Donovan

by Richard Dunlop

  Donovan certainly did not look at it that way. To him MacArthur was a monumental ego who insisted upon “keeping everything in his theater under his thumb.” He had attempted to win favor with MacArthur at the time of his Bataan stand by stating in a national radio address, “General MacArthur—a symbol for our nation—outnumbered, outgunned—with the seas around him and the skies above controlled by the enemy—fighting for freedom.” On April 26, 1943, he had sent Lt. Comdr. William McGovern to brief Vice-Adm. William Halsey, commander of the U.S. naval forces in the South Pacific, and persuade him to adopt Donovan’s way of thinking.

  “Donovan wanted to send OSS teams into the Philippines to organize resistance much as we were already organizing the resistance in Burma,” said McGovern. “There were other parts of the South Pacific where the OSS was ready and able to play a major role in the defeat of the Japanese, but neither Halsey nor MacArthur would listen. MacArthur never was willing to forget that Donovan was the only American soldier who emerged from the World War I fighting in France with more medals and fame than he did.”

  On July 11, 1941, President Roosevelt established the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), making Donovan its chief. When the COI was transformed into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942, Donovan continued as America’s wartime intelligence master.

  (National Archives)

  Perched on the corner of his desk, the OSS director confers with top aides. Behind the men is the map that Donovan studied as he pondered reports from the field.

  (Coburn Allen Buxton)

  The limestone and brick buildings at 25th and E streets that served as COI/OSS headquarters after August 1941.

  Donovan and OSS men and women share a moment of relaxation at OSS headquarters in China.

  (Howard Lyon)

  The walled-in OSS compound near Kunming, China, was a world away from Washington, but it was in daily communication with the capital.

  (Howard Lyon)

  The St. Regis Hotel in New York, where Donovan kept a suite during the war. William Stephenson and William Donovan, the two great Allied spymasters, celebrated VE day together in Donovan’s St. Regis apartment.

  (Sheraton Corporation)

  This wartime photograph shows Donovan as the charismatic leader that most former OSS personnel remember. Donovan dispatched his agents on extraordinary missions all over the world as if he were merely sending them on errands. To him, said one OSS staff member, “the Sahara Desert was a little stretch of sand, the Himalayas were a bank of snow, the Pacific was a mere ditch.”

  (U.S. Army Photograph)

  Donovan never lost his taste for field experience and frequently dropped in at OSS bases around the world to see for himself how things were going.

  Ray Peers, commander of OSS Detachment 101 (beside Donovan in jeep), meets his chief at a landing strip in Assam, India.

  (Lt. Gen. W. R. Peers/101 Association)

  On one of his busiest trips, late in 1943, Donovan (shown above talking with jungle priest Father James Stuart) traveled behind enemy lines in Burma to meet Kachin resistance leaders; then flew to Chungking to confront the duplicitous spymaster Tai Li; and went to Moscow to talk to NKVD chiefs.

  (101 Association)

  At Kunming, Donovan visits a parachute riggers’ loft to see the chutes upon which an agent’s life might depend.

  (Howard Lyon)

  Lord Louis Mountbatten, supreme allied commander for Southeast Asia, confers with Dr. Cora DuBois, chief of Research and Analysis for Detachment 404, and Col. John Coughlin, 404’s commander.

  (Byron Martin)

  Knowing in the summer of 1945 that the United States had the means at hand to end the war with Japan, Donovan journeyed to Hsian in North China to consult OSS agents and Nationalist Chinese leaders about possible Soviet and Chinese Communist moves when Japan was defeated.

  (Elizabeth Heppner McIntosh)

  In Hsian, Donovan assembles a knot of OSS officers to talk over the potential problems of postwar Asia.

  (Elizabeth Heppner McIntosh)

  Donovan reviewed guerrilla fighters in China. One Washington officer who accompanied him objected to the OSS director’s unmilitary appearance.

  (Howard Lyon)

  Donovan and Allen Dulles (right) end a conference in Berlin shortly before the Nuremberg trials commence.

  (Bernard Gelman)

  Robert Sherwood towers over Donovan, Ned Buxton, and Sir William and Lady Stephenson as in November 1946 “Big Bill” presents “Little Bill” with the Presidential Medal for Merit. President Truman, who was seated just off camera, insisted that Donovan have the honor of making the presentation.

  (Sir William Stephenson)

  On January 11, 1946, President Truman awards Donovan an Oak Leaf Cluster to the Distinguished Service Medal. When asked by the President whom he wanted at the White House ceremony, Donovan said he would prefer to come alone.

  (Lt. Gen. W. R. Peers)

  During the postwar years, Donovan actively supported European unification. Here Donovan, chairman of the American Committee on United Europe, is flanked by Joseph H. Reitinger, secretary-general of the European movement, and Thomas Braden, director of the Committee for United Europe.

  (National Archives)

  OSS man Guy Martin, Gen. George C. Marshall, Donovan, and Walter Lippmann gather at the first George Polk Memorial Award Dinner. In 1948 Donovan investigated the murder of CBS news correspondent George Polk in Greece.

