Beneath the British treasury chambers in Whitehall, the British government had in 1936 converted a labyrinth of centuries-old tunnels and dungeons into an underground command post. Although the cabinet war room itself was beneath the treasury, passages extended to Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, the Home Office, even to Waterloo Station. Here Churchill held his late-night cabinet meetings dubbed “Midnight Follies,” and here it was that Churchill remarked upon entering the room for the first time as prime minister, “If the invasion comes, that’s where I’ll sit. I’ll sit there until the Germans are driven back or they carry me out—dead.”
Donovan paid a visit to Churchill in his underground headquarters. He descended a spiral staircase into the war room where Churchill, wearing his boiler suit, talked to him candidly of Britain’s future. The prime minister assured Donovan of his government’s complete cooperation on his mission. Donovan and Churchill toted their own trays of food from the underground mess and dined together.
“In these dungeons under Whitehall, you step into a Shakespearean play,” Donovan later told William Stephenson, “with stage directions like ‘Army Heard in Distance, Sound of Trumpets!’ . . . You know there isn’t an army, but it’s hard to be sure, down there in the theatre.”
Donovan went about England visiting RAF bases and inspecting shore defenses hastily erected against the expected invasion. He learned how the British intended to turn their innocent-looking sandy beaches into a hell of flaming oil to engulf German landing craft. This was just as well, for they had little else with which to fight off an assault. Most of their equipment had been left behind at Dunkirk. “The defenders share a total of 786 field guns, 167 antitank guns, and 259 inadequate tanks, enough for two divisions against the forty German divisions waiting across the Channel,” Donovan wrote to Bill Stephenson.
On the Norfolk coast Donovan fell in with 60-year-old Col. Eric Bailey, who in his younger years had been a British agent in Central Asia and minister plenipotentiary to the king of Nepal. Bailey led the guerrilla force that the British were training to defend every coastal village. The villagers had dug an observation trench overlooking the beach. As Donovan watched, Bailey wrote out a note and stuffed it into a tennis ball. He dropped the tennis ball into a pipe that ran to his command post, situated beneath the village church. Donovan was delighted, and Bailey became his fast friend. Later, as a King’s Messenger, Bailey several times carried top-secret dispatches across the Atlantic in Donovan’s plane.
“He sighed for the simpler days,” Donovan observed. “Rolling tennis balls down drainpipes, waiting to stick a German with a pitchfork, struck him as healthier than being stuffed into the gun turret of a bomber to be ferried back and forth.”
Donovan observed the formidable Spitfires in combat and concluded that since British planes and pilots were both superior to the German attackers, it was most unlikely that the Luftwaffe, despite its overwhelming strength, could sweep the RAF from the skies. The large number and wide dispersal of British airfields also made it hard for the Germans to wipe out the RAF on the ground. On a previous visit to Britain, Donovan had heard of work on a secret death ray. Now he discovered that the so-called death ray was actually radar. Donovan met Sir Robert Watson-Watt, radar’s inventor, and he toured coastal radar stations that tracked approaching German air flotillas. Knowing when and where the enemy would strike made it possible to save both British aircraft and gasoline. One by one, Donovan learned the answers to the lists of questions given to him by key government officials in Washington.
On one day Donovan talked to author George Orwell about how British social institutions were standing up under the strain of war. On another he went down to the Thames bank to watch schoolboys experimenting with a new type of floating mine, designed by the distinguished professor J. B. S. Haldane to blow up German landing craft. The explosives, said Haldane, were “detonated when the action of the water dissolves the retaining pin—a cough drop.”
Donovan visited defense plants and military training centers, and he learned what it was like inside a shelter during an air raid. Once as he checked into a provincial hotel, German planes came roaring over the city. The raid caught Donovan in a hotel corridor marching along behind the 11-year-old bellboy, who was pulled lopsided by his bag. The boy struggled ahead despite the bombardment. A terrific blast nearby shook plaster and dust down into the hall. The boy glanced at Donovan and stood erect despite the weight of the bag. “Those Huns can’t even drop a bomb straight,” he said, and there was such cool assurance in his tone that Donovan for the moment forgot the acres of smashed buildings that he had seen in English cities.
“Here, let me carry that bag, son,” he said to the boy.
“No, sir!” the lad replied. “I started carrying this bag, and I’ll finish carrying it. I’ll get stronger as I go, and I’ll never quit.”
When the raid was over, Donovan sat in his hotel room and thought about his trip. He couldn’t get a British youngster to accept help in carrying a heavy bag, but he knew that America would not be turned down if it offered help to the badly hurt British people. What kind of help was needed most? To Donovan it now appeared that the gravest danger came not from air attacks or the threatened invasion but from the mounting submarine warfare that was choking off vital supplies. If America could transfer its overage destroyers to the British Navy, this would probably be the most valuable aid the New World could give to the Old.
Bill Donovan detested Joe Kennedy for his mean spirit and crabbed nature. The more he learned in Britain, the more his contempt for the ambassador’s lack of objectivity and integrity mounted. As for Kennedy, he was angry that his first direct word of Donovan’s presence in London came from Edgar Ansel Mowrer. When Kennedy understood that Mowrer was working for Donovan, he snarled, “We don’t need a newspaperman to make this investigation for the government, and it is most embarrassing to me. I think he should be recalled off the complete assignment.”
