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Bradley Hart

Adolf Hitler knew D-Day was coming. He had seen and heard direct evidence of troop buildups and plans to attack. But what Hitler did not know was that the Allies had launched the most elaborate deception plan in modern history, Operation Fortitude. For the Allies, the planning of D-Day was complex. The logistics alone moving more than 150,000 troops across the English Channel with thousands of ships and landing craft, it's like moving an entire American city literally overnight. And the odds of success would be greatly increased if Hitler and the Nazis didn't know where the attack is coming. That's where Operation Fortitude comes in. Fortitude's objective was to fool Hitler's generals into believing the real invasion was fake, and the fake operation was real. This deception plan composed of Fortitude North and Fortitude South deployed a multifaceted mix of deceptive troop movements, fake radio messages, phantom armies, and double cross agents, all designed to trick Hitler into believing the invasion target was either north in Norway, or south at Pas-de-Calais. Eisenhower even appointed General Patton, one of the most prominent and famous generals of the war, to lead Fortitude South as a decoy. Germany viewed Patton as the best commander of the Allied forces. And so surely they believed this was real. We're joined by Mary Kathryn Barbier, author of "D-Day Deception: "Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion." Let's talk about Operation Fortitude, one of the biggest, if not the biggest deception plans of the war. What are the big ideas of these plans, and how are they important in this period?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

The goal of Fortitude was to provide cover for the Normandy invasion, if we want the simple version of what it was. But it's pretty complex operation. Fortitude actually had two components, two parts. There's Fortitude North and Fortitude South. Fortitude North was designed to suggest an upcoming invasion of Norway at two places, Narvik in the north and Stavenger in the south. The Germans had 12 or 13 divisions in Norway, big coastline to protect. And so Fortitude North was intended to tie them down there. Before Normandy happens, Fortitude North was merged into Fortitude South. So there's simulation of movement of all these forces that didn't exist down to the south. Fortitude South was aimed at the Pas-de-Calais region. The Port of Calais and the the area around it. And the US, the Allies had intelligence, then intercepting German messages that suggested that the Germans were focused on the Pas-de-Calais as where they thought the landing would come. And so Fortitude was designed to reinforce that idea. The London Controlling Section, which designed this plan, hoped to do, was to reinforce the German's preconceived notion that here's where the invasion would come. And so to focus, try to focus their attention on that area. And this is going on at the same time that Rommel has this task of establishing the Atlantic Wall, right? Building up these defenses all along the coast, not just at Calais. So the deception plan focused on trying to beef up what the Germans are already thinking, and have their intention remain focused on that particular part of the French Coast.

Bradley Hart

And how does the London Controlling Section actually do this?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Right, so we get to implementation, and that's where, so there are three ways in which they try to put across this story. One was the establishment of fake camps, army camps, air fields, landing craft on various estuaries off the Thames, to simulate the buildup of troops in southeast England, which would make sense that that's where they would be gathering if there were the Ally forces were gonna cross a channel at its narrowest point. So side note on that is they wanted those camps to be as realistic from the air as possible so that German aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft flying over the coast would see these camps and think, oh yeah, they're building up all these forces in this area. So the Allies fly their own aircraft over to see how realistic these camps are, and realize they don't look so realistic. And so they do a lot of things to kind of beef that up. For instance, in the fake army camps, they have a mess tent. So obviously there's water boiling 'cause there's steam going up, there's laundry out on the line. They try to simulate activity that would look realistic from the sky. The landing craft, which are all fake, 'cause this is really what we wanna do, create oil slicks around them, so it suggests that they're real landing craft as opposed to fake. There was a mail boat that would deliver the mail to ship. Again, do things to try and make these fake scenes look realistic from the sky, which is great, but by the time they really start implementing this, certainly by May of 1944, when they're really getting their stride with setting up these camps, there are very few German reconnaissance flights flying over the coast. So we've got all this stuff going on, and they're not necessarily seeing it. That's first. The second way in which they try to get this story across is also multilayered, wireless communications, record transmissions, the movement of vehicles and tanks in camp areas that are enclosed that you're not supposed to have anybody close to, but so that you can hear this at night. The movement of these vehicles to suggest the normal operations of a camp, that the exercises and training that troops would be going through in order to prepare for an invasion, suggesting embarkation and demarcation exercises. They record movements of vehicles, and people talking that they play through loudspeakers that are going around these camps. They also, they simulate the movement of troops by having radio silence in various periods of time to suggest, okay, this radio is operating in this area, so this unit is located here, and then all of a sudden they go off air. And when they come on air again, they're in another part of England. So suggesting the movement of troops around to suggest that there are air fields where they don't actually exist. They use headlights on chassis, that they just pull across a field at night to suggest an aircraft taking off or landing so that the Germans would drop bombs there rather than on real airfields. So that's the second way they do this. And the idea is that despite the fact that the British claim that they caught every single German spy that was sent into England. And I ask, how do you know? What they stand by that, that just in case, there were spies around, or there were British who were cooperating with the Germans who were situated near these camps, even though there were off limits, they want them to hear these sounds and be aware of this activity, so it suggests that there are a whole lot more troops in that area than there are. And then the third way is the use of double agents.

