General Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith (5 October 1895 – 9 August 1961) was a senior officer of the United States Army who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff at Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) during the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 during World War II. He was Eisenhower's chief of staff at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in the campaign in Western Europe from 1944 to 1945.
Smith enlisted as a private in the Indiana Army National Guard in 1911. During World War I, he served with the American Expeditionary Forces and was commissioned to second lieutenant in 1917. He was wounded in the Aisne-Marne Offensive in 1918. After the war, he was a staff officer and instructor at the U.S. Army Infantry School. In 1941, he became secretary of the General Staff, and in 1942 he became the secretary to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His duties involved taking part in discussions of war plans at the highest level, and Smith often briefed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on strategic matters.
Smith became chief of staff to Eisenhower at AFHQ in September 1942 and acquired a reputation as Eisenhower's "hatchet man" for his brusque and demanding manner. However, he also successfully represented Eisenhower in sensitive missions requiring diplomatic skill. Smith was involved in negotiating the armistice between Italy and the Allies, which he signed on behalf of Eisenhower. In 1944, he became the chief of staff of SHAEF, again under Eisenhower. In that position, Smith also negotiated successfully for food and fuel aid to be sent through German lines for the cold and starving Dutch civilian population, and he opened discussions for the peaceful and complete German capitulation to the First Canadian Army in the Netherlands. In May 1945, Smith met representatives of the German High Command in Reims, France, to conduct the surrender of the German Armed Forces, and he signed the German Instrument of Surrender on behalf of Eisenhower.
After the war, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1948. In 1950, Smith became the Director of Central Intelligence, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the other intelligence agencies in the United States. Smith reorganized the CIA, redefined its structure and its mission, and gave it a new sense of purpose. He made the CIA the arm of government that is primarily responsible for covert operations. He left the CIA in 1953 to become Under Secretary of State. After retiring from the State Department in 1954, Smith continued to serve the Eisenhower administration in various posts for several years until he retired shortly before he died in 1961.
Walter Bedell Smith was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 5 October 1895, the elder of two sons of William Long Smith, a silk buyer for the Pettis Dry Goods Company, and his wife, Ida Francis née Bedell, who worked for the same company.
Smith was called Bedell from his boyhood. From an early age he was nicknamed "Beetle" or occasionally "Beedle" or "Boodle." He was educated at St. Peter and Paul School, Public Schools #10 and #29, Oliver Perry Morton School, and Emmerich Manual High School, where he studied to be a machinist. There, he took a job at the National Motor Vehicle Company and eventually left high school without graduating. Smith enrolled at Butler University, but his father developed serious health problems, and Smith left to return to his job and support his family.
In 1911, at the age of 16, Smith enlisted as a private in Company D of the 2nd Indiana Infantry of the Indiana National Guard. The Indiana National Guard was called out twice in 1913 for the Ohio River flood and during the Indianapolis streetcar strike. Smith was promoted to corporal and then sergeant. During the Pancho Villa Expedition he served on the staff of the Indiana National Guard.
Smith was a practicing Catholic; in 1913, he met Mary Eleanor (Nory) Cline, who was born in 1893 and died in 1963. They married in a traditional Catholic ceremony on 1 July 1917. Their marriage was of long duration but was childless.
With the army expanding for World War I, Smith's work during the Ohio River flood of 1913 led to his nomination for officer training in 1917, and he was sent to the Officers Candidate Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. Upon graduation on 27 November 1917, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Organized Reserve Corps and assigned to the newly formed Company A, 1st Battalion, 39th Infantry. The regiment was part of the 4th Division, which was then undergoing training at Camp Greene, North Carolina. On 9 May 1918, the division embarked at Hoboken, New Jersey, and it reached Brest, France on 23 May. After training with the British and French Armies, the 4th Division entered the front lines in June 1918 and joined the Aisne-Marne Offensive on 18 July 1918. Smith was wounded by shell fragments during an attack two days later.
Because of his wounds, Smith was returned to the United States. He served with the U.S. Department of War's General Staff and was assigned to the Military Intelligence Division. In September 1918, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Regular Army.
Smith was next sent to the newly formed 379th Infantry Regiment as its intelligence officer. The regiment was part of the 95th Infantry Division, based at Camp Sherman, Ohio. The 95th Infantry Division was demobilized following the signing of the Armistice with Germany on 11 November 1918.
In February 1919, Smith was assigned to Camp Dodge, Iowa, where he was involved with the disposal of surplus equipment and supplies. In March 1919, he was transferred to the 2nd Infantry Regiment, a regular unit based at Camp Dodge, remaining there until November 1919, when it moved to Camp Sherman.
In 1921, the staff of the 2nd Infantry moved to Fort Sheridan, Illinois. In 1922, Smith became aide de camp to Brigadier General George Van Horn Moseley, the commander of the 12th Infantry Brigade at Fort Sheridan. From 1925 to 1929 Smith worked as an assistant in the Bureau of the Budget. He then served a two-year tour of duty overseas on the staff of the 45th Infantry at Fort William McKinley in the Philippines. After nine years as a first lieutenant, he was promoted to captain in September 1929.
Returning to the United States, Smith reported to the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in March 1931. Upon graduation in June 1932, he stayed on as an instructor in the Weapons Section in which he was responsible for demonstrating weapons like the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. In 1933, he was sent to the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He later returned to the Infantry School but was detached again to attend the U.S. Army War College from which he graduated in 1937.
He returned to the Infantry School once more and he was promoted to major on 1 January 1939 after nine years as a captain. The slow promotion was common in the Army in the 1920s and the 1930s. Officers like Smith, commissioned between November 1916 and November 1918, made up 55.6% of the Army's officer corps in 1926. Promotions were usually based on seniority, and the modest objective of promoting officers to major after 17 years of service could not be met because of a shortage of posts for them to fill.
When General George C. Marshall became the Army's Chief of Staff in September 1939, he brought Smith to Washington, D.C., to be the assistant to the secretary of the General Staff. The Secretary of the General Staff was primarily concerned with records, paperwork, and the collection of statistics, but he also performed a great deal of analysis, liaison, and administration. One of Smith's duties was liaison with Major General Edwin "Pa" Watson, the senior military aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Smith was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 4 May 1941, and then to colonel on 30 August 1941. On 1 September, the Secretary of the General Staff, Colonel Orlando Ward, was given command of the 1st Armored Division, and Smith became secretary of the General Staff.