American Warlords

by Jonathan W. Jordan

  The military men were less sympathetic. “Considerable sob stuff about children with legs blown off & blinded old ladies but nothing about the saving of risk to our young soldiers landing on a hostile shore,” grumbled Cunningham to his diary. Ike tried to reassure Churchill that estimates of eighty thousand Frenchmen had been very much on the high end, and he pointed out that the raids would kill a great many Germans, too.

  In any event, he said, the Transportation Plan was critical. “The ‘OVERLORD’ concept was based on the assumption that our overwhelming Air power would be able to prepare the way for the assault,” he told Churchill on May 2. “If its hands are to be tied, the perils of an already hazardous undertaking will be greatly enhanced.”26

  But Churchill was willing to tie OVERLORD’s hands, and less than a month before the invasion he wrote Roosevelt, “The War Cabinet share my apprehensions of the bad effect which will be produced upon the French civilian population by these slaughters all taking place so long before Overlord D-Day. They may easily bring about a great revulsion in French feeling towards their approaching United States and British liberators. They may leave a legacy of hate behind them.”27

  Roosevelt avoided interfering in military tactics. He might tell his generals when to do something, or even where to do it, but not how to do it. That was their job, not his, and he trusted them to know best. He replied to Churchill, “However regrettable the attendant loss of civilian lives is, I am not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action by the responsible commanders that in their opinion might militate against the success of Overlord or cause additional loss of life to our Allied forces of invasion.”28

  “This was decisive,” wrote Churchill later. “The price was paid.” Roosevelt would let his airmen, generals, and admirals run this part of the war. The Transportation Plan went forward, and more than 76,000 tons of bombs fell on bridges, open lines, and railyards.

  French casualties were lighter than SHAEF had predicted.29

  •

  As FDR pondered the invasion of France, an aide brought him a letter from Eisenhower’s chief of staff to General Marshall complaining that SHAEF was having problems arranging French help for the invasion force. The obstacle was that Eisenhower had no authority to deal with Charles de Gaulle’s French Committee of National Liberation.30

  De Gaulle was still the same haughty, headstrong bride that Roosevelt and Churchill had dragged to the altar at Casablanca the year before. He had formed the FCLN as “co-chairman” with General Giraud, but de Gaulle’s coterie never considered de Gaulle “co”-anything. Le général, they insisted, was the rightful provisional ruler of France.31

  As the invasion of Normandy nosed up over the horizon, Roosevelt believed de Gaulle was not only an annoying, self-serving Frenchman, but an unnecessary one. Brigadier General William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services, assured Roosevelt that de Gaulle was not critical to a revived French democracy; other parties, Donovan said, would spring up to fill the political vacuum in French government.32

  Yet no one had worked harder to rally the French people against the fascists. From England to West Africa, de Gaulle’s was the voice of French resistance, and he led the most viable alternative to a resurrected Vichy government. He could be ignored as long as battles were being fought in Africa or the Mediterranean, but once the war moved into France, his faction’s cooperation would be vital.

  Roosevelt, Eisenhower later concluded, was “almost an egomaniac in his belief in his own wisdom.” De Gaulle was an egomaniac, too, but by poking him in the eye, the Allies would be left to govern a liberated France, with all its civil and logistical burdens, without a political infrastructure while they were fighting their way toward the Rhine.33 Observing that the Allies had two choices of provisional government—the FCLN and the “Vichy gang”—in mid-May Eisenhower cabled Marshall for instructions.34

  After letting Ike’s message sit in his office for almost two weeks, Roosevelt sent Marshall a blunt reply complaining that Eisenhower “does not quite get the point.” He told Marshall, “[Eisenhower] evidently believes the fool newspaper stories that I am anti–de Gaulle, even the kind of story that says I hate him, etc., etc. All this, of course, is utter nonsense. I am perfectly willing to have de Gaulle made President, or Emperor, or King or anything else so long as the action comes in an untrammeled and unforced way from the French people themselves.”

