Donovan

by Richard Dunlop

  Donovan had indeed cabled a dispatch to Roosevelt, and it covered far more than the Balkan front:

  Deterred by the magnitude of her task, Germany may abandon the attempt at invasion of England and, while continuing to strike at British shipping, may gamble on overrunning in a short war not only all the Balkans but Turkey as well. Russia’s fear of this German encirclement may give us the one chance of securing her support. Germany deals with all theaters of operations as constituting one strategic front from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of which the Mediterranean from Spain to the Black Sea is an integral part. Whatever she does in one theater has its intended repercussions in another. For example, she may induce Japan to strike in the Far East simultaneously with any offensive she may make in the West.

  On Monday, February 10, he was in Alexandria to visit the British eastern Mediterranean fleet, which had returned to its base after a running battle with Italian ships and German planes. The British were still convoying ships through the Mediterranean despite the Axis efforts to prevent them. Donovan found the British Navy willing to undertake transporting troops from Alexandria to Greece even if very little air cover was available. The Luftwaffe was known to have positioned a powerful striking force. Donovan delayed his departure from Cairo to confer with Anthony Eden, the new British foreign minister, who flew in from Gibraltar and Malta on February 19. They met at the British Embassy.

  “After supper I had some talk with the ambassador, read the telegrams from home and finally had a discussion with Colonel William Donovan,” wrote Eden in his memoirs. “He had been touring the Balkans for the United States government and was able to give me a firsthand account of recent developments. His blunt speech in those countries had been useful and I was grateful to him for waiting several days to see me. I asked him to send the President a message emphasizing that any action we might take in the Mediterranean would overstrain our shipping resources and inviting him to help if he could.”

  The day after he talked with Eden, Donovan filed a confidential report to Franklin Roosevelt. He said that the British should hold on in the Balkans to keep Hitler from invading the United Kingdom. He identified new German secret weapons as “huge land mines parachuted upon square-mile areas and self-propelled barges of soldiers three lines in width, guarded by submarines and canopied by an armada of planes.”

  Two days later, Eden had another long talk with Donovan. They discussed both the Turkish and the Greek situations. Eden explained that Turkey was Britain’s traditional ally but that the needs of Greece were great. Since Britain did not possess enough strength to help both countries at the same time, which should it favor? “My frank reply was,” Donovan said, “that I thought they should supply Greece for reasons moral, psychological, and military. If you abandon your tactical position now in your salient in Greece, I doubt if you can ever get it back. You can always go from there to Turkey, but once you leave, I don’t see how you will ever get back.”

  Donovan’s views on the critical importance of the Mediterranean in the future conduct of the war intrigued British leaders, as they were to fascinate War Department officials when he reached home in March.

  When you look at your map, try to look at it this way. Don’t look upon the Mediterranean as a great arterial highway running from east to west, but draw a north and south axis, and then you see the Mediterranean as a great no-man’s-land between two lines of trenches, the northern line of trenches being the European continent as a theater of operation, a great strategic area running from Spain to the Black Sea. . . . On that line up to this moment, the Germans had domination excepting for one little toehold that the British had and which they tried to hang on to, and which was an important justification for their making the fight they did, apart from any moral obligation which they felt very strongly to go to the aid of their fighting ally. Now the southern line of trenches runs along the African continent, in which the British have a strong position in the Suez and west of it, but also where the Germans had an ever-widening salient, actually through that which was held by the Italians and potentially that which would come from the disintegration of the French Empire in North Africa.

  What Germany was seeking to do in the fight between the two is shipping demoralization of the Mediterranean. What Germany was seeking to do was to seal up the Mediterranean, and she is trying to do that by closing the Suez and the Strait of Gibraltar, and then having sealed it up, would seek to mop it up by establishing her air bases on that three-pronged position of the Dodecanese and Sicily.

