would be blown," Mr. O'Donnell said.
"I learned by the end of it that I was one of the best liars to come down the pike," Mr. Weismiller said. "It was a very disturbing thing to find out about myself."
After the war, Mr. Weismiller returned to poetry and became a leading scholar on the works of John Milton. He moved to the District in 1968 when he became an English professor at George Washington and enjoys the many lives he has led.
"I'm a poet, I'm a counterspy, I'm a teacher and a scholar," he said.
Even though he is mostly a scholar these days, editing a commentary on Milton and hoping to publish his fifth book, Mr. Weismiller says part of him will always be a spy at heart.
"It's still in my mind; it's very much alive in my mind," he said.
Copyright (c) 2004, The Washington Times
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The Fayetteville Observer - The Unknown Story
By Henry Cuningham,
Military editor
They called her Cynthia, and she seduced men in the line of duty.
Her real name was Elizabeth Peck, and she worked for the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II forerunner of the CIA, Special Forces and other special operations forces.
"She seduced an Italian admiral who had the Italian navy ciphers," author Patrick K. O'Donnell said. "It's a remarkable story. Basically, she convinced him that those ciphers were needed, and he gave them up." The information may have played a role in the British naval victory at Cape Matapan in March 1941, he said.
The 34-year-old author interviewed 300 OSS veterans over the course of three years for his 2004 book "Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II's OSS." He spent the rest of the time in the National Archives getting the original documentation.
"Every story in the book is backed up with the original documentation and mission reports," he said.
The stories are incredible indeed.
"My greatest spy interview is with a German-born Jew, Fred Mayer, a true citizen spy," O'Donnell said. Mayer came to the United States, joined the 81st Division, went on maneuvers and singlehandedly captured the general.
"They said, 'Fred, we've got a place for you. It's called OSS.'"
Mayer parachuted into Innsbruck, Austria, in a three-man secret intelligence team. The team included another Jew, Hans Wynberg, and a German prisoner of war, Franz Weber.
"They jumped on the side of a glacier," he said. "They had to find their way down. They find a sled. They go down about 60 mph on a glacier that's 10,000 feet high."
The men boarded a German train with U.S. Army uniforms under their ski parkas and bluffed their way past the Gestapo.
Mayer obtained a German lieutenant's uniform and, by casual conversation, learned details on everything from the construction of Hitler's bunker to 26 trains loaded with tanks and artillery. He called in a bomber strike to destroy the trains, which were bound for Italy.
O'Donnell, who was at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum recently for a book signing, said he confirmed details of the mission in the National Archives.
"Then he is captured by the Gestapo and beaten for three days, hung upside down, dunked under water," O'Donnell said. "It's the end of the war, and he convinces the Germans to do the right thing."
That meant surrendering the entire city of Innsbruck.
The SS are convinced by this guy that if they do this they are not going to have to worry about their war crimes," he said. "They declare Innsbruck an open city. The 103rd Division captures Innsbruck without a fight. It's a remarkable story. It saves thousands of lives on both sides."
The secret war
Like special operations forces in the war on terror, the OSS was fighting the secret war with a small number of people tackling projects of enormous importance.
"There are some definite similarities, especially in the weapons of mass destruction department," he said. ''The OSS had something called T-Force, which were teams that went after Hitler's weapons of mass destruction as well as secret weapons."
Today, Osama bin Laden is the target. Sixty years ago, it was Hitler.
"OSS had Operation Cross, which were 100 men, that were German prisoners of war that they trained to kill Hitler or other high-ranking officials," O'Donnell said.
There were the three-man Jedburgh teams that parachuted into France to aid the Resistance and the Operational Groups, which consisted of 15 to 30 men with skills in everything from foreign language to sabotage and hit-and-run raids.
"A lot of times they culled the ranks of the 82nd and the 101st (airborne divisions) when they were training for people that had language skills to fill these units," he said. "Then they went through rigorous training. They filled out the units, and then they went overseas."
Today's Special Forces are organized into A-teams with soldiers trained in languages and skills similar to the Operational Groups.
"They were, also, I think, really America's first special operations forces," O'Donnell said.
