Geographical intelligence: American geographers and research and analysis in the Office of Strategic Services 1941-1945

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 149-168

  Barnes, Trevor J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

TWENTIETH CENTURY; WAR;

EID: 31344466464     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.06.001     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. T. Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, New York, 1975, 76.
2. Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1975. The quotes are from pages 18, 17, 76, and 77 respectively.
3. The gendered nature of "defence intellectuals" is well explored by C. Cohn Sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12 (1987) 687-718
4. Apart from pointing to the obvious fact that most defense intellectuals are men, she argues that their research and analysis is at every turn coloured by masculinism. Katz in his study of the OSS begins to try to find the almost exclusively female producers of '4000 cubic feet of typescript ... [whose] only archival trace were [their] ... initials at the bottom left hand corner'. B. Katz, Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services 1942-1945, Cambridge, MA, 1989, 25.
5. Mechtild Rössler, however, says that women at OSS were not confined to the typing pool, suggesting that up to 25% of the research force was female, and often engaged in espionage because they were less likely to be caught. M. Rössler, Geographers and social scientists in the office for strategic services (OSS) 1941-45, in: V. Berdoulay and J.A. van Ginkel (Eds), Nederlandse Geografische Studies 206: Geography and Professional Practice, Utrecht, 1996, 75-85.
6. Michael Heffernan provides a useful account of British military intelligence up to the end of the First World War, the origins of which are historically longer standing and more complex than in the United States. M. Heffernan Geography, cartography and military intelligence: the Royal Geographical Society and the First World War Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21 (1996) 504-533
7. The three primary locations for the Manhattan Project were Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. Some 30 other research sites across the US also contributed. Consultants and active researchers working on the Manhatten Project included Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller.
8. R. Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution, New York, 1996.
9. Bush claimed proximity fuses increased the effectiveness of weaponry sevenfold, neutralising V1 rockets, kamikaze Japanese pilots, and producing victory at the Battle of the Bulge. The nature and historical development of proximity fuses is exhaustively discussed at http:// www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq96-1.htm#anchor1191195
10. There were at least two historical precedents for OCI/OSS. The Comité d'Etudes established in Paris in February 1917 was made up among others of historians, economists, and geographers, and published a series of volumes on France, its colonial holdings, and its prospective role in the New World Order. Vidal de la Blache was a prominent member. Similarly, the Inquiry founded in April 1917 in New York employed at its height 150 researchers across a range of disciplines, and engaged in fact finding and political geographical interpretation. Isaiah Bowman was key, and accompanied Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Unlike the Comité and the Inquiry, however, OCI/OSS was concerned with using social science for immediate wartime strategic military ends and tactics. While OCI/OSS represented an archive of information, it emphasised above all social scientific analysis
11. Michael Heffernan writes about the Comité: Mars and Minerva: centres of geographical calculation in an age of total war Erkunde 54 (2000) 320-333
12. History, Geography and the French national space; the question of Alsace-Lorraine, 1914-1918 Space and Polity 5 (2001) 27-48
13. The first of Heffernan's articles cited also discusses the Inquiry. A more extensive treatment, emphasising especially the role of Bowman, is found in N. Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, Berkeley, 2003, chs. 5 and 6.
14. Both the July 11 Executive Order that created OCI, and the 'Military Order of June 13, 1942,' that transformed the OCI into the OSS are reprinted as appendices in T.F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency, Frederick, MD, 1981. The quote is from page 423. Numbers of staff employed at OSS increased precipitously over the course of the war from 2,000 at its formation to over 13,000 by 1944.
15. R. Hartshorne, The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past, Lancaster, PA, 1939.
16. Neil Smith argues that by focussing on only geography's past, and in particular, one national version of that past, Germany's, Hartshorne 'committed geography to a museum-like existence. The museum perimeter was jealously fenced by a ring of conceptual distinctions that kept geographers in and effectively discouraged would be intruders'. N. Smith, Geography as a museum: Private history and conservative idealism in The Nature of Geography, in: J.N. Entrikin and S.D. Brunn (Eds), Reflections on Richard Hartshorne's The Nature of Geography, Washington DC, 1989, 91-120, 96.
