Returning for Victory

Interviewer: Matthew Graves

Interviewee: Arnold H. Weiss

Instructor: Alex Haight

February 17, 2009

Table of Contents

Interview Release Forms Pg. 2

Statement of Purpose Pg. 3

Biography of Arnold Weiss Pg. 4

Historical Contextualization Paper Pg. 6

Interview Transcription Pg. 22

Audio Time Indexing Log Pg. 35

Interview Analysis Pg. 37

Appendix Pg. 40

Works Consulted Pg. 42

Statement of Purpose

The oral history interview with Mr. Weiss provided us with an in depth understanding of the training and operations of the OSS at the end of WWII. Escaping a Jewish orphanage months before the beginning of the Holocaust he returned to Germany as a young intelligence officer. Mr. Weiss’ first hand accounts of his operation behind enemy lines and the interrogations he conducted provide clarity of the intelligence efforts at the end of the war. Mr. Weiss gives us a unique perspective of a Jewish man escaping Germany who then returned to his home to interrogate German officers. Biography

Arnold H. Weiss was born on July 25, 1924 in Nuremberg, Germany. He lived in Germany as a Jewish German in the time before the Holocaust and World War II.

During his childhood, especially close to WWII, some of the other student taunted and would throw rocks at him. Luckily, before the Nazi’s put him into a concentration camp, he was saved and taken to the United States. He completed his high school education and turned 18 he joined the US army. The US army sent Mr. Weiss into the army air core.

Mr. Weiss was then transferred to Wimbledon, Utah where his group was put into 17 squadrons. After that he was involved in a plane crash because the plane’s landing gear didn’t function. After he rested in the hospital for a number of months the US army sent him to Pittsburg, Texas where he served as a crew chief in a bombardier navigator camp.

Because of his fluency in German he was sent to Washington to join the OSS (Office of

Strategic Services) in 1944. Mr. Weiss was then sent to Camp Richey, in Maryland, where he went to the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) and learned the art of interrogation for four months. There were a variety of field survival tests he went through. After that the US army sent him to the University of Pennsylvania where he brushed up on his German. After his training was complete the army had him flown over to CIC Paris. He worked primarily in finding stay behind agents and bringing the Nazi’s and their assets to war trials for the war crimes they had committed. His most significant contribution to the war was when the OSS put Mr. Weiss in a group of operatives sent to find out what had happened to Hitler. The US army then sent him into the Third Reich where he found Hitler’s last will and testament [Appendix 2]. He also worked for

Secretary of State James Bryan as one of his security officers [Appendix 1]. His last assignment was in Czechoslovakia where he was sent down the U.S. embassy there to discover any stay behind agents left behind by the Russians. After that Mr. Weiss felt his clandestine work was over for him so after 4 and a half years of serving he went into the army reserves for 15 years as an intelligence JAG. He got his Bachelor’s Degree at the

University of Wisconsin. He had earned a Bronze Star, an Army Commendation Medal, and the WWII Theater Medal. After he left the military he worked as a lawyer and had two boys with Artemis Weiss who passed away in 2006. Clandestine Times

Winston S. Churchill said, “ In the high ranges of the Secret Service work the actual facts in many cases were in every respect equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle within tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party, were interwoven in many texture so intricate as to be incredible and yet true.” This is an avid definition of how the OSS, the early CIA, began.

To understand the OSS one must examine Franklin D. Roosevelt, Britain’s Intelligence

Agencies, and American involvement in World War II as well as gain a first-hand perspective from someone who was there.

Franklin D. Roosevelt began his creation of an early intelligence cell in March 17,

1913 when he was appointed by Woodrow Wilson as the assistant secretary of the Navy.

He became very interested in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). In ONI’s thirty-first year when FDR came to the department it was a small, elite sub-empire, one that had planted naval attaches in all significant world capitals of the world. ONI’s chief, Captain

James Oliver Harrison unhappily observed Roosevelt’s own secret intelligence cell as interfering with his own professionals. (RSW 6-7) Roosevelt’s early interest in espionage was a big factor in the creation of the CIA later when he became president. In April 1917,

Harrison was then replaced by Captain Roger Welles. Welles commissioned FDR’s intelligence cell into ONI. This growth continued with ONI hiring hundreds of new investigators and expanding more with new threats appearing. On July 9, 1918 FDR boarded the USS Dyer where it took him to view the war in Europe. There he met Britain’s Naval Intelligence Admiral Sir Redinald Han who created room 40, the Royal

Navy’s code breaking arm, and it was in Room 40 that the Zimmerman telegram was decoded. (RSW 8) This early experience with a more experienced intelligence cell led to

FDR seeing the importance of them. At his inauguration on March 4, 1933 FDR was alarmed by Japans belligerence by the mid-thirties. In 1937, Japanese planes had sunk the

American gunboat Panay in Chinese waters. Within a year, a militarist regime, led by

Prince Fummimaro Konoye, took power. Japan, as it had since 1932, continued to bite off pieces of China. By the end of 1938, the Japanese would occupy Nanking, Canton and

Hankow. Japan would quit the League of Nations and demand the United States to recognize its “New Order” in East Asia.(RSW 11) FDR had a problem investing any money in spy games with the Great Depression looming. Never the less FDR made attempts to gain information on what was happening in the world. The Friedman team, which had been attacking the Japanese diplomatic cipher designated red for years, had finally broken the code by 1936. (RSW 13) This meant that FDR would have foreign diplomatic cables delivered directly to his desk. FDR started to see the importance of having a good spy cell. If not for the president backing the early CIA would not have been able to be created. As the president begins to look over at Europe he observes that the situation is getting much worse.

Unknown to the WWI Allies, Adolf Hitler, by 1937, had already declared his intentions to his inner circle. At a secret Berlin meeting held on November 5th, he had gathered Nazi leaders, led by his heir apparent, Hermann Goring, to proclaim Germanys destiny. Within a year Hitler has annexed his native Austria, seized one slice of

Czechoslovakia, and by March 1939, had swallowed the rest. (RSW 14) Germany began a espionage campaign against America to gain information on its new technology. Du

Pont sold information on explosives to German munitions makers. Sperry Gyroscope licensed a German company to manufacture instruments enabling aircraft to fly blind.

