That evening at Lane’s house the American minister and his guest dined late and then played poker well into the night. In the morning Donovan and U.S. Military Attaché Col. Louis L. Fortier went to the War Ministry to see Gen. Peter Pesić, the minister of war; Gen. Peter Kosić, the chief of the general staff; and Adm. Julian Luteroti, chief of naval operations. Donovan inspected the general staff school and the military academy. He visited the military academy, Donovan later explained to the War Department,
because I wanted to see the quality of men who would be the leaders of these fighting forces. I went through the academy in Belgrade with three or four of the younger generals who in the last war had been subalterns, and the thing that struck me and made me wonder—there was always different thought between the soldier and the politician. The soldier was for standing up for his country and the politician was hoping something would turn up and make it unnecessary to face an issue, and that is what struck me about the soldiers there. We went to this little room that was set apart as a kind of a sanctuary, and in that room was an easel, and on the easel was a map of old Serbia, and on the map there were blue lines indicating the position that the Serbian Army had held during the advance of the Germans in the last war, and they pointed out with pride the fact that they had held their army intact even though they had been driven out of their country and even though they had to remain outside of that country for three years before they ever returned, but they were used to that and they didn’t fear it.
Donovan observed officers engaged in a study of map problems and fortifications, watched a gymnastic drill and a fencing demonstration, and listened to a chorus of young officers sing marching songs.
He lunched that day with British Minister Ronald Campbell and his aides, and had a press meeting with American reporters. Then he slipped off to a clandestine meeting with Gen. Dušan Simović, commander of the air force. Throughout Europe Donovan already had a network of informants, and Belgrade friends told him that Simović and a handful of patriotic army officers were planning to obstruct the surrender of their country to Germany. Donovan always believed he had escaped the Abwehr surveillance on his trip across the Danube River to the air force headquarters at Zemun, but German intelligence records show that Canaris’s people tracked him to his destination. Simović told Donovan that he believed concessions to Germany would be deadly and would destroy Yugoslavia’s chance to resist invasion. Certainly the Yugoslavs, tough mountain people with a knowledge of every pass and crag, would be able to make their rugged terrain an ally. Donovan and Simović talked over Simović’s plans for a coup d’état against the government of Prince Paul. The patriots would strike as soon as the government signed an agreement with the Axis and would place royal authority in the hands of 17-year-old King Peter, who agreed that Paul had outlived his usefulness. Before he left for Belgrade, Donovan watched flights of Yugoslav Bristols, Blenheims, and trainers maneuver overhead.
Donovan was back at Minister Lane’s residence for a late dinner party. He briefed naval and military attachés so they could send his reports to Washington by diplomatic pouch, safe from Axis surveillance. He was able to furnish them with a probable timetable for Hitler’s move into the Balkans. He said nothing to the minister about what he had learned from Simović. Lane cabled Hull that Donovan and he had been assured by Prince Paul and by Prime Minister Cvetković that the Yugoslavs would not permit the passage of German troops or war materials through their territory and would resist aggression. When the intercept of the cable was placed before German leaders in Berlin, they had reason to be satisfied. Apparently Donovan had learned exactly what they wanted him to learn. They had no inkling of the plot to overthrow the pro-Axis government, which Donovan had wisely kept to himself.
It had been announced that Donovan would leave the next morning by train for Salonika, Greece, but instead he secretly went to the airport long before dawn and flew in a private airplane. Plans for his flight were closely guarded until he had safely passed over the Greek and Italian fighting front and landed in Greece. “It is understood,” said a New York Times telephone dispatch, “United States and Yugoslav authorities concealed this information to prevent any possible effort to intercept his airplane during his flight over belligerent zones.”
The political climate had shifted dramatically in Greece since Donovan’s departure for Sofia, and German intelligence at least was attributing much of the change to him. The Germans believed Donovan had persuaded Premier Metaxas to agree to British plans for the defense of Greece. British troops would land at Salonika when German forces moved into Bulgaria, which must be considered a clear indication that an invasion of Greece was intended.
