Shadow Warriors of World War II Page 4

  Over the next few weeks she made two trips into Burgos with medicines. She also carried a letter addressed to Ambassador Sir Henry Chilton from Franco’s foreign minister, Vizconde de Santa Clara Avedillo. It was an appeal to the British government to recognize Franco. Sir Henry reacted angrily to the letter, as the British government’s sympathies were turning against Franco. He told Betty she was putting her husband’s career in peril. She brushed off the criticism, but when she returned to Burgos with more medical supplies she found she had been denounced to Franco’s military headquarters as a Republican spy.

  Within the space of a few days Betty was accused of being a spy for the Republicans and for Franco. She vehemently denied the accusation of being a spy for anybody and managed to persuade the Nationalist officer sent to arrest her that the person who had denounced her was a wronged woman, and she escaped back over the border to the sanctuary of the British embassy.

  Only Commander Don Gomez-Beare, who would become Britain’s naval attaché in Madrid during World War II, knew that Betty, on visits to Burgos, was being “used as a useful informant . . . to British Naval Intelligence.” She was reporting to Admiralty intelligence on conditions inside Nationalist-held Spain and on her conversations with the many high-ranking Nationalists in her social circles.

  Betty Pack had become a spy. Within months, she would become an official recruit to the Secret Intelligence Service and a secret agent for MI6—a stepping stone to becoming an SOE and OSS spy.

  2

  The Clouds of War

  ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 14, 1941, William Donovan saw the reporters and photographers standing outside the Pan Am seaplane terminal on New York’s waterfront. He slowed his stride and told them it was a business trip, smiling for the cameras. That had always been his way, the more so now that the war in Europe had led to him being engaged on behalf of President Roosevelt.

  Donovan’s colonel uniform had a clasp of brightly colored service ribbons on his chest and shiny silver oak leaf stars on the epaulets. The ribbons included the Distinguished Service Cross, the army’s second-highest decoration, for leading his regiment in action during World War I in France. Beside it was the Medal of Honor, awarded for “performing extra heroism by leading from the front and refusing to be evacuated after wounded.” When he had finally returned to New York on April 21, 1919, surrounded by his men, he was the most highly decorated soldier in American history. Still recovering from his war wounds in the leg, he had led his soldiers in a parade up Fifth Avenue to receive the key of the city from the mayor.

  Now, at the age of fifty-nine, his hair silvered and neatly brushed to one side, his blue eyes as alert as ever, there was a determination on his face to honor the trust President Roosevelt had put in him.

  Walking beside Donovan through the terminal to see him off was Canadian-born William Stephenson, another of the rich and powerful clients of Donovan’s legal firm. A one-time amateur boxer and a Royal Flying Corps pilot in the Great War, Stephenson had become a millionaire entrepreneur first in Canada, trading in bear and seal skins, and then in Europe. In 1939 he had arrived in New York to expand his business. Needing a personal lawyer, he had received a recommendation from an old friend, the champion boxer Gene Tunney, to use Donovan. Sharing a common passion for boxing and other sports, Stephenson and Donovan had quickly become friends and enjoyed weekly martini lunches at the St. Regis Hotel or the 21 Club.

  Donovan had negotiated office space for Stephenson on the thirty-sixth floor of Rockefeller Center in New York. The business was called the British Security Coordination. It was the cover name for MI5 and MI6, Britain’s intelligence services, in the United States. Churchill had put Stephenson in charge of covert operations against German agents trying to sabotage any aid shipped to Britain.

  That Sunday morning while they had brunched at the St. Regis, Stephenson said he had asked Lord Lothian, the British ambassador in Washington, to have his government ensure that Donovan met Churchill to discuss the idea that Britain and the United States should develop intelligence ties.

  In those postwar years in the 1920s, Donovan, by then an established Wall Street lawyer, had been an outspoken critic of Roosevelt, then governor of New York State, accusing him of being a “big spending liberal.” When Roosevelt was elected president, Donovan saw that in foreign affairs he matched his own views about the increasing threat Hitler posed in Europe since coming to power in 1933.

