Simple Sabotage Field Manual
Office of Strategic Services
January 1944

Goal: prepare a (successful) D-Day

  • drain/waste physical resources
  • bind human resources
  • demoralize the "enemy"
  • gain support in the (civil) population

Bottom-up resistance

Motivate ordinary citizens to commit (undetectable) simple acts of sabotage.

  • make faulty decisions:
    Act stupid.
  • non-cooperative attitude:
    Be (...) irritatable and quarrelsome (...)
  • physical destruction

Examples of simple sabotage

Forget to provide paper in toilets;
— p. 3
Make mistakes issuing train tickets (...) issue two tickets for the same seat in the train, so an interesting argument will result.
— p. 19
Change sign posts at intersection and forks; (...) When the enemy asks for direction, give (...) wrong information.
— p. 21f.

Simple sabotage

within organizations (p. 28)

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues (...)
(3) (...) refer all all matters to committees (...) as large as possible — never less than five.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings (...)
(6) Refer back matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question (...)

Simple sabotage

for managers (p. 29)

(10) To lower morale (...) be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustily about their work.
(9) When training new works, give incomplete or misleading instructions.
(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

Simple sabotage

for office workers (p. 30)

(3) Misfile essential documents.
(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.

The end

References & further reading