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Metcalfe , Hugh , 1928-2002 , weapons engineer and historian

Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Special Operations Branch, London, and Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Secret Intelligence Branch, London

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the approximate US counterpart of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and Special Operations Executive (SOE), with which it co-operated throughout World War Two and its immediate aftermath. The OSS was created by Presidential Military Order on 13 Jun 1942 and it functioned as the principal US intelligence organisation in all operational theatres. Its primary function was to obtain information about enemy nations and to sabotage their war potential and morale. From 1940-1942, the US had no central intelligence agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information bearing on national security, these services having been dispersed amongst the armed services and regional desks in the US State Department. In Jul 1941 Maj Gen William Joseph Donovan was appointed by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the civilian post of Co-ordinator of Information (COI) and was instructed to consolidate a regular channel of global strategic information. Under Donovan's leadership, the COI claimed the functions of information gathering, propaganda, espionage, subversion, and post-war planning. The overt propaganda functions of the COI were eventually severed and the COI was re-organised as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942. The OSS was instructed by the President to collect and analyse such strategic information as might be required to plan and operate special military services in theatres of operation directed by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The headquarters of the OSS were in Washington, but is also maintained overseas outposts which engaged in information gathering and liaison operations with Allied intelligence services, most notably Special Operations Executive (SOE). Chief among the overseas units was the London Outpost, established at the end of 1941 to facilitate co-operation between the Allied intelligence services, and to serve as a base of operations for Allied intelligence, espionage and operational activities in Europe. The Special Operations (SO) Branch, OSS, London, was charged with conducting sabotage operations, support and supply of resistance groups, and guerrilla warfare in enemy-occupied territories. The 'London Group' of SOE was its British counterpart. On 10 Jan 1944, the SO Branch and the London Group were integrated into Special Forces Headquarters, under which they were charged with carrying on their operations. Thus, from Jan-Sep 1944, 93 Jedburgh teams, consisting of one British SOE soldier, one American OSS soldier, and one officer native to the country in which the team would operate, were parachuted into occupied Western Europe to supply resistance movements and co-ordinate operations. The purpose of the Secret Intelligence (SI) Branch, OSS, London, was to collect and analyse strategic intelligence as was required by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. The OSS was terminated by Executive Order 9620 on 20 Sep 1945, its functions later assumed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

US Department of Defense, 1947-1981

The Times, London

FM Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, 1914-1919

Cabinet Office, War Cabinet

When World War Two began for Britain on 3 Sep 1939, Prime Minister Rt Hon (Arthur) Neville Chamberlain appointed an eight member strong War Cabinet. It consisted of the Prime Minister, who was the Chairman; the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Foreign Secretary; the three service Secretaries; the Lord Privy Seal; the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence; and the Minister without Portfolio. This number increased when select non-War Cabinet Ministers were invited to attend meetings and when the Chiefs of Staff and the Permanent Under Secretary to the Treasury attended, bringing the Cabinet numbers to fifteen members. The War Cabinet met daily during the first year of the war and, as the war progressed, often met more than once a day to deal with a range of issues from military planning to food rationing. The Cabinet Minutes from Sep 1939 to May 1940 were devoted almost exclusively to the situation on the Western Front, which remained decidedly unchanged throughout the period. From May 1940, Rt Hon Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill, who had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of war, criticised the Chamberlain government's handling of the war and urged a more offensive British approach to the Western Front. In addition, the Allied campaign in Norway ended in disaster. Consequently, and following a debate in the House of Commons, at which 200 members voiced a non- confidence against Chamberlain, Churchill became Prime Minister and Chairman of the War Cabinet. Following the defeat of France in Jun 1940, the United Kingdom faced a severe defensive crisis and thus the War Cabinet was enlarged. Rt Hon Clement Richard Attlee; Rt Hon Arthur Greenwood; Rt Hon Robert Anthony Eden; and Rt Hon Sir John Anderson immediately entered, as would eventually Rt Hon Ernest Bevin, as Minister of Labour and National Service; Rt Hon William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, as Minister of Aircraft Production; Rt Hon Sir Kingsley Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; Capt Rt Hon Oliver Lyttelton, Minister of State in the Far East; Rt Hon Sir (Richard) Stafford Cripps as Lord Privy Seal; Rt Hon Herbert Stanley Morrison as Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Minister of Home Security; and Rt Hon Frederick James Marquis, 1st Baron Woolton of Liverpool, as Minister of Reconstruction. At the end of 1940, the War Cabinet was preoccupied with the planning a unified British strategy for the waging of war, with Gen Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, often acting as a refrain to Churchill's more unconventional ideas about strategy. By mid-1941, concentration turned from the defence of Britain to intervention in Balkans, the war in North Africa, plans for providing armed forces to Europe to draw German forces from the Soviet Union, and the prospect of bringing the United States into the war. In 1942, the British persuaded US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to authorise a combined invasion of North Africa. In 1943, the War Cabinet remained pre-occupied with strategic affairs, but began to think increasingly about the post-war reconstruction of Britain and general social security measures for the British population. With a firm schedule for the Allied invasion of France firmly in place in 1943, the War Cabinet turned its attention to the post-war settlement of Europe, an Allied occupation strategy for Germany and Austria, and the post-war rehabilitation of Britain. As the war drew to a close, there began to appear increasing signs of strain between the two major parties in the British Coalition Government, which ultimately affected the War Cabinet's ability to operate effectively. On 23 May 1945, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister. On 30 May 1945, the first meeting of the new British Cabinet took place, marking the end of the War Cabinet and the return to peace-time civil procedures.