****
THEY DID IT FIRST: THE ORIGINAL SPECIAL OPERATORS
During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services first performed many of the missions that are today associated with the CIA and military special operations forces.
T-Force: Counterespionage units designed to locate key individuals, enemy documents and information.
Psychological warfare: The OSS used everything from radio to leaflets to spread messages that could confuse the enemy and undermine morale.
Operational groups: Small, self-sufficient teams of 15 to 30 men entered enemy territory by boat and parachute. They spoke foreign languages and were trained in demolition, sabotage, gathering information, hit-and-run raids and organizing local guerrilla forces. Author Patrick K. O'Donnell said, "OSS's commandos were America's first Special Forces."
Copyright (c) 2004 The Fayetteville Observer
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The Columbus Dispatch - "Spook" heroism lets pilots live to fly again
By Mike Harden,
The Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
In the vernacular of espionage, he was a "spook," a World War II shadow soldier whose field of operations knew neither front lines nor rear.
In 1943, a Navy recruiter in the Office of Strategic Services told Art Jibilian: "Sometimes we will drop you by parachute. Sometimes you will go by submarine. You'll have a 50-50 chance of making it back."
Today, Jibilian recalls, "He didn't pull any punches. He told me that the OSS needed radio operators desperately."
Dispatched to the Balkans after jump school, Jibilian was dropped into German-occupied Yugoslavia in spring 1944. He ran headlong into a German offensive to wipe out resistance fighters and Allied intelligence operatives.
Jibilian and partisan soldiers, retreating before the enemy advance, fought an 11-day gun battle to try to seek cover in mountain forests with a small group of downed U.S. fliers.
After two months of hiding, he and his companions made it to the safety of friendly forces. Jibilian was awarded the Silver Star for his role in the jump and rescue.
Eight weeks later, he jumped again into Yugoslavia, this time with a mission to bring 50 downed fliers to safety.
The objective was complicated not only by the presence of German troops in the target area but also high tension between two factions of partisan fighters. One Yugoslav rebel group was led by Marshal Tito, another by Serbian Gen. Draja Mihailovic.
British intelligence favored Tito, branding Mihailovic a German collaborator. The British strenuously objected to the planned OSS mission to rescue U.S. flight crews.
The 80-year-old Jibilian, in a telephone interview from his Fremont home, said: "We were told that Gen. Bill Donovan (head of the OSS) and President Roosevelt were discussing the situation. The president mentioned that the British were unhappy with the proposed mission. Gen. Donovan is alleged to have replied, 'Screw the British. Let's get our boys out.' "
Jibilian jumped shortly thereafter, only to find a glaring error in the estimated number of U.S. fliers awaiting rescue.
"We found 250 instead of 50," he said.
"Mihailovic's men had been feeding them even when they didn't have any food to feed themselves."
Rebel fighters helped Jibilian grade a makeshift runway to land C-47s. While U.S. fighter planes strafed the nearby German garrison to buy time, the 250 men were rescued.
As the last plane departed, Mihailovic told Jibilian that his partisans were hiding scores more U.S. crew members. Jibilian asked to stay until the last man was out.
"We took out 513 men in six months," he said of the mission, recently chronicled in Patrick O'Donnell's Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs.
At war's end, when communist leader Tito captured Mihailovic and was preparing to try him as a Nazi collaborator, Jibilian and a delegation of rescued pilots appealed to the U.S. State Department to intercede.
Their pleas went for naught. Mihailovic was killed by a firing squad.
"The truth is for everyone," he is reported to have said as he faced his executioners.
Jibilian, now the last man standing from the OSS rescue mission crew, knows that truth without action -- like faith without deeds -- is chaff flung to the winds.
Mike Harden is a Dispatch columnist.
Copyright 2004 The Columbus Dispatch
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History Book Club
Review by Dennis Showalter for the History Book Club
(OSS is a Main Selection)
Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs is as gripping as a techno-thriller, with the bonus that its stories are true. O'Donnell's history of the Office of Strategic Service begins with President Franklin Roosevelt's decision that a country on the edge of entering a world war for survival needed an undercover foreign intelligence service. On July 11, 1941, he ordered the establishment of a Coordinator of Information, whose mission was to collect and analyze all information relevant to national security. Its head was Colonel William "Wild Bill" Donovan.