  He added: “It is awfully easy to be for de Gaulle . . . but I have a moral duty that transcends ‘an easy way.’ It is to see to it that the people of France have nothing foisted on them by outside powers. It must be a French choice—and that means, as far as possible, forty million people. Self-determination is not a word of expediency. It carries with it a very deep principle in human affairs.”35

  In human affairs, perhaps. But a deep principle in FDR’s affairs was to shut de Gaulle out of power. Eisenhower would keep his dealings with the general and his French committee to a bare minimum.

  But even a bare minimum, he would find, was more than Roosevelt wanted.

  FORTY-ONE

  SORROWS OF WAR

  “I was somewhat intrigued by your question regarding the method of selecting generals, ‘What are they like that makes you know they will be good ones?’ This probably is the most important of my duties, the most difficult.”

  MARSHALL PENNED THESE LINES TO MISS LILLIAN CRAIG’S CLASS AT Virginia Heights School in Roanoke, Virginia. In March 1944 Miss Craig’s students, diagnosed as “strephosymbolics” because they read words or letters backward, sent a letter to Marshall asking questions about his life, work, and personality. The general brushed aside most of their personal questions without comment, but to this one he offered a thoughtful answer.

  “It is comparatively simple to select the generals after a display of their military qualities on the battlefield,” he said. “The difficulty is when we must choose them prior to employment in active operations.” He told the children that an officer’s bearing, his dependability and speech, and the recommendations of his commanding officers were important considerations. The most important trait, he said, was the character of the man, meaning his integrity, selflessness, and “sturdiness of bearing when everything goes wrong and all are critical.”1

  Before the war, Marshall and Stimson had agreed on three principles governing their selection of these sturdy, selfless men. Marshall would select the very best officer for each theater. He would give that commander the widest possible authority, and would hold him accountable for the results. As one staffer summed up Marshall’s method: “He’d give you responsibility for something and let you do it. If you didn’t do it right, or like he thought it was right, you’d catch hell.”2

  After the Casablanca conference, Marshall told Eisenhower, “Retention under your command of any American officer means to me that you are satisfied with his performance. Any man you deem unsatisfactory you must re-assign or send home.” He warned Eisenhower, “This principle will apply to the letter, because I have no intention of ever giving you an alibi for failure on the excuse that I forced unsatisfactory subordinates on you.”3

  In August 1943, when it looked as if Marshall would lead the invasion of France, Marshall asked Eisenhower to release Lieutenant General Omar Nelson Bradley, commander of the U.S. II Corps in Sicily, for assignment to OVERLORD. Bradley had won high marks from Eisenhower and Patton, and Marshall wanted a battle-proven commander leading the American spearhead, the First U.S. Army. Eisenhower felt the same way about his West Point classmate, and when he took the reins of OVERLORD, he appointed Bradley as First Army commander for D-Day, then as an army group commander when a second force, the Third U.S. Army, arrived from England a month later.4

  Eisenhower next asked Marshall to banish Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, commander of American forces in the United Kingdom. Devers, a onetime classmate of Patton, was the Army’s senior man i
n England until Eisenhower’s arrival. Ike had never worked with him and did not trust him. The previous year Devers had earned Eisenhower’s enmity by denying him four bomber groups Ike wanted for the Salerno landing, on the grounds that the bombers were needed for the strategic bombing campaign against Germany.

  Eisenhower rarely held grudges when he won an argument, but Devers made the fatal mistake of winning the bomber group fight. Marshall left the decision to Eisenhower, so Devers went to the Mediterranean to take the reins of ANVIL.5

  One by one, the other pieces of Eisenhower’s command team dropped into place: Major General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith would remain Ike’s chief of staff. Lieutenant General Courtney Hicks Hodges, a self-effacing Georgian who served under Marshall at Fort Benning, would take over First U.S. Army when Bradley moved up to army group command. Major General J. Lawton “Lightning Joe” Collins, a young, handsome Pacific commander, would lead one of Bradley’s two corps, while Major General Leonard T. Gerow, Eisenhower’s Leavenworth classmate, would command the other. About a month after D-Day, the Third Army under George Patton, one of Eisenhower’s oldest friends, would come ashore on Bradley’s right. As Eisenhower saw it, First Army would be Bradley’s workhorse, punching a hole in the German line and pinning down the enemy, while Patton’s Third Army would be the racehorse, slashing deep on the right and driving toward Paris and the Rhine.6

