If the second-front issue weighed heavily upon the Russians, it also burdened FDR and his military planners, for the British—spearheaded by the persuasive Churchill—continued to argue for the expansion of the Mediterranean campaign, which could not occur without a diversion of American assets from the buildup in England. Churchill’s fertile imagination and the dexterous British planning staffs produced offensive projects that extended from the Balkans to the Istrian coast at the head of the Adriatic Sea to the west coast of Italy. The only operation the Allied chiefs approved, an amphibious envelopment at Anzio in January 1944, did not alter the stalemate in Italy. Limited forces, tactical caution, and German combativeness ended Churchill’s dream of a dramatic success. Although the Americans still saw some marginal advantages in continuing the Italian campaign, principally in opening additional air bases, they opposed any substantial reinforcements for the Mediterranean, especially troops and ships needed for a cross-Channel attack.
Despite persistent questions about the size and location of the invasion of France, the Tehran conference (December 1943) ended the debate about whether the offensive (OVERLORD) would occur in 1944. With General Marshall carrying the brunt of the argument, the Americans, seconded by the Russians, persuaded the British that the invasion should take the highest priority in allocating Anglo-American forces. As FDR boasted to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, “I have thus brought OVERLORD back to you safe and sound on the ways for accomplishment.” Army ground and air units still held in strategic reserve in the United States would go to northern Europe, with only minimal reinforcements to the Mediterranean and the Pacific war. (In 1944 the Army sent twenty-six divisions to Europe, seven to the Pacific.) In addition, the preponderance of American forces in the Allied expeditionary force made the British concede that the commander of the invasion would be an American general. Marshall hoped he would be that commander, but FDR reluctantly concluded that he could not spare the chief of staff from his councils of war. He chose instead Marshall’s most trusted subordinate and proven coalition commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The accelerated preparations for OVERLORD did not end the often tense strategic discussions between the Americans and British about how a campaign in Europe should develop. While Eisenhower and his coalition staff wrestled with the tactical and logistical problems of OVERLORD, the Combined Chiefs of Staff argued about an American proposal for a simultaneous invasion of southern France (ANVIL). The military planners did not see how the Allies could find enough ships, transports, tactical aircraft, and divisions to mount two major invasions at the same time unless operations in the Pacific halted for the summer of 1944. That prospect was anathema to the American planners, especially Admiral King. Supported by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, Churchill lectured the Americans about using the forces for ANVIL (largely American and Free French) for intensified operations in Italy or other Mediterranean locales. The Americans, however, held fast to the ANVIL concept, for a second “second front” in France would force the dispersion of German divisions and perhaps cut some of them off if the Allies could quickly link their armies along the Rhine frontier.
Despite British claims that ANVIL was additional evidence of American naiveté, Roosevelt rejected Churchill’s anti-ANVIL position for the same reasons he ultimately turned away from the entire Mediterranean strategy: He saw no reason to divert American forces from the war with Germany in France to other operations in central Europe, which the Allies would enter from the Adriatic. FDR did not think Churchill was pathologically opposed to the Russians, but he feared that the British would antagonize the Soviets by entering an area of Europe that the Russians seemed determined to dominate. FDR’s political judgment coincided with his planners’ preferred strategy. The president did not believe his constituency would support American military intervention in central Europe, let alone a postwar military presence. Moreover, he wanted to ensure that the Russians would enter the war with Japan, whose armies were still relatively strong. Superficially the eternal optimist, Roosevelt privately doubted that the United States had the political will and military resources to block the Soviets in central Europe at the same time it was fighting the Germans and Japanese.
The Pacific war exerted its pull upon America’s military leaders, their commitment to OVERLORD notwithstanding. Through the end of 1943 the Army deployed almost as many divisions and air groups (heavy bombers excepted) to the Pacific as it did in Europe. Except for its antisubmarine escorts and support groups, the Navy built its forces for a climactic battle with the Japanese, assisted by the divisions and aircraft wings of the Fleet Marine Force. In the summer of 1943, pressed by King and all the Pacific commanders, the JCS authorized Nimitz to begin operations in the central Pacific, which meant a “second front” along the eastern edges of the Japanese defense perimeter. The Pacific theater and JCS planners crafted plans that would take the Navy’s new carrier and amphibious task forces across the central Pacific through the Gilberts and Marshalls to the western Carolines, capturing or isolating the major naval base at Truk. Further negotiations between the planners produced an additional set of objectives: the large islands of the Mariana group (Saipan, Tinian, Guam), coveted by both the Navy and the Army Air Forces as naval and air bases. Hap Arnold—an apostle of strategic bombing—and King made strange allies, but both wanted to take the war to the Japanese homeland as quickly as possible. Arnold would have a new long-range bomber (the B-29) to use against the Japanese home islands, and King wanted to put his carrier groups and submarines between Japan and its raw materials in the south. The Marianas would provide bases for both forces, leading to economic strangulation and demoralization. In addition, the Navy believed the Imperial Japanese Fleet would have to fight again somewhere in the western Pacific, and it felt confident that it would finish the work it had begun at Midway and in the south Pacific.
