“Has Secretary Knox arrived yet?” asked a reporter.
“No, he is coming up this afternoon,” said Roosevelt, “and we will have a full shipload. Oh, I will tell you who is coming up with him and going to be on the train and going down on the Potomac: Bill Donovan, so he can tell me what he found on the other side when he went over. . . . He will get off the boat tomorrow afternoon. There is no bunk for him.”
“Can you give us any indication of the nature of Donovan’s mission abroad?”
“I cannot, and he won’t tell you.” Roosevelt changed the subject and ended the conference.
Knox and Donovan joined Secretary of Commerce Harry L. Hopkins and the President at Hyde Park about 6:00 P.M. on Friday, August 9. They found Roosevelt delighting in the company of a brand new acquisition, a scottie dog named Fala. They drove with the President to the Hyde Park railroad station, where they boarded the presidential car. Donovan reported to the President about his trip to England as the train rumbled up through New England. When Roosevelt went to bed, the others took up the problem of Joseph Kennedy and also discussed whether the United States should supply weapons and equipment to the British. Donovan advocated the appointment of an ambassador “who would go back and forth across the Atlantic and keep the two countries in touch; someone who could detect ways of making concessions without condescension, while insisting on explaining prickly matters of sovereignty and protocol.” After Knox went off to his stateroom, Donovan and Hopkins talked until dawn. Donovan warned Hopkins that the Germans might strike toward Suez through French North Africa.
As Donovan wrote to Britain’s Menzies, he emphasized to the President that the English “were strong, determined and would hold out.” He told Roosevelt that if Britain were invaded it would fight, but that it could not fight without American help. He urged that the immediate transfer of overage destroyers to Britain must be made to keep open the lines of communication across the Atlantic. He also proposed that the Sperry bombsight be given to the British and that the production of flying boats and Flying Fortresses be increased. America, Donovan told the President, should establish training schools for Australian, Canadian, and British pilots. Donovan reported to Admiral Godfrey and Sir Cyril Newall, British chief air marshal, that the President was very receptive on all scores.
“Not only did Mr. Roosevelt accept Donovan’s appreciation of our war effort,” Godfrey later wrote, “but he approved in principle the supply of material on a large scale, which developed into ‘Lease Lend’ and later full alliance.”
Donovan made it clear to the President that the “United States should start preparing immediately for a global war.” In the words of Allen Dulles, “He particularly stressed the need of a service to wage unorthodox warfare and to gather information through every means available. He was convinced that America’s military planning and its whole national strategy would depend on intelligence as never before and that the American intelligence setup should be completely revamped.”
In the months to come Donovan discussed this idea at length with Knox, Stimson, and Attorney General Robert H. Jackson.
Shortly after noon, Donovan boarded the Potomac with the other members of the presidential party and continued his briefing of the President. Then he went ashore to return to Washington, where other leading members of the administration awaited him. On Saturday President Roosevelt and Secretary Knox gave another press conference.
“Have you and Mr. Knox anything to say about Donovan’s mission to Europe?” a reporter asked the President.
“May I answer that question?” inquired Knox.
“Yes,” said the President.
“He went over as my eyes and ears to see what he could find,” said Knox.
“Anything to say, sir?” the reporter asked Roosevelt.
“Well, you see it is his mouth,” said Roosevelt.
“Your eyes and ears and Colonel Donovan’s mouth?” asked the baffled reporter.
Donovan spent Sunday with Gen. Robert E. Wood, the leader of the America First isolationists, to assure him of England’s will and ability to repel a Nazi attack. Wood was Franklin Roosevelt’s bitter political antagonist, but Donovan reasoned that as a prominent American he was entitled to know the truth about the situation across the Atlantic.
On Monday Donovan briefed some influential senators and congressmen on his trip to England. Henry Stimson wrote in his diary:
In the evening I attended a dinner given by Senator Burke—the sponsor of the Selective Service Bill in the Senate—with a number of Senators and Congressmen to listen to Bill Donovan on the results of his recent trip to Europe and containing his views on the necessity of the bill. It lasted until nearly midnight and the Senators were very interested and keen in their questions. I spoke. Patterson spoke. And Donovan spoke. Among others, Senator Barkley, Senator Connolly of Texas, Senator Minton of Indiana, Senator Hill, Senator Schwartz, Senator Thomas of Utah, Senator Gurney, Senator Austin, Jim Wadsworth, and Assistant Secretary Patterson, and several others were present. It was encouraging to me to see their interest and they all seemed to think the bill would finally pass in some fairly good form.
The mood in Washington when Donovan returned from abroad had been one of black pessimism. Donovan had a sanguine effect on the capital. “Colonel Donovan almost single-handed overcame the unmitigated defeatism which was paralyzing Washington,” said Walter Lippmann.
“I think that so far as the restoration of morale here was concerned the trip was worthwhile,” Donovan wrote to Kirk in London. “I found that in general the morale was pretty low and there was a feeling of helplessness insofar as England was concerned.”
“The back door of the White House was opened to him,” said journalist Frederic Sondern, Jr., “and he took full advantage of it.”
