Will Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern
American Espionage
By Douglas Waller
In grad
school seminars, students have a difficult time dealing with a “good book.”
Whenever grad students use the phrase “it’s a good book,” they immediately
follow with the word, “but”. Then they list everything that book should or
could have done better. The discussion ultimately circles back and concludes with
“it’s a good book.”
Douglas
Waller’s biography of William Donovan, who founded the Office of Strategic
Services during World War II, exemplifies this quandary. Waller, a journalist
who has covered politics, war, and espionage, exhibits passion and control over
his material. His research draws from archives in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Russia, Germany, and across the world. His descriptions of Donovan’s
and the OSS’s activities during World War II constitute the bulk of the book
and demonstrate the depth of his research. The book also offers a detailed
early history of America’s first steps into the larger world of international
espionage. As Waller demonstrates, bureaucratic infighting, untrained
operatives, and unclear mandates from above beset the intelligence community
from the start. He also shows how Donovan’s enthusiasm, his ability to inspire
members of the OSS, and his relentless energy spearheaded America’s early
intelligence gathering operation. As a history of American espionage in World
War II, the book proves an interesting and enlightening read. OSS operations,
for example, acquired Hitler’s dental records so the Russians could identify
his body and the OSS provided much of the evidence for the Nuremburg Tribunal.
The book,
however, fails as a biography of William “Wild Bill” Donovan. Waller breezes over
much of Donovan’s life until the creation of the OSS. By page 57 of 389,
Donovan is 57 years old. In his life up
to that point, Donovan had risen from a poor childhood in Buffalo to attend
Columbia University, started a law practice in Buffalo, married into a wealthy
family, entered Buffalo’s cultural elite, founded snooty private clubs, served
as an officer in World War I where he earned medals for his valor, served as
the U.S. Attorney for Buffalo, served as in the Justice Department as an
assistant Attorney General, lost the race for the governorship of New York in
1932, and traveled around the world observing international affairs for the
United States government in the 1930s. In doing so, Donovan largely neglected
his wife and children, engaged in numerous affairs (which Waller does not
detail), spent lavish sums of his wife’s money, and bounced from pet project to
pet project with a boundless energy. Yet all of this serves as mere footnotes
to Donovan’s OSS activity—the pesky life details that Waller had to address
before reaching the meat of the project.
While
Waller deals with Donovan’s pre-OSS life in such a perfunctory manner, it seems
to me that these activities served as important precursors to Donovan’s OSS
activity. Waller, however, does not provide much detail into how Donovan
gathered his information during his international forays. Yet Donovan would put
these skills in action when he founded the OSS. They could have provided some
insight into how Donovan created an international spying agency from scratch. This absence epitomizes the problem with the
book as biography, Waller fails to offer insight into Donovan’s character. The only
bits of analysis of Donovan’s inner life seemingly enter the book accidently. Waller
recounts how Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg tribunal, “thought
Donovan was a shallow, social climbing headline grabber” (347). At that point
in the book, I was inclined to agree with Jackson’s assessment. Donovan had
spent his marriage largely ignoring his wife Ruth and spending her money. He
rarely spoke to his son David although David’s wife, Mary frequently served as
Donovan’s hostess, sparking rumors of an affair. Yet Waller does not try to
connect any of the events of Donovan’s life into his OSS career. He declines to
discuss the potential influence that his social climbing, traveling, lavish
spending, and familial neglect had on Donovan’s work in the OSS. After all, as
Waller details, Donovan spent his time in the OSS attending every Allied
landing he could find, traveling across the world establishing OSS stations,
spending untold sums of government money, and not seeing his family for
extended periods of time. Waller notes that Donovan “was not prone to
introspection… (359).” Donovan’s lack of introspection is unsurprising, but it
behooves his biographer to offer some.
Wild Bill Donovan is a good book, but…
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