U.S. Overseas Deployments December 1943
* * *
AGAINST GERMANY
AGAINST JAPAN
Personnel
1.8 million
1.8 million
Divisions
U.S. Army
17
13
Marine Corps
0
4
U.S. Army Air Forces
Strategic bombers
2,263
716
Tactical bombers
1,251
723
Fighters
3,456
1,897
Transports
849
545
Naval aviation
Land-based aircraft
204
1,662
Carrier aircraft
366
1,941
U.S. Navy warships
Battleships
6
13
Large carriers
1
7
Light carriers
0
7
Escort carriers
9
14
Heavy cruisers
2
12
Light cruisers
8
20
Destroyers
120
188
Destroyer escorts
112
57
Submarines
40
123
Amphibious transports
10
34
LSTs
92
125
* * *
Threatened with a shift of strategic priorities away from his own southwest Pacific theater, General MacArthur presented the JCS with a series of plans (RENO) that would take his command from the coast of New Guinea to the Philippines. As the south Pacific theater closed down in early 1944, MacArthur received additional Army divisions and air groups from the JCS. MacArthur unloaded his own strategic arguments on Nimitz, King, Marshall, and even FDR, whom he
met in Honolulu in a classic confrontation of great egos. The recapture of the Philippines, MacArthur argued, would interdict Japan with land-based aviation as effectively as any naval blockade. At the root of MacArthur’s persuasiveness, however, was the emotional appeal of wiping away the stinging defeat of 1942 and freeing both Americans and Filipinos from the harsh grip of their Japanese captors. Authorizing a dual drive into the western Pacific also allowed FDR and the JCS to postpone again the question of overall command in the Pacific, an issue neither wanted to resolve. As Nimitz’s forces turned west across miles of ocean and low coral atolls, MacArthur aimed his own American-Australian divisions and air forces, supported by the 7th Fleet, toward the Philippines.
The dual Pacific drive also reflected the JCS’s disillusionment with the Nationalist Chinese. Early in the war FDR and his planners envisioned Chiang Kai-shek’s primitive but numerous army as the foundation of an offensive against the Japanese on the mainland of Asia. By the end of 1943 this optimism had gone aglimmering in a cloud of distrust, broken promises, wasted aid, and reciprocal contempt. If Chiang wanted to fight at all, he wanted to fight fractious warlords and his Communist rivals, not the Japanese. Having no confidence in Chiang, the British avoided extensive operations in Burma, which Chiang championed. Even a limited offensive in 1943 by the Anglo-Indian army along the southern Burmese border came to nothing.
The American interest in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater changed from a war carried by the Nationalists to a war carried by American strategic bombers. The requirements for the bombing offensive against Japan (MATTERHORN) were disheartening. To maintain a B-29 force of 700 aircraft in China, so USAAF planners calculated, would require an airlift force of 3,000 transports to fly the awesome “Hump” of the Himalayas from India. The American air bases in western China would need both ground and air protection from Japanese attacks, which were sure to follow the first raids. Even if the Chinese provided the ground defense forces, the logistical requirements for MATTERHORN would probably exceed 15,000 tons a month, far in excess of American airlift capacity in 1943. The alternative was to open an overland route from Ledo, a railhead in India, to the Burma Road, but this option would require a ground campaign in northern Burma, since the Japanese held the Burma Road. Except for skilled (but small) Anglo-American “long-range penetration forces” and Burmese hill tribe guerrillas, the ground offensive depended upon the Chinese divisions organized and trained by General Stilwell’s military mission in India and Yunnan, China. Aware that Chiang did not want them to waste their troops against the Japanese—as long as the USAAF would fly the “Hump”—Stilwell’s Chinese generals showed minimal enthusiasm for a harsh jungle campaign.
Back in Washington, General George C. Marshall fretted about “localitis” and “theateritis,” a virulent condition of limited perspective that seemed to infect all the principal Allied commanders. But the war was still an odd lot of minimally connected operations mounted from an initial position of weakness. Whether all the theater campaigns could now be linked and pursued to victory remained the challenge to the Allied grand coalition.
The War Against Germany and Japan
If the cross-Channel attack was the future foundation for German defeat in 1944, the strategic bombing campaign against the Third Reich had been part of Anglo-American strategy since Pearl Harbor. In the uncertain winter of 1943–1944 it had not yet produced victory. Prewar theorizing suggested that an aerial campaign might make traditional warfare obsolete; under the press of actual experience strategic bombardment seemed less likely to defeat the Germans. The most enthusiastic bombardment champions in the RAF and USAAF still believed that bombing might make an invasion unnecessary. The experience of the RAF’s Bomber Command before 1942 did not, however, augur well for the Americans. Prohibitive losses in daylight bombing had forced the RAF to switch to nighttime operations and to change its targeting doctrine. Instead of striking specific industrial and military targets, the RAF bombed the central areas of German cities on the theory that killing and “dehousing” civilians would demoralize the Germans and stir internal resistance to the Nazi regime. Against a progressively sophisticated German air-defense system, the RAF sent streams of bombers into the blackness above the Continent to blast and burn the Third Reich.