The National Security Archive, from sources at US national security agencies, principal of which were the State Department, the Department of State, and the Central Intelligence Agency

Documents included in the collection relate to the US government's internal decision making process during the Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962. The collection is primarily a record of executive decision making during the presidential administrations of Dwight David Eisenhower and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and includes material generated by a broad range of agencies within the US national security bureaucracy. Particularly significant are those materials that chronicle the actions of the primary decision making bodies in the US government during the Berlin Crisis, 1958-1962, the Office of the White House, the US Department of State, the US Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During the Eisenhower administration the Department of State played a central role in policy making because of the president's close working relationship with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his successor, Christian Archibald Herter. During the Kennedy administration, the State Department's role became more operational while the direction of Berlin and German policy shifted to the White House and the national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy. As the co-ordinating and policy making structure for the US military, the US Department of Defense was responsible for developing US nuclear and conventional force structures. During the Eisenhower administration, Secretaries of Defense Neil McElroy and Thomas S(overeign) Gates worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in providing recommendations on contingency planning which the President and the Secretary of State could synchronise with budget priorities. Under the Kennedy administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara worked to integrate conventional forces options into Allied military planning on Berlin as well as to ensure more centralised control over US nuclear weapons in Western Europe in order to prevent accidental use. After the US occupation of West Berlin, the Central Intelligence Agency used the city as a base for intelligence operations and covert activities aimed at the Soviet bloc. The CIA tasked its Office of National Estimates (ONE) and Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) with analysing and reporting on German and Berlin developments. ONE prepared National Intelligence Estimates and Special National Intelligence Estimates on the Berlin situation which were circulated among senior officials at the Departments of State and Defense and the White House. OCI prepared weekly intelligence reports that were less analytical and included reporting on recent Berlin-related developments.

Soviet military personnel, strategists, and military analysts

The Harry S Truman Library

Harry S Truman was born in Lamar, Barton County, Missouri, 8 May 1884. From 1906 to 1917 he operated the family farm near Grandview, Missouri. During World War One he served as 1st Lt, Battery F, and Capt, Battery D, 129 Field Artillery, 35 Div, US Army, and served in the Battles of St Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne, Aug- Nov 1918. He was discharged with the rank of Maj. In 1922, Truman sought the Democratic nomination as county judge, thus beginning a ten-year judicial career. In 1934, Truman became a candidate for the US Senate, won the election, and took office in Jan 1935. Re-elected in 1940, Truman headed the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, a senate committee which investigated fraud in recent US military procurement policies. In 1944, leaders of the Democratic Party replaced Vice President Henry A Wallace with Truman as the party's vice presidential nominee on the 1944 election ticket alongside President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Upon Roosevelt's death on 12 Apr 1945, Truman became President of the United States. Unfamiliar with recent foreign policy developments, Truman initially retained all of his predecessor's cabinet appointees, including US Secretary of State Edward R Stettinius, Jr. Shortly thereafter, Truman's foreign policy developed as he announced preparations to continue for the detonation of an atomic test device in New Mexico on 16 Jul 1945, and attended the conference at Potsdam, Germany, with Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, which would shape post-war Europe. In Aug 1945 he ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and accepted the surrender of all Japanese forces in the Far East. In the post-war years and throughout the Korean War, Truman espoused a foreign policy designed to allay the Cold War. In 1947, he announced what became known as the 'Truman Doctrine', which stated that the United States would support any nation threatened by Soviet-sponsored communism, and signed the presidential order creating the US foreign intelligence organisation, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Also announced in 1947 was the European Recovery Plan, or 'Marshall Plan', named after Gen George Catlett Marshall, US Secretary of State, which would see appropriations of US funds to support the European economies until 1952. Under Truman, the US and its allies organised in Apr 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1950, Truman committed US armed forces to the Korean War. After an initial period of public support, however, criticism quickly grew over US involvement in the region. The intervention of the People's Republic of China and the recall of Gen Douglas MacArthur, brought to the Truman administration additional pressures to alter its foreign policy direction. In 1952, Truman refused to seek re-election for President of the United States and left Washington for Independence, Missouri, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died on 26 Dec 1972. Starting in 1961, the Harry S Truman Library's Oral History programme began to conduct interviews with some of the men and women who had made contact with Harry S Truman during his professional career. Interview subjects ranged in their professional experience, and included US armed forces personnel, international leaders, and political advisers and associates. All of the interviews were transcribed and made available in transcript form, ranging in length from fewer than 10 to over 1,000 pages.

