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The Bizarre Ways America’s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler
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a425couple
2019-07-15 22:14:34 UTC
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The Bizarre Ways America’s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler

From undercover heiresses to hormone-injected vegetables, the early
days of the Office of Strategic Services were marked by colorful hires
and wild schemes.

SAM KEAN
JUL 9, 2019
William "Wild Bill" Donovan (standing) in 1945
William "Wild Bill" Donovan (standing) in 1945 JACK WILKES / THE LIFE
PICTURE COLLECTION / GETTY

At the start of World War II the United States had no civilian agency
dedicated to gathering foreign intelligence. Not that Americans never
spied: The Army and Navy both had intelligence branches, and even
private companies like General Electric sponsored corporate espionage.
But the genteel Ivy Leaguers who ruled the federal government tended to
view such activity as immoral, even dirty. As President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s secretary of war, Henry Stimson, once said, “Gentlemen don’t
read each other’s mail.” This squeamishness put the United States at a
disadvantage compared with Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, all of
which had sophisticated intelligence bureaus and happily spied on
adversaries and allies alike.

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Pearl Harbor finally forced the U.S. government to admit its
shortcomings and establish the Office of Strategic Services. Most people
know it today as the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, but
OSS’s mandate was broader than that. In addition to espionage, it
carried out paramilitary operations overseas and helped pave the way for
the U.S. military’s Special Forces. In many cases, the espionage and the
extralegal activities went hand in hand.

This post is adapted from Kean’s new book.

OSS was primarily shaped by two men: its director, William “Wild Bill”
Donovan, and its chief scientist, Stanley Lovell. Donovan first won fame
during World War I for leading a spectacularly idiotic assault. He
commanded the 69th Infantry of New York, the famous “Fighting Irish,”
who were trying to conquer a German fortress in the Argonne Forest in
October 1918. During an intense shoot-out one day, Donovan received
orders to fall back. After considering his options, he ordered his men
to charge instead. When the Fighting Irish hesitated, he screamed,
“What’s the matter with you? You want to live forever?” and charged off
alone, confident his men would follow. They did.

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The Germans stopped them cold, and a machine-gun bullet shattered
Donovan’s knee. But he once again refused orders to evacuate, and spent
the next five hours hobbling around and preparing his men for the
inevitable German counterassault. When it came, he rallied the Fighting
Irish and drove the Huns back into the fortress in a rout, all but
winning the battle single-handedly. Had the assault failed, Donovan
would have been court-martialed (assuming he even lived). As it was, he
earned the Medal of Honor and returned home one of the most highly
decorated soldiers in American history.

When World War II rolled around, Donovan was working in a New York law
firm. He happened to have attended law school at Columbia with Franklin
D. Roosevelt, and Roosevelt sent his old chum to England in July 1940 to
provide a more accurate picture of events there than Joseph Kennedy Sr.,
the defeatist ambassador to the U.K., could. Although Donovan agreed
that things were grim, he emphasized the grit of the British people and
singled out Winston Churchill—who wasn’t even prime minster yet—as a
stupendous leader. The assessment bucked up FDR’s spirits and
contributed to the Churchill-Roosevelt alliance that would ultimately
help defeat Hitler.

Read: That time the CIA bugged a cat to spy on the Soviets

Donovan parlayed his field trip to England into a job as Roosevelt’s
coordinator of intelligence, and from there he founded OSS and became
its chief. But while the role made sense on paper—Donovan clearly had
the vision and drive to see OSS succeed—Wild Bill also lacked pretty
much every other skill necessary to run a government agency. Even those
who adored him admitted that he had “abysmal” if not “atrocious”
administrative skills, and he simply didn’t have the patience or
fortitude to manage people. As a result OSS became one of the most
poorly run agencies in American history. Employees used to laugh over a
line from Macbeth that perfectly summed up the enterprise: “Confusion
now has made his masterpiece.”

Nowhere were Donovan’s flaws more evident than in his hiring practices.
Needing to throw together an agency quickly, he turned to his circle of
friends in New York and hired blue bloods by the dozen. The OSS roster
was lousy with Mellons, Du Ponts, Morgans, and Vanderbilts. Columnists
joked that the agency’s initials actually stood for “Oh So Social.” In
Donovan’s defense, hiring aristocrats did make sense on some level: They
usually spoke several languages and knew Europe well. But holidays on
the Riviera were a far cry from war. As one reporter noted, “Knowing how
to speak French in a tux didn’t necessarily prepare recruits for
parachuting into enemy territory or blowing up bridges.” More than a few
heirs and heiresses suffered “dramatic mental crackups” in the field.

Even more than aristocrats, however, Donovan loved misfits, and he
staffed OSS with a bizarre array of talent. There were mafia contract
killers and theology professors. There were bartenders, anthropologists,
and pro wrestlers. There were orthodontists, ornithologists, and felons
on leave from federal penitentiaries. Marlene Dietrich, Julia Child,
John Steinbeck, John Wayne, Leo Tolstoy’s grandson, and a Ringling
circus heir all pitched in as well. Observers sometimes referred to OSS
as “St. Elizabeths,” after the well-known Washington, D.C., lunatic
asylum. One top official there admitted that “OSS may indeed have
employed quite a few psychopathic characters.” Donovan once said, “I’d
put Stalin on the OSS payroll if I thought it would help defeat Hitler.”
No one knew whether he was kidding.

