OSS/London, originally known as COI/London or the London Outpost, was the largest foreign headquarters complex of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, operating out of several buildings in the area near Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London, which maintained the command and control over all OSS servicemembers stationed in the United Kingdom and agents deployed to Western Europe, and for the bulk of the war, operated as the headquarters of OSS/Europe. From OSS/London, operations were planned alongside the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to deploy officers and agents throughout Europe for missions of sabotage, clandestine operations, covert operations, espionage, and other mission sets.
OSS/London began with a single staffer from the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) assigned as a Liaison officer to the British government working down the road at the Macdonald House. The first three specific offices for OSS/London were located at 59, 71, and 72 Grosvenor Street, but by the end of the war it had expanded to Mount Row, Brook Street, Portman Square, and Mount Street. The facilities management and procurement were undertaken by OSS/London's transportation section. For some time, the X2 Counterintelligence Section was based out of 7 Ryder Street (which has become 14 Ryder Street). At its peak staffing in 1944, there were 2,800 OSS personnel working under the command structure of OSS/London.
History
Origins
Throughout 1939 and 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were in constant communications, where Churchill tried to convince Roosevelt to contribute militarily to the war. Roosevelt could not do this without an Act of Congress. However, in June 1940, he did deploy William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan – the man that he called his "secret legs" – to London on a fact-finding mission to gauge British strength, and to discover any information regarding fifth columns. While Donovan was in England, he formed relationships with Stewart Menzies, King George V, John Henry Godfrey and Ian Fleming. Upon his return to the United States, Donovan presented his findings to Roosevelt that they were in desperate need of a new style of civilian intelligence agency, to be modeled after the British system.
In July 1941, Roosevelt appointed Donovan as the head of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI). After the British officers Dick Ellis, John Godfrey, and Ian Flemming contributed to the blueprint for the agency, corralled initially by William "Little Bill" Stephenson at the British Security Co-ordination (BSC), the first batches of COI-trained operators were sent to Camp X, which was operated by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose first commandant was Richard Melville Brooker.
COI/London
At the end of 1941, Donovan and the COI established the London Outpost at the Embassy of the United States, which was at that time located at Macdonald House in Mayfair, London. The two primary representatives at the Embassy mission for OSS became William Dwight Whitney and Fisher Howe, both of whom had already been stationed at the Embassy on other matters for Donovan.Whitney became the first Director of the London Outpost, and toured the country with Robert Sherwood, director of the Foreign Information Service (FIS) at the time, inspecting military installations and other relevant special and secret installations belonging to the SOE, SIS, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), and the Ministry of Economic Warfare(MEW). The day after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Whitney's first small team of staff arrived at the Outpost – the attack in Hawaii had occurred while the team was in-route. Quickly, they established COI liaison officers with their counterparts in the British military and intelligence, as well as the other relevant American offices in Grosvenor Square. The SOE and PWE were enthusiastic, but the SIS took a few weeks to develop rapport because the original COI liaisons intended for the relationship with SIS – R.M.J. Fellner and William Phillips – were less than preferable. Fisher Howe, in the journal of the OSS Society, notes that there were two people named "William Phillips" involved in COI, and that they are often confused with one-another. After the United States entered into the war, Whitney was overly forthcoming in communications to his British counterparts about the internal political landscape in Washington. One of his most damaging reports came in the form of a memo entitled "The Crisis in COI," detailing the political machinations trying to assail Donovan at the time. This memo created a British mistrust in the COI, especially in the political allies to the military.
Over the course of the next several months, another political conflict back home arose between Robert Sherwood and Bill Donovan over the nature of the Foreign Information Service. Sherwood wrote a letter to the President stating his desire for the propaganda service to be separated out from the COI, but also included in the letter that Donovan desired this as well – Donovan didn't, Sherwood was lying, but nonetheless Roosevelt began making these arrangements.
William Dwight Whitney resigned from his post two weeks later. His replacement became William Phillips, the renknowned American diplomat.
OSS/London
On June 13, 1942, President Roosevelt issued an executive order to create a new organization called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). To stay relevant as an operator in the war, Donovan accepted the dissolution of the COI, but in exchange, he urged the establishment of OSS under the structure of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff. This came with the commission into the rank of Brigadier General (BG). With the OSS coming under the command structure of the Joint Chiefs, the leadership felt less threatened by the civilian nature of the military organization, but Donovan still maintained enmities among the military ranks.
As Charles Pinck (former director of the OSS Society), writes: "Donovan fought entrenched Washington interests that were threatened by his revolutionary intelligence organization. Donovan said he had more enemies in Washington than Hitler had in Europe."
