Certainly Bill Donovan never forgot his own experience as an infantry officer in World War I, and throughout his years as director of the OSS, he felt a lively sympathy for the guerrilla warriors he sent to fight behind the enemy lines. On four separate occasions—in Sicily, Burma, Normandy, and the south of France—he joined in the fray, even though to have been captured would have risked betrayal of some of the Allies’ deepest secrets.
Early on, COI-OSS cast its lot with native resistance movements. Before the Allied invasion of North Africa, Carleton Coon and Bill Eddy had contacted the most powerful Moslem leader in northern Morocco, known by the code name Strings, and a tribal chieftain in the coastal mountains of El Rif known as Tassels. Tens of thousands of Arabs, responding to the call of holy men and sheiks, worked for Strings. According to Kermit Roosevelt, agents “penetrated areas forbidden by the French authorities to the general populace” and cooperated with “farmers and shepherds who relayed pertinent items of intelligence in comparative anonymity.”
Tassels commanded a guerrilla force of Berbers in the Atlas Mountains. These guerrillas set the pattern for OSS clandestine forces, which in time were to be deployed behind the lines in Asia and on the continent of Europe.
“Marshal Pétain required ten months and a force of 150,000 men and thirty batteries of 65-millimeter mountain guns to put down the Abd-el-Krim insurrection of 1925–28,” Donovan told Roosevelt. Now the Berbers were working for the OSS. The Arabs of North Africa also proved outstanding intelligence agents.
In Spanish Morocco, Arabs reported the actions of German submarines lurking in secret bases fashioned out of coastal caves. When Gen. Erwin Rommel threatened to break out of Tunisia and invade Morocco, an underground Arab army of 80,000 men waited to fight him. The signing of the North African Armistice on November 11, 1942, passed control of French North Africa west of German-occupied Tunisia to the Allies. From that time on Donovan’s Arab guerrillas and intelligence forces operated out of Algiers.
In 1943 Donovan made frequent and usually unheralded visits to the OSS headquarters in Algiers to meet with North African OSS men and with Arab and French resistance leaders. He would stay at the St. George Hotel, set among gardens high on a hill overlooking the bay, and entertain a constant stream of visitors, both Europeans and Arabs of both sexes. Often after a long flight from London he would have a masseur work on his body while he read reports and listened to the radio. OSS man Peter Mero, who was stationed in North Africa, once arrived at the hotel only to have Donovan, who was being massaged, give him a look that clearly meant he was to say nothing of importance since the masseur was unreliable. Mero had to wait, making small talk until the man had left, before he could say what he really had on his mind.
Usually Donovan would visit OSS headquarters, which was nearby. Charles Taquey was waiting in Algiers to be sent on a clandestine mission into Sardinia when Donovan arrived at headquarters. “There was a WAC called Mousie,” Taquey said. “Glasses, cute little nose. She was elected to be Bill Donovan’s secretary in Algiers. Donovan demanded that she bring him all the reports, all the telegrams that had been dispatched or received at the outpost since his previous visit. She obliged. Donovan studied each dispatch and then remarked to Mousie, ‘Now I’m going to scare everybody.’” He did exactly that, and OSS Algiers redoubled its efforts.
William Rader, the San Francisco photographer who had opened an OSS photo laboratory in Algiers to process film smuggled out of enemy-held country, remembered several such visits. “Bill Donovan was a dangerous man to know,” he observed. “If he really liked you, he’d pay you the compliment of having you dropped into Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, northern Italy, southern France, or someplace else like that.”
One of the men at OSS Algiers whom Donovan took a fancy to was Stuart Hughes, grandson of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and the scholarly director of R&A’s field base in North Africa.
“Since Hughes was doing brilliant work for R&A,” Rader said, “Donovan conceived that he would do even more brilliant work behind the lines in northern Italy, even though he could scarcely speak ten words of Italian.”
Hughes was nonplussed. Swept up as he might be in the whirlwind of Donovan’s sense of mission, he was at the same time unable to see how he could function successfully in enemy country.