Donovan did hire some brilliant misfits as well, including the chief
scientist, Stanley Lovell. When Donovan first interviewed Lovell, he
asked him to become the OSS equivalent of Professor Moriarty, Sherlock
Holmes’s nemesis. But it’s more accurate to think of Lovell as Q from
the James Bond franchise: His job basically consisted of puttering
around in a lab and thinking up cool spy tools. He and his labmates
developed bombs that looked like mollusks to attach to ships. They
crafted shoes and buttons and batteries with secret cavities to conceal
documents. They invented pencils and cigarettes that shot bullets. They
devised an explosive powder called Aunt Jemima with the consistency of
flour that could be mixed with water and even baked into biscuits and
nibbled on without any danger; only when ignited with a fuse did Aunt
Jemima detonate.

Read: The tools of espionage are going mainstream

Like overgrown toddlers, Lovell’s team also developed several
feces-based weapons. One, called caccolube, destroyed car engines far
more thoroughly than sugar or sand when dumped into gas tanks. Another
weapon involved creating artificial goat turds to bombard North Africa
with, in the hope of attracting flies that spread diseases. (They called
it Project Capricious.) Yet another project required synthesizing what
was essentially eau de diarrhea, a compound that, as Lovell said,
“duplicated the revolting odor of a very loose bowel movement.” They
then hired small children to dart out and squirt it onto the pants of
Japanese officers in occupied China. Lovell dubbed it the “Who, Me?” bomb.

And those weren’t even the cockamamie ideas. After hearing that Hitler
and Mussolini would be holding a summit at the Brenner Pass between
Austria and Italy, Lovell devised a scheme to dump a vial of caustic
liquid into a vase of flowers in the conference room. Within 20 minutes,
this volatile liquid would evaporate, turning into mustard gas and
frying the corneas of everyone present. To really add some punch, Lovell
suggested contacting the pope ahead of time and having him prophesy that
God would strike the fascists blind for violating the Ten Commandments.
When the mustard gas fulfilled this “prediction,” the citizens of
Germany and Italy would surely revolt, Lovell argued, and take down the
fascists from within. (Alas, the summit location was changed at the last
second, and the plan never went into effect.)

Lovell also developed what he called the “glandular approach” to winning
the war. Drawing on some dubious Freudian theory, Lovell declared that
Hitler straddled the “male/female gender line” and therefore might
easily be pushed toward one sex or the other. Accordingly, Lovell
isolated several feminine hormones to inject into beets and carrots in
Hitler’s personal vegetable garden. He hoped that Hitler’s breasts would
swell, that his mustache would fall out, that his voice would rise to a
humiliating soprano register. The plan got far enough for Lovell to
bribe one of Hitler’s gardeners, but ultimately nothing came of it. As
Lovell later admitted, “I can only assume that the gardener took our
money and threw the syringes and medications into the nearest thicket.”

The stories go on and on. But the craziest, nuttiest, most unbelievable
thing about OSS was this: Often as not, its schemes worked. Whatever his
faults as an administrator, Wild Bill Donovan possessed a rare
combination of physical courage and mental daring. As the film director
John Ford—another OSS recruit—once said, “Bill Donovan ... thought
nothing of parachuting into France, blowing up a bridge, pissing in
Luftwaffe gas tanks, then dancing on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel
with a German spy.” A man like that couldn’t help but inspire people.
And for every 20 of Lovell’s far-fetched ideas, one or two worked
brilliantly, seriously disrupting Axis missions. In fact, given the
chaos of the world then, perhaps only something as haphazard as OSS
could have succeeded.

This post is adapted from Kean’s new book, The Bastard Brigade: The True
Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic
Bomb.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to
the editor or write to ***@theatlantic.com.

SAM KEAN is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of
Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us.
Byker
2019-07-15 23:08:08 UTC
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Post by a425couple
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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/how-oss-tried-defeat-hitler-world-war-ii/593455/
(Regards,,, been mentioned around here,,,)
The Bizarre Ways America’s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler
Stalin's secret police also wanted to off der Fuhrer, but Uncle Joe stopped
them, fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace with the
U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide open to the
full force of the Wehrmacht...
SolomonW
2019-07-16 08:57:10 UTC
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Post by Byker
Post by a425couple
from
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/how-oss-tried-defeat-hitler-world-war-ii/593455/
(Regards,,, been mentioned around here,,,)
The Bizarre Ways America’s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler
Stalin's secret police also wanted to off der Fuhrer, but Uncle Joe stopped
them, fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace with the
U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide open to the
full force of the Wehrmacht...
Explain more please
Byker
2019-07-18 00:46:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
Post by Byker
Stalin's secret police also wanted to off der Fuhrer, but Uncle Joe
stopped them, fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace
with the U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide
open to the full force of the Wehrmacht...
Explain more please
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-hitler/stalin-blocked-attempts-to-kill-hitler-general-idUSTRE64O5QX20100525

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7765731/Stalin-blocked-two-attempts-to-kill-Hitler-Russian-general-says.html
SolomonW
2019-07-18 07:22:58 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
Post by Byker
Stalin's secret police also wanted to off der Fuhrer, but Uncle Joe
stopped them, fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace
with the U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide
open to the full force of the Wehrmacht...
Explain more please
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-hitler/stalin-blocked-attempts-to-kill-hitler-general-idUSTRE64O5QX20100525
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7765731/Stalin-blocked-two-attempts-to-kill-Hitler-Russian-general-says.html
It is possible, let me make two observations.

