Since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, tens of thousands of people have downloaded the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual”, a guide written by a US intelligence agent in 1944 to help the allied resistance during World War II. Its newfound popularity comes amid an emerging grassroots opposition to waves of executive orders from the new president.
The first time Donald Trump was elected US president in 2017, George Orwell’s dystopian thriller “1984” made a surprise return to the top of bestseller lists as readers discovered a new appetite for the novel that examines how a totalitarian government’s use of “double speak” fatally erodes the concept of truth.
Eight years later, Trump’s return to the White House has ignited interest in another decades-old publication, this time from the non-fiction aisle.
The “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” was produced in 1944 by the US Office of Strategic Service (OSS) – predecessor to the CIA – and on February 1 became the most popular book on Project Gutenberg, the world’s biggest platform for downloading open-source free and public domain ebooks.
American spies used the manual when they were on the ground in Europe towards the end of World War II.
According to the manual, “simple” sabotage can be executed by normal citizens using everyday objects, and “carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal”.
It details how to spot opportunities for small-scale sabotage in a variety of everyday situations, especially in the workplace, often through making clumsy “mistakes” or sewing discord among other employees.
In short, the guide is “good for training you to become incompetent at work”, Willmetts says.
For instance, railway workers were advised to print multiple tickets for the same seat on trains used by German soldiers, and secretaries to make callers wait for long periods or even to “forget” to connect important calls. Saboteurs working in factories that were important for the German war effort were even encouraged to let whole rolls of toilet paper fall into the toilet bowl to block facilities.
It encouraged managers to “lower morale” and production by promoting inefficient workers, complaining about those who did good work and finding excuses to waste time.
“Make ‘speeches’. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate ‘patriotic’ comments,” it reads.
Meanwhile, lower-level employees were encouraged to scrupulously apply company rules to slow down the workflow as much as possible.
“Insist on doing everything through ‘channels’. Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions,” the guide advises.
Broadly speaking, the manual says citizen-saboteurs should seek out opportunities “to make faulty decisions, to adopt a non-cooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit”, subtly ramping up poor-workplace behaviour that is “frequently responsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction even under normal conditions”.
The overall objective was to introduce so many small obstructions in individual workplaces that it slowed the wider economy in occupied territory.
“There are historical examples of success using this method,” says Robert Dover, professor of Intelligence and International Security at the UK’s University of Hull. Towards the end of World War II “in some production factories they managed to build unreliable engines that lasted less long than the usual ones,” he adds.
Opposition to Trump?
The idea that a large number of small gestures can combine to create collective force is also known as “the war of the flea”, first conceptualised by former Chinese Leader Chairman Mao. “There is an analogy with fleas that constantly keep coming back to a dog to create massive irritation,” Dover says.
It was perhaps an unusual technique for US intelligence forces to champion during World War II. But “the OSS has a unique history with all these interesting creative people who came up with a lot of original ideas,” Willmetts says. Donovan also authored a manual for spies detailing how to come up with a temporary disguise.
It is not at all surprising that the idea of simple sabotage is finding a new audience in 2025, says Willmetts.