Front-line infantryman in World War I, Wall Street lawyer and business executive, former Assistant Attorney General, Donovan became one of the century's masters of clandestine war. He argued convincingly that the U.S.needed an organization that would take the fight to the Axis through propaganda, espionage, sabotage and guerrilla operations. In June 1942 the COI's name was changed to Office of Strategic Service; it was placed directly under the Joint Chiefs of Staff-and Donovan set about building a legend.
The "Oh So Secret" recruited from Ivy League schools, law firms, corporations, and-occasionally-prisons. Veterans of the Spanish Civil War, stigmatized elsewhere as "premature anti-fascists," were assigned to work with Communist resistance networks. Foreign nationals, even some prisoners of war, joined and went behind Axis lines with ropes around their necks, knowing they could expect only execution if captured.
O'Donnell conducted extensive interviews with over 300 former OSS members. He then cross-checked their narratives, as far as possible, against the extensive OSS records in the National Archives, many only recently declassified. First committed in North Africa, OSS teams and individuals operated in Sicily and Italy, in the Balkans alongside their British counterparts. But it was in France that the organization did its best work and had its greatest days. Well before the invasion, OSS agents were parachuted in to contact and organize resistance groups. Once the invasion began, OSS teams engaged in guerrilla operations, especially against the 2nd SS Panzer Division on its march to Normandy.
It was not all triumph. Individual operations were blown or defeated, usually at heavy cost in lives. A late-war OSS attempt to support partisans in Slovakia ended in disaster, with most of the agents falling into German hands. Nor was the OSS entirely about derring-do behind Axis lines. O'Donnell included a solid chapter describing the growing sophistication and effectiveness of OSS efforts in the field of propaganda. By the end of the war, OSS agents were conducting diplomatic negotiations as well, above all in Italy, where Allen Dulles, later chief of the Cold War CIA, played a key role in negotiating a theater-level German surrender.
O'Donnell concludes by suggesting the OSS may well have been too successful for its own good. Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, disbanded the organization in part because he feared an "American Gestapo." In little over a year Truman would authorize the Central Intelligence Agency, which for good and ill took over the OSS records, a good few of its agents, and its heritage.
About the Author: Patrick K. O'Donnell, the author of Beyond Valor and Into the Rising Sun, is a pioneer of Internet-based "oral history." He is the creator of www.thedropzone.org, a virtual community for WWII veterans and buffs dedicated to collecting and sharing stories of the war.
About the Reviewer: Dennis Showalter is Professor of History at Colorado College. He is the author of Tannenberg.
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Sea Power Magazine
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a critical component ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt to permeate and cripple Axis powers during World War II. Patrick K. O’Donnell compiles information from more than 300 interviews and recently declassified government files to tell the story of the men and women who served under the OSS and who played an undisputable role in lodging victory for Allied forces in his new book Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs.
The OSS provided a foundation for modern special operations forces. Assembled by William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS was founded to revamp primitive pre-World War II U.S. intelligence forces that paled in comparison to other countries’ intelligence services because, as one Navy intelligence officer noted, to Americans, “espionage is by its very nature not to be considered as ‘honorable’ or ‘clean’ or ‘fair’ or ‘decent.’” Intelligence before World War II was assembled by four departments: the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division (G-2) and the Special Intelligence Service, which was established in 1940 to deal with intelligence crises in Latin America. These departments, however, were not sufficient for U.S. intelligence needs during wartime. Principally, the problems were dissemination of information, lack of funding, reliance on attachés (who were instructed to avoid sabotage and espionage during peacetime) and arbitrary chains of command.
In response to these problems, Donovan curried the government to "develop shadow-war capabilities." Immediately, a White House agency, the Coordinator of Information (COI), was formed in 1940, “effectively creating America’s first peacetime national intelligence organization,” in order to coordinate the four intelligence services. However, the agencies revolted against the COI, according to O’Donnell, making it essentially impotent.