General Anatoly Sergeyevich Kulikov was born in 1946, so if this
observation it is second hand.

Hitler only went to live in the bunker in 1945 so the first attempt stated
is unlikely in the bunker.
Byker
2019-07-18 17:45:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
General Anatoly Sergeyevich Kulikov was born in 1946, so if this
observation it is second hand.
Any firsthand observer who went public with this info prior to 1991 would
have been shot or sent to the nearest gulag...
SolomonW
2019-07-20 15:54:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
General Anatoly Sergeyevich Kulikov was born in 1946, so if this
observation it is second hand.
Any firsthand observer who went public with this info prior to 1991 would
have been shot or sent to the nearest gulag...
I would doubt it, Russia after Stalin was not that sort of a place.

I am not saying the story is not valid, I just saying that it does not have
a ring of truth to it as it stands.

Note it is quite possible and very plausible about your original comment
that Stalin would not Hitler removed after 1943 because as you said he
would be "fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace with
the U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide open to
the full force of the Wehrmacht... ". After all, that is what the generals
were planning who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
Byker
2019-07-20 18:35:33 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
Note it is quite possible and very plausible about your original comment
that Stalin would not Hitler removed after 1943 because as you said he
would be "fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace with
the U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide open to
the full force of the Wehrmacht... ". After all, that is what the generals
were planning who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
Had they knocked him off after the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad, 18
months before Klaus von Stauffenberg's attempt, and worked out a deal with
the Western Allies, I wonder if if FDR and Churchill would've abandoned the
Soviet Union to its fate while the Wehrmacht was still a substantial force
to be reckoned with. Knowing that the alliance with the USSR was a deal with
the devil, the Allies would've welcomed the notion of the Nazis and
Communists obliterating each other...
SolomonW
2019-07-21 02:09:18 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
Note it is quite possible and very plausible about your original comment
that Stalin would not Hitler removed after 1943 because as you said he
would be "fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace with
the U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide open to
the full force of the Wehrmacht... ". After all, that is what the generals
were planning who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
Had they knocked him off after the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad, 18
months before Klaus von Stauffenberg's attempt, and worked out a deal with
the Western Allies, I wonder if if FDR and Churchill would've abandoned the
Soviet Union to its fate while the Wehrmacht was still a substantial force
to be reckoned with. Knowing that the alliance with the USSR was a deal with
the devil, the Allies would've welcomed the notion of the Nazis and
Communists obliterating each other...
If Hitler is killed and the generals take over, then the NAZIs are
finished. The Allies would make a deal with German goes back to pre-ww2
borders. Western Europe goes to the Allies supported Government in Exile
and most Eastern Europe probably soon goes under moderate right-wing
military rule. Now what would scare Stalin is what happens to the Russian
areas under German rule?





Eastern Europe goes under some moderate right wing
Byker
2019-07-21 03:14:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
If Hitler is killed and the generals take over, then the NAZIs are
finished. The Allies would make a deal with German goes back to pre-ww2
borders. Western Europe goes to the Allies supported Government in Exile
and most Eastern Europe probably soon goes under moderate right-wing
military rule. Now what would scare Stalin is what happens to the Russian
areas under German rule?
They'd still try to take it all back, casualties be damned:



The end justifies the means.

"Russia has endured revolution and war on a scale that can be difficult to
comprehend. A former commandant of the Army War College in the United
States, Major General Robert Scales, once recalled giving a Russian general
a tour of Gettysburg. The Russian asked the American how many casualties the
battle had produced. Told that 51,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or
left missing, the Russian swept his hand dismissively.

"'Skirmish,' he said.

"But Ganapolsky, the radio host, said history alone did not explain Russia
of today. Russians care, he said in an interview, but they stay home and
express their anger or sorrow in private.

"'Why do Italians come out into the streets?' he said. 'Because they know
they can change their government. Why don't Russians come out in the street?
Because they know they will meet the riot police.'"