Pratt & Whitney sold the Germans aircraft engines. The U.S. industry was willingly helping bring the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to a state of readiness, making the efforts of

German agents almost redundant. (RSW 14) Roosevelt’s old group of friends served him well in his early establishment of a intelligence cell called the Club but more importantly it showed to FDR that Vincent Astor would make a great chief of a future American intelligence service. (RSW 16) On June 26, 1939, two months before the war erupted in

Europe, FDR ordered the heads of the FBI, MID, and ONI to start synchronizing their actions. He handed responsibility for this thankless task to the assistant secretary of state for administration, Gerorge S. Messersmith. (RSW 17) the problem was that the three departments were all against each other in order to become the best group. But this led to problems between them and information wasn’t getting everywhere it needed to be. This was a big problem for FDR because not having the right information can lead to disaster.

On May 10, 1940, when Churchill moved into 10 Downing Street, replacing

Chamberlain. The day before, Hitler had declared, “The decisive hour has come for the fight today decides the fate of all German nation for the next 1000 years.” (RSW 20)

On May 20, 1940 in London officers from MI5, the domestic military intelligence service, and secretary of the American embassy. (RSW 19) They had found that Tyler

Kent had taken 1,929 embassy documents of conversations between FDR and Winston

Churchill that would jeopardize America’s presumed neutrality in the European war. If this information had been leaked to the public isolationists in American would have used it against FDR possibly preventing him from his third term and allowing Germany to possibly take over most of Europe. Tyler Ken was tried in secret in the Old Bailey on

October 23, 1940, charged with violating Britain’s Official Secrets Act and the Larceny

Act for stealing documents. (RSW 31) From Paris, Bill Bullitt sent a message to

Washington stamped PERSONAL AND SECRET FOR THE PRESIDENT. Bullitt judged Britain’s situation hopeless, and he proposed a desperate strategy. “I should like to speak of what follows into your most private eat at the White House and to have no record ofit,” Bullitt’s cable began. France, he predicted, “will be crushed itterly.” More alarming, “The British may install a government of Oswald Mosley and the union of

British fascists which would cooperate fully with Hitler. That would mean the British navy would be against us.” In the case the war went that badly, he urged “the British fleet would base itself in Canada in defense of that domination which might become the refuge for the British crown.” (RSW 20) FDR did not write off the British navy in its home waters or the king in Buckingham Palace and ignored his proposal. Negotiations between

Britain and America continued to grow as secretly the Americans favored the British and in return the British would supply them with information. Admiral John Godfrey, director of British Naval Intelligence, reported on February 26, 1940: “….[T]heir [U.S] patrols in the Gulf of Mexico give us information, and recently they have been thoroughly unneutral in reporting the position of the SS Columbus,” a German merchant vessel subsequently captured by the British. (RSW 22) This cooperation between Britain and

America would continue and prosper in the British helping to create the Americans CIA.

In another message to Roosevelt, Churchill dangled tempting bait before the President.

FDR had earlier turned down the Prime Minister Chamberlain’s request for the Norden bombsite. Now Churchill offered a quid proquo: “We should be quite ready to tell you about out ASDIC methods whenever you should feel they would be of use to the United

States Navy” and added that FDR could be”….sure the secret will go no further.”

Churchill was offering a new sound wave technique able to detect submerged submarines, later called, in the American version, sonar. The British would trade ASDIC for the Norden bombsite. Roosevelt responded that he would consider the deal, and it was consummated while the United States was still technically neutral. (RSW 22-23) With

America and Britain coming closer and closer the information swapped helped Roosevelt in his decisions about the war. But he realized that it would be easier for him if he did not have to rely on anyone.

More explosive was the message FDR sent on May 16, six days after Churchill took over as prime minister, which Tyler Kent had stolen. As Nazi military victories began swallowing up the Europe continent, Churchill knew it was key to Britain’s survival lay in keeping the sea-lanes open, free of German submarines. He asked FDR to spare fifty old mothballed American destroyers to bolster his thinly stretched fleet. The

Bletchy cryptanalysts were shocked to find Roosevelt’s response to his request report nearly verbatim in a dispatch sent from Ambassador Mackensen to the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. The secret FDR cable now available in Berlin read,” It would be possible to hand over 40 or 50 destroyers of the old type, but this is subject to the special approval of Congress, which would be difficult to obtain at present. (RSW 25)

That Roosevelt even considered to give the British ships would have made isolationists angry and would hinder his attempt at a third term in order to create any spy cells. Every pro British action had to be cloaked so that the public would not see him in the wrong light. On May 20, 1940 J.Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, was complaining about the

Communications Act of 1934 that prevented wiretapping. FDR could not openly allow them to do this but Hoover found a loophole in the act that it was not outlawed but only the disclosure of wiretapping of the information. With this FDR was able to allow the tapping in “defense of the nation due to other nations “fifth column”. (RSW 35-36) FDR asked later if there existed “any law or executive order which it could be possible for us to open and inspect outgoing…or incoming mail to and from certain foreign nations to uncover “Fifth Column activities-sabotage, antigovernment propaganda, military secrets, ect. FDR was disappointed with his answer but Hoover still taught agents in mail opening techniques. (RSW 36) Hoovers actions of wiretapping, bugging of rooms, surreptitious break-ins, “black bag jobs” outraged champions of civil liberties but it still continued.

“Black Bad” jobs were those that involved pilfering ciphers, codebooks, and recruiting diplomats. (RSW 37 and OSS 26-27) If not for these actions other countries that did not have any civil liberties would take advantage of our laws and be able to gain access to our most tightly kept secrets. The president’s actions in employing his chief spy catcher against enemy agents and potential saboteurs were legitimate. Unknown to FDR at the time Hitler had ordered the Abwehr not to conduct sabotage to the United States so that no Black Tom provocations occurred. Hitler actually gave information to America to show the might of Germany and to disprove any false information given by Britain.

