INTRODUCTION
UNITED STATES
Office of Strategic Service (OSS)
William Donovan establishing the OSS, recruiting agents from all walks of life, developing armaments, intelligence gathering.
The OSS Research & Development successfully adapted Allied weapons and espionage equipment, and producing its own line of novel spy tools and gadgets, including silenced pistols, lightweight sub-machine guns, "Beano" grenades that exploded upon impact, and explosives disguised as lumps of coal.
Operations: Operation Jedburgh,
Pacific Theatre operations: OSS played a major role in training Kuomintang troops in China and Burma, and recruited Kachin and other indigenous irregular forces for sabotage as well as guides for Allied forces in Burma fighting the Japanese Army.
UNITED KINGDOM
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Recruitment and training; equipment, ciphers and radios; Operations, including Operation Jedburgh, the first significant joint operation with US OSS; Agents such as Odette Sansom, Christine Granville, Noor Inayat Khan, Nancy Wake and Violette Szabo, as well as Patrick Leigh Fermor in the kidnap of Heinrich Kreipe.
Force 136 active in south-east Asia.
FRANCE
Maquis
French Forces of the Interior Sabotage
Joint operations with SOE agents Betrayals. Reprisals
BELGIUM
Sabotage and assassination - Between June and September 1944, 95 railroad bridges, 285 locomotives, 1,365 wagons and 17 tunnels were all blown up by the Belgian resistance Intelligence gathering
Resistance to the Holocaust
Helping Allied soldiers on escape routes
THE NETHERLANDS
Underground groups produced forged ration cards and counterfeit money, collected intelligence, published underground papers. They also sabotaged phone lines and railways, produced maps, and distributed food and goods. Housing Jews, attacking Dutch fascists and German forces.
POLAND
Armia Krajowa (Home Army), Bataliony Chlopskie (Peasants' Battalions), NSZ (National Armed Forces) and other organisations.
Assassinations of Gestapo and SS officers
Intelligence gathering
Sabotage
Uprisings: Zamosc, Vilnius, Lwow, Warsaw
CZECHOSLOV AKIA
Operation Anthropoid, in collaboration with the SOE, the assassination of SS- Reinhard Heydrich in Prague
DENMARK
Borgerlige Partisaner (BOPA) (Civil Partisans) and other groups. Responsible for sabotaging railway lines. Also, saving almost all of Denmark's Jews in 1943.
NORWAY
Operation Gunnerside, sabotaging hydroelectric plants in Norway to stop Germans acquiring heavy water. Operation Archery. Secret assistance from Sweden: 1944, some 7,000-8,000 men had been secretly trained in Sweden.
Saboteurs Max Manus and Gunnar Sonsteby destroying Nazi ships
ITALY
Partisans. By August 1944, the number of partisans had grown to 100,000. Carla Capponi.
THE BALKANS
National Liberation Front (EAM) and Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS)
Operation Harling - 1942 destruction of the Gorgopotamos viaduct in central Greece by the EAM, ELAS and SOE.
Crete
Yugoslav Partisans
USSR
Partisans. Forest Brothers
Operation Concerto, 1943: an operation of partisan formations against the railroad communications intended to disrupt the German reinforcements and supplies for the Battle of the Dnieper and on the direction of the Soviet offensive in the Smolensk direction.
GERMANY
Abwehr - German military intelligence, led by Wilhelm Kanaris
Brandenburgers - an extension of the Abwehr and the first special ops forces to see action in WWII, as, dressed as civilians, they crossed into Poland to take hold of strategic points the night before ground troops invaded. Also active in the early days of Operation Barbarossa working behind enemy Soviet lines; also fighting the Partisans in the Balkans Operation Eiche - Otto Skorzeny's 1943 Gran Sasso Raid, which saw a team of German commandos rescue of none other than Benito Mussolini.
Operation Greif - Skorzeny's operation during the Battle of the Bulge in which German soldiers disguised as Americans, destroying ammunition dumps, misdirecting troops and changing road signs.
Duquesne Spy Ring - active in the US until uncovered in summer 1941. With 33 convicted members, it remains the largest spy ring detected in the US.
Operation Pastorius
Bibliography
Index