“We hid Hughes in my photo laboratory until Donovan had left for Cairo,” recounted Rader. “I’m confident we saved his life. Donovan found somebody else he liked enough to drop into Italy.”
As the British and American armies fought Rommel’s troops for Tunisia, OSS agents cooperated with the British SOE to penetrate German lines for tactical intelligence. In Tunisia the OSS discovered that because they were allies of the French, they did not have the friendly collaboration of the Arabs they had previously enjoyed. Now they were perceived as too close to the colonial masters of North Africa. Some OSS agents resorted to a hostage system to obtain necessary intelligence about the Germans.
“We found that when we entered a distant village where loyalty was wavering,” reported an agent, “we would take the eldest son of the most important man and hold him pending his father’s arrival. The old man inevitably came with gifts, demanding his son. He was sent back to get good information of enemy positions, and when he came the second time his son was released if the information was satisfactory. This use of hostages was our chief source of intelligence aside from the work of our own patrols.”
Rommel’s Afrika Korps had fallen back onto the Tunisian peninsula with Montgomery’s British Eighth Army in pursuit. The British First Army joined the attack on the German positions from the west, but the Germans were able to repulse the combined attacks because they had been reinforced from Italy and were in very strong positions. When the U.S. Second Corps attempted to join the action, Rommel’s counteroffensive in February resulted in a major American defeat at Kasserine Pass. It appeared in the spring of 1943 that it would be a good number of months before the Germans could be routed from Tunisia.
“Meantime, U.S. forces had captured documentary material from the Germans in Africa,” said Whitney Shepardson, a top Donovan aide. “G-2 immediately took charge and sent the material to London where they came to conclusion that they lacked language competence. Transported all of it in boxes to OSS, top floor of Grosvenor St. headquarters. There R&A appraised it, and to their amazement, came upon entire plans for interior defense of position Rommel was holding. Transferred this to G-2 and Rommel’s position was taken.”
By May 6 the city of Tunis fell to the British, followed the next day by Bizerta. Hitler gave orders that his troops should fight until the last. They did continue firing until their positions were overrun, although toward the end most of the soldiers deliberately fired into the air in a bizarre attempt to appease the victors. Ironically, the last Axis troops to surrender to the Allies were Italian. Organized resistance ended on May 13, while in Washington Roosevelt and Churchill were meeting in a conference code-named Trident to plan for the invasion of Italy and to decide what to do about the situation in the Balkans.
When Donovan went to Algiers, more often than not he continued on to Cairo, where, as Sterling Hayden remarked, OSS was situated in a villa that seemed a “bastard version of the Taj Mahal.” Broad verandas overlooked a shady lawn surrounded by a high wall. A formidable wrought-iron gate kept out unwanted visitors. Within the building, houseboys padded about ready to bring a cooling drink or a snack. In almost any place in the world where OSS had an outpost, it could be counted on to be the most comfortable and luxurious quarters available.
Donovan’s arrivals in Cairo were just as traumatic for the staff as were his appearances in Algiers. “I was at work in the message center, and finally got a message deciphered,” remembered a cryptographer. “It announced that 109 [Donovan’s code name] was due to arrive at four that afternoon and expected to be met at the airport. I glanced at my watch and saw that the General’s plane had already landed. I locked up the message center and was
taking the message up to the station chief when who should I encounter on the steps but 109 himself. He had beat the message to Cairo.”
Adolph Schmidt had opened the Cairo post, from which he exercised responsibility for the east coast all the way to Mozambique, where Leopold Wertz, German vice-consul in Lourenço Marques, operated an espionage ring extending into South Africa. OSS Cairo was also concerned with operations in the Middle East and the Balkans.
