Behind Enemy Lines

Recruitment

Home

 

The OSS and the Italian Resistance in World War II is a powerful but overlooked tale of devotion, courage, tragedy and ultimate triumph. While many brave soldiers have risked their lives for the country they loved, few have fought for two countries at once. The Italian-American men who undertook this harrowing journey did so as part of a covert war of liberation and their story deserves and needs to be told.

In the early days of American involvement in World War II, Italian-Americans represented the largest group of civilians whose parents had arrived in the latest wave of immigration from Europe to the United States. The United States' intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), a precursor to the CIA, proposed a bold gambit -- recruit a vast number of these first-generation Americans for specialized training to aid the Italian Resistance. OSS leaders believed that the cultural backgrounds of Italian Americans combined with their knowledge of language and their empathy for people whose values of family and community were similar to their own, would provide them with advantages behind enemy lines.