Joseph E. Persico (13 page)

Donovan was soon demonstrating a budding influence on FDR's decisions. Lord Beaverbrook, Britain's minister of aircraft production, had pleaded with Donovan to persuade America to give the British the Norden bombsight. Through their own sources, they knew that the Germans already had obtained the American design. Within weeks Bill Stephenson was able to cable his London superiors, “President has sanctioned release to us of the bombsight, to be fitted henceforth to bombers supplied to us.” It was Donovan who had convinced FDR. Churchill had begged for old American destroyers to replace the Royal Navy's heavy losses in Norwegian sea battles. Donovan began lobbying Secretary of War Stimson and influential senators to back a counterproposal FDR had made to Churchill, destroyers for naval bases to be leased to the United States for ninety-nine years. When FDR finally went ahead with the deal on September 3, without the blessing of a balky Congress, he gave Donovan substantial credit.

Ambassador Kennedy had sought to torpedo Donovan's mission and failed. In the marketplace of FDR's esteem, Donovan's fortunes were on the rise and Kennedy's stalemated. The ambassador longed to quit the Court of Saint James's because he could not believe in the policies he had been sent there to represent—Roosevelt's strategies to prop up Britain. The President shrank from firing anybody, but Kennedy had long been skating on thin ice. His womanizing was flagrant, including an open affair with the movie star Gloria Swanson. His slanderous private comments about the President leaked to the media. His blaming the war on “the Jewish conspiracy” was disgraceful. James Reston, the
New York Times
London correspondent, said of Kennedy, “He couldn't keep his mouth shut or his pants on.” Still, FDR did not want the ambassador to leave his post yet. He feared having Kennedy shooting off his mouth in the United States during an election year. In the end, Kennedy broke the stalemate; he simply announced his retirement and headed home on October 23, 1940. Two years and nine months of the impetuous Irishman's outrages had ended for FDR.

Meanwhile, though Bill Donovan's stock was rising, he was still dissatisfied. What he hankered for, above all, was what he had done so valorously twenty-two years before, to lead American troops. Two days after his return from England, he had dined with Henry Stimson, and as the evening was about to end, the secretary of war dangled a tantalizing prospect before Donovan. How would he like to head one of the training camps the Army was reviving? “I wouldn't say no,” a grinning Donovan replied. Stimson later wrote of his guest's reaction in his diary: “He was determined to get into the war some way or other and was the same old Bill Donovan that we have all known and been so fond of.” Promisingly, General Marshall invited Donovan to visit training camps and mobilization centers. He spent ten days in October touring Fort Benning, Fort Sam Houston, and Fort Sill. He wrote to Robert Vansittart at the British Foreign Office that he had also been offered the Republican Senate nomination from New York State. But that was not what he wanted: “I intend to go with the troops, and as it looks now I shall probably spend the winter in Alabama training a division.”

It was not to be. His hopes began to wither as no call to arms came to him from the White House.

*

On December 22, 1940, a quiet Sunday, Missy LeHand interrupted the President's rest to inform him that the journalist Fulton Oursler had just called from New York pleading for a confidential meeting as soon as possible. FDR knew Oursler well, a reporter, lecturer, biographer, playwright, a writing jack-of-all-trades who had often come to the White House. If Oursler, no political ally, was eager to meet with the President in secret, FDR was curious enough to accommodate him. LeHand called Oursler back, telling him to present himself anonymously at ten-thirty the following morning at the front door with the other tourists, rather than through the official guests' entrance.

Oursler took the train to Washington and, after a fifteen-minute wait in the Red Room, was ushered to FDR's second-floor study. There the President cheerily introduced him to a Scotch terrier given to him five months before by a distant cousin and close Hudson Valley friend, Margaret “Daisy” Suckley. The dog's full name, bestowed by FDR, was Murray, the Outlaw of Falahill, though he was called simply Fala. The President asked about Oursler's young daughter, April, surprising the journalist with his detailed recollection of the girl's schooling. He chattered on about whatever subject caught his fancy that afternoon, seemingly oblivious of the fact that Oursler had come to him with a certain urgency. Finally, Oursler seized on a brief pause in the monologue. He began to explain that he had just returned form the Bahamas on assignment from
Liberty
magazine. The Bahamas' present governor, the Duke of Windsor, formerly England's Edward VIII, who had abdicated his throne to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson had previously refused interviews. Oursler had scored a scoop, not only getting an interview, but also stumbling into something that could shake the warring world.