Bradley Hart

In the planning for D-Day, the Allies used the double cross system to their advantage. These were German spies who had been turned into double agents in the UK. They sent coded messages back to Germany, claiming to see troop movements and reporting specific train traffic. All of it was false, but these messages were passed on to Hitler. So let's talk about the double cross system. This is of course the British being fairly confident they've turned every German spy in the country. But of course, how would you really know? What is the double cross system, and how does that contribute to Fortitude and other deception?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Well, the double cross system ran double agents against the Germans. And the idea was that, so this happened in a couple of different ways. So the Germans sent agents in to spy on the UK.

Bradley Hart

How'd they get in, these German agents?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Gosh, different ways. Some agents were actually spirited in, they came on submarines or whatever, and many of those were easily caught, 'cause nobody's gonna notice somebody who speaks very little English, has a heavy German accent, can't read the British train timetable, and wants to buy a train ticket and doesn't understand the currency. That's kind of a no brainer. Some came in via Spain or Portugal. Some spies were caught and turned. The ones who weren't were either imprisoned or in some cases executed. And then there were handful of spies who were either recruited by the Germans, or approached the Germans to work for them with no intention of ever working for them. Their goal was to get into the UK and work against the Germans. So the idea is that once these spies leave German control and are in Britain, it is possible that they've been captured. So they have to establish their credibility with their German handler. The first way they do that is sending information that the Germans can confirm. And they do that enough a period of time to start establishing this credibility and comfort between the agent who is an enemy country and the handler. And over time, fake information. It was inserted a little at a time until it went from having mostly true and a little bit of false, to mostly false and a little bit of true, if any. And that was something that had happened over a period of time. You couldn't just have an agent arrive in the UK and be ready to be a double agent sending fake information. The double cross system contributed to Fortitude because it was one way in which the Allies provided parts of the story that they wanted the Germans to believe. And the crucial thing is parts of. So think of this as a puzzle, and each of these agents is providing information that's part of the puzzle. And the hope is that the Germans get all this information, and put all these pieces together and correctly, and so reached the right conclusion about what that puzzle looks like.

Bradley Hart

Which is the wrong conclusion.

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Yes. And so, 'cause they can't, there's this understanding and this realization that they can't just have these agents say, oh, the Allies are gonna land to the Pas-de-Calais, and have the Germans actually totally believe it, especially if they don't know if their agent is under control or not. So some of the information that these double agents sent across is, you know, identifying what Allied forces are in what part of England, what the patches look like, what sort of of vehicles they have, you know, what they seem to be doing, that sort of thing. One of the things I should have mentioned about the wireless communications and all that other stuff, is the Allies bombarded the airways so much with those wireless communications, some of which was in code, some of which was in unclear that there's evidence now that the Germans weren't even necessarily getting it all, much less reading that information. So we've got two ways this deception's being implemented that have varying degrees of that information actually making it across. So in most respects, I think that the double agent part of it is what is most successful contribution to this implementation. Although one has to wonder how the Germans were buying some of this stuff. For instance, the most famous of these double agents, Juan P. Garcia, AKA Garbo, who got to England by a circuitous route, supposedly as a Spanish national in the UK, gets a job in the British Ministry of Information, and sees sensitive information that he passes along. It's like, why are the Germans not saying, really? Are you sure? You know, this is the, you know, why they're not questioning it more than they do. And I guess it kind of helps that Garbo had started creating this fictitious spy network before he even made it into England, and even had the Brits fooled for a little bit. He is promoted as one of the most influential of the double agents who passed across this information. A lot of this is pointing towards Calais and taking it. And reinforcing what the Germans are thinking, the only reason that this is successful, and we can talk about degrees of success and influence is because it's not convincing the Germans to do something they weren't already doing, or to think what they weren't, you know, to think something other than what they were already thinking. Human nature being what it is, we're used to doing something a certain way or believing a certain thing. We don't always pay attention to things that suggest that we're wrong, or that we should be doing something in another way. It was no different during World War II when we think about what the Germans were buying and why they were buying it. Even when it seems, yes, how many years removed that thinking logically, and if I had gotten this information, why would I be accepting that as right, as true? But it fed into their narrative, right? It fed into what they were already thinking.