Good article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/world/europe/25iht-russia.4.5017801.html
SolomonW
2019-07-23 10:39:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
If Hitler is killed and the generals take over, then the NAZIs are
finished. The Allies would make a deal with German goes back to pre-ww2
borders. Western Europe goes to the Allies supported Government in Exile
and most Eastern Europe probably soon goes under moderate right-wing
military rule. Now what would scare Stalin is what happens to the Russian
areas under German rule?
http://youtu.be/DqZKWZKFUJw
The end justifies the means.
"Russia has endured revolution and war on a scale that can be difficult to
comprehend. A former commandant of the Army War College in the United
States, Major General Robert Scales, once recalled giving a Russian general
a tour of Gettysburg. The Russian asked the American how many casualties the
battle had produced. Told that 51,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or
left missing, the Russian swept his hand dismissively.
Such losses would be comparable to Russian battles of the time, eg the
Battle of Borodino
pyotr filipivich
2019-07-23 15:46:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
If Hitler is killed and the generals take over, then the NAZIs are
finished. The Allies would make a deal with German goes back to pre-ww2
borders. Western Europe goes to the Allies supported Government in Exile
and most Eastern Europe probably soon goes under moderate right-wing
military rule. Now what would scare Stalin is what happens to the Russian
areas under German rule?
http://youtu.be/DqZKWZKFUJw
The end justifies the means.
"Russia has endured revolution and war on a scale that can be difficult to
comprehend. A former commandant of the Army War College in the United
States, Major General Robert Scales, once recalled giving a Russian general
a tour of Gettysburg. The Russian asked the American how many casualties the
battle had produced. Told that 51,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or
left missing, the Russian swept his hand dismissively.
Such losses would be comparable to Russian battles of the time, eg the
Battle of Borodino
It is a problem with any cross time comparison. Fifty thousand
men were killed in battle, out of how many involved, out of a nation's
population? Six hundred thousand out of a population of thirty one
million is 2%.
Likewise, the American Revolution battle at Lexington/Concord
inflicted 273 casualties out of the British force of 700.
(Colonialists suffered 95 out of ~ 400 plus).
OTOH, Paraguay suffered "only" 300,000 total deaths in it's war
with the Triple Alliance. Out of a population estimated at half a
million. "oops".
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?
SolomonW
2019-07-24 13:22:53 UTC
Permalink
Post by pyotr filipivich
Post by SolomonW
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
If Hitler is killed and the generals take over, then the NAZIs are
finished. The Allies would make a deal with German goes back to pre-ww2
borders. Western Europe goes to the Allies supported Government in Exile
and most Eastern Europe probably soon goes under moderate right-wing
military rule. Now what would scare Stalin is what happens to the Russian
areas under German rule?
http://youtu.be/DqZKWZKFUJw
The end justifies the means.
"Russia has endured revolution and war on a scale that can be difficult to
comprehend. A former commandant of the Army War College in the United
States, Major General Robert Scales, once recalled giving a Russian general
a tour of Gettysburg. The Russian asked the American how many casualties the
battle had produced. Told that 51,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or
left missing, the Russian swept his hand dismissively.
Such losses would be comparable to Russian battles of the time, eg the
Battle of Borodino
It is a problem with any cross time comparison. Fifty thousand
men were killed in battle, out of how many involved, out of a nation's
population? Six hundred thousand out of a population of thirty one
million is 2%.
Likewise, the American Revolution battle at Lexington/Concord
inflicted 273 casualties out of the British force of 700.
(Colonialists suffered 95 out of ~ 400 plus).
OTOH, Paraguay suffered "only" 300,000 total deaths in it's war
with the Triple Alliance. Out of a population estimated at half a
million. "oops".
If you go too China and India, you will see the same effect. I was in India
and was told that this town was small. I asked how many people live in this
town, about a million, I was told.
pyotr filipivich
2019-07-24 16:12:07 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
Post by pyotr filipivich
Post by SolomonW
Post by Byker
Post by SolomonW
If Hitler is killed and the generals take over, then the NAZIs are
finished. The Allies would make a deal with German goes back to pre-ww2
borders. Western Europe goes to the Allies supported Government in Exile
and most Eastern Europe probably soon goes under moderate right-wing
military rule. Now what would scare Stalin is what happens to the Russian
areas under German rule?
http://youtu.be/DqZKWZKFUJw
The end justifies the means.
"Russia has endured revolution and war on a scale that can be difficult to
comprehend. A former commandant of the Army War College in the United
States, Major General Robert Scales, once recalled giving a Russian general
a tour of Gettysburg. The Russian asked the American how many casualties the
battle had produced. Told that 51,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or
left missing, the Russian swept his hand dismissively.
Such losses would be comparable to Russian battles of the time, eg the
Battle of Borodino
It is a problem with any cross time comparison. Fifty thousand
men were killed in battle, out of how many involved, out of a nation's
population? Six hundred thousand out of a population of thirty one
million is 2%.
Likewise, the American Revolution battle at Lexington/Concord
inflicted 273 casualties out of the British force of 700.
(Colonialists suffered 95 out of ~ 400 plus).
OTOH, Paraguay suffered "only" 300,000 total deaths in it's war
with the Triple Alliance. Out of a population estimated at half a
million. "oops".
If you go too China and India, you will see the same effect. I was in India
and was told that this town was small. I asked how many people live in this
town, about a million, I was told.
Was helping a friend edit a paper on the Partition of India in
1948. She had trouble wrapping her mind around half a million dead in
the rioting which accompanied it. Being from Alaska, where the
largest city is a quarter million strong, it sounded like "too many to
be believable." Believe me, the population of the subcontinent would
consider a half million dead a blip in the reporting.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?
Rich Rostrom
2019-07-21 16:15:47 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Had they knocked him off after the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad, 18
months before Klaus von Stauffenberg's attempt...
Operation FLASH, the time bomb on Hitler's plane, was in March 1943,
16 months earlier.
Post by Byker
and worked out a deal with
the Western Allies, I wonder if if FDR and Churchill would've abandoned the
Soviet Union to its fate while the Wehrmacht was still a substantial force
to be reckoned with.
FDR had already committed the Allies to "unconditional surrender"
and no separate peace at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943,
with Churchill's immediate concurrence.

