Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  The various G-2s embellished on the supposed threat, possibly because they had little else to do by this stage of the war. Seventh Army G-2, for example, suspected the creation in the redoubt of “an elite force, predominately ss and mountain troops, of between 200,000 and 300,000 men.” Already supplies were arriving in the area at the rate of “three to five very long trains each week.… A new type of gun has been reported observed on many of these trains.…” There were hints of an underground aircraft factory “capable of producing Messerschmitts.”32

  It all seemed to make sense, if only because the Bavarian Alps were the best natural defensive area the Germans could find, and there they could combine the fighting forces from Germany and Italy, perhaps even draw in some from the Eastern front. General Strong ordered reconnaissance missions flown over the Alps, but the results were confusing. The Germans seemed to be installing extensive bunkers, and there was a definite increase in antiaircraft protection. It did seem likely that the fanatical Nazis would make a last-ditch stand somewhere, and there was no better place to make it.

  As General Strong commented to Bedell Smith, “The redoubt may not be there, but we have to take steps to prevent it being there.” Smith agreed. He said in his opinion there was “every reason to believe that the Nazis intend to make their last stand among the crags.”33

  All the rumors, the fragments of real evidence, and the genuine fears among the Allies that they would have to kill every last Nazi before the war would be over fed the March 11 SHAEF intelligence analysis: “Theoretically within this fortress, defended both by nature and the most efficient secret weapons yet invented, the powers that have hitherto guided Germany will survive to organize her resurrection. The area is, by the very nature of the terrain, practically impenetrable. The evidence indicates that considerable numbers of ss and specially chosen units are being systematically withdrawn to Austria … and that some of the most important ministries and personalities of the Nazi regime are already established in the Redoubt area.”

  At this point, Strong seems to have been carried away with his own verbiage. “Here armaments will be manufactured in bombproof factories, food and equipment will be stored in vast underground caverns and a specially selected corps of young men will be trained in guerrilla warfare, so that a whole underground army can be fitted and directed to liberate Germany from the occupying

  Insofar as there never was a redoubt (although SHAEF G-2 did have a map pinpointing German defensive positions in the area, as reported by OSS), never any German plan to move troops into the region (although because of the pressure from their enemies they did tend to drift in that direction), Strong’s report of March 11 must rank as one of the worst intelligence summaries of the war. He himself blamed Allen Dulles. In his memoirs, Strong wrote, “There was a period when Allen Dulles was responsible for passing a good deal of information directly to the Americans under Eisenhower—especially information concerned with the so-called ‘National Redoubt’ in Germany; if I had not taken steps to counter some of the less reliable information about this ‘Redoubt’ it could have had a considerable effect on Eisenhower’s strategy.”35

  It has, however, often been charged that Dulles’ flight of fancy about the redoubt did actually induce Eisenhower to change his strategy, specifically to leave Berlin to the Russians while he moved Patton’s and Bradley’s troops south toward the redoubt in the last weeks of the war. This charge immediately gets tied up in the broader issues of whether the Allies should have and could have taken Berlin before the Russians got there, controversies that will go on as long as people are interested in World War II. Suffice it to say here that whether Ike was right or wrong, his reasons for avoiding Berlin had little to do with imaginative intelligence rumors; he stayed away from the capital for what seemed to him—and to this writer—to have been solid military, diplomatic, and political reasons.

  ON MAY 8, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally. The final intelligence report of the war, issued that day, read, “For the first time in eleven months there is no contact with the enemy. The victory which was won on Omaha and Utah Beaches reached its climax. Today belongs to the men of this Army who fought and conquered the enemy from Normandy to the Elbe. There is no enemy situation to report for there is no longer an enemy to defeat.”36

  INTERLUDE 1945-53

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Eisenhower Between SHAEF and the Presidency

  EARLY SPRING, 1952. Ike has to decide whether or not to run for the presidency. He believes it is improper for a soldier to enter politics, but he does not want to shirk his duty, and he does believe his country faces grave threats.

  FROM JANUARY OF 1942 UNTIL MAY OF 1945, Dwight Eisenhower was one of the dozen or so most powerful men in the world. From January of 1953 until January of 1961, he was the most powerful man in the world. In the interlude, from 1945 to 1953, Ike was not a decision-maker nor in a position to create policy. He was, however, near the center of power, first as Army Chief of Staff (November ’45 to February ’48), then as President of Columbia University (’48 to ’51), where he added the New York financial and industrial elite to his list of friends, a list that already included many of the top government and military officials around the world, and finally as the first supreme commander of the NATO forces (’51 to ’52). In retrospect, although not planned that way, the interlude was a perfect preparation for the presidency, a sort of finishing school at the highest level.

  Although he frequently expressed a heartfelt desire for a quiet retirement, the truth was that Ike was much too vibrant, too passionate, too concerned to simply retire, even when in 1950 he reached sixty years of age.