  (Byron Martin)

  The caisson carrying the body of William J. Donovan enters Arlington National Cemetery, where he was buried with full military honors on February 11, 1959.

  (Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society)

  Donovan informed MacArthur of McGovern’s mission, and received a courteous invitation to come and visit the South Pacific himself. On August 27 Donovan wrote to MacArthur, “I was in the Sicilian operations, and I am going back to Europe whatever else may happen. After that is over I am planning to go out to the Far East, and I wanted to let you know that I will then take advantage of your kind offer and stop for a day or two in your theater.

  “I have been doing some work with Mountbatten, and he is really a cooperative fellow. I hope that some time you will see him.”

  At the Quebec Conference in August, Lord Mountbatten was made supreme allied commander for Southeast Asia. FDR and Churchill informed him that his appointment was top secret. Mountbatten went back to his room at the Château Frontenac. “I drew up a chair, sat down, took a blank sheet of paper and began to write down all the things I would have to do,” he told his biographer Richard Hough. “Before I had even finished, there was a knock on the door. It was Bill Donovan, head of the OSS.”

  “Let me be the first to congratulate you on being appointed supreme allied commander, Southeast Asia,” said Donovan.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why do you come barging in here talking complete nonsense?” said Mountbatten. “Anyway, I’m much too young—halfway down the captains’ list.”

  “You can’t fool me,” continued Donovan. “Why do you think we’re here? I’ve got spies everywhere. I know that the PM and the President have offered you the job.”

  “Well, supposing you’re right, why do you come and worry me about it?” Mountbatten asked.

  “Because I want your permission to operate in Southeast Asia.”

  Mountbatten informed Donovan that Stilwell was already there and suggested that Donovan ask Stilwell.

  “That bastard won’t let me operate with him,” complained Donovan. “He’s a prejudiced old son-of-a-bitch. But you’ve been working with SIS and SOE, so you know what we’re all about.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “You bet we’re good.”

  “Then I’m going to test you.” Mountbatten decreed that Donovan must get him two of the best seats for Oklahoma!, the hit musical then playing in New York.

  “Goddamn it, that’s impossible!” exclaimed Dono
van. “There are absolutely no seats for six months. How do you expect me . . . ?”

  “No seats for Oklahoma!, no operations in Southeast Asia.”

  A few days later Donovan met Mountbatten in New York. Donovan had tickets for the best seats in the house and two of the prettiest girls the city had to offer for the evening. After the show, the party went to a nightclub.

  “On the way out, in the foyer, there were a couple of photographers,” recounted Mountbatten. “By this time Bill thought he was in. But I said, ‘If those photographs are published, not only are you out, but I’ll probably be out, too.’”

  In a flash, two men suddenly appeared and hustled off the photographers. Donovan was in.

  Donovan believed that Mountbatten’s gifts for public relations equaled MacArthur’s and that Mountbatten was also a strategist of great talent. It seemed to Donovan that the two commanders of adjoining theaters should work in close collaboration. He intended to visit both MacArthur and Mountbatten at their command posts as soon as possible.

  By the end of August Donovan was back in Algiers, where he set up an office at OSS headquarters. There were only a few days remaining before the Allied forces embarked for the assault on Salerno, and he wanted to make certain that the OSS did its work with the Italian Resistance well. First, he wanted to take advantage of Marshall’s request to Eisenhower that he be given “a chance to do his stuff” in Sardinia and, for good measure, Corsica.

  Donovan and Bill Eddy, then the OSS chief at Algiers, asked an operational group instructor who had just arrived from the States to come and see them in the morning. This was Serge Obolensky-Meledinsky-Meletzky, a Russian prince who, his hyphenated name reduced to a relatively simple Obolensky, had long been a fixture of international café society. Obolensky had been a czarist officer and had been given exacting OSS training. When he strode into the office for the interview, Donovan sized him up shrewdly. Donovan needed a brave man—the mission he had in mind was bound to be dangerous—but he also needed a man accustomed to dealing with people of high station.

  Donovan explained the mission. Within a few days the Allies were going to land at Salerno. On the flank of the movement across the straits were the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, garrisoned by some 270,000 Italian and 19,000 German soldiers. These must be overcome if the invasion were to be successful. An OSS team must jump into Sardinia and deliver a letter from Marshal Badoglio to General Basso, commander of the Italian troops on Sardinia. In the letter General Basso was ordered on behalf of the king to join the Allies and neutralize the Germans on Sardinia. When Donovan had finished explaining the situation, both Eddy and he directed meaningful looks at Obolensky.

  “Do you want me to volunteer?” Obolensky asked.

  “Well—certainly,” replied Donovan.

  “I’d be delighted. When does the mission leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Obolensky asked to pick his team.

  “Yes, you should take two radio operators and an interpreter,” said Donovan. “You’ve got one radio man who came over with you, and we’ll give you another radio operator from here.”

  The OSS team jumped from a British Halifax bomber into a stretch of sand dunes between Cagliari, Sardinia’s largest city, and the highest hill on the island. They avoided German patrols and bluffed both Italian and German officers. General Basso agreed to “abide by the orders of the king.” The Germans fled Sardinia for Corsica. The British Eighth Army made the initial Allied landings on Italy’s toe on September 3, and on September 9 the U.S. Fifth Army hit the beaches at Salerno.

