Hull wired Kennedy on July 11 that Donovan would be making the trip, but that he would make his own arrangements. It would not be necessary for Kennedy to set up briefings and meetings for him. That evening Donovan and Knox dined at the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington. After dinner they sat late, the waiters keeping a respectful distance despite the hour, while they talked about Donovan’s mission.
On July 12, Hull received Kennedy’s reply: “I will render any service I can to Colonel Donovan whom I know and like. Our staff I think is getting all the information that possibly can be gathered and to send a new man in here at this time, with all due respect to Colonel Knox, is to me the height of nonsense and a definite blow to good organization.”
Kennedy also telephoned Sumner Welles, under secretary of state, and told him he could not understand how Donovan could learn anything of value “except through our existing military and naval attachés.” He added that the mission would “simply result in causing confusion and misunderstanding on the part of the British.”
When Hull informed Roosevelt of Kennedy’s cable and phone call, Roosevelt remarked to Knox, “Somebody’s nose seems to be out of joint.”
Unbeknown to Kennedy, Naval Intelligence Chief Anderson and Army Intelligence Chief Gen. Sherman Miles had already sent messages through secret channels to Capt. Alan G. Kirk, naval attaché, and Brig. Gen. Raymond E. Lee, military attaché, in London requesting that they help Donovan in his mission. They were instructed not only to brief Donovan but to set up meetings with top British intelligence officers. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the naval attaché in Paris, was also directed to meet Donovan in London.
In the meantime, Donovan was calling upon concerned officials to obtain their list of queries to be answered. Edward Stettinius, Jr., who had taken over the post of adviser to the Council of National Defense, posed a tough group of questions:
1. What were found to be the main choke points in the British rearmament program?
2. To what extent was the shadow plant idea for obtaining reserve capacity found useful? What were the defects in this system that should be guarded against?
3. To what extent were machine tools found to be a choke point and what methods were utilized for overcoming it?
4. To what extent were mass-production operations in ammunition manufacture broken down into simple operations by semiskilled labor as compared to utilization of special high-production machine tools of a complicated character?
5. What methods were employed for overcoming the shortage in highly skilled workmen, leading men, designers, and other semitechnical classifications?
6. To what extent was the dilution of labor caused in munitions plants by the introduction of unskilled workers, male and female? What method was used in training this unskilled labor?
7. To what extent were educational or trial orders used as a preliminary to production orders?
8. Were the designs for armament frozen at the beginning of production or were frequent changes permitted in the hope of increasing output? To what extent had designs been previously proven to show their acceptability from a quantity production standpoint?
These were vital matters upon which America’s own industrial mobilization might come to depend. Other government officials handed Donovan equally difficult questions: “What was the best defense against air attack? Could the war be won by air power and the blockade alone? Which types of ordnance were proving effective, and which types ineffective? How could intelligence operations be improved? What were the principal problems the British had encountered in mobilizing economically for war? The British were expanding their armed forces with the greatest possible speed, and the United States would probably have to undertake a similar expansion; in what ways could we profit by England’s experience?”
Donovan’s lifetime of mental conditioning, his legal training, and his experience as an intelligence observer uniquely qualified him for this demanding mission. As he went about Washington gathering the dozens of essentials for his mission, he knew that he was undertaking one of the most momentous assignments ever given to an American citizen. When he next returned to see Roosevelt, he was also informed that he must at the same time be a confidential presidential ambassador at the highest level, assuring Churchill and his government of the great concern felt by the President of the United States and his administration. Upon the outcome of Donovan’s mission rested not only the fate of Great Britain but also that of his own country. Donovan left the White House in a very sober state of mind.
On Saturday, July 13, Navy Secretary Knox took his first trip in his official yacht, Sequoia. Bill Donovan and Jim Forrestal were his guests. They lunched on board and cruised down the Potomac until about six o’clock, talking over the situation in England and how Donovan might go about his task. Knox and Donovan returned to Donovan’s Georgetown home, got into dinner clothes, and went to dine with Lord Lothian at 8:00 P.M. Lothian promised to arrange for Donovan to see Churchill.
Various government officials handed Donovan letters to people in Great Britain who could help him with his mission. A letter from Secretary Hull advised all American diplomatic and consular officers to extend “such courtesies and assistance as you may be able to render, consistent with your official duties.” There were numerous letters to British business and government leaders, and Knox wrote to Lord Beaverbrook, Britain’s minister of aircraft production:
This letter will be presented to you by Colonel William J. Donovan, an intimate friend of mine at whose house, you will remember, we met some time ago. Colonel Donovan is abroad on an official mission for me, with the full approval of the President of the United States.
I shall deeply appreciate anything you can do to promote the purpose of Colonel Donovan’s mission, and I hope you will be as frank in talking to him as you might be in talking to me if I were able to go over myself.
On Sunday, July 14, a stocky, ruddy-faced man, athletic in bearing, boarded the Lisbon Clipper on the Baltimore waterfront. Alert reporters recognized William J. Donovan. “I’m on a personal business trip,” he announced. “I am on my way to London via Bermuda and Lisbon.”