It should be noted that there was general agreement among US and
British leaders that "the real enemy" was not just Nazism, but
an entrenched clique of militarists in Germany, and the militaristic
culture of "Prussianism", which had to be completely rooted out.
It was believed that the terms of Versailles, which allowed a cadre
of the German army and especially the General Staff to remain in
being, had been a colossal mistake.
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.
Byker
2019-07-21 19:48:34 UTC
Permalink
It was believed that the terms of Versailles, which allowed a cadre of the
German army and especially the General Staff to remain in being, had been
a colossal mistake.
The greatest thing that Germany lost after World War I was its dignity, as
it was totally humiliated with the Treaty of Versailles whose 440 Articles
demobilized and reduced the military forces of Germany, reduced its lands by
14%, and left 12.5% of the German people living outside German borders. The
thirst to "get even" was too tempting for firebrands like Hitler to ignore
and capitalize on.

At the end of the WWII, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.
demanded that Germany be stripped of all its science and industry and be
reduced to a nation of farmers, something that would have all but guaranteed
the rise of another tyrant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

Morgenthau peddled his plan throughout Washington. He visited FDR on the day
before the president died, and again badgered him to adopt the plan. On the
day the war ended, May 8, 1945, Morgenthau would resume what amounted to
campaign for the starvation of central Europe, this time with Harry S.
Truman. He called Secretary of War Henry Stimson at home and complained that
the Coordinating Committee was not carrying out his "scorched earth" policy
as hard as he wanted, particularly as related to the destruction of all oil
and gasoline and the refineries for making them in Germany, and Directive
1067 that ordained this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#JCS_1067

Except for the purpose of facilitating the occupation, JCS.1067 defined,
"You [Eisenhower] will take no steps looking toward the economic
rehabilitation of Germany nor designed to maintain or strengthen the German
economy."

The U.S. Army protested this senseless order, but Morgenthau wanted his will
performed. Stimson privately dictated, "I foresee hideous results from his
influence in the near future." In a memorandum to Mr. Truman dated May 16,
Stimson outlined the probable consequences of such "pestilence and famine"
in central Europe's "political revolution and Communistic infiltration." And
he added a warning against the emotional plans to punish every German by
starvation: "The eighty million Germans and Austrians in central Europe
today necessarily swing the balance of that continent."
Rich Rostrom
2019-07-21 16:27:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Knowing that the alliance with the USSR was a deal with
the devil, the Allies would've welcomed the notion of the Nazis and
Communists obliterating each other...
Also, the US leadership was profoundly naive about the USSR.
Harry Hopkins wrote in his diary that peace between the West
and the USSR, and democracy in the USSR, were dependent on
Stalin surviving. Harry Dexter White, one of the top economic
policymakers, became a Soviet agent even though he was not a
Communist, to promote good relations by giving the Soviets
inside information.

Churchill was not so deluded, but even he had no real
understanding of how the USSR was actually ruled. The Labour
Party, which shared power, and would win the next election,
was riddled with fellow-travelers. (To be fair, once in
power, Labour PM Atlee signed up for NATO, committed the RAF
to the Berlin Airlift, and send British troops to fight in
Korea.)

Publicly, the US had embraced the USSR as "good guys" in its
wartime propaganda. Britain too, I think. For the governments
to turn and repudiate the USSR, and leave its peaple at the
mercy of the Germans, would have been Orwellian. ("We have
never been allied with Eastasia.")
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.
Byker
2019-07-21 18:58:43 UTC
Permalink
Publicly, the US had embraced the USSR as "good guys" in its wartime
propaganda.
Much to the later embarrassment of those who co-operated with Frank Capra in
the production of certain "Why We Fight" episodes. Nowadays the series
borders on "camp":

