The deal, like so many others, involved compromises. It placed Alexander, Montgomery, and Anderson, all four-star British generals, under a three-star American with no previous combat experience. It also moved Eisenhower further from the battlefield. “We were carrying out a move which could not help flattering and pleasing the Americans,” Brooke wrote long afterward. “They did not fully appreciate the underlying intentions. We were pushing Eisenhower up into the stratosphere and rarefied atmosphere of a Supreme Commander, whilst we inserted under him one of our own commanders to deal with the military situations and to restore the necessary drive and coordination which had been so seriously lacking of late!”50
During a private lunch with Roosevelt near the end of the conference, Marshall brought up the subject of Eisenhower’s rank. Ordinarily, he admitted, it would be hard to justify Eisenhower’s promotion to full general when Allied armies were stuck in the mud. But under the new command structure, Eisenhower would be commanding generals who outranked him. In those circumstances, it would be difficult for Eisenhower to keep headstrong four-stars like Alexander and Montgomery in check while wearing only three stars.
Harry Hopkins popped into Roosevelt’s room just as he was telling Marshall “he would not promote Eisenhower until there was some damn good reason for doing it.” Promotions, he declared, would go to people who had done the fighting, and “while Eisenhower had done a good job he hadn’t knocked the Germans out of Tunisia.”*51
Marshall dropped the subject. He could do nothing for Eisenhower’s rank, but he did help the beleaguered lieutenant general by moving the Army’s best and brightest into the African theater. He arranged for the State Department to send him diplomats, to lift some of the political load, and he urged Eisenhower to consider appointing Patton as his deputy for ground forces. He also sent Eisenhower’s West Point classmate Major General Omar Bradley to Algeria, where he would serve as the supreme commander’s “eyes and ears” at the front, diagnose problems, and recommend solutions.52
•
Early in the conference, Roosevelt met with General Henri Giraud to discuss the French Army. Admiral Darlan’s assassination by a radical monarchist on Christmas Eve left a power vacuum in French North Africa, and Roosevelt told Giraud it would be a “very splendid thing” if he and de Gaulle could work out an acceptable division of power. Giraud, who had once been de Gaulle’s commanding officer, nodded agreeably and told Roosevelt he expected the resistance leader to fall into line.53
De Gaulle not only refused to fall into line; he refused even to show up. He told British foreign secretary Anthony Eden he would neither attend nor parlay with Giraud, and he even bristled at Roosevelt’s invitation to come to Casablanca, huffing that a foreign leader could not invite a French leader to meet on French soil. It was a matter of honor; if Roosevelt wanted to invite de Gaulle to a meeting, de Gaulle would meet him in Washington.54
Roosevelt was furious with de Gaulle’s impertinence. He managed to restrain his anger only by alloying it with a little humor, writing to Cordell Hull:
We delivered our bridegroom, General Giraud, who was most cooperative on the impending marriage, and I am quite sure was ready to go through with it on our terms. However, our friends could not produce the bride, the temperamental lady de Gaulle. She has got quite snooty about the whole idea and does not want to see either of us, and is showing no intention of getting into bed with Giraud.55
FDR’s son Franklin, serving as his father’s aide for the conference, recalled Churchill arriving for a luncheon with a scowl wrapped around a fat Havana cigar. With a peevish look, he muttered that he had been unable to convince de Gaulle to come to Casablanca.
“Winston, I don’t quite understand that,” replied Roosevelt. “Payday is coming up on Friday and you issue checks to the Free French. I think you ought to just send a message to de Gaulle saying if the bride won’t come to Casablanca, there will be no payday on Friday.”56
Payday was not interrupted, for two days later the six-foot, four-inch Frenchman was standing over Roosevelt, arguing with him. Secret Service agent Mike Reilly, who watched the meeting from behind the villa’s curtains, remembered de Gaulle marching up to Roosevelt with the “unmistakable attitude of a man toting a large chip on each shoulder.”
