American Warlords

by Jonathan W. Jordan

  Hopkins agreed with Marshall, but Roosevelt overrode them both. He cabled Churchill that he was “more anxious than ever that BOLERO proceed to definite action beginning in 1942,” and the next morning he assured Molotov that the Americans did intend to open a second front that year. A satisfied Molotov packed his bags and flew home with pistol, sausage, and a commitment for a second front.*9

  Shortly after Molotov departed, Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, called Hopkins to discuss the wording of a press release that referred to a second front in 1942. Hopkins checked with Marshall, who again objected to any reference to “1942.” ROUNDUP, he reiterated, would only be feasible in 1943.

  Hopkins passed along Marshall’s objections, but Roosevelt again demurred. He wanted a second front opened in 1942, and like “Iron-Ass” Molotov, Roosevelt refused to budge. The press release, issued June 11, read: “In the course of the conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.”10

  •

  Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, once Prince Louis of Battenberg and now Churchill’s combined operations specialist, arrived from London the week after Molotov’s visit. Young, Hollywood handsome, rich, and gregarious, he was well liked by the Americans, and Churchill occasionally used “Dickie” Mountbatten, for tricky negotiations with his most important ally.

  Over a private dinner with Roosevelt, Mountbatten told FDR that the Allies lacked the specialized landing craft needed to mount a meaningful invasion of France that year. An invasion in 1942 would not draw off an appreciable number of German divisions from the Russian front, and it would probably end with American and British bodies floating in the English Channel.

  Roosevelt understood the danger. It was magnified by the prospect of a Soviet defeat, which would make Germany invulnerable on the Continent. “My nightmare,” he told Mountbatten, “would be if I was to have a million American soldiers sitting in England, Russia collapses and there’d be no way of getting them ashore.”11

  Stimson and Marshall worked furiously to counter whatever snake oil Mountbatten was selling. “We were largely trying to get the president to stand pat on what he had previously agreed to,” Marshall later told an interviewer. “The president was all ready to do any side show and Churchill was always prodding him. My job was to hold the President down to what we were doing.”12

  To drive Mountbatten’s message home, Churchill scheduled another visit to Washington, with a side trip to Hyde Park, to confer with Roosevelt. Before Churchill’s arrival, FDR held a White House conference with Stimson, Knox, and the Joint Chiefs, where he dusted off GYMNAST. Marshall pushed hard for BOLERO, and Stimson, always supporting Marshall, argued vehemently against Churchill’s African detour.

  King uncharacteristically refused to stick his neck out. He saw ROUNDUP as an Army fight, and he kept his thin lips snapped tight, except when he agreed with Roosevelt. “King wobbled around in a way that made me rather sick with him,” Stimson grumbled to his diary. “He is firm and brave outside the White House but as soon as he gets in the presence of the President he crumbles up.” 13

  Stimson and Marshall shuddered to think what Roosevelt and Churchill would do when, far from the guiding hands of their experts, the two men secluded themselves at FDR’s Hyde Park mansion later that week. They were both scions of old and noble families—though not especially wealthy families, anymore—and both were accustomed to wielding immense power in their own domains. “I can’t help feeling a little bit uneasy about the influence of the Prime Minister on him,” Stimson wrote. “The trouble is Churchill and Roosevelt are too much alike in their strong points and in their weak points. They are both brilliant. They are both penetrating in their thoughts but they lack the steadiness of balance that has got to go along with warfare.” 14

  •

  Winston Churchill sat in FDR’s study at Springwood, the Roosevelt family mansion in Hyde Park. The two men had spent part of the day riding around steep grades overlooking the Hudson River in FDR’s lever-operated Ford convertible, an exhilarated FDR behind the wheel. The Ford darted between trees and around the winding roads of Hyde Park’s grounds, and as it rolled close to the river’s steep embankments, an uneasy Churchill sat quietly in the passenger’s seat, mighty grateful that the hand-controlled brakes functioned as advertised.*15