Rich Rostrom
2019-07-21 16:06:33 UTC
Permalink
After all, that is what the generals were planning
who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
They wanted to make peace period. There were
some who suggested approaching Stalin first.
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.
SolomonW
2019-07-22 07:19:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rich Rostrom
After all, that is what the generals were planning
who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
They wanted to make peace period. There were
some who suggested approaching Stalin first.
Indeed they did. The problem I see is that the German army was occupying
with the help of local governments most of Europe. Do you think the Allies
would let Stalin control Eastern Europe in such circumstances? Do you think
the locals would allow it without some fight?
pyotr filipivich
2019-07-23 15:28:36 UTC
Permalink
Post by SolomonW
Post by Rich Rostrom
After all, that is what the generals were planning
who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
They wanted to make peace period. There were
some who suggested approaching Stalin first.
Indeed they did. The problem I see is that the German army was occupying
with the help of local governments most of Europe. Do you think the Allies
would let Stalin control Eastern Europe in such circumstances? Do you think
the locals would allow it without some fight?
A) how could the Democracies stop Stalin?
B) who would support the locals?
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?
SolomonW
2019-07-24 13:16:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by pyotr filipivich
Post by SolomonW
Post by Rich Rostrom
After all, that is what the generals were planning
who tried to kill Hitler a separate peace with the allies.
They wanted to make peace period. There were
some who suggested approaching Stalin first.
Indeed they did. The problem I see is that the German army was occupying
with the help of local governments most of Europe. Do you think the Allies
would let Stalin control Eastern Europe in such circumstances? Do you think
the locals would allow it without some fight?
A) how could the Democracies stop Stalin?
They have a powerful army
Post by pyotr filipivich
B) who would support the locals?
The West, Stalin would have to invade these areas to take over. He would be
seen as the aggressor.
Rich Rostrom
2019-07-17 15:40:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Byker
Stalin's secret police also wanted to off der Fuhrer, but Uncle Joe stopped
them, fearing that Adolf's successors would make a separate peace with the
U.S., Britain, and France, thus leaving the Soviet Union wide open to the
full force of the Wehrmacht...
Dunno about the second part... but there was at least one
assassination plot. There was a Russian actress named Olga
Chekhova. (She was married to a nephew of the great playwright
Anton Chekhov, who was also married to Olga's aunt.) She fled
Russia after the Revolution, and became a film star in Germany.

As head of all German "media" activities, Josef Goebbels had
many "glamorous film stars" as cronies, among them Chekhova.
These social contacts often included Hitler.

Meanwhile, her brother, who had remained in the USSR, had
become an important orchestra conductor. At one time it was
proposed in the NKVD that the brother contact her, and if
possible use her entrée into elite Nazi circles to get close
enough to Hitler to kill him. However, nothing came of it -
neither of the Chekhovs could or would really fulfill the
requirements.

(After the war, Olga lived in West Germany. In the 1950s,
her granddaughter, also an actress, dated an American
soldier stationed in Germany - a nice young fellow from
Tupelo, Mississippi.)
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.
pyotr filipivich
2019-07-16 15:54:00 UTC
Permalink
[cleaned up some of the formatting and excised the extraneous bits
from the website]

from
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/how-oss-tried-defeat-hitler-world-war-ii/593455/

(Regards,,, been mentioned around here,,,)

The Bizarre Ways America’s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler

From undercover heiresses to hormone-injected vegetables, the early
days of the Office of Strategic Services were marked by colorful hires
and wild schemes.

SAM KEAN
JUL 9, 2019

At the start of World War II the United States had no civilian agency
dedicated to gathering foreign intelligence. Not that Americans never
spied: The Army and Navy both had intelligence branches, and even
private companies like General Electric sponsored corporate espionage.
But the genteel Ivy Leaguers who ruled the federal government tended
to view such activity as immoral, even dirty. As President Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s secretary of war, Henry Stimson, once said, “Gentlemen
don’t read each other’s mail.” This squeamishness put the United
States at a disadvantage compared with Great Britain, Germany, and
Russia, all of which had sophisticated intelligence bureaus and
happily spied on adversaries and allies alike.

Pearl Harbor finally forced the U.S. government to admit its
shortcomings and establish the Office of Strategic Services. Most
people know it today as the precursor to the Central Intelligence
Agency, but OSS’s mandate was broader than that. In addition to
espionage, it carried out paramilitary operations overseas and helped
pave the way for the U.S. military’s Special Forces. In many cases,
the espionage and the extralegal activities went hand in hand.

[This post is adapted from Kean’s new book.]

OSS was primarily shaped by two men: its director, William “Wild Bill”
Donovan, and its chief scientist, Stanley Lovell. Donovan first won
fame during World War I for leading a spectacularly idiotic assault.
He commanded the 69th Infantry of New York, the famous “Fighting
Irish,” who were trying to conquer a German fortress in the Argonne
Forest in October 1918. During an intense shoot-out one day, Donovan
received orders to fall back. After considering his options, he
ordered his men to charge instead. When the Fighting Irish hesitated,
he screamed, “What’s the matter with you? You want to live forever?”
and charged off alone, confident his men would follow. They did.

The Germans stopped them cold, and a machine-gun bullet shattered
Donovan’s knee. But he once again refused orders to evacuate, and
spent the next five hours hobbling around and preparing his men for
the inevitable German counterassault. When it came, he rallied the
Fighting Irish and drove the Huns back into the fortress in a rout,
all but winning the battle single-handedly. Had the assault failed,
Donovan would have been court-martialed (assuming he even lived). As
it was, he earned the Medal of Honor and returned home one of the most
highly decorated soldiers in American history.

