During the interwar years, as "part of an informal network of American businessmen and lawyers who closely tracked and collected intelligence on foreign affairs," Donovan traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, "establishing himself as a player in international affairs – and honing his skills as an intelligence gatherer overseas." He met with such foreign leaders as
Benito Mussolini, with whom he discussed World War I, the expansionist ideology of
Italian Fascism, and Roosevelt's prospects for re-election in 1936. Mussolini granted Donovan permission to visit the Italian front in
Ethiopia, where he found
Italy's military much improved since the war and predicted an Italian victory. Donovan also made connections with leading figures in
Nazi Germany. He was no friend of the dictators, publicly assailing
Hitler, Mussolini, and
Stalin as
totalitarians and taking steps to protect his Jewish clients in Europe from the
Nazis. Donovan openly believed during this time that a second major European war was inevitable. His foreign experience and realism earned him the friendship of President Roosevelt, notwithstanding their extreme differences in domestic policy and despite the fact that Donovan, during the 1932 election campaign, had harshly criticized Roosevelt's record as Governor of New York. The two men were from opposing political parties, but were similar in personality. Roosevelt respected Donovan's experience, felt that Hoover had done Donovan wrong on the Attorney General appointment, and believed that if Donovan had been a Democrat he could have been elected president. Also, Donovan's national profile had risen considerably thanks to the 1940
Warner Brothers film
The Fighting 69th, in which
Pat O'Brien played Father Duffy and
George Brent played Donovan, and Roosevelt recognized a useful opportunity to exploit Donovan's newfound popularity. As the two men began exchanging notes about developments abroad, Roosevelt recognized that Donovan could be an important ally and adviser. Roosevelt came to place great value on Donovan's insight. Following Germany's and the
USSR's invasions of Poland in September 1939 and the start of
World War II in Europe, President Roosevelt began to put the United States on a war footing. This was a crisis of the sort that Donovan had predicted, and he sought out a responsible place in the wartime infrastructure. On the recommendation of Donovan's friend,
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Roosevelt gave him a number of increasingly important assignments. In 1940 and 1941, Donovan traveled as an informal
emissary to Britain, where he was urged by Knox and Roosevelt to gauge Britain's ability to withstand Germany's aggression. During these trips, Donovan met with key officials in the British war effort, including
Winston Churchill and the directors of
Britain's intelligence services. He also had lunch with
King George VI. Donovan and Churchill got along famously, sharing war stories and reciting in unison the nineteenth-century poem "The Cavalier's Song" by
William Motherwell. According to Ellis, quoted in his biography by British-Australian author
Jesse Fink: ‘I was soon requested to draft a blueprint for an American intelligence agency, the equivalent of BSC [British Security Co-ordination] and based on these British wartime improvisations... detailed tables of organisation were disclosed to Washington... among these were the organisational tables that led to the birth of General William Donovan’s OSS.’ Said United States Assistant Secretary of State
Adolf Berle: ‘The really active head of the intelligence section in [William] Donovan’s [OSS] group is [Ellis] . . . in other words, [Stephenson’s] assistant in the British intelligence [sic] is running Donovan’s intelligence service.’"
OSS , and Colonel
William H. Jackson in April 1945 On July 11, 1941, Roosevelt signed an order naming Donovan
Coordinator of Information (COI). "At the time," Thomas wrote, "the U.S. government had no formal spy agency. In 1929, the Secretary of State,
Henry L. Stimson, had abolished the highly effective
Black Chamber, a code-breaking organization left over from World War I." In Stimson's view, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
Postwar plans As World War II began to wind to a close in early 1945, Donovan began to focus on preserving the OSS beyond the end of the war. A February 19 article in the
Washington Times-Herald revealed his plans for a postwar intelligence agency and published a secret memo he had sent to Roosevelt proposing its creation. The article compared the proposed agency to the Gestapo. Knowing that Americans wanted a smaller federal government after the war, Roosevelt was not entirely sold on Donovan's proposal, although Donovan felt reasonably confident he could talk the president into the idea. Hoover disapproved of Donovan's plan, which he saw as a direct threat to FBI authority, even though Donovan had stressed that his agency would operate only abroad, not domestically. After Roosevelt's death in April, however, Donovan's political position was substantially weakened. Although he argued forcefully for the OSS's retention, he found himself opposed by the new president, Harry S. Truman. While the OSS got "glowing reviews" from many wartime commanders, notably Eisenhower, who described its contributions as "vital", critics dismissed it as "an arm of British intelligence" and, like the Times-Herald reporter, painted dark pictures of it as an American Gestapo in the making.
