Today, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual stands as a concise record of how the OSS understood organizational vulnerability and the strategic value of disruption. It demonstrates that effective sabotage does not always require Hollywood-style explosions or highly-specialized and expertly-trained operatives; it can be carried out through small, successive acts that degrade efficiency, slow decision‑making, and strain administrative systems.

Read in this context, the manual is not a curiosity but a clear articulation of how the OSS sought to weaken enemy capacity through methods accessible to anyone willing to participate. Its lessons remain a study in how complex organizations fail — and how they can be made to fail through targeted, systemic obstruction and incremental impairment.

And yet, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is not buried in the archives of military history, collecting dust on some long forgotten shelf. After the war, its guidance circulated in unofficial translations produced by resistance groups, appeared in Cold War counter‑administrative doctrine, and resurfaced decades later when business analysts shockingly noted its uncanny resemblance to modern workplace dysfunction.

Which raises an unavoidable question: how much of this manual do you recognize in your own professional life? When you sit through a meeting that drifts without purpose, when a simple task becomes mired in procedural delay, when communication chains grow needlessly complex, or when decisions stall under the weight of bureaucratic oversight — are you witnessing ordinary inefficiency, or echoes of a sabotage stratagem once taught to civilians resisting an enemy occupation?

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual may have been a product of wartime necessity, but its techniques have slipped into everyday organizational behavior, surfacing in offices, institutions, and corporate cultures the world over, and most of them have never even heard of the OSS (and would probably assume you’re speaking of some computer operating system at the mere mention of its acronym). The relevance of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual endures not because we are surrounded by saboteurs, but because the vulnerabilities it identified remain embedded in the systems we inhabit, in the processes we engage daily.

Which leaves one final consideration: in systems built on routines, procedures, and interlocking responsibilities, where do you stand? When you postpone a decision because [insert arbitrary requirement here], when you forward an email instead of answering it, when you follow a rule to the letter knowing it will delay everything — are these moments of ordinary workplace friction, or are they forms of Simple Sabotage by another name?

The real question, then, is not whether sabotage exists in your workplace, but whether you have ever participated in it, knowingly or not.

Finally, a quick note on the text itself: our only additions consist of the thirty-odd footnotes we’ve appended throughout the manual for clarity, context, and commentary where necessary.

With that: end of briefing, proceed as directed—

Heathenry: A Briefing on the Manual
1. Introduction
2. Possible Effects
3. Motivating the Saboteur
4. Tools, Targets, and Timing
5. Specific Suggestions for Simple Sabotage

Simple Sabotage Field Manual

Heathen Short #15
Published: January 17, 2026
Format: Paperback
Retail: $6.95
ISBN-13: 9798900750156
Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.125 inches
Weight: 2.5 oz
Cover: Matte Finish
Interior: Black & White on Cream Paper
Pages: 48 (+2 POD)
Language: English
Annotations: 33 Footnotes
Illustrations: 4

• Title Page
• Heathenry Flame
• Honorary Heathen Headshot: Office of Strategic Services
• End Title

Categories:

• History / Wars & Conflicts / World War II
• History / Military / Intelligence & Espionage
• Political Science / Propaganda