OSS Against the Reich: The World War II Diaries of Colonel David K.E. Bruce
(OSS Against the Reich presents the previously unpublished...)
OSS Against the Reich presents the previously unpublished World War II diaries of Colonel David K.E. Bruce, London branch chief of America’s first secret intelligence agency, as he observed the war against Hitler. The entries include eyewitness accounts of D-Day, the rocket attacks on England, and the liberation of Paris. As a top deputy of William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, Bruce kept his diary sporadically in 1942 and made daily entries from the invasion of Normandy until the Battle of the Bulge. Bruce had served in World War I and, as Andrew Mellon’s son-in-law, moved easily in the world of corporate and museum boardrooms and New York society. However, World War II gave him a more serious and satisfying purpose in life; the experience of running the OSS’s most important overseas branch confirmed his lifelong interest in foreign service. After the war, in partnership with his second wife, Evangeline, Bruce headed the Marshall Plan in France and was ambassador to Paris, Bonn, and London. He further served as head of negotiations at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam, first American emissary to China and ambassador to NATO.
David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce was an American statesman, intelligence officer, politician and diplomat. He is known as a prominent United States diplomat who served from 1961 to 1969 as ambassador to Great Britain and headed the U. S. delegation to the Paris peace talks on Vietnam from 1970 to 1971.
Background
David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce was born on February 12, 1898 in Baltimore, Maryland, to William Cabell Bruce and Louise Este Fisher. His father, a member of a distinguished southern family that owned one of the largest plantations in Southside, Virginia, was a prominent lawyer who served as a United States senator from 1923 to 1929 and authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Benjamin Franklin. His mother was a socialite descended from one of Baltimore's most distinguished families.
Education
Bruce attended the Gilman Country School, an exclusive private school in Baltimore. He also entered Princeton University in 1915. Upon his return from Europe to the United States, Bruce studied law at the University of Virginia from 1919 to 1920 and then at the University of Maryland from 1920 to 1922 but did not earn a degree.
Career
David Bruce left Princeton University and in 1917 to join the United States Army, in which he served until the end of World War I. He was discharged with the rank of lieutenant. His work for the Army Courier Service during the Versailles Peace Conference and his subsequent personal travels during the 1920's enabled him to visit most of the capital cities of Europe.
He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1923 and began a law practice in Baltimore.
President Calvin Coolidge, the vice-president, five Supreme Court justices, the Speaker of the House, General John Pershing, and many other high-ranking officials attended the ceremony presided over by the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D. C. After passing the Foreign Service examination in 1925, Bruce assumed his first overseas assignment as vice-consul at the United States embassy in Rome in 1926.
Bruce then devoted his attention to Staunton Hill, the Bruce family estate at Brookneal in Charlotte County, Virginia. The estate had become too much for Bruce's father to handle and he had sold it during the 1920's to be used as a hunt club in which his two sons held some financial interest. With an improved financial portfolio, David Bruce purchased it as outright owner.
During this period he also operated a 5, 000-acre tobacco plantation and ran a parachute manufacturing company. Meanwhile, he engaged in highly remunerative legal work for such prominent firms as Bankers Trust and W. A. Harriman and Company.
Bruce also assisted his father-in-law and Ailsa's brother, Paul, with the establishment of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. ; the National Gallery and its contents, Andrew Mellon's renowned personal art collection, were the financier's unique "gift to the nation. "
On June 28, 1940, Bruce traveled to England as chief representative in Great Britain for the American Red Cross. He made another trip to England at the end of the year. Various newspaper publications of his letters from abroad and his subsequent radio broadcasts at home in the United States reported on the fortitude of the English during the Battle of Britain and their need for assistance, and helped to build support for the United States' entry into World War II.
On July 11, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized William J. Donovan to head a new government agency, which became the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. Donovan recruited Bruce, who began his wartime responsibilities on October 10, 1941. With the rank of United States Army colonel, Bruce served as the London-based director of the OSS European Theater of Operations (ETO) from 1943 to 1945.