Donovan met again with Greek leaders on January 27 to discuss what American supplies might be needed for the defense of Greece. Some months later, after the outmanned Greek Army had been overrun by German troops and the British had evacuated the forces they had sent there, armchair generals in the United States laid the blame for the British military failure on interfering politicians in London. Churchill, they claimed, had forced a resisting Wavell to send troops to Greece. Donovan, however, said Wavell himself had favored military aid to the Greeks. “I happened to be with General Wavell the night it was discussed,” Donovan remarked before the Union League of Philadelphia,
I had been at dinner with him, and he showed me a paper he took out of his dispatch case. . . . That paper constituted his appreciation of the situation, and that appreciation set forth possible German intentions . . . to come down and try to get Salonika as a means of protecting her flank in the event of any action she wanted to take in the Aegean and . . . to deny to the British the use of Salonika as a jumping-off trench. And to do that she also had to do the job that Italy had been unable to do, and that was to mop up Greece.
Wavell set forth all of that, and then he set forth the necessity of putting in six divisions. But he didn’t have the shipping to do it—and through all I say, you will see that the whole strategy of England is limited by the lack of shipping, just like the strategy of Germany is dictated by the need, or her fear of the need, of getting her job done before the weight of our support can be felt. And so Wavell decided to put in two divisions, New Zealand and Australian, and one armored division, and to let Salonika go, withdraw from the Bulgarian frontier and take the heights by mountain routes. . . .
From Salonika Donovan went to the Albanian front, where Greek and Italian forces had been fighting since late October. He spent about seven days at the front, accompanied by a young Greek lieutenant and four Greek privates. They traveled by automobile along precipitous mountain roads, and more than once Donovan was “scared to death,” he told his Philadelphia audience.
You would have these drivers who were always eager to discuss political questions, who knew more about the Roosevelt-Willkie campaign than I did, and the driver [would] round these hairpin turns, in the left hand a cigarette, swinging it around as we hugged the mountainside, and his right hand off the wheel pounding the knee of the second driver to emphasize his remarks. I went around more hairpin turns without any hand on the wheel than I have ever done at any other time. Now those men, they talk about those things. Maybe they talk about it too much, but one thing that I found, they weren’t ashamed to talk about it, and they weren’t afraid to die for it. . . . These boys fought with a rock for a parapet and a mule [for transportation] and a gun for a weapon, and that is one thing that was brought home to me there: If you are going to have mechanized equipment, you have got to have the best. The second best is no good, because if you have the second best against the best, you are apt to rely upon it, and if you rely upon it you get overwhelmed.
One day Donovan said to his Greek companions, “Now here you boys have done pretty well against the Italians, but how about the Germans? You must know that they are going to come here and drive down into Salonika.”
“Well, what difference does it make how big they are?” replied a young soldier. “If you want to be free, you
got to fight them.”
From his observation of the Greeks fighting Italians in Albania, Donovan drew an important principle of modern warfare. “The more we become mechanized, the more important it is that we go back with our men and try to exercise the primal virtues,” he later said in a War Department speech. It was possible, he said, to become overly mechanized. “Then your legs are just something you stand on when you get out of an automobile. I think the British are coming to realize this. They now see that they . . . have to come to the methods the underdog uses—the principle of guerrilla warfare. In addition to their commandos, they have organized units among themselves and their different allies for the purpose of carrying fear into the heart of the enemy by getting behind [his] lines.”
Donovan was already seeing the necessity of creating an American bureau that would provide not only strategic intelligence but also men who would be trained in what Churchill called “ungentlemanly warfare.”
