What makes a good missionary makes a good American spy, or so
thought Office of Special Services (OSS) founder "Wild" Bill
Donovan when he recruited religious activists into the first ranks
of American espionage. Called upon to serve Uncle Sam, Donovan's
recruits saw the war as a means of expanding their godly mission,
believing an American victory would guarantee the safety of their
fellow missionaries and their coreligionists abroad. Drawing on
never-before-seen archival materials, acclaimed historian Matthew
Sutton shows how religious activists proved to be true believers in
Franklin Roosevelt's crusade for global freedom of religion. Sutton
focuses on William Eddy, a warrior for Protestantism who was fluent
in Arabic; Stewart Herman, a young Lutheran minister rounded up by
the Nazis while pastoring in Berlin; Stephen B. L. Penrose, Jr.,
who left his directorship over missionary schools in the Middle
East to join the military rank and file; and John Birch, a
fundamentalist missionary in China. Donovan chose these men because
they already had the requisite skills for good intelligence
analysis, espionage, and covert operations, skills that allowed
them to seamlessly blend into different environments. Working for
eternal rewards rather than temporal spoils, they proved willing to
sacrifice and even to die for their country during the conflict,
becoming some of the United States' most loyal secret soldiers.
Acutely aware of how their actions conflicted with their spiritual
calling, these spies nevertheless ran covert operations in the
centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican,
and Palestine. In the end, they played an outsized role in leading
the US to victory in WWII: Eddy laid the groundwork for the Allied
invasion of North Africa, while Birch led guerilla attacks against
the Japanese and, eventually, Chinese Communists. After the war,
some of them -- those who survived -- helped launch the Central
Intelligence Agency, so that their nation, and American
Christianity, could maintain a strong presence throughout the rest
of the world. Surprising and absorbing at every turn, Double
Crossedis an untold story of World War II spycraft and a profound
account of the compromises and doubts that war forces on those who
wage it.
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