The relationship between the COI and the newly formed Joint Chiefs of Staff when America entered World War II also was tenuous. “In order to solve this perception problem and gain access to military support and greater resources, Donovan proposed bringing COI under the control of the Joint Chiefs,” writes O’Donnell, whereupon “the name was changed to the Office of Strategic Services.”
OSS developed methods of shadow-warfare and technology seemingly overnight. It spawned a new way of fighting wars by stealthily penetrating enemy lines and truly paved the way for U.S. Special Operations Forces.
O’Donnell explores the chronology of OSS from the agents' perspectives in this book. He writes the untold story of these men and women giving the significance that is deserved of this pre-eminent organization. These agents, never commended with medals or media attention, were the ones who penetrated opposition planning and provided valuable intelligence to the U.S. military that was critical to the ultimate demise of Axis powers.
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Kirkus Reviews - Starred review
A lively recounting of America's shadow war against the Axis powers, fraught with peril, treachery, and bad decisions. William J. Donovan, a distinguished hero of the Great War, fought an uphill battle to establish a military intelligence unit that worked across service and agency boundaries, but he was vindicated by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the aftermath, "Wild Bill's" fledgling unit was put under the authority of the Joint Chiefs, though given considerable leeway; Donovan used his relative freedom to emphasize an "integrated 'combined arms' of shadow war techniques" and to otherwise sharpen the Office of Strategic Service's skills in the fine arts of "persuasion, penetration and intimidation." Among OSS's specialties was a refined understanding of military logistics: its "bespectacled economists, historians, political scientists, and historians" were able to glean considerable intelligence from raw reports and economic data, making the first accurate estimates of such things as German
tank production and orders of battle. But, as O'Donnell (Beyond Valor, 2001) writes, drawing on vivid oral histories by unit veterans, OSS types were not all bookworms; hundreds performed heroic and unlikely deeds behind enemy lines, organizing partisan resistance, committing acts of sabotage, and gathering critically important intelligence. One not untypical operative, writes O'Donnell, was a Russian prince who "emigrated to the United States, married an Astor, and became vice president of Hilton International"-and who helped organize the Allied invasion of Sardinia. OSS had its failings, O'Donnell acknowledges, especially in the Pacific Theater and in the Balkans, where operatives missedopportunities to land in Istria and arrive in Vienna before the Soviets-which would have changed the postwar era considerably. Even so, O'Donnell believes, the OSS did well to gather intelligence about the Soviets as well as the Axis, and in the end, he observes, OSS "may have made its greatest contribution, not to winning
World War Two, but to winning the Cold War." First-rate reading for fans of cloak-and-dagger stuff, and for students of WWII history.
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Men's Journal - Spies like us
March, 2004
In Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II’s OSS, Patrick O’Donnell chronicles the wartime cloak-and-dagger operations of the U.S.’s office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to today’s CIA. In a white knuckle narrative, O’Donnell tracks the agents who pioneered American espionage, from the stateside folks who developed gadgets (e.g., “Aunt Jemima,” an explosive substance that was baked into muffins for easy smuggling behind enemy lines) to the iron nerved spies scattered throughout Europe and North Africa. “OSS put an end to the shibboleths of ‘gentlemanly’ intelligence,” O’Donnell writes, tying the groups legacy into our current black ops abroad. “As one CIA analyst close to the war on terror put it, “What we are doing is all OSS.”
