Donovan William Joseph - Rendezvous with destiny: how Franklin D. Roosevelt and five extraordinary men took America into the war and into the world

Prologue

SEPTEMBER 1939

A t 2:50 a.m. on Friday, September 1, 1939, a telephone rang in a darkened bedroom on the second floor of the White House. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fifty-seven years old, the twice-elected president of the United States, stirred in his narrow iron cot and pushed himself up with his powerful arms and shoulders. His useless, withered legs trailed behind. He switched on a light, illuminating the clutter with which he liked to surround himself: an old rocking chair; a bureau and a heavyset wardrobe; a mess of family pictures and naval prints covering the walls; a litter of small china pigs and a herd of carved donkeys occupying the marble mantelpiece; a horses tail hanging over the door to remind him of his privileged childhood in New Yorks Hudson River Valley. He picked up one of the telephones that competed for space on his bedside table with books, aspirin, a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, a prayer book, odd bits of paper, and pencil stubs. On the line was Roosevelts ambassador in Paris, William C. Bullitt, relaying a message from his counterpart in Warsaw. Germanys legions had breached Polands frontiers. The Luftwaffe was bombarding Polands cities. The greatest, bloodiest war in history had begun. Well, Bill, its come at last, said FDR. God help us all.

As the news spread, it reached the ears of five other men scattered across North America. Sumner Welles, the highborn under secretary of state and principal diplomatic adviser to the president, was the first to hear. Welles was brilliant, fastidious, and imperturbable; one minister from Central America compared him to a tall glass of distilled ice water. Welles subscribed fully to Talleyrands famous advice to a young diplomat: above everything, do not allow yourself to become excited about your work. When Roosevelt put down the telephone to Bullitt, he called Welles at Oxon Hill, his lordly 250-acre estate on the Potomac River. A few hours later, the under secretary arrived at the State Department for an emergency meeting with his boss, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and other senior officials. Soon he was conferring with the president at his bedside: Welles, stiff and correct as always, sat in a chair by the bed; FDR leaned up against his pillows wearing a blue cape over his pajamas.

Over the next two days, as British prime minister Neville Chamberlain dithered, then rallied, and eventually declared war on Germany on September 3, followed quickly by France, Welles was never far from Roosevelts counsels. From his State Department office, a beautifully decorated, book-lined space with dark blue leather chairs, a gleaming mahogany table, and a marble bust of a statesman on a corner pedestal, Welles helped to coordinate Washingtons response to European events, starting with an emergency meeting of Latin American foreign ministers.

If Sumner Welles was at the heart of things, Bill Donovan was literally in the wilderness: camped beside Teepee Lake in Canadas Yukon Territory, 250 miles from the nearest town. Wild Bill was an Irish American war hero, New York lawyer, and muscular Republican in the mold of Franklin Roosevelts distant cousin Theodore. TR certainly would have approved of Donovans monthlong hunting expedition in the Yukon with three other wealthy Republicans, including retired general Robert E. Wood, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co. The men had a special permit from the Canadian authorities to collect taxidermy specimens for a natural history museum in Boston, and they were enthusiastic about their work. Riding on horseback through the spectacular Saint Elias Mountains and Kluane Lake country, accompanied by Native guides and a pack train, they hunted mountain sheep, moose, caribou, and bear, and caught grayling and arctic trout. Without a radio, they were oblivious to the worsening situation in Europe. Donovan nearly perished when he was thrown from his horse and almost tumbled over a cliff. He recovered to bring down a ram with an extraordinary long-range shot and bag a nine-foot-tall grizzly, the great-grandfather of them all, according to one of his companions. Meals were prepared by the Jacquot brothers, well-known local outfitters and guides who had trained in France as chefs. A typical camp dinner consisted of soup, roast lamb or duck with all the trimmings, a hot fluffy biscuit, lemon cream pie, tea, scotch, and cigars.