Ike's Spies

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  One SLU wrote, “It is most easy for the Ultra representative to allow himself to become isolated from the mainstream of the intelligence section, so that he loses awareness of what other sources are producing. Another facile error, induced by inertia, is to permit Ultra to become a substitute for analysis and evaluation of other intelligence. The two easy errors, isolation from other sources and the conviction that Ultra will provide all needed intelligence, are indeed the Scylla and Charybdis of the representative. Ultra must be looked on as one of a number of sources; it must not be taken as a neatly packaged replacement for tedious work with other evidence.”24

  Another point Taylor stressed in his final report was that ULTRA’S “normal function was to enable the SLU and his recipients to select the correct information from the huge mass of P/W, agent, reconnaissance, and photographic reports. Ultra was the guide and the censor to conclusions arrived at by means of other intelligence; at the same time the latter was a secure vehicle by which Ultra could be disseminated under cover.”25

  As will be seen, the system Taylor created worked well. Time and again his SLUS were able to get crucial information to their commanders in time for decisive action. Most SLUS had a daily briefing for the general; some held two briefings; all had round-the-clock access to the general if they had an intercept that called for immediate action. It was Anglo-American cooperation at its most highly developed—recall that all decoding and translating was done by British at BP—and as the Germans can testify, it was remarkably effective. As Lewin concludes, “After the Americans first became fully involved in Ultra they entered into an enormous inheritance which they did not squander.”26

  IF THE SLUS WERE THE PICK of America’s young men, Donovan’s OSS agents were supposed to be almost as good. But in Sicily, and then during the invasion of Italy in September 1943, the OSS was of no help to Ike, unless it was to provide some comic relief.

  Colonel Donovan claimed that the OSS had proved itself in North Africa and that it should therefore be given a free hand in Sicily and Italy. He nearly got it, although Ike was able to stop one or two harebrained schemes before they got started. In late June, for example, Donovan wanted to send an OSS team to Sicily for sabotage operations, but when Eisenhower learned of the plan he vetoed it, on the obvious grounds that sending in agents at so late a date would alert German coastal defenses.

  Donovan ran a far more serious risk on D-Day for HUSKY when he went ashore with Patton’s troops to direct the efforts of his ten-man OSS unit for Sicily. How it happened is a mystery, except that Donovan somehow managed to do it without Ike finding out. It was a bit of madness, obviously, for a man who knew all about ULTRA, the atomic bomb, the British Secret Service organization for France, not to mention the OSS secrets, to put himself in a position where he might be captured. Anthony Cave Brown, the British journalist, comments, “This rash behavior on the part of senior OSS officials was one of the root causes of the intense suspicion with which the British secret services were now coming to regard their American comrades-in-arms.”27

  It was probably inevitable that the American Government’s secret agencies, initially the OSS and then the CIA, would find occasion to work in close cooperation with another secret organization that also had nearly unlimited funds, the Mafia. It happened first in 1943 during the Sicilian campaign. Assistant New York District Attorney Murray Gurfein, at that time attached to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), later an OSS colonel in Europe, and eventually a federal judge in New York, made a deal with Mafia chief “Lucky” Luciano. Luciano was in prison for crimes concerning prostitution. The deal was that if the Mafia in Sicily cooperated with the OSS there to provide information, the ONI would get him out of prison. Although no concrete evidence has been produced to indicate that the Mafia turned over intelligence of any value, on the day World War II ended in Europe, ONI sent a petition for executive clemency for Luciano to Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. The petition said Luciano had “cooperated with high military authorities” and had rendered “a definite service to the war effort.” Dewey approved the appeal and Luciano was let out of prison and deported from the United States.28