17. Other, often contextual, interpretations of Hartshorne's book are found in the same volume in which Smith's essay appears Hartshorne's own account of how he came to write The Nature is found in R. Hartshorne Notes towards a bibliography of The Nature of Geography Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979) 63-76
18. A. Kirby, What did you do in the war, daddy? in: A. Godlewska and N. Smith (Eds), Geography and Empire, Oxford, 1994, 300-315, 306
19. By way of a benchmark the membership of the Association of American Geographers in 1936 totaled just over 200, S. McCune The young geographers and their research: 1936-1943 Professional Geographer 38 (1986) 359-365
20. There are some exceptions: D.J. Robinson, On Preston E. James and Latin America: A biographical sketch, in: D. Robinson (Ed.), Studying Latin America: Essays in Honor of Preston E. James, Syracuse, NY, 1980, 1-101;
21. Kirby, What did you do in the war, daddy? M. Rössler, Geographers and social scientists in the office for strategic services (OSS) 1941-45, in: V. Berdoulay and J.A. van Ginkel (Eds), Nederlandse Geografische Studies 206: Geography and Professional Practice, Utrecht, 1996, 75-85
22. A few reminiscences exist such as K. Stone Geography's wartime service Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979) 89-96
23. A.H. Robinson Geography and cartography then and now Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979) 97-102
24. C.D. Harris Geographers in the US Government in Washington, DC, during World War II Professional Geographer 49 (1997) 245-256
25. There are also scattered references in P.E. James, All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, Indianapolis, IN, 1972
26. J.A. Russell, Military geography, in: P.E. James and C.F. Jones (Eds), American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, Syracuse, NY, 1954, 485-495.
27. OSS came to be divided into five main branches, one of which was R&A. The other four were Secret Intelligence, Secret Operations, Morale Operations, and X2 (counter-intelligence).
28. Latour's writings are numerous. Four key books that outline his ideas are: Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers around Society, Cambridge, MA, 1987;
29. The Pasteurization of France, Cambridge, MA, 1988
30. We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA, 1993;
31. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA, 1999. Latour's ideas are widely discussed by geographers
32. Two early users were J. Murdoch Inhuman/nonhuman/human: Actor-network theory and the prospects for a nondualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15 (1997) 731-756
33. N.J. Thrift, Spatial Formations, London, 1996.
34. Latour, The Pasteurisation of France, 1988.
35. The model appears as chapter 6, Centres of calculation, in: Latour, Science in Action.
36. It has been discussed and developed by both historians and geographers: A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World, New Haven, CT, 1993;
37. M. Bravo, Ethnographic navigation and the geographical gift, in: D.N. Livingstone and C.W.J. Withers (Eds), Geography and Enlightenment, Chicago, 1999, 199-235.
38. Particularly germane to my paper is M. Heffernan's article that uses the idea of centres of calculation to understand the contributions of geographers in the UK, France, and the USA to military and political intelligence during the First World War, and its immediate aftermath: Mars and Minerva, 320-333.
39. While translation is couched often in terms of combining different human and non-human elements, Latour makes clear that translation applies also to the joining of different kinds of texts, or even manipulations within texts. For example, 'equations are sub-sets of translations and should be studied like all other translations' Science in Action, 238-239. More generally, the issue of translation arises whenever different objects, texts, skills, or even people, come together to produce a common product. Sometimes translation fails, however, because differences are too great. But even then, re-translation is possible, although eventually it too may falter
40. Trevor Barnes uses the idea of translation to understand the history of the regional science movement, The rise (and decline) of American regional science: Lessons for the new economic geography? Journal of Economic Geography 4 (2004) 107-129
41. Katz, Foreign Intelligence, xii.
42. Quoted in Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/oss/art02.htm
43. C. Ford, Donovan of OSS, Boston, MA, 1970;
44. T.F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency, Frederick, MD, 1981.
45. R&A was established on July 31st 1941, and became operational on August 27th. The Donovan quote is from Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/ oss/art02.htm
46. Latour, Science in Action. The quotes are taken respectively from pages 254, 239, and 222.
47. Langer titles a memo to Donovan, 'Assets of the R&A Branch,' 23rd August 1945, RG226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
48. By the end of the war, there were a dozen such outposts. The first was set up in London in April 1942 (and even makes it into Gravity's Rainbow). They functioned primarily as subsidiary centres of calculation, feeding information back to R&A in Washington, although they did have some local autonomy.
49. Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/oss/art02.htm
50. In an admittedly light-hearted classification drawn up by Wallace Atwood in December 1939 of number of citations, Hartshorne was already at 'Genius' standing. He had 45 citations, James 34, and Atwood himself zero (and so was designated by his own scheme as an 'Idiot');
51. D.J. Robinson, On Preston E. James and Latin America: A biographical sketch, in: D.J. Robinson (Ed.), Studying Latin America: Essays in honor of Preston E. James, Syracuse, NY, 1980, 1-101, 60, fn. 132. Robinson's chapter is the source about the meeting at which James suggested Hartshorne as Chief of the Geography Division, pages 62-63.