The forward elements of the USAAF 8th Air Force deployed to England with the American doctrine of strategic bombardment unmodified by the European air war. American airmen, led by prewar bombing advocates Carl “Tooey” Spaatz and Ira Eaker, believed that the B-17 could conduct precision, daylight operations against specific industrial targets and do so beyond the range of escorting fighters. They also believed that their first task was to ruin the German air force by destroying its aircraft before they were ever assembled. Factories manufacturing airframes, engines, and specialized component parts should receive first attention. The next most important targets—whose destruction would cripple the German economy—were electricity-generating plants, the petroleum industry, and the transportation system. While the bombing might affect German morale, the American air planners did not regard public demoralization as an appropriate objective. In this conviction they differed from the RAF, which wanted American bombers to join its city-busting campaign.
The initial American bombing efforts in 1942 were too modest to produce conclusive evidence on the ultimate success of the air campaign. With TORCH approaching, units assigned initially to the 8th Air Force went instead to North Africa for the Mediterranean campaign. In addition, the 8th Air Force changed target priorities, for the CCS demanded that it bomb U-boat pens and construction yards. Since most of their early targets were in France, the 8th Air Force bombers had fighter support on their raids, and the Luftwaffe, by its own admission, had not trained to attack mass formations of B-17s. Yet even in its limited early operations the 8th Air Force lost an average of 6 percent of its bombers per raid, a loss rate that had led the RAF to abandon daylight operations. The promise of the bombing campaign, on the other hand, still carried the B-17s forward into the fighters and flak. After a raid in which he had lost almost a third of his bombers, one wing commander asserted, “There is no question in my mind as to the eventual result. VIII Bomber Command is destroying and will continue to destroy the economic resources of Germany to such an extent that I personally believe that no invasion of the Continent or Germany proper will ever have to take place.”
FDR, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff did not share such unrequited optimism, but at Casablanca (January 1943) they included the strategic bombing of Germany among their most important offensive priorities. A “Combined Bomber Offensive” (POINTBLANK) appeared critical to any invasion and ground campaign, since the limited Allied ground forces would require clear air superiority and a weakened Wehrmacht. The CCS statement on POINTBLANK was modest and very general: “The aim of the bomber offensive is the progressive destruction and dislocation of the enemy’s war industrial and economic system, and the undermining of his morale to the point where his capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” Arguing that limited bomber numbers and unperfected bombing techniques had made an assessment of the campaign difficult, the CCS said that larger raids would reduce bomber losses. They also thought that the bombing campaign would not win the war by itself or destroy German morale, but that “it already has an appreciable and will have an increasing effect on the enemy’s distributive system and industrial potential.” The bomber offensive also had its political dimension, for FDR and Churchill presented it to Stalin as a “second front in the air” that would cripple the German armies fighting in Russia: The British would bomb at night, the Americans by day.
Stripped of bombers and fighters for the North African operations, the 8th Air Force started POINTBLANK with attacks on targets in Western Europe, especially naval bases, airfields, and railroad marshaling yards. Usually the bombers had fighter escorts. The Luftwaffe’s response was intense enough for General Eaker, who had succeeded General Spaatz as the 8th Air Force
commander, to order his available medium bombers and fighters to attack German airfields and maintenance depots. Guided by British intelligence and JCS targeting orders, Eaker placed highest priority on attacking the German aircraft industry, especially fighter assembly plants, engine factories, and ball-bearing manufacturers. Petroleum targets and transportation systems dropped down the priority list, while submarine targets remained close to the top. Frustrated by erratic weather (which limited attacks to about ten a month) and crew and aircraft shortages, 8th Air Force did not mount a very impressive effort until the summer of 1943. It did, however, help to divert about half of the Luftwaffe’s fighter force to antibomber operations.
When he received additional B-17 groups, Eaker ordered major missions into Germany, since the airfield bombings were not appreciably reducing German fighter strength. On August 17, the 8th Air Force launched its deepest raids against factories at Schweinfurt and Regensburg. The bombs destroyed some of the factory complexes, but the Luftwaffe destroyed and damaged much of the bomber force. The raids cost the 8th Air Force 60 of 315 bombers—and the ten crewmen in each bomber. After more raids on Luftwaffe airfields, the 8th Air Force made another massive effort the next month. Of 262 bombers sent against Stuttgart, 45 fell. Although the Americans proved—weather permitting—that they could put some of their bombs on target, their losses in unescorted raids suggested that the 8th Air Force might not find planes and crews to replace its losses and maintain efficiency and morale.
For the Common Defense Page 59