  Marshall’s liberality did not mean Eisenhower would be free to strip the Mediterranean of everyone, however. Always on the lookout for “localitis,” a communicable disease causing theater commanders to break out in a rash of cables demanding ships, men, and air support, Marshall told Eisenhower and Beetle to be judicious in their requests. When the exiled Jake Devers asked Marshall if he could keep both Patton and Major General Lucian K. Truscott in the Mediterranean theater, Marshall gave Patton to Eisenhower but told him Devers would keep the able Truscott.7

  •

  As a Washington general, Marshall had politics in the back of his mind every day. So when he opened his newspaper on the morning of April 26 and read the latest story on General Patton, he saw a political sledgehammer swinging toward the Army’s head.

  Patton, the New York Times reported, had made some ill-conceived remarks to a Welcome Club at Knutsford, England. After tossing out a few extemporaneous comments that he considered charming, Patton, according to a British reporter, added, “It seems to be the evident destiny of the British and Americans to rule the world.”8

  Patton was no stranger to bad press. He had caused a scandal the previous summer when he slapped two enlisted men suffering from battle fatigue in field hospitals. Editors and politicians were now quick to pounce on his Knutsford gaffe; he had excluded the Russians from his new world order, and they expressed outrage that a general would suggest a world order of any sort, a matter for politicians, not generals. In a scathing editorial, the Washington Post opined, “It is more than fortunate that these [flaws] have become apparent before the Senate takes action to pass upon his recommended promotion in permanent rank from Colonel to Major General. All thought of such promotion should now be abandoned. That the War Department recommended it is one more evidence of the tendency on the part of members of the military to act as a clique or club.”9

  Marshall was beside himself. He had known Patton for many years, and had supported him when the press crucified him for slapping those enlisted men.* This time his offense was more serious. Republicans were using the story as an example of the administration’s inability to control its own officers, and Marshall feared what the Senate would do with his list of permanent promotions. “We were about to get confirmation of the permanent makes,” he told Eisenhower the day the story broke. “This I fear has killed them all.”10

  Marshall ruminated over what to do. While Patton was Eisenhower’s man and a longtime friend of Secretary Stimson, Marshall held the ultimate responsibility for Army assignments. If a general detonated a bomb at home, it was Marshall’s job to remove him.

  But it was also Marshall’s job to win the war as quickly and cheaply as possible. Where the needs of victory conflicted with the whims of the electorate—in the case of the “Germany First” policy, for instance—it was the chief of staff’s duty to take the heat.

  Reflecting on what was riding on OVERLORD, he sent another cable to Eisenhower.

  “You carry the burden of responsibility as to the success of OVERLORD,” he told Eisenhower. “If you feel that the operation can be carried out with the same assurance of success with Hodges in command, for example, instead of Patton, all well and good. If you doubt it, then between us we can bear the burden of the present unfortunate reaction.”11

  On April 29 Eisenhower wired Marshall about their mutual friend. “Frankly I am exceedingly weary of his habit of getting everybody into hot water through the immature character of his public actions and statements,” he wrote. While Patton had apparently been misquoted by the reporter, Eisenhower said he had “grown so weary of the trouble he constantly causes you and the War Department, to say nothing of myself, that I am seriously contemplating the most drastic action.”12

  Both Marshall and Eisenhower wanted to keep Patton, for he possessed fighting qualities uncommon among army commanders. He believed that a fast, violent assault produced fewer casualties than a slow, methodical advance—a principle other generals paid lip service to but tended to shy away from when shells exploded and men died. Patton may have been theatrical and vulgar, but he produced victories. That was what generals were paid to do.

