That's actually a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing u/BasedCitizen 👈🏻
Because the British SOE set up the US OSS, it would have made it very easy to keep Pearl Harbor under wraps or coordinated, if indeed, Churchill (and Roosevelt?) would do anything to get the US into WWII. They needed something to get "the people" on board with it, as the US citizens were very much against getting involved in "Europe's War" again.
I don't understand this comment. Pearl Harbor occurred on 7 Dec 1941. The Office of Strategic Services was created on 20 Sept 1945, by which point we had been at war for about 11 months.
Roosevelt didn't need Churchill to get into WWII; he had already directed the U.S. Navy to conduct antisubmarine warfare from Oct 1941 onward. (My father had enlisted in the Navy by then, and those were their orders.) Agreed that FDR was avid to get into the war. The feeling at the time was that FDR was goading Japan into doing something, but the expectation was that the initial attack would be against the Philippines. Pearl Harbor was a surprise. (And the Philippines were attacked immediately following.)
I think I misconstrued the OSS with the precursor SSI. Here is the relevant part from BasedCitizen's link that led to my train of thought. Full disclosure, sometimes my trains fall off their tracks.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of William Stephenson, the senior British intelligence officer in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt requested that William J. Donovan draft a plan for an intelligence service based on the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE). After submitting his work, "Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information", Colonel Donovan was appointed "coordinator of information" on July 11, 1941, heading the new organization known as the office of the Coordinator of Information (COI).
My main point is that US and British intelligence services were working very closely with each other before December 7, 1941.
Interesting symbol on the letter head.
https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Office_of_Strategic_Services
That's actually a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing u/BasedCitizen 👈🏻
Because the British SOE set up the US OSS, it would have made it very easy to keep Pearl Harbor under wraps or coordinated, if indeed, Churchill (and Roosevelt?) would do anything to get the US into WWII. They needed something to get "the people" on board with it, as the US citizens were very much against getting involved in "Europe's War" again.
I don't understand this comment. Pearl Harbor occurred on 7 Dec 1941. The Office of Strategic Services was created on 20 Sept 1945, by which point we had been at war for about 11 months.
Roosevelt didn't need Churchill to get into WWII; he had already directed the U.S. Navy to conduct antisubmarine warfare from Oct 1941 onward. (My father had enlisted in the Navy by then, and those were their orders.) Agreed that FDR was avid to get into the war. The feeling at the time was that FDR was goading Japan into doing something, but the expectation was that the initial attack would be against the Philippines. Pearl Harbor was a surprise. (And the Philippines were attacked immediately following.)
I think I misconstrued the OSS with the precursor SSI. Here is the relevant part from BasedCitizen's link that led to my train of thought. Full disclosure, sometimes my trains fall off their tracks.
My main point is that US and British intelligence services were working very closely with each other before December 7, 1941.
Aha.