The Shadow War Against Hitler: The Covert Operations of America's Wartime Secret Intelligence Service Book

Based on an extensive analysis of OSS records, including the vast trove of records released by the CIA in the1980s and ´90s, as well as a new set of interviews with OSS veterans conducted by the author and a team of American scholars from 1995 to 1997, The Shadow War Against Hitler tells the full story of America´s far-flung secret intelligence apparatus during World War II. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt set up America´s first coordinated intelligence operation. In June 1941 he established the Coordinator of Information (COI), which became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS put out feelers to anti-Hitler elements, infiltrating spies and sabotage agents behind enemy lines and implementing propaganda operations. Planned and directed from Washington, the anti-Hitler campaign was nevertheless implemented and conducted in Europe. Mauch gives special attention to the foreign outposts of the OSS in Bern and London and also compares OSS activities with those of Britain´s secret services as well as with State Department and army and navy intelligence services. A fascinating cast of characters appears throughout: William J. Donovan, Allen Dulles, a veritable pantheon of Ivy League academics who were recruited to work for the intelligence services, and Roosevelt himself. A major contribution of the book is the story of how FDR employed Hitler´s former propaganda chief, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstengl, as a private spy. More than a mere compilation of dramatic incidents, this book adds significantly to our understanding of how we fought World War II.Read More