(RSW 43-44) Nearing the election Roosevelt had to maintain the idea that he did not want to go to war. In his speech at Boston Garden in the last days of his campaign, “ I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign wars.” On November 5, 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for his third term. In his third inauguration address given on January 20, 1941 he talks about the

American spirit and how it cannot die and how Americans always go forward and are progressive. FDR is trying to bring that nation together so that when war breaks out it will not be a separated nation but one united in service.

April 20, 1940 Astor made a groundbreaking discovery. Confidential correspondence of all governments sent between the Western Hemisphere and the rest of the world had to be routed, via diplomatic pouch, through two central points, Bermuda and Trinidad, both British Crown colonies. Thanks to this snooping, FDR could now read the secrets of a Japanese attaché, a German charge d’affaires, a Brazilian foreign minister, or a Soviet Ambassador. (RSW 51) As 1940 came to a close, Churchill had sent a letter to Roosevelt arriving on December 6 that spelled out Britain’s peril. Plainly he told FDR the Britain was broke. (RSW 83) FDR then thought of the lend-lease program. Passed and signed on March 11, 1941 the U.S. would give weapons and supplies without charge to be returned or paid for after the war. (RSW 83) On April 11

Roosevelt initiated a secret operation. By claiming that west of the median line are

Americans we can patrol them to protect British ships.(RSW 84) June 18 FDR asks Bill

Donovan to be coordinator of information and was officially made a white house agency

July 11, 1941 (OSS xii) Dr J. R. Hayden and Kenneth Baker became the creators of the

COI undercover training program. The SOE (Special Operations Executive) and SIS

(Secret Intelligence Service) , both British organizations, laid the foundation for the COI.

(OSS 1) The organizations name was changed to OSS, Office of Strategic Services by

FDR shortly after. They designated the training school to be Camp X, located in Canada, and was the first training school in North America. (OSS 1 and Intrepid 187) Instructors included William Ewart Fairbair who developed the Fairbarn technique, aka Gutter

Fighting, and co creator of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife. (OSS 4) SOE demolitionists were hired like Rex Applegate. Many agents were radio operators or

“pianists” who had a life expectancy of six months. (Intrepid 193) The first independent spy school created by the OSS was the RTU-11. (OSS 9) Dr. Stanley Lovell became the head of OSS’s Research and Development branch. The three divisions were Camouflage,

Documentation, and Special Assistant divisions. He created things like “Aunt Jemima” which was a special explosive similar to flour that could be backed into muffins and be used as bombs. He also created the “Casey Jones” which was a device to be attached to train cars so when a sudden change in light occurred, train goes into a tunnel, it would explode. (OSS 16) Other devices created were the “Beano” which was a grenade developed by Al Polso that prevented grenades from being thrown back through a shorter timer and a pin that came out in the air. They developed the “L”, “K”, and “TD” pills.

“L” was to kill compromised agents “K” was to knock out and “TD” was an early form of the truth serum. Congress, worried about too much British involvement passed the

Mckellar Act that placed limits on British activities in the U.S. (OSS 26-27)

Howard Zinn said, “ Was she (The United States) fighting the war to end the control by some nations over others or to make sure the controlling nations were friends of the United States?” (APHUS 302). With the questionable interactions between

Churchill and Roosevelt and the British favoritism, Zinn’s assessment is a possibility. In

Laurie Podskalny’s interview of Elizabeth P. McIntosh indicated what it was like for women in the OSS. Mrs. McIntosh’s experiences shows us the problems and difficulties faced by spies in WWII. The Germans used a machine called the Enigma to code their messages

Decryption was made possible in 1932 by Polish cryptographers Marian Rejewski, Jerzy

Różycki and Henryk Zygalski of the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau. To crack the enigma agent “Cynthia” went to Warsaw posing as a Mrs. Pack, the wife of the British commercial secretary in Warsaw, seduced Michal Lubienski to gain the information the polish cryptologists had. In the Murphy-Waygand accord it allowed the Vichy government to buy badly needed non-military goods and food from the U.S. in March

1941. As you can see in the Washington Post article printed in August 11, 1941. To ensure that the trade good given were not given to Germany a group was formed called the “Twelve Apostles” but were actually OSS spies used to relay troop movements. (OSS

31) In order to prevent disputed over turf the Donovan-Hambro accord was created to framework conducting SOE and OSS special operations and defined British and U.S. operational areas. Code-named Torch was singled by the BCC. The trident-shaped attack landed amphibious forces along the sprawling North African coast on November 8, 1942.

(OSS 36-37) The invasion achieved a total surprise. In may 1943 axis forces capitulated, and over 275,000 prisoners were taken in an allied victory. Carleton Coon created a

“Strings and Tassels” Network which was a plan involving using local resistance to gain intelligence. It would set up a network of natives that worked at transportation areas to discover troops movement and information. (OSS 43) May 1943 “Beetroot” was a OSS-

SOE operation to penetrate a Nazi spy camp in Spanish Morocco. The plan was to capture the German spymaster there but they failed because of a double agent who was later killed. In July 10, 1943 operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, occurred but due to the AFHQ, Allied Forces Headquarters, forbid them from being involved. (OSS 49) Even before Sicily fell in August, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel was trying to convince

Mussolini to break with Berlin. Unable to convince I1 Duce to sever the Axis, the kind took action, arresting Mussolini on July 25, 1943. German forces then take control of

Rome and most of Italy. (OSS 53)

On September 9th the American Fifth Army landed at Salerno, just south of

Naples, a few days after the British Eighth Army crossed the Straights of Messina and landed at Reggio di Calabria. Here is where two major OSS operations occurred, the

McGregor Project and the other was the OSS Fifth Army Detachment. The Fifth Army

Detachment was a special squad to gain information for Darby’s Rangers [American

Commandos] (OSS 53) who landed on Salerno’s Amalfi coast. Their agents crossed enemy lines to be captured then convince the Germans that they were merely interpreters used by the Americans and then locate the Germans position to be bombed by the flee.

