Spies and saboteurs : Anglo-American collaboration and rivalry in human intelligence collection and special operations, 1940-1945

American, and French. Reading this book will give some idea of the success of their association, and the difficulties which had to be overcome in building the groups under the conditions of occupation. For the secret services herein recorded, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) was long-term, professional, with a great record of past success. SOE was created from the 'D-Section' of SIS and the military research section of the War Office Intelligence section (MIR). This took place in July 1940, for the short term, as it turned out. It was designated 'Executive' not 'Service,' implying, as in the Civil Service, subordination to Higher Authority. Its members were recruited from employments in which they had shown aptitude and gained experience, to meet many challenges ahead. All were anxious to return to their normal employment once the survival of Britain and the Commonwealth was assured, and after helping -with our allies -in the liberation of the occupied countries from the Axis powers. Never was heard any suggestion that SOE should continue thereafter, or that they sought employment therein. SIS regarded SOE at the outset with some apprehension as being 'amateurish'. A similar view was held, together with SOE, of the newborn American organizations, Coordinator of Intelligence (COl) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), in 1941 and 1942 respectively. SIS thus had duties which stretched beyond the war's end, whereas SOE knew that their tasks would be short -Ii ved. On the other hand, the American Services were being created and led by General Bill Donovan, with his vast and varied experience, who foresaw the place of the United States in the future world order. He therefore urged the need for a permanent organization, combining intelligence and action, befitting its economic strength and political stature. In the years between the wars the world had been split into many authoritarian groups of Left and Right. The Left, Communists and various Socialists; the Right, Fascists, broadly representing the status quo, and capitalists. The Right had been strengthened on the Continent by the knowledge of the bloodstained Russian revolution, and episodes like Bela Kun in Hungary. The result was more anti-Communists than anti-Fascists in Europe before and after 1939. Another factor was the weakness of the Democracies in the later 1930s. They had estimated that there could not be another European war without ten years warning. Then Germany had rearmed with unexpected swiftness, under an obvious aggressor. All others wished to avoid a repeat of the slaughter of 1914/1918. They admired President Teddy Roosevelt's dictum 'Speak softly, but carry a big stick.' They spoke softly -appeasement -but pursued disarmament, not a big stick. Yet again there had been a seismic change in conflict. Until 1918, wars had been fought between armies, leaving out the civilian populations. The 'Troubles' in Ireland and Russia after 1917, and later conflicts in China, Ethiopia, and Spain, had shown that there could well be resistance against outside occupation, in which the new facilities -air transport and wireless radio -could playa vital role. Against this background, it was difficult for us to understand the account of the American opposition to Donovan's first plans to help Britain. These resulted in protection XIV Foreword Italy. From the last was given air support to Poland and Central Europe, and to much of the Balkans, both of which groups were at first out of the AFHQ area. All this gave wide experience of SOE/OSS cooperation. Two episodes in this phase mentioned by Dr J akub show Allied misunderstandings, or differing judgements, but not antagonism. First, OSS' s Louis Huot, whose controversial Balkan operation from Italy is discussed in Chapter 5. Following the Italian Armistice, an Allied base for special operations was set up in Brindisi. The local situation was fluid. Seventy thousand Allied prisoners of war were freed in Italy. The Adriatic was wide open, until weeks later the Germans closed the eastern side. War stores were being brought by sea from the Polish base in Tunisia. Little prevision was allowed, to safeguard the security of the Allied landing at Salerno. We were faced with the problem of forwarding military stores to the all too willing recipients in Yugoslavia; local ships were available. From 'On High' arrived Louis Huot, with the magic of real American dollars. Gerry Holdsworth, an SOE sailor in charge of the Brindisi base, set Louis to work, to carry the first load, which he did bravely, adding President Franklin Roosevelt's compliments, and was sent for from Cairo to report to OSS. He did not return. Four decades later I heard when in the United States that Huot was still trying to justify his action, which I offered to help, having encouraged him in a splendid operation to supply Tito' s Partisans. It seems that such crossing of the Area lines (supplying Yugoslavia from Italy) had not