Mara Jade Skywalker wrote:

> Guerre secrète 1939-1945: SIS, SOE et OSS -
>
> L'utilisation de procédés indirects pour atteindre les objectifs
> militaires classiques caractérise la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
> Le développement des unités commandos en est un aspect.
>

The OSS and the London “Free Germans”
Strange Bedfellows

Jonathan S. Gould

Editor’s Note: The opening of the files of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
and the end of the Cold War have enabled scholars to add new perspective to our
understanding of World War II intelligence operations. Two decades ago, Joseph Persico’s
Piercing the Reich used some of the declassified records to tell the story of the OSS’s
daring infiltration of agents into Nazi Germany in the closing months of the war. One of
the OSS officers who ran those operations, the late Joseph Gould, left a memoir that now
adds texture and impact to Persico’s account and subsequent scholarship. The author of
this article, Gould’s son Jonathan, has combined his father’s memories with the published
literature—and with a startling twist from behind the Iron Curtain.

* * *

Following the Allied landing at Normandy in June 1944, the OSS dispatched over 200 spies
into Nazi Germany. The London office of the Secret Intelligence Branch (SI), under the
leadership of the late CIA director William J. Casey, organized and dispatched over 100
missions from September 1944 through April 1945.1 Agents recruited from the ranks of
church dissidents, Spanish civil war veterans, political refugees, and underground labor
groups throughout occupied Europe gathered military intelligence critically important to
the advance of the Allied armies, leading to the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945.

This article focuses on one set of those missions, manned by seven exiled German trade
unionists, and the relationship between the agents and the OSS officer who recruited and
trained them. That officer— Army Lt. Joseph Gould—was the author’s father. This article is
dedicated to his memory and to the courage and sacrifice of these seven silent soldiers of
the German resistance, who have gone largely unrecognized.

..../

Epilogue

OSS/London’s campaign to penetrate Germany has been recognized as an important milestone
in the history of US intelligence during World War II. The five TOOL missions manned by
the Free Germans clearly contributed to “the high-quality intelligence that gave the
American military timely insights into enemy defenses and the dubious prospects for a
last-stand bastion in the Alps. No other source of intelligence was as useful in reliably
discerning such details in the closing months of the war.”59 With regard to the
performance of the Free Germans themselves, the OSS, in its final report, praised them for
“rendering extremely valuable service during the hostilities period when they were dropped
blind into enemy territory to accomplish secret intelligence missions.”60 Declassified
documents reveal that the OSS recommended to the US Army that HAMMER mission agents Paul
Lindner and Anton Ruh be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and that the Bronze Star
and the Silver Star be issued to PICKAXE agents Walter Struewe and Emil Konhäuser,
respectively.61 In addition, the OSS commended the PICKAXE team for “undertaking a
dangerous mission in which they performed courageously and efficiently that led to results
of great value to the Allies and which contributed directly to the defeat of the enemy.”62
In January 1946, the War Department endorsed an OSS recommendation that Kurt Gruber, who
was killed in the airplane crash that aborted the CHISEL mission, be posthumously awarded
the Medal of Freedom.63

Postwar politics, however, interevened. The OSS’s final report on wartime penetration
operations states that, “because of the political background of these men, there is
serious doubt as to whether they could fit into our postwar German operations.”64 The US
Army then reversed an earlier decision to utilize HAMMER mission agents Lindner and Ruh
for postwar military intelligence work with the OSS Mission to Berlin.65 Moreover,
Lindner, Ruh, Struewe, and Konhäuser never received the military decorations that the OSS
had recommended, and Kurt Gruber’s family never got word of the US Army’s decision to
posthumously issue him the Medal of Freedom.66 Because of the unwelcome climate in postwar
England, the Free Germans eventually sought repatriation and returned to their native
land. All except Emil Konhäuser, who remained in West Germany, lived out their lives in
East Germany. Because of escalating Cold War tensions and the East German government’s
distrust of their loyalty as a result of their work with the OSS, the London Free Germans
never received even their own country’s recognition for their work in the early anti-Nazi
underground or their wartime service. Only now, with the Cold War over, can tribute be
paid to the courage and sacrifice of the Free Germans and to the man who recruited and
trained them for their OSS intelligence mission.

Article Complet
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...article03.html