  Inside the house, they held a long and leisurely discussion among the portraits and mementos of Roosevelt’s youth. As thoughts became words, and words became new thoughts, SLEDGEHAMMER began to crack. Churchill presented insoluble problems for an invasion that year: lack of landing craft, lack of troops, lack of air cover. Lack of British enthusiasm. His Majesty’s government, he warned, would not support any landing on the French coast that courted a serious risk of another defeat. Unless the Allies had the means to land in France, and stay there, they mustn’t make the attempt.16

  By disregarding Marshall’s advice about Molotov, Roosevelt found himself wedged between two strategic boulders. On one hand, Churchill was right; an invasion of France posed immense risks for 1942. On the other, he had just promised Stalin that the Allies would open a second front in 1942, and they could not renege on that commitment.

  He also had to consider public reaction at home, for while the spear may be a military weapon, where that spear will be pointed is political. Roosevelt could preach the gospel of Germany First, but the big battles—Wake, Bataan, Coral Sea, Midway—had been fought against Japan. If the nation’s fighting men were only fighting in the Pacific until the middle of 1943, Americans might want to finish the war against Japan before opening a new can of worms in Europe.

  Before leaving Hyde Park, Roosevelt concluded that he must put soldiers into battle against Germany before year’s end. But he had no idea where to fight. On Saturday, June 20, he sent a message to Marshall and King asking for a list of places where U.S. ground troops could fight Germany before mid-September. He wanted their answer presented at the White House the next day.17

  • • •

  On a muggy Sunday morning, as the thermometer began its long climb into the nineties, Roosevelt sat perspiring in his White House study with Churchill and “Pug” Ismay, Churchill’s military adviser. Churchill, playing on FDR’s desire for action in 1942, favored North Africa, and he mounted a vigorous attack against SLEDGEHAMMER, the only American alternative for that year.18

  Roosevelt and Churchill hadn’t spoken for long when Captain McCrea, FDR’s naval aide, unobtrusively entered with a pink slip of paper. He handed it to Roosevelt, who quickly read it and asked McCrea to hand it to Churchill.

  Tobruk, the message said, had fallen to the Nazis. The last bastion of British power in Libya, the Singapore of North Africa, was now in German hands. General Claude Auchinleck’s troops were streaming east in retreat toward Egypt, and the Royal Navy was preparing to evacuate Alexandria.

  Churchill’s jowly face turned pale. Perhaps thirty thousand Commonwealth troops had been led into captivity, and Egypt and the Suez Canal were exposed to the snapping fangs of Rommel’s panzers. With Japanese troops driving through Burma toward the Indian border, an Axis linkup in the Middle East was a very real, very dangerous possibility. This second epic defeat for the year might even prompt a no-confidence vote in Parliament, bringing down Churchill’s government.19

  “For the first time in my life, I saw the prime minister wince,” said Ismay.

  “I can’t understand it,” Churchill sputtered. Tobruk had withstood a six-week siege a year earlier. Now it had fallen in thirty-six hours.

  Had the British Army lost the will to fight? The men in the room hoped not. “Defeat is one thing,” Churchill wrote. “Disgrace is another.”20

  Roosevelt appreciated the implications of the disaster, both for the war and for Churchill, the steady helmsman of Britain. Tobruk had capped off an annus horribilis not endured by Britons since 1776, and it was unc
lear whether his government would survive. Animated by the same instinct that impelled him to find jobs for the jobless, or to help children stricken with polio, he leaned forward in his chair and asked the grieving minister, “What can we do to help?”

  The Englishman was touched by that simple question, a gesture of personal support from a man who sensed what he was going through. “Nothing could exceed the sympathy and chivalry” of his friend, he later said. “There were no reproaches, not an unkind word was spoken.”

  Even the flinty General Brooke was moved. For the rest of his life, he remained “impressed by the tact and real heartfelt sympathy that lay behind these words. There was not one word too much or too little.”21

  A grateful Churchill asked Roosevelt for three hundred of America’s new Sherman medium tanks. Roosevelt sent for Marshall. He passed along Churchill’s request.