Operation McGredor was led by John Shaheen and Marcello Girosi and was intended to convince the Italian naval command to surrender their fleet. This plan failed because the

Italian Navy had already agreed to surrender to the British Navy before hand. (OSS 55)

While many of the attempts by the OSS were fruitless not all of them did not have a large impact on the war. One such mission was carried out by Lt. Colonel Serge Obolensky. He was a czarist prince who had emigrated to the U.S. and was given a mission to deliver special letter between the Baldoglio government and General Eisenhower that ordered

Sardinia’s commander to surrender his forces.(OSS 56) The mission was a success and many lives were saved due to his efforts.A few days after the Saradini operation the OSS commandos were chosen to spearhead the operation along with the French unit known as

Battalion de Choc where Germans were withdrawing. March 1944 Hitler issues his famous “Commando order” that decreed that all enemy commandos should be killed “to the last man”. Ginny Team suffered his fate. They sent out March 21-22, 1944 where they planned to destroy critical railroad tunnels at Stazione, Franura but were captured and interrogated and killed. (OSS 59) Operation Codenames Shingle was an operation to iinvade Rome from the south to capture the city from the beach resort town of Anzio.

Germans responded by implementing their own plan. January 20th Peter Thompkins, codenames “Pietro” organized an intelegence cell. His “watchers” were placed along all major highways that entered Rome. (OSS 61) Thompkins then contacted Maurizio Gilio, a OSS agent who operated a radio station codenamed Vittoria. He then got in contact with Franco Malfatti, leader of the socialist underground. He sent all his gathered information to the Fifth Army. (OSS 62) Unfortunately Maurizio Gilio and some other members of Thompkins net were captured and killed. Rome finally fell to the Allies on

June 3, 1944.

In Switzerland Allen Dulles, bearing the title of “Special Representative of the

President of the United States”, infiltrated the Swiss intelligence and sent operative directly into the Germany. Through his spies he learned that there was a German spy working in the Turkish embassy in Britain codenames “Cicerio” (OSS 67-68) On June

24, 1943 one of Dulles agents learn of the V-1 rocket and its whereabouts which Dulles gives to the U.S. via a scramble-equipped radiotelephone. March 15, 1944 a three man squad codenamed “Sparrow” parachuted into Hungary near the Yugoslav border. They turned themselves in to operate out of the axis satellite country but were betrayed and killed. (OSS 70) Through the British Donovan comes into contact with Hans Bernd

Gisevius, an alavehr agent, who told him that the Germans had broken the U.S. State Departments diplomatic code Between June and July 1944. In the late summer of 1943

Donovan dispatched the three-man team Jadwin in Bulgaria. The team brought representatives of the Bulgarian government to Istanbul for talks. (OSS 80) Unfortunately they broke down and nothing significant was accomplished. Christmas 1943 the first OSS teams permitted to carry their own radios; Alum and Amazon parachuted into

Yugoslavia. They relayed the entire defense system of southern Austria between Udine in

Italy and Vienna in Austria.(OSS 80) In October 1944 team Cuckold was sent into

Yugoslavia to blow the main rail line leading into the Reich. To aid in their code cracking attempts they would have operatives calculate the weather on airfields to help decipher the codes. Team Cuckolds final objective was the main Zidani Most-Ljublijana line which they blew sky high.(OSS 88) Operation Rosselsprung (Knighs Move) was an attempt by the Germans to whip out the partisan activity in Yugoslavia and Albania during the winter of 1943 and the spring of 1944. (OSS 90) August 1944 the Halyard

Team, led by Captain Musulin parachuted into Pranjune about 80 kilometers south of

Belgrade, where Chetniks were caring for 250 downed Allied fliers and constructed a runway there. (OSS 96) Team Ranger arrived in Serbia in late August officially it was rescuing downed fliers bu were unofficially there to continue operations with the

Chetniks.

Fall 1944 Soviet forces overrun Romania, Bulgaria, and most of Yugoslavia. Fear of a Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe motivated several high-ranking Germans to contact the OSS to discuss the potential surrender of their forces in the Balkans. (OSS 98)

The surrender never materialized because Yugoslavia was controlled by the British not the Americans. The Simmons Project, organized by the OSS Special Projects Office, was intended to secure intelligence on a radio-guided bomb, the HS-293 in Greece. They were unable to find the bomb at the airfield that it was believed to be held in. (OSS 102) In late

1943 Operation Noah’s Ark planned to keep large German garrison in Greece away from the upcoming Allied landing in France. It continued the fiction promoting that the allies would attack Germany from the Balkans. It called for extensive sabotage operations in

Greece to keep those armies occupied that mostly occurred January 1944. (OSS 106) In

Greece under the “Plaka” agreement SO was able to halt the blood feud between anti- communist EDES and the Communists and the Leftist EAM by directing their hatred to the Germans. The Chicago Mission was behind enemy lines longer than any other SO or

OG team in Greece. Their first operation was to destroy the Svilengrad and

Alexandroupolis Bridges. It was successful with minimal casualties. (OSS 117)

A new phase to the OSS campaign in Greece began on April 23, 1944. OG teams were formed from the 122nd Infantry Battalion from the request of the government in exile. On April 23, 1944 Group I led by captain George Verghis entered Greece. (OSS

117) The groups would set up road blocks to prevent German supply lines from functioning. By September 1944 all German units in Greece began to withdrawal northward to Yugoslavia. (OSS 118) On September 8th Group II was performing its tenth operation to destroy German railways. On September 8, 1944, the last OG, Group IV, parachuted into Macedonia. Shortly after arriving, the group destroyed a railroad bridge.

The U.S. Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces Combat Drivers, Ranger Scout

Swimmers, and the Air Force Pararescuemen all tracing back to the Maritime Unit (MU) of the OSS. Training began in August 1942 where they were trained in sabotage, boat training, ect. (OSS 124) In the summer of 1943 Donovan decided that the OSS maritime training should be placed into its own branch so he created the Maritime Unit. MU’s first officers were shipped to the Mediterranean where they performed operation Audrey. This mission was to give supplies and munitions to partisans in Yugoslavia in October 29,

1943. Training bases for the MU were set up on the West Coast at Camp Pendelton,

California in November 1943 and later on the Catalina Island. (OSS 127) As the allies began to move towards the Reich the intelligence cells used previously became obsolete.

