James P. O'Donnell(1917-1990)
- Writer
The son of a brain surgeon, O'Donnell was educated at Harvard
University and worked as a journalist, mostly for Newsweek magazine. A
student in Germany before the war, he became involved with a group of
fellow students who were smuggling Jewish and Catholic clergymen out of
the country by bribing German border guards. A friend of the Kennedy
family from his youth, he once traveled to London to see Ambassador
Joseph Kennedy and appeal to him for assistance. The future president's
father immediately opened his wallet and handed O'Donnell 15 $100
bills. Arriving in Berlin as a U.S. army intelligence officer in July
1945, O'Donnell bribed the Soviet soldier guarding the entrance to
Hitler's Berlin bunker with a pack of Camel cigarettes. He thus became
the first non-Soviet to examine the interior. To his surprise and
delight, he found numerous top secret Nazi documents still in their
filing cabinets. The Soviets, it seemed, were interested only in
finding Hitler's body. These documents became the basis for his book on
Hitler's last days, "The Bunker." O'Donnell joined the State Department
as an adviser on Berlin whehn his friend John F. Kennedy became
president. He spent his last years as a journalism professor at Boston
University.