  He worked a brutal schedule. As Chief of Staff, he was constantly testifying before congressional committees, attending ceremonial functions, meeting with the Joint Chiefs, going on inspection tours, putting in long days in his office and putting off politicians who wanted him to run for the presidency. At Columbia, where he had hoped to get some rest in the supposedly calm atmosphere of ivy-covered walls, he found he was working almost as hard as he had in 1944.

  Mentally, he was reaching toward a peak. He had a breadth of experience, with his knowledge of foreign leaders matched in America only by George C. Marshall, and in the world only by Churchill, de Gaulle, and Stalin. He had been to the Kremlin after the war, where he met with Stalin and all the top Russians. He had an intimate association with Churchill (who was voted out of power in 1945, but went back to Number 10 Downing Street in 1951). He had de Gaulle’s respect, admiration, and—best of all—friendship. He knew the map of Western Europe as well as that of central Kansas; he had lived in the Philippines for four years before the war; he had journeyed through much of Asia. He was familiar with Central America, too, having served in Panama for three years in the 1920s.

  He knew the United States Government, perhaps as well as any man living. First of all, he knew the White House and its operating procedures. Never personally close to either FDR or Harry Truman, Ike nevertheless spent more than enough time with each President to have a genuine insider’s perspective and understanding of how the presidency worked. Second, he knew the armed forces and their ways of doing things, their capabilities and limitations, their personnel, their prejudices, and their traditions.

  He also knew Congress and its peculiar ways of operating, so frustrating to outsiders. Ike knew about Congress as a result of having served MacArthur, in the thirties, as the Army’s chief liaison officer with Congress. Further, his brother Milton was the number two man in the Department of Agriculture during the New Deal, and he shared his experiences with Ike four or five nights a week. Being at the center of one of the New Deal’s most active agencies, and being a sharp observer of the congressional scene, Milton was able to give his brother a priceless education merely by recounting his day. Finally, as Army Chief of Staff after the war, Ike had his own experiences with the inner workings of Congress. For all these reasons he also knew the federal bureaucracy and its standard opera
ting procedures.

  Another asset was his firsthand knowledge of clandestine operations, of what they could and could not accomplish, how to set them up, how to control them, how to direct these covert actions so that they reinforced policy, how to tie them into a broader program of national action. He was up to date, too, on the state of the art in electronic intelligence gathering, air reconnaissance, cameras, and other devices used in scientific spying. He knew the British Secret Service’s operation almost as well as Churchill or Menzies. He knew the right questions to ask of the spies, and how to ask them.

  A further source of Eisenhower’s strength was his tremendous popularity with the American people. His big grin, his open manner with reporters, his obvious sincerity, his speaking ability (he was a big hit with small groups of influential men, as well as with large audiences; many Britishers, including Churchill, rated Ike’s 1945 Guildhall speech as one of the best they had ever heard), and his image as the leader of the crusade against Hitler all combined to make him trustworthy. Montgomery put it best: Ike, Monty said, “has but to smile at you, and you trust him at once.”1 Even those who never met or saw the man felt that way, believed that they could trust Ike.

  Crusade in Europe, his war memoir published in 1948, added to his stature, prestige, and popularity. Often described as the second-best set of memoirs from an American professional soldier—pride of place goes to Ulysses Grant—Ike’s book was an immediate best seller. It was Ike at his best—his common sense, his ability to communicate with different types at different levels, his decisiveness, his leadership capability, his outstanding generalship, his openness to new ideas, new techniques, new methods, all came through in nearly every chapter.

  Small wonder, then, that both the Democrats and the Republicans were anxious to nominate him for the presidency in 1948. He turned them both down, partly because he thought he had done enough for his country, mainly because of Pershing’s example after World War I. Pershing was one of Ike’s few heroes, and he agreed with Pershing that soldiers ought not involve themselves in politics.

  But, like most men, Ike was susceptible to flattery. Republicans began to tell him that if he did not run in 1952, as a Republican, it would be the end of the two-party system in America. It was, they said, his duty to his country to run.

  The key word was “duty.” The Republicans recognized, early on, that Ike, like George Marshall, could not resist that word (Truman had twice persuaded Marshall to give up his retirement by citing his “duty”). One of the Republicans to approach Eisenhower was the defeated 1948 candidate, Thomas Dewey. On July 7, 1949, Ike recorded in his diary, “Gov. Dewey visited me yesterday. He stayed at my house for 2 hours. He says he’s worried about the country’s future—and that I am the only one who can do anything about it.

  “The Gov. says that I am a public possession—that such standing as I have in the affection or respect of our citizenry is likewise public property. All of this, therefore, must be carefully guarded to use in the service of all the people.

  “(Although I’m merely repeating someone else’s exposition, the mere writing of such things almost makes me dive under the table.)”2

  On November 3, 1949, Ike again turned to his diary: “A message sent me by a very strong manufacturing association (not the N.A.M.) was to the effect that I had soon to let them know that, in the event of nomination, I’d be ‘willing.’ The argument was that this gang was ready to spend five million dollars—and they weren’t going to do that if there was any later chance of my declining. So I told the man to say ‘Nuts.’ In fact the thing smacks of the same ineptitude that has characterized a lot of American business leadership over the past 40 years.

