The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Preparing to turn to other business, Marshall muttered, “While this may seem a sacrifice to you, that’s the way it must be.”

  Eisenhower’s sense of duty was almost as keen as Marshall’s and he had already reached a rank he had not thought possible. He resented being singled out for the lecture, so impulsively he blurted out, “General, I’m interested in what you say, but I want you to know that I don’t give a damn about your promotion plans as far as I’m concerned. I came into this office from the field and I am trying to do my duty. I expect to do so as long as you want me here. If that locks me to a desk for the rest of the war, so be it!”

  Pushing back his chair, Eisenhower strode toward the door. It was a big office and a long walk. By the time he reached the door his anger had subsided. He turned, looked at Marshall, and grinned. As he closed the door he thought he detected a tiny smile at the corners of Marshall’s mouth.

  Two weeks later Marshall recommended Eisenhower for promotion to major general. In his recommendation to the President, Marshall explained that Eisenhower was not really a staff officer, but was his operations officer, a sort of subordinate commander. On March 27 Eisenhower got his second star.3

  Eisenhower knew enough about the Chief not to try and thank him. When other promoted officers did try, Marshall would brush them aside with a terse “Thank yourself; if you hadn’t earned it you would not have received it.” After the war Eisenhower recalled, “The nearest that he ever came to saying [anything] complimentary directly to my face was, ‘You are not doing so badly so far.’ ”4

  There was a father-son quality to the Marshall-Eisenhower relationship, but it had a nineteenth- rather than twentieth-century flavor to it. They were never “pals.” To the Chief’s face, and in discussing him with others, Eisenhower always called him “General.” Marshall was proud of Eisenhower and tried to guide him. Eisenhower respected the general, who had an enormous influence on his thought—there was never any doubt, throughout the war, that Marshall’s was the guiding hand behind the broad policies.

  Marshall’s strengths were in the higher levels of policy, organization, and strategy. In these areas Eisenhower followed, for he was an operator rather than a theoretician, the perfect man to take Marshall’s concepts and translate them into practice. The Supreme Allied Command in Europe would never have come about had it not been for Marshall’s thought, driving force, and persuasive powers, but it would not have worked had it not been for Eisenhower.

  The partnership began during the first weeks of the war; symbolically it took on the form it was to assume for much of the remainder of the conflict—a fight for American versus British ideas. Right after Pearl Harbor the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and his Chiefs of Staff came to Washington to discuss grand strategy. The meetings began on December 4 (code name ARCADIA) and lasted until the middle of January. There were twelve meetings in all, several of which Eisenhower, as Gerow’s deputy, attended.5

  The conference was essentially an exploration. Each side was feeling the other out, for the extent of American mobilization was not yet known with any degree of accuracy and the Americans were preoccupied with the crushing events in the Pacific. What stood out was the agreement on grand strategy. The British had feared that the Americans would react to Pearl Harbor and the impending loss of the Philippines by abandoning RAINBOW 5 and turning full force on the Japanese. The Americans laid those fears to rest at the opening of the conference.

  It was a great achievement and must always be kept in mind, for it is easy enough to present a picture of the Grand Alliance as being not so grand, to concentrate on the disagreements and to argue that the real story of World War II is British-American infighting, with the climax coming when the Americans imposed their will on the British. Any account of Eisenhower and the alliance will inevitably lean toward a picture of Anglo-American irritation, harassment, bitterness, and disagreement, because it was the issues the two sides did not agree upon that they talked about.

  But this was the firmest alliance in history. The partners agreed upon the broad goal and the broad strategy—the total defeat of the Axis powers brought about by first assuming a defensive role in the Pacific and an offensive one in the Atlantic. That they stuck to the agreement was their greatest accomplishment. Agreement on implementation was never easily reached, however, and except for Operation OVERLORD it is difficult to find an operation in the war about which both sides were enthusiastic. The disagreements began at ARCADIA.

  In December 1941 Marshall and the Americans were willing to bide their time. They did not intend to defer to the British, but in the first wartime meeting they were ready to keep their own ideas in the background. The British had been at war for more than two years and had gained invaluable experience. Britain was fully mobilized and in terms of striking forces available much more powerful than the United States. American potential loomed in the background, but it would be a year or more before the country was tooled up for the war. The British were engaged with the European Axis; the Americans were not. Under the circumstances, the Americans allowed the British to take the initiative and to make the proposals, contenting themselves with commenting upon them.