  Weighing the needs of his army against Britain’s war in the Near East, Marshall replied, “Mr. President, the tanks have just been issued to the 1st Armored Division. It is a terrible thing to take weapons out of a soldier’s hand, but if the British need is so great, they must have them.”22

  Marshall produced the tanks, along with one hundred 105mm howitzers. To this he added a few groups of aircraft, and even looked into the loan of General Patton’s Second Armored Division.23

  • • •

  Grateful for FDR’s assistance, Churchill returned to GYMNAST. In that humid oval room, Marshall pleaded the case for BOLERO, SLEDGEHAMMER, and ROUNDUP, while Churchill provided the strategic rebuttal.

  For once, Roosevelt was unsure of himself. For the moment, he was inclined to hold Churchill to his ROUNDUP bargain, and he showed Churchill a letter from Stimson forcefully opposing GYMNAST. Whatever its merits as a diversionary tactic, North Africa would divert resources from the big cross-Channel effort. “When one is engaged in a tug of war,” Stimson wrote, “it is highly risky to spit on one’s hands even for the purpose of getting a better grip.”24

  But he still reached no firm conclusion. With unusual diffidence, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill to invade France in 1942—if an invasion were feasible. If not, the two men agreed to find an alternative. The Allies would continue to study SLEDGEHAMMER until September 1, after which time the weather would rule out an invasion for the year, and BOLERO would forge ahead. In the meantime, other alternatives, including GYMNAST, would be investigated.25

  The agreement in Roosevelt’s study, like so many of his decisions, was a polygamous marriage of convenience, politics, and strategy that gave everyone the impression they got what they wanted. Stimson and Marshall came away convinced that a second front in France was the presumptive mission, at least for 1943; because GYMNAST would deplete troops, air, and ships needed for ROUNDUP, they believed there would be no landing in Africa. It was a simple matter of military logic.

  Churchill, on the other hand, understood the wheels within wheels of FDR’s political mind. Like a musician anticipating the next note, Churchill sensed that what Roosevelt wanted most was an invasion in 1942. It was the time, not the place, that counted most. The president had agreed to support an invasion of France in 1942 if it were feasible, and Churchill knew damned well it would not be feasible. If Africa could offer Roosevelt what France could not, he could be brought around.26

  • • •

  Stimson and Marshall soon learned there was no such thing as a safe bet with politicians as nimble as Churchill and Roosevelt. On July 8, Churchill cabled FDR, “No responsible British general, admiral, or air marshal is prepared to recommend SLEDGEHAMMER as a practicable operation for 1942.” Placing his stubby finger on the solution, he added, “I am sure myself that GYMNAST is by far the best chance for effective relief to the Russian front in ’42. This has all along been in harmony with your idea. In fact it is your commanding idea. Here is the true second front in ’42. Here is the safest and most fruitful stroke that can be delivered this autumn.”27

  To Marshall and Stimson, Churchill was repudiating a bargain they had just struck. Stimson complained to his diary, “The British war cabinet are weakening and going back on Bolero and are seeking to revive Gymnast—in other words, they are seeking now to reverse the decision so laboriously accomplished when Mr. Churchill was here a short time ago.” 28

  Marshall was sick of going back to the garden and yanking out the weeds of North Africa. Every time he thought he had pulled them up and buried them at the bottom of his compost heap, he would look back, and there they were, pushing through the soil.

  He realized, too late, that he had been outflanked. Roosevelt had been telling the Joint Chiefs since May that for political reasons, he wanted a battle across the Atlantic in 1942 to keep the public focused on Germany as the greater threat. But the men in uniform hadn’t found him one. They “failed to see that the leader in a democracy has to keep the people entertained,” Marshall said years later. “That may sound like the wrong word, but it conveys the thought. The people demand action. We couldn’t wait to be completely ready.”29

  In desperation, Marshall turned to Ernie King.

