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Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of World War II's OSS

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Patrick O'Donnell has now written three of these books. Each is a collection of oral histories from World War 2, the first following elite units in Europe, the second covering the same ground in the Pacific. This third volume is a collection of oral histories covering the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, in Europe.

The format is simple. The author collects the histories into a coherent narrative, provides some context, and pads the narrative with some text. The result is a recounting of various campaigns or actions from the ground level, right at the tip of the bayonet.

The difficulty, such as it is, comes from the context. There's nowhere near enough of it. The author (as noted elsewhere) speaks in this book as if the OSS did all or most of the infiltration into France and Germany during WW2, only briefly mentioning the French and British infiltrations that were more prevalent. The author focuses on the American forces, as he did in the previous two books, but here it's a bit more egregious. For one thing, the intelligence world is somewhat murky and indistinct, and its effect on the larger campaigns in the war is, to say the least, controversial. Given that we're not sure how much effect these actions had on the campaigns, the author's presentation is problematic. He tends to take whatever a spy says about the effect of an intelligence coup at face value, and expects the reader to do likewise. This is a bit much, at times.

Other than that, the book does feel a bit incomplete. One reviewer made an unfavorable comparison with M.R.D. Foot's SOE in France (which by the way should never have been allowed to go out of print); this comparison is unfair, as Foot's book was written in the Sixties, and the author had unprecedented access to classified documents and was allowed to interview a great number of people who were then alive. Though it was a great success, Foot's book cause such a controversy that critics succeeded in blocking publications of any further books by Foot or anyone else. O'Donnell's book is nowhere near as comprehensive, and couldn't be, given the differences in the way they were written.

This is a good book, if you understand it's limitations and gee-whiz-look-what-we-did attitude. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

I bought the book and couldn't put it down after reading it straight through over the weekend. So much of O'Donnell's book contains new information on OSS and WWII. O'Donnell does a masterful job capturing OSS's most important missions and the incredible exploits of these men and women agents most of them untold until now. The narrative style of this book combined with oral history, allows it to read like some of Ambrose's classics like D-Day or Citizen Soldiers. O'Donnell has changed his style compared to his other books yet he still allows the voices of these incredible spies and Special Forces troops to speak

I was really stunned with what OSS did during the war: everything from creating the first SEALS; to blowing up bridges in Greece; to operation CROSS a team of 100 ex-German POWs trained to kill or kidnap Hitler. Some of the best chapters revolve around Greece and the Balkans which have hardly been touched by most historians. Also entertaining was the chapter revolving around spy gadgets created in OSS labs. OSS made everything from umbrella guns to cigarettes that were .22 caliber pistols to something called the "Truth Drug." The missions into Germany itself made my hair stand up in the back of head, especially, the stories from Jewish-American veterans that went back facing almost certain death if they were captured.

Pat O'Donnell has done it again. I read this book from cover to cover in just one day, and I think it's his best work yet. The stories of these real American heroes, told in their own words, really shows the emotions these men and women felt, and the hardships they endured 60 years ago. Most have maintained their vow of silence that long, both out of respect for the work that they did, but also because of some of the bad memories these experiences evoked. Pat O'Donnell got these heroes (no other way to describe them) to open up and relive some of their adventures and missions. The way that Mr. O'Donnell interwove their stories into his book made me wish that I had heard these stories first-hand, or even lived the adventure with them. Mr. O'Donnell has definitely succeeded in his mission to pull us into their world. I can't wait for the next book in his series.

More than anything, this is a collection of first-person interviews with former operatives in OSS during WW2, weakly cobbled together with some uncritical filler narrative. Although there are some brief sections that touch on the broader challenges and decisions of the American intelligence effort, most of it involves repetitive first-person accounts of people hiding in the woods from the Nazis. If that sounds interesting, it isn't. I came away from the book with a modest understanding of what the guys on the ground went through, but with almost no sense of the strategic challenges that sent them there. Having said that, it is an easy read, if only because it is largely devoid of interesting ideas.

I would not recommend this to someone who wants to understand the broad sweep of the American intelligence effort in WW2. I would recommend this to someone who has some interest in first-hand accounts of the operatives on the ground.

"First rate reading for fans of cloak-and-dagger stuff..."
-Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

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 Prof.of History at Colorado College. He is the author of Tannenberg.

"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

This book is not "War and Peace", nor is it a comprehensive book on spies, but rather it is a collection of stories using first hand testimony of the participants in the OSS in WWII. In that context the book is different from most of what must now be a 1000 books on WWII. The strength of this book is the excellent writing and the series of interesting characters and their stories, all involving ordinary men that do heroic things. Thankfully their stories have been recorded by the author since many of these men are now many in the 80's and their first hand recollections will soon be lost. In any case the book is better that one might expect.

I first heard about this book on WABC where John Bachelor has interviewed a series of the living subjects or "spies" on air on his late daily show at 10:00 PM. The guys are ordinary but the stories are often riveting. They put themselves in tremendous danger with their patriotic actions. In many ways this book is like the recent Tim Russert book - a sleeper. The book seems okay from what you have heard from others and from interviews on the radio, but the book is actually a much better read. In many ways the both books (Russert and this book) are on subjects that when properly presented become compelling page turning reads. This is a great value and a good book.

Patrick O'Donnell's "Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II's OSS" is an interesting history of some of the OSS's missions during WWII. O'Donnell describes the creation of the OSS and the tough training that the agents went through.

O'Donnell's stories are well-written and interesting, showing the reader the dangers that the agents faced. However, although he tries to argue that the OSS was very important in WWII, he never gives the reader the full sense of the operations or places them in the bigger overall big-picture. Instead, he simply relates a bunch of stories about some of the OSS operations.

This book is a decent read for anyone interested in WWII special operations but is little more than that.

"Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs" is most likely not the most detailed or comprehensive work describing the contributions of the OSS to the war effort, but it is valuable and entertaining. Any record of the firsthand experiences of WWII veterans is, of course, extremely valuable. The effort O'Donnell put into recording such experiences shows through clearly, and O'Donnell presents the stories of the OSS agents he interviewed in an entertaining, highly readable manner. "Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs" is a fine overview of the OSS, and a much appreciated record of the firsthand experiences of some "unsung heroes" of WWII.

Drawn heavily from interviews, Operatives, Spies And Saboteurs: The Unknown Story Of The Men And Women Of WWII's OSS is the fascinating true story of espionage, intrigue, and sabotage that took place across the occupied territories of Europe. From disruption of supply lines to the relaying of critical information, targeted killings, resistance organization and much more, Operatives, Spies And Saboteurs covers a different dimension of warfare in depth and is a most welcome addition to World War II military history and reference shelves. An inset selection of black-and-white photograph illustrates this remarkable account of the OSS and its critical work in the shadows, long overdue for its public acclaim for weakening Axis defenses.

History spiced with espionage in a book that keeps the facts straight and the drama intense. If you love military history or just page-turning non-fiction, this book is recommended.