Book Review: The Brenner Assignment: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Spy Mission of World War II

I am not surprised that over the past few years, a great many historians have begun to explore some of the lesser known theaters of the Second World War. Gregory Freeman has examined Yugoslavia in The Forgotten 500. Mark Ryan has told us the story of Danish spy Thomas Sneum in The Hornet’s Sting. And now Patrick K. O’Donnell has taken us inside the lives of OSS operatives who acted behind enemy lines in Northern Italy during the War’s final year in The Brenner Assignment: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Spy Mission of World War II (Da Capo Press 2008, 286 pages).

For centuries the Brenner Pass has been a key military route through the Alps, connecting Austria and Italy. During World War II, it served as the principle supply artery for Nazi Germany’s forces in Italy. Not surprisingly, the United States and its Allies wanted to bring about the destruction of the bridges and roads that led from the Pass. That task was vigorously embraced by the newly formed Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the current Central Intelligence Agency.

In The Brenner Assignment, we learn the parallel stories of Stephen Hall and Howard Chappell. Both were dropped in Northern Italy in the area around Bolzano. Hall was dropped alone, while Chappell had a small number of his team with him. Both men were instructed to link up with Italian partisans, train and supply them, and then work their way to the Brenner Pass, leaving destruction in their wake. Both men were largely successful.

Mr. O’Donnell, relying on meticulous research of official documents, oral histories taken from the surviving participants and “a behind-the-lines diary buried in a bottle” to give us a compelling drama that reads as part-history and part adventure story. The stories of both Hall and Chappell are very personal and Mr. O’Donnell provides excellent insight into the daily life of OSS agents who operated behind enemy lines for months at a time. They lived constantly on edge, forced to rely on the support of Italian partisans, who could be fierce warriors or ineffective cowards, while at the same time avoiding capture by ever vigilant SS executioners and their Italian fascist supporters. They were fighting the war and they were fighting the elements of a cold, Alpine winter.

Where The Brenner Assignment fails is in its superficial treatment of the strategic efforts of Hall, Chappell and their allies. Military engagement is given very little description or explanation and, although Mr. O’Donnell asserts that the OSS activities in Northern Italy were successful, he does not adequately explain or quantify the nature of those successes. I wish that when a bridge was blown up, we learned more about the long-term effects that the loss of the bridge had on the German war machine.

The book also could have been improved by offering a much more detailed explanation of the political situation in Northern Italy during the latter days of World War II. Nazi-occupied Italy was full of competing local paramilitary groups which both fought the Germans and fought each other at times, bringing Italy close to civil war, not unlike the civil war that was fought in neighboring Yugoslavia during World War II. I very much would have appreciated a lot more explanation of the political situation into which US OSS agents were dropped.

Criticism aside, The Brenner Assignment is a thoroughly enjoyable book and Mr. O’Donnell has done an excellent job of giving us a real-life adventure in which the tension builds from the first page. The Brenner Assignment does not answer every question that it evokes but it will keep its readers turning pages.