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Publisher's Weekly
March, 2004
No longer satisfied with gentlemanly intelligence gathering, with the advent of WWII the United States changed its espionage policy and opted for more daring tactics like decoding secret messages and detonating exploding cigars. Under the guidance of decorated WWI hero William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the Office of Special Services, the CIA’s predecessor, assembled a motley assortment of agents who set the stage for the Allied armies’ most important missions, like the invasion of North Africa and the storming of Normandy. Through first person narratives from a slew of OSS operatives, O’Donnell explores the thrilling world of spying before satellites and computer hacking boxed agents into cubicles. The WWII OSS hauled hardened criminals out of jail to burgle enemy embassies and culled spies from the Free French who fled to England and North Africa. The sophisticated seductress "Cynthia" used her sex appeal to gather ciphers for breaking Polish, Italian and Vichy codes from high-ranking military men. Elsewhere, Virginia Hall supplied the French Resistance with arms and continually sabotaged the Gestapo while limping with a wooden-leg. The book also chronicles psychological operations by the Allied "Sauerkraut agents" who demoralized German troops by spreading rumors of defeat, disease and desperation. The chapter on the OSS’ covert weapons, like exploding baseballs and umbrella pistols, vividly recalls 007’s pre-mission encounters with "Q." This book is far more than a simple historical survey and reads like a satisfying cloak and dagger yarn, making it a good choice both history and mystery buffs.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Military Book Club
With his trademark recognition of the grunt at ground level, so gracefully displayed in his books Beyond Valor and Into the Rising Sun, Patrick O’Donnell takes you behind Axis lines with Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agents tasked with blowing up bridges, railroads, munitions and other targets. You won’t find a more gripping, comprehensive account of American WW II espionage and sabotage than Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs.
The OSS—the father of the CIA and post-war special forces—was a gathering of amazing men and women ranging from Ivy League graduates to prison inmates, all focused on one thing: sticking it to the Axis Powers any way possible. The feats of courage and heroism in these pages are no less than remarkable. Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs is the only comprehensive history of the agency that did so much during the war, yet is so often overlooked. This book—the result of interviews with over 300 former OSS members—is a necessary component to your WW II education. 352 pages.
The first and only complete history of the OSS, this thrilling narrative takes you on such missions as:
- Navy SEAL-type recon and sabotage missions against coastal targets
- Organizing anti-Hitler movements in Switzerland
- Risky airborne operations to aid the French resistance
- Guerilla operations against the 2nd SS Panzer Division in Europe
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Booklist
”O'Donnell, author of two books on U.S. elite units in World War II's European and Pacific theaters, turns to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and as in his previous books, writes from the perspective of the men--and in the OSS, some women--on the front lines. For the OSS, those lines were largely in German-occupied Europe, where operatives gathered intelligence and provided weapons, communications, and leadership to a wide variety of resistance organizations. The danger from the ruthless and frequently effective German forces was great, particularly for the local personnel. So, too, was the risk of being caught in factional quarrels in France and Italy and outright fratricidal slaughter in the Balkans. O'Donnell doesn't denigrate the OSS as do some other historians, who prefer other agencies and services that had turf fights with it throughout the war. Instead, he argues persuasively that the OSS made both material and psychological impacts on European resistance and, through it, on the Germans.”
-Roland Green
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Book of the month
An ex-boxing champion leads a valiant spy mission, is captured and ingeniously escapes—later forcing the surrender of hundreds of German troops. A former embassy clerk disguises herself as a milkmaid, joins the French Resistance and becomes one of Germany’s most wanted figures—all in spite of the fact she bears a wooden leg. These are just two of the many operatives of the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), an agency so secret it could carry out daring feats beyond any we've seen since.
Here, author Patrick O’Donnell (Beyond Valor) has captured many of these dramatic, untold stories. Through interviews and recently declassified information, he pieces together a remarkable “shadow war” of WWII, fought with espionage and sabotage by “ordinary” men and women who relied on guile, sex appeal, brains, and sheer guts to help ensure an allied victory.
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"A revealing look into the intrigue and extraordinary courage of our intelligence gatherers of World War II . A rare combination of suspense thriller and true heroism by a great American writer."
Clive Cussler
"Before there was a James Bond or a CIA, before there was a genre called the spy thriller, real-life spooks worked behind the scenes, often at tremendous risk, to win World War II. Deftly using oral history and recently declassified documents, Patrick O'Donnell gives us a fascinating look at the shaken-not-stirred life of these intrepid spies and soldiers, who are into intrigue before intrigue was cool."
Hampton Sides, author of GHOST SOLDIERS
"This is a unique and uniquely valuable contribution, casting a penetrating light into the war in the shadows during World War II. O'Donnell breaks new ground with these first hand accounts by people who never expected to tell their story. Just as there was nothing new to say, along comes a book like this."