Historical Detachments, US Army

Miksche , Ferdinand Otto , 1904-1992 , Lieutenant Colonel , writer on military affairs

Born in Karvinna, Teschen, Austrian Silesia, 1904; education included the Schiller-Gymnasium, Teschen, Oberrealschule, Kaschau, and the Imperial Military College; enrolled as a Cadet, Ludovika Military Academy, Budapest, Hungary [1924]; conscripted into Czechoslovakian Army [1927]; service as a Reserve Officer in an artillery regiment, Kosice and Mukacevo, Slovakia [1927-1930]; Lt, 1930; served in the International Brigades, Spanish Civil War, Spain, 1936-1939; Capt, 1936; Maj, 1938; commanded artillery battalion, Battle of the Ebro, 1939; served in World War Two, 1939-1945; evacuated from France to UK with Czech Legion, 1940; appointed Capt in the British Army [1940]; service with the Czechoslovak Independent Bde Group, 1940-1941; joined Free French forces as a Maj, 1941; served on personal staff of Free French Brig Gen Charles de Gaulle, and in the Troisième Bureau, assisting in the development for the planned invasion of Normandy, France, 1941-1944; author and military strategist, 1941-1992; awarded French Légion d'Honneur, 1944; Assistant to the Czech Military Mission, and adviser on central European affairs to the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), 1945; awarded US Medal of Freedom, 1946; Czechoslovakian Military Attaché, Paris, France, and Brussels, Belgium, 1946-1947; joined French Army, 1948; Lecturer in Tactics, Instituto de Altos Estudos Militares, Caxias, Portugal, 1950-1955; awarded Order of the Portuguese Empire [1955]; died, 1992. Publications: Blitzkrieg (Faber and Faber, London, 1941); Paratroops. The history, organisation and tactical use of airborne formations (Faber and Faber, London, 1943); Is bombing decisive? (Allen and Unwin, London, 1943); Blitzkrieg. Étude sur la tactique allemande de 1937 à 1943 (Harmondsworth, New York, USA, 1944); War between continents, with François Pierre Edmond (Faber and Faber, London, 1948); Les erreurs stratégiques de Hitler (Payot, Paris, France, 1945); Secret forces. The technique of underground movements (Faber and Faber, London, 1950); Unconditional surrender. The roots of World War III (Faber and Faber, London, 1952); Danubian Federation. A study of past mistakes and future possibilities in a vital region of Europe (published by author, printed by Kenion Press, Slough, Berkshire, 1953); Donauföderation (Forschungsinstitut für Fragen and Donausraumes, Salzburg, Austria, 1953); Atomic weapons and armies (Faber and Faber, London, 1955); Tactique de la guerre atomique (Payot, Paris, France, 1955); La faillite de la stratégie atomique (Presses de la Cité, Paris, France, 1958); The failure of atomic strategy and a new proposal for the defence of the West (Faber and Faber, London, 1959); Kapitulation ihne Krieg (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1965); Die Zukunft der Bundeswehr (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1967); Rüstungswettlauf (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1972); Vom Kriegsbild (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1976); Bis 2000 (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1979); Moskaus indirekte Strategie: Erfolge und Niederlage (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1983); Das Ende der Gegenwart (Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany, 1991).

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Inter Avia, [Swiss aviation journal]

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