Customs officials told reporters that Donovan was carrying a special passport that would allow him to fly on a British plane from Lisbon to beleaguered London. The Neutrality Act forbade American citizens from flying aboard the planes of the warring powers, but an exception had been made. When newsmen in Washington asked a State Department spokesman about Donovan’s trip, he confirmed that Donovan was indeed on a mission for the government but that he knew nothing more about it. Earlier in the day Donovan had been handed a message that attachés Kirk and Lee were awaiting him in London and were prepared to cooperate with him without informing Ambassador Kennedy as to the true nature of his trip.
In Lisbon Donovan boarded a British plane for the hazardous flight to England. He flew northward along the coast of German-occupied Europe, while in London British officials were preparing to welcome him. In New York, British Security Coordinator William Stephenson helped too. He sent a secret radio message from his office in Rockefeller Center to Sir Stewart Menzies, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, to let Donovan have access to secret material. On July 15, Stephenson cabled to Churchill, “Colonel William Donovan personally representing President left yesterday by clipper. . . . United States Embassy not Repeat not being informed.”
Another eyes-only cable from Stephenson, to King George VI, read, “Donovan by virtue of his very independence of thought and action inevitably has his critics but none will deny credit that is his due for reaching correct appraisal of international situation. The American government is debating two alternative courses of action. One would keep Britain in the war with supplies now desperately needed. Other is to give Britain up for lost. Donovan is President’s most trusted personal adviser despite political differences, and I urge you to bare your breast to him.”
Claridge’s on Brook Street in London’s Mayfair is the hotel where foreign royalty
and chiefs of state usually find lodging when visiting the British capital, and it was there that Donovan was accustomed to stay. At the time of his arrival in London on July 17, a German air attack was in full fury. Donovan was exhilarated, for even as he checked into the hotel, its lobby seemingly unchanged since his last visit, he could hear the crunch of bombs falling not far away. He noted with approval that the hotel manager, who welcomed him as a frequent guest, seemed totally unperturbed.
Within a few hours of his arrival, Donovan went to Buckingham Palace to see the king. George VI welcomed him cordially and held out a paper to him; it was a deciphered message from Adolf Hitler to his field commanders. The king gave Donovan the message, but he did not disclose that the cipher had been broken by Britain’s top-secret Ultra method, which Churchill was to call “my most secret source.” (Without knowing the exact cryptanalytic method used, Donovan himself concluded over the next two weeks that since the British seemed to know the most intimate details of the German high command’s plans, they had managed to break the most enigmatic of the German ciphers. He kept this knowledge to himself, because he realized the king had deliberately let him in on this secret.) The message was dated July 16.
“Since England, in spite of her hopeless military situation, shows no sign of being ready to come to an understanding,” said Hitler, “I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England to eliminate England as a base for the prosecution of the war against Germany.
“First, the English Air Force must be so reduced morally and physically that it is unable to deliver any significant attack against the German crossing.”
The king assured Donovan that the Germans would press the air attacks on Britain, and that Buckingham Palace was among the targets. As for the invasion itself, British Intelligence had concluded that it would be made on the east and south coasts. The Germans had the planes to drop up to 15,000 paratroopers on Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent in one day.
“Donovan’s plan of action was to see as many people as he could manage,” said Conyers Read, an OSS aide in later years. “He brought together all the American military and naval observers in London at a series of informal breakfasts and luncheons and plied them with questions. He talked also with many other Americans, bankers, businessmen, newspaper correspondents, engineers, scholars. But his main business was with the British.”
Captain Kirk and Brigadier General Lee proved particularly helpful. They briefed Donovan without informing Kennedy. Kirk told Donovan about the situation on the Continent and in Europe. In response to Donovan’s questions about the ability of the Royal Air Force to stand off the Germans, Kirk replied that common sense said the Germans would win, but the young RAF flyers had such amazing morale they probably would be the victors. Lieutenant Colonel Carl Spaatz, an assistant military attaché at the embassy, who later was to command the air force, also informed Donovan that he was confident the Germans could not defeat the RAF. Donovan, knowing from the king that Hitler did not think he could successfully invade Britain until the RAF was destroyed, felt a first small hope that England might yet survive. Lee, who had spent a frustrating six months as military attaché at an embassy headed by an ambassador entirely repugnant to him, reported in his journal of July 20, “ ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan came in to make his presence known. I like him. My theory is that I welcome anyone who gets the intelligence and sends it home.”
“Breakfasted with Donovan at Claridge’s,” Lee wrote on July 23. “He wanted to tell me what he is trying to do. He is really over here to gain firsthand knowledge of how the Conscription Law is working and of what sort of legislation is required successfully to operate a counterespionage organization. He expects to be heard by Congress on these two things. He feels that we will have conscription soon and as he phrases it, ‘Our attitude toward it will be a test of our soul.’ ”
Donovan, true to his intelligence calling, told Lee only what he preferred him to know. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, naval attaché in Paris, came to London at Kirk’s request with information for Donovan on long-range German aims for the French people and how the fifth column had been utilized to prepare the way for the Nazi panzers. American and British intelligence sources briefed him on the German exploitation of the fifth column in Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France.
