Simple Sabotage Field Manual

This book is included in the Self Reliance Self Defense section.

Preface
Office of Strategic Services
Washington, D. C.
17 January 1944
This Simple Sabotage Field Manual — Strategic Services (Provisional) — is published for the information and 
guidance of all concerned and will be used as the basic doctrine for Strategic Services training for this subject.

The contents of this Manual should be carefully controlled and should not be allowed to come into unauthorized 
hands. The instructions may be placed in separate pamphlets or leaflets according to categories of operations but 
should be distributed with care and not broadly. They should be used as a basis of radio broadcasts only for local 
and special cases and as directed by the theater commander.

AR 380-5, pertaining to handling of secret documents, will be complied with in the handling of this Manual.
William J. Donovan
Director

Introduction
	a. The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to 
	present suggestions for inciting and executing it. 
	
	b. Sabotage varies from highly technical coup de main acts that require detailed planning and the use of
	specially-trained operatives, to innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur 
	can perform. This paper is primarily concerned with the latter type. Simple sabotage does not require 
	specially prepared tools or equipment; it is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act 
	individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group; and it is carried out 
	in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.

	c. Where destruction is involved, the weapons of the citizen-saboteur are salt, nails, candles, pebbles, 
	thread, or any other materials he might normally be expected to possess as a householder or as a 
	worker in his particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his own usual kit of 
	tools and supplies. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and 
	inconspicuous access in everyday life.

	d. A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical 
	damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, 
	to adopt a noncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. Making a faulty decision may be 
	simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another. A non-cooperative attitude may involve 
	nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one's fellow workers, engaging in bickerings, 
	or displaying surliness and stupidity.

	e. This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the "human element," is frequently responsible for 
	accidents, delays, and general obstruction even under normal conditions. The potential saboteur should
	discover what types of faulty decisions and poor operation are normally found in this kind of work and 
	should then devise his sabotage so as to enlarge that "margin for error."

Contents

PREFACE
Chapter I. INTRODUCTION
Chapter II. POSSIBLE EFFECTS
Chapter III. MOTIVATING THE SABOTEUR
Chapter IV. TOOLS, TARGETS, AND TIMING
Chapter V. SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS FOR SIMPLE SABOTAGE

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