Click here to read about espionage during the Cold War.
On the evening of March 26, 1944, fifteen O.S.S. agents were executed following a failed raid on Italian soil to blow-up an Axis railroad tunnel. The sabotage mission was in support of the allied attack taking place further south at Monte Cassino (Battle of Monte Cassino, January 17, 1944 – May 19, 1944) and had the tunnel been successfully blown, supplies to the defending Germans would have been cut off.
This YANK article reported on the first war crime trial of the post World War Two era: the trial of German General Anton Dostler (1891 - 1945), who gave the order to execute the O.S.S. prisoners. In his defense, General Dostler insisted that he was acting under the orders of General Gustav von Zangen, who denied the claim. Siegrid von Laffert, Edit von Coler and the exotic dancer LaJana had four things in common: they were all carbon-based life forms, they were all all German women, they were all beautiful and they were all Nazis spies:
"These women spies are called the 'Blonde Battalions'. Chosen for their physical attractiveness, they are usually between 18 and 22 years of age. Members of the 'Blonde Battalion' are admitted to the Gestapo school in Altona, near Hamburg and after they are sent out to perform their work as efficient machines, with rigid discipline and precision..."
From Amazon:
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies
This was more than likely the very first mainstream magazine article to address the vital contributions that the Office of Strategic Service made in beating the Axis powers. It appeared on the newsstands just about six weeks after the end of the Second World War and lists various key operations and triumphs that had heretofore been secret.
The FBIS - short for Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service - is the organization that listens to the world's radios for Uncle Sam. It's monitoring station in Washington has, besides editors and annalists, some sixty fantastic linguists on its staff - people who are fluent at anywhere from three or four - up to a couple of dozen, languages apiece. Their job is to intercept and translate the shortwave broadcasts of Rome, Berlin, Vichy and a score of lesser stations, which daily pour out Axis propaganda in more languages than were ever spoken in the Tower of babel." From the 1940 editorial pages of PM came this column by Henry Paynter (1899 - 1960) who wrote amusingly about the many frustrations facing Japanese spies in North America.
"The identity of almost every Japanese spy or saboteur has been known to U.S. authorities. Every instruction they have received or sent has been decoded..."
At the height of their irritation, they confided in the German Consul-General stationed in San Francisco - only to learn after the war that he was an FBI informant (you can read about him here). |
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