The Yankees thought that entrusting excellent Polish agents with a spy mission in the dying territory of the Third Reich was a bull's eye. They did not foresee one thing - after the betrayal in Yalta, our countrymen lost their enthusiasm for the further fight "for our freedom and yours" ...
At the request of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the Polish government in London selected forty men among the soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces to work for the Americans.
Mainly representatives of the lower strata of Polish society were selected. "Proletarian" origin and not very exquisite manners were to allow them to blend in imperceptibly with the crowd of foreign forced laborers, working in various sectors of the German economy and thus obtain valuable intelligence. 
All these people, the Americans stressed in the reports, were passionate to work and passionate about patriotism . Due to the fact that Polish intelligence enjoyed great respect with our allies, a lot was promised after the effects of the Poles' work.
Our troops, as part of Operation Eagle, as this project was called, were divided into sixteen teams. Each of them was given a code name derived from the name of a popular drink, such as "Pink Lady" or "Martini". The command over the whole was taken by the head of the "Polish" section in OSS, an American of Polish origin, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Dasher (Daszewicz).
The training of future agents in the secrets of espionage and conspiracy was successful and was nearing its end when an event occurred in February 1945 that had a significant impact on the finale of Operation Eagle. Poles found out about the arrangements of the Yalta conference and the faithlessness of the allies. It broke them. The future CIA director William Casey, who was in charge of the operation at the time, recalled:
You could see with the naked eye the decline in morale in these people. We sensed it as they drove away. Some people just struggled with their thoughts. They were different from when they were trained.
Hey Pole, bayonets!
Despite the terrible mood in the Polish ranks, the Americans decided to continue the operation. In order to revive heroism among our soldiers, energetic Lieutenant Colonel Dasher organized patriotic evenings for them, during which Polish national songs were sung. But when it came down to it, a few of our boys turned their fighting zeal in a completely different direction.
The news about the decisions of the Yalta Conference had a negative impact on the morale of Polish soldiers.
One of the espionage teams was to be trucked from Belgium to Maastricht, the Netherlands, and cross the front lines there. When the vehicle was passing through Brussels, a rather unexpected situation occurred. At one point, the OSS officer in the cab next to the driver in charge of the team, was surprised to find that the truck's cargo box was empty!
It turned out that thirsty for female companionship Poles were quietly jumping out of the car when it passed by the more attractive representative of the fair sex . Eventually, after a few days, they were all found and, badly damaged, transported through the front.
Unfortunately, not one of the sixteen bands in Germany has established a radio link with the London base and it is not known what was the reason for this. Some of them may have been exposed by the Germans. This was the fate of one of the agents of the "Martini" band, 41-year-old Leon Adrian.
Blown up
Adrian was parachuted on March 18, 1945 in the Augsburg area. The Pole was said to be a railway electrician escaping from Poznań from the Red Army. It was simple as he actually practiced this profession as a civilian.
After landing, he managed to sketch a large Luftwaffe airfield near Augsburg. Unfortunately Adrian was already dropped in during his first routine police check. His documents, although well forged, were somewhat outdated. Moreover, the policemen had a list of employees of the Poznań railway, on which Adrian obviously did not appear.
In Gestapo's paws
The Pole was taken to the Gestapo in Halle. On the way he managed to swallow a sheet of airport plans . Unfortunately, the police escorting him noticed that. In Halle, the Gestapo subjected him to a brutal interrogation for this reason. Adrian recalled:
First, they beat me in the stomach to make me return everything I had in my stomach (…). Then they gave me some solution to drink, but I declined and immediately got my rifle butt in my face and spat out three teeth. Later, they forcibly poured the solution into my mouth, but I still hadn't vomited. Then they used two cylindrical rubber rollers which they pressed against my body and rode them from the knee to the ribs.
Messerschmitt Me 261 V-2 airplane at the military airport in Lechfeld near Augsburg, around 1945
The agent finally vomited. The Gestapo men found scraps of paper in the vomit, but the Pole consciously explained to them that they were the remains of candy wrappers that he had received from a woman and he ate them whole because he could not unwrap them. I think they believed him, which did not prevent them from subjecting him to daily interrogations during the next few days, during which they mistreated him with rubber truncheons.
Revenge
Leon Adrian has been declared an Allied spy or deserter. In each of these cases, he faced the death penalty. At 2 p.m. on April 6, 1945, his sentence was to be pronounced. Four hours before that date, a miracle occurred. At around 10:00 the prison was bombed by Allied bombers . The blast of bombs ripped open the cell's doors and windows. Adrian, with the help of two inmates, managed to escape.
The Pole hid for almost ten days. The exhausted from hunger was helped by Polish and Russian forced laborers working on cleaning up the bombed synthetic gasoline factory. On April 15, the Americans entered the plant.
Leon Adrian managed to escape thanks to the bombing of the prison
Leon Adrian was hired by the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps as a special agent to track down Nazi security officials. During one of the actions, he recognized two of his torturers. He pulled the pistol out of the holster of the gendarme standing closest to the gendarme and put both of them dead with four shots at location. As a result of this act, he did not suffer any consequences on the part of the Americans.
Operation "Eagle" unexpectedly ended in a spectacular failure. American historian Patrick O'Donnell blames it for poor, hasty training and an unfortunate selection of potential agents.
Meanwhile, the truth may be more prosaic. Perhaps the Poles were fed up with the fight "for our freedom and yours" and in a situation where our country was handed over by its allies to a hostile power, they decided to take care of their own skin only.
Bibliography:
- David K.E. Bruce, OSS Against the Reich:The World War II Diares of Colonel David K.E. Bruce , Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 1991.
- William Casey, The secret war Against Hitler , Regency Washington 1986.
- Patrick O'Donnell, Covert operations, spies and saboteurs , Świat Książki Sp. z o.o. Warsaw 2016.
- Joseph E. Persico, Secret US Intelligence Operations in Nazi Germany , Bellona Publishing House Warsaw 2004.