Research and Analysis Branch

R&A Headquarters

• Library of Congress Annex
• Apex Building in Federal Triangle
• Abandoned Ice Skating Rink
• Apartment building at corner of 23rd Street and E. Street, part of Potomac Hill / Navy Hill / E Street Complex{{Cite news |last=Hendrix |first=Steve |date=2023-04-15 |title=Former OSS spies on a mission to save old headquarters |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/former-oss-spies-on-a-mission-to-save-old-headquarters/2014/06/28/69379d16-fd7d-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html |access-date=2024-06-25 |newspaper=Washington Post |language=en-US |issn=0190-8286}}

R&A Field Offices

• New York
• San Francisco

R&A Outposts

• Honolulu
• London
• Stockholm
• Moscow
• Algiers
• Cairo
• Istanbul
• New Delhi
• Chungking (Chongqing)

The divisions of R&A at the beginning of the war were not the same as the ones that it comprised at the end of the war. In the early days of R&A, arguments occurred between Division and Section Chiefs over jurisdictional matters regarding analysis and mission. The major restructuring of the R&A Divisions in 1943 was controversial throughout the branch.{{Cite book |last=Katz |first=Barry M. |title=Foreign Intelligence · Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services 1942-1945 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1989 |location=Cambridge, MA. London, England.}} Barry Katz writes that "This [restructuring] was one of the most portentous administrative decisions of its history, but also the most traumatic, for it violated the received wisdom that the world is organized in the manner of a university catalogue."

At its peak product output in 1944, R&A was arranged into eight divisions.{{Cite web |last=Warner |first=Michael |title=The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency |url=https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Office-of-Strategic-Services.pdf |publisher=Office of Public Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency}} Four of these divisions were referred to as "Geographical Divisions," and organized the world into Geographical areas. These divisions were created out of the original Geographical Division that was created in 1941 under COI. Four of these divisions were "functional" in nature. Each of these divisions were further made up of sections and sub-divisions, differing between divisions in their makeup. The Geographic subdivisions were primarily divided further by "Geographic," "Economic," and "Political," Sub-divisions, and sections falling within that structure.{{Cite web |title=HyperWar: Office of Strategic Servcices (OSS) Organization and Functions |url=https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USG/JCS/OSS/OSS-Functions/ |access-date=2024-06-24 |website=www.ibiblio.org}}

The Europe-Africa Division included the Political sections of Africa, Central Europe, the Balkans, Italy, the Near East, Scandinavia, and Western Europe.{{Cite web |title=HyperWar: Office of Strategic Servcices (OSS) Organization and Functions |url=https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USG/JCS/OSS/OSS-Functions/ |access-date=2024-06-23 |website=www.ibiblio.org}} Sherman Kent was the Chief of the Europe-Africa Division.{{Cite web |last=Goldman |first=Jan |title=An Encyclopedia of Covert Ops, Intelligence Gathering, and Spies |url=http://chinhnghia.com/encyclopediagoldmancia.pdf |publisher=Central Intelligence Agency}} Assistant Chiefs of the Division were C. Morse and Harold Deutsch.

The Far East Division was responsible for the geographical area that included Imperial Japan, and the surrounding East Asia territories of the PTO. The Political Sub-Division of the Far East Division comprised the following sections: China, Japan, Korea and Manchuria, Southern Asia, and Pacific Islands.

File:Research and Analysis Map Division.png

The Chief of the Map Division was Arthur H. Robinson.{{Cite web |last1=University |first1=© Stanford |last2=Stanford |last3=California 94305 |date=2018-08-25 |title=History |url=https://exhibits.stanford.edu/oss-maps/about/history |access-date=2024-06-24 |website=Office of Strategic Services Maps - Spotlight at Stanford |language=en}} R&A's Map Division functioned as the "central repository for target intelligence collected by OSS around the world." "Winnowing out irrelevant details, the branch created accurate, customized maps for specific operations."{{Cite web |title=OSS Exhibition Catalogue |url=https://www.cia.gov/static/Official-OSS-Exhibition-Catalogue.pdf}} The Subdivisions of the Map Division included; Special Photography, Cartography, Map Information, and Topographic Models.

