The American School of Spies: The Archaeologists Who Fought the Nazis and Saved the Treasures of Ancient Greece

From the New York Times bestselling author, the incredible true story of the American archaeologists and classicists who went undercover as OSS spies during World War II to fight the Nazis and protect the world's most precious relics.

In 1942, as head of of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan deployed spies across Europe and around the world to try to thwart the Nazis. In Greece, Nazis weren’t just taking over territory; they were seizing and threatening to destroy some of the world’s most important and valuable historical monuments and artifacts. So, Donovan tapped a young Ivy League-trained archaeologist named Rodney Young to assemble and lead a team of spies to collect intel.

Young set about recruiting the most unlikely of spies—academics, classicists, epigraphers, and other specialists and scholars—who would come to be kown as “the Greek desk”. These men and women, young and old, went undercover and tried desperately to protect some of the world’s most significant treasures. They reburied artifacts. They created fakes to give over to the Nazis to appease their lust for these remarkable works. Ultimately, when it became clear the cat and mouse game on its own wasn’t going to save Athens, they brought in an army of Greek American soldiers to beat back the Nazi regime and save their homeland.

Story Locale:Greece, Turkey, United States