  The lawyer had started to write letters to the president with observations from his own business trips to Europe. Roosevelt wrote back. Soon the exchanges became regular and they began to meet. Their common charisma and intellectual curiosity—one knowing how to use political skills in Washington, the other equally versatile in the legal world—drew them closer, as did their shared concern about Hitler.

  On July 17, 1936, civil war broke out in Spain. General Francisco Franco brought home his legions from Spanish Morocco to oust the government in Madrid. That evening Donovan had dined with Roosevelt at the White House, and they had both agreed that the war clouds over Spain could lead to a wider conflict. Roosevelt had then asked his guest to become his personal envoy to scope out the situation in Europe. Donovan had immediately accepted.

  The next day Donovan asked his secretary, Eloise Randolph Page, a debutante from Charleston, South Carolina, to arrange a standing reservation with Pan Am—seat 5 in first class—which was to be kept free for him on any of its transatlantic flights. His favorite menu should always be available: turtle soup, steak, and ice cream. Tea or coffee was his choice of beverage, and he never smoked and rarely drank alcohol. In his office he started to keep an overnight bag so he’d be able to leave at short notice in case of events developing in Europe.

  On March 7, 1936, Hitler had sent troops marching into the demilitarized left bank of the Rhineland. The soldiers were under orders to withdraw promptly if their presence was challenged by either Britain or France. Neither country had done anything. They were both preoccupied with the war in Ethiopia. Poland had secretly proposed to France that they jointly attack Germany. Paris declined. In London, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden condemned Hitler for repudiating the Treaty of Versailles: “One of the main foundations of the peace of Western Europe has been cut away. If peace is to be secured there is a manifest duty to rebuild.”

  Two years later, Hitler sent German troops into Austria, the Anschluss. Six months later came the annexing of the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia, followed by German tanks rumbling into Prague. On Friday, September 1, 1939, Luftwaffe dive-bombers and the Wehrmacht combined tactics to launch blitzkrieg to invade Poland and overrun its poorly prepared forces. World War II had started.

  On his missions for Roosevelt, Donovan had visited Benito Mussolini in the Italian dictator’s Venetian palace in Rome. He was escorted across a chamber he guessed was twice the size of the Oval Office. Mussolini sat behind a massive desk at the far end. Donovan’s law school—trained eye for detail noted, “He put aside papers he was reading and, chin bulging, dark eyes fixed on me as I approached, he eased himself out of his armchair, nodded his shaved head, welcomed me in English and indicated a chair to one side of his desk where I would sit. Beneath his portrait sat a woman with a notebook open on her knees.”

  Earlier Donovan had received a different welcome from German diplomats in Berlin’s Foreign Ministry when he had asked if it could be arranged for him to meet Adolf Hitler.

  “They looked at me in astonishment and said the Führer was always busy. But if Herr Roosevelt wanted to meet him that could be possible if he came to Berlin. In the meantime it had been arranged for me to tour the city,” Donovan later wrote.

  His guide in Berlin had been Colonel Walter Warlimont, a member of the Wehrmacht General Staff. They had spent an afternoon in his apartment overlooking the Tiergarten. His host had spoken openly about Hitler’s skill in spotting and exploiting the weakness in opponents and how he had consolidated his power by outmaneuvering the conservatives who had though
t with naive arrogance they could control him. He had dealt with them with new laws and mass imprisonment. Hitler had halted the rise of unemployment by introducing conscription and rearmament. Neither Britain, France, nor the United States had objected.

  Mussolini wanted to know whether Donovan had served alongside Italian troops in World War I. What did he think of them? Donovan was blunt. They appeared to lack discipline in the ranks. Mussolini assured him the Italian army had been changed at his orders. Their success in Ethiopia showed that.

  Mussolini had more questions. Was Roosevelt popular? Donovan said he was. If there was another war would America expect Italy to remain neutral? Or would America remain neutral? Donovan said it would depend on what had caused the war. Mussolini laughed, came around the desk, said it was a good answer, and embraced Donovan.

