The midnight reception that Donovan threw at his Beekman Place apartment for New York’s glitterati made the society columns. Poets, politicians, business tycoons, and the wives of the powerful gathered around the pianist entertaining them and enjoyed lobster Newburg at the candlelit buffet. Patricia served as Donovan’s hostess in Ruth’s absence. As the black-tie party got into full swing, the beautiful and glamorous Becky Hamilton made her entrance, sweeping down the circular staircase into the living room wearing a stunning off-the-shoulder black gown with swirling inserts of lace.
A Wellesley graduate and now an editor at Harper’s Bazaar, Rebecca Stickney Hamilton had married Pierpont Morgan Hamilton, a nephew of J. P. Morgan, in 1930. She had a reputation for being “a little bit fast and a touch cheap,” recalled Mary Bancroft, who as a young teenager had swooned when Donovan marched by her with his regiment during the Fifth Avenue parade after the World War and who now was a close friend of Becky’s. “She wore red suits and she was one of the first girls I knew to use a certain kind of matching red lipstick,” a clear sign of the times that she would play around. Mary also found that “there was really something tough and calculating about Becky for all her good looks and cheerful charm.” Becky, Mary thought, used people and no one more so than Mary, who helped arrange her trysts.
By 1939, Becky’s marriage to Pierpont was headed for the rocks and she was having a steamy love affair with Donovan. When Donovan was in Europe the two would meet in Switzerland. Becky would use the excuse that she was visiting Mary, who was living there with her husband, Swiss financier Jean Rufenacht. After one rendezvous Mary set up for the lovebirds, Becky had sent her a black lace nightgown as a thank-you gift, which the jealous Rufenacht was sure had come from a man. He threw it into the furnace.
Becky had fallen madly in love with the manly Donovan. At one point she wanted him to divorce Ruth and marry her. With Becky’s driving ambition and Donovan’s star power, she was convinced she could put him in the White House. Donovan, who had fallen hard for Becky as well, realized that would never happen if he divorced and remarried. By the end of the 1930s the two lovers had drifted apart.
Ruth learned of the affair. This time, she had a serious talk with Donovan about whether they should divorce. Donovan, who was over Becky, did not want one. And in the end neither did Ruth. She was from the old school; when you married you were supposed to stay married and put up with all the problems. Marriage was as sacred as a business contract and you do not break a contract.
Chapter 6
War Clouds
DONOVAN BROUGHT THE rifle to his right eye and squinted through its sight to take a bead on the ram some seven hundred yards away. He exhaled softly, then gently squeezed off a round. The Indian guide crouched next to him peered through his binoculars and confirmed a likely kill. It was a triumphant end to an adventurous expedition Donovan had taken with Sears, Roebuck chairman General Robert E. Wood and two other business executives into Canada’s Yukon Territory. For three glorious weeks the four men had ridden horseback (with attendants leading a long mule train of supplies behind them) through the Yukon’s rugged mountains with their snow-capped peaks, cliffs serrated by glaciers, winding icy rivers, and gusty winds blowing siltlike dust through canyons. By day they had hunted Dall sheep, moose, and grizzly bear. Donovan had already bagged another ram at three hundred yards and a nine-foot grizzly. At night cooks prepared feasts of fresh lake trout, roasted wild duck, lamb cutlets, hot fluffy biscuits, ears of corn, and cole slaw, topped off with lemon pie, glasses of Scotch, and cigars.
Near midnight, the exhausted men sat in a tent at a card table playing their last round of bridge (Donovan usually lost and owed money). Early the next morning they would begin the four-day ride by horseback to a landing field, where a plane would take them back to civilization. An Indian guide opened the tent flap, pulled an envelope out of his pocket, and handed it to Wood. The cable inside was dated September 1, 1939, from Juneau, Alaska. “Warfare started today between Poland and Germany,” it read. That Friday morning, September 1, German planes and tanks employing novel blitzkrieg tactics had stormed across the border and quickly overrun poorly prepared Polish forces.