When World War II rolled around, Donovan was working in a New York law
firm. He happened to have attended law school at Columbia with
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Roosevelt sent his old chum to England in
July 1940 to provide a more accurate picture of events there than
Joseph Kennedy Sr., the defeatist ambassador to the U.K., could.
Although Donovan agreed that things were grim, he emphasized the grit
of the British people and singled out Winston Churchill—who wasn’t
even prime minster yet—as a stupendous leader. The assessment bucked
up FDR’s spirits and contributed to the Churchill-Roosevelt alliance
that would ultimately help defeat Hitler.

Read: That time the CIA bugged a cat to spy on the Soviets

Donovan parlayed his field trip to England into a job as Roosevelt’s
coordinator of intelligence, and from there he founded OSS and became
its chief. But while the role made sense on paper—Donovan clearly had
the vision and drive to see OSS succeed—Wild Bill also lacked pretty
much every other skill necessary to run a government agency. Even
those
who adored him admitted that he had “abysmal” if not “atrocious”
administrative skills, and he simply didn’t have the patience or
fortitude to manage people. As a result OSS became one of the most
poorly run agencies in American history. Employees used to laugh over
a
line from Macbeth that perfectly summed up the enterprise: “Confusion
now has made his masterpiece.”

Nowhere were Donovan’s flaws more evident than in his hiring
practices. Needing to throw together an agency quickly, he turned to
his circle of friends in New York and hired blue bloods by the dozen.
The OSS roster was lousy with Mellons, Du Ponts, Morgans, and
Vanderbilts. Columnists joked that the agency’s initials actually
stood for “Oh So Social.” In Donovan’s defense, hiring aristocrats did
make sense on some level: They usually spoke several languages and
knew Europe well. But holidays on the Riviera were a far cry from war.
As one reporter noted, “Knowing how to speak French in a tux didn’t
necessarily prepare recruits for parachuting into enemy territory or
blowing up bridges.” More than a few heirs and heiresses suffered
“dramatic mental crackups” in the field.

Even more than aristocrats, however, Donovan loved misfits, and he
staffed OSS with a bizarre array of talent. There were mafia contract
killers and theology professors. There were bartenders,
anthropologists, and pro wrestlers. There were orthodontists,
ornithologists, and felons on leave from federal penitentiaries.
Marlene Dietrich, Julia Child, John Steinbeck, John Wayne, Leo
Tolstoy’s grandson, and a Ringling circus heir all pitched in as well.
Observers sometimes referred to OSS as “St. Elizabeths,” after the
well-known Washington, D.C., lunatic asylum. One top official there
admitted that “OSS may indeed have employed quite a few psychopathic
characters.” Donovan once said, “I’d put Stalin on the OSS payroll if
I thought it would help defeat Hitler.” No one knew whether he was
kidding.

Donovan did hire some brilliant misfits as well, including the chief
scientist, Stanley Lovell. When Donovan first interviewed Lovell, he
asked him to become the OSS equivalent of Professor Moriarty, Sherlock
Holmes’s nemesis. But it’s more accurate to think of Lovell as Q from
the James Bond franchise: His job basically consisted of puttering
around in a lab and thinking up cool spy tools. He and his labmates
developed bombs that looked like mollusks to attach to ships. They
crafted shoes and buttons and batteries with secret cavities to
conceal documents. They invented pencils and cigarettes that shot
bullets. They devised an explosive powder called Aunt Jemima with the
consistency of flour that could be mixed with water and even baked
into biscuits and nibbled on without any danger; only when ignited
with a fuse did Aunt Jemima detonate.

Like overgrown toddlers, Lovell’s team also developed several
feces-based weapons. One, called caccolube, destroyed car engines far
more thoroughly than sugar or sand when dumped into gas tanks. Another
weapon involved creating artificial goat turds to bombard North Africa
with, in the hope of attracting flies that spread diseases. (They
called it Project Capricious.) Yet another project required
synthesizing what was essentially eau de diarrhea, a compound that, as
Lovell said, “duplicated the revolting odor of a very loose bowel
movement.” They then hired small children to dart out and squirt it
onto the pants of Japanese officers in occupied China. Lovell dubbed
it the “Who, Me?” bomb.

And those weren’t even the cockamamie ideas. After hearing that Hitler
and Mussolini would be holding a summit at the Brenner Pass between
Austria and Italy, Lovell devised a scheme to dump a vial of caustic
liquid into a vase of flowers in the conference room. Within 20
minutes, this volatile liquid would evaporate, turning into mustard
gas and frying the corneas of everyone present. To really add some
punch, Lovell suggested contacting the pope ahead of time and having
him prophesy that God would strike the fascists blind for violating
the Ten Commandments. When the mustard gas fulfilled this
“prediction,” the citizens of Germany and Italy would surely revolt,
Lovell argued, and take down the fascists from within. (Alas, the
summit location was changed at the last second, and the plan never
went into effect.)