  As the Mafia connection indicated, the Americans had a tremendous potential advantage in carrying out spying in Italy—millions of Americans were from Italy or second-generation immigrants with close personal ties to the old country. Speaking the language perfectly, knowing the country and its ways thoroughly, the Italian-Americans were ideal agents. Donovan had gone deep into the military to find volunteers; the leader of his Sicily unit was Max Corvo, a U. S. Army private of Sicilian descent. Corvo in turn recruited twelve Sicilian-Americans and two young lawyers to become recruiters and organizers. One OSS man who helped train the larger group remembered them as “tough little boys from New York and Chicago, with a few live hoods mixed in.… Their one desire was to get over to the old country and start throwing knives.” One or two had been recruited directly from the ranks of Murder, Inc., and the Philadelphia “Purple Gang.”29 They did not, unfortunately, meet expectations. Although Corvo’s group did recruit on Sicily, they were unable to find a sufficient number of Sicilians who, in the words of one OSS wit, were willing “to take a shot at their relatives.”30

  OSS had all the problems of a new organization, compounded by the fact that it had more agents and more money to spend than it could use effectively. The result was its own private war, often either at odds with the aims of the real war or a duplication of effort. During the invasion of Italy, OSS agents dashed off on missions without the knowledge or approval of Eisenhower’s headquarters. It was the only time in the war that Ike allowed this to happen—during the Normandy landings nine months later nothing went on that he had not personally approved—and it appears to have been a result of Donovan’s enthusiasm plus FDR’s strong backing of Donovan.

  The absence of communication between OSS and the regular forces was the cause of an absurd mix-up on D-Day at Salerno. A “MacGregor unit” (OSS code name for a sabotage team), consisting of Peter Tompkins, John Shahhen, and Marcello Girosi, commandeered a high-speed British motorboat. They had a wild plot to reach the Italian Naval Command, there to force the Italian admirals to turn their fleet over to the Allies. What they did not know was that the secret surrender negotiations with the Italians, which had been going on for some weeks, had already made arrangements for turning over the fleet, which was indeed sailing at that moment to surrender to the British at Malta.

  Elsewhere the ninety-man OSS detachment for Italy, commanded by Colonel Donald Downes, did some good service. Wading ashore on D-Day, the agents managed to exploit the early confusion in order to infiltrate through enemy lines, make contact with resistance groups, and recruit spies. An occasional piece of helpful information came out of this effort.31

  Before much could be accomplished, however, Donovan came onto the scene to reorganize the unit. He had Downes join him on a typical Donovan expedition—a jaunt to the Isle of Capri, just across the bay from Naples, which was still held by the Germans. On the way over, Donovan told Downes that Colonel Eddy had taken ill and would be replaced in Algiers by a West Point colonel. Another colonel, Ellery Huntington, Jr., a Wall Street lawyer and former Yale quarterback, would take Downes’ place as head of the OSS detachment in Italy. Downes would stay in the country, but only as chief of counterintelligence. Finally, Donovan said that in the future the OSS would have to follow the President’s political line, which in Italy meant that the OSS could work only with or recruit Italians who pledged their loyalty to the King, Victor Emmanuel.

  All this was rather too much for the idealistic Downes, who told Donovan point-blank that he would not serve under Huntington, “a good-natured incompetent” who had been a key fund raiser for Donovan in 1932 when Donovan ran for governor of New York. As to the political directive, he asked Donovan, “How could we betray all the Italian democrats, almost to a man rabidly anti-House of Savoy, by insisting that they swear allegiance to the ridiculous little ki
ng who had saddled them with fascism and thumped for Mussolini until military defeat was inevitable?”

  They arrived at Capri, where a MacGregor team was plotting a new daredevil operation to rescue an Italian scientist from German-occupied Italy. Capri was peaceful. “Elegant ladies in sun suits and big hats strolled about followed by their little dogs and gigolos. The smart hotels were open and at cafe tables the indolent conversation of the idle rich was to be heard.” To Downes’ amazement, Donovan announced that his first objective was to visit the villa of Mona Williams, wife of a prominent New York utilities magnate who had made the second largest contribution to Donovan’s 1932 campaign. Donovan explained that he had promised to protect her magnificent resort home from being “ruined by a lot of British enlisted personnel.” He told Downes to get on it. Downes replied curtly, “I don’t want to fight a war protecting Mrs. Williams’ pleasure dome.” That night, Donovan ordered Downes to get out of Italy and stay out.32

  The contrast between Taylor’s SLUS and Donovan’s OSS could scarcely have been greater. The one was professional, serious, efficient, dedicated, and self-effacing, while the other was amateur, comic, unproductive, and self-serving.

  THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN WAS, for the Allies, the most frustrating of the war. Hopes were high and expenditures of men and equipment were heavy, but results were slim. In August, three weeks before the invasion, ULTRA revealed that Hitler had decided to pull out of southern and central Italy. He wanted Kesselring to bring his divisions north and put them under Rommel, who had taken over command in northern Italy. As this plan seemed to make good strategic sense, and because the Italians were negotiating secretly with Ike’s chief of staff, Bedell Smith, and his G-2, Ken Strong, to pull a double-cross on the Germans, Eisenhower expected a relatively unopposed landing at Salerno. What he got was some of the toughest fighting of the war, and another lesson in the perils of undue reliance on ULTRA.

  It is widely believed that Hitler kept a tight control on the various Wehrmacht battlefields, retaining for himself the right to make not only strategic but also tactical decisions. That may have been generally true on the Russian front, but elsewhere the German generals seem to have been able to use their own judgment and even flaunt Hitler’s direct orders. If it worked, they got away with it. For Kesselring, in Italy, it worked.

  Kesselring did not like Rommel and liked even less the prospect of turning his troops over to Rommel’s command. Further, Kesselring believed that Rome could be successfully defended. He therefore delayed and obstructed the movement of his troops northward, so that when the attack came on September 9 he still had the bulk of his forces south of Rome. Against Hitler’s better judgment and contrary to his orders, Kesselring decided to launch an all-out counterattack against the Allied beachhead at Salerno. ULTRA revealed only a little of Kesselring’s movements, mainly because the Germans had relatively secure telephone lines in Italy and thus did not need to use the radio.33

  ULTRA could provide only an insight into the enemy’s plans, intentions, and capabilities. It could not provide fighting men, tanks, planes, ships, or aggressive generals. At Salerno, Mark Clark had expected a cakewalk. Instead, his troops were under terrific pressure from the Germans in what was one of the most dangerous moments of the entire war for the Allied armies in Europe. An army of two corps, with four divisions, was on the verge of annihilation. Ike received a message from Clark that indicated that Clark was about to put his headquarters on board ship. It made Ike almost frantic. He told Butcher that the headquarters should leave last, that Clark ought to show the spirit of a naval captain and if necessary go down with his ship. Like the Russians at Stalingrad, he should stand and fight.

  Fortunately, Clark stayed, rescued by the Allied naval and air forces. Eisenhower put every bomber in the Mediterranean to work pounding the German forces at Salerno, and brought in the British Navy to bombard the German positions with their big naval guns.34 Meanwhile, Monty’s Eighth Army was coming up from the toe of Italy after an unopposed crossing from Sicily to Italy over the Straits of Messina, a crossing supported by an all-out artillery barrage that was comic-opera stuff. The only casualty was an escaped lion from the Reggio zoo.35 Kesselring reluctantly decided that his attempt to throw the Allies back into the sea had failed, and he signaled Hitler—ULTRA picked it up—that he was withdrawing to a line just north of Naples. Hitler approved—he was much impressed by Kesselring’s resistance to date—and Eisenhower breathed a sigh of relief.

  In the campaign in Italy that followed, ULTRA continued to provide the Allied commanders with high-grade information. Why, then, did the campaign go so badly? The major reason was the Germans themselves, who fought skillfully and fanatically in mountainous terrain ideally suited to their defensive genius. Another factor of considerable importance was that the Allied divisions were being steadily withdrawn from the Mediterranean to go to England to prepare for the 1944 invasion of France. A third factor was incompetent Allied, especially American, generalship.

  Nowhere did this incompetence show more clearly than in the Anzio landings of January 1944. Briefly, the idea was to get an American corps behind Kesselring’s lines in order to cut his communications with Rome and thus force him to retreat to northern Italy. Churchill said he wanted to hurl a wildcat ashore; what he got instead, he later complained, was a stranded whale. The Americans sat at Anzio while the Germans pounded them day after day, week after week. In the end, far from forcing Kesselring to pull back, the troops at Anzio had to be rescued by Allied forces coming up from the south.