Donovan and the other three had been in a news blackout the past three weeks, but around campfires they had discussed often the territory Hitler had been grabbing in Europe. His rearmed army had reoccupied the Rhineland in March 1936. In March 1938 he had marched German troops into Austria for the Anschluss. He annexed the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia six months later and six months after that his tanks rolled into Prague. England and France, which had done little more than protest up to that point, finally threatened military action if Germany conquered any more small states. Donovan and the three others, nevertheless, were startled by the cable that lay before them on the card table. Up to that point, Donovan had felt that Hitler was Europe’s problem, that the United States should remain neutral and on its side of the Atlantic. But with England and France declaring war on Germany—which they did that day, September 3—Donovan knew it would be only a matter of time before America intervened.
Europe and the threat of war had been engaging more of Donovan’s time and travel. His secretary always kept in his office a bag packed with his passport so he could take off on just twenty minutes notice, which Donovan did often in the 1930s. He took Pan American Airways’ first transatlantic flight to Marseilles by its giant Dixie Clipper seaplane, dining on turtle soup, steaks, and ice cream and receiving a silver cigarette case to commemorate the maiden trip. Before he boarded the plane, however, Donovan had a rigger come to Beekman Place to show him how to use a parachute. During his European and Asian trips he studied rearmament among future belligerents, becoming part of an informal network of American businessmen and lawyers who closely tracked and collected intelligence on foreign affairs. Donovan, recalled a friend, also was “not happy if there is a war on the face of the earth, and he has not had a look at it.”
One such foray occurred in November 1935 as he tended to legal work, which included a boring coal mine lawsuit and a more interesting dispute a client had with retired actress Mary Pickford. Donovan was eager for a break to tour the Ethiopian front. Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, had invaded Ethiopia the month before with grand visions of restoring the Roman Empire. Donovan’s law partners were not enthusiastic about the trip. But he aggressively lobbied Italy’s ambassador to Washington, arguing that he wanted to tour the war zone as a Republican representative, so if the GOP beat Roosevelt in 1936 his party “would be accurately advised” on the Abyssinian conflict. Mussolini agreed to meet Donovan, not completely buying his line that he was a party envoy but believing the Italians could milk some propaganda from the trip. Douglas MacArthur, now Army chief of staff, thought the excursion had some value, as long as his old friend paid his own way (which Donovan was more than willing to do, drawing from the law firm till). MacArthur’s Military Intelligence Service had been unable to get its spies to the Italian front and had a long list of questions for Donovan to answer.
The day after Christmas, an elderly usher in a black Prince Albert coat opened the doors to a large ballroom with high ceilings in Rome’s Venetian Palace. At the furthest end sat Mussolini at a plain table, a lamp on it lit, not looking up from papers he was reading. Donovan made the long walk toward him, the clicking of his heels on the marble floor echoing in the huge chamber.
Il Duce finally glanced up as Donovan neared the desk. His chin jutting out, his dark eyes bulging from his shaved head, the dictator rose from his table. He strutted around it to greet the American, pointed to a seat, then returned to his own chair.
“You were in France during the war?” asked Mussolini, who spoke English.
“Yes,” Donovan replied.
“For how long?”
“Nineteen months”
“Wounded?” Mussolini asked, lifting his eyebrows.
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
�
�Three times.”
Mussolini seemed impressed. “What is your impression of Italy?” he asked.
“Tranquil,” Donovan said simply, with a smile.
“Oh, yes,” the dictator agreed, “it is quiet.”
“Unity of spirit,” Donovan added, trying to slather on the charm.
“Yes! Yes!” Mussolini agreed, becoming somewhat excited.
But “of the spirit of the soldier I cannot tell,” Donovan hedged.
“Oh, you will see that,” Il Duce assured him. Donovan now knew he would be allowed into Ethiopia. He had not been completely sure up to that point.
Donovan wanted to see Mussolini’s forces in action now, he told the dictator, “because I did not think much of your troops in the World War—neither the discipline of the men nor the quality of the officers.”
