Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War

In this powerful work, historian Sutton follows the fledgling Office of Strategic Services (Roosevelt’s intelligence agency) as its head, “Wild” Bill Donovan, launched a top-secret program: the recruitment of foreign missionaries in areas of Axis conflict. The agency’s spies included William Eddy, a missionary in Africa and the Middle East; Stewart Herman, pastor of the American Church in Berlin; John Birch, an evangelist in China; and Stephen Penrose, the child of missionaries in the Middle East. Some directed operations in Egypt (Penrose) and Morocco (Eddy), aggressively building large networks of clergyman spies; others waded into combat, such as John Birch, who rescued downed Allied pilots in Japanese-occupied China. “Neither the missionaries themselves nor their religious agencies nor American military leaders felt comfortable acknowledging the wartime lying, deceiving, manipulating, and even killing that these religious activist operatives engaged in,” so records relating to their activities were hidden, expunged, or destroyed, and the participants wrestled with internal conflict. Many solved this problem by believing that violence was a necessary means to achieving peace and spreading the word of God. Some of them were later involved in shaping U.S. foreign policy, with almost evangelical results: God’s chosen people remaking the world in their image. This provocative book illuminates little-discussed history and raises larger philosophical questions. It is an unusually fresh and intelligent addition to WWII literature. (Sept.)