Nuremberg trials While British authorities and the US military and State Department were relatively indifferent to the question of trying war criminals after the war, Donovan was lobbying Roosevelt as early as October 1943 to arrange for such prosecutions. Roosevelt tasked Donovan with looking into the legalities and technicalities, and in the months that followed Donovan collected testimonies about war criminals and related information from a wide range of sources. In addition to seeking justice, Donovan wanted to exact retribution for the torture and killing of OSS agents. When Truman named Supreme Court Justice
Robert H. Jackson to serve as chief U.S. counsel in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Jackson, discovering that the OSS was the only agency that had seriously explored the issue, invited Donovan to join his trial staff. On May 17, 1945, Donovan flew to Europe to prepare for the prosecutions, and eventually brought 172 OSS officers onto Jackson's team, interviewing
Auschwitz survivors, tracking down SS and Gestapo documents, and uncovering other evidence. Donovan, whose idea it was to hold the trials in
Nuremberg, also introduced Jackson to useful foreign officials and even released OSS funds to bankroll the prosecution effort. Eventually, Jackson, who had been a political rival of Donovan's in New York State, considered him a "godsend"; in return for Donovan's help, but also because the OSS had proven "vital for the prosecution team," Jackson lobbied Truman in person to approve of Donovan's plans for a permanent postwar intelligence agency. The effort was unsuccessful, however. On September 20, 1945, Truman signed an executive order abolishing the OSS. As was only revealed 60 years later, Donovan succeeded in getting the Americans to block the Soviet attempt to add the
Katyn massacre to the list of German war crimes. He had been convinced by the German opponent of Hitler,
Fabian von Schlabrendorff, unofficially included on his staff, that it was not the Germans but the Soviet secret service
NKVD that had murdered some 4,000 Polish officers in the
Katyn forest. But shortly afterwards Donovan came into conflict with Jackson. In Nuremberg, Donovan interrogated many prisoners, including
Hermann Göring, whom he spoke with ten times. But eventually Donovan fell out with Jackson. The latter wanted to indict the entire German High Command, not just men who had personally ordered or committed war crimes; Donovan considered this a violation of American principles of fairness. Donovan, a former prosecutor, also criticized Jackson's lack of skill and experience at putting together a strong case and at courtroom examination and cross-examination. Jackson removed him from the team, and Donovan returned to the U.S., where in January 1946 Truman presented him with the
Distinguished Service Medal.
CIA In 1946, Donovan resumed the practice of law and began writing a history of American intelligence since the
Revolutionary War – a book he never completed. He traveled extensively in Europe and Asia and ran unsuccessfully for the
Republican nomination for the US Senate. He also became chairman of the newly founded
American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), which worked to counter the new Communist threat to Europe (→
Cold War) by promoting
European political unity. The vice-chairman was Dulles, and
Walter Bedell Smith sat on the board as well. The ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organization in the immediate postwar years. (In 1958, the ACUE provided 53.5% of the movement's funds.) In addition, the ACUE provided all of the funding for the
European Youth Campaign, in which
Joseph Retinger,
Robert Schuman, and
Paul-Henri Spaak were involved. Meanwhile, Truman moved forward with plans for a new intelligence agency, finally giving approval in 1946 for a watered-down interdepartmental "Central Intelligence Group." Donovan warned that it would be ineffectual – he compared it to a "debating society" – and he soon proved to be right. As the Cold War quickly intensified, Truman recognized the need for a far stronger intelligence service, and in February 1947 asked Congress to approve plans for a Central Intelligence Agency along the lines Donovan had proposed. Donovan himself lobbied Congress privately to pass the enabling legislation, the
National Security Act of 1947. After returning to the U.S., he resumed his law practice and registered as a lobbyist for the Thai government. Eisenhower made him chairman of the
People to People Foundation, a group that arranged international citizen exchanges. Eisenhower believed that Americans acting through person-to-person communications in foreign countries would "make the truth of our peaceful goals and of our respect for the rights of others known to more people overseas." Donovan also worked with the
International Rescue Committee, co-founded
American Friends of Vietnam, and in 1956 raised a large sum of money for Hungarians who fled their country after the
Soviet Ground Forces had
crushed the Hungarian Revolution. ==Death and legacy==