Like most things connected with Italian government, the answer was messy and ambiguous. Messy and ambiguous had never bothered FDR, however, so long as he got what he wanted. What he got in Italy was, to him, a self-evident good: the long, murderous stretch of Mussolini’s wars, from his invasion of Ethiopia to his last gasps in Sicily, was finally over. Finito Benito. In Roosevelt’s mind, it didn’t matter how his war chiefs got there, as long as they got there.6
On September 19, General Eisenhower wired Marshall to ask for authority to recognize the Badoglio government on a provisional basis. In Ike’s view, recognition was necessary to enlist active Italian support in driving the German Army out of Italy. Marshall forwarded Eisenhower’s request to Roosevelt and the State Department. After consulting with Churchill, FDR instructed Eisenhower to recognize the Badoglio government as a co-belligerent—not an ally—provided Italy immediately declared war on Germany.7
After tiresome, Italian-style negotiations concluded the following month, Italy formally declared war on Germany. No promises were made by either Roosevelt or Churchill. When the war was over, debts would be settled, and surrender would be, more or less, unconditional. The liberation of Italy had been won, on paper.
But it would cost the lives of thousands of Clark’s men to turn that paper victory into a real one.8
•
As the Italian campaign slowed to a bloody minuetto south of Rome, a restless Churchill proposed opening yet another front, this time in the Aegean. He wanted to invade the Dodecanese Islands—Rhodes, Samos, Kos, and a few other specks of Greek mythology—to see if he could draw Turkey into the Allied camp.9
The Eastern Mediterranean had always been a hot button for Marshall. Churchill’s designs there smacked of a grand scheme for Britain’s postwar empire. An attack on the Dodecanese, he feared, was Churchill’s down payment on a much larger investment of ships and men. It was an old military trick to commit men to battle on the assumption that where lives and victory hung in the balance, the brass would have to back the commander’s check no matter how much he wrote it for. The Allies would have to double down if they got into trouble—and perhaps triple down if they found a success to exploit.
Reading Churchill’s proposal, Marshall’s every suspicion bubbled to the surface. He would have to kill this new diversion quickly and without mercy. After conferring with Leahy, he and King drafted a reply for Roosevelt’s signature refusing any assistance in the Dodecanese.10
Roosevelt, safely in Marshall’s corner on this subject, agreeably signed the cable. To Marshall’s draft he added, “Strategically, if we get the Aegean Islands, I ask myself, where do we go from there and vice versa where would the Germans go if for some time they retain possession of the islands?”11
Churchill, who had no answer, backed down. “He did it with a bad grace and with almost a childish squawk, but he yielded and the lesson will prove salutary,” remarked Stimson.12
• • •
He did not yield for long, however. General Harold Alexander, Churchill’s senior commander in the Mediterranean, began peppering the Ministry of Defence with pessimistic reports describing setbacks in Italy. Alex’s messages, which Churchill circulated to the Americans, had the ring of a cry for more ships, men, and planes for the Mediterranean theater.13
Stimson watched from the Pentagon as events confirmed his fears. In September Churchill sent a small British force to occupy three key Aegean islands. He didn’t ask for any American help, at least not directly, but in late October he warned FDR that the transfer of divisions from the Mediterranean to England would cripple the progress of the Italian campaign. He complained that two of his best British divisions were sitting idle in Sicily, and would not be put into action for seven more months if they had to await OVERLORD’s launch.14
To Stimson, the PM was blowing the old Mediterranean trumpet to renege on the OVERLORD deal. “Jerusalem!” he exclaimed, using one of his stronger expletives. “This shows how determined Churchill is with all his lip service to stick a knife in the back of Overlord and I feel more bitterly about it than I have ever done before.” 15
In a White House meeting at October’s end, Roosevelt assured Stimson he would not touch the Balkans unless Stalin asked for help there, and both knew Stalin wouldn’t. Much relieved, Stimson asked Roosevelt never even to mention the Balkans again. The mere word, he said, threw his OVERLORD planners into fits.
As Stimson was leaving the Oval Office, he turned to Roosevelt, held up his hand, and said with a smile, “Remember, no more Balkans!”