“It is different now and you will see a vast change,” Mussolini said, eyes blazing.
“If Italy is to have a new empire she must have a new Tenth Legion,” Donovan said, knowing that would push his hot button. On the voyage over he had read this would-be Caesar’s autobiography.
“That is right!” Mussolini said, almost shouting.
The dictator probed Donovan on American public opinion toward Italy and its invasion of Ethiopia. He also picked Donovan’s brain about the political climate in the United States, inquiring whether he thought Roosevelt would be reelected.
“I cannot tell,” Donovan answered. “The next few months will decide.”
“Mr. Roosevelt is popular?”
“Yes.”
“With whom.”
“The left of labor, the left of the farmers, and the great mass of those who want something for nothing.”
“And recovery now comes to you by reason of the New Deal policies?”
“In spite of them,” Donovan gave him the partisan Republican answer.
“Oh!” Mussolini said, rising from his chair, laughing and repeating: “In spite of them.”
The dictator approved clearances for Donovan to inspect Italian forces in Ethiopia. “We are not afraid to have an impartial observer,” Il Duce insisted.
Donovan toured Ethiopia for two weeks inspecting front lines, arms depots, artillery positions, motor pools, field hospitals, and airfields. He interviewed hundreds of Italian officers up and down the chain of command, spent hours with Marshal Pietro Badoglio, whom he had already met during one of the general’s visits to the United States and who was now busy trying to drive back a Christmas counteroffensive by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. Donovan wrote detailed reports on everything he saw and heard, concluding that the Italian army was “vastly improved” from the World War with superior equipment and soldiers who would easily conquer Ethiopia.
British defense officials who read Donovan’s report thought he exaggerated Italian military prowess. The War Department, however, was delighted with his intelligence. (Donovan also managed to work in a little business on the side, hooking up Italian diplomats with American businessmen who still wanted to invest in Italy.) His prediction of an Italian victory proved to be the case. In fact, Donovan seemed almost too effusive in his forecast, praising Badoglio’s generalship to reporters and sending him a gushy private note congratulating him on his “great victory”—which took the marshal five months to achieve with Italian planes dropping poison gas on the helpless Ethiopians. But more importantly, Donovan was establishing himself as a player in international affairs—and honing his skills as an intelligence gatherer overseas.
FBI agents, who tracked the Ethiopian venture, sent J. Edgar Hoover regular reports on Donovan’s overseas travel, which by 1939 had been extensive, particularly to Germany. Hoover suspected that Donovan, who often went to Berlin representing clients, was collaborating with the Nazis. Donovan, who signed a petition in 1933 protesting German government dismissals of Jewish judges, was actually trying to protect clients, such as Rothschild bankers in Austria, from the Nazis.
Donovan also developed a network of German informants, such as Berlin lawyer Paul Leverkühn, who slipped him political intelligence and set up meetings with key German officers. One important appointment Leverkühn arranged on a Berlin trip Donovan made shortly before his Yukon expedition was with Walter Warlimont, a handsome and energetic colonel on the German General Staff who would eventually become a top Wehrmacht general. The two men spent hours in a Berlin apartment, with Warlimont talking freely about Hitler’s strategic aims in Italy and the Balkans. Donovan quietly listened.
NEAR THE END of January 1940, Donovan sat in a New York radio studio with actor Pat O’Brien plugging the Warner Brothers release of The Fighting 69th, an overdramatized movie about the regiment in the World War. Donovan loved Irish star George Brent, who played him in the film. O’Brien played Father Duffy, who had died in 1932. The release of The Fighting 69th had made Donovan once more a national celebrity, whom FDR was becoming more interested in using for his own political purposes.
