Simple Sabotage Field Manual

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual was published by the Office of Strategic Services on 17 January 1944 as Strategic Services Field Manual No. 3, intended for saboteurs in occupied Europe and Asia. The opening states: "This Simple Sabotage Field Manual - Strategic Services (Provisional) is published for the information and guidance of all concerned and will be used as the basic doctrine for Strategic Services training." Rather than explosives and violence, the manual focuses on psychological and economic disruption: clogging machinery with sand, introducing water into fuel lines, spreading demoralization through rumor. It assumes trained military saboteurs will not always be available and local resistance cells must improvise. The manual's techniques required minimal training or specialized equipment. Declassified by the CIA in the 1970s, it documents what wartime strategy looked like to the institutions executing it.