Roosevelt took Stimson’s injunction in good humor and agreed to avoid the infernal word. But Stimson returned to the Pentagon rattled by the close call. “It was an unpleasant incident,” he wrote. “What I would call dirty baseball on the part of Churchill.” 16
•
Throughout November Roosevelt kept his cards close to his vest. He wanted Marshall in Europe, but it would pose a political risk to defy Pershing’s judgment and a chorus of criticism from Republicans and vulnerable Democrats. And in the fall of 1943, criticism of his war management was a dicey problem, because of a certain general in Australia.17
Though he had not lived in America for more than seven years, Douglas MacArthur’s political star refused to die. In early 1942, two Republicans, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Representative Clare Boothe Luce, of the Time-Life publishing empire, began seeing in MacArthur a possible Republican opponent to Roosevelt in 1944. Responding the way men do when they hear words they wish to hear, MacArthur began quietly flirting with Vandenberg. In April 1943, rumors of a MacArthur ticket reached the ears of Stimson, Marshall, and Leahy, and as speculation swirled through the media, MacArthur coyly announced his intention to do his duty and retire. That announcement, as he well knew, was chum in the shark tank.18
Marshall was aware of MacArthur’s ambition. As a bipartisan Army booster, he kept close ties with Senator Vandenberg—even if, to avoid stoking suspicions among Roosevelt loyalists, he kept his relationship so quiet he had to weather occasional press accusations that he was a New Deal lackey. (“Actually,” Marshall said, “we couldn’t have gotten much closer together unless I sat in Vandenberg’s lap.” 19)
Marshall watched the fall drama unfold but saw no reason to weigh in on MacArthur’s theoretical candidacy. Stimson, however, did. Seeing a monster growing in Brisbane, Stimson enraged the Vandenberg clique by reinstating an old Army regulation banning political activities by Regular Army officers. At Stimson’s weekly press conference, journalists pointedly asked whether he had targeted MacArthur when he reinstated the old rule.
Stimson denied it, but few believed him. Vandenberg attacked Stimson for squelching the constitutional and God-given right of a man to run for president. Representative Hamilton Fish, Roosevelt’s nemesis from Dutchess County, introduced a bill to repeal the ban on candidacies for men in active service, and proposed drafting MacArthur on a “win-the-war platform and on a one-term plank, as opposed to a fourth term and military dictatorship.” Colonel McCormick gleefully told one interviewer, “Roosevelt’s in a hell of a position. If MacArthur wins a great victory, he will be president. If he doesn’t win one, it will be because Roosevelt has not given him sufficient support.”
Vandenberg summed up Republican hopes in his diary: “These people can easily martyrize [MacArthur] into an irresistible figure. . . . It is obvious on every hand that the movement is making solid headway in all directions.” 20
MacArthur’s polling numbers lagged well behind Wendell Willkie and New York Governor Thomas Dewey, and a spring poll pitting Roosevelt and Wallace against a Dewey-MacArthur ticket had the Democrats winning 54 to 46 percent. But a Gallup survey released in September 1943 showed MacArthur outpolling Roosevelt among Midwestern farmers, a key swing region. Roosevelt’s global war strategy, and his choice of commanders, would be wrapped up in the politics of 1944.21
THIRTY-SEV
EN
VINEGAR JOE AND PEANUT’S WIFE
CHINA’S WAR WITH JAPAN NEVER WENT ANYWHERE. WHEN THE ALLIES poured in supplies, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek said he needed trained men to attack the Japanese. When they cut supplies back, he said he couldn’t move without more equipment.* Having spent a generation fighting warlords and communists, he fought like an old man set in his ways, waiting for his new enemy to leave so he could go back to battling the old one he knew better.
Chiang had long complained of General Joseph Stilwell, Marshall’s honest but tactless commander in China. “Vinegar Joe” had the sharp tongue of a cranky country parson, and he blamed Chiang’s corrupt cast of bureaucrats for the ills plaguing China’s war effort. He called Chiang “Peanut” behind his back and refused to kowtow to Chiang’s lackeys. Unsurprisingly, Chiang and his wife liked the dashing General Chennault better, and tended to support Chennault’s air war at Stilwell’s expense.1
The bad blood between Chiang and Stilwell grew more septic when Chiang’s foreign minister, Dr. T. V. Soong, asked President Roosevelt to slice off chunks of Stilwell’s authority as U.S. ground commander. To sideline the general further, Soong also asked Roosevelt’s blessing for the appointment of a supreme allied commander—Chinese, of course—to be placed in charge of the theater.