Bradley Hart

I think what's interesting there is you use the analogy of of puzzle pieces that are being fed through double cross. It's pieces of the wrong puzzle, right? It's pieces of the puzzle that the Allies want the Germans to be assembling, versus the actual puzzle. So let's talk about degrees of success here. I mean, how do the Germans detect this ruse? Are their voices saying, hold on, this is too good to be true?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Yes and no. If you're not expecting somebody to be lying to you, are you looking for the lie?

Bradley Hart

But this is the importance, of course, in the intel world of independent analysis, right? The idea that you need outside voices.

Mary Kathryn Barbier

But it's also against the backdrop of Hitler not necessarily trusting intelligence, creating competing intelligence organizations who are providing information on the same things, but one has to feed the information through the other who doesn't want the first one to get the glory, so changes that information. So what's getting to Hitler was not totally accurate. Where they, in many respects, overestimated Allied troop strength, or Allied troop strength and what they were capable to deploy at that point in time. Because you might have somebody say, the first division is in this area and has been training, and they're ready to embark upon the invasion, where only a third of that division is there. What the Germans are recording is that the whole division is there, and the whole division is ready to go. So you've got the Germans getting incorrect intelligence from their own people, combined with this misinformation that's coming from the UK, on top of Hitler's saying, most of what the Allies are doing could be a ruse. We don't know what's the real thing and what's not. And so what do you believe? What do you focus on? And if they're buying into this reinforcing what they're thinking, and they're not considering as a ruse, they're not looking for it to be ruse necessarily. Does that mean that they don't have intelligence that suggests, oh, you might wanna rethink that. There was a communication from Ronstadt. It suggested that the Germans understood that Allies' attention was focused elsewhere. And I'm gonna quote extensively from this because I think it kind of illustrates, or sort of kind of helps us to get to the answer to your question. Quote, the enemy landing exercise, which took place most recently indicates that the enemy attaches special importance to recognizing and clearing the outer beach obstacles at low water. Would the obvious conclusion here be, why would the Allies wanna clear these outer beach obstacles to land on an open beach if they're really gonna land in a port? You have this information, but it's not necessarily translating because contrary to what they're already thinking. Had more people been paying attention, it's very likely they could have seen through the ruse. They are still fixated on the Allies behaving the way that they think they're gonna do. Had the German acted on their own intelligence, then it's possible they could have dismissed the ruse and shifted their focus to Normandy. I mean, because they understand they have to take Cherbourg and Le Havre, one would think they shift their attention to Normandy. And yet they don't.

Bradley Hart

I wanna talk about one of the big names associated with Fortitude in some ways to his chagrin. And that's General George Patton.

Mary Kathryn Barbier

The Germans apparently thought that Patton was the next best general to slice bread, that if anybody was gonna lead the invasion, it was gonna be Patton. But the problem was after the whole slapping incident in Italy, when he could have been sent home, Eisenhower uses him to an advantage. And so Patton was put in charge of the first US army group, which didn't actually exist, but it existed on paper, and was part of the deception plan. Patton participated in various events so that he could be seen, and he would only be in this part of England because ooh, that's where his forces are, that sort of thing. He did say some things that kind of riled the Soviets, but we won't get into that. So the idea was to have Patton appear in places where it associated him with the buildup of forces in southeast England that wasn't actually happening.

