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Librarians-turned-spies helped fight the Nazis by deploying their information gathering and organizing skills as weapons during World War II.
These secret agents collected everything from local newspapers and trade journals to underground resistance pamphlets, technological manuals, economic reports and land surveys.
“They weren’t the James Bond type of spy but more of the low key, under-the-radar spy,” says Kathy Peiss, author of “Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe.”
"They were there to collect what today we would call open-source materials. So magazines, newspapers, materials like industrial directories, and anything that might give some insight into the planning and strength of the enemy.”