Donovan had been a persistent critic of Roosevelt’s first term in office, accusing him in speeches before GOP faithful of being an undemocratic, destructive, big-spending liberal. His New Deal was a “racketeering attempt” to create prosperity, which unfairly soaked the rich with more taxes, threatened family values, and bordered on being communistic. But by the beginning of 1940, Roosevelt was quietly moving the country to a war footing and fighting isolationists who denounced him as a warmonger. He realized that the New York Republican who had savaged him on domestic issues the past eight years could now be his ally. Heavily influenced by his European travels, Donovan by 1936 had begun publicly branding Hitler, Mussolini, and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as Europe’s axis of evil and warned that “this is not time” for America to shrink from its obligations as a world power. He stopped short, as Roosevelt did, of advocating U.S. military intervention in Europe. Before Hitler invaded Poland he still privately advised clients not to bet on war. But he called for a military buildup and by 1940 backed a draft not only for young men but also for older ones like him, who he thought were smarter and still had fight left in them.
FDR and Donovan began to warm to each other; they were two canny politicians who were beginning to see an opening for a common cause. Donovan began exchanging notes with the president on his observations from trips abroad and on foreign policy initiatives, such as the private Polish relief fund he now headed with the help of actress Greta Garbo. The two men came from divergent backgrounds and disagreed on domestic policy—Donovan thought the differences far more profound than Roosevelt did—yet they had a lot in common. Both were energetic and supremely confident of America’s potential power, both had charisma and insatiable intellectual curiosity, both were enigmatic and played people off one another, both had courageously overcome tremendous obstacles (Roosevelt over polio and Donovan on the battlefield). Each also respected the other’s political skills. Donovan sensed he was dealing with a powerful man in FDR. Roosevelt, who thought Herbert Hoover had cheated Donovan on the cabinet appointment, believed that if Donovan had been a Democrat he might well have been sitting in the White House.
After Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt began to consider forming a coalition cabinet for the bipartisan support he would need if the country must go to war. He began to sound out Colonel Frank Knox, the Republican publisher of the Chicago Daily News and an internationalist like Donovan, for the navy secretary’s job. Knox, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 1936, was interested but wanted company; he urged FDR to consider his “very dear friend” Bill Donovan for secretary of war. Having two prominent Republicans controlling all the armed forces of a Democratic administration might be more bipartisanship than either party could bear, Roosevelt worried. Others in FDR’s inner circle, such as Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, were cool to the idea. Donovan’s name was still being floated for high office in a future Republican administration. The last thing FDR aides wanted was their cabinet becoming a farm team for the GOP’s stars.
“Let us let the whole matt
er stand as it is for a while,” Roosevelt finally wrote Knox as 1939 came to a close. This would be a tricky political move. He wanted more time to think about bringing in the Chicago publisher and any other Republicans.
A HEAVY RAINSTORM pounded the East Coast on Monday afternoon, April 8, 1940, as Donovan’s daughter drove her convertible north on Route 1, hardly able to see much ahead of her even with the windshield wipers on. Patricia had been visiting a friend at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and was returning to Washington. She had transferred from Wellesley to George Washington University in the District and planned to graduate from there in two months.
Thirty-five miles south of Fredericksburg, Virginia, her car hydroplaned on a patch of water. It spun around twice and slammed into a tree on the side of the road, throwing the driver’s door open and hurling Patricia fourteen feet away. An ambulance evacuated her to a nearby hospital. She was unconscious with a crushed shoulder and hip and massive internal injuries. Mary and David rushed from Chapel Hill to the hospital and found her still clinging to life.
Rain pelted the windows of Donovan’s Wall Street office Monday afternoon when a phone rang in the hallway. A doctor at the hospital had called the firm’s Washington office with the news of Patricia’s accident. Thomas McFadden, one of the lawyers there, relayed the report to Donovan that his daughter was in a coma. He nearly collapsed with fear.
The rainstorm made it impossible to fly south so Donovan took the train to Washington and then a car to Fredericksburg. But he was too late. Patricia died at 6 p.m. that day. Even worse, Ruth was somewhere in the Pacific aboard the Yankee. Donovan succeeded in reaching her on the boat by shortwave radio, but it would take Ruth more than three agonizing weeks just to reach Hawaii. Roosevelt had been informed of the tragedy and had overseas embassies help arrange her voyage back.
Wild Bill Donovan Page 7