Donovan urged upon Roosevelt his plans for irregular warfare—propaganda, sabotage, underground resistance. “Above all,” he told Roosevelt, “it would be necessary to know everything about the war potentialities of every country which might become involved in the conflict. That would take a centralized, powerful intelligence agency capable of making a complete picture of any situation anywhere in the world when the President needed it.”
Roosevelt agreed with Donovan, but he felt that the political situation within the United States would not yet permit the establishment of such an organization. He explained to Donovan that he had a campaign to fight in the fall.
The President also agreed with Donovan that the transfer of 50 overage destroyers to the United Kingdom had great meaning beyond their military value. It would assure the British that America understood their danger and would not allow the German conquest of Britain without taking action. It would also warn the Germans that America had taken alarm and would oppose their march toward world conquest.
“The last week has been engaged with trying to get U.S.A. up to the point of sending us the destroyers,” wrote Lord Lothian in his journal on August 16. “I think the trick has been done. At least the President told me on the telephone this morning that he thought it was. Donovan has helped a lot and Knox.”
Eleven days later Roosevelt was far less certain. He told Donovan that he expected to lose the election on the destroyer issue but felt it had to be faced. Donovan argued that from a legal viewpoint Roosevelt need not obtain congressional approval to trade the 50 elderly destroyers to Britain in exchange for 99-year leases on British bases in Bermuda, the Caribbean, and Newfoundland. Roosevelt maintained that what might be legally possible was not politically possible.
“Congress is going to raise hell about this,” Roosevelt told his secretary Grace Tully, “but even another day’s delay may mean the end of civilization.”
Roosevelt drafted his historic message to Congress in late August. To his relief Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate for president, agreed not to make the transfer of the destroyers a campaign issue. Donovan’s friend George Bowden, later to be an OSS man, drew up the bill that made the transfer of destr
oyers possible. Now it was up to Congress.
One pretext for Donovan’s trip to England had been an assignment to investigate the German fifth column. When he finished briefing administration leaders, senators, and congressmen about the situation in England, Roosevelt and Knox urged him to collaborate with Edgar Ansel Mowrer on a series of newspaper articles alerting America to the danger of the fifth column.
“I lived at that time on 30th Street in Georgetown,” Mowrer said after the war. “Donovan lived on R Street just off 30th. I saw him fairly often during the following year. He is one of these ‘come to breakfast’ boys. And I not being an early riser preferred having my appointments somewhat later in the day. I was so startled.”
Startled or not, Mowrer found himself at working breakfasts with Donovan. Donovan supplied much of the information for the articles. Some of his information had come from German officers whom Donovan had known from World War I and the early trips he had made to Europe in the aftermath of the war. Mowrer did all the writing. Donovan agreed to share the by-line only when Roosevelt insisted upon it. Frank Knox wrote an introduction to the articles: “They are designed to make Americans fully conscious of methods used by the totalitarian powers, so that, if or when such methods are used here, they will instantly be recognized for what they are and their effect nullified. I regard defense against possible enemy propaganda as second only to defense against enemy armaments.”
The three major American news agencies distributed the articles, and they were printed in pamphlet form by the American Council on Public Affairs under the title “Fifth Column Lessons for America.”
“The masterpiece of the Fifth Column was unquestionably the French debacle,” asserted Donovan and Mowrer.
Here everything that Hitler promised came to pass with almost mathematical precision. He did not strike until he was in touch with certain important Frenchmen who were ready to treat with him.
What happened to the French officers? Simply this: for the most part they had ceased to believe in freedom, democracy, or any of the slogans which alone could galvanize the entire country.
While not exactly pro-Fascist (and certainly not pro-German), they were hostile to the Third Republic; many had come to believe that an authoritative regime like that of Italy or Germany was really preferable. It would, they thought, save the position of the privileged classes and really save France from the disagreeable necessity of defending itself. If there was to be a war, then let it be against the Bolsheviks. In other words, at least half and perhaps a majority of influential French citizens had come to believe what Hitler wanted them to believe.
For years his agents in France, Friedrich Sieburg, the author, Otto Abetz, pro-French consuls like Nolde and many others, had “worked” the French leaders. When necessary, they were assisted by beautiful women: the Baroness von Einem, the Princess von Hohenlohe and others of lesser brilliance. They “got in” with certain of these leading Frenchwomen, who at the moment of defeat, exercised such a devastating influence on certain French statesmen. They went everywhere, saw everybody, came to know everything, dipped into French politics through scandalously venal French newspapers. To the weak and cynical they preached defeatism; to the unsuccessful, hatred of the Jews; to all, the possibility of living on good terms with Germany if only France would break relations with the Bolsheviks and “money-minded” Britons. During the appeasement period the Germans were actually aided by certain members of the British Embassy in Paris. Not until two months before the outbreak of war did anyone dare to take action against the numerous German agents—and then the vacillating Daladier talked big and did little.
The Nazis had already fostered a fifth column within the United States. Many pro-Nazi Americans took angry exception to the series of articles, and when they broke cover to challenge Donovan and Mowrer, the FBI and military intelligence were able to identify them for arrest if war broke out with Germany.
