Imagine the Terror: On a seemingly ordinary day in May, 1941, a boy from a tiny village in Crete faces an unexpected threat - the invasion of German troops. He runs for cover - his first escape in a series of encounters with destiny. Imagine the Adventure: The boy and his brother work for the SOE, an underground branch of the English Intelligence Service. When the resistance movement is uncovered, they quickly escape through the mountains of Crete, hiding from the enemy in broad daylight. Danger looms everywhere. Imagine the Glamour: The boy trains to be a spy for the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services), the SOE's newly formed American intelligence counterpart. Imagine the Peril: While on his undercover mission in Salonica, the boy constantly risks his life, operating a wireless radio in plain view. Will the German police ever discover him? Imagine the Courage: If captured, the boy resolves to take a poison capsule that will quickly end his young life, rather than endure torture. Often, he finds himself seconds away from that dreaded event. Imagine the Victory of living to tell the tale at age 91... It's all true! No imagination is necessary. This is the stuff of movies--a must-read story about the Game of Life. The author's story, along with those of other agents, was featured in the documentary Camp X: Secret Agent School, a production by YAP Films, and was aired on HISTORY Channel in Canada and other networks worldwide.

During World War II, training in the black arts of covert operation was vital preparation for the 'ungentlemanly warfare' waged by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) against Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan. Reproduced here is the most comprehensive training syllabus used at SOE's Special Training Schools (STSs) showing how agents learnt to wreak maximum destruction in occupied Europe and beyond. The training took place in country houses and other secluded locations ranging from the Highlands of Scotland to Singapore and Canada. An array of unconventional skills are covered - from burglary, close combat and silent killing through to propaganda, surveillance and disguise - giving insight into the workings of one of World War II's most intriguing organizations. Denis Rigden's introduction sets the documents in its historical context and includes stories of how these lessons were put into practice on actual wartime missions.

The daring missions and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of America's World War II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), have become the stuff of legend. Yet the contributions of the four thousand women who made up one-fifth of its staff have gone largely unheralded. Here, at last, are their fascinating stories, told by one of their own. A seasoned journalist and veteran of sensitive OSS and CIA operations, McIntosh draws on her own experiences and in-depth interviews with more than one hundred OSS women to uncover some of the most tantalizing stories and best-kept secrets of the war.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER “As exciting as any spy novel” (Daily News, New York), The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring World War II spies before marrying into European nobility. Perfect for fans of A Woman of No Importance and Code Girls. When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes. Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage. Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections. “[A] meticulously researched, beautifully crafted work of nonfiction that reads like a James Bond thriller” (Bookreporter), The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a spirited American woman who risked everything to serve her country.

OSS Operation Black Mail is the story of a remarkable woman who fought World War II on the front lines of psychological warfare. Elizabeth “Betty” P. McIntosh spent eighteen months serving in the Office of Strategic Services in what has been called the “forgotten theater,” China-Burma-India, where she met and worked with characters as varied as Julia Child and Ho Chi Minh. Her craft was black propaganda, and her mission was to demoralize the enemy through prevarication and deceit, and ultimately, convince him to surrender. Betty and her crew ingeniously obtained and altered personal correspondence between Japanese soldiers and their families on the home islands of Japan. She also ordered the killing of a Japanese courier in the jungles of Burma to plant a false surrender order in his mailbag. By the time Betty flew the Hump from Calcutta to China, she was acting head of the Morale Operations branch for the entire theater, overseeing the production of thousands of pamphlets and radio scripts, the generation of fiendishly clever rumors, and the printing of a variety of faked Japanese, Burmese, and Chinese newspapers. Her strategy involved targeting not merely the Japanese soldier but the man within: the son, the husband, the father. She knew her work could ultimately save lives, but never lost sight of the fact that her propaganda was a weapon and her intended target the enemy. This is not a typical war story. The only beaches stormed are the minds of an invisible enemy. Often a great deal of time and effort was expended in conception and production, and rarely was it known if even a shred reached the hands of the intended recipient. The process was opaque on both ends: the origin of a rumor or radio broadcast obscured, the target elusive. For Betty and her friends, time on the “front lines” of psychological warfare in China-Burma-India rushed by in a cascade of creativity and innovation, played out on a stage where a colonial world was ending and chaos awaited.

New, completely updated and revised.

This Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a genuine guide from the Second World War, states that its purpose is to "characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it." Among the other fine pieces of advice in this handy volume, one is encouraged to "switch address labels on enemy baggage", "let cutting tools grow dull", "forget to provide paper in toilets", and "change sign posts at intersections and forks; the enemy will go the wrong way and it may be miles before he discovers his mistakes."

Carmen and Juni are spending the summer at an OSS sleep-away camp. The camp director is a retired spy-turned-environmentalist named Oscar Zohn. But it turns out that O. Zohn thinks environmentalism means using nature for his own devices. He plans on using the unknowing help of the Spy Kid campers. Only Carmen and Juni are in the know…which means only they can save the world!

The unvarnished behind-the-scenes tale of the OSS—and the incredibly daring men and women who put their lives at stake in the most dangerous game of all. “By mid-1942, after a Washington shuffle, the Office of Coordinator of information had become the Office of Strategic Services. By then, Colonel, later General, "Wild Bill" Donovan, the "Wizard of OSS", was "sitting stop a lusty, burgeoning, dynamic organization stamped with its own imprint". The story of how that organization grew, the sort of operatives and methods it employed, the schemes and techniques of financing its activities, and the things it was able to accomplish for the war effort still makes exciting reading, even this many years after the war. Alcorn served with the organization from its earliest days, with Donovan both directly and indirectly; his observations would indicate that the man was nearly unique in his ability to grasp quantities of detail. While Alcorn does not leave out some mention of prima donnas and other undesirable; who occasionally cropped up, and he is moderately censorious of MacArthur's refusal to let OSS operate freely in the Pacific theatre, his overall picture is one of uncommon harmony for such a complex effort. The emphasis is on people, rather than techniques, he has a real grasp of how to project human-interest material. The thrills, chills, and tears are well balanced, and the effect is exhilarating.”—Kirkus Reviews “One of the best”—Detroit News “The thrills, chills, and tears are well balanced, and the effect is exhilarating.”

An American-born boy grew up in a small village on the Greek island of Crete. In his last year in high school, he witnessed the German invasion of Crete, in May of 1941, during the early days of WW II. At the age of eighteen, he joined a resistance group headed by his brother, and supplied crucial information to the SOE, the arm of the English Intelligence Service. This resistance group is uncovered, resulting in their hasty evacuation by the SOE, to Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo, the author and his brother were asked to join the English Intelligence Service, but rather, pursued the American OSS, or Office of Strategic Services, the newly formed American intelligence counterpart. They were enlisted into the US Army, and attached to the OSS, where the author was trained in the SI, or Secret Intelligence sector, which included parachute jumping, wireless/Morse code training, commando/defense training, locks/safe-cracking techniques, escape methods, and environment assimilation techniques. After being transformed into a skilled spy, the author was sent back to Greece undercover, and along with a Greek naval intelligence officer, set up a communications cell in Salonica, Greece s second largest city, whereby daily coded messages to OSS Headquarters in Cairo were sent. One such message describes the course of events surrounding the bombing of the main railroad yard in Salonica, and the loss of thousands of German troops, as well as recalling the near-capture encounters with the German Gestapo and the Greek police. The author also recounts his personal experiences of his escape from Crete through the mountains, the evacuations by an English torpedo boat, his OSS training, the return mission to Greece, and his final return to the United States.