been agreed with Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Had this been known, Huot could have been described as an officer from the joint SOE/OSS headquarters in Algiers, and omitted the President's compliments. The second episode had longer term effects -the support for Draza Mihailovic and the Chetniks in Yugoslavia. In 1940, SOE had agreed with the nationalist Yugoslav leader in Belgrade, General Dusan Simovic, to 'leave behind' the then Colonel Mihailovic in the event of occupation by the Germans. This occurred in 1941. The usual instructions were to keep the powder dry, to carry out sabotage, etc., without attracting reprisals, until support was needed for the approach of liberating armies. This Mihailovic did, with varying success in controlling disparate elements in a divided country, until the appearance of Tito after the Soviet Union was attacked. Thereafter began differences of opinion by the admittedly ill informed decision-takers in Cairo, about whether -while agreeing on the policy of supporting Tito -support should be withdrawn from Mihailovic on the grounds that he was not active enough. The decision was finally taken to withdraw support and the British officers assigned to help the Chetniks, despite Mihailovic' s representatives in Italy saying that, now that the Allies were winning the war, the enemy of his country was Communism, against which he needed any support he could get (a view shared by the West within four years). In 1940 the only groups left with clandestine organizations had been the Poles and the Communists. So, as spontaneous resistance to Nazi occupation everywhere increased, most groups had a Communist element in control, with clear postwar aims. Policy had been to support groups regardless of this; under Allied Foreword xv military authorities who were bound to regard the Communists as part of their Soviet ally. It was possible in most countries, as the war progressed, to balance pro-Communist groups with anti-Communists. Thus in Greece a handful of British officers were able to hold a bridgehead for Democracy. Under General Donovan's guidance, such an attempt was made in Yugoslavia after the withdrawal of British aid to Mihailovic. It will be for future historians, drawing on the evidence put up by Dr J akub' s book, to decide the merits of these differing judgements. Near the end of military operations in the Mediterranean in October 1944, Colonel Hewitt from our Bari headquarters estimated that at the peak of special operations, clandestine and paramilitary groups -working from bases at Algiers, Corsica, Naples, and Bari -totalled 2700 individuals of all ranks. Among these numbered a large Air Force contingent commanded by a Major General, an Air Marshal, and numerous Brigadiers, with men and women from a score of nationalities, supplying a dozen countries, from France to Poland to Greece. These 2700 were responsible for directing up to a million men and women, ready to march before or when liberating armies approached. It was quite an organization. Few could have been able, or wished, to tell who had contributed most to this international coalition for the Free Society. But all would have paid tribute to General Donovan and our General Gubbins for their original vision and unremitting application to turn visions into reality. Similar tributes would have been paid by all who served in General Koenig's EMFFI headquarters, supporting the Normandy landings, and in the Special Operations Center for the southern assault on France. Also by the integrated groups such as the Jedburghs, the Pathfinders and the Sussex intelligence successes, and by the British SAS and the OSS Operational Groups who often linked regular with irregular action. In East Asia, cooperation was not so marked; starting from different bases, often independent, with different 'imperial' aims, political and economic, for victory and after. Comparatively little was accomplished before the atomic bomb brought an end to the anti-Axis series of hostilities. But some actions added to the later contests in 'Indo-China'. For Ho Chi Minh, after being put into North Vietnam by OSS for anti-Japanese action, was directed later against the French. When the French were also expelled, Ho turned against the American crusade against Communism. This conflict was only to cease three decades after VJ-Day. The independence of India was probably little affected by differences of Allied opinions. But other failures to agree may have had some adverse effect in Burma and Thailand. Less than a decade later, I was to find General Donovan in Thailand, and happy to try to work with him in the nascent rise of the drug menace from the region. Before leaving London in November 1942, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Dick Law, the Canadian-born son of the Prime Minister Bonar Law, told me in friendly advice: 'Try to involve the Americans in all our responsibilities, but try to retain control.' I took this to be in line with Churchill's speaking at the end of the Second World War of the 'changing of the guard' , to defend the Free Society which Britain