OSS (Office of Strategic Services), an intelligence organization set up in the USA in late 1941 along similar lines to Britain's SOE. Based on existing US government departments and initially titled the office of Co-Ordinator of Information (COI), the OSS was formally activated in June 1942 under the leadership of Maj Gen William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, a Franklin D. Roosevelt confidant from his clandestine relationship with Churchill during the 1930s.
Like the SOE, the OSS was tasked with undertaking unconventional warfare (UW) as well as intelligence gathering and evaluation, which included psychological operations, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and the co-ordination of resistance activity behind enemy lines.
Divided into three operational branches: Intelligence, Special Operations, and Operational Groups, the OSS remained a cellular organization, with individual groups knowing little of the others. The operational groups (OGs) each consisted of 30 enlisted men and three officers, divided into two 15-man sections, and tasked with a particular region or country. Because of the need for linguists, volunteers were recruited from a wide range of backgrounds, many without any previous military connections.
Training was similar to that carried out by the commandos, with emphasis placed on raiding, sentry elimination, ambushing, cross-country night navigation exercises, and target attacks. With the exception of demolitions training, there was little in the way of literature to aid either the students or their instructors, and in the early days the OSS lacked the experienced directing staff that later operations would provide.
Further training for OSS operators destined for western Europe was provided in conjunction with already-established SOE units in Scotland and the Midlands. Special units known as ‘Jedburgh’ teams were raised, as part of a tripartite effort by the SOE, OSS, and the French Bureau Central de Renseignements et Action (BCRA). Consisting of an officer from either the OSS or the SOE, plus a French officer and a radio operator, the four-man Jedburgh teams were parachuted into occupied countries in advance of conventional forces. The first Jedburgh force numbered some 350 of all ranks and nationalities, and more were to follow.
From 1941 until the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 the Jedburghs operated in occupied Europe in ever-increasing numbers, providing Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) with strategic information for the preparation of the Normandy landings. They conducted both passive and active sabotage campaigns against transport targets and, on receipt of the invasion signal, maximized their activities to delay Axis reinforcements reaching Normandy. The crack SS Das Reich armoured unit, for example, had to travel from southern France by road because of the disruption of the railway system, committing atrocities as it went, in response to harassment from the emboldened French Resistance.
While a significant proportion of the French population were sympathetic to the Allied cause, only an estimated 2 per cent were actively involved in resistance. Some 10, 000 French civilians were killed, either as a direct result of resistance activity or by German reprisals. Insignificant in the overall holocaust of WW II, these losses must also be measured against the gains in terms of enemy soldiers committed to garrison and guard duties throughout the occupied territory, and in material damage. Aerial bombing was still very clumsy and the Jedburghs were a very cost-effective means of ‘throwing sand in the works’ by destroying railway tracks and, particularly, switching points.
Both the SOE and OSS sent thousands of agents into occupied western Europe, Italy, and the Balkans. However, the two organizations did not always agree on policy, as their differing attitudes towards the Vichy authorities in French North Africa testifies. The Balkans too proved to be a sensitive area, with two distinct resistance groups being supported initially, before the royalists were dropped in favour of Tito's communist Partisans. Tito was successful in creating diversionary actions responsible for tying-up over two Axis divisions, denying their deployment elsewhere, and preventing Germany achieving full control of Yugoslavia.
The area of OSS operations was extensive, and extended across the world, with two main exceptions: Central and South America, which was covered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ; and the Pacific area, where Gen Douglas MacArthur's own organization conducted OSS-type operations. OSS Detachment 101, which operated behind Japanese lines in the Burma campaign, is accredited with over 5, 500 enemy killed and a further 10, 000 wounded, at a cost of only 15 OSS operators lost. This detachment was also responsible for the repatriation of 215 downed Allied aircrew. While rescuing shot-down pilots represented a small area of OSS operations, it provided a morale booster to the men of Allied air forces. Of those airmen brought down over occupied Europe, over 5, 000 were brought out by the OSS, in itself a significant achievement that contributed much to the Allied war effort.
Post-war the OSS was disbanded, only to be reborn three years later as the CIA. One enormously ironic legacy was the help and equipment it provided for resistance to the Japanese in Vietnam, one of the reasons that Giap was able to field 5, 000 Vietminh regulars in August 1945 and go on to defeat the French during the Indochina war and, later, the USA herself.
— Peter MacDonald