The OSS needed German defects that were willing to spy on their own country. This caused it to be increasingly difficult for operatives. As the allies pushed towards

Germany, like the Seventh Army farther north, they ran up against the Rhine. Operation

Market Garden was created. It called for airborne troops from the First Allies Airborne

Army (FAAA) to decend upon and hold over 50 miles of Dutch highways and bridges.

Simultaneously the ground forces would push north from Belgium, race over the freshly captured highways, and cross the final bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem. (OSS 212) The

Germans managed to hold the final bridge at Arnhem, dooming Market Garden to failure and stopping their movements.(OSS 213) As the front lines drew closer to their homeland their resolve stiffened. During the fall of 1944, OSS engineers developed the

“Joan/Eleanor”, and early cell phone-like transmitted that allowed agents in every territory to communicate with planes circling overhead. This meant that agents did not have to carry hard to hide suitcase radios.(OSS 214)

The autumn of 1944 brought the Allies to Germany’s borders. To the east the

Russians were sweeping through Poland and moving toward the foothills of the

Carpathians in eastern Czechoslovakia. (OSS 217) Operation Dawes was put into effect soon after. Its objective was to act as a liaison with the Czechoslovakian army and partisans. Dawes was also told to gather orders of battle information and in addition many aviators were saved who had bailed out over Czechoslovakia. Germany learned of this and put the Abwehr 218 after them (OSS 220) the Abwehr 218 was a veteran squad of partisan hunter that captured the partisans and the Dawes squad. They were all killed by February 9, 1945. The fall of 1944 also brought about a letter from President

Roosevelt outlining the reduction and liquidation of the OSS. The end of the war seemed near. (OSS 227) However, allied hopes fro victory in Europe in 1944 ended when Hitler unleashed his forces in operation Wacht am Rhein. The Battle of the Bulge forces OSS to resume efforts. In the Volos region of Greece, the Ulysses Mission issued forged orders, printed anti-nazi newspapers, and distributed leaflets resulting in confusion and some

German desertions. In the fall of 1944, MO, Morale Operators, put operation Joker on the air. The plan had the voice of German Chief of General Staff Ledwig Beck, who had been killed after the July assassination attempt on Hitler but never publicly made known, talk about how the war was a failure and urged the German people to discontinue war and liquidate the Nazi leadership. (OSS 237) Operation Corn Flakes, in early 1945, was designed to bring subversive propaganda to the German breakfast tables. They would send thousands of letters to demoralize the German people. (OSS 237)

The Battle of the Bulge proved that the war in Europe was far from over and that the allied agencies still needed to get into Berlin. OSS Captain Stephan Vinciguerra was in charge of four OSS agent teams who were to drop with the 17 Airborne division and infiltrate German lines immediately after landing. (OSS 244) Two of the teams were in

German uniform and the other two teams went in with civilian clothing. The operation took place on March 24, 1944. Due to anti-aircraft fire the team carrying the Volkswagen, the best team, was wounded and the vehicle damaged. All the other teams made it successfully but one team retreated and another was overrun due to a breakthrough in allied forces. On February 25, 1945 Luigi Parilli contacts Dulles. He claims that he is a representative on Germany and wants to discuss surrender in northern

Italy. Dulles informs the Allied High Command and waited for their direction. The U.S. rejecting the Soviets from peace discussion aggravated Stalin and led to his breaking their peace treaty with Japan on April 4th. (OSS 299) April 12 FDR soft-pedals the situation calling it a misunderstanding and dies that very afternoon. Truman administration refused to offend its allies and allowed them in on the peace talks. With the conclusion of Sunrise on April 30, 1945, OSS secured the surrender of several hundred thousand troops. May

7th, 1945, at redbrick schoolhouse at Rheims, General Alfred Jodl signed Germany’s surrender. (OSS 307) In the article Donovan Ends Pacific Tour we can see that Donovan was ready to stop and go on his way. On Sunday, February 8, 1959, Donovan passed away. President Eisenhower heard the news and is said to have remarked: “We have lost the last hero.” Interview Transcription Interviewee: Arnold H. Weiss Interviewer: Matthew Graves Location: Mr. Weiss’s house, 3811 Woodbine St. Chevy Chase, MD Date: January 2, 2009 This interview was reviewed and edited by Matthew Graves and Thomas Graves

Matthew Graves: This is Matthew Graves and I am interviewing Arnold H. Weiss as part of the American Century Oral History Project. This interview took place at 2:08 on

January 2nd, 2009 at Mr. Weiss’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. When you were leaving Germany what were you thinking?

Arnold H. Weiss: That was a long time ago. That was in 1938 I was 13 years old.

[pause] I was reflecting on how I was glad to leave Germany but I didn’t know what the future would be like. I was glad to get out of there, but I didn’t know what the future would bring. I was a little bit concerned about that because I wasn’t going to see relatives so basically it was the future that was not known to me. And I didn’t know where I was going. So I was somewhat concerned about that. It was the first time in a long time in a couple of years where the [year] was good and I would hear people getting beaten up in the street.

MG: Did that happen a lot where you lived?

AW: Oh yes

MG: Was it on a daily basis? AW: Well we had to go a couple of blocks to go to school and they would be waiting about every other day.

MG: Do you remember the first thing you wanted to do when you got to America?

AW: I had no idea what was going to happen. It was difficult to envision. No one told me anything. Well I was, [pause] I wasn’t docile but I mean there were no choices I could make.

MG: How did u come to be a spy? Did you sign up for it or were you recruited?

AW: I was in the army. I enlisted when I was 18 years old. I went into the army air core.

After basic training I went to army school and from there to gunnery school then they sent me to a squadron [in Utah, Wimbledon,] Utah. [We were put into] 17 squadrons and then I was in a plane crash. The plane, the plane’s landing gear didn’t function. And I wound up in the hospital for a number of months. When the mended me back together they sent me to Texas. And for about half a year I was flying as the crew, I was the crew chief. [unintelligible] [nuclear] weapons material, bombardier navigator training camp.

This was a training base for bombardier navigators in a place called Pittsburg, Texas, west Texas. And I guess my card fell through to the Pentagon to somebody that I spoke

German and the next things I knew I was sent to Washington and the I had to report to what was the OSS I don’t know what it was. MG: In my reading for that time period it would be the OSS because you came after all the other organizations that were created.