Geoffrey Perret, Author of Eisenhower
"OPERATIVES, SPIES AND SABOTEURS is a superbly told story of the men and women of the OSS. Only by understanding the deeds of those who have gone before us can we appreciate the sacrifices made that paved the way for the outstanding records established by present-day special warriors."
Captain Robert A. Gormly, USN (Ret.), author of COMBAT SWIMMER and former commander SEAL Teams Two and Six and Naval Special Warfare Group Two
"These individual experiences are the heart of the book - and they are moving… This is not a book for those with weak stomachs. The oral histories paint a reality of infantry combat little understood by those who have not experienced it….It is not politically correct, and will not leave the reader feeling good. It is worth reading because it brings the war through the voices of those who experienced it, and because it is important to succeeding generations to know what they did."
General Carl Mundy, 30th Commandant of the Marine Corps - Naval History [Into the Rising Sun]
"An extraordinary book."
General Henry H. Shelton, Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Beyond Valor]
"The stories Mr. O’Donnell elicited from our World War II Pacific veterans were often tragic, but always inspiring."
General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [Into the Rising Sun]
"What Steven Spielberg accomplished visually for the cinema in Saving Private Ryan, Patrick O’Donnell has accomplished through the printed word."
Carlo D'Este, author of PATTON: A GENIOUS FOR WAR
"…is an important addition to the reporting of WWII oral histories - much like the seminal work of Stephen Ambrose. [Beyond Valor is] bound to be a WWII classic."
Col. Dominic Caraccilo, Book Editor Military Heritage, CO 503rd, former XO 75th Ranger Battalion
"O'Donnell does an excellent job of presenting the stories of a group of men who receive scarce attention… and does not sugarcoat their stories. Those who died can never tell their stories. With this book, however, O’Donnell will not let these men be forgotten."
Dr. Kathryn Barbier, Yale, The Journal of Military History
"Wonderful … the book brought tears to my eyes"
The Washington Times, February 25, 2001
"There are very few of us left who were there and we owe it to our buddies that didn’t return to let people know what happened."
Jack Trovato, WWII Veteran]
"Captures what the average soldier went through during combat."
USA Today, May 15, 2001, Front page, Section A-1
"A superb historian, Patrick O’Donnell has recaptured [World War II] in a way no one else has."
The Toledo Blade, May 27, Dr. Jack Lessenberry, Wayne State University
""....gives the flavor of being in the action not provided by other histories, with their emphasis on leaders at distant headquarters. Included are many interesting stories, such as the Finns offering to sell intelligence about America's secretive wartime ally, the USSR."
Library Journal
"An engaging and gritty look at combat from those who experienced it first hand. Grade A."
Rocky Mountain News, April 2001
"These riveting oral and e-mail accounts by glidermen and rangers and paratroopers are reminiscent of such books by Stephen E. Ambrose as D-Day and Citizen Soldiers."
Douglas Brinkley, director of the Eisenhower Center and Professor of History at the University of New Orleans
"Beyond Valor teaches realities of World War II combat that I have encountered in no other book."
Gerald F. Linderman, author of The World Within War: America's Combat Experience in World War II, Professor Emeritus Univ. Michigan
"Beyond Valor is a great war book. It has pathos, excitement, and sometimes suspense. Above all it reminds us that wars are fought by men on the ground, not in the war rooms of higher headquarters."
John S. D. Eisenhower, author of Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott
"These narratives are highly charged, emotional, dramatic, intense. The horrific underside of war has seldom been exposed so graphically."
Stanley Weintraub, Professor Emeritus Penn. State University, author of MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero
"Told by the GIs of WWII in their own words, the extraordinary personal histories collected here prove that real war ultimately can only be explained by those who fought it, and that the true heroes too often go uncelebrated. Beyond Valor is a fitting memorial to these men."
W. E. B. Griffin author of The Corps and the Men at War Series
"Patrick O'Donnell may be the next Studs Terkel. Spending untold hours with proud and often laconic veterans, coaxing their stories with meticulous care, he has shown us the wet, dark, jungled truth of the Pacific War."
Hampton Sides author of Ghost Soldiers
"Browse through a few of these tales and you will probably gain new respect for the older men in the Veterans Day Parade."
The Wall Street Journal