  “I am not, now or in the future, going willingly into politics. If ever I do so it will be as the result of a series of circumstances that crush all my arguments—that there appears to me to be such compelling reasons to enter the political field that refusal to do so would always thereafter mean to me that I’d failed to do my duty.”3

  Like most great men, Ike was both self-assured and dynamic. He had no doubts of his ability to do the job and in fact to do it better than anyone he could think of as an alternative. His great energy required an outlet. Already a world figure, the truth was, whatever his protests, he needed a world stage to fully express himself, to exercise his abilities, to satisfy his intense and never-ending curiosity. He needed to lead his nation through perilous times. In 1952, he agreed to serve.

  THAT THE TIMES WERE PERILOUS, that they demanded the best the nation could offer, he had no doubt. The menace of Stalin and the Communists was as grave to Ike as that of Hitler a decade earlier. In some ways it was greater. The Nazis had a limited ideological appeal outside Germany, while the Communists could and did appeal to entire classes of people in France, Italy, Germany, and throughout the world. The Nazis had been forced to buy their spies, and even then could not trust them, while the Communists could and did receive invaluable information—the best being how to set off an atomic bomb—from out of the blue, a gift from true believers who managed to convince themselves that giving Stalin military secrets would speed the coming of the inevitable socialist utopia.

  In post-Vietnam America it became fashionable on some college campuses to sneer at Ike and his contemporaries for their seemingly excessive fear of Stalin and obsessive anti-communism. That generation of American leaders, however, felt—like Churchill in the thirties—that they were warning against dangers that were terribly clear to them but which their countrymen seemed determined to ignore. The evidence that Stalin did pose a threat to all the world, including the United States, seemed to them to be beyond dispute.

  The facts spoke for themselves—Poland, East Germany, Rumania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Albania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, and China, all taken over by the Communists in the first half decade following Hitler’s death. In every instance Communist dictatorships suppressed precisely those freedoms Ike and his comrades in arms had fought to defend—freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of economic enterprise, and of personal movement. In the process, Stalin brought all these countries (except for China, Albania, and Yugoslavia) under his direct control, thereby adding enormously to the military potential of the Soviet Union. Thus by the early fifties, as Eisenhower and his friends saw it, Stalin had clearly demonstrated that he had the will to conquer, the ideology with which to do so, and the military strength to make world conquest conceivable.

  With the single exception of World War II, the United States, after her wars, has indulged in splendid isolationism. The immediate postwar generation—in 1784, in 1816, in 1900, and in 1920—has turned away from active involvement in the world, relying on the oceans for the nation’s defense. That did not happen after the Second World War. The isolationists were still there, to be sure, led by Senator Robert Taft. Ike’s fear that Taft would be the Republican nominee if he himself did not run was the major factor in convincing him that his duty required him to enter politics. For the Americans to withdraw from Europe and Asia would have been to abandon those ancient civilizations to communism; Ike felt he had to do what he could to prevent such a catastrophe.

  New weaponry magnified the Communist threat. World War II had brought great leaps forward in the arsenal of destruction and made America, for the first time, vulnerable to an attack launched from Europe. Most terrifying of all, of course, was the atomic bomb, which the Russians acquired in 1949. From that moment on, the Cold War was fought under the shadow of the mushroom-shaped cloud.

  If the bomb highlighted the threat, so did the method by which the Soviets acquired it. The United States and Great Britain had made a stupendous effort to build the first atomic weapons, an effort that involved billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of man-hours of their best scientists, and a huge industrial commitment. The Russians, thanks to their spies, who were for the most part motivated by ideology, were able to avoid much of that effort. If the Russians could so easily penetrate the top-secret M
anhattan Project, it appeared that no scientific breakthrough would be safe for long.* The Russians had a worldwide network of spies, much the largest in history.

  There were many obvious reasons to fear the Russians, not the least of which was the Red Army in Eastern Europe. Capable of mobilizing hundreds of divisions along the Elbe River, the dividing line in Germany between East and West, the Red Army could—according to estimates by the U. S. Army G-2—overrun all of Western Europe in two weeks. That was an exaggeration, Ike thought—he wrote on the margin of this 1948 estimate, “I don’t believe it. My God, we needed two months just to overrun Sicily”5—but the general point was certainly valid.

  Most frightening was what seemed most likely, a surprise attack. Pearl Harbor had burned itself into the minds of every American leader of the day. To a man they were determined that it would never happen again. A Russian-launched “Pearl Harbor” would involve a ground offensive by the Red Army in Europe and/or an atomic assault on the United States, and unlike the original Pearl Harbor, it would almost surely be decisive, at least in Europe. The Red Army, once entrenched in France, would be almost impossible to dislodge.

  Ike’s perception of these threats was keener than that of most leaders, partly because it was his business, mainly because he knew better than anyone else how close World War II had been.