During World War II, American code breakers and spies were crucial in gathering intelligence, decrypting enemy communications, and conducting covert operations to support the Allied war effort. Operating in secrecy and often risking their lives behind enemy lines, these individuals significantly contributed to the Allied victory.
American code breakers, such as those at the "Station HYPO" cryptanalytic unit in Hawaii and Bletchley Park in England, worked tirelessly to decrypt enemy codes and ciphers, providing valuable intelligence on enemy movements, strategies, and plans. The breaking of the Japanese naval code, JN-25, enabled the United States to anticipate Japanese naval operations, including the pivotal Battle of Midway in June 1942.
Meanwhile, American spies and operatives conducted clandestine missions to gather intelligence, sabotage enemy operations, and aid resistance movements in occupied territories. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was instrumental in coordinating these efforts, deploying agents like Virginia Hall, known as "The Limping Lady," who operated behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France.
The contributions of American code breakers and spies were often unsung and unrecognized during the war due to the secrecy of their work. However, their efforts were instrumental in providing the Allies with a critical intelligence advantage, enabling strategic decision-making and ultimately contributing to the defeat of the Axis powers.
After the war, the intelligence and espionage capabilities developed during World War II laid the groundwork for the modern intelligence community, shaping the role of intelligence gathering and analysis in national security and international affairs. The legacy of American code breakers and spies continues to influence intelligence operations and strategies.
Allied Intelligence Bureau; our secret weapon in the war against Japan. Maps by Donald Pitcher. by
Allied Forces Southwest Pacific Area Allied Intelligence Bureau
World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service -- United States
Between Silk and Cyanide by 
Case by Case by
A chronicle of Melchior's hair-raising escapades as an agent for the OSS and the U.S. Army in World War II.
Cast no shadow : the life of the American spy who changed the course of World War II by
An American socialite married to a British embassy official joins an intelligence organization and obtains secret information during World War II.
Codebreakers : the inside story of Bletchley Park by 
MacArthur's spies : the soldier, the singer, and the spymaster who defied the Japanese in World War II by
On January 2, 1942, Japanese troops marched into Manila unopposed by US forces commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. Thousands of soldiers surrendered and sent on the notorious Bataan Death March to 80 miles to a prison camp. But thousands of other Filipinos and Americans refused to surrender and hid in the Luzon hills above Bataan and Manila. This is the story of three of them, and how they successfully foiled the Japanese for more than two years, sabotaging Japanese efforts and preparing the way for MacArthur's return.
My father's secret war : a memoir by
In this moving and compelling memoir about parent and child, father and daughter, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lucinda Franks discovers that the remote, nearly impassive man she grew up with had in fact been a daring spy behind enemy lines in World War II. Sworn to secrecy, he began revealing details of his wartime activities only in the last years of his life as he became afflicted with Alzheimer's. His exploits revealed a man of remarkable bravado---posing as a Nazi guard, slipping behind enemy lines to blow up ammunition dumps, and being flown to one of the first concentration camps liberated by the Allies to report on the atrocities found there. My Father's Secret War is an intimate account of Franks coming to know her own father after years of estrangement. Looking back at letters he had written her mother in the early days of WWII, Franks glimpses a loving man full of warmth. But after the grimmest assignments of the war his tone shifts, settling into an all-too-familiar distance. Franks learns about him---beyond the alcoholism and adultery---and comes to know the man he once was. Her story is haunting, and beautifully told, even as the tragedy becomes clear: Franks finally comes to know her father, but only as he is slipping further into his illness. Lucinda Franks understands her father as the disease claims him. My Father's Secret War is a triumph of love over secrets, and a tribute to the power of the connection of family.
Nisei linguists : Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II by
At the start of World War, II the U.S. Army turned to Americans of Japanese ancestry to provide vital intelligence against Japanese forces in the Pacific. Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II tells the story of these soldiers, how the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) recruited and trained them, and how they served in every battle and campaign in the war against Japan. Months before Pearl Harbor, the Western Defense Command (WDC) selected sixty Nisei soldiers for Japanese-language training. When the WDC forcibly removed more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, MIS continued to recruit Nisei from the relocation camps and later from Hawaii. Over the next four years, the school graduated nearly 6,000 military linguists, including dozens of Nisei women and hundreds of Caucasians. Nisei Linguists tells the remarkable story of those who served with Army and Marine units from Guadalcanal to the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Their duties included translation, interrogation, radio monitoring, and psychological warfare. They staffed theater-level intelligence centers such as the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section in the Southwest Pacific Area. In China, Burma, and India they served with the Office of Strategic Services, Merrill's Marauders, and Commonwealth forces. Others served with the Army Air Forces or within the continental United States. At war's end, the Nisei facilitated local surrenders of Japanese forces as well as the occupation. Working in military government, war crimes trials, censorship, and counterintelligence, the MIS Nisei contributed to the occupation's ultimate success.
