Latest news with #OfficeofStrategicServices
Wall Street Journal
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘Rain of Ruin' Review: Fire From the Skies
Of the lingering controversies of World War II, perhaps the most intensely debated is America's bombing of Japan's cities. The two most dramatic forms—the firebombing raids in the spring of 1945, which killed more than a quarter-million civilians, and the better-known atomic bombings that summer—pitted morality against necessity as both sides groped for a way to end the war on acceptable terms. The air campaigns have been covered from many angles in recent books. Malcolm Gladwell's 'The Bomber Mafia' (2021) focuses on the apostles of strategic bombing, notably Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the chief architect of the firebombings. James M. Scott's brilliant 'Black Snow' (2022) balances America's drive to end the war against heartrending stories of ordinary Japanese citizens caught in the bombsights. Max Hastings's 'Retribution' (2007) frames the bombings in the context of the wider war for Asia. In 'Rain of Ruin' Richard Overy, a British historian whose books include 'The Dictators' (2004), distills the atomic bombing campaign—and its precursor, the incendiary strikes—into a single moral issue. As he writes, 'The question asked is usually 'was it necessary?'; the question, however, should really be 'why was it thought to be necessary at the time?'' The strategy of scorching densely populated cities wasn't the initiative of a single, bloody-minded general of the Strangelove stripe. 'Area bombing' of urban centers—a shift from pinpoint bombing of factories and military targets—had been studied by the U.S. Army Air Forces since 1943. The Office of Strategic Services analyzed Japan's urban demographics to find areas most vulnerable to fire. Air Forces analysts dissected the results of Britain's carpet bombing of German cities, and a replica village of typical Japanese homes was erected in a Utah desert to test the effects of napalm attacks.
New York Times
04-03-2025
- New York Times
Peter Sichel, Wine Merchant With a Cloak-and-Dagger Past, Dies at 102
Refugee, prisoner, wine merchant, spy: Peter Sichel was many things in his long, colorful life, but he was probably most often identified as the man who made Blue Nun one of the most popular wines in the world in the 1970s and '80s. At its peak, in 1985, 30 million bottles of this slightly sweet German white wine — its label featuring smiling nuns holding baskets of grapes in a vineyard — were sold. By the time Mr. Sichel (pronounced sea-SHELL) took charge of his family's wine business in 1960, he had lived a long, clandestine life. For 17 years, first in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and then in the Central Intelligence Agency — from its formation in 1947 until he resigned in 1959 — he played a crucial role in gathering intelligence for the United States. He died on Feb. 24 at his home in Manhattan, his daughter Bettina Sichel said. He was 102. As a 19-year-old German émigré to the United States who volunteered for the U.S. Army the day after Pearl Harbor, Mr. Sichel was recruited to join the O.S.S. as part of an effort to build an American intelligence-gathering force where none existed. He served in Algiers in 1942 and '43, and then as head of the O.S.S. unit attached to Gen. George S. Patton's Seventh Army as it drove from Southern France toward Alsace in late 1944. Among his jobs were interrogating German prisoners of war and recruiting volunteers to infiltrate the German lines and report back to him. One of Mr. Sichel's O.S.S. colleagues, George L. Howe, wrote a novel about one such case, made into the highly regarded 1951 film 'Decision Before Dawn,' directed by Anatole Litvak, with a screenplay by another of Mr. Sichel's colleagues, Peter Viertel. After Germany surrendered, Mr. Sichel became the O.S.S. station chief in postwar Berlin. He was 23 and known as 'the wunderkind.' As the O.S.S. evolved into the C.I.A., and the Allies' wartime united front deteriorated into the international standoff that became the Cold War, he oversaw espionage operations. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
