By late 1944, the collapse of the Third Reich appeared imminent; nevertheless, isolated pockets of determined resistance persistedincluding in Slovakia, where 15,000 German soldiers had been deployed to crush an underground resistance movement. General Donovan had convinced U.S. President Roosevelt that his OSS personnel could contribute decisively to the war effort: not only by assisting downed Allied pilots but also by aiding the Czech resistance, gathering intelligence on the German occupiers, and carrying out acts of sabotage against them. Thus, in September 1944, the Office of Strategic Services dispatched the "Dawes Team" to Slovakiaalmost simultaneously with the "Windproof" mission of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). However, pressed by the numerical superiority of German and Allied troops, and plagued by food shortages, disease, and Europes harshest winter in 50 years, the members of the Dawes Team and its subunits were soon captured. Although they had been taken into custody while in uniform and in possession of valid military identification, these members of the OSS and SOE were brutally interrogated, tortured, and ultimately executed by the SS on January 24, 1945, at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Given the inherently top-secret nature of both missions, news of this massacre only slowly reached the public. The liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp by U.S. troops in May 1945 not only brought eyewitnessesincluding another OSS memberto light but also led to the discovery of incriminating records. The perpetrators who had survived the war were soon brought to trial by U.S. Army military authorities; The majority of the defendants were sentenced to death. The judicial proceedings sparked controversyboth then and nowa reaction attributable to the rapid pace at which the trials were conducted, as well as to the sometimes irregular nature of the proceedings. In the years that followed, the sacrifices made by members of the OSS, SOE, and partisan units were honored not only by the veterans themselves but also by the grateful Slovak population during annual commemorative ceremonies. This book traces the course of that fateful mission, the fate and deaths of the twelve OSS operatives, the post-war legal reckoning, and the enduring commemorationwhich continues to this dayof these men's sacrifice.