The Chief of the Latin America Division was Maurice H. Halperin.{{Cite book |last=Haynes, J.E., Klehr, H. & Vassiliev, A |title=Spies: The Rise & Fall of the KGB in America. |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2009}} The Latin America Division was responsible for the geographical areas of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

The USSR Division was a separate division from the Europe-Africa Division, and perhaps had the most strenuous relationship with the State Department during the war for several reasons, including jurisdictional issues and the very fact that the OSS was collecting intelligence on an Allied power.{{Cite journal |last=Dessants |first=Betty Abrahamsen |date=October 1996 |title=Ambivalent allies: OSS' USSR division, the state department, and the bureaucracy of intelligence analysis, 1941–1945 |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684529608432388 |journal=Intelligence and National Security |language=en |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=722–753 |doi=10.1080/02684529608432388 |issn=0268-4527|url-access=subscription }}

The Current Intelligence Staff oversaw the publication of a series of highly regarded periodicals produced by R&A. The Current Intelligence Staff maintained a War Room for OSS leadership. It also produced the Current Intelligence Studies, which were sometimes abbreviated R&A studies, and it produced a daily situation report for use in the War Room.

CID was the Division responsible for cataloguing, organizing, and indexing incoming information from the other divisions of the R&A. CID was often referred to as "the library," even though the library - officially called the Reference Section - was only one of the three sections of CID. Chief Wilmarth Lewis was quoted as saying that CID's "system has been called the best in Washington over and over again—within the week it was called so by the Army Staff College and was adopted in toto by them."{{Cite book |title=Letter by Wilmarth S. Lewis to William L. Langer; folder 19; entry 1; RG 226. |publisher=OSS Archives |date=30 June 1943}}

In addition to the Reference Section, CID also included the Pictorial Records Section and the Biographical Records Section.

Indexing was performed in series and category; "Regular Series," denoted open source and unclassified information, "XL Series," was used for secret information, "L Series," was used for information generated by the OSS, the "Order of Battle Series," were military documents about the military situation in-theater.{{Cite web |title=Summary of OSS Records in the National Archives |url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP76-00883R000100120009-6.pdf}}

The Interdepartmental Committee was responsible for coordination of R&A with other agencies. The sections of this division included; Publications, Subject Index, Outposts.

The Enemy Objectives Unit, based in London, analyzed the German economy and war production, recommended particular targets and ultimately helped convince Allied air commanders that the key objectives of the bombing campaign should be first, German aircraft factories and second, German oil and synthetic oil production facilities.{{Cite web |title=A Wartime Organization for Unconventional Warfare (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/a-wartime-organization-for-unconventional-warfare.htm |access-date=2024-06-23 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}}

R&A veterans included seven future presidents of the American Historical Association, five of the American Economic Association, one of the American Political Science Association, and two Nobel Laureates.

• Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
• Walt W. Rostow
• Edward Shils
• Herbert Marcuse
• H. Stuart Hughes
• Gordon A. Craig
• Crane Brinton
• John King Fairbank
• Sherman Kent
• Ralph Bunche
• Benjamin Rivlin
• William L. Langer
• Walter Langer
• Wilmarth Lewis
• William Applebaum (Wolf)
• James McHugh
• Joseph Charles
• Richard Gard
• George H. Owen
• Edward T. Dickinson, Jr.
• Charlotte Gower (Chapman)
• Conyers Read
• Felix Gilbert
• Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
• Edward Hartshorne
• Herbert Marcus
• Carl Schorske
• Harold Deutsch
• C. Douglas Dillon
• Arthur H. Robinson

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Research and Analysis Branch

Category:1942 establishments in the United States

Category:1945 disestablishments in the United States

Category:Agencies of the United States government during World War II

Category:Defunct United States intelligence agencies

Category:Government agencies disestablished in 1945

Category:Government agencies established in 1942

Category:Intelligence services of World War II

Category:World War II espionage