The general towered over the man in the wheelchair and the two launched into a rancorous argument, FDR in his passable French, de Gaulle prattling on about “ma dignité” and his status among the Allies. Reilly, hidden behind the curtain with his pistol drawn, grew tense as the conversation heated.57
Roosevelt’s appeal to the cause of French liberation eventually overcame—just barely—de Gaulle’s ego. On January 24, Roosevelt persuaded him to sign a lukewarm statement of French unity with Giraud. De Gaulle’s signature was hardly dry when Roosevelt and Churchill ushered bride and groom to four chairs set up on the lawn behind Roosevelt’s villa. In his seat, the long-legged de Gaulle sulked like a French maiden betrothed to a hideous troll in some bad fairy tale.
As Roosevelt recalled afterward, before the two Frenchmen left, Army Signal Corps photographer Sammy Schulman, an old press friend of FDR’s, asked the leaders if he could snap a picture of the two Frenchmen shaking hands.
When Roosevelt translated the request, Giraud immediately stood up and extended his hand with an affable “Mais oui!”
De Gaulle eyed Schulman’s camera warily and refused to budge through five full minutes of cajoling by the Anglo-American leaders. Finally he stood up and shook hands with his fellow liberator.
Roosevelt grinned as Sammy snapped pictures of the shotgun wedding. The photograph went round the world, proving, as Mike Reilly concluded, “Cameras do lie.”58
• • •
Like many of his generals, FDR’s mental picture of a militant Germany was heavily influenced by the events of 1918. The Kaiser’s empire had capitulated before Allied troops had overrun the Vaterland, a circumstance that had allowed Hitler’s thugs to claim that Germany had never really been defeated. According to the Nazi line, the Second Reich’s death was not due to military defeat, but to a stab in the back by Jews, communists, and the West.59
The State Department had discussed the idea of “unconditional surrender” the previous May, and at his pre-Casablanca meeting with the Joint Chiefs, FDR told them he would talk it over with Churchill. At the time, he did not ask his military men for their opinions.
Had Roosevelt asked, Marshall and King would have advised him not to draw a line that would spur the enemy to fight harder. “As the war carried on,” King later wrote, “I, myself, became more and more convinced that this slogan was a mistaken one. Of course, the people of the United States like slogans because they are terse and sometimes fit the situation; at least, they don’t have to think!!”60
After photographs of Giraud and de Gaulle were safely part of the historical record, Roosevelt shifted over to a wooden chair next to Churchill, where he casually addressed some fifty newsmen sitting cross-legged on the lawn. As the journalists took notes, he explained the proceedings of the eventful conference. His eyes sparking, he trod upon a subject he had not fully discussed with anyone:
I think we have all had it in our hearts and our heads before, but I don’t think that it has ever been put down on paper by the Prime Minister and myself, and that is the determination that peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power.
Some of you Britishers know the old story—we had a General called U.S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in my, and the Prime Minister’s, early days he was called “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy and Japan. That means a reasonable assurance of future world peace. It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which a
re based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.61
FDR later claimed that his announcement was an impromptu decision. The effort to get Giraud and de Gaulle together was so difficult, he said, it reminded him of getting Grant and Lee together at Appomattox. “And then suddenly the press conference was on,” he said, “and Winston and I had no time to prepare for it, and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant ‘Old Unconditional Surrender’ and the next thing I knew I had said it.”*62
But a demand for subjugation, without any terms, would only make Germany fight harder, and Roosevelt’s chiefs knew the decision would bind together the fates of Mussolini and Hitler. There would be no divide and conquer anymore, just conquer. It was a monumental strategic choice that the president neglected to examine with his advisers before committing himself in public.63
But for better or worse, as Eleanor had once remarked, “The president does not think. He decides.” During the next few months, there would be plenty of agonizing decisions to make.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“A WAR OF PERSONALITIES”
THE CASABLANCA CONFERENCE HAD SET THE WAR’S STRATEGIC DIRECTION for the next six months, but for Marshall, Stimson, Arnold, and King, that direction was a decidedly mixed bag.