After his trip to the field, Donovan returned to Athens for a quick round of meetings with British and Greek officials. On January 29, while Donovan was with the Greek Army in Albania, Premier Metaxas had died suddenly. His successor, M. Korysis, was less resolute, but he assured both Donovan and the British that Greece would resist any German aggression, although shortages of transport and artillery ammunition would limit the resistance to a delaying action. Lord Forbes, the British air attaché in Athens, volunteered to fly Dykes and Donovan to Istanbul on Thursday, January 30, but a severe storm postponed the flight for one day. On Friday the plane landed at the Istanbul airdrome, where Donovan was met by the U.S. naval attaché to Turkey, Comdr. Richard B. Tuggle. Tuggle drove Donovan to the American Consulate General to meet with members of the British military mission to Turkey. When Donovan took the 6:30 P.M. train for Ankara, Tuggle accompanied him.
The next morning Donovan arrived in Ankara. His host, American Minister John Van A. MacMurray, was not entirely happy about Donovan’s presence there. MacMurray wrote to Hull that Donovan’s visit was “a matter of very considerable embarrassment to me in my relations with both the Turks and the British, by reason of my being altogether in the dark as to what it was about.”
MacMurray had discovered that the British ambassador and the Turkish president, premier, and foreign minister all knew more than he did about Donovan’s mission. On Sunday Donovan lunched with Britain’s Ambassador Sir Hugh Knotchbull-Hegessen, who informed him that Churchill had just sent a message to President Ismet Inönü asking that Turkey permit the RAF to station ten squadrons of fighters and bombers in Turkey. Once the planes were positioned in Turkey, Churchill could threaten that if Germany marched on Bulgaria, the RAF would bomb the Ploesti oil fields on the Romanian Black Sea coast, from which Germany drew most of its petroleum.
On Sunday evening Donovan dined with a group of Turkish officials and army officers whom he had met since arriving on Saturday. Then on Monday he met with Premier Refik Saydam as well as the foreign minister, the defense minister, the minister of national defense, and the chief of the General Staff. He saw every Turkish leader of consequence with the exception of President Inönü, who had gone to the Bulgarian border to inspect Turkish Army preparations for a possible German and Bulgar invasion. Donovan informed the leaders that American war production would be in full swing by September. If Greece and Britain could hold out for six months, he said, American assistance would reach them.
Turkish sources told the New York Times correspondent that Donovan’s “resolute presentation of the position of the United States in this struggle of the free nations against dictatorships is everywhere remarked to have had tremendous effect, stiffening resistance to Germany in the Balkans. No less encouragement has been given by his practical inquiry into just what military aid these countries hoped had been sent direct from the United States to various areas where the struggle against Nazism is in progress or is likely to be taken up this spring.”
Donovan noted in his journal that Britain did not have the strength to protect the Balkans from Hitler, and Turkey knew it. The Balkans required a military shield behind which they could unite, and the United States alone could provide such a shield. From Ankara, Donovan advised Roosevelt by confidential messenger that only American armed intervention could prevent the Germans from seizing the area. Roosevelt had little choice but to ignore Donovan’s advice. America’s potential strength was enormous, but the armed forces presently ready for action could not begin to prevent a German takeover, and the American public was still divided as to the seriousness of the Axis threat. Later Donovan said of the Turks, “I found that Turkey, although not equipped with modern arms and not prepared to carry on an offensive at this time, was an ally of Britain and proud too of the fact that Turks would be the defenders, as they express it, of the Gate.”
He also learned a great deal from the Turks about what might happen when Germany attacked Russia. “Russia is scared to death of her,” he reported in a speech a few months later. “The only thing I know about Russia is what the Turks told me, and Turkey says Russia is not much better in her army than she was at the end of the war with Finland. There has been some improvement, but nothing to speak of. The Turks feel that the aim of Germany, with her sixty divisions in Poland and her twenty-five divisions in Romania, is to strike at the Ukraine, and in doing that, to try to encircle Russia by getting through the Dardanelles. They believe, too, in Turkey that it is the intention of Germany to strike through Turkey into Iraq.” The Turks left Donovan with the impression that if Bulgaria would resist a German incursion, they would step in and assist Bulgaria. But if Bulgaria did not resist, they told Donovan, they did not have the power or the equipment “to stick their neck out.”