AW: Yeah it was in 1944 so the OSS, the office of strategic services, and ah they sent me to a military intelligence school in Camp Richey in Maryland and there we were trained in a whole variety of different types of training courses, a variety of intelligence specialties. I was in the CIC school the counter intelligence school and it was a four months course and it was [pause] a very tough course. You learned a lot of [pause] a variety of techniques, interrogation techniques. You were taught how to operate with a variety of equipment, like cameras [pause] surveillance equipment. Well radios, that’s a special device. While we had a general knowledge I was not a cryptographer. Which is what they were training, but not there. Cryptography, it’s training, was here in

Washington. But it was names we were working with [garble] prisoners of war. Trying out on them with various techniques. There were field exercises that evaluated you when you went three days without sleep to see how you functioned after that, during that period eight-day exercise in the field. This was a tough course. But once that was finished.

[pause] I never volunteered for anything just to set the records straight I learned a long time ago. I wasn’t really a sergeant by the time I got to Camp Richey. So I had learned not to volunteer. But, you went where you were told to go.

MG: Can you tell me some of the techniques you learned? I read about the Fairburn-

Sykes technique, which was a fighting technique. AW: Well the Fairburn-Sykes technique was a knife fighting technique. You learned a lot about many things. But you mainly learned about the German war machine and we had to learn a great deal about it. You had to learn about the various units in the German army.

There was a separate course for interrogators of war and there was another course for order of battle, which was the book kept by the military showing every unit in the

German army. From German military [pause] well I guess it had more than the German military [pause] every commanding officer. You got as much intelligence as you could.

Some were from the radio, general sources, some of it from spies who were already inside Germany. The book was pretty much kept up to date. So when you interrogated prisoners of war and they would said I was in such and such a unit you could check using you book by asking who was your commanding officer and you could check by using the book and see. But you learned how to push very thoroughly. After I finished at Richey I was sent to the University of Pennsylvania to brush up on my German because my

German was the vocabulary of a 13 year old. In order to do interrogation properly you need an adult vocabulary. And [pause] you could say the training was very stringent.

Then we were flown over to Europe and wound up with CIC Paris. There we were mainly looking for stay behind agents. Germans providing information or whatever, it was done more by the French than by us but it was some training. And then about this time of year the Battle of the Bulge broke out.

MG: So you were only involved with counter intelligence or did you do sabotage? Or did you do anything like being parachuted behind the lines? AW: I made one mission behind enemy lines.

MG: When was that?

AW: That was right after the Battle of the Bulge.

MG: Did you encounter any Gestapo?

AW: Well we arrested a number of Gestapo agents and interrogated them.

MG: So, did you learn different techniques on interrogation through different classes? Or did they show them to you in front of you at your school?

AW: You mean at Richy? Basically they test you on how to attain information on the prisoner you were interrogating. Most of it was fake information that the prisoner was giving you. But you learned how to interrogate him in order to obtain information and then you wrote a report on the information that you had elicited from the individual. And then they checked it against the story they gave him and they graded you on whether you got all the information or part of the information. We didn’t use any techniques of torture you learned how to interrogate them using you mind, using you capability of inducing the guy to speak. Whether you used cigarettes or threats of dire consequences. Interrogation is and art it’s not something your born with you have to learn how to do it. You’re interrogating me now, your asking me questions it’s the same technique you have done you homework you have read up on me. Every German soldier came equipped with certain documentation called a (?Solk?) book. It showed when he was paid last who paid him. The Germans were meticulous record keeper. So there was a lot of information that you could gain just from that like the units he was attached to and the payment he got. So a lot of them were equipped with papers and documents that you would then have to decipher and then you would ask them about and documents you could find. Much of the intelligence work was gathering documents. You learned how to distinguish them and well tried to get confirming documentation. And all of the stuff that we used at Richy was fake. But when you got into the field and it was deadly. There were other things you learned how to do. You have night courses where they would drop you off a couple miles from the camp and they would give you a compass and a map and you would have to find you way back to the camp or to another place where trucks would pick them up. There were combat excursuses [pause] that type of thing. Some of it was pretty basic stuff but some of it very complicated.

MG: Do you know if any of your actions greatly affected the war?

AW: Most of my important work was after the war where we had to chase down Nazi’s and send them to war crime trials. [pause] I was in a group that chased after the Nazi’s and their assets [pause] from Switzerland there were a lot bank accounts. There are a number of books on the subject a good one was Nazi Gold which was the story of how we went after the Nazi assets first in the party then the various individuals [pause] senior officers, the party itself. The German military machine was more than an army. There was a party that itself had storm troopers, the SS, the regular SS and then the (garble) SS, and then (?Heinsets gimmato?) which were the specialty units. They did the leader killing and concentration camps. They had different groups within the divisions so I had the 430 and I was operation officer for counter intelligence in that area for the CIC. And most of the people who were tried at Nuremburg were arrested in that installment which was very because it was a sort of readout area because that’s where they all had homes. That’s where I did a lot of preliminary interrogation, at the Nuremburg trial the war trials.

MG: So your first real interrogation was in France?

AW: Yeah but that was, I wasn’t in France very long in Paris. Then I went [pause] I was sent out to military intelligence units that are part of the infantry divisions attached to the

G2 that was intelligence ops. I was in the MID, the military intelligence detachment, and when the Bulge ended I was sent down south to the 45th division which was New Mexico and Oklahoma National Guard which wasn’t long out of the National Guard I mean it was an army division that had landed in Africa and had fought their way up to Italy and then Southern France. There were so few originals left that they were replacing military intelligence detachment, which had been designated (garble) over the years and had been in combat a long time. I was a junior officer and we didn’t have much of a companionship.

MG: One of the book I read told me a lot about the operations of the OSS [shows OPERATIVES, SPIES, and SABOTEURS by Patrick K. O’Donnell] Can you tell me about the operation you had behind enemy lines.

