Hello, welcome to another episode of the World War II podcast. I'm Angus Wallace.

The old adage is information is power and in this episode we're going to be looking at US operations

to initially obtain information that was in the public domain.

Post-D-Day that mission changed to both seizing books, documents and papers as the Allies advanced. In Europe, after the close of

hostilities in May 1945, the operation morphed once more to collecting, seizing and sorting books.

The men tasked with this job were an unlikely band of librarians, archivists and scholars.

It's a particularly less well-known corner of the war that historian Kathy Paeis throws the spotlight on in her book,

information hunters when librarians, soldiers and spies banded together

in World War II Europe.

Kathy is the Roy F and Jeanette P Nichols professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Her research has examined the history of working women, working class and interracial

sexuality, leisure, style and popular culture, the beauty industry in the US and abroad, and

libraries, information and American Cultural Policy during World War II.

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