He witnessed and participated in most of the major Allied military events of the ETO and entered liberated Paris in the company of Ernest Hemingway.
The postwar period launched Bruce into a succession of political appointments and diplomatic activities. As assistant secretary of commerce to W. Averell Harriman from 1947 to 1948, Bruce oversaw the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce; he then served as chief of the Economic Cooperation Administration mission to France from 1948 to 1949 and promoted the Marshall Plan there; then he was appointed United States ambassador to France, a post he held from 1949 to 1952.
He next served as under secretary of state and alternate governor of the International Monetary Fund from 1952 to 1953; as governor of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and special United States observer at the Interim Committee of the European Defense Community in 1953; and as special American representative to the European High Authority for Coal and Steel from 1953 to 1954. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Bruce to the newly created President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities. In 1957, Eisenhower appointed Bruce ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he served until 1959.
In 1961, President Kennedy named Bruce ambassador to Great Britain, a post he held until 1969, thereby serving longer than any previous United States ambassador to the Court of St. James. As a consultant for the Department of State, he signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in London in July 1968.
On July 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon used a nationwide television speech to announce Bruce's appointment as chief United States negotiator at the Vietnam peace talks in Paris. Reportedly frustrated by the attitudes of the North Vietnamese, a little more than a year later Bruce offered his resignation. However, some credit Bruce with paving the way for the secret talks between Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiators that ended the Vietnam War.
He died of a heart attack in Washington, D. C. Bruce was the first American diplomat to serve as ambassador to the three most prestigious European posts of the postwar era: France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Great Britain.
Achievements
David Bruce was one of the National Gallery's first five general trustees and served as vice-president and then president of the board during the early years of World War II. In 1939 he won election to the Virginia House of Delegates as a Democrat and served there until 1942.
Diplomatically active even in his last years, Bruce became the first chief of the United States mission to the People's Republic of China from 1973 to 1974, and then served in Brussels as ambassador to NATO from 1974 to 1976.
During his lifetime, Bruce received numerous American and foreign awards and military decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the French croix de guerre, and the Legion of Honor. President Gerald R. Ford awarded him the Medal of Freedom on February 10, 1976.
Throughout his extensive, impressive career, he won admiration and respect for his gracious personality and refined sensibilities, and particularly for his inherent capability to mitigate negotiation tensions. Such diplomatic agility was a most admirable asset for a major world power during such critical times.
He won election as a Democrat to the Maryland House of Delegates, where he served from 1924 to 1926.
Connections
On May 29, 1926, Bruce married Ailsa Mellon, the only daughter of Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, a multimillionaire financier and philanthropist. Ailsa soon became ill and required medical attention at spas outside of Italy, however, and Bruce left the Foreign Service in 1927 to return home with his ailing wife.
Bruce was divorced from Ailsa in 1945, and on April 23 of that year, he married Evangeline Bell, daughter of an American diplomat and fellow OSS worker. He had one daughter, Audrey, with Ailsa; and two sons and a daughter with Evangeline. Both of his daughters died tragically: Audrey and her husband, Stephen Richard Currier, were on a January 1967 chartered flight that disappeared between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands; Bruce's second daughter, Alexandra Bruce Michaelides, died of a gunshot wound on November 9, 1975.
Father:
William Cabell Bruce
1860–1946
Mother:
Louise Este Fisher Bruce
1864–1945
1st wife :
Ailsa Mellon Bruce
1901–1969
Daughter:
Audrey Sheila Bruce Currier
1934–1967
Daughter:
Sasha Bruce
1946–1975
2nd wife :
Evangeline Bell Bruce
1914–1995
Son:
David Surtees Bruce
1948–2008
Brother:
James Cabell Bruce
1892–1980
Brother:
William Fisher Bruce
1890–1892
Brother:
William Cabell Bruce
1895–1910
Friend:
Jean Monnet
Bruce was much influenced by his lengthy friendship with Jean Monnet, the "father of the Common Market".