52. B.M. Katz The criticism of arms: The Frankfurt School goes to war Journal of Modern History 59 (1987) 439-475
53. A. Söllner from political dissent to scholarly integration: The Frankfurt School in American Government, 1942-49, in: B. Robbins (Ed.), Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics, Minneapolis, 1990, 225-244.
54. William L. Langer to William J. Donovan, Assets of the R&A Branch, 23 August 1945, page 1, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
55. Functions of Research and Analysis in strategic services, R&A No. 2700, no date, page 8, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA. The collecting began almost as soon as R&A was created, and continued throughout the war. For example, in July 1942, Kirk Stone was sent to riffle through the holdings of Pan Am Airways in San Francisco and Seattle and brought back Pacific airline route manuals, 625 maps, pictures of 'Pacific stations,' and meteorological data. Kirk H. Stone to William J. Donovan, July 1 1942, RG 226 Entry 1 Box 7, Folder 14, NARA. That said, prising lose information could be difficult especially from other branches of the US military and its allies. The Projects Committee minutes for October 19 reported that 'Mr Hartshorne stressed the difficulty, under severe circumstances, of getting material from military agencies' Projects Committee Minutes of Meetings, Book 1, October 19 1942, RG 226 Entry 59, Box 1. The Army and Navy signals intelligence were especially resistant. In his history of American secret intelligence, Christopher Andrew says R&A 'were denied access to the best intelligence of the war, Ultra and Magic [decoded enemy intercepted signals], and their work suffered accordingly'. C. Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush, New York, 1995, 133.
56. Intelligence Photographic Documentation Project: Memorandum for Field Terms, no date, page 2, RG 226, Box 4, File 10, NARA.
57. Two memos from Charles Fahs to William L. Langer and Edward A. Mason, Materials on the Far East which we desire from the USSR, 15th January, 1944, RG 226, Roll 103, frames, 24-28, NARA.
58. Functions of Research and Analysis in strategic services, R&A No. 2700, no date, page 12, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
59. R&A Administrative Regulation, January 21, 1943, page 4, RG 226 Entry 1, Box 1, Folder 2, NARA.
60. William Langer to Kermit Roosevelt, March 5th, 1947, quoted in Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 22.
61. K. Stone Geography's wartime service Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979) 89-96
62. Preston James in a letter to Chandler Morse, head of the London R&A outpost, complained about 'a certain amount of friction at the so-called working level ... between geographers and economists,' Preston James to Chandler Morse, 3rd August 1944, RG 226, Entry 146, box 83, NARA, quoted in M. Rössler, Geographers and social scientists in the office for strategic services, 75-85, 78. It was also telling that Hartshorne wrote a memo to Langer on 'Branch morale' four months after the new organisational form of enforced interdisciplinary co-operation was enacted, and began, 'The honeymoon is long since over.' Richard Hartshorne to William Langer, Branch morale, 9th June 1943, RG 226, Box 1, Folder 18, NARA.
63. Functions of Research and Analysis in strategic services, R&A No. 2700, no date, pages 2-3, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
64. Functions of Research and Analysis in strategic services, R&A No. 2700, no date, page 2, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
65. Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 5; Projects Committee Minutes of Meetings, November 18, 1942, RG 226, E59, Box 1.
66. 'All requests for studies are referred to the [Projects] Committee and it considers all projects for studies instituted within the Branch. It assigns priorities and designates what division is to be responsible and what other units should cooperate or be consulted in the preparation of the work. Finally, it passes upon [sic] finished reports and controls their distribution.' Functions of Research & Analysis in Strategic Services, no date, RG226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA.
67. The reviews could be tough. One reviewer for R&A Report 1589, Grain Requirements of Western Yugoslavia, noted, 'The author uses "banovina"; as the plural, whereas it is actually the singular, and the plural should be "banovine" or "banovines".' Reviewer's report, December 3 1943, RG 226, E 60, Box 1, NARA. On the process of the production of reports, see also B. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA, New York, 1983, 363. There was no prescribed length for the reports or a set structure. Authors should strive for 'terseness and clarity,' and a report's organisation should 'fit the specific purposes for which they are intended.' R. Hartshorne, Draft of proposed guide to preparation of political reports, pages 10 and 9, no date, RG226, entry 37, Box 5, Folder 3, NARA.