AW: I was designated as one of the member of the group to determine what happened to

Hitler. We were headed by a British major and I was the American task force. The French then, a couple of them, were concerned of what happened to Hitler himself. The Germans had advised that he had been killed or killed himself but that all they said. So we went in and tried to constitute who had been with the Furher at his headquarters. We learned that he had decided to stay and die there. So first we started to arrest people that had been, at first the people that may have been the first people on our roster. We made up a roster of people of who had been there then we started to look for people on that roster. Some of them were in the British zone but most of them were in the OSS zone. I had one guy on my list and this guy was a SS brigadier who had been an attribute to Bormann. We were also looking for Bormann who was one of the three in the hierarchy of (garble). We never found Bormann and I had to trail down this fellow (?Zunder?) and he’s the one who led me to Hitler’s last will and testament [Appendix 2]. It was a marriage license to Eva

Braun who doubles as his assistant. That was probably the biggest major contribution I made but I was involved in the whole school of operations who to some extent directed against the potential of a German uprising against the operation forces but it was mainly arrested people who had committed war crimes and hunting them down. You must understand that Germany at that particular moment was in a terrible mess. All their cities had been bombed out a whole flood of refugees moving into our zone where we had to sort out all the people and at the same time you were concerned with the soviet influence. The world was already beginning to turn to the rivalries between the west and the east. So you had border guards who supervised the GI’s. The German border guards came in later.

The movement of population was so large and you have the responsibility for security and then to get through it was complicated.

MG: Did you have any gadgets that you used for you interrogations?

AW: [pause] Well I mentioned earlier we had the order of battle book. We had a book that was a list of what’s called automatic risk categories. The Nazi party has a lot of physical areas too called GAU, which were areas where the party left at the end with political priests and area differentials. Some of these people were automatic risk categories and we chased them down and arrest them. There was interrogation and all kinds of techniques and having it all right there [pause] there own history and then extra information. The Nazi’s themselves, as I said, kept meticulous records of a lot of pretty much everything and if you had gotten a hold of those records they never destroyed them.

So there was a lot of stuff to work with and in the early days, six months before the end of the war, the matter of skill now fresh in mind but to be specific we used small cameras

I used to have it. You could use it to take small pictures of documents. As I said most of it was straight interrogation. And you just used different techniques on different people.

In most cases it wasn’t that difficult because the war was over. But some of them were very difficult and would tell you know fairy tales and you would use all kinds of threats.

We set up a system of preliminary interrogations questions to see if they were a high level or at my level. END OF TAPE ONE; BEGIN TAPE TWO

MG: Did you ever heat Hitler’s commando order, which said if the German Army found and Allied commandoes for them to be executed?

AW: Somewhere I found a set of orders that was sent out from Nazi Headquarters to not take prisoners like shot down pilots or anyone, which was also used against them. And it was issued by a fellow called Fallon, who himself was killed by because he was trying to

(garble) I mean the Nazi’s committed most of their atrocities behind barbed wire. They didn’t make public displays [pause] that I know of anyway.

MG: Can you tell me what you last mission was?

AW: My last assignment was in Czechoslovakia and I was sent down to the U.S. embassy. We were running a net into the Balkans. This was to discover maybe stay behind agents. The situation in the country of the Balkans we are talking about

Hungarians and Bulgarians who were pretty unsettled. The communists were trying to take over the Russian military machine but it was still not so communist activity. There was when we got kicked out of Czechoslovakia and the communists were taking over and that was the end of it for me. I had had enough points and enough of it anyway so I had served four and a half years. MG: Did you ever run into the Chetnicks while you were there?

AW: Well the Chetnicks were Yugoslavian who were were in then Yugoslavian but there were probably more Croats than Slavs. Did I run into them; we arrested a few up north in my area who had served with the Nazi’s but I interrogated a few. And that period in the

OSS was very short I shifted over to the CIC some of the CIC people were also in the

OSS. It was contingencies of services threw a lot of people together. And some of the teams were put together with a variety of people in the OSS and civilians and Navy people and Marines and people in military schools who had specialties.

MG: Do you know what the L, K, PD pills are?

AW: No, I know there were certain number pills you could get that you bit down on them that was basically cyanide that would kill you very quick. I knew they existed but I never used them.

MG: That’s what the L pills were but did you ever operate in Italy?

AW: I have been there a couple of times but that was after the war.

MG: What do you think of historian Howard Zinn calling the reason we went to WWII to make sure that the controlling nations in Europe were friends of the United States? AW: [long pause] Well, [pause] certainly Hitler’s early success raised some serious problems for the United States. The fear of the Nazi’s taking control of a substantial almost all of Europe so the British Isles and almost all of Russia except for Leningrad and

Moscow area they had gone almost to the Urals but I could never really understand what happened. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which was what brought us into the war, the German Government decided to declare war against the United States. It wasn’t the other war around even though we were supplying the Brits with supplies but as to why Hitler did this I don’t think anyone knows. But I think our actions after the war. Our posture after the war because Europe going into the war against Germany sorta made but not within the United States. The Germans were trying to stop us from supplying the

Brits and the Russians but I don’t see that as a good explanation as to Germany declaring war on the United States. Try to remember thought that any answer I give you if from the eyes of a 21 year old rather than a; I was not on the general staff and I was not a very high-ranking officer in WWII. I mean I achieved some rank after the war but that not important. So my knowledge is a bit limited compared to some of the writers who have the ability to look at documentation post war is quite a different story.

MG: Well I would like to thank you for you time.

AW: Oh not at all Audio Time Indexing Log

1. Interviewer: Matthew Graves

2. Interviewee: Arnold H. Weiss

3. Date of interview: January 2, 2009

4. Location of interview: 3811 Woodbine St.

5. Recording format: Cassette

Audio Type: Cassette

Minute Mark Topics presented in order of discussion in recording

5 Early Life

10 How Mr. Weiss came to be in the Army

15 Camp Richey

20 OSS Training

25 Mr. Weiss’ view of the German military machine

30 Hitler’s Last Will and Testament

35 Interrogation Techniques

40 Intelligence net in the Balkans

44 Italy

50 Perspective of WWII Interview Analysis

In The Satires, Horace said, “A wise man in times of peace prepare for war”. Prior to our entry into WWII Franklin D. Roosevelt’s interest in the art of gaining intelligence began through his interest in the British Intelligence. FDR’s ideas elevated our nations interest in establishing an organization in the collection of intelligence to further our national interests. The Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, was one of the first organizations whose charter was established for these purposes and it is in the foundation of ONI’s organization that the men of the OSS began their intelligence gathering prior to

WWII. Arnold Weiss was one of the first OSS officers in the WWII. Being a specialist in interrogation and having operated behind enemy lines in the Third Reich, Mr. Weiss’s story illustrates a personal oral history whose historical significance in an integral part of our nations beginning of clandestine warfare. Mr. Weiss had a firsthand knowledge of intelligence collected by the OSS both during and after WWII. And it is this knowledge of intelligence that makes him uniquely qualified to assess America’s reasons for entering

WWII providing valuable information depicting our nations history.