  Who was to blame? Mark Clark pointed to ULTRA. He said that his forces would have moved inland on the first day, thus effectively cutting Kesselring’s supply line, but ULTRA information indicated that the Germans were moving major units into the region and that therefore his men had to dig in to await the assault. This claim has made various British writers furious, and rightly so. Lewin shows conclusively that the ULTRA information was absolutely sound, that it did indicate a German buildup against the beachhead, but that it also showed that it would take two or three days for the Germans to get to the scene. Meanwhile, Clark’s men sat and the campaign was lost before it got started.36

  By then, Ike had left the Mediterranean. Roosevelt had selected him to be the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces—one of the most coveted commands in the history of warfare. In England, he would have available to him for the cross-Channel attack the resources of the two great democracies, including thousands of war planes and ships and millions of fighting men.

  By no means the least of the resources under his command were the secret ones, which had been built with such skill and patience by the British (and later the Americans) for the moment when the democracies would hurl their armed might across the Channel. These secret resources included guerrilla forces in France, sabotage units, British and American spies, turned German spies in Britain, ULTRA, and countless deception devices. Success in OVERLORD would depend not only on how well Ike used his ships, planes, and fighting men, but also on how well he managed his secret forces.

  *

  * In an interview in 1979, former SLU Stuyvesant Wainwright II agreed that it was remarkable that the secret was kept so long. He explained, “Don’t forget we all signed the British Secrecy Act. Have you ever seen one? It practically says your testicles will be cut off and you’ll spend the rest of your life in the local clink if you open your mouth, that you would practically disappear in a Stalinist camp in Northern Siberia if anything came out about ULTRA.… It never occurred to me to discsuss it until thirty years later. I never discussed it with my wife. She always wanted to know what I had done and I never told her.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Secret Side of OVERLORD

  JANUARY 15, 1944. Eisenhower’s task is staggering. Forces under his command have to transport 176,000 fighting men, covered by thousands of airplanes, carried in thousands of ships, across the English Channel onto the coast of France in one day, without letting the Germans k
now in advance where or when this mighty host will make its assault. Because of another requirement, that of making the Germans believe that the attack will come at some point other than the actual site, the already difficult assignment is nearly impossible.

  IT PUTS TOO GRAND A FACE ON IT to say that the future of Western civilization was at stake, but that is not far wrong. OVERLORD was a tremendous gamble. Britain and America were putting everything they could into it in a display of unity of purpose not seen before or since in either country. The bet was that the whole of this effort could be concentrated on one operation, and that the operation would be decisive. Failure in OVERLORD would mean the loss of the bet, and the size of the bet was stupendous, a fortune in men and matériel carefully built up by the British and Americans over the past two years.

  Eisenhower and Hitler both knew what was at stake. In one of his first messages to the Combined Chiefs in his capacity as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower declared, “This operation marks the crisis of the European war. Every obstacle must be overcome, every inconvenience suffered and every risk run to ensure that our blow is decisive. We cannot afford to fail.”1

  At about the same time, Hitler was saying, “The destruction of the enemy’s landing attempt means more than a purely local decision on the Western Front. It is the sole decisive factor in the whole conduct of the war.”2

  EVERY COMMANDER hopes to surprise his enemy, but in Ike’s case surprise was crucial, because he was on the offensive with forces that were numerically woefully inferior. Ike’s one great material advantage was Allied air superiority. On the ground, the Germans had fifty-nine divisions in France, while the initial Allied assault would be only seven divisions strong. By no means were those German divisions contemptible garrison troops—they were armed with the latest weapons, including tanks, and their morale was high. Many were veterans of the Eastern front. The Allies therefore needed to do better than simply surprise the enemy—they had to induce Hitler to move the best of his units, especially the panzer divisions, away from the invasion site, and keep them away.