68. Projects Committee - Minutes of Meetings, 8th September 1943, and 17 April 1944, RG 266, Entry 59, Box 2, NARA.
69. Katz, Foreign Intelligence, 15.
70. R. Hartshorne, Draft of proposed guide to preparation of political reports, pages 7, 8, and 10, no date, RG226, entry 37, Box 5, Folder 3, NARA.
71. Richard Hartshorne to Sherman Ken, R&A No. 2345, page 1, 15th June 1945, RG 226, Entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA.
72. R&A reports do not have author's names. Hartshorne's memo to Langer about the paper, however, implies Marcuse is an author. Richard Hartshorne to William L. Langer, Issues raised by the Europe-Africa Division, 23rd July 1945, page 3, RG226, entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA.
73. Richard Hartshorne to Sherman Kent and Lt. Carl E. Schorske, R&A No. 1549, page 1, 14th July 1945, RG 226, Entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA.
74. The quote from Schorske is found in a memo from Richard Hartshorne to William L. Langer, Administrative problems involved in the current controversy with the Europe-Africa Division, 23rd July 1945, page 3, RG226, entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA. The title of Kent's memo is found in a second memo from Richard Hartshorne to William L. Langer, Issues raised by the Europe-Africa Division, 23rd July 1945, page 3, RG226, entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA.
75. The memo is divided into two parts: The first reaffirming the structure of decision-making in the Branch, and Hartshorne's authority within it; and the second repeating unfavourable comments from referees (who included Hartshorne). Memo from Richard Hartshorne to William L. Langer, Issues raised by the Europe-Africa Division, 23rd July 1945, page 3, RG226, entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA.
76. There were several reasons for the dissolution of OSS. President Roosevelt's death in April 1945, and his succession by Truman, was the important catalyst. Donovan was Roosevelt's friend, not Truman's. Further, Truman was anxious to disband the apparatus of war quickly, and more generally, was suspicious of peacetime espionage (which he regarded as an 'American Gestapo'). Dononvan's wartime clashes with Edgar Hoover, who remained head of the FBI after the war, as well as with other chiefs of military intelligence further hobbled OSS's future. The highly critical Park report that alleged gross incompetence and waste at OSS that was given to Truman just after he took over the Presidency sealed the issue. However, four months after disbanding OSS on September 30th 1945, the National Intelligence Authority was created, giving way in September 1947 to the Central Intelligence Agency. A good account of the demise of OSS and the rise of the CIA is found in Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only, ch. 5.
77. Richard Hartshorne to William L. Langer, Issues raised by the Europe-Africa Division, 23rd July 1945, RG226, entry 1, Box 4, Folder 1, NARA. Much of Hartshorne's subsequent post-war career at the University of Wisconsin turned on defending his pre-war The Nature of Geography and its view of the region as an 'element complex' of objective facts. While the boundaries of regions themselves could not be objectively described, the elements that composed them could
78. Hartshorne's exact definition of the region has been a vexed one, but Robert Sack provides a lucid account in Chorology and spatial analysis Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64 (1974) 439-452
79. Schorske's writings are numerous, but his article The new rigorism in the human sciences, 1940-60 Daedalus 126 (1997) 289-309 Marcuse's writings are also numerous.
80. An excellent commentary is B.M. Katz, Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation, London, 1982.
81. Latour, Science in Action, 220.
82. C.T. Pinck D. Pinck The best spies didn't wear suits The New York Times December 10, 2004
83. Functions of Research & Analysis in Strategic Services, no date, page 4, RG226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA; R&A Administrative Regulation # 2, March 12 1943, RG226 Entry 1, Box 1, Folder 2, NARA.
84. Functions of Research & Analysis in Strategic Services, no date, page 4, RG226, Box 9, Folder 3, NARA. The role of Enemy Objectives Unit is well discussed by B.M. Katz, Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services 1942-1945, Cambridge, MA, 1989, ch. 4.
85. The effects of the 'oil offencsive' are describe in Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/oss/art02.htm.
86. William L. Langer to William J. Donovan, Assets of the R&A Branch, 23 August 1945, RG 226, Box 9, Folder 3.
87. Given the recently proposed massive reorganization of American intelligence in the wake of 9/11 this is clearly still relevant.
