Eduard Mark

For the period between World War II and the full onset of the Cold War, histories of American intelligence seem to go dark. Yet in those years a little known clandestine organization, the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), emerged from the remnants of wartime American intelligence to lay the groundwork for what would become the CIA and, in ways revealed here for the first time, conduct its own secret warof espionage and political intrigue in postwar Europe. Telling the full story of this early and surprisingly effective espionage arm ofthe United States, Spying through a Glass Darkly brings a critical chapter in the history of Cold War intelligence out of the shadows.Constrained by inadequate staff and limited resources, distracted by the conflicting demands of agencies of the US government,and victimized by disinformation and double agents, the Strategic Services Unit struggled to maintain an effective Americanclandestine capability after the defeat of the Axis Powers. Never viscerally anti-communist, the Strategic Services Unit was slow torecognize the Soviet Union as a potential threat, but gradually it began to mount operations, often in collaboration with the intelligence services of Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, and Sweden, to throw light into the darker corners of the Soviet regime. Bringing to bear a wealth of archival documents, operational records, interviews, and correspondence, David Alvarez and Eduard Mark chronicle SSU’s successes and failures in procuring intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of the Soviet Union, a chronicle that delves deeply into the details of secret operations against Soviet targets throughout Europe: not only in the backstreets of the divided cities of Berlin and Vienna, but also the cafes, hotels, offices, and salons of such cosmopolitan capitals as Paris, Rome, Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw.

The United States Army Air Forces became an independent service, the United States Air Force, in 1947-the second year, supposedly, of "peace." In reality there had just begun a long conflict between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and the satellite states subject to it. In 1949 the United States and most of the non-Communist countries of Europe signed theNorth Atlantic Treaty. The United States Air Force, which had been only a token presence on the continent since the end of World War II, once morecrossed the Atlantic in strength. The commitment of that service to peace and security in Europe, which continues still, has been the longest of its history. This pamphlet attempts to give the general reader some sense of the role theUSAF has played in Europe since the end of World War II. It contains three sections. The first reviews the reasons for the origins of the Cold War and describes the strategic concerns that drove the United States to commit itself tothe military defense of distant lands. The second section reviews the higher strategy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with specialreference to the central role of air power. The final section reviews the history of the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) in order to show the many ways in which the United States Air Force has served American national security policy on the continent. This section is closely based on a brief history of USAFE prepared by Dr. Daniel Harrington of USAFE' s history office. I amgrateful to Dr. Harrington for having made his study available to me.