Admiral John H. Godfrey, the British director of naval intelligence, was given a more accurate idea of Donovan’s purposes. “The object of Bill Donovan’s mission was to discover if we were in earnest about the war,” he wrote in his memoirs, “and if we were worth supporting, to enquire into our methods in adopting conscription, the difficulties we experienced, and how they were overcome, our anti-fifth columnist methods and to establish intimate collaboration with the British Navy both in the spheres of technical development and intelligence.”
On another occasion, the admiral added: “I was one of the first people to meet him, and, without the help of the American Ambassador, he quickly established contacts with important people in this country. Donovan sensed the general air of defeatism at the Embassy and felt it to be more marked among the Naval than among the Army representatives. Undeceived by appearances he quickly became aware of the spiritual qualities of the British race—the imponderables that make for victory but had evaded Mr. Ambassador Kennedy, for whom he seemed to have very little use.”
Soon after Donovan’s arrival in London, Edgar Ansel Mowrer reached England. Considered one of the top foreign correspondents of the time, Mowrer had been based in Paris for the Chicago Daily News, and he had seen the Nazi blitzkrieg firsthand. He had retreated with the French Army to Bordeaux.
“My wife and I had been compelled to flee from Bordeaux by no less a person than Tony Biddle, our Ambassador, who told me he would not want to have me hiding under his bed,” Mowrer later told Allen Dulles.
One Dr. Joseph Paul Goebbels had said over the radio that he would give a division to lay hands on those two American SOBs, Mowrer and Knickerbocker. Hence I got out of Bordeaux and made my way with I don’t know how many hundred thousands of other refugees to Lisbon.
After a few days in Lisbon, quite unexpectedly I got a long message from Colonel Knox telling me that instead of returning to the United States, which had been my intention, I was to fly to London and put myself at the disposal of Colonel Donovan. This seemed rather cryptic, but I realized we were at war and not necessarily fully informed; so in due time, my wife and I fought our way on to a plane (and several other thousand tried to get on the same plane) and got to London, and I went to Colonel Donovan’s hotel.
Mowrer found Donovan easy to get along with.
“Edgar,” said Donovan, “Frank Knox told me that you would help me in any way you can.”
“Sure, what do we do?”
“Well,” said Donovan, “frankly, President Roosevelt is disturbed by the dispatches which he has received from London, and he wants to know whether or not the British are going to be able to hold out or are going to try to hold out against a German invasion.
“Now, as a news correspondent, you can ask any sort of impertinent questions which as a businessman. . . . ” Donovan paused and then went on. “Furthermore, Knox tells me you have very close personal relations with the Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper, husband of Diana Manners.”
“That is correct, we are fellow conspirators against Hitler,” said Mowrer. He explained to Donovan that “all fellow conspirators against Hitler are locked in a freemasonry. We almost know each other by this kind of business.”
“So,” concluded Donovan, “now let’s scatter out, and find out. You see the people you see, and I’ll see the people I see, and we’ll meet every three or four days and pool what we have.”
Thanks to Bill Stephenson, Donovan had no difficulty in talking to Stewart Menzies, known simply as C in British intelligence circles. Menzies briefed Donovan on how the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) worked with the British military. He kept in frequent touch with Donovan and made cer
tain that other high officials in British Intelligence cooperated with him. Donovan was permitted to see the commandos in training, and he met with Colin Gubbins, who was readying guerrilla forces, not only to oppose the Germans in case they landed in Britain, but to carry the war back to the Continent. One day Donovan called on Gen. Frederick Beaumont-Nesbitt, the head of military intelligence. Beaumont-Nesbitt explained how the changes in German military equipment and tactics had forced a radical alteration in Britain’s intelligence requirements. Economic warfare was more important than in any other war in history, but it had to be directed at specific targets, for example, the denial to the Axis of a certain type of carburetor employed in a tank’s engine. Donovan went to see Sir Desmond Morton, director of the Industrial Intelligence Centre, who explored in more detail the relationship between the armies in the field and economic warfare.
Donovan was shown everything there was to see about British Secret Intelligence as well as Special Operations (SO), which, appropriately enough, had its headquarters on Baker Street in London, a street made famous by Sherlock Holmes. The Chief of the Special Operations Executive, Air Commodore Sir Frank Nelson, made certain that Donovan was welcomed at SO stations throughout Britain.
“Probably from the point of view of COI-OSS [U.S. central intelligence], the most important consequence of this visit to England was the development of close personal ties between Donovan and the most influential figures in British public life,” said Conyers Read years after the war. “It marks the beginning of close cooperation with the British which was to characterize the whole history of COI-OSS. When Donovan later undertook to organize his secret intelligence . . . and his subversive operations . . . he turned frankly to British models.”
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