Bradley Hart

Can you tell us about the slapping incident briefly?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Oh, there was, so a soldier who was suffering from, well, shell shock, and Patton accused him of malingering, and slapped him, and it was a big, rightly so, a big incident. Not excusing his activity whatsoever, but militaries were kind of slow to come to this realization that there was such a thing as shell shock, or what we call PTSD, or you know, and to recognize that there was a mental effect on soldiers in given situations. And Patton was old school, old school in that, okay, so you got roughed around a bit. You pick up yourself, you dust yourself off, and you get back to battle. And he didn't, I'm not sure how much conversation he had with anybody who would've talked about the effects of shell shock. He wasn't the only one to have this tunnel vision, and this whole idea is that, you know, okay, so you're wounded, now you better get back to work, and that means go back to the front lines. It was in such a public place where he did it that it gained a lot of attention.

Bradley Hart

Ends up in the Washington Press as I recall.

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Yeah. And Marshall was ready to pull him home.

Bradley Hart

And so he's essentially sent now to England to head up this first US army division that doesn't actually exist.

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Right. Now, he's eventually gonna be sent, right? He'll come back with the third US Army. But the idea was for him to be punished but not punished to some extent that he was reduced in rank and sent home in disgrace. Because Eisenhower understood that he could serve a useful purpose in this situation, but also later on with the fight that Patton, I think Eisenhower thought he really needed Patton.

Bradley Hart

I'm really struck for some of our listeners who are big readers of sort of the spy fiction genre, of the similarities between actually Fortitude and the classic John le Carre novel, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", in the sense of, without giving away any spoilers, this is all about who's feeding good information versus bad information through existing intelligence networks. I don't know whether le Carre based that plot on partially Fortitude or other Cold War developments. He, of course, had an extensive sort of set of interactions, let's say, with the intelligence community, especially MI6. But what would you say is the legacy of Fortitude today? What is the takeaway for the modern intel community and for our listeners?

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Our initial perceptions of the success of Fortitude actually comes from the London Controlling Section. Roger Hesketh, he helped devise the plan, helped oversee the implementation of the plan, and wrote the official history of the plan afterwards. So it's somewhat colored, right, by his involvement. And the assumption is that because the Germans did what the Allies wanted, or they behaved the way they wanted them to behave is all because of this deception. Sorry, as an historian, I take the prerogative to be a little bit sarcastic. There's a title of a book that is simply "Garbo: the Spy who Saved D-Day". And I look at my students when I mention the book, and I say, "All by himself, how is that possible?" It was a contributing factor, but it wasn't the only factor. And a lot of the stuff with Garbo comes down to that one message, right, that he sent, that supposedly Hitler read and--

Bradley Hart

Tell us about it.

Mary Kathryn Barbier

Eisenhower reluctantly agreed to let Garbo send a message a few hours before the landing started saying, "I've got new intel, "don't pay attention to what's going on. "This is not the real deal. "There's another, the real deal is coming later. "You might want to focus on." And he does mention Pas-de-Calais at that point. The problem was, the person who was supposed to be receiving his communication is supposed to be online when this message was sent, wasn't there. So the message doesn't sent get sent until after the landings start. We know Hitler saw the communication 'cause he initialed it. We know that two Panzer divisions were diverted to Calais. However, for a week. So even if they... Hitler bought it, it wasn't bought for long, 'cause those Panzer units left Calais a week after the invasion started and headed to Normandy. So it was influential, but it wasn't, it didn't save. I don't think it went as far as to say, saved D-Day. I think for the intelligence community as being willing, when the circumstances warrant it, to think outside the box. And to think about ways in which sort of influence what the enemy is considering doing or thinking about, or you know, what they already believe. Deception has a role. It's just figuring out what that role is and when is it appropriate. You don't wanna cry wolf too many times, 'cause then they're not gonna believe it. I think it has a role, but you have to be strategic about when you use it.

Bradley Hart

While Operation Fortitude will ideally prevent the Germans from effectively defending the real invasion site, there's another Allied operation underway that will sow chaos across occupied Europe as the battle unfolds. It was called Operation Jedburgh. The motto of these three agent teams was surprise, kill and vanish. 93 Jedburgh teams, each made up of one radio operator and two officers parachuted into occupied France in 1944. Other teams parachuted into occupied Belgium and the Netherlands. On the ground, the Jedburghs linked up with local resistance fighters and helped the advancing Allies. Pete Crean, Vice President of Education and Access at the National World War II Museum joins us again. Pete, thanks again for joining us.