  Donovan traveled by plane from Egypt to Malta and Gibraltar on Monday, February 24. The next morning he took the train through Seville to Madrid, where he arrived during the night. Hitler was pressuring Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco, to enter the war on the side of the Axis. American Ambassador Alexander Weddell had quarreled with Ramon Serrano Suñer, the pro-Hitler foreign minister, and for several weeks there had been no communication at all between the U.S. Embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Donovan impatiently let the ministry know he would not be put off by any minor diplomatic storm. The morning after his arrival he met with Sir Samuel Hoare, a special British ambassador. Hoare wrote in his journal, “I have had a most interesting morning’s conversation with Colonel Donovan. He struck me as first-class in every way, mentally, morally, and physically.”

  Donovan listened attentively to Hoare, who had been stationed in Spain’s capital for nine months. Hoare wondered whether the Monroe Doctrine might be extended to Spain, which was clearly important for America’s defense. He suggested that the United States should take the Spanish peninsula and the coast of Northwest Africa under its special protection. He further pointed out the importance of Spain in the strategy of the war. “From the point of view of the United Kingdom, the Spanish Peninsula is practically our only gate left in Europe,” he told Donovan, “and the closing of the Strait of Gibraltar would greatly lengthen the war and add to our problems. If we could have a friendly Spain, it would give us the chance of a future offensive.”

  Hoare admitted that “some would say that the position is hopeless. If things go badly for us in Greece, there will be many people here who will resign themselves to German domination.”

  Franco, Serrano Suñer, Gen. Juan Vigon, and several of the generals, Hoare told Donovan, were “mesmerized by the size of the German military machine” and expected Germany to win. “Franco and Serrano Suñer also believe that a British victory would mean the end of all dictatorships in Europe, their own included.”

  Hoare urged that Roosevelt be advised to encourage Latin America to pressure Spain to stay neutral. The combined New World could play an important role in Spain. “If we can keep the peninsula out of the Axis,” he concluded, “we frustrate Hitler’s effort to conquer all Europe and we keep Spain and Portugal in the orbit of the oceanic powers, the United States and the British Empire, and prevent them being absorbed into Hitler’s bloc.”

  Donovan did not see Serrano Suñer and Franco until the last day of February. Knowing that the United States alone had the oil that Spain needed, Donovan decided to take a hard line. “To both he spoke with almost brutal frankness,” reported Hoare. “Serrano Suñer in particular he treated as if he were a prisoner in the dock. Using all his forensic ability he went through a long indictment that omitted nothing in the charge sheet, and left the minister almost speechless with fury. The minister’s reactions were what might have been expected. His resentment against the United States became even more bitter than before.”

  Donovan argued for Spanish opposition to a German takeover, but Serrano Suñer shut off further discussion by saying that the Germans would easily win the war. He hoped for German victory, for then Spain would get Gibraltar and recognition of her claims in Africa. Nevertheless, Spain would “remain aloof” from the struggle “until its honor, interests, or dignity were in question.”

  Donovan’s hectoring attitude toward the foreign minister was calculated to draw indiscretions from the choleric Spania
rd, and Donovan was able to report what Serrano Suñer believed would be the results of a German victory in Europe:

  The self-appointed destiny of the German race is to create a new Europe and a new world under Nazi domination. The thirty or forty states which composed Europe and Africa and Asia were too many states. It was necessary to have a single center of European ideology, European military strength, European commercial planning. Force is the basis of all social relationship. Conquered nations and conquered areas must be reduced to a state of permanent inferiority as has already been done in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The German race is the master race.

  Only certain parts of the conquered territory, as was explained to me by Mr. Suñer, the Spanish foreign minister, are to be incorporated into the larger Germany. The areas not so included would be governed by local Nazi leaders and grouped around the Reich in a colonial pattern, their production and their labor contributing to the improved standard of living of the master race, while being forced to reduce their own. Labor unions will be abolished. Anti-Semitism enforced.

  “For myself the talk was a tonic,” Hoare wrote of Donovan’s interview with Serrano Suñer in his journal, “as it showed President Roosevelt’s keen interest in the affairs of Spain.

