This book is about the founding and role of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II led by William Donovan. The first third of the book lays out the background and development of the O.S.S. and then goes into specific cases and the role that the organization played in each. While the authors do a credibe job with the book, it just did not grab me. I felt that there is much detail about the organization that was lacking in this book.  It is a quick read due to it's length.

I recomend this book for those looking for those looking for an overview of the role that the Office of Strategic Services played in World War II.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook and Twitter pages.

This brief account of the origins and range of work done by the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA) during World War 2 was fascinating and informative. It was written in 1946 by two authors who served with it on missions to help the resistance behind the lines in Nazi-occupied France. Thus, it has a freshness and accuracy borne of recent experience. On the down side, at the time of writing much historical analyses of OSS operations and their impact on the progress of the war remained to be carried out, and the secrecy of many missions was still under wraps.

As the U.S. got closer to joining the war in 1941, the need for a centralized intelligence service was an obvious one for Roosevelt. Getting information on the plans and capabilities of enemy and potentially enemy nations called for teamwork with diverse experts and active undercover work by agents on the scene in these countries. Nurturing and supporting the work of insurgents and partisans in those countries with similar goals to America’s was a parallel priority. The effectiveness of Britain’s MI-6 in these spheres was an alluring model, but the abuses of the Soviet security services and brutal methods of its spies was an anathema to the American public. The intentions of world domination by Germany and Japan made the development of a home-grown spy organization more acceptable and necessary.

Instead of turning to the intelligence services of the Army, Navy or FBI, Roosevelt tapped an old friend, Bill Donovan, to get it started. We get an incisive sketch of his leadership style, but never enough to satisfy my interests spurred by countless cameo appearances in fiction and broad historical accounts of the war.
<i>An expansive enthusiasm has been the hallmark of “Wild Bill” Donovan’s career. Donovan was born in a lace-curtain Irish home in Buffalo. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor while leading the famous Fighting 69th in World War 1, and afterwards rose to such prominence as a lawyer that he was the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 1933. Throughout his career he had a shrewd penchant for first names, for meeting the right people, and for expanding generously in every direction. OSS was a direct reflection of Donovan’s character. He was its spark plug, the moving force behind it. In a sense it could be said that Donovan was OSS.</i>

Donovan exercised his free reign and generous funding to hire for his new agency a whole bunch of military types bored with their civilian status or current duties and itching to make a difference. Academic and technical experts of all stripes were hired, from history and languages to engineering and business spheres. At this point in history the dust hadn’t settled on the question of whether this broad casting of nets was inspired or profligate and looney. Regardless, the growth of the agency went into high gear after Pearl Harbor, soaring toward its ultimate peak of 12,000 employees. Only about 10% were involved in field placements, including about 1,000 who were parachuted behind enemy lines in occupied countries, from Norway to Burma. Typically, a team of three included an American officer, a radio operator, and an enlistee with local connections or foreign language skills. When success at hooking up with the local resistance was accomplished, the next step would be radioing back information on enemy activity and arrangement for clandestine air drops of needed supplies and weapons. A small subset of volunteer agents were on their own like as in the common conception of a spy from literature and film, typically in positions with local governments critical to monitoring enemy operations.

The authors illustrate the varieties of success and failures of the initiatives in France, Holland, Italy, Thailand, Burma, Morocco, and Switzerland. I loved this range in the stories. Of these, the latter two were independent countries, and both were sites of an espionage extravaganza (think of the movie Casablanca). Examples from France reveal cases where the agents joined a strong organization of the resistance (maquisards) and waged wide-ranging and effective guerilla operations. In others, they had to build a resistance group from scratch. Coordination and alignment with the objectives of the conventional military forces was a fine art. In the case of Italy, the advance of Allied forces up from Sicily was so glacially slow that the guerilla activities were premature and resulted in a systematic and brutal scouring of partisan bands. In Thailand, the secret invaders were able to harness the support of the premier himself, who served as the main leader of resistance activity. In Burma, a small band of American and British agents (Detachment 101 and the Merrill Marauders) were able to take an airfield with the help of Kachin tribesmen who were well skilled in fighting invaders over the centuries and in a strength that eventually swelled to thousands. Compared to battle deaths of nearly, 5,500 Japanese soldiers, less than 100 Kachins and 15 Americans died in combat. The hit and run tactics of the resistance in France and Italy were estimated by the authors to incur more modest but respectable comparative ratios of 3 or 4 enemy kills per Allied combatant killed.

The book usefully divides the OSS mode of field operations into stages: recruitment, authentication of a plausible persona, training, dispatching into the field, and communication and support of their mission while there. Discussions of these steps provided a number of fascinating stories, including triumphs and tragic failures. Examples of women as agents were noted but not given attention equal to the interest I had in that subject. Cases of extreme moral boundaries that had to be crossed included ones where the agents had to effectively look away when the partisans killed prisoners and one case where a local woman’s collaboration with the Vichy version of the Gestapo had to be killed after ratting out one of the insurgents, leading to execution of his family.

