BOOK REVIEW: Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women of the OSS
By Lisa Rogak / St. Martin’s Press
Reviewed by: Tammy Kupperman Thorp
The Reviewer — Tammy Kupperman Thorp was Director of Public Affairs for the Central Intelligence Agency from 2021 to 2025. Prior to that she was Director of Media Relations for BAE Systems, was a producer for CNN and NBC News, and worked in senior positions at the National Counterterrorism Center, and Office of Naval Intelligence.
REVIEW — In an age of misinformation, disinformation, and unsourced or questionably sourced information, Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women of the OSS is a timely read. It reminds us of the importance and power of information as a tool in pursuit of clear objectives. In this case, in Propaganda Girls, author Lisa Rogak explores the role played by four women in the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) to influence World War II on the side of the Allies.
Propaganda Girls is as much about the unseen roles played by women as the potential value of covert influence campaigns. First, on the role of women. Legendary OSS architect General William “Wild Bill” Donovan looked for the right people for the mission, no matter race, ethnicity, or gender. After WWII, he famously observed, “We have come to the end of an unusual experiment. This experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans constituting a cross-section of racial origins, of abilities, temperaments and talents, could risk an encounter with the long-established and well-trained enemy organizations.”
This book tells the story of four women who used their skills to seed false information or demoralize enemy soldiers to break their will. While many of these stories are known, Ms. Rogak does a good job of weaving them together while pointing out the challenges faced by women in the OSS, even in an organization that theoretically valued their contributions over their gender. On the one hand, the OSS empowered these women – particularly their creativity in covert influence operations – while on the other hand, recounts again and again their difficulty in being recognized for their exploits. Their roles and responsibilities belied their junior rank – and, even with the written support of male peers – their difficulty, or inability in some cases, to be promoted. Still, a familiar story for many women.
It is fitting that the OSS as the predecessor to the CIA embarked on this “experiment.” While largely “pale, male, and Yale” for many years, CIA has since recognized the importance of diversity to accomplish its global mission (the current administration notwithstanding). Former Director Bill Burns often pointed out how critical diversity is to performing CIA’s worldwide mission effectively, noting CIA won’t be successful “if everyone looks like me, talks like me, and thinks like me.” Let’s hope CIA doesn’t forget the lessons learned over decades and demonstrated by the OSS.
In recounting the work of these four women, Propaganda Girls describes a series of covert influence campaigns often conceived and carried out by the women as members of the OSS’ Morale Operations branch, an organization in charge of producing “black propaganda.” The author describes black propaganda primarily as a “series of believable lies designed to cause the enemy soldiers to lose heart and ultimately surrender.” Betty MacDonald, who came to the OSS as a newspaper reporter, later explained, “We were taught how to get rumors started and to disseminate material, a mix of truth and fantasy.”
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Donovan recognized that information operations, when successful, can be more effective than a shooting war.” It is important to realize that these operations were executed in wartime and often were in service of discrete objectives. For example, in 1945, to divert Japanese troops away from Japan, Betty used a radio broadcast to plant a false story, that the Allies were planning to attack Hong Kong, succeeding in drawing Japanese troops away. This example, however, highlights the significant challenges with using credible sources of information, i.e., radio broadcasts, to communicate false stories, that inevitably diminish the credibility of these channels.
To be effective the so-called black propaganda had to first be understood in order to resonate with those behind enemy lines. A great example is the use of drawings on leaflets distributed in Japanese-occupied parts of China, where the literacy rate was low. Another one is Jane Smith-Hutton’s operation to forge and disseminate to Japanese troops a Japanese battlefield manual that told troops surrender was honorable. The real manual said the exact opposite.
The OSS also made use of the cultural backgrounds of these women, two of whom came to the US from Europe – Marlene Dietrich, the famous singer and actress, from Germany, and Zuzka Lauwers from Czechoslovakia. In the case of Dietrich, her performance of “Lili Marlene” and other ballads helped demoralize rank-and-file German soldiers by stirring nostalgia and rankling the Nazis when it was broadcast on German radio. The “nostalgic appeal [was] designed to promote more weariness and defection.”
As Ms. Rogak acknowledges, it is often difficult to judge the effectiveness of information operations as metrics – a commonly used measure of effectiveness -- tend to be elusive. The propaganda girls certainly felt this frustration and often could not judge the effects of their operations, leading to the “MO (Morale Operations) blues.” But statistical data is likely not the best way to measure the success of such operations, argues JD Maddox who consults for the Navy on information operations. He recently observed in the magazine Proceedings that judging the success of an info operation by statistics “would be like judging the Marine Corps’ Battle of Mosul by the number of bullets expended.”
One exception to the unreliability of metrics to measure success came when Zuzka Lauwers learned that Czech and Slovak volunteers had been relegated to a work farm by the Nazis. Lauwers drew on her Czech roots to craft leaflets and speeches, ostensibly from the Czechoslovak Army, ordered the soldiers to turn on the Germans, resulting in 600 of them crossing lines, surrendering to the Allies, and offering to fight against the Germans.
As any practitioner of information ops – or student of war – can tell you, the effects of these information operations are notoriously difficult to discern, the Czechoslovak example a rare exception. The author misses the chance to apply any lessons to today. In an era when spying is more difficult and the information environment is vast and ubiquitous, arguably information ops are more complex. Operations serving battlefield objectives offer clarity that today’s geopolitics make difficult to see clearly. Additionally, with the proliferation of tools such as bots and AI, distinguishing fact from fiction can be nearly impossible, imperiling the credibility of information sources and the truth.
Propaganda Girls is a short, fun read but should be seen as narrow. While it offers some lessons, it is important to place it in historical context. Lessons about the value of diversity are clear and apply to today. But it fails to offer an important coda: how can information operations best be utilized in the age of abundant information – some true, some misleading, and much false. The book also does not explore how to maintain credibility while, at the same time, fully operating in the information domain – crucial to winning, and avoiding, wars.
As Donovan also observed, “Only by decisions of national policy based on accurate information can we have the chance that peace will endure.”
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