  “Most important of all, the world of Madrid soon heard of the strong line that Colonel Donovan had taken and concluded from it that, so far from the war being ended, a new chapter was soon to begin with the formidable participation of the United States.”

  The night after Donovan met with Serrano Suñer and Franco, the Spanish dictator wrote a letter to Hitler declining to enter the war. Franco did not mention Donovan by name, but Hitler had no difficulty in realizing exactly who had pressured him into turning down Germany’s invitation to join the battle.

  In subsequent talks Donovan found other Spanish leaders not so certain of a German victory. He stressed how American aid could prevent Hitler from exploiting shortages in Spain to draw the nation into the war. Donovan reported that many of the Spanish generals opposed the Falangist leaders’ conviction that Germany would win the war and rejected the idea that Spain should remain faithful to the Nazi cause.

  On the first day of March, Donovan flew to Lisbon, where he talked for an hour with the premier of Portugal, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar listened to Donovan with apparent favor, and Donovan went away thinking that he was “one of the best intellectually of the statesmen of Europe, who does not want Germany to win but who fears that she will.” As for Salazar, he was skeptical of Donovan because he suspected the United States of being interested in making the Azores into a strategic American base. He confided in the Italian ambassador that Donovan lectured him “like a schoolmaster” and had “quizzed him about his ideas on the future of the world and so on.”

  The ambassador reported to Rome, and Rome shared the impression with Berlin. Oswald Baron von Hayningen-Hesse was also in Lisbon during Donovan’s brief visit, and he passed on to Berlin information he picked up about the Donovan–Salazar meeting.

  By that evening Donovan was in Seville, from where he went to Gibraltar. On Monday, March 3, he arrived in London. When the British press cornered him at the railroad station, he replied only, “I do not think there is anything to say.” The following day Churchill took him to see the king at Buckingham Palace so the sovereign could hear his report and express Britain’s appreciation for his remarkable mission. Donovan had adroitly represented both his own country and Great Britain. That evening Donovan and American Ambassador John G. Winant dined with Churchill.

  According to Thomas Troy, Donovan “briefed and was briefed. He was asked to go before the joint board and discuss the hard decision to aid Greece. He went to lunch with the War Cabinet and with the chiefs of staff. He was thoroughly briefed on the organization of SOE [Special Operations Executive] and visited some of its training establishments. With the director of censorship he discussed the problem of getting control of enemy communications. With Britain’s home security chief he went into the problem of frustrating Nazi efforts to subvert Allied and neutral seamen in American ports.”

  Churchill and Donovan had long talks at Downing Street and at Chartwell. According to William J. Casey, they “found themselves in tune in boldness, in imagination, in openness to new ideas, in readiness to innovate and to act. . . . Churchill saw that Donovan returned with a thorough knowledge of the intelligence service which England had developed over five centuries and of the way Britain was nourishing resistance in the occupied nations of Europe pursuant to Winston Churchill’s dramatic order to ‘set Europe ablaze.’ Out of this perspective and knowledge came the OSS.”

  “During his last few days in London, Colonel Donovan spent much time in gathering together supplementary reports on the Mediterranean theater,” wrote Conyers Read.

  He also fortified himself with further material based upon British war experience. More particularly he pursued his study of psychological warfare and of guerrilla operations. He had noted the efficiency of German sabotage and secret intelligence in the Mediterranean theater and he made it his business to find out all he could about British efforts in those directions.

  It was at this time also that he secured a description of the organization which was responsible for the conduct of sabotage in enemy-occupied areas and for the supply of resistance groups. In detail he sought to answer such questions as these: How did the British recruit their personnel? What were their plans? In what walks of life are the best men found? In business? Law? Diplomacy? What sort of special training has proved necessary? With what other government agencies has it proved desirable—and possible—to cooperate particularly closely? How was security—secrecy—best maintained? Has any attempt been made to coordinate all British military and other intelligence and if so what has been the result of the attempt?