The interview with Mr. Weiss started with talking a lot about his training and his time at Camp Richey and how the courses were rugged and difficult. The foundation of his training was also something he emphasized. He went on to talk about his significant contribution to the war in chasing down the Nazi’s and their assets to bring them to war trials. He explained that the German military machine was more than just an army, “

There was a party that itself had storm troopers, the SS, the regular SS and then the..”

(Graves 29) and he explained how each one had its own jobs. He then told me about the one operation that he had in the Third Reich. Mr. Weiss said,” I was designated as one of the members of a group to determine what happened to Hitler”. (Graves 30) He discussed the task force itself and what they did to obtain the information. He described a man named Bormann, who was one of the big three, and how that led him to finding Hitler’s last will and testament. He discovered that it was not only a will but also it designated who would lead the Nazi’s when he was gone.. Mr. Weiss’s most important work was done after that war in chasing down Nazi’s and sending them to war crime trials. He also talked about the equipment he used in his interrogations and how, “We set up a system of preliminary questions to see if they were a high level or at my level.” (Graves 31) We also talked about Yugoslavia and the Chetnicks and the different types of pills they using on missions. We finished our interview with talking about the reason of WWII.

After WWII there were differences in opinion about whether the U.S. or Germany declared war on the other first and whether it was justified. Some people believe that it was in fact the United States that chose to enter the war. They believed this because of the U.S. was smuggling weapons and we favored the British over Germany. They also saw the secret letters between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Others believed the Germans initiated hostilities by declaring war against the United States for declaring war on Japan. In Laurie Podskalny’s oral history project with Elizabeth

McIntosh, Ms Podskalny says “The Office of Strategic Services purpose was “to enforce our (the U.S.) will upon the enemy by means other than military action…unorthodox warfare, guerilla activities behind enemy lines; contact with resistance groups; subversion, sabotage and … physiological warfare” (McIntosh 7).”. This implies that the

U.S. declared was against Germany inferring that it was the goal of the United States to go to war with Germany. In the interview with Arnold Weiss, Mr. Weiss says, “When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which was what brought us into the war, the German

Government decided to declare war against the United States. It wasn’t the other war around even though we were supplying the Brits with supplies but as to why Hitler did this I don’t think anyone knows.” (Graves 35) Mr. Weiss saw that there was no good reason for the Germans to declare war on us just for supplying the British. But both viewpoints are from OSS officers operating in two different parts of the world. Mrs.

McIntosh was in China while Mr. Weiss was in Europe during the War and aftermath.

They both receive different information about what is going on in Europe and have different opinions because of their backgrounds.

While historians like Howard Zinn believe that the reason we went to WWII was,” to make sure that the controlling nations in Europe were friends of the United

States”, and Zinn thinks that we antagonized Germany through assisting Britain because we didn’t want the Nazi’s to control all of Europe. Mr. Weiss disagrees and said,” When the Japanese declared war against the United States the German Government decided the declare war against the United States. It wasn’t the other was around.” (Graves 35) He acknowledges that we had been supplying the British with supplies but still believes that it was no justification of a declaration of war. Mr. Weiss also wonders why Hitler detained and killed the Jews and doesn’t think we will even know. But he believes our actions after the war showed us that Zinn is incorrect. He finished with saying that his answer is from,” the eyes of a 21 yr old rather than a high-ranking U. S. officer in WWII.

There is no definitive reason behind why Hitler declared war on the United States. Hitler knew we were giving things to Britain and didn’t do anything but the war against the

Japanese changed something. Unless we could ask Hitler we will never know. Zinn and Weiss will just have to agree to disagree.

Mr. Weiss’s story of finding Hitler’s last will and testament shows us that he is part of the history that collects the information of that time period. Mr. Weiss was right where some of the most important information was being collected, in the Third Reich.

This transcription shows us how Mr. Weiss was an important part of the information gathering. It also shows that the United States Government was just as interested as bring the Nazi’s to justice than as winning the war. This perspective shows us how the people that were there at the war searching through what was left behind by the war. This interview showed me that there are actually people out there that are like those people in the movies. Saving peoples lives and defending us through mental mind games of interrogation or information gathering. I saw that there are amazing stories and people who live just down your street who are more than willing to share their stories and experiences to the world. Appendix 1

Works Consulted

Greene. “Bryne’s Flies to Paris after Bavarian Sit.” Stars and Stripes 1946.

- - -. “Byrens visits export show.” Stars and Stripes 1946.

Hitler, Adolf. “Commando Order.” Europe . 18 Oct. 1942.

McIntosh, Elizabeth. Personal interview. Laurie Podskalny 9 Feb. 2004.

O’Donnel, Patrick K. Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs. New York: Free Press, 2004.

Persico, Joseph E. Roosevelt’s Secret War FDR and World War II Espionage . New York:

Random House, 2001.

Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Third Inaugural Address .” Presidential Inauguration . White House. 20

Jan. 1941.

Russell, Francis. The Secret War. Alexandra, Virginia : Time-Life, 1981.

Smith, Bradley F. The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A. New York: Basic

Books, 1983.

Stevenson, William. A Man Called Intrepid . Gulford, Connecticut : The Lyons Press, 2000.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. 1980. New York: New York Press, 2003.

Weiss, Arnold H, narr. Interview of Experience as a OSS Officer. Matthew Graves. Rec. 2 Jan. 2009. Audiocassette. Chevy Chase, Maryland.