Marshall returned home with the least to show for his troubles. He lost his second effort to revive ROUNDUP, and his only Moroccan trophy was an iffy British promise to think about invading Burma by the end of the year. As a frustrated Al Wedemeyer wrote, “We lost our shirts and are now committed to a subterranean umbilicus in mid-summer. . . . We came, we listened and we were conquered.” 1
The sister services fared better. King pried loose permission for a Pacific offensive. Arnold did even better: He came away with a commitment to concentrate heavy bombers in England for a strategic air campaign, and when Sicily was taken, his bomber bases would sit within easy range of Rome.
Having outlined grand strategy at Casablanca, Roosevelt’s lieutenants were free to return to parochial problems. As in the troublesome year 1942, the biggest problem was identifying the man who would conduct the slow, bloody steps across the Pacific Ocean. The question of command once again dumped Marshall into the middle of another power struggle among MacArthur, Arnold, and King.
• • •
Tamping down interservice rivalry was never easy, and the attitudes of MacArthur, the Army Air Forces, and the Navy did not help. From Brisbane, MacArthur worked himself into a frenzy over conspiracies festering against him at Main Navy, and his xenophobia filtered down to his staffers planning the nuts and bolts of operations with their naval counterparts. Hap Arnold, who had toured the Pacific theater the previous year, came home believing there was a lobbying campaign by the Navy against his high-altitude bombing strategy.2
Like everyone else, the admirals harbored their own prejudices. MacArthur had rubbed King the wrong way ever since 1942, when the general had carped about Admiral Hart not doing enough to help him in the Philippines, and King didn’t think much of MacArthur as a strategist. “King said MacArthur wasn’t using what he had, that he didn’t know how to use naval power, and in his opinion never will know how,” one of King’s journalist friends wrote his editor. “MacArthur, [King] remarked, had just discovered the airplane.”3
At one meeting of the Joint Chiefs, King began harping, bitterly and at length, on MacArthur’s arrogant personality. Fed up with King’s harangues, Marshall rose to his feet, pounded his fist on the table, and bellowed, “I will not have the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff dominated by a policy of hatred. I will not have any meetings carried on with this hatred!”4
As Marshall later told one interviewer, “On the matter of the respective attitudes of the Navy and MacArthur, the feeling was so bitter and the prejudice was so great that the main thing was to get an agreement. . . . Because you were in a war of personalities—a very vicious war.” A partnership between Army and Navy “was arrangeable if the two commanders wanted to get together. But their approaches, particularly on MacArthur’s side, were so filled with deep prejudices that it was very hard to go about it.”5
Through a thick stew of suspicion, King and Marshall understood that a fracture among the services would only benefit Japan; they would have to put a stop to the rancor their men were making. In March, King and Marshall hosted a meeting of the Pacific staff leadership to clear the air. MacArthur sent a delegation led by his chief of staff, Major General Richard Sutherland, and his air force commander, Lieutenant General George Kenney. Nimitz sent his deputy, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, and Halsey sent his chief of staff, Captain Miles Browning. Day-to-day meetings were refereed by the irascible Admiral “Savvy” Cooke and the suspicious General Wedemeyer.6
The conference was held ostensibly to decide what the Pacific theater needed and who would command the various operations. But nearly everyone at the conference—Army, Air Forces, and Navy—spent their time trying to grab men, ships, and planes for their own fiefdoms. In a case of politics and strange bedfellows, the Pacific delegations representing MacArthur and Nimitz lined up with King’s men against staffers representing Arnold and Marshall. Admiral Cooke harangued Arnold’s staff over air allocation to the Pacific. Knitting his thick black eyebrows, a scowling Savvy Cooke bellowed that the Pacific was being shortchanged by the War Department. Arnold’s chief planner, Brigadier General Orvil Anderson, countered that the buildup of a concentrated bomber force in England was mandated by the Casablanca agreements; the Allies could not shut down the air war over Germany just so MacArthur and Nimitz could bomb Rabaul into the Stone Age from which it had so recently emerged.7
The conference degenerated into a squabble among khaki squires that did their overlords little credit. One witness recalled, “The admiral and the general quarreled, as was not uncommon in days when neither had an intelligent comprehension of the other’s business.” Another, Captain Charles Moore, was less understated: “I was really shocked to hear Cooke lay Anderson out in the most violent and vicious terms at this meeting, in public. . . . He didn’t spare a word in cracking Anderson down.”8
The delegates deadlocked on what to give the Pacific, and how to divide the Pacific’s allotment of ships, transports, planes, and fuel between MacArthur and Halsey. Unable to agree, they dumped the logistical spaghetti bowl into the laps of the Joint Chiefs.
