Women spies of World War II.(Book Review)

Elizabeth P. McIntosh. Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998. xiv + 282 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $27.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-55750-598-5.

Elizabeth McIntosh's Sisterhood of Spies details the history of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II precursor to the CIA. What gives McIntosh's telling of the story particular poignancy is that she served in the Asian field of operations for the OSS during the war, and adds her personal perspective to the book, including recollections of people and places as well as her experiences. Based primarily on interviews, the book attempts to "recapture and document for the reader that exciting period in our history when women served as a true Sisterhood of Spies" (p.xiv). In order to do this, approximately the first half of the book constitutes a chapter-by-chapter account of the different branches of the OSS that were responsible for activities such as coding, research, and propaganda. The chapters in the latter half of the book focus more closely on the activities and experiences of individual women.

It is in the second half of the book that McIntosh's goal can be most clearly seen, as she recounts numerous stories including those of women who went behind enemy lines and were captured by the Germans. The anecdotes related here start to portray some of the adventure and excitement that these women must have experienced, even as the chapters discuss the hardship and danger that they faced. These chapters provide McIntosh most thorough commentary on the uniqueness of women as spies, their particular contributions, as well as how they were regarded and treated. For example, she makes note of such factors as medals that women received, and times when women spies received information or engaged in missions of importance, noting that it was one of the women stationed in Ceylon that first reported on the Japanese labor camp later immortalized in the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Yet, these comments are sparser than a reader interested in women's contributions might hope. Given the organization of the book, the first half does not relate detail on individual women, but instead emphasizes the operations of the entire OSS. In doing so, men often become the focus of chapters. For example, McIntosh purports to tell of Jane Clark, who was assigned to research the movements of a Nazi Waffen-SS officer. ...