  Donovan interrupted his investigations on March 8 to make a quick air trip to Dublin and back at the request of Roosevelt and Churchill. The threat of an invasion of the British Isles had receded, and there was less concern that the Germans might strike at Ireland, but it was as critical as ever that the Irish allow Great Britain to use their ports to counter the German submarine menace. During lunch with Prime Minister Eamon de Valera and the cardinal from Northern Ireland, Donovan was incensed when the prelate remarked that he did not see much difference between a Nazi victory and British dominion, and he blistered the churchman with his opinion of the anti-British myopia shown by some Irish. De Valera would not make a commitment to the Allied cause.

  Not long afterward, Australian Prime Minister Menzies arrived in Dublin to see De Valera. “The people of this ‘distressful country.’ ” he wrote in a memorandum, “or at any rate those who govern it, are in a state of exaggerated self-consciousness. They are not very realistic in their approach to the problems of the war. They are ready to take offense. They resented the fact that Colonel Donovan’s visit was only for a couple of hours. They feel, and I think with some justification, that their point of view has been either not examined or impatiently examined. These comments are specially true of De Valera himself.”

  Churchill was pleased with Donovan’s trip to Dublin, and he cabled Roosevelt, “I must thank you for the magnificent work done by Donovan, in his prolonged tour of the Balkans and the Middle East. He has carried with him throughout an animating, heartwarming flame.”

  When Donovan had completed briefing British leaders concerning his trip through the Balkans and the Middle East and had gathered the answers to his questions, he flew to Portugal. There on Friday, March 14, he rendezvoused with Averell Harriman, who had crossed the Atlantic on his own mission on behalf of the President. The two presidential envoys chatted at the Hotel Palacio in Estoril, which Harriman characterized as a “nest of spies.” Pinto, the concierge at the Palacio, remembered the conference. “All the Allied agents stayed at the Palacio,” he explained years later. “The Axis agents stayed at the Hotel de Parque, which is just across the gardens. The waiters, chambermaids, busboys,
pages, porters, bartenders were all on somebody’s payroll. When an agent went into the casino, he didn’t go there to gamble; he went there to place an undetected phone call to Switzerland, another nest of spies.” Even so, one Berlin agent always concluded his phone conversations with, “Good-bye. Good-bye also to my British friends, wherever you are!”

  In this environment Donovan and Harriman spoke softly together in a room that had been checked carefully for bugs. Lloyd V. Steere, a U.S. Department of Agriculture expert, joined the discussions to report on the condition of Britain’s farms and how the United States could integrate its own food production into the British supply picture. Then Harriman flew off to England, and Donovan, after a night’s sleep and a round of conferences, continued by Yankee Clipper over the South Atlantic route to the United States.

  The day after St. Patrick’s Day he stepped out of the Clipper at La Guardia. He was almost expansive with the press at the pier.

  “I’ve been a good many miles—about 25,000. I have seen a lot of warfare and I’ve seen too how important the administrative and maintenance side of war is,” he said, “and from all I have learned, I hope I’ll be able to give information of value to our country.”

  When a reporter remarked that Secretary of the Navy Knox had said Donovan was traveling at his own expense and had no official status, Donovan replied, “The secretary does not need corroboration.” Donovan left almost immediately for Washington, and the next morning while he, Harry Hopkins, and Frank Knox ate breakfast with the President, Donovan made the first of a series of oral reports to Roosevelt. Conyers Read summarized this report:

  So far as the Mediterranean is concerned, he was most intent on pointing out both the dangers and the opportunities to America in the French position in Northwest Africa. He thought that it ought to be exploited; that the Arabs and the French in North Africa distrusted the imperial pretensions of the British and that French officialdom had not forgotten the destruction of the French fleet by the British at Oran. Nor had they forgotten the abortive effort of De Gaulle, assisted by the British, at Dakar. On that account Donovan insisted that in any American military operation in Northwest Africa, psychological or otherwise, the British should play a definitely subordinate part and De Gaulle should be omitted altogether. Donovan was, however, definitely of the opinion that any operations in that quarter should be supported by some French general whom the French themselves would respect as a leader.