Who were the famous spies in World War II?

Morris "Moe" Berg: Baseball player undercover agent

Berg, once referred to as "the smartest man in baseball", was born in New York to Ukrainian immigrants. He played as a small forward at Princeton University and graduated in modern languages in 1923. He started his career with the Brooklyn Robins (which became the Brooklyn Dodgers), then played for the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators, and Boston Red Sox, and retired in 1939 with a batting average of 243. A former professional baseball player who attended the Sorbonne and earned a law degree from Columbia University, Berg is said to be fluent in over a dozen languages.

Shortly after the United States entered the war, Berg began working for the Office of Inter-American Relations, a government agency established in early 1942 to counter enemy propaganda in Latin America. He joined the OSS (Strategic Services Office) in 1943 and was responsible for learning about the Nazis' atomic bombing activities in Europe. In December 1944, Berg was sent to Switzerland to assassinate the famous German scientist Werner Heisenberg, whom American officials believed had coordinated the construction of a bomb for Adolf Hitler. Although Berg considered shooting Heisenberg, he gave up because he believed the Nazis were not close to finishing the nuclear bomb. A mysterious recluse, Berg worked for the CIA in the early 1950s after the war, but later couldn't find a regular job and spent the rest of his life staying with friends and relatives.

Graham Greene: novelist working for MI6 in the UK

British-born Greene, the author of the adventure novels "Brighton Rock" and "The Power and the Glory", joined the British secret intelligence agency MI6 in 1941. Serving in Freetown, Sierra Leone for nearly a year, Greene's duties included tracking Vichy troops in neighboring French Guinea and inspecting ships carrying diamonds and paperwork from Africa to Germany. ("The Heart of the Matter", Greene's 1948 bestseller, was inspired by his time in West Africa). The author returned to London in 1943 and joined MI6 under the command of senior British espionage chief Harold "Kim" Philby, who defected to Moscow in 1963 and turned out to be a long-term Soviet mole. After that, Greene began to publicly defend his friend and even visited his Soviet friend. Greene has written more than twenty-five books throughout his career, including suspenseful spy novels such as "The Quiet American," "Our Man in Havana," and "The Human Factor."

Josephine Baker: The artist who carries information for the French Resistance

Born as Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906, Josephine Baker had a difficult childhood and had her first marriage as a young girl. She started her career as a dancer and continued in vaudeville companies and on Broadway. She moved to Paris in 1925 and became a big star in the city's cabarets. Also known by the nicknames Black Venus and Venus Baker, Baker became a big star in Europe for her singing and acting, and an icon of the Roaring Twenties and Jazz Ages of the 1920s.

Baker served as an operative for the French Resistance during World War II out of gratitude for her country, which despised the bigotry of the Nazis and brought her fame for the first time. As a professional singer, she was able to roam freely in Europe without arousing suspicion and often attended embassy parties to gather political and military information that could be useful to the Resistance. In her castle in the south of France, she hid Jewish refugees and weapons for the cause. Honored by the French government for her efforts during the war, Baker later stayed in France and had a family of 12 adopted children, whom she called the "Rainbow Tribe," despite her participation in the American civil rights movement.

Roald Dahl: author of children's books who spied on the US

In the years before Roald Dahl was recognized as the author of children's classics such as "Charlie's Chocolate Factory" and "The Giant Peach," he worked as a spy for the British government in Washington, DC. Born in Wales, Dahl enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1939 and trained to become a fighter pilot. After completing many combat missions, his military flight career was short-lived due to injuries sustained during a landing in the North African desert. Dahl joined the British Security Coordination in 1942 after being appointed assistant air attaché at the British Embassy (BSC) in Washington. Among the group's members was future James Bond writer Ian Fleming, and they were tasked with secretly conducting propaganda and other covert activities to persuade a reluctant United States to join the war against Germany.

Even after Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war, BSC agents continued to support British interests in the US and work to weaken the remaining isolationist attitudes in American politics and society. Tall, handsome Dahl was an undercover spy who learned about the American political scene by befriending Washington politicians, journalists, business bosses, socialites, and even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Julia Child: TV chief dealing with highly classified documents

Born Julia McWilliams in California, Child did her first intelligence work in Los Angeles in the spring of 1942 as a civilian volunteer with the Aircraft Warning Service, which monitors ships off the California coast to deter enemy attacks. She immediately attempted to join the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) but was turned down due to her height (1.80). She wanted to do something to help with the war effort and was fascinated by intelligence work, so she became William Donovan's research assistant at OSS headquarters in Washington, D.C. The following year she transferred to the Emergency Marine Rescue Equipment Division, where she helped develop a chemical shark repellent for use by downed pilots in remote areas.

Child served as OSS registry chief in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and China from 1944 to 1945 and was tasked with managing large amounts of confidential paperwork. OSS viewed Child as a top civilian intelligence officer, although she wasn't actually spying on anyone. Julia met her future husband Paul Child, an OSS officer, in Ceylon, and the two married in 1946. It all started in 1948 when Paul Child accepted a position at the US Information Agency in Paris and Julia decided to follow her husband there to learn French culinary art at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu. Her career began with the release of her book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in 1961.

Arthur Goldberg: Intelligence agent turned Supreme Court judge

Future Supreme Court justice Goldberg served in the OSS during the war and established an intelligence network involving anti-Nazi European organizations. The son of a Russian immigrant peddler, Goldberg was born in Chicago, and after graduating from Northwestern University with a law degree, he took a break from World War II. He served in World War II. He joined the OSS and set up a spy network operating behind enemy lines in Europe. Shortly after the war ended in 1945, President Harry Truman ordered the OSS to be abolished.

Shortly after, in 1961, Goldberg was appointed U.S. Secretary of Labor by President John F. Kennedy and continued to be a prominent labor advocate. President Kennedy nominated Goldberg to the Supreme Court the following year, but President Johnson persuaded him to resign in 1965 so that he could become the United States Ambassador to the UN. Goldberg, one of the few judges to leave the court for a reason other than retirement, wanted to facilitate peace negotiations in the Vietnam War. Leaving his post at the UN in 1968, Goldberg returned to his profession and human rights advocacy after unsuccessfully running for governor of New York in 1970.