To Americans, Windsor was the ever-boyish prince charming who had enchanted the country during his 1924 visit to the United States. A popular song of the day ran, “I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales.” America's affection had been increased by the sheer romance of a monarch who chose love over power. To British insiders, however, beginning with the Prime Minister, the duke's behavior since departing the throne was embarrassing, possibly treasonous. After his abdication, Windsor had gone to live with his wife in France, and while there he made a visit to Germany in October 1937, ostensibly to study housing and working conditions. He wanted to learn, he said, how Britain could benefit from what he considered a model Nazi program. What particularly pleased him during this tour was that German officials referred to his wife as “Her Royal Highness,” words she would never hear in the British Isles. The high point of the trip had been an invitation to Berchtesgaden to spend the day with Hitler, who impressed the duke with what he had done to root out communism in Germany.

When the war broke out, Windsor was chagrined to be appointed only a major general with vague liaison duties at French army headquarters. As king, he had carried the rank of field marshal. Winston Churchill, a cultural, if not always a political Tory, had staunchly stood by Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. But as prime minister, knowing the duke's admiration for Germany, even with Britain now at war, Churchill found Edward troublesome. After France fell, the former king expected the Prime Minister to offer him a position of real substance back home, which Churchill knew was impossible. His presence in England would prove awkward for the present king, Edward's brother, George VI.

On July 9, 1940, through the “former Naval person” channel established between Churchill and Roosevelt, the Prime Minister notified FDR of how he proposed to handle the sensitive royal. He wanted the President to know his solution before it became public. “The position of the Duke of Windsor on the Continent in recent months,” Churchill wrote, “has been causing His Majesty and His Majesty's government some embarrassment as, though his loyalties are unimpeachable, there is always a backwash of Nazi intrigue which seeks now that the greater part of the Continent is in enemy hands to make trouble about him. There are personal and family difficulties about his return to this country.” Churchill had a solution. He had offered Edward the governorship of the Bahamas, and “His Royal Highness has intimated that he will accept the appointment.” Privately, the Prime Minister was more blunt. His intention was to keep Windsor “out of Hitler's grasp,” which was not proving easy. The duke and duchess had gone to Lisbon in preparation for their departure to the Bahamas and showed scant inclination to leave. The Germans were just as eager to keep Windsor in Europe, assigning a key intelligence officer, Walter Schellenberg, this mission. The objective was to have this friend of Germany returned to the British throne that he had abdicated. The Germans made clear that, unlike the British, they were ready to recognize Wallis as queen. While the duke dithered in Lisbon as the guest of a rich Portuguese banker, Ricardo Santo Silva, German intelligence agents filed back to Berlin every anti-war, anti-Churchill, even anti–royal family remark that Windsor made. Finally, and reluctantly, the duke and his wife boarded a British warship for the Bahamas. Prior to leaving, he gave his Portuguese host, Silva, a code word to be used when the time was ripe for him to return to Europe.

Upon his arrival in his much reduced realm, Windsor began pestering Churchill, a man leading a nation at war, about perquisites for his new office. With millions of Britons answering the colors and falling in battle, Edward insisted on draft exemptions for his servants. He wanted a Navy ship assigned for his personal use. Churchill, his patience stretched thin, telegraphed the duke that even major generals could be court-martialed.

Franklin Roosevelt still felt warmly toward British royals. He once confided to a friend that he had been hurt when, in his visit to England during the First World War, he had not been invited to Buckingham Palace. He considered it one of his social peaks when King George and Queen Mary accepted his invitation to visit the Roosevelt family seat, at Hyde Park. Eleven days before Fulton Oursler's arrival at the White House, FDR had himself entertained the Duke of Windsor. The President had boarded the USS
Tuscaloosa
at Miami for a ten-day pleasure cruise, and was joined briefly by Edward, who had accompanied his wife to Florida for her dental work. Windsor met a fit, beaming FDR, relieved of burdens and refreshed by days of fishing, nights of poker, and watching movies aboard ship. FDR saw a smiling, sleek Edward, well garbed and well tanned, a startling contrast to his beleaguered countrymen still undergoing the Blitz. As Daisy Suckley described the duke, “Windsor is completely insignificant looking but charming and quick. . . . You can't help liking him and feeling sorry because he is an exile from home and country. . . . His wife, a completely unscrupulous woman, as is proved by her past life, does, however, seem to keep his devotion and make him happy.”