Kennedy proved ineffective in opposing Donovan. He soon found that although he may have been close to Chamberlain and the Cliveden set of British appeasers, Churchill had no time for him at all. Finally early in August Donovan called on Kennedy. “American policy is to help in every way we can,” he bluntly informed the ambassador, “and it doesn’t help these people any to keep telling them that they haven’t got a chance.” Kennedy kept his temper because he understood now that Franklin Roosevelt stood behind Donovan, and he feared that one of Donovan’s recommendations upon returning to Washington would be that he be fired.
As Donovan went about his investigations, Mowrer was making his own. At first he stayed at the Hyde Park Hotel on Knightsbridge Road, but then he moved in, as he said, “believe it or not, with Nancy Astor who was trying to compensate for the Cliveden set by cooperating with a notorious antagonist of the Führer.”
“I scattered out and saw what I could,” he said later. “I had lunch with Winston Churchill, and I went out and inspected tanks. My wife’s family is English so through her we saw a great many English people.”
From time to time, Mowrer told Allen Dulles, he and Donovan met at Claridge’s to exchange information and ideas.
We both acted independently, covered as much ground as we could, and pooled our information and conclusions. I was delighted to see that we had reached the same understanding.
At the end of the thing, why Donovan and I found the contrary of the reports that had been coming from the American Embassy in London. I understand we were agreed that the English under Churchill were going to fight and if they were beaten by any chance they would then try to carry on the fight from Canada or such places having sent the fleet ahead of them. This Churchill told me specifically, and one had to believe Churchill when he said something!
“Worked till six-thirty on a list of things which Donovan promises to take up with Roosevelt and Knox and Stimson,” Military Attaché Raymond Lee wrote in his journal on August 2.
His time here is getting short as
the British are starting a plane to New York via Foynes and Newfoundland tomorrow and offered him a seat. We have never really checked together, as I told him I would rather he made his own conclusions while here and then we could compare notes. So all of us went to Claridge’s and had breakfast with him this morning, and talked from 8:15 till 10:30. A lot of ground was covered in free and frank discussion; everyone had a chance to advance his conclusions and recommendations and to ask questions. At the end Donovan said that he had learned so much and was so anxious not to forget many of the matters we had discussed, that he would greatly like to take a list of them along, together with references to the cables and dispatches in which these topics had been very fully treated. His object is to have these reports of ours brought out for consideration by the decision-makers in Washington. What greatly pleased me was that our feeling in the office is pretty uniform about things and what Donovan has found by talking to an extraordinary list of well-posted people, from King and Churchill down, agrees with our conclusions and is not at all defeatist. He gives odds of 60–40 that the British will beat off the German attack.
Donovan spent his last evening in England at Braddocks, the home of Rear Adm. John Godfrey, at Seven Oaks in Kent, within easy driving distance of London. The two intelligence masters sat up until 2:00 A.M. talking as much about America’s need for a modern intelligence service as they did about Britain’s desperate plight.
“He then told me what he intended to report to the President,” said Godfrey after the war.
One of his first tasks would be to urge the appointment of a “sensible Ambassador,” and of someone who could travel backwards and forwards (“a sensible Colonel House”) and keep the feelings of each country fresh in the minds of the other country’s rulers. The need was for someone who could readily detect all the various ways by which the two countries could concede to each other and co-operate, whilst insisting and explaining to each other the prickly matters, where national sovereignty and too peremptory demand for concessions should be avoided. His answers to the questions “were we in earnest about the war and were we worth supporting” were, “definitely, yes,” and in this respect one must regard his influence as decisive, as Kennedy and others had been feeding the President very different information. Donovan also took back with him definite proposals regarding the following matters, concerning all of which he considered that the USA should help us in every way: a. bomb sights, b. flying boats, c. fifty destroyers, d. squadrons of Flying Fortresses with if possible pilots and certainly mechanics and technical maintenance staff, e. twenty-five [pounder] and 105 mm guns, f. motor boats—released from US Naval service, g. all surplus material including Lee Enfield rifles, h. use of American airfields for training Canadian, Australian, and British pilots.
In addition, he urged full intelligence collaboration and the placing at our disposal of reports by US Consular officers, especially in French ports, direct liaison between myself and the United States DNI [Director of Naval Intelligence], and the establishment of safe and direct methods of communication. In the sphere of technique and material, Donovan said he would be able to smooth out difficulties, as he had among his clients and his clients’ relatives, such a large number of industrialists of all sorts, many of whom were carrying out contracts for the British Government.
It was obvious that we had a good friend in Donovan and one who had the ear of the President and knew how to work with the British.
In the morning Godfrey reported to Vice Adm. Tom Phillips on his evening with Donovan, who forwarded his account to First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound, who handed it to Churchill with the notation, “This is very satisfactory.”