It was ironic how this modern war with mechanized armies armed with tanks and artillery still provided an opportunity for individual human efforts by small bands of ragged volunteers armed with simple hand weapons and explosives to impede and disrupt their goals. The impacts of resistance activities and the information they provided is generally hard to gauge, but a number of clear cases of demonstrable outcomes were presented. A fine example is the fieldwork by OSS in North Africa that fooled the Germans on the site of the Allied invasion persuaded most forces of the Vichy French Army not to fight, thereby resulting in very modest casualty numbers when Eisenhower pulled off Operation Torch.

Despite there being plenty of more in-depth histories of OSS and ones that benefit from decades of research, I would recommend this as an accessible introduction to the subject with some special energy in its presentation due to its writing so soon after the war. The quality of the writing reflects the talent of the authors, who went on to become famous journalists in print and TV media. It was a surprise for me to learn at the end how the OSS was disbanded and its research division shifted to the State Department. In other words, it wasn’t directly transformed into the CIA but only a model for its inception several years later with the ramp-up of the Cold War.

The new version of this book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.

Written originally in 1946 this is the account of Sub Rosa. Which is a series of operations conducted by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the forerunner to the CIA. It includes eyewitness and first person accounts of events during WWII. It is fascinating and very well written by the authors.
This is complex in its entirety, eye opening in its detail of the behind the scenes activities during WWII. I was enthralled by this and the accounts of the dangers and perils they faced. Lack of communication methods was why so many of our spy's were lost in WWII and this tells the story of their patriotic bravery. and how they went headfirst into danger.
This book I highly recommend for all interested in history of our country and WWII. Very well done it is one of the best books I have read this year.
The ARC did not affect my personal opinion.

I had to remind myself several times when I was reading this that it was real life stories of real life spies. It seemed at times so far fetched and at times funny, that it didn't seem this could be the way spies operated through World War Two. How buttons were sewed on and being full of bravado may have been important but some of the stories show how ill prepared these brave people were. At times I was trying to work out whose side some of the spies were on as they used their guile and cunning to escape capture and death or in several cases unfortunately not to.

It would have been a 5 star review but I was uncomfortable with the continuous use of the word "Jap" to describe Japanese people. This did not seem necessary or appropriate.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I was invited to read and review this title by Net Galley and Open Road Media. At first I thought it looked like a real winner, and in many respects it is. For me, one glaring problem made it impossible to finish; more on that in a minute. For those interested in the Resistance during World War II, this may prove a successful read and an interesting one if you can get past the hurdle that stopped me.

And now, the rant: Why is it—I ask for perhaps the tenth time—that publishers that would never, ever dream of letting literature that gratuitously uses the “N” word, and rightfully so, nevertheless let anti-Asian slurs drift in and out of historical prose as if they are nothing more than period details? Yes, it’s true that in World War II, Japanese were called some ugly things, and inexplicably, so were Chinese, though they were friendly toward the US. And it’s also true that there are Black men in the US military that were referred to by ugly, racist epithets by Caucasians at all levels of command. We don’t reprint the nasty words used with regard to African-American troops, because those words are hurtful, and the use of them is wrong. In fact, it may be considered a hate crime.

So then…why is it any less urgent that anti-Asian insults be expunged from literature?

If I had seen just one or two instances in this work, I would have included a comment to that effect here and move forward with a description of the book itself. And it’s true that there is solid information provided by specialists here, along with meaty anecdotes. It’s not easy to find accessible books that describe the Resistance in a knowledgeable way, and this book does that. In fact, without the vile language incorporated here without recognition or comment on the part of the authors or the publisher, I would probably rate this at five stars. But it’s hard to be certain because when I hit the page where 5 slurs appeared on one page of my Kindle—at about the 40% mark—I gave up.

Yo, Open Road. I love that you folks were among the first to auto-approve me when I was a brand new blogger, and I have been looking for a chance to pay you back with a five star review. And we almost had that here. But you need to do whatever it is that publishers do when they find offensive terms sprinkled throughout the text of an otherwise worthy book for no good reason. If you can’t do that, I can’t praise your historical works.

For Asians—some 6 million in the USA, according to the most recent Census—for those that love Asians and hate racism, this book is not recommended.

Written in 1946 to defend the OSS against its dissolution, this is Alsop and Thomas doing hagiography of Bill Donovan and his eccentricities, and recounting for the public the value of the oh so social who volunteered to be parachuted into occupied Europe--ivy league English professors, an adventuress with a wooden leg, the Spanish speaking bartender from the Yale club..... The British SOE makes an appearance as the wise and experienced older espionage sibling to the brash Americans, with torture and the very high OSS death rate addressed cavalierly. I did pick up the unusual statistic that for all of the people Rucker ran through parachute training, only 50 every refused to go out the door and none of them were the 38 women agents.

