Karlow, Peter, 1943 - 1945

Biagio "Max" Corvo (1920-1994), a U.S. Army officer, served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WWII where he worked as an intelligence officer in Italy and Sicily after Italy signed the 1943 armistice with the allied powers, realigining itself with them. Corvo's papers consist of correspondence, memos, files, telegrams, photographs, and various ephemera such as pamphlets, tickets, and leaftlets. The bulk of the material relates to U.S. intelligence gathering in Italy from 1943 to 1945. The collection also contains several photographs of Italian partisans in Northern Italy. In addition, the audiovisual portion of the papers includes several CDs where Corvo speaks about the early days of the OSS as well as providing a description of the collection.

A precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the OSS had little power or international recognition during its early years, but surmounted the challenge of parachuting to the anti-Fascist Partisans arms and supplies to be used against German troops stationed in Italy under the terms of Germany and Italy’s bilateral agreement until 1943. The organization also assisted in channeling intelligence via OSS radio stations to members of 15th Army Group, who from their base in Algiers, were staging an attack through Sicily with other Allied forces to oust German and Axis forces. The accuracy of the intelligence reports, signaling Hitler’s baseline plans for attack to Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, ensured the Partisans had enough time to thwart some of the German attacks—a crucial offensive advantage given the asymmetrical balance of power between the two sides. In September 1943, when Italy signed an armistice joining the Allied Forces, as the Allies’ power and political legitimacy increased, few German forces still remained in Italy. The Partisan troops, thus, as the power gradient decreased, were able to force the collapse and surrender of German divisions in northern areas like Genoa, Turin, and Milan.

Intelligence reports from Italy and Sicily illustrate the adversity the OSS had in its formative years in countering an attack against Fascist loyalists, not only through its collection of formal mission reports, but also in the informal letters relayed to various members of the organization from the US, Algiers, and mainland Italy. As the only nearly complete archive of the OSS in Fascist Italy, 1943-1945, the papers are a significant resource in the Watkinson Library’s collection.