Donovan found much to occupy him in Cairo. He kept an eye on how Reza Shah in Iran was plotting to turn his country into a Nazi satrapy and on the intrigues of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on his friend Hitler’s behalf. He consulted with his Cairo chiefs on what might be done for Allied pilots shot down in attacks on Romanian oil fields at Ploesti and what the latest intelligence from the Greek underground portended. Greek resistance was divided. On one hand Napoleon Zervas, bearded and patriarchal, led the republican and monarchist force. The combined democratic and communist guerrillas were dominated by the Reds, following much the same pattern as was being demonstrated by Tito in Yugoslavia and by Enver Hoxha in Albania. There were nationalistic slogans to broaden the base of support, but all the key positions went to trusted communist lieutenants.
Agent Stallion in Syria, who had set up a net of 60 subagents, could always be counted upon to provide some nuggets of useful information about the continuing collaboration of the Vichy French and the Germans in Syria. It was Stallion who first informed Donovan that the French were refueling Italian submarines operating in the eastern Mediterranean.
Yugoslavia was one of Donovan’s headaches during the spring of 1943. At a conference in Washington in 1942, Donovan and King Peter had discussed sending U.S. supplies to Yugoslavs who were fighting the Germans. Constantine Fotić, the Yugoslav ambassador, was pressing Roosevelt for delivery.
“The Yugoslav Minister is most anxious (a) that we get forty tons of concentrated food now in Cairo delivered (I suppose by air to Yugoslavia) and (b) that we establish definite liaison with Mihajlović,” Roosevelt wrote to Donovan on May 10. “I understand British contacts are in effect and that they have ten officers in Yugoslavia. We should not cross wires with them but the Ambassador thinks it would be good if we could get one officer into Serbia.”
The next day Donovan replied,
On May 4, 1943, our representative in Cairo cabled that (a) the distribution of food has definitely been planned and will be carried out when arrangements are completed with the Theater; (b) that the Theater Commander has been requested to requisition approximately 284 tons of dehydrated food, at present in the possession of OSS, in this country. We can have the food as soon as this requisition has been approved.
Two OSS representatives left yesterday for Cairo by air, one of whom is to establish liaison with General Mihajlović in Serbia, and the other to be attached to the Partisans. Each of these men is fully trained in Intelligence and Subversive activities, is a qualified radio operator, and has the necessary language qualifications.
The two OSS men Donovan had sent to Cairo were George Musulin and George Wuchinich, Americans of Serbian descent. With their foreign backgrounds, they represented the kind of Americans Donovan felt could be most effective in Occupied Europe.
The food in question was packed in special containers, each holding ten packages of five pounds each, and wrapped in Yugoslav colors. A message from Franklin Roosevelt in Serbian in each package greeted Mihajlović and his Chetniks, wishing them luck and concluding with recipes for preparing the food. The concentrated food was shipped to Egypt to be dropped to Mihajlović just as Donovan had said it would be, but the Chetniks were fated never to try the recipes provided by the President of the United States. People on Malta were near starvation, and British authorities in Cairo sidetracked the food intended for the Yugoslavs and sent it to the beleaguered island. What the Maltese thought of the supplies, wrapped in Yugoslav colors with instructions in Serbian, is unrecorded. What the Chetniks thought of not receiving the provisions they desperately needed is mercifully unrecorded as well.
Donovan always found his visits to Cairo stimulating, not only because of the intrigues his people were carrying on there but because a blond girl of exceptional beauty vied with a redhead of comparable good looks for his off-hour attention.
Gerhard Van Arkel remembered a visit that Donovan made to Algiers on his way back from Cairo. “We’d taken a villa,” Van Arkel said. “The French landlord had ripped out tiles, light bulbs, and the plumbing except for two sinks in the bathroom. We gave Donovan a bedroom opposite mine. In the morning I went into the bathroom to shave and Donovan was shaving at the other sink. A ship had recently exploded in the harbor and smashed all our windows, and a cold wind was blowing through the room. Our furniture was a shambles, we were eating C rations, and the rain had almost washed me out of bed during the night.”
“How was Cairo?” Van Arkel asked 109.
“Just like here,” he huffed. “Too damned much luxury.” Coming from the sybaritic Donovan, the response miffed Van Arkel.