Now, days later, Oursler was in the White House, uneasy but convinced that he must tell the President about his own encounter with Windsor. “Mr. President,” Oursler said, “I am perfectly aware that there is more than a slight air of the preposterous about what I have to tell you, but it is all factual.” The story had begun on December 13 with Oursler's arrival with his wife, Grace, and daughter, April, at the British Colonial Hotel in the Bahamas. After initially being turned down, the journalist finally won an interview with the duke. Oursler received word to present himself at Government House in Nassau at 6
P.M
. the next day. Upon his arrival, he was led up a wooden stairway and through a large ballroom whose sole contents appeared to be mountains of luggage that the duke and duchess had brought from Europe. Windsor, in a checked sportcoat, received Oursler in a recently refurbished drawing room. He spoke amiably of how splendid it had been to be back, however briefly, in the United States. Life in Nassau, he said, was like living in a village.

Oursler was not long into his interview before the duke began asking
him
questions. He wanted to know if the journalist thought America should get into the war. Oursler, at that stage an isolationist, answered no. The duke's expression seemed to suggest that Oursler had passed a test, and he began to speak more openly. He warned his visitor, “there was no such thing in modern warfare as victory,” for one side. “The German armies,” he went on, “had never been defeated in 1914–1918.” The home front had collapsed behind them. He next explained to a stunned Oursler, “[I]t would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler were overthrown. Hitler was the right and logical leader of the German people.” He considered Adolf Hitler a great man. The duke leaned forward, shooting his head out like a turtle's from its shell, close to Oursler's face. “Do you suppose that your President would consider intervening as a mediator when, and if, the proper time arrives?” he asked. Britain was being destroyed, and the time was coming, he said, “when a man like your President must stop this war. I am not a defeatist but I am realistic.” The duke mentioned his recent visit with FDR on the
Tuscaloosa,
but told Oursler that he had said nothing to Roosevelt of what they were now discussing. Instead, he and the President had talked of economic development for the Caribbean islands.

After two hours, a shaken Oursler left the duke. The next morning, as he was packing to return home, Windsor's aide-de-camp, Captain Vyvyan Drury, phoned asking if he might come to Oursler's hotel. Upon his arrival, Drury began a recitation of the duke's sad plight. Anthony Eden, Churchill's foreign minister, hated him. So did Lord Halifax, Eden's predecessor, and Lord Lothian as well. Drury asked Oursler, “Would you enter into a Machiavellian conspiracy?” Oursler nodded noncommittally, not wanting to turn off a source. “Tell Mr. Roosevelt,” Drury went on, “that if he will make an offer of intervention for peace, that before anyone in England can oppose it, the Duke of Windsor will instantly issue a statement supporting it and that will start a revolution and force peace.” Drury warned Oursler that if he should betray the duke's confidences to him in print, “the lid would be blown off the British Empire.”

Oursler recognized that Windsor had used Drury as a mouthpiece to provide himself a wall of deniability. What the aide had passed along was obviously what the duke wanted Oursler to tell FDR. Thus, upon his return to New York, the journalist had asked for the White House appointment.

Oursler had barely begun reciting his experience in the Bahamas to the President when FDR broke in. “Fulton,” he said, “nothing can surprise me these days. Why, do you know that I am amazed to find some of the greatest people in the British Empire, men of the so-called upper classes, men of the highest rank, secretly want to appease Hitler and stop the war.” The President's knowing smile told Oursler that Roosevelt knew all about his conversation with the duke. British agents in the Bahamas, well aware of Windsor's defeatist sympathies, had eavesdropped on the talk, reported it to the British embassy in Washington, which in turn informed FDR. The President continued to monopolize the conversation, surprising Oursler with the depth and strength of his opinions about the duke and the British peace crowd. He finally stopped long enough to let Oursler tell what had happened to him in Nassau. Though he already knew the content of the duke's tête-à-tête with the journalist, the very mention of the ex-monarch's machinations rekindled FDR's wrath. “He could barely listen to the words that I spoke,” Oursler recalled. “He looked away. His hands trembled. His whole body shook.” “When Little Windsor says he doesn't think there should be a revolution in Germany, I tell you, Fulton,” FDR exploded, “I would rather have April's opinion on that than his.”