Pete Crean

Oh, thanks for having me.

Bradley Hart

Let's talk about the Jedburgh teams. Who's involved in these missions? What are they hoping to accomplish, and how does this play into sort of the wider series of events that take place on and around D-Day?

Pete Crean

The Jedburgh teams are a kind of a unique collaboration among nations. There're three man teams that are designed to go behind enemy lines to work with the Maquis or the French resistance. And ideally, three nations would be involved in each team. You would have one person who was French. Every single team had to have a French participant. One Brit who came from their Special Operations Executive, or the SOE. And an American from the OSS. And while it was common for many teams to have, you know, two Brits or two Americans, two or three French, there was always somebody from France on there. And the whole idea was to provide equipment, provide training, provide leadership as a liaison with the French Maquis to help organize, as Winston Churchill said, ignite a fire behind the German lines. What they're trying to do in the lead up to D-Day and in the months afterwards is really cause chaos and slow down the Germans between the aerial bombardments taking out rail networks and bridges, and the Maquis Jedburgh teams that are doing similar things, blowing up communication lines, attacking isolated German outposts, blowing bridges. It's causing mayhem, which the idea being that, one, it makes it harder to get reinforcements to the front, and two, it ties down units that are going, German units that are going to be needed at the front. So while they were never intended to lead or to serve the same purpose as the Allies who are landing on the beaches, they're what today would be called a force multiplier.

Bradley Hart

I mean, this seems like really dangerous work on and around D-Day. How dangerous is this for these Jedburgh teams?

Pete Crean

Oh, this is extremely dangerous. You know, when look, landing on Omaha Beach was one of the most dangerous places in the world. Actually on that day, it was the most dangerous place in the world. But if worst came to worst, you could have always evacuated the troops off. And for the paratroopers who landed on D-Day, their landing alone by nature of a parachute, they're landing by themselves, but they're quickly joining up with other Americans. And if they got caught in a spot, they could always retreat back to the beaches. But the Jedburghs are being dropped all over France, deep in France, and there's no such thing as a retreat. If things started to go poorly, they would have to escape first, and then try to live by wit's end. And many of them didn't. In a four month period, there were 276 Jedburghs dropped, and 18 were killed, 51 were wounded. 17 were either missing in action or captured. And of course, if you were wounded, it's not like you were going to be evacuated on off to an American ship to go home. So it's extremely dangerous.

Bradley Hart

And those are really high casualty rates, even at this point in the war. What's the impact of these Jedburgh teams in the D-Day operations and in the wider war?