by its own lights had sought to do for past centuries. XVI ## Foreword With the anticipated changes from Empire to Commonwealth, and the subsequent reduction in the power of the United Kingdom, these two realized that such defence must pass to the only power -unwilling though at times it might seem -able and with the same outlook to take on the task. In his generation, Donovan did as much as any other, long-term, to hasten the transfer of these responsibilities. Much of the explanation for this claim lies in the pages of this excellent exposition of Donovan's many achievements by Dr Jay Jakub. ## Preface My observation that there has been an emphasis on quantity over quality in most intelligence writing produced between the war and the appearance of the OSS records, however, should not in any way be construed as an indictment of the historical record, nor does it detract from those works that have filled important gaps in our knowledge. There are indeed very useful secondary resources and personal accounts available, and these works stand out precisely because of the mass of their considerably less useful counterparts. Michael Foot's SOE in France, for example, is now thirty years old, yet remains essential for assessing British special operations across the English Channel. Sir Harry Hinsley's officially-sanctioned account of British intelligence during the war -published in five volumes beginning almost two decades ago -is also both useful and contextual although, like Foot, Hinsley's team did not address OSS in any detail. Former CIA officer Thomas Troy's recent reprint of his formerly classified paper on the early ties between Donovan and William Stephenson is also helpful, but covers a narrow period and much of the research was completed some 25 or more years ago. Troy's 1981 book, Donovan and the CIA, remains perhaps the most important resource on what was happening to Donovan's organization in Washington during the war -particularly regarding bureaucratic infightingbut was never intended to be a book about Anglo-OSS affairs, although some aspects of the relationship are discussed. Bradley Smith's 1983 book, The Shadow Warriors, and R. Harris Smith's 1972 book, OSS, both examine the evolution of OSS in a broad and useful way, but were written before most of the OSS operational records were publicly available and focus more on how Donovan's wartime organization evolved into CIA than on how it worked with its British counterparts. Spies and Saboteurs is the story of the origins of the Anglo-American 'Special Relationship' in human intelligence collection and special operations, which took place amidst the global conflagration that was the Second World War. It is the story of William 'Wild Bill' Donovan - the father of America's Central Intelligence Agency - and of his relationship with legendary British spymasters like William Stephenson, code named 'Intrepid', Stewart Menzies ('C'), chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, Admiral John Godfrey, the powerful and enigmatic director of Naval Intelligence, and General Colin Gubbins, Britain's master saboteur. Relying almost exclusively upon recently declassified OSS and British intelligence documents and survivor interviews, it examines the transatlantic association in espionage and sabotage, guerrilla warfare and disinformation. It explores the evolution of covert relations from a 'tutorial' arrangement with the U.S. as pupil, to an unequal then full partnership, and ultimately to competition and rivalry in the prosecution of the clandestine war.
Spies and Saboteurs is the story of the origins of the Anglo-American "Special Relationship" in human intelligence collection and special operations, which took place amid the global conflagration that was the Second World War. It is the story of William "Wild Bill" Donovan--the father of America's Central Intelligence Agency--and of his relationship with legendary British spymasters. Relying almost exclusively upon recently declassified OSS and British intelligence documents and survivor interviews, it examines the transatlantic association in espionage and sabotage, guerilla warfare and disinformation. It explores the evolution of covert relations from a "tutorial" arrangement with the US as pupil, to an unequal then full partnership, and ultimately to competition and rivalry in the prosecution of the clandestine war.
Front Matter....Pages i-xxix Planting the Seeds: ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan’s Two European Missions, 1940–41, and their Impact on Anglo-American Intelligence Cooperation....Pages 1-21 An Unequal Partnership: The Coordinator of Information and British Mentoring, 1941–42....Pages 22-47 Trial by Fire: London and the Proving Grounds of North Africa and Burma, 1942–43....Pages 48-92 Coming of Age: London, Norway, and the Jedburgh-Sussex Negotiations, 1943....Pages 93-109 The Yugoslav Morass: A Case Study in Anglo-OSS Divergence, 1942–4....Pages 110-145 The Liberation of France: A Case Study in Anglo-OSS Convergence, 1943–44....Pages 146-184 Key Findings....Pages 185-197 Back Matter....Pages 198-280