Fake News for the Resistance: The OSS and the Nexus of Psychological Warfare and Resistance Operations in World War II

Abstract

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), America’s intelligence and special operations organization in World War II, is best known for its efforts to collect intelligence on the Axis powers and to arm and train resistance groups behind enemy lines. However, the OSS also served as America’s primary psychological warfare agency. This article will show how organizational relationships imposed by theater commanders, who often had little understanding of psychological warfare or special operations, could serve to enable or hinder the sort of coordinated subversive campaign that OSS founder General William J. Donovan envisioned. This history offers important lessons for contemporary campaign planners in an environment where psychological warfare is playing an ever-larger role in the conduct of military operations.