  That evening in the Vatican, Donovan met Francis Cardinal Spellman, the archbishop of New York. After Donovan described his meeting with Mussolini and his visit to Berlin, Spellman said it was time for America not to shrink from its obligation as a world power.

  In his hotel bedroom that night, Spellman’s words became the last ones in Donovan’s report to Roosevelt on his visit to Rome.

  Now, on that Sunday afternoon as he shook hands with Stephenson and boarded the Clipper seaplane flight to London, both men knew Donovan faced a difficult mission. He had told Stephenson the question uppermost in Roosevelt’s mind was that while he hoped Britain would survive, could he be sure? Donovan was to find out if Britain could withstand the Luftwaffe and a cross-Channel invasion—and what help it would need from America.

  As the flying boat headed out over the Atlantic, Donovan knew there was another matter Roosevelt had not yet decided upon. Apart from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States had no real intelligence service like Britain’s SOE. The FBI did little more than wiretap Teamster leaders or suspected Communists. Though the army, navy, and State Department had intelligence gathering units, Donovan had long seen them as dumping grounds for policemen, army officers, and FBI agents waiting to retire. The president had promised he would consider the matter. In the meantime he had suggested Donovan should formulate his proposal on paper for “a spy service” after returning from London.

  In his office in Baker Street, Selwyn Jepson continued to assess the biographical details people had been asked to submit with photographs of places they had been to in Europe. He first divided the letters into piles: those written by men and those by women. He then separated them into those who spoke French and those who spoke other European languages. The French pile was noticeably larger. There was also a pile for those who said they were British-born, were married, and had children. Another pile contained various nationals, including Austrians, Belgians, Dutch, and Americans. Some of the writers were not suitable. Those letters were dismissed.

  The piles were neatly laid out on Jepson’s desk, and every morning he added to them, to select the men and women he would write to. He wanted those whose courage would be as important as their social background. He knew that while bravery would be important, some would be braver than others. The severe test would come if an agent were caught by the Gestapo. Would they be able to hold out for the forty-eight hours which it was calculated would allow enough time for their contacts and comrades to go underground? By the end of that period, Jepson believed an agent would be unable to reveal anything of value after being interrogated and tortured.

  Gubbins had told Jepson every agent must be told about an L-tablet, a cyanide pill, which would be offered at the start of every mission but could be refused on religious or moral grounds.

  Each potential agent received the same letter asking him or her to come for an interview “connected with the war effort.” It was signed Captain “E. Potter,” Jepson’s chosen alias. Men were asked to come to room 505 in Sanctuary Buildings in Great Smith Street, close to Westminster Abbey. Women were called to room 15 in the Victoria Hotel in Northumberland Avenue, near Trafalgar Square. Both buildings had been requisitioned by the War Office, and Jepson had selected the rooms.

  Jepson decided an interview could be spread over two or three sessions. During the first he listened to their stories, checking details on their vetting reports from initial research by MI5 and MI6 into their background. He hinted about them working in France or other countries in occupied Europe, which could be dangerous. Some interviewees, he expected, would volunteer immediately. At the second meeting he explained in detail what it meant to work for the SOE—the danger and possible death. The decision was theirs, but they had to keep it secret from everybody, including their family, and they should think it over carefully before deciding. Several women were married and had young children; Jepson assured them that the children would be safe and there would be regular reports on their progress. Contact with husbands could be maintained through a postbox address they would be given in due course.

  At the last interview they gave him their final decisions and signed the Official Secrets Act. He then arranged for them to go and see Vera Atkins at Orchard Court.

  While Donovan was flying across the Atlantic to England, Stewart Graham Menzies, the head of MI6, sat in his office at 54 Broadway, since 1924 the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS, overlooking St. James’s Park. On that July evening, Britain’s senior intelligence officer was preparing a schedule Churchill had asked him to organize for the three-day visit of President Roosevelt’s envoy.

