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Dirty Tricks and Deadly Devices:
OSS, SOE, NDRC and the Development of Special Weapons and Equipment
by BENJAMIN B. FISCHER -- abstract

Cooperation in research and development of special weapons and devices was key to the success of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in waging subversive warfare against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. One of London's main objectives in lobbying for creation of an American counterpart intelligence and special operations service was to gain access to facilities, science and engineering, and financial resources that either were strained or were at risk in war-torn Britain. Official and scholarly histories of the two organizations, however, generally gloss over this important subject, if they mention it all, largely for reasons of national pride and lack of access to wartime records. The recent declassification of a key OSS record, the "History of Division 19," a unit of US National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) dedicated to developing "miscellaneous weapons," reveals how Anglo-American collaboration was organized and why it worked despite different national experiences and bureaucratic cultures. Linked together by key personalities and organizational arrangements, the OSS-SOE-NDRC triad brought British experience and research together with American private-sector resources to produce a symbiosis that endured despite strains on the Anglo-American relationship as national interests diverged and organizational rivalry increased in the final stages of the war.