Thank the OSS!

“Simple Sabotage Field Manual” by United States. Office of Strategic Services is a historical publication written during the early 1940s, amid World War II. This manual acts as a guide for ordinary civilians to conduct simple acts of sabotage against enemy operations without the need for specialized training or equipment. Its main topic revolves around promoting small, accessible forms of resistance that could collectively disrupt the enemy’s war effort. The manual outlines various strategies and techniques for citizens to engage in sabotage that could be executed discreetly and with minimal risk. It provides specific suggestions for targeting transportation, communication, and industrial facilities to create delays and inefficiencies in enemy operations. The manual emphasizes the power of many individuals acting independently to contribute to a larger campaign of disruption, encouraging simple acts such as misplacing tools, delaying communication, or damaging equipment with household items. Overall, the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” serves as a unique historical artifact that illustrates grassroots resistance efforts and the belief in the collective power of ordinary people during wartime.

This video from Some More News has some good suggestions about what how to resist a fascist takeover. One little suggestion I want to bring up is that the video recommends a pamphlet, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a book published by the US government during WWII to provide ideas for the citizens living under the Nazi regime. Suddenly, the old is new again!

The book first talks about how to motivate citizens to become subtle saboteurs. Spread the news around!

To incite the citizen to the active practice of simple sabotage and to keep him practicing that sabotage over sustained periods is a special problem.

Simple sabotage is often an act which the citizen performs according to his own initiative and inclination. Acts of destruction do not bring him any personal gain and may be completely foreign to his habitually conservationist attitude toward materials and tools. Purposeful stupidity is contrary to human nature. He frequently needs pressure, stimulation or assurance, and information and suggestions regarding feasible methods of simple sabotage.

(1) Personal Motives

(a) The ordinary citizen very probably has no immediate personal motive for committing simple sabotage. Instead, he must be made to anticipate indirect personal gain, such as might come with enemy evacuation or destruction of the ruling government group. Gains should be stated as specifically as possible for the area addressed: simple sabotage will hasten the day when Commissioner X and his deputies Y and Z will be thrown out, when particularly obnoxious decrees and restrictions will be abolished, when food will arrive, and so on. Abstract verbalizations about personal liberty, freedom of the press, and so on, will not be convincing in most parts of the world. In many areas they will not even be comprehensible.

(b) Since the effect of his own acts is limited, the saboteur may become discouraged unless he feels that he is a member of a large, though unseen, group of saboteurs operating against the enemy or the government of his own country and elsewhere. This can be conveyed indirectly: suggestions which he reads and hears can include observations that a particular technique has been successful in this or that district. Even if the technique is not applicable to his surroundings, another’s success will encourage him to attempt similar acts. It also can be conveyed directly: statements praising the effectiveness of simple sabotage can be contrived which will be published by white radio, freedom stations, and the subversive press. Estimates of the proportion of the population engaged in sabotage can be disseminated. Instances of successful sabotage already are being broadcast by white radio and freedom stations, and this should be continued and expanded where compatible with security.

(c) More important than (a) or (b) would be to create a situation in which the citizen-saboteur acquires a sense of responsibility and begins to educate others in simple sabotage.

Then the fun stuff. There are many little ideas about how to screw up the smooth operation of factories, but reading it first made me think of annoying high school pranks. One of the unfortunate side-effects of disseminating this information is you can expect to see more exploding plumbing in the toilets of your local public schools.

(1) Ruin warehouse stock by setting the automatic sprinkler system to work. You can do this by tapping the sprinkler heads sharply with a hammer or by holding a match under them.

(2) Forget to provide paper in toilets; put tightly rolled paper, hair, and other obstructions in the W. C. Saturate a sponge with a thick starch or sugar solution. Squeeze it tightly into a ball, wrap it with string, and dry. Remove the string when fully dried. The sponge will be in the form of a tight hard ball. Flush down a

W. C. or otherwise introduce into a sewer line. The sponge will gradually expand to its normal size and plug the sewage system.

(3) Put a coin beneath a bulb in a public building during the daytime, so that fuses will blow out when lights are turned on at night. The fuses themselves may be rendered ineffective by putting a coin behind them or loading them with heavy wire. Then a short-circuit may either start a fire, damage transformers, or blow out a central fuse which will interrupt distribution of electricity to a large area.

(4) Jam paper, bits of wood, hairpins, and anything else that will fit, into the locks of all unguarded entrances to public buildings.

Somebody needs to print out copies of this manual and hand them out at the protests at Tesla factories and sales rooms. We need to understand that Tesla and Elon Musk are the enemy. Likewise, Trump’s hotels need to be brought down. I notice that the manual has had 77,604 downlads in the last 30 days. Get yours before the government shuts it down!

I can’t really use it, though. I’m at one of the institutions targeted for destruction by the MAGA regime, and what I need is information on how to reinforce the spines of our administrators, and how to support a university under siege.