That afternoon Donovan went to Poole, on the English Channel near Southampton, to board the flying boat Clare for the long flight to America. The flight was to be the first British transatlantic passenger service in aviation history. In order to make the long hop, the plane was fitted with extra fuel tanks. The only other passengers, British aircraft manufacturer Charles R. Fairey and Geoffrey Cunliffe of the British Air Ministry, were already aboard the four-engined Caledonian flying boat, which had been painted with green and blue patches to camouflage it from German Messerschmidts. Just before he went aboard, Donovan was handed a note from Brendan Bracken, minister of information.
There may be no luxurious Claridge’s to house you during your next visit to London. When you return you will see a poorer England, but you will either look upon the battered relics of a race which never surrendered, or a people which, against great odds and having paid a heavy penalty for neglecting their defense, triumphed over the most bestial tyranny the world has ever known.
These issues will be settled before I have the happiness of meeting you again. Perhaps we shall never meet. But in parting from you I ask leave to thank you for all you are trying to do for this little island of ours.
Captain J. C. Kelly-Rogers taxied out into the Channel to commence his takeoff. Once the Clare was airborne, a squadron of Spitfires zoomed up to escort it as far as Ireland, where it landed on the Shannon River at Foynes. Aboard the plane Donovan talked to the other passengers and, among other books, reread a life of Admiral Nelson, making mental notes about his strategy in the Mediterranean, which in the light of the Italian declaration of war seemed pertinent indeed.
Over the Atlantic the pilot turned the radio off, and the plane observed radio security until the following morning when it was approaching Newfoundland. At 10:00 A.M. on August 4 the Clare landed at Botwood and then flew another six hours to Boucherville Island near Montreal, where it set down on the St. Lawrence. The other passengers left the plane at Montreal, and Donovan was the only passenger when the flying boat circled La Guardia Field twice in the dying sunlight before gliding in for a landing on the seaplane basin. When he stepped out of the plane onto the pier, Donovan was met by a handful of reporters from the New York newspapers and two FBI agents.
“They’re friends of mine,” Donovan assured the reporters, who asked him if he were in trouble with the FBI for traveling on the plane of a belligerent power in violation of the Neutrality Act. “I have a special passport.”
The reporters wanted to know what he had been doing in England. Donovan said that he had talked with Hugh Gibson, London representative of the Paderewski Fund for Polish Relief, of which he was the chairman. Had he discussed with London officials the idea of delivering overage U.S. destroyers to Great Britain? He denied this, but he admitted that he had been on a mission for Colonel Knox.
“Was the mission a success?”
“Colonel Knox will have to decide if my mission was successful.”
Donovan left immediately for Washington.
19
Back Door to the White House
COLONEL KNOX had a chance to decide on the success of Donovan’s mission the very next morning, when Donovan made an oral report. Edgar Ansel Mowrer had flown back from London a few days earlier than Donovan, and that evening both Mowrer and Donovan were Knox’s dinner guests. Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson, Gen. Sherman Miles, James Forrestal, admirals Harold R. Stark and Walter Anderson, and John O’Keefe, Knox’s secretary, were also guests. Donovan and Mowrer had a chance to talk at length about the situation in Great Britain.
Washington buzzed about Donovan’s mission. At his press conference in Hyde Park, New York, on Tuesday morning, August 6, a correspondent asked President Roosevelt, “Could you tell us, Mr. President, what the mission was that Wild Bill Donovan went on to London?”
“You will have to ask the Secretary of the Navy and Wild Bill,” replied Roosevelt.
“We asked Wild Bill,” said the correspondent.
Roosevelt flashed a jaunty smile as his only reply.
Donovan spent the day briefing cabinet officers and key senators and congressmen. That evening he dined with Secretary of War Stimson. “In the evening we had Bill Donovan and Patterson and his wife at dinner at Woodley and Donovan told us at length of his recent trip to England to find out
the real situation there,” Stimson entered in his diary.
This was taken on the instance and at the expense of Frank Knox. It was a very interesting story, for Donovan had come into contact with all the chiefs of the British Army; had been taken all over their country and had gone up and down the Islands, so that he knew everything that an outsider could learn. He described the morale as very high now and his final summary was that if an attack was made now, the British would probably win. On the other hand, the greatest danger in the future, as he sees it, will be the letdown which will come if no attack is made and the long boring days of winter set in. In such case he fears that while the British will increase their munitions, they will lose their personal morale, and that an attack in the Spring might have more chance of success. He laid special emphasis on the home defense units which had been created out of older men, and men who had had experience in the last war. He also laid stress on the tremendous part that women were taking in the Army, as well as in the general defense plan. All driving of motor cars and apparently of motor trucks is being done by women. He emphasized Britain’s need of destroyers and he spoke especially of her need for 250,000 more Enfield rifles for the home defense force that I have just mentioned.
Roosevelt held another press conference at Hyde Park on Thursday. He was preparing to take a train up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he was to inspect coastal defenses before boarding the presidential yacht Potomac to visit naval installations at Boston, Newport, and New London with a stop-off at Nahant Cove in Massachusetts to see his youngest grandchild. Knox was to be a guest on the cruise.
Donovan Page 30