  • • •

  Three months earlier, Brigadier General Eisenhower had suggested that if the British would not go along with SLEDGEHAMMER-BOLERO, the Americans should turn their full might against Japan. “Unless this plan is adopted as the eventual aim for all our efforts,” he advised Marshall, “we must turn our backs upon the Eastern Atlantic and go full out, as quickly as possible, against Japan!”30

  Now Marshall seemed ready to take Ike’s advice. At a meeting of the Joint Chiefs on July 10, he made an impassioned plea to shift American efforts to the Pacific if Churchill did not back down on BOLERO, SLEDGEHAMMER, and ROUNDUP. He pointed out that a Pacific strategy “would tend to concentrate rather than scatter U.S. forces; that it would be highly popular throughout the U.S., particularly on the West Coast; that the Pacific War Council, the Chinese, and the personnel of the Pacific Fleet would all be in hearty accord; and that second only to BOLERO, it would be the operation which would have the greatest effect toward relieving the Russians.”31

  Admiral King was happy to sign on to Marshall’s gambit. Though he accepted the “Germany First” policy intellectually, he knew GYMNAST would drain tremendous resources from the Pacific war. Besides, he doubted the British had ever been enthusiastic about a landing on the Continent.32

  With Stimson’s backing, a helpful nod from King, and the secret concurrence of Sir John Dill, Marshall sent Roosevelt a memorandum signed by himself and King. It read:

  Our view is that the execution of GYMNAST, even if found practicable, means definitely no BOLERO-SLEDGEHAMMER in 1942 and that it will definitely curtail if not make impossible the execution of BOLERO-ROUNDUP in 1943. We are strongly of the opinion that GYMNAST would be both indecisive and a heavy drain on our resources, and that if we undertake it, we would nowhere be acting decisively against the enemy and would definitely jeopardize our naval position in the Pacific. . . . If the United States is to engage in any other operation than forceful, unswerving adherence to BOLERO plans, we are definitely of the opinion that we should turn to the Pacific, and strike decisively against Japan; in other words, assume a defensive attitude against Germany, except for air operations; and use all available means in the Pacific.33

  Marshall’s willingness to forge ahead in the Pacific was not so solid as his letter implied. As he told Roosevelt in a follow-up memorandum, his real goal was to “force the British into acceptance of a concentrated effort against Germany.” Only if this proved impossible, he said, would he recommend the United States, “turn immediately to the Pacific with strong forces and drive for a decision against Japan.”34

  • • •

  As he sat in his Hyde Park study on a warm Sunday morning, Roosevelt turned over Marshall’s memo in his large hands. He knew a radical shift to the Pacific was the last thing Stimson and Marshall really wanted. Even King understoo
d the big picture, and the Navy could not have been entirely comfortable about backing off Hitler, even temporarily.

  Well, the personal views of his service chiefs did not concern him. The commander-in-chief, not his military staff, would decide grand strategy. Roosevelt saw no wisdom in giving Germany a free hand for another year or two while Nimitz and MacArthur chased Yamamoto around the Pacific, and he would not let it be said that he had turned his back on an ally with whom he had so passionately and publicly bound America’s fortunes.

  Like the head of any other government agency, Roosevelt knew admirals and generals would kick from time to time. A president sometimes had to stick pins in them to get them moving in the right direction, and as commander-in-chief, Roosevelt had become a pretty good pin-sticker. He picked up the phone and called the War Department.35

  If the Joint Chiefs wanted a major Pacific offensive, he said, then their commander wanted to know exactly what they had in mind. He ordered them to send him a statement setting forth precisely what they planned to do in the Pacific and why they wanted to do it. He wanted to know which islands they planned to assault, estimated landing dates, estimated numbers of ships, planes, and men they needed, and where they planned on finding those ships, planes, and men. He wanted to know how the “Japan First” effort would help the Russian and Middle East fronts and how the global picture would be improved by throwing everything against Japan rather than Germany. And he wanted it in Hyde Park by the end of the day.36

  Marshall rushed back to Washington from his home in Leesburg. At the Munitions Building, he, Stimson, Arnold, King, and a buzzing hive of staffers worked furiously for two and a half hours preparing a draft plan. But the best they could come up with was a rough outline of the major strongpoints to be overcome between Midway and Tokyo. They could not promise that a shift to Japan would improve the picture much globally; all they could say was that a drive against Japan was better than a drive into the African desert.37