their insights with techniques from modern psychology. War service Langer was an enlisted man in the United States Army Chemical Service in World War I, and saw combat in a chemical weapons unit on the Western Front in France. He described the experience in a book he wrote with another man in his company. During World War II, Langer served in the new Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as deputy chief and later chief of the Research and Analysis Branch until the end of the war. In correspondence he was identified as OSS 117, a codename which entered French popular culture in 1949 for an unrelated iconic fictional character of books and film. He was special assistant for intelligence analysis to U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. In 1950 Langer organized the office of National Estimates in the newly established Central Intelligence Agency. After war After the war, Langer returned to academia, but from 1961 to 1977 he served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Honors William Langer was awarded the Medal for Merit by President Truman in July 1946 in recognition of his wartime service. He was also awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1954. Postwar, both Harvard and Yale University awarded Langer LL.D. degrees as did the University of Hamburg in 1955. Among his many involvements, Langer served as president of the American Historical Association for 1957. Langer received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1965. Selected bibliography revised as: Gas and Flame in World War I (1965) online An Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged. © 1972, 1968, 1952, 1948, & 1940. 1948 edition online The Franco-Russian Alliance 1890–1894 (1929) online European Alliances and Alignments 1871–1890 (1931) (second edition with supplementary bibliographies, Vintage, 1950). online The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890–1902 (1935) (two volumes) online review; online copy Our Vichy Gamble (1947) The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–1940 (1952) with S. Everett Gleason online The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (1953) with S. Everett Gleason Conyers Read, 1881–1959: Scholar, Teacher, Public Servant (M. and V. Dean, 1963) Political and Social Upheaval, 1832–1852 (1969) online In and out of the ivory tower (1977), autobiography online References Sources In and Out of the Ivory Tower: The Autobiography of William L. Langer (Neele Watson Academic Publications, 1977) 1896 births 1977 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers American Unitarians United States Army personnel