Their identities remained classified until 2008 when the National Archives released OSS personnel records. By executive order, Donovan’s agency was dissolved as of October 1945, but its secret Intelligence (SI) and X-2 branches would become the nucleus of a new peacetime intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created in 1947.Īt its peak, in late 1944, nearly 13,000 men and women had worked for the OSS, with some 7,500 of these deployed overseas. Truman had no inclination to prolong the existence of the OSS when World War II ended later that year. Roosevelt died in April 1945, and his successor Harry S. Eisenhower once said of the OSS: “If (it) had done nothing else, the intelligence gathered alone before D-Day justified its existence.” In advance of the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944, paratroopers in the Special Operations (SO) branch of the OSS parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands to coordinate air drops of supplies, meet up with local resistance forces and make guerrilla attacks on German troops. The organization also developed its own counterintelligence operation, known as the X-2 branch, which could operate overseas but had no jurisdiction in the Western Hemisphere.īefore Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion of North Africa in late 1942, a dozen OSS officers traveled to the region and worked as “vice consuls” in several ports, establishing local networks and gathering information that would prove vital to the successful Allied landings. In addition to gathering intelligence, fostering resistance and spreading disinformation behind enemy lines, OSS operatives carried out soldier rescues, guerilla warfare and sabotage, among other missions. As head of the OSS, Donovan was frustrated when his rival agencies effectively blocked access to intercepted Axis communication, the most vital source of wartime intelligence.ĭespite such obstacles, Donovan quickly built up the ranks of his organization, training new recruits in national parks in Maryland and Virginia and establishing full-fledged operations in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. military, under the control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In June 1942, he issued an executive order establishing the OSS, which replaced the COI and was charged with collecting and analyzing strategic intelligence and running special operations outside the other branches of the U.S. During World War II, Major General William “Wild Bill” Donovan was the head of the Office of Strategic Services.Īfter the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt acted swiftly to improve U.S.
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