88. Projects Committee - Minutes of Meetings, 14th October 1943, RG 266, Entry 59, Box 2; Edward Ackerman to William L. Langer, April 30th and May 5th 1943, RG 226 Entry 1, Box 4, Folder 11; William L. Langer to William J. Donovan, May 10th 1943, RG 226, Entry 1, Box 4, Folder 11; Edward T. Dickinson to William L. Langer, Turkish chrome ore and the Maritsa Bridge, October 29 1943, and Richard Hartshorne to William J. Donovan, Turkish chrome ore and the Maritsa Bridge, 30th March 1944, Microfilm roll 118, frames 197-204.
89. J.A. Russell, Military geography, in: P.E. James and C.F. Jones (Eds), American Geography: Inventory and Prospect, Syracuse, NY, 1954, 485-495, 486.
90. E.A. Ackerman Geographic training, wartime research, and immediate professional objectives Annals of the Association of American Geographers 35 (1945) 121-143
91. Committee on Training and Standards in the Geographic Profession, National Research Council Lessons from the war-time experience for improving graduate training for geographic research Annals of the Association of American Geographers 36 (1946) 195-214
92. L.S. Wilson Geographic training for the post-war world: A proposal Geographical Review 38 (1948) 575-589
93. Lessons from the war-time experience, 206.
94. The quotes are respectively from: Ackerman Geographic training, 122, 127, 129;
95. L.S. Wilson, Geographic training for the post-war world: A proposal, Geographical Review 38 (1948) 575-589, 578;
96. Lessons from the war-time experience, 206, 207, 209.
97. Ackerman, Geographic training, 127.
98. L.S. Wilson Geographic training for the post-war world: A proposal Geographical Review 38 (1948) 575-589
99. On the Naval Intelligence Handbooks see H. Clout C. Gosme The Naval Intelligence Handbooks: A monument in geographical writing Progress in Human Geography 27 (2003) 153-173
100. H. Clout, Place description, regional geography and area studies: The chorographic inheritance, in: R.J. Johnston and M. Williams (Eds), A Century of British Geography, Oxford, 2003, 247-274.
101. Memo: War and Navy Department and OSS, July 1 1943, RG 226, Entry 1, Box 1, Folder 2, NARA. Edward Ackerman to Edward L. Ullman, Report on Examination of past JANIS publications and present recommended research procedures, 10th June 1944, RG 226, Box 1, Folder 20.
102. Memo: Proposed outline for Joint Strategic Monographs, William L. Langer to all section heads, July 27, 1942, RG 226, Box 1, Folder 3, NARA. Memo: Proposed outline for Joint Strategic Monographs, George Brightman to Richard Hartshorne, August 13, 1942, RG 226, Box 1, Folder 3, NARA.
103. Clout, Place description, 247-274.
104. Kirk H. Stone to Richard Hartshorne, 13 July 1943, RG 226 Box 1, Folder 20, NARA.
105. Edward L. Ullman, Notes on organization of topographical intelligence, 13 December 1944, RG 226, Entry 1, Box 1, Folder 18, NARA. Ullman's post-war intellectual trajectory is seen in a compilation of his writings, E.L. Ullman, in: R.R. Boyce (Ed.), Geography as Spatial Interaction, Seattle, 1980.
106. A.H. Robinson Geography and cartography then and now Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (1979) 98
107. Memo to William Langer from Arthur Robinson, 28th September 1945, RG226, NARA.
108. Robinson, Geography and cartography then and now, 98-99.
109. L.S. Wilson Lessons from the experience of the map information section, OSS Geographical Review 39 (1949) 298-310
110. L.S. Wilson Library filing, classification, and cataloging of maps, with special reference to wartime experience Annals of the Association of American Geographers 38 (1948) 6-37
111. Arthur Robinson to William Langer, 28th September 1945, page 1, RG226, NARA.
112. The original quote is from Pierre Bosquet, a French general observing the Charge of the Light Brigade, but 'appropriated' by Captain 'Pirate' Prentice as his 'motto,' Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 10.
113. Examples include: D.R. Stoddart, Geography and war - the new geography and the new army in England, 1899-1914, Political Geography 11 (1992) 87-99;
114. Heffernan, Geography, cartography and military intelligence
115. F. Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire, Oxford, 2001.
116. Clout and Gosme, The Naval Intelligence Handbooks.
117. Clout, Gosme. The Naval Intelligence Handbooks
118. B. Hudson, The new geography and the new imperialism: 1870-1918, Antipode 9:2 (1977) 12-19.