  The British proposed, in briefest terms, to close and tighten a ring around Germany and then, when all the signs were favorable, plunge in the knife. They were detailed and exact in their proposals about closing the ring, vague about the final battle in northwestern Europe. Churchill argued that for the final attack “it need not be assumed that great numbers of men are required,” and contended that 600,000 troops would be sufficient. He did warn that enormous amounts of material would be required. He thought one of the Allies’ greatest advantages was the population of western Europe, especially France, and a major task of the British and Americans would be to get arms into the hands of these people. It was traditional British strategy writ large—England (and the United States) would supply the money and arms, while the Continentals did their own fighting. The program “was tailored to suit scattered interests, a small-scale economy and limited manpower for ground armies, and to exploit sea- and air-power.”6

  For the immediate future, the British proposed operations in the Middle East and on the North African coast, looking toward a 1943 invasion of Europe “either across the Mediterranean or from Turkey into the Balkans.…” Churchill felt that the Vichy French could be persuaded to co-operate with the British and Americans, and offered as an initial step an invasion of North Africa by 100,000 men, mostly British. The idea had a great appeal for Roosevelt, who laid it down as a principle to Marshall that it was “very important to morale, to give this country a feeling that they are in the war, to give the Germans the reverse effect, to have American troops somewhere in active fighting across the Atlantic” in 1942.7

  The War Department position differed radically. WPD had classified as subsidiary theaters not only the Far East but also the Iberian Peninsula, the Scandinavian Peninsula, Africa, and the Middle East. The American premise, which was Marshall’s and from which he never wavered, was that the plains of northwestern Europe constituted the main theater, where “we must come to grips with the enemy ground forces.”8 It soon became apparent that the difficulty was that no attack on the main theater could be launched in 1942, so if the President’s dictum was to be met it would have to be elsewhere.

  Much of the next two years would be taken up with arguments about Marshall’s conception of the quickest and surest way of defeating Germany. During ARCADIA, however, the Americans did not push. They agreed to study GYMNAST, the North African operation, and to begin implementing MAGNET, which sent American troops to Northern Ireland, allowing the British to release troops in the home islands for the Middle East.

  At ARCADIA, Marshall was more concerned with organization than with strategy. Where to fight the war could be worked out later, but how to fight it had to be settled immediately. The sine qua non of Allied success, Marshall felt, was the adoption of the concept of unity of command.

/>   This concept differed radically from the British practice. In their most active theater, the Middle East, as elsewhere, the British worked with a committed system. The senior army, air, and naval officers formed a group called the Commanders in Chief and directed the war in that theater, subject to close supervision from London. The system had the advantage of avoiding any instance in which a general gave an order to an admiral, or vice versa, while it had the inherent disadvantage of most committees trying to operate in a crisis situation.

  Following the first ARCADIA meeting, Eisenhower wrote a memorandum for Marshall on the subject of unity of command. He did not intend to influence Marshall’s thinking, but rather to supply him with arguments, since the Chief was going to make his bid for agreement in principle at the next day’s meeting. Eisenhower began by pointing out that in the Southwest Pacific there were several separate forces operating, each independent of all the others—the American Air Force, the American Asiatic Fleet, the Australian Forces (which consisted of three separate arms), the British Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Dutch land, sea, and air forces. It was obvious, Eisenhower said, that “the strength of the allied defenses in the entire theater would be greatly increased through single, intelligent command.” He realized that with the number of independent national interests involved, as well as the separate organizations represented, “real unity of command cannot be achieved suddenly,” but did feel that it could be achieved in small localities such as Singapore, where “the paramount interest and the vast majority of the forces concerned are British.” He pointed out that “unification of British forces could be accomplished by a single order from the head of the government,” while the forces of the other powers in the area could be directed to report to the British supreme commander for orders.

  Eisenhower was trying to slip in the principle through the back door by getting the British to adopt it in their current hot spot (in return for dropping their committee system, the British would get command of the small American forces in the area). Hopefully, then, the British would not object when the principle was applied elsewhere, over a broader area.

  Marshall, however, felt there was no hope of success in Singapore—the old salts in the Admiralty would never allow a British general to direct their fight, and the British Army felt the same way about the Royal Navy. In any case Marshall was after bigger game, and he therefore rejected Eisenhower’s recommendation.9 Instead, at the Christmas afternoon meeting, which Eisenhower attended, Marshall used the opportunity presented by a discussion on the question of reinforcements for MacArthur to broach the larger issue. He said it was too early to make a decision on aid for the Philippines and in any case it was not an appropriate topic for the Chiefs of Staff. If they were to become involved in the details on