Lovell also developed what he called the “glandular approach” to
winning the war. Drawing on some dubious Freudian theory, Lovell
declared that Hitler straddled the “male/female gender line” and
therefore might easily be pushed toward one sex or the other.
Accordingly, Lovell isolated several feminine hormones to inject into
beets and carrots in Hitler’s personal vegetable garden. He hoped that
Hitler’s breasts would swell, that his mustache would fall out, that
his voice would rise to a humiliating soprano register. The plan got
far enough for Lovell to bribe one of Hitler’s gardeners, but
ultimately nothing came of it. As Lovell later admitted, “I can only
assume that the gardener took our money and threw the syringes and
medications into the nearest thicket.”

The stories go on and on. But the craziest, nuttiest, most
unbelievable thing about OSS was this: Often as not, its schemes
worked. Whatever his faults as an administrator, Wild Bill Donovan
possessed a rare combination of physical courage and mental daring. As
the film director John Ford—another OSS recruit—once said, “Bill
Donovan ... thought nothing of parachuting into France, blowing up a
bridge, pissing in Luftwaffe gas tanks, then dancing on the roof of
the St. Regis Hotel with a German spy.” A man like that couldn’t help
but inspire people. And for every 20 of Lovell’s far-fetched ideas,
one or two worked brilliantly, seriously disrupting Axis missions. In
fact, given the chaos of the world then, perhaps only something as
haphazard as OSS could have succeeded.

This post is adapted from Kean’s new book, The Bastard Brigade: The
True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi
Atomic Bomb.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to
the editor or write to ***@theatlantic.com.

SAM KEAN is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of
Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?
Rich Rostrom
2019-07-17 15:29:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by a425couple
from
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/how-oss-tried-defeat-hitler-world-war-ii/593455/
(Regards,,, been mentioned around here,,,)
The review (or possibly the book) has some serious errors, noted below.
Post by a425couple
The Bizarre Ways America¹s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler
From undercover heiresses to hormone-injected vegetables, the early
days of the Office of Strategic Services were marked by colorful hires
and wild schemes.
SAM KEAN
JUL 9, 2019
...
Post by a425couple
The OSS was primarily shaped by two men: its director, William ³Wild Bill²
Donovan, and its chief scientist, Stanley Lovell. Donovan first won fame
during World War I for leading a spectacularly idiotic assault. He
commanded the 69th Infantry of New York, the famous ³Fighting Irish,²
who were trying to conquer a German fortress in the Argonne Forest in
October 1918. During an intense shoot-out one day, Donovan received
orders to fall back. After considering his options, he ordered his men
to charge instead. When the Fighting Irish hesitated, he screamed,
³What¹s the matter with you? You want to live forever?² and charged off
alone, confident his men would follow. They did.
That sentiment is usually attributed to Sergeant Dan Daly (USMC), at
the battle of Belleau Wood, 6/6/1918:

"Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?"
Post by a425couple
When World War II rolled around, Donovan was working in a New York law
firm. He happened to have attended law school at Columbia with Franklin
D. Roosevelt, and Roosevelt sent his old chum to England in July 1940 to
provide a more accurate picture of events there than Joseph Kennedy Sr.,
the defeatist ambassador to the U.K., could. Although Donovan agreed
that things were grim, he emphasized the grit of the British people and
singled out Winston Churchill‹who wasn¹t even prime minster yet‹as a
stupendous leader.
Churchill had become PM on 10 May 1940.
Post by a425couple
Like overgrown toddlers, Lovell¹s team also developed several
feces-based weapons. One, called caccolube, destroyed car engines far
more thoroughly than sugar or sand when dumped into gas tanks.
Cacolube, as one might deduce from its name, attacked the lubricant
oil in an engine. The name alluded to its intense anti-lubricant
effect; there was no feces involved.
Post by a425couple
And those weren¹t even the cockamamie ideas. After hearing that Hitler
and Mussolini would be holding a summit at the Brenner Pass between
Austria and Italy, Lovell devised a scheme to dump a vial of caustic
liquid into a vase of flowers in the conference room. Within 20 minutes,
this volatile liquid would evaporate, turning into mustard gas and
frying the corneas of everyone present. To really add some punch, Lovell
suggested contacting the pope ahead of time and having him prophesy that
God would strike the fascists blind for violating the Ten Commandments.
His suggestion was that the Pope speak out afterwards.
Post by a425couple
This post is adapted from Kean¹s new book, The Bastard Brigade: The True
Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic
Bomb.
Kean appears to have relied extensively on Lovell's memoir _Of Spies and
Strategems_. Unfortunately, Lovell is not an entirely reliable source.
--
Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
--- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.
Byker
2019-07-20 19:02:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rich Rostrom
Churchill had become PM on 10 May 1940.
Just think if Lord Halifax would have been PM instead of Churchill, which
very nearly happened. When the BEF was pushed all the way back to the
Channel, he'd probably have sued for peace, and Franco-Prussian War II would
have lasted a grand total of eight months. It's not as ludicrous as it
sounds. In April, 1940, over 90% of Americans polled wanted nothing to do
with getting involved in another European war. 110,000 U.S. troops died in
WWI, and the popular notion that we were "duped" into getting involved
produced a resentment that lasted a generation.

Interesting scenario to ponder:

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