  In a follow-up letter the next day, a deeply conflicted Eisenhower told Marshall, “On all of the evidence available I will relieve him from command and send him home unless some new and unforeseen information should be developed in the case.” He did not specify what “new and unforeseen information” might develop, but as he talked himself through the problem, Eisenhower grew reluctant to send his old friend to the scaffold. He contrasted Patton’s proven ability to conduct “a ruthless” drive with the cautious approach of General Hodges and concluded, “There is always the possibility that this war, possibly even this theater, might develop a situation where this admittedly unbalanced but nevertheless aggressive fighting man should be rushed into the breach.”13

  Marshall believed Eisenhower’s military judgment, not his political view, should rule the day. He cautioned Eisenhower against overreacting to a few caustic editorials. “Do not consider War Department position in the matter,” he counseled. “Consider only OVERLORD and your own heavy burden of responsibility for its success. Everything else is of minor importance.”

  A relieved Eisenhower replied, “Because your telegram leaves the decision entirely in my hands, to be decided solely upon my convictions as to the effect upon OVERLORD, I have decided to retain him in command.” They would not put down the old warhorse. Not yet.14

  •

  In war, death stalks the land with many weapons. Its favorite tool is usually famine or disease, though sometimes, to keep up with the fashion of the times, the scythe takes the form of a Mauser rifle, a B-17 bomber, or a Long Lance torpedo.

  Sometimes that scythe takes the shape of fatigue, and when it takes that form, death does not swing, but jabs and nicks as if it has all the time in the world: Hap Arnold’s two heart attacks since Pearl Harbor. Hopkins wheeling in and out of Bethesda Naval, Walter Reed, and the Mayo Clinic. Cordell Hull and John Dill, declining under the stress of war. Death could even find a man sitting quietly in a chair, thousands of miles from the nearest front line.15

  In late April, Navy Undersecretary James Forrestal rang up Henry Stimson to tell him that Frank Knox had suffered a heart attack while attending the funeral of a former business partner in New Hampshire. Not appreciating the seriousness of his condition, the secretary flew home, and his heart began shutting down and he soon lost consciousness. The next day Stimson asked Mabel to go see Knox’s wife, Annie, and offer her the fami
ly’s friendship and support.

  That support comforted Annie Knox, but her husband was beyond help. A little after one o’clock on the twenty-eighth of April, Jim Forrestal called Stimson and told him their friend and colleague Frank Knox had died.16

  Knox had been Stimson’s comrade in politics and war. The two old-line Republicans had answered their nation’s call at the same moment, and each had sacrificed his standing with his party for the good of the country. Stimson would miss the smiling, combative Frank, and his condolence visit to Annie Knox left him badly shaken. “She was a pathetic sight and my heart ached for her,” he wrote that night. “The whole thing was a very hard blow to me too because Frank had been a close friend and we had been so similarly situated we had seemed like side partners here in Washington.”

  Stimson and Mabel attended Knox’s funeral at the Mount Pleasant Congregational Church on Columbia Road. FDR was recovering from another bout of what he called the “flu” in South Carolina, and Eleanor attended the service in her husband’s place. Supreme Court justices, diplomats, and Navy men, including Admiral King, came to pay their respects as Knox’s flag-draped casket, laid atop an Army caisson pulled by seven white horses, bore the Rough Rider to his final resting place.17

  • • •

  “Well done, Frank Knox!” read the press release from Admiral King’s office. “The nation has lost a great patriot, the Navy a great leader. We dedicate ourselves, one and all, to what would have surely been his last order—‘Carry on!’”18

  The “Well done” part lacked perfect sincerity, and King would have been more comfortable with Knox’s death if he’d had a hand in selecting his successor, for King believed the obvious choice, James Forrestal, was a micromanager who committed the sin of butting his nose into Navy business. He had previously tried to strip King of his CNO position, and in early 1942 he even had the impertinence to ask King for a summary of the Navy’s war plans. “I think Forrestal was undercutting Knox even before his death,” King later remarked. “Forrestal was as tricky as he could be,” and King hoped to steer the post to someone less “tricky.”19