In 1943, the OSS came up with a plan to increase its support to the French resistance forces that were fighting the Nazis. The OSS recruited some of the best American bomber pilots and crews to a secret airfield and briefed them on the intended mission. Given a choice to stay or leave, every airman volunteered for what became known as Operation Carpetbagger. Their dangerous plan called for a new kind of flying: taking their B-24 Liberator bombers in the night across the English Channel and down to  low altitudes in Nazi-occupied France to find drop zones in dark fields. On the ground, resistance members waited to receive steel containers filled with everything from rifles and hand grenades to medicine and bicycle tires. Based on exclusive research and interviews, the definitive story of these heroic flyers and of the brave secret agents and resistance leaders they aided can now be told.

In 1942, the U.S. Army unleashed one of its greatest secret weapons in the battle to defeat Adolf Hitler: training nearly 2,000 German-born Jews in special interrogation techniques and making use of their mastery of the German language, history and customs. Known as the Ritchie Boys, they were sent in small, elite teams to join every major combat unit in Europe, where they interrogated German POWs and gathered crucial intelligence that saved American lives and helped win the war. Bruce Henderson draws on personal interviews with many surviving veterans and extensive archival research to bring this never-before-told chapter of the Second World War to light.