BOOK REVIEW: ORTIZ'S WAR: THE ALLIES' SECRET WEAPON AGAINST THE NAZIS IN FRANCE
By Nicholas Reynolds and Katie S. Sanders / Harper Horizon
Reviewed by: Bill Harlow
The Reviewer — Bill Harlow is The Cipher Brief's senior book editor and a former CIA Director of Public Affairs.
REVIEW: Some lives sound made up. Peter Ortiz's does. He left a comfortable upbringing to join the French Foreign Legion as a teenager, fought in North Africa, escaped a German prison camp, and joined the U.S. Marine Corps after Pearl Harbor. He parachuted twice into occupied France as an intelligence operative, was a highly successful OSS operator, earned two of the Marine Corps' highest decorations for valor, sat out a second stretch as a German prisoner, and later found an odd second act advising on and appearing in Hollywood films. Ortiz's War gives that life the serious, sourced biography it deserves.
The book's greatest strength is its research. Reynolds and Sanders worked through military and government archives, family papers, and firsthand accounts, and it shows on every page. The operational detail is specific and well-sourced, and the authors take care to separate Ortiz's own postwar recollections from what the documentary record actually confirms. Readers who care whether a wartime intelligence story rests on solid ground, rather than secondhand legend, will find this one clears that bar.
That care doesn't slow the book down. Structured chronologically and paced like a thriller, it moves briskly through Ortiz's restless youth, his service behind enemy lines, and the missions that followed. Reynolds and Sanders have an eye for the telling detail, and they let those small moments — a human beat amid a tense standoff, an act of quiet endurance during a long captivity — carry the weight on their own, without pausing to explain what they mean.
One of the book's pleasures is how accessible it makes Ortiz, and how vivid it makes the people around him. Reynolds and Sanders skip the org-chart detail and focus instead on what drove Ortiz, how he earned the trust of the resistance fighters and civilians who risked everything alongside him, and why people still spoke of him with admiration decades later. The authors are upfront that intelligence and special operations are rarely solo work, and they give real credit to the lesser-known people who made Ortiz's missions possible. The book ends up nearly as much a tribute to them as to him.
The authors' partnership helps too. Reynolds brings the credentials of a veteran CIA officer, Marine and career military historian. Sanders brings her skills as a journalist, plus something more personal: one of the airmen Ortiz helped rescue was a relative of hers. It's a well-documented book that occasionally lets Sanders' personal stake show through, and the authors don't lean on that connection any harder than they need to.
Ortiz defied the odds and found enormous success in nearly every chapter of his life — except one. In Hollywood, after the war, he mostly landed work only as an extra or bit player.
Ortiz's War is engaging and well-researched, and it reads fast for a book this carefully sourced. Peter Ortiz deserves to be better known, and Reynolds and Sanders have rescued an extraordinary, underdocumented life from the margins of history. Readers who follow the history of wartime intelligence and resistance operations will find plenty here. So will anyone who just wants a well-told true story.
One footnote for readers planning their fall reading list: a second full-length Ortiz biography, from a different publisher, is due out roughly six weeks after this one. It's called “The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill,” by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. Two major publishing houses landing on the same overdue OSS Marine within weeks of each other is an interesting coincidence. Proof perhaps this this is a story worth telling twice. The Cipher Brief will review that second book later this fall. In the meantime, read this one.
The Cipher Brief participates in the Amazon Affiliate program and may make a small commission from purchases made via links.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.