Pete Crean

It's kind of a mixed bag. Most Jedburghs would say that as effective as they were, they would've been more effective if they had been able to go in earlier. The French resistance, the Maquis had been asking for help for a while, but because of the nature of security of an operation, you couldn't send them in early. So the very first notification over the radios going on out to the French resistance that teams were going to be coming in was on the 1st of June. And even then, that notice was just stand by the radio, we're going to send a message in the next three days. So some of, there were a few teams in early, but most of them were going to go in the night of the invasion on the 4th of June. Of course, the storm hits, the invasion is delayed a day, and most of them that wind up going in on the 5th or later. But they went in so late so that it wouldn't tip the hand to the Germans that they were coming. As a result, they were really building up while the invasion was actually going on. They did cause mayhem, but like the aerial bombardment campaign, they were a force enabler. All of that said, generals like Bradley and Patton said they were worth division worths. They're the forerunners, really this gets into their legacy. But they're the forerunners of the Army Green Berets and Special Forces. The whole purpose, you know, in popular culture today, people think of the Green Berets as shock troops or special operations troops. And while they're part of the special operations, the purpose of the American Green Berets is to go into foreign lands, to work with other local Allies, and help equip them, to train them, and lead them in operations. So really that is a legacy of the Jedburghs, and the Jedburghs were very good at it. Many of the stories are harrowing of what they did and how they survived by the skin of their teeth. The Germans worried to a point that there was, of course, the famous Hitler order that anyone caught with the French resistance, whether they were in uniform or out of uniform, were to be immediately shot. That is, you know, in a backhanded way, one of the greatest compliments you can have to your effectiveness when the enemy thinks that you are so dangerous that you need to be immediately killed. A number of people who were significant in later special operations and intelligence communities came from the Jedburghs, or worked with the Jedburgh's. Most famous probably being William Colby. He was an officer. He had a code name, Berkshire, but later became the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. He, of course, was led a team called BRUCE, was the code name of the team that was just south of Paris in the Yonne region of France. And as kind of an indication of how dangerous this is, the regional leader of the FFI, or the French Maquis, was captured by the Germans. And a number of his key people were captured by the Germans. And they didn't know until well after the war that the reason he was captured was because his deputy was a turncoat. The person who was in charge of the Maquis that Colby was working with was actually informing the Germans. And Colby wound up escaping by the skin of his teeth on a couple of occasions. But he also, when there was a general uprising for the liberation of Paris, the Paris Commune and the Paris Resistance leaders were looking for weapons, and were looking for American support. And the way they established communications was by going out of Paris and dealt with the BRUCE Jedburgh team. So there was important communications going back and forth. Now, after France is liberated, Colby winds up being sent to Norway to help do sabotage and espionage operations up in Norway. So he's just one of the folks, but another one, you know, we mentioned the fact that really the latter legacy of the Jedburghs is the US Green Berets, the Special Forces. Well, Colonel Aaron Bank was on a Jedburgh team in southern France, and he's widely regarded as the founder of the US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. So really, there is a literal legacy that comes from many of these folks. A number of people went on to work as CIA officers, French Foreign Intelligence officers, French Guerilla Commando leaders in Vietnam. Even some folks like Stewart Alsop, who became a well-known journalist and political columnist. So many of these Jedburgh folks, by the unique character traits that they had went on to significant careers later on.

Bradley Hart

And that's true of a lot of people involved in OSS, as we've talked before on the podcast. These are people from kind of unique backgrounds in a lot of ways, or unique sets of skills who then go on to very prominent careers later on, a variety of spheres.

Pete Crean

That was even one of the points in recruiting these guys. They were not looking for conformists or traditional professional military folks. They were looking for that kid who was always told to shut up and sit down in class. They wanted the kids that were comfortable breaking the rules, comfortable in their own skin, because you needed somebody who was going to keep their head and always attack when alone behind the German lines. And that's the thing is, you know, one of the other great things about the Jedburghs, beyond what they did on arming and training the Maquis, they were a tangible symbol to the French resistance, that the resistance and the guerilla fighters were seen and being taken seriously.

Bradley Hart

Let's do something we don't often do here on the podcast, Pete, let's turn personal for a moment. We should acknowledge that you have a connection to William Wild Bill Donovan. Can you tell us about it?

Pete Crean

Sure. So my full name is Peter Donovan Crean, and Bill Donovan was my grandmother's cousin. So it's these big Irish families in Buffalo. Now, I never got to meet the man. He died seven years before I was even born. But my mom met him, and you know, of course, my grandma. The Donovans and Bill's family was classic Irish. You know, they have three boys, one of 'em becomes a priest, one of 'em becomes a lawyer, one of 'em becomes a doctor. And so my grandmother's first job was working for Bill Donovan's brother, Tim, because in those days, doctors used to, there was no such thing as getting off work to go to the doctor. So they would stay open one night a week. And so she worked there. And before Bill got married, also another big Irish family thing was that the unmarried young men would, everybody had to feed 'em basically. And so one night a week, Bill Donovan would come by for dinner.

Bradley Hart

Any family stories you can share about Wild Bill?

Pete Crean

There's, it's funny as I've been re-looking at him again, one of my favorite ones was something I did get to see, because Bill Donovan's papers are owned by the Army at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There is a letter in there. Bill Donovan is famous for commanding the Fighting 69th in New York. And in World War I, and there's the famous Father Francis Duffy is his chaplain. And there was a letter in that collection, in Donovan's collection, that Father Duffy wrote to Bill Donovan's brother, Vincent, a priest, about his brother. And so two priests talking about Bill Donovan. What Duffy said was that before they went into the line the first time, that Donovan ordered the entire regiment to go to confession. What I loved was that apparently, the guys who were hanging out in the back of the line, they moved them up to the front 'cause they figured they needed it most. But there is no way you could get away with ordering soldiers to go to confession before going into battle now. But apparently Donovan did it, that's the kind of guy he was.

