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General William J. Donovan reviews Operational Group members in Bethesda, Maryland, prior to their departure for China in 1945
General William J. Donovan reviews Operational Group members in Bethesda, Maryland, prior to their departure for China in 1945

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. Bethesda is an Unincorporated area in southern Montgomery County Maryland, just Northwest of Washington D The United States of America —commonly referred to as the An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to the Information gathering (known in the context as " intelligence " World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. near as long as it used to be several months ago It has been actively summarized and split into sub-articles and there is a dynamic talk page discussion of all

Contents

Beginning of the OSS

Prior to the formation of the OSS (the counterpart of the British Secret Intelligence Service), American intelligence had been conducted on an ad-hoc basis by the various departments of the executive branch, including State, Treasury, Navy and War. The United States Department of War, sometimes also called the War Office, was the department of the United States government 's executive branch They had no overall direction, coordination, or control. The Army and the Navy had separate code-breaking departments (Signals Intelligence Service and OP-20-G) that not only competed, but refused to share break-throughs. The United States Army is a military organization whose primary mission is to "provide necessary forces and capabilities. The Signals Intelligence Service (SIS was the United States Army Codebreaking division headquartered at Arlington Hall. OP-20-G or "Office of Chief Of Naval Operations ( OP NAV 20 th Division of the Office of Naval Communications G Section / Communications Security" Also, the original code-breaking operation of the State Department, MI-8, run by Herbert Yardley, had been shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry Stimson because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail". The Black Chamber, otherwise known as MI-8 or Cipher Bureau, was America 's first peacetime Cryptanalytic organization and a forerunner Herbert Osborne Yardley ( 13 April 1889 - 7 August 1958) was an American Cryptologist best known for his book The American Black The United States Secretary of State (commonly abbreviated as SecState) is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with Foreign affairs Henry Lewis Stimson ( September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American Statesman, who served as Secretary of [1] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, the senior representative of British intelligence in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt directed Stephenson's friend William J. Donovan, a World War I veteran, Medal of Honor recipient and New York lawyer, to draft a plan for an intelligence service. Sir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC, DFC, ( January 23, 1897 &ndash January 31, 1989) was a "Wild Bill Donovan" redirects here For the Baseball Pitcher and manager see William Edward Donovan. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous Donovan was employed to evaluate the global military position in order to offer suggestions concerning American intelligence requirements because the US did not have a central intelligence agency. After submitting his work, "Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information," Gen. Donovan was appointed as the "Co-ordinator of Information" in July, 1941.

The Office of Strategic Services was established by a presidential military order issued by Roosevelt on June 13, 1942, to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. The Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS) is a group comprising the Chiefs of service of each major branch of the Armed services in the United States armed forces During the War, the OSS supplied policy makers with facts and estimates, but the OSS never had jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities—the FBI was responsible for intelligence work in Latin America, and the military guarded their areas of responsibility.

Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train and supply resistance movements, including Mao Zedong's Red Army in China and the Viet Minh in French Indochina, in areas occupied by the Axis powers during the Second World War. A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups dedicated to fighting an Invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign nation Mao Zedong ( 26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a Chinese Military and political leader who led The People's Liberation Army ( PLA) ( is the unified Military organization of all land sea and air forces of the People's Republic of China. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National The Việt Minh (abbreviated from Việt Nam Ðộc Lập Ðồng Minh Hội, English "League for the Independence of Vietnam" was a National liberation First French interventions See also France-Vietnam relations France-Vietnam relations started as early as the 17th century with the mission of the Jesuit Belligerent military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory passes to a hostile army. The Axis powers also known as the Axis alliance Axis nations Axis countries or sometimes just the Axis were those Countries World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including The OSS also recruited and ran one of the war's most important spies, the German diplomat Fritz Kolbe. Fritz Kolbe ( September 25, 1900 - February 16, 1971) was a German Diplomat who became America's most important spy Other functions of the OSS included the use of propaganda, espionage, subversion, and post-war planning.

