Catalog Search Results
History Reference Center
Full-text articles to support research in history and genealogy and lesson plans to support student learning.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The rich history of SEAL Team 6 that captured Osama bin Laden stretches back to World War II when US intelligence officials formed a team of special-operation combat swimmers. Under the leadership of Captain Jack Taylor, a California dentist, the Maritime Unit (MU) started training in 1942, learning underwater and covert operation techniques, as it developed an array of James Bond-like new equipment, including the recently invented underwater breathing...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
An impossible mission
Behind enemy lines
The never-before-told true story of a small team of American saboteurs with orders to sever the Third Reich's main supply artery — the Brenner Pass
Like a scene from Where Eagles Dare , a small team of American special operatives parachutes into Italy under the noses of thousands of German troops. Their orders: link up with local partisans in the mountains and sabotage the well-guarded Brenner...
Behind enemy lines
The never-before-told true story of a small team of American saboteurs with orders to sever the Third Reich's main supply artery — the Brenner Pass
Like a scene from Where Eagles Dare , a small team of American special operatives parachutes into Italy under the noses of thousands of German troops. Their orders: link up with local partisans in the mountains and sabotage the well-guarded Brenner...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front, modern day Ukraine. With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men. The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid. The Soviets viewed POWs...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"From the co-author of The Zhivago Affair, a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award, comes the riveting story of a wealthy heiress who joined the OSS and was the only American woman in uniform to be captured by the Germans; her imprisonment among the Nazi elite and daring escape in 1945 comprise one of the more remarkable untold episodes of WWII. Gertrude "Gertie" Legendre was a society heiress from South Carolina who lived a charmed...
Author
Language
English
Description
This is the story of special operations in the second world war, as it has never been told before, directly by those who took part.
Compiled by Russell Miller from interviews, diaries, letters and contemporaneous first-person accounts-many unpublished until now-the oral history in Behind the Lines follows the adventures of the courageous men and women who volunteered for service with the United States' Office of Strategic Services and Britain's Special...
Author
Language
English
Description
The stirring, little-known story of the forerunners to today's Special Forces. The OSS-Office of Strategic Services-created under the command of William Donovan, has been celebrated for its cloak-and-dagger operations during World War II and as the precursor of the CIA. As the "Oh So Social," it has also been portrayed as a club for the well-connected before, during, and after the war. Donovan's Devils tells the story of a different OSS that of ordinary...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
During the Second World War daring and highly unusual missions were mounted by the Special Operations Executive (SOE)—formed on Churchill's orders 'to set Europe ablaze'—and its American counterpart, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In sixteen separate chapters the author describes how the fearless individuals in these clandestine organisations were recruited, trained and armed, and examines some of their guerrilla operations in Europe,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The author "draws on her own experiences and interviews with more than a hundred other OSS women to reveal some of the most tantalizing stories and best-kept secrets of the war in Europe and Asia. ... Along with famous names like Julia Child and Marlene Dietrich, readers will discover such intrepid agents as Amy 'Cynthia' Thorpe, who seduced a Vichy official and stole naval codes from the French embassy."--Jacket.
12) Covert action
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Presents the history of the real "cloak-and-dagger" world of espionage as OSS and CIA agents carry out covert intelligence operations to further American foreign and military policy.
Author
Language
English
Description
"How were agents recruited for secret operations in World War II? How did they fare once dropped behind enemy lines? How effective were resistance movements? And how brutal were the reprisals? Ranging from the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the German Abwehr to resistance movements across Europe, Secret Operations of World War II is a fascinating account of the major special ops organisations...
Author
Series
Language
Polish
Description
"Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front, modern day Ukraine. With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men. The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid. The Soviets viewed POWs...