Bradley Hart

In this final segment of Season 1, we are on the brink of June 6th, 1944, D-Day. And William Donovan wants to be part of the action himself. I'm joined again by Nicholas Reynolds, author of "Need to Know: "World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence". Nick, thanks again for being with us.

Nick Reynolds

It's absolutely my pleasure.  

Bradley Hart

I'm also joined by Jeffery Rogg, author of the great book, "The Spy in the State: "The History of American Intelligence", Senior Research Fellow at the University of South Florida's Global and National Security Institute. Jeff, thanks for being here.

Jeff Rogg

Thank you, Bradley. Great to be here.

Bradley Hart

William J. Donovan, this man who has been fighting all these battles in DC bureaucratically. He's an old soldier, he's a Medal of Honor winner from World War I. He's not gonna be left out. Nick, what's he doing on D-Day?

Nick Reynolds

He can't stay away. That's Donovan's, that's the bottom line here about Donovan. Donovan had made a pledge to himself that he would make every landing, make every opposed landing. And he comes close, he's already done a couple in the Mediterranean, and now there's this big one coming up. There's D-Day coming up, and it's known to his superiors that he wants to do this. Now, his superiors are not some obscure bureaucrat. It's Eisenhower and it's Marshall. And they specifically order him, do not land in Normandy, do not come under fire. And the Secretary of the Navy, Forrestal, who has replaced Donovan's friend, Knox, who died of a heart attack, Forrestal directs the ship's commanders in the European Theater not to allow Donovan onto their ships to go to D-Day. Donovan has a strategy of his own to defeat this, and it's quite elaborate. So it starts at the end of May. He leaves the office, and he takes the Director of OSS Europe, William, K.E. Bruce, with him, right? Makes him a co-conspirator. They get on a ship and the ship is in Belfast for a bit. Donovan socializes with the crew and the aristocracy, the people in Belfast who are pro Ally. And then they are out of touch with their chain of command, right? They're basically hiding from their own chain of command, which they happen to run, right, or supposed to be running. And they, by June 6th, they are off the coast of France, and they watch from the ship, which is the USS Tuscaloosa. They can watch the drama of the landing. And then they wanna go ashore. Well, you're on a cruiser, and it's not so easy to land from a cruiser. So they transfer to a destroyer escort to various kinds of landing craft. And then they wind up on a DUKW, which is a amphibian. It's half Jeep and half boat basically, and a little bit larger. And that gets 'em on the beach, and they're sitting on the hood of this amphibious creature, and a German fighter plane comes over. So here's the two most senior guys in the OSS hierarchy. They're sitting there, and Donovan recognized he's still got the instinct. He's portly, but he can still move pretty fast when he's got to. And he recognizes a threat way before the aristocrat, Bruce. You know, Bruce is a good guy, but he's more accustomed to fancy restaurants than combat. And Donovan goes, hey, we gotta get off. You know, so he jumps off the hood of the car of the DUKW. And then Bruce goes, where'd he go? And so jumps on top of him, the edge of Bruce's helmet, cuts Donovan's neck, and Donovan starts to bleed very dramatically. And the German bullets hit right where they had been sitting, and the plane flies off, and then they get up, and it's Donovan's like, oh, it's just a flesh wound. And isn't this great? And he says something like, things are gonna be different now. In other words, we're gonna get into combat, and it'll be a good time. So then they proceed inland, and Donovan says he's looking for spies, which is total nonsense. He's a combat tourist, plain and simple. He says he is there for meetings with his agents, and he points in the general direction of three French peasants who are trying to harvest, you know, rutabagas or whatever. And the young officer who's there on the spot goes, well, that's kind of strange, but all right. I mean, you're a general, you know what you're doing. And so they advance further, and then they come under machine gunfire, German machine gun nest, and they get down, they're on the ground, and they're trying to make themselves as small as possible. And Donovan says to Bruce, "Did you bring your L pill?" The pill that you're supposed to bite into, it's a cyanide, and it'll kill you right away so the Germans can't get secrets out of you. And Bruce says, "Well, no, actually." And Donovan says, "I think I got mine here somewhere." And he goes through his pockets, he's got his hotel keys, he's got pictures of the grandkids, you know, he's got a handkerchief, but he doesn't have the L pill. And he goes, "Oh my God "yeah, I left it on the dresser drawer at Clarridge's", the hotel that he preferred in London. Anyway, so they, in the end, they don't get captured or killed, someone else takes out the machine gun post. And Donovan continues on his way, they meet General Bradley, Omar Bradley. Bradley says, "What are you doing here?" Basically, why don't you go back where you came from? Which ultimately Donovan does, goes back to London. Here, he gets away with disobeying direct orders from three very senior people. And he does it in part because of his chutzpah. He goes to Roosevelt, and tells him the story of how exciting it was to be. It was actually D plus one the day they landed. So it was the day after the original landing. He tells him this story of all the excitement, and Roosevelt loves a good story like that. So it's kind of ha ha ha. This story about Donovan has been retaled by people telling OSS history for years. And it's the people who tell the story, the storyteller, it's either like, isn't this, wow, what a story? Isn't this, wasn't he a great guy? And then there's people like me who are more on the side of order and discipline, who a reasonable professional discipline who say, oh my gosh, this was not such a good idea. And in the end, the OSS, the official OSS war report comes down on the side of order and discipline. It's written by Theodore Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit Roosevelt. And he writes, in retrospect, it is clearly outrageous that individuals with knowledge of Ultra, that is code breaking, should have been allowed to expose themselves to possible capture. Donovan himself did this three times.