However, another arrival in June 1942 to London was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who quickly established himself at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), which was also based out of Grosvenor Square. Eisenhower himself took up residence in the neighborhood, as well. The close proximity of all of these American offices, both military and civilian, allowed effective in-person communication between the entire American mission to London. The mass influx of Americans to the neighborhood caused reporters from The Guardian to refer to the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square as "Little America" or "Eisenhower Platz."
While the North African campaign was underway, the staff of OSS/London steadily grew over that summer, and especially in the leadup to Operation Torch. The primary focus of OSS/London was the territory of Free France/Vichy France and the colonial possession of French West Africa.In December 1942, David K. E. Bruce replaced William Phillips as the Chief of Station. Phillips, meanwhile, was personally sent by the President to an Ambassadorial post in India during WWII.
Theater Commanders thought that OSS/London should function as an extension of the G-2 in London. This perspective was shared by both General Frank Maxwell Andrews, who was killed in a plane crash in May 1943, and his successor, General Jacob L. Devers.
The growing pains of development were solved under the leadership of David Bruce, who managed to disperse and place new staffs relatively evenly between the branches of OSS/London. As more staffers arrived from the United States, the OSS managed to expand their reach into Europe, acting as a vital relief to the beleaguered Resistance organizations in occupied territories. Each of the branches, especially SI/London and SO/London, grew from core groups of individuals into large underground enterprises. By the end of 1943, large numbers of staff were in place at OSS/London, and regular operations were deployed to France.
However, many of the newly arrived military generals and OSS leadership had been somewhat indoctrinated into a mythos that had grown around the British intelligence apparatus, and were hesitant to allow OSS to undermine the success of SOE and MI6. General Devers was particularly susceptible to the British myth, causing David Bruce to include the General's apprehension about allowing OSS to expand here in memos bak to Washington. This mythos pervaded pockets of OSS/London for the rest of the war.
Successively after Algiers, Casablanca, and Cairo were liberated by the Allies, OSS/London was involved in deploying members to staff large field bases there. However, those bases were not nearly as large as OSS/London. This provided for a coordinated effort leading up to the Allied invasion of Sicily. While there was coordination between OSS/Europe and OSS/MEDTO, OSS/London had no operational control over MEDTO (Mediterranean Theatre of Operations).
By 1944, shortly before D Day, there were 2800 people working at OSS/London. At this time of hectic activity, Bruce and Donovan established the OSS/London Secretariat, which facilitated Bruce in managing the complex and its staff.
Shortly after D Day, while maintaining command over OSS/Europe, David Bruce advanced forward onto the continent and worked mostly out of offices there, rarely returning to London. Much of the staff of OSS/London, after the success of Operation Cobra and the establishment of a beachhead in Normandy, then relocated onto the continent to be closer to the front line, reducing the overall staff at OSS/London through 1944.
The OSS was formally dissolved by Executive Order 9620 on 20 September 1945, leaving the facilities at Grosvenor Street to eventually become residential complexes.
Activities OSS had been designed as a centralized intelligence agency with all aspects of intelligence under its purview, but the British system which emerged was by 1942 no longer structured under a centralized organizational hierarchy. As such, each of the branches of OSS stationed here formed semi-autonomous operational capabilities. To some onlookers, this seemed like it might have hindered their abilities, but this was not an opinion shared by most OSS/London branch chiefs. Each of these branches also formed separate liaison offices with their British counterparts. In many cases, the relationships formed between these OSS branches and their British counterparts were stronger than they were with each other. David Bruce, as a result, had to constantly mediate arguments between SIS and SOE in order so that the American effort might be perceived as unified back home, instead of siloed as it was. Another complication was that while their British counterparts would share information with SO/London and SI/London, they would not share information with SO/Washington or SI/Washington.
Both SO/London and SI/London created detachments that operated in the field alongside military commanders, in order to receive and coordinate appropriate mission sets for their clandestine and covert operatives in the field.
SO/London and SO/SOE
The Special Operations Branch (SO) at OSS/London, known as SO/London, was responsible for sabotage, the supply and support of resistance organizations, and the conduct of guerrilla warfare in enemy-occupied areas. Its British counterpart was the London Group of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
The Chief of SO/London was Charles Vanderblue. The Executive Officer of SO/London was George E. Brewer, who was also responsible for all of the remote installations away from OSS/London. Brewer would also become the Acting Chief whenever Vanderblue was deployed on-mission.