The Chiefs assembled in a closed-door session on March 19. King wanted every bomber coming off the line sent to the Pacific, and he was willing to give up a division of Army ground troops to get them. Major General George Stratemeyer, sitting in for Arnold, wanted no weakening of the bomber force in England; theater commanders, he argued, should be told what they could have and should make their plans accordingly, not the other way around. Marshall wanted to go slow. He felt a better inventory of the Pacific’s resources was in order; once the Joint Chiefs knew exactly what the theater had, they could better decide what, if anything, to take from other places.9
Leahy weighed in on the Navy’s side. Looking at the problem through Roosevelt’s political lens, the old admiral knew that strategic bombing, no matter how important from a military perspective, was a concept the public would not condone if it meant American sons and husbands were being bombed and strafed on the ground. “Whether Germany is bombed or not,” he concluded, “the American forces in Africa and the South Pacific must be adequately protected. If those troops are neglected, the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not face the people of the United States.”10
Speaking for Roosevelt, Leahy resolved the “where” question the same way Roosevelt had resolved it before the midterm elections: More resources would go to the Pacific, even at the expense of a bomber buildup in England.
But there was still a “who” question that defied solution: Would the Pacific’s next phase be led by MacArthur, or by Nimitz?
• • •
In July of ’42, the Joint Chiefs had given Guadalcanal to
Admiral Ghormley by shaving off one degree from MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area. Now King’s men suggested lopping off the rest of the Solomons and giving them to Admiral William Halsey, Ghormley’s replacement. When Marshall refused, King suggested putting the entirety of the Pacific under a single Navy man—Nimitz—just as everything in Europe and the Mediterranean was under a single Army man, Eisenhower. Again Marshall refused.11
Marshall countered by nominating MacArthur as supreme commander of all operations in and around New Guinea. This time King refused, though not just for reasons of service pride. The fleet battles around Guadalcanal had taught Ernie King a healthy respect for Japan’s striking power. The Imperial Navy could show up anywhere in the South or Central Pacific, and King didn’t want his carriers tied to MacArthur’s schemes in New Guinea if Yamamoto decided to launch another attack. Nimitz needed the flexibility to fight another Midway without asking permission from MacArthur, so MacArthur could not monopolize the Navy.12
Leahy broke the volley of refusals and counterrefusals by pushing King into a compromise. They could find a way to support MacArthur without leaving Nimitz in the lurch. Knowing MacArthur’s propensity to blame the Navy for not doing enough to support him, Leahy assured King that Nimitz would remain in command of naval forces everywhere, but he made King promise that Nimitz would not shortchange MacArthur during the Solomons-Rabaul campaign.13
On March 28, the Joint Chiefs finally had an order they could send to MacArthur, Nimitz, and Halsey. Four months of studies, discussions, and arguments—sometimes vicious arguments—were distilled into six sterile paragraphs. The Pacific would receive two more infantry divisions and substantial air support. Under MacArthur’s general direction, the Army and Navy would capture the Solomons and Cape Gloucester on New Britain, a stepping-stone to Rabaul. Heavily defended Rabaul would be crossed off MacArthur’s target list for 1943, though it would be picked up the next year, and Nimitz would command all naval forces not assigned temporarily to MacArthur.14
American Warlords Page 30