During the next several months detailed reports came by special couriers from England as British officials answered the lengthy questionnaires that Donovan had left behind. Donovan received these at his New York law office and distributed them to the appropriate officials in Washington. A full year before President Roosevelt appointed him coordinator of information, he was gathering information from overseas sources for the President and his cabinet.
The Century Group was a coterie of leading citizens who believed that the United States must prepare itself for an almost inevitable war with Germany. Donovan was a member, and upon his return from England, the group arranged for him to make a national radio address on behalf of selective service. It was decided that he should speak from Chicago, in the heart of the isolationist Midwest. On Friday, August 16, Donovan went to the midwestern city, checked into the Blackstone Hotel on Michigan Avenue, and went over his notes. He spoke Saturday evening at 8:15 over the Mutual Broadcasting System. The address was actually made from the home of Albert Lasker in the North Shore suburb of Lake Forest, over a telephone line to radio station WGN. At the last minute WGN, which was fully owned by archisolationist Col. Robert R. McCormick, itself refused to broadcast the talk, but the rest of the nation heard it.
Donovan admitted that if Hitler won in England, he still might not attack the United States. “But let us weigh against this the price of unpreparedness in the face of a threat which turns out to have been a real threat,” he said. “We have seen other nations pay that cost—the nations of Europe that have fallen.” He argued that unpreparedness would be a gamble with the freedom of future generations, a gamble the current generation had no right to make.
He concluded that in World War I, he had seen untrained boys sent into battle and suffering excessive casualties.
Those of you who were in France can confirm out of your own knowledge and experience. I remember at the battle of Château-Thierry in July 1917, we had suffered heavy losses. These losses were made up while we were on the march to the battle of St. Mihiel. We were given untrained or half-trained replacements. Some of these men had never worn a gas mask; some had never opened the bolts of their rifles; they had never been in a detachment larger than a corporal squad.
And yet, within eight days, they were to be thrown into the first major offensive of the American Army. These men had to be trained while we were advancing to the front by night marches that lasted from darkness to dawn. The only opportunity of training these tired men was to take them from the period of noon until nightfall and to give them in a few hours what should have been given them in months of training. That is what comes of starting training men after war begins and not before. The casualties resulting from that kind of unnecessary wastage of human life eat ultimately into the social life of a nation.
Donovan demanded “a fair chance for his life” for an American soldier and argued that “natural leadership and primitive military skills” were not enough in modern warfare, where tightly coordinated movements of mechanized units and sophisticated weapons were used. The volunteer system must give way to universal selective service.
“While it is absolutely true that if you want to fight, you’ve got to be strong,” he told his fellow countrymen, “it is equally true in this world of today that if you want peace, you’ve got to be stronger still—and it is because I am for peace that I am for conscription.”
The next morning Donovan left for California, where he was trying a law case. Upon his return to Washington he appeared before both houses of Congress to discuss the Burke-Wadsworth Selective Service Training bill in the light of his findings in England. His remarks were based upon his experience in World War I and his observations in embattled Britain, and they swung undecided legislators behind the bill, which was passed a few weeks later.
Donovan was convinced that the United States could not escape war with Germany. He did not think he could urge that young men be drafted into the armed forces without volunteering for active service himself, and he talked to Stimson about a command in the army. “I intend to go with the troo
ps and as it looks now I shall probably spend the winter in Alabama training a division,” he wrote to Lord Vansittart.
Despite his involvement in the vital national decisions of the summer of 1940, Donovan managed to continue his law practice. He was in Wyoming trying a case when he received a phone call from Frank Knox. “I am just on my way to maneuvers of the fleet; do you want to come with me, because I would like you to tell the admirals something about yourself.”
Donovan finished his legal argument and went to Treasure Island Naval Base in San Francisco Bay. There he met Secretary Knox, his naval aide Capt. Mort Dale, his secretary John O’Keefe, and Adm. Charles Cooke, commandant of naval air in the Atlantic. In the morning the group was to fly to Pearl Harbor in a new navy PBY. It was the first PBY flight over such a distance, and extra tanks of fuel were placed on board. Destroyers and cruisers were stationed every 250 miles along the route to effect a rescue if the plane went down. The navy was taking no chances with the VIPs from Washington.
“When we went to bed in the admiral’s quarters,” said O’Keefe in recalling the occasion, “we were told that the weather in the morning promised to be too foggy to fly. We’d have a knock on the door at 4:00 A.M. if we were going to take off.”
The knock came at 4:00 A.M., and the PBY, heavy with extra gasoline, lumbered into the air. It barely managed to lift over the Golden Gate bridge.
“It was freezing cold in the plane,” noted O’Keefe. “Then when a crew member attempted to fix the heating system, a fire broke out. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames.”
The PBY reached Pearl Harbor without any more trouble.
“I went out with the fleet for three weeks,” Donovan said later, “and I never knew there were so many admirals in our country. I had a little of the advantage of it because on coming back from England, I had just reread the life of Nelson, so I proceeded questioning some of those gentlemen on the Mediterranean, and after that I felt more strongly that that was the place that would have to be watched, because Gibraltar, Malta, Cairo, were hooks upon which history was going to be hung.”
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