  Donovan sent two OSS teams ashore with the American troops. A British motorboat put one team, code-named MacGregor, on the beach near Paestum. Headed by John Shaheen, his mind still concocting extraordinary stratagems and plots, the team included Marcello Girosi, later to be an Italian motion-picture producer, Henry Ringling North of the Ringling circus family, and most important, Peter Tompkins. The other team, led by Donald Downes, waded ashore with the soldiers. Their assignment was to provide combat intelligence, since the Fifth Army G-2 badly needed OSS assistance. Downes set up headquarters at Amalfi in what had been a monastery, and his 90 agents began to collect valuable information about the German positions.

  The various OSS men went about their business with dispatch. North went from jail to jail liberating political prisoners as the Fascists and Nazis fled. Shaheen tried fruitlessly to reach the Italian Navy’s high command to arrange the surrender of the fleet to the Allies, a task that, ironically enough, had already been accomplished.

  Just across the bay from Naples (which was still occupied in force by the Germans) lay Capri, seemingly untouched by the war when the MacGregor team arrived there. A resort of the wealthy since the Roman Emperor Augustus gave it to his “most pure and beautiful daughter Julia,” Capri seemed as preoccupied with its indolent life as in prewar days. Donovan arrived at OSS headquarters at Amalfi on September 30 and crossed to Capri to see how the MacGregor team was doing.

  “Dressed in a field uniform, his pale blue eyes matching the ribbon of his Congressional Medal of Honor, he looked older than when he had recruited me in Washington the week of Pearl Harbor,” said Tompkins.

  Henry Ringling North explained what the MacGregor team had been doing. “He charged me to requisition Mona Williams’s villa and safeguard it against pillage and plunder as Mona was a dear friend,” remembered North. “With the constant weight of his vital responsibilities in the midst of war, Bill found time for acts of friendship and consideration.” North arrived at the villa just as Count von Bismarck ran out the rear entrance.

  Tompkins undertook to explain to 109 something of the intricacies of Italian politics. He finished by taking him to see Benedetto Croce, whom British SOE officers had rescued from his villa at Sorrento, behind the German lines. The great Italian philosopher and historian had lived in his native Naples throughout the Fascist period and never once let his public opposition to Mussolini’s regime waver nor allowed himself to be intimidated by the Fascists. History to Croce was the creation of the present and not a record of the past. Since it also was the act of thinking, it became a philosophy.

  Croce talked to the young American OSS man and his chief. Long considered a royalist, Croce told Donovan that the king of Italy had been discredited before the Italian people by his cowardice in failing to oppose Mussolini. Donovan asked if Badoglio was popular with the people of Italy.

  “What is being popular?” asked Croce in return. “Who is popular in Italy today? Obviously nobody.

  “The people,” he said, “had been annoyed with Badoglio because once the Fascist regime had been overthrown he had not immediately made peace with the Allies and got rid of the Germans. But the real culprit was the king. I’ve been working very closely with the group in Italy which has been trying to get the king to throw out Mussolini and make peace with the Allies. Even before the Allied landings in North Africa, Badoglio was the man this group had decided to use. But the king was like a Sphinx and could not make up his mind.” Croce proposed that Donovan form a legion of Italian volunteers to fight for Italy, since he was convinced they would never be willing to take up arms on behalf of the king.

  In later years Donovan commented that those few hours on Capri with Benedetto Croce were a landmark in his life. “He seemed so sane in a world that made no sense at all,” Donovan said.

  When Donovan was finished talking with Croce, he boarded a P T boat and crossed to Salerno, where he conferred with Gen. Mark Clark about his findings. Clark listened but, preoccupied with the immediate problems of his command, did not take Croce’s plans for a legion of Italian volunteers seriously. The plan never got beyond OSS circles.

  The next morning the attack on Naples commenced. Five additional OSS teams sailed into the harbor of the city in fishing boats. German shore patrols drove off two of the boats with machine-gun fire, but the other three landed with arms for the underground. The OSS men organized the Resistance and led them in f
orays against the Nazis. Their agents infiltrated through the German lines to bring the Allies reports of conditions in the city. When on October 1 the vanguard of the British and American soldiers entered Naples, the OSS men and their underground friends welcomed them with bottles of Chianti.

  Downes and Tompkins were in the forefront of the Allied entry into Naples. They spotted a four-story palazzo on a back street, ousted the Fascist manufacturer who lived in it, and made it OSS headquarters. On October 13 the Badoglio government declared war on Germany. Donovan, still in Italy directing the OSS operational groups and intelligence net, came to the crumbling palazzo in Naples to talk with Tompkins. Donovan decided to send Tompkins into Rome, where he was to handle partisan and intelligence activities. Above all, Donovan wanted to keep the Italian monarchists, democrats, and communists united against the Germans, not fighting one another. He began to study Italian. When Rome fell to the Allies, Donovan thought it might be advisable to move his own headquarters from Washington to the Italian capital, from where the OSS intelligence offensive into Europe could be masterminded.