  The desk behind which Menzies sat was built from the mahogany panels from the cabin of Admiral Lord Nelson’s Victory, and the longcase clock standing in one corner was made by the founder of the service, Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Tradition demanded that both pieces of furniture should remain in the office from one chief to another, each one known as “C.”

  Menzies knew in the backstabbing atmosphere of Whitehall some government ministers saw him as a shadowy figure who exercised undue influence over Churchill, himself always an admirer of intelligence. In the two years since he had accepted the position as the SIS chief, Menzies had survived criticism that his spies had failed to anticipate Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia or more recently to provide an accurate figure for German rearmament.

  Donovan’s visit would be an opportunity to ensure his briefing would leave the envoy in no doubt that Britain was going to fight a merciless war with the help of its empire—and would welcome the support of the United States. Stephenson had sent a coded cable to Menzies after seeing Donovan catch his flight, saying he was certain that not only would Roosevelt authorize “full support for Britain” but that Donovan planned to convince the president that the United States should have an intelligence service modeled on the SOE. It was another item to add to the briefing paper Menzies was preparing.

  It included details from the Air Ministry of aircraft production and, from the Admiralty, the deployment of ships on coastal patrols and hunting U-boats. Government economists and leaders of industry had provided figures of factory output and the Ministry of Food details of agricultural production and fishery catches.

  At the top of the list of people Donovan was to meet were the king and queen for lunch at Buckingham Palace. There would also be a visit to an RAF fighter squadron and the control center for London fire and rescue teams. A day had been set aside to show Donovan how far Britain had already gone to help occupied Europe resist the Nazis. His guide would be Gubbins.

  The visit would conclude with dinner with Churchill. The prime minister had told Menzies he wanted Donovan to fly home with a clear understanding that, after all he had seen, he should convince Roosevelt not only that Britain would defeat Hitler but that it would do so more quickly with American support.

  In Washington, General Friedrich von Boetticher—since 1933, the military attaché at the German embassy—continued to compose his cables to the Auswärtiges Amt, the Foreign Ministry, on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin.

  He had become friends with many American generals, including George S. Patton. These relat
ionships enabled him to observe numerous troop maneuvers, visit important sites, and attend lectures, which gave him a detailed picture of US military capabilities. Since the beginning of the war, Hitler wanted personal reports and precise details of the growth of American arms.

  Boetticher sent his messages every three or four days, filled with information he also culled from the American press or radio broadcasts: Australian troops had arrived in Egypt; a speech in Ottawa by Britain’s air chief marshal Hugh Dowding revealed that RAF fighters had “detectors” to spot Luftwaffe crossing the Channel; American forces would be 1.4 million strong in 1939. The information came from the annual report to Congress on the armed forces and had made headlines a few days earlier.

  It earned him a telegram of thanks from Hitler. Like his führer, the attaché peppered his cables with attacks on American Jews: “They run America within the framework of the Jewish conviction regarding the power of business and money” and “President Roosevelt is the exponent of the Jews.”

  In a follow-up cable the attaché predicted that his sources had indicated “There is no danger of an intervention in the war by the United States.”

  After Donovan settled into his suite in the Savoy, Menzies sent a staff car to bring him to dinner at his home at 21 Queen Anne’s Gate, bordered by the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

  Menzies had furnished the spacious apartment in a style that reflected his family’s status as courtiers for the British throne down the generations. There were paintings and photographs of ancestors whose privileges and power had helped to create the British Empire. On side tables were silver-framed pictures of his own days at Eton and his travels through Africa and Europe. He spoke French and German fluently and had become admired as a horseman, riding with the aristocrats of the Beaufort and Quorn foxhunting packs. In World War I he had served on Sir Douglas Haig’s staff as an intelligence officer at army headquarters. A photograph hung in the entrance hall of him in the days of the war, resplendent in the uniform of a captain in one of the British Army’s most prestigious regiments, the Life Guards, with the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross ribbon he had won at Ypres.