For the glorious Ukrainian resistance

"Behave silly." This sage advice comes from the Office of Strategic Services' (OSSA) "Simple Field Guide to Sabotage," published by translation of the article (and the manual (see below)) newsky.com.ua with reference to smallwarsjournal.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the World War II predecessor of the CIA, the US Special Operations Command, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research—was known for innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking.

CIA director and OSS veteran William Casey described his principles perfectly: “You can't wait six months for a feasibility study to prove that an idea can work. You bet it could work. You haven't burdened the organization with bureaucracy designed mostly to cover someone's rear end. You took initiative and responsibility. You went over the edge, you went over someone's head if you had to. But you acted. That's what drove the regular military and State Department executives crazy about the OSS."

An OSS veteran said the OSS was "the greatest collection of people in the history of the world." Among them was Nobel Laureate Ralph Bunch; Hollywood director John Ford; architect Eero Saarinen; "The French Chef" by Julia Child; actors Sterling Hayden and Marlene Dietrich; Virginia Hall, the only American to receive the Distinguished Service Cross in World War II; Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg; Jay Kilby, who invented the integrated circuit; and Colonel William Eddy - "Lawrence of America" ​​to name a few.

Its founder, the legendary General William "Wild Bill" Donovan - the only American to receive our nation's four highest honors, which President Roosevelt called his "secret legs" - welcomed seemingly outlandish ideas because he said you never know , where a good one can come from.

Ambassador David Bruce, who was one of General Donovan's closest aides, said "woe to the officer who abandoned the project because it seemed ridiculous, or at least unusual, on the face of it." Bruce said Donovan's imagination was “unlimited. Ideas were his toy. The excitement made him snort like a racehorse."

One of the best ideas of OSS was “A Simple Field Guide to Sabotage". The creators of the manual recognized that the greatest vulnerability of the Nazi occupiers as an occupying force was the indigenous population. Its purpose was to instruct citizens of Nazi-occupied countries in how to carry out acts of sabotage using everyday objects - matches, pins, nail files, candles, pebbles, grease, thread, dead insects, hair, salt and nails - that would undermine the enemy's ability function and demoralized them.

It stated that “acts of simple sabotage, multiplied by thousands of citizen saboteurs, can be an effective weapon against the enemy. Cutting tires, draining fuel tanks, starting fires... shorting electrical systems, wearing out machine parts will result in wasted materials, labor and time. Simple sabotage, carried out on a large scale, will be a permanent and tangible drag on the enemy's military efforts."

The guide directed people to supplies as targets (including food, water, and tires) and locations that would be most useful to the enemy: vehicles and communications, factories, farms, roads, bridges, buildings, and hotels. The manual contained a lot of information on how to sabotage all types of engines and mechanisms. OSS was invented Caccolube, a condom filled with abrasive materials that destroyed the engine after entering the oil pick-up pipe.

The manual instructed citizens working in transport to make the trip as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel by making mistakes in issuing railway tickets; by issuing two tickets for one seat; make train food as bad as possible; alerting the station very loudly and late at night; by delivering luggage to the wrong stations; and by posting incorrect timetables. He advised railroad engineers to put trains on the wrong tracks and derail trains by loosening bolts connecting sections of rails. One of the most witty and humorous directives was coprological: don't fill the toilets with toilet paper.

In addition to acts of physical sabotage, the manual also contained instructions for sabotaging organizations: “speak as often and as long as possible. Illustrate your points with long anecdotes and stories about personal experiences. Whenever possible, refer all issues to committees for further study and consideration. Try to make the committees as large as possible. Raise irrelevant issues as often as possible. Negotiate the precise wording of messages, protocols and resolutions. Return to the issues resolved at the last meeting and try to reopen the question of the appropriateness of their decision."

The manual recommended that managers “make sure that important jobs are assigned to ineffective employees; giving inefficient employees undeserved promotion; hold conferences when more important work needs to be done; and to watch three men approve of all that one would do.'

Employees were taught to “work slowly; create as many interruptions as possible in your work; do your job poorly… and never transfer your skills and experience to a new or less qualified employee.” Best advice on how to sabotage an organization? "Behave silly."

General Donovan would be pleased to know that the manual's recommendations for sabotaging military transports are being implemented by the Ukrainians today. He ordered simple saboteurs to "change signs at intersections and forks; the enemy will go the wrong way, and may go miles before he discovers his errors.'

Although the technology has evolved exponentially since the manual was published, the basics of simple sabotage remain the same: "It must always consist of actions that will cause damage to enemy materiel and manpower."

Translated by the OSS Society my Ukrainian A Simple Guide to OSS Subversion. We hope that this will contribute to the liberation of the occupied country, as it was during the Second World War. Glory to Ukraine.