Open Road Media republishes books that have long since been relegated to the out-of-print registry. Some of them hold up to time better than others, and this is one of the best. This book was originally written in 1946, and as usual with early reactions, captures the intensity and feelings of the participants without the mellowing influences of time.
Open Road does not add any modern commentary or updates to the texts, even though I often with they would, so there are no corrections or further information on the stories presented, even though there may have been significant developments since the original publication date.
Sub Rosa is a series of accounts of operations conducted by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the forerunner to the CIA. It includes eyewitness and first person accounts of events during WWII.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* Life behind the lines in the war could be a nasty place, and Stewart Alsop and Braden Thomas capture that quite well. OSS operatives, and native Resistance fighters were playing for very high stakes, and capture could likely mean death and/or torture. And yet the men and women drawn to the service were not the outward risk-takers you would expect. The authors do an excellent job of capturing the personality of the “everyday people” that took on the tasks.

* There are stories of OSS operations in both Europe and Asia, including both successes and failures. The authors profile a few excellent leaders, and are not above discussing the strong and weak points of both the OSS and native leaders.

* These is no shortage of violence and atrocities. The authors do not sensationalize this, but they describe it accurately and show the consequences of those actions to both sides. There is also no shortage of racial epitaphs that no modern editor would allow, but which were in common use in 1946. I admire the publisher for leaving these intact in the text, because I believe history is best told in the language of the times, even if we find the language unacceptable by modern standards.

* Some of the stories were somewhat surprising, and the book included little details which give it authenticity. For example, I was amazed at the percentage of time that OSS officers, behind enemy lines, spent in uniform. While this may (or may not) have provided them with some protection in case of capture, it was much less risky than it seemed. In occupied Thailand, the odds of finding any Japanese soldiers in the interior of the country were relatively slim, and an American would stand out no matter how he was dressed.


=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* As I mentioned, one of the characteristics of the Open Road reprints is that they do not update or append the original texts. While the book describes several Resistance and OSS campaigns, it does not indicate the overall effectiveness of these actions. Part of that is that the full effects were not quite fully understood in 1946 when the book was published. Later research and writings show just how important some of the Resistance fighters were. As a quick example, the invasion and battle of France was greatly aided by the inability of the German Army to move troops around the countryside because of sabotage and attacks on transportation systems undertaken by the Resistance.

* The book has an annoying habit of including quotes with phrases in French. Historically accurate, but I always need to run to the web for a translation.


=== Summary ===

I enjoyed the book, and while some of its factual content was later updated and perhaps modified, it does represent a history written shortly after the events occurred. You can still feel the raw emotions of some of the participants, and the book is full of the sort of details that fade with time.

It was a quick and easy read, and any WWII history buff would probably enjoy it.

In this slim, thriller styled book written in beautiful prose, we visualise the empire building in the form of OSS by William Donovan, and how unknown men and women set themselves to the task of influencing WW II. Published long back in 1946, written by two OSS paratroopers, Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden, the book is a timeless classic both from the content perspective as well as in understanding the work of USA to fight off Germany & Japan in far off lands. Some of the characters, especially "Billy", whom we meet in this book are so unique we keep wondering about them much after the book is over, about why they did what they did - and whether the humanity has paid the price for their sacrifices. And, if these events were are taken out of context - in a contemporary situation - will they be viewed differently.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.
In my English 101 class, we just talked about spies and saboteurs in World War II. It was in a conversation about an essay that dealt with the changing nature of history books in schools. We were discussing people and ideas that history books leave out. Female resistance members and the dropping of people into occupied countries came up.
Perhaps we don’t like talking about such people in wars because there is a whiff, just a whiff, of something not quite right. It is almost sneaky but in an understandable way. It is the question of tough choices and we really know that real spies are not James Bond in any of his incarnations. It is messy and tough, and not fair.
Perhaps that is why. Perhaps this is also why we romanticize the role because we know that it is a necessary one.
This slim volume gives a brief history of the OSS (the forerunner to the CIA) built pretty much by Wild Bill Donovan as well as detailing some of the lesser known missions. Both Alsop and Braden worked for the OSS, so the reader gets a sense of wanting the deserved acknowledgement.
Considering the time in which the authors lived, they deserve absolute kudos for noting woman agents and pointing out that the women agents did not hesitate to throw themselves out of perfectly good airplanes. It almost makes up for the use of only male missions in the second section of the book.
The authors also note the use of non-white agents as well.
Yet the authors do deserve praise for not trying to sugar coat not only the risks but also the need to sometimes act in a less than chivalrous way, this is particularly true of the last class.
At times, the stories seem to be a bit blogged down with words (and sometimes with too similar names), yet Alsop and Braden do a good job at bringing a little known but very important role in the Second World War to light.

I couldn't finish this book unfortunately. It's more of a series of anecdotes and stories as opposed to a history of the OSS. The stories were too disjointed too. There didn't appear to be an overall thesis. On the positive side, it is very approachable as long as you understand it's more of a popular history than scholarly.