June 13: President Franklin Roosevelt establishes the Office of Strategic Services, with swashbuckling General William J. Donovan at–the–helm.
At the height of its influence during WWII, the OSS employed over 23,000 people. Included on its rosters were Julia Child (later, world–famous cooking celeb), Arthur Goldberg (later, US Ambassador to the UN), Mo Berg (later, a Major League Baseball catcher, then coach), and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (later, the renowned historian).
Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train and supply sundry resistance movements, including Mao Zedong’s Red Army and the Viet Minh in French Indochina (later, Vietnam). Both these movements later emerged as foes of the US.
The OSS was spawned by WWII, and its institutional life ultimately did not supersede the end of the war. Disbanded in September 1945, a month after VJ Day (August 15), the OSS is reincarnated two years later in 1947 in the form of the CIA.