OSS against the Reich the World War II diaries of Colonel David K.E. Bruce by
OSS Against the Reich presents the previously unpublished World War II diaries of Colonel David K.E. Bruce, London branch chief of America's first secret intelligence agency, as he observed the war against Hitler. The entries include eyewitness accounts of D-Day, the rocket attacks on England, and the liberation of Paris. As a top deputy of William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, Bruce kept his diary sporadically in 1942 and made daily entries from the invasion of Normandy until the Battle of the Bulge. Bruce had served in World War I and, as Andrew Mellon's son-in-law, moved easily in the world of corporate and museum boardrooms and New York society. However, World War II gave him a more serious and satisfying purpose in life; the experience of running the OSS's most important overseas branch confirmed his lifelong interest in foreign service. After the war, in partnership with his second wife, Evangeline, Bruce headed the Marshall Plan in France and was ambassador to Paris, Bonn, and London. He further served as head of negotiations at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam, first American emissary to China and ambassador to NATO.
A private war an American code officer in the Belgian Congo by 
The shadow war against Hitler : the covert operations of America's wartime secret intelligence service by
Surveying the expanding conflict in Europe during one of his famous fireside chats in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt ominously warned that "we know of other methods, new methods of attack. The Trojan horse. The fifth column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs, and traitors are the actors in this new strategy." Having identified a new type of war--a shadow war--being perpetrated by Hitler's Germany, FDR decided to fight fire with fire, authorizing the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to organize and oversee covert operations. Based on an extensive analysis of OSS records, including the vast trove of records released by the CIA in the 1980s 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 is the full story of America's far-flung secret intelligence apparatus during World War II. In addition to its responsibilities generating, processing, and interpreting intelligence information, the OSS orchestrated all manner of dark operations, including extending feelers to anti-Hitler elements, infiltrating spies and sabotage agents behind enemy lines, and implementing propaganda programs. Planned and directed from Washington, the anti-Hitler campaign was largely conducted in Europe, especially through the OSS's foreign outposts in Bern and London. A fascinating cast of characters made the OSS run: William J. Donovan, one of the most decorated individuals in the American military who became the driving force behind the OSS's genesis; Allen Dulles, the future CIA chief who ran the Bern office, which he called "the big window onto the fascist world"; a veritable pantheon of Ivy League academics who were recruited to work for the intelligence services; and, not least, 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 record of dramatic incidents and daring personalities, this book adds significantly to our understanding of how the United States fought World War II. It demonstrates that the extent, and limitations, of secret intelligence information shaped not only the conduct of the war but also the face of the world that emerged from the shadows.
Sisterhood of spies : the women of the OSS by
Here is the fascinating story of the four thousand women who made up one-fifth of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, told by one of their own.
The spy wore red : my adventures as an undercover agent in World War II by
Aline, Countess of Romanones, 1923-
World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service -- United States
World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service -- Spain
Spies -- United States
They dared return : the true story of Jewish spies behind the lines in Nazi Germany by
Having barely escaped Germany, several Jewish friends are determined to strike back at the Third Reich while their families languish in concentration camps. After months of training with the U.S. Army, a small group of spies is formed, including several former German soldiers now willing to betray their Führer for the greater good of Germany. The mission's commander is a Jewish sergeant who only months earlier was plucked from the streets of Brooklyn. The men are sent on a covert operation deep into the heavily fortified area of Austria's "Alpine Redoubt," where Hitler planned to make his last stand. Capture meant almost certain death; success, a swift end to the war. Using recently declassified files, private documents, and personal interviews, military historian Patrick K. O'Donnell has written another cinematic World War II drama, filled with an unforgettable cast of characters and packed with action, suspense, and intrigue.
The Ultra Secret by
"Operation Ultra was designed to intercept and decode German signals sent using Enigma, the top-secret German cypher machine. F.W. Winterbotham, was the man responsible for the organization, distribution and security of Ultra. This is his personal account of the operation. "
A Woman of No Importance by
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, Amazon, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, PopSugar, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography "Excellent...This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down." -- The New York Times Book Review "A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people -- and a little resistance." - NPR "A meticiulous history that reads like a thriller." - Ben Macintyre A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine. In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day. Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.
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