Roosevelt liked Chennault better, and his distant cousin, Joe Alsop, was Chennault’s publicity adviser. Hearing Soong’s complaints, Roosevelt concluded that Stilwell lacked the patience and diplomacy to get along with the touchy generalissimo.2
Normally unsentimental, Marshall was a deep shade of blue over the hatchet job being done on his old friend—a job for which Marshall would swing the hatchet. Stilwell had been an exemplary leader at Fort Benning before the war, and corruption and civil strife were hardly problems that could be laid at his muddy boots. Marshall deeply regretted having given Stilwell the assignment in the first place.
But the theater was stalled, and there was a job to be done. Perhaps someone else could make a better show of it. With a heavy heart, Marshall drafted the order recalling Stilwell to Washington.3
• • •
In one of those odd twists of fate that dictate so much of China’s history, Madame Chiang leaped into the fray. In shrill tones, she told Soong, her brother, to back off Stilwell. She ordered her husband, politely but firmly, to give him one last chance. Then she summoned Stilwell to her home and ordered him to seek an audience with her husband. Stilwell, she commanded, would show Chiang the respect due his office, and would recant any discourtesy he had shown his Chinese commander.
Stilwell’s initial reaction was to tell the Chiangs and Soong where to go. But after thinking over Madame Chiang’s proposal, he gave in. He submitted himself to a sharp lecture on respect and decorum from the Chinese leader, and the interview cleared the air between Vinegar Joe and Peanut. At least, for a while.
With a better understanding of where each man stood, Stilwell won a reprieve. Marshall laid his draft order aside.4
THIRTY-EIGHT
A RUSSIAN UNCLE
ADMIRAL KING’S DAUNTLESS RARELY PIPED VISITORS ABOARD, MUCH LESS IMportant ones. Most evenings, King would emerge from his Cadillac, stride up the gangplank and salute the colors as he made his way to the dining cabin. That was about all the ceremony the converted yacht’s crew ever had to observe.
Armistice Day 1943 was different. That morning, the ship’s hundred-man crew welcomed Generals Marshall and Arnold, together with sixteen senior military and naval staffers. Though none of the crew knew it, they were about to carry the Joint Chiefs on the first leg of what would be a 17,000-mile odyssey to the far side of the world.1
Roosevelt had been trying to entice Josef Stalin to a three-power meeting since shortly after Pearl Harbor. To FDR, Hitler’s one advantage over the Allies, unity of command, could be offset by careful coordination among the three great “United Nations” leaders.
Roosevelt, a man for whom politics was personal, believed a direct, one-on-one connection with the Soviet dictator would bridge decades of long-distance distrust. As Churchill’s physician, Lord Moran, told his diary, “The President is convinced that even if he cannot convert Stalin into a good democrat he will be able to come to a working agreement with him. After all, he had spent his life managing men, and Stalin at bottom could not be so very different from other people.” 2
For weeks Stalin resisted Roosevelt’s advances. He said the demands of a 260-division front, stretching from Leningrad to the Caucasus, ruled out meetings in Alaska, Scotland, Cairo, Iraq, Beirut, and every other place Roosevelt suggested. Finally, on September 8, he agreed to a three-power meeting in Tehran, a city nominally under Soviet control. The western leaders accepted, and Churchill, ready as always with a new code word, dubbed the summit EUREKA. Before meeting with the Russians, Churchill and FDR agreed to hold an Anglo-American conference in Cairo, code-named SEXTANT. To give the impression that the British and Americans were not conspiring against their eastern ally at Cairo, Roosevelt invited the Chinese and Soviets to send representatives to the SEXTANT conference.3
None of the Combined Chiefs relished the next round of discussions. Mutual distrust over means to an end, tamped down momentarily at Williamsburg and then at Quebec, kept bubbling over each time the delegations returned home. “I wish our conference was over,” a gloomy Brooke told his diary two days before the meetings even started. “It will be an unpleasant one, the most unpleasant one we have had yet, and that is saying a good deal.” 4