Bradley Hart

It's a remarkable moment, the Head of OSS with all of this classified knowledge, we would say now literally within firing distance of a German machine gun. I mean, it's--

Nick Reynolds

Crazy.

Bradley Hart

It's remarkable. Jeff, let me ask you this. I mean, you know, these stories were sort of bandied about, of course, at the time. You know, Nick, you just mentioned sort of Donovan telling Roosevelt himself this story. What does the American public know about any of this in the midst of the war?

Jeff Rogg

So Donovan's actually in the public spotlight, and I don't think he minded being there. You know, it's funny because if you think about it, that sort of helps you if your organization floundering. Donovan was probably more popular than the COI and the OSS. And you know, it's funny, there was an article written that I found called something, it was something like, you know, "Donovan: Washington's Mystery Man". And that's sort of an ironic title because it reveals in it that he's the head of a secret organization. So you're writing that he's a mystery man, but there's nothing mysterious about Bill Donovan, you know, multimillion dollar Wall Street lawyer, World War I veteran and hero. So he doesn't exactly fly under the radar. The public too though, you know, they were sort of shielded, I think, from some of the more bitter divisions over the OSS. But the way that they read about it was the pro and con journalists. And you know, for example, it's notorious that J. Edgar Hoover, you know, would sort of try and put articles that hurt the OSS in the press. And there's actually this great piece where his Deputy, Edward Tam, writes to 'em and says, there's gonna be an expose. This is when it was still the coordinator of information. There's gonna be an expose, you know, on the COI, and it wasn't flattering at all. The battle is taking place, sometimes with the public realizing it in their eyes. But again, I think when you look at it from Donovan's perspective, you know, it's almost like there's no such thing as bad publicity for him at least. And so it's not really a mystery, you know, that there's, this is the irony again, is when the COI is even created, the New York Times writes an article and it says, you know something, and this is this, I'm an American intelligence historian. This is patently untrue. But this is what the Americans knew of intelligence at the time. It announces that, you know, with the creation of the COI, the US has now embarked on the game of, you know, secret espionage. We've been doing it since the very beginning. George Washington did it. But you know, there's this mindset that the US doesn't do espionage. It's un-American. And so it's funny, isn't it, that secret organizations were spoken about so publicly. I mean, isn't this America even today?

Bradley Hart

Join us for Season 2 of the Secret World War II podcast. We start on June 6th, 1944. Operation Fortitude has fooled Adolf Hitler. The Nazi leader does not know where the real Allied attack will take place. It's D-Day in Normandy, and the role of American intelligence in the largest conflict in human history is just getting started. Be sure to subscribe to the Secret World War II wherever you get your podcasts to get our latest episodes when they come out. And check out our website for additional resources for each episode, reading lists featuring the work of our experts, and links to videos and oral histories from the collections here at the National World War II Museum.