Donovan learned from Turkish sources that “with the activities of the Germans with the Arabs in Iraq, in Persia, and in Syria, Turkey may feel herself surrounded and may find herself helpless. It may be that the Germans will attack in Syria, get in the rear of the Turks, because it must be remembered that the whole theory of the offensive of Germany is to outflank, take a country not only for the acquisition of that country itself, but to take it because it puts it on the flank of the next country it wishes to dominate.”
On Monday evening, February 3, Donovan and Tuggle went to the railroad station to catch the train to Beirut, from where they would go on to Jerusalem. In Beirut, Donovan hoped to see French officers loyal to his old friend Gen. Maxime Weygand, who were with the French Army of the Near East, camped outside Beirut. He also hoped to talk to Gen. Henri Dentz, the French high commissioner. It was not to be.
“There was a dramatic incident in Ankara station Monday,” reported the New York Times correspondent by telephone, “when Colonel William J. Donovan, President Roosevelt’s special envoy in Europe, was to have left by train for Palestine via Syria.
“While he was there with his party waiting to enter the train, a secretary of the French Embassy arrived and informed him that a telegram had just arrived from Vichy saying that under no conditions was Colonel Donovan to be allowed to go through Syria. Colonel Donovan had already received his visa, and this was canceled. No reason was given for this attitude.”
Donovan and his party boarded another train that took them to Adana in southern Turkey, from where Lord Forbes flew them in a British military plane to the island of Cyprus. Donovan and the others spent Wednesday at Nicosia on Cyprus and then flew to Jerusalem on Thursday. There, American Consul General George Wadsworth, an old college friend, helped Donovan interview the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, an Arab leader who was outspoken in his support of Hitler and who was attempting to cultivate a Nazi movement among the Arabs. Donovan discovered that most Arabs, being devout Moslems, were not attracted to the errant religious leader’s pro-German speeches.
“In Palestine,” said Donovan later, “I saw battalions made up of companies of Jews and of Arabs together, their political differences submerged in the need of a common defense.”
When a handful of newspapermen caught up with
Donovan in Jerusalem, as the New York Times correspondent put it, “the American observer today affably declined once more to reveal the impressions of his journey so far as political matters were concerned or divulge his destination, but he did not deny the possibility that he might go back to London before returning to America.”
Donovan posed with journalists for the photographers and remarked that his last visit to the Holy Land had been in 1923. When his attention was called to the previous week’s Berlin and Rome broadcasts charging he was giving gratuitous advice to the Balkan states and urging them to resist Axis pressure, he said with a chuckle, “Pity I hadn’t heard the broadcasts. Why are they worrying about an ordinary American citizen traveling around with his bags?”
Then he pointed to Wadsworth, who was standing nearby. “There’s your story,” he said. “George and I were both born and grew up together in Buffalo, New York. We served together in Washington. You can call my visit to Palestine, reunion in Jerusalem.”
Donovan made a side trip to Baghdad to talk to the premier of Iraq and to meet with Arab friends. In Baghdad, as everywhere else, he took time to get in touch with perceptive individuals whom he had met over the years. Somebody once called these men and women Donovan’s moles. Many had climbed high in their own nation since he had first met them as young officers or as students, and now they were ready to help him set up an intelligence network.
He returned to Cairo on Friday, February 7. Abwehr agents checked his arrival and reported to Berlin that after staying only one night in the city, he departed for the Libyan front. Before leaving Cairo, Donovan met with Australian Prime Minister Robert G. Menzies, who had come to Egypt to learn details about British plans to deploy an Australian division in Greece.
“I saw the American unofficial ambassador, Colonel Donovan, in Cairo after his return from the Balkans,” Menzies cabled to Acting Prime Minister A. W. Fadden in Canberra, “and he has stressed to the President of the United States the importance of the formation of a Balkan front.”
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