The OSS purchased Soviet code and cipher material (or Finnish information on them) from émigré Finnish army officers in late 1944. Finland, officially the Republic of Finland ( is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr. protested that this violated an agreement President Roosevelt made with the Soviet Union not to interfere with Soviet cipher traffic from the U. Edward Reilly Stettinius Jr ( October 22, 1900 – October 31, 1949) was United States Secretary of State under Presidents S. Donovan might have copied the papers before returning them the following January, but there is no record of Arlington Hall receiving them, and CIA and NSA archives have no surviving copies. Arlington Hall (also called Arlington Hall Station) was the headquarters of the US Army 's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS Cryptography effort This codebook was in fact used as part of the Venona decryption effort, which helped uncover large-scale Soviet espionage in North America. The Venona project was a long-running and highly secret collaboration between Intelligence agencies of the United States and United Kingdom that involved [1]

One of the greatest accomplishments of the OSS during World War II was its penetration of Germany by OSS operatives. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian individuals for missions inside Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and socialist party members, labor activists, anti-Nazi POWs, and German and Jewish refugees. At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed over 12,000 personnel.

How the OSS became the CIA

A month and a half after the war was won, the OSS was disbanded by President Truman, on September 20, 1945. In the following month the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War. State received the Research and Analysis Branch of OSS which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) and headed by Alfred McCormack. The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter-espionage (X-2) Branches that were housed in a new office created for just this purpose - The Strategic Services Unit (SSU). The Strategic Services Unit was an Intelligence agency of the United States government which existed in the immediate post- World War II period The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder (formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) as director to oversee the liquidation, and more importantly the preservation of the OSS' clandestine intelligence capability.

Yet in January of 1946, President Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) which was the direct precursor to the CIA. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO). In 1947 the National Security Act established America's first permanent peacetime intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, which took up the functions of the OSS. The National Security Act of 1947, Pub L No 235 80 Cong 61 Stat near as long as it used to be several months ago It has been actively summarized and split into sub-articles and there is a dynamic talk page discussion of all

OSS Branches

OSS Facilities

Prince William Forest Park (then known as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area) was the site of an OSS training camp that operated from 1942 to 1945. This article is a subset article of Intelligence cycle security. Prince William Forest Park was established as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area in 1936 and is located in southeastern Prince William County, Virginia Area "C", consisting of approximately 6,000 acres (24 km²) was used extensively for communications training, whereas Area "A" was use for training some of the OGs. Catoctin Mountain Park was the sites of OSS training Area "B. Catoctin Mountain Park, located in north-central Maryland, is part of the forested Catoctin Mountain ridge that forms the eastern rampart of the Appalachian " Congressional Country Club (Area F) in Bethesda, MD was the primary OSS training facility. The Congressional Country Club is a Country club and Golf course located in Bethesda Maryland. Bethesda is an Unincorporated area in southern Montgomery County Maryland, just Northwest of Washington D

The Facilities of Catalina Island Marine Institute at Toyon Bay on Santa Catalina Island are composed (in part) of a former OSS survival training camp. The Catalina Island Marine Institute is a non-profit educational program run by Guided Discoveries on Santa Catalina Island California.

US Army units seconded to the OSS

In popular culture

Author W.E.B. Griffin's "Honor Bound" series revolves around fictional OSS operations in Argentina and his Men At War series revolves around OSS operations around the world. The 2671st Special Reconnaissance Battalion was organized at Caserta, Italy on 1944-08-01 under the sponsorship of U This was a special Infantry Regiment that was seconded to the Office of Strategic Services as an operational armed force W E B Griffin (born William Edmund Butterworth III on November 10, 1929) is a writer of military and detective fiction with 38 novels in six series published For the Icelandic Óss rune see Aesir. See also OSS. Oss ( is a Municipality and a City in the southern For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Argentina topics. Both series take place during WWII. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including

In the 2008 movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it is stated that Indiana Jones was a member of the OSS and worked on operations in the Pacific and Berlin and attained the rank of Colonel. Dr (also Col Henry Walton Jones Jr, better known as Indiana Jones or Indy after his pet dog is a fictional Adventurer, Soldier

Some games in the "Medal of Honor" franchise feature a plot surrounding Jimmy Patterson, a fictional OSS agent. In the "Medal of Honor Allied Assault", the player takes the role of Lt. Mike Powell, an agent for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Lt. Powell is sent through six missions in the North African and European theatre and is expected to complete multiple objectives on every mission.

See also

References

Notes

External links

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