The crux of the unpleasantness was the incestuous ménage à trois of OVERLORD, Italy, and the Eastern Mediterranean. On the American side, Marshall and King had little faith that Churchill and his chiefs would keep their end of the OVERLORD bargain. Churchill’s doubts, expressed to Stimson in London, rang loudly in their ears, and the PM’s sputtered references to Rhodes, Crete, and the Balkans gave the Americans ample reason to doubt British fealty to OVERLORD.5
The British chiefs still saw strategic incompetence among their Yankee counterparts. Their prejudice was, however, neither an echo of 1776 nor the dread of corpses washing up on Dover’s beach. They distrusted the American mind-set. Fixated on northern France, the Americans viewed military strategy as an unalterable blueprint, and strategic agreements as binding contracts among lawyers. Marshall and King could not see the value in extemporizing in northern Italy or the Aegean—extemporization that would aid OVERLORD while lopping off key morsels of the German empire.6
To soften their suspicions, in October Sir John Dill approached Marshall and King with a proposal to allow the British and Americans to post junior officers on each other’s planning staffs. Marshall, who had great faith in Sir John, agreed to the arrangement.
He then tried to persuade King to sign on to the experiment. “We have to work with these people and the closer the better, with fewer misunderstandings I am certain,” Marshall stressed. “We are fighting battles all the time, notably in regard to the Balkans, and other places, and the more frankness there is in the business on the lower level the better off I believe we are.”7
King didn’t give a damn about frankness and cooperation. “Frankness” went against his grain, and he forwarded Marshall a memo from his staff that predictably concluded, “It would mean the injection of a low level group into our Joint War Plans Committees which would permit us no privacy in the consideration of problems which are purely those of the United States.” King would let no subject of the Crown near his Pacific theater plans.8
• • •
With a heave, Dauntless slipped her moorings and steamed down the Potomac River to Point Lookout on Chesapeake Bay. There she spoke the battleship Iowa, a 58,000-ton behemoth boasting sixteen-inch guns that could throw a one-ton explosive shell nearly a mile in two seconds. Welcoming the four-star guests to his new ship was Captain John McCrea, the presidential naval aide who had survived his encounters with Admiral King and had gone on to skipp
er the largest ship the Navy had ever put to sea.9
Iowa and her consorts waited patiently at anchor in Chesapeake Bay until early the next morning, when USS Potomac, the presidential yacht, hove to and quietly transferred her passengers. Roosevelt, Hopkins, Leahy, Pa Watson, Dr. Ross McIntire, Rear Admiral Wilson Brown (the president’s new naval aide), and a small group of staffers moved onto the battleship.10
Roosevelt loved to travel on naval warships. He especially enjoyed cruisers, and four years earlier he’d had a grand time watching fleet war games in the Caribbean from the bridge of the cruiser Houston. At one point in the war game Admiral Leahy, then chief of naval operations, had to break some bad news flashed in by naval umpires: “Mr. President, we have just been sunk by an enemy submarine.”*11
On this Friday evening, Iowa topped off with fuel and was ready to weigh anchor by ten o’clock. But Roosevelt shared an old sailor’s aversion to beginning a voyage on a Friday, and he asked Captain McCrea to remain at anchor until 12:01 on the morning of Saturday, November 13. So at one minute past midnight, Iowa fired her engines and stood out to sea.12
McCrea, intimately familiar with the president’s routine, attended to every detail for a VIP unable to walk. The Iowans built a special elevator to give the president access to the bridge, and McCrea even had a bathtub installed—said to be the only bathtub in the entire United States Navy.* To these structural accommodations Secret Service Chief Mike Reilly added a cache of presidential necessities: Saratoga Springs mineral water, cigarettes, wooden matches, and enough reels of musicals and comedies to run a different film every night.13
Welcome cards prepared by McCrea’s staff told each guest where he would be living for the duration of his stay. Roosevelt’s read:
American Warlords Page 37