There were other OSS posts in Africa for Donovan to visit from time to time. At Dakar in French West Africa, two OSS officers were working in close liaison with the French Deuxieme Bureau, checking on subversive activities along the coast to the south. From Accra, other agents were presumably checking on Axis diamond smuggling.
Adolph Schmidt was the OSS man given the task of looking into the smuggling. “When I left for Accra, I was told I’d have secret instructions awaiting me there,” said Schmidt. “The Congo was a source of uranium, and Donovan had heard that it was being diverted to Europe. Were the Germans working on an atom bomb?”
At Accra Schmidt learned he was to proceed to Leopoldville (Kinshasa) under cover of trying to look for diamonds being sent secretly to Germany. Actually he was to search for evidence of uranium smuggling. Schmidt was not to tell the Belgians, who controlled the Congo, of his mission.
“In Leopoldville I discovered that industrial diamonds were going overland to Addis Ababa from where the Italians were sending them on to Germany,” said Schmidt, “but I found no evidence of the diversion of uranium to Germany.” Other OSS agents discovered that diamonds were being mailed to the Germans by disloyal Belgians in what appeared to be Red Cross parcels.
On February 17, 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent President Roosevelt the nomination of William Donovan to the grade of brigadier general. It was added that “it will be necessary to issue an order by direction of the President that he is to continue as Director of the OSS, inasmuch as there are new officers in the Planning Group of the OSS who will be senior to him.”
Roosevelt acted on the nomination, and Donovan the civilian became Brigadier General Donovan. OSS staffer Arthur Robinson recalled the first time he saw Donovan in uniform.
The Director had a regular staff meeting in the mornings for all department heads. It had been quite informal, with attendees coming early, getting a cup of coffee, and sitting on the big table, in lounge chairs, etc., and chatting until the Director arrived to open the meeting. On the first day the General was in uniform, it was business as usual. When he arrived and went to the head of the conference table, the others finished their conversations and took their time taking their seats. He thereupon chewed them out for not coming to attention when their Commanding General entered the room, told them not to let it happen again. The others were shocked, of course, and sat silently.
John Ford had been making a night of it. He walked into the silent meeting. Dark glasses hid his bloodshot eyes. He took a seat.
“Commander, if you can see well enough, we can get started!” barked Donovan.
“General,” replied Ford, “I can see one thing; you’ve got a ribbon for the Congressional Medal of Honor on the wrong place on your uniform.”
The tension was broken. Everybody laughed, including Donovan, and the OSS got back to work as usual despite the fact that the director was now a brigadier general. From then on Donovan wore his full uniform, w
hich he had tailored at Brooks Brothers, whenever he went to meet with the JCS.
“Even though he was the most decorated U.S. officer in World War I,” recalls John Beaudouin, “he wore on his uniform coat only the Medal of Honor. The officers he was confronting in the Joint Chiefs were covered from collarbone to breastbone with ‘fruit salad’—except for the Medal of Honor.”
Shortly after he went into uniform, Donovan summoned Walter Langer to Washington for a conference. They talked about routine affairs.
“What do you make of Hitler?” Donovan suddenly asked. “You were over there and saw him and his outfit operating. You must have some idea about what is going on.”
Donovan then elaborated on his own impressions of Hitler, which he had first gained 20 years before in a Bavarian village Weinstube. Remembered Langer:
I had to confess that although I had given the subject some serious thought on various occasions, the psychology of Hitler and his hold on the German people were still a complete mystery to me. He assured me that I was not alone in this respect, and I gathered from the subsequent conversation that there was a wide divergence of opinion among our top policy makers concerning Hitler and his relationship to the German people. It was the General’s view that we should have something more reliable to guide us than what the German propaganda machine and foreign correspondents were feeding us.
“What we need,” the General said, “is a realistic appraisal of the German situation. If Hitler is running the show, what kind of a person is he? . . . What is he like with his associates? What is his background? And most of all, we want to know as much as possible about his psychological make-up—the things that make him tick. In addition, we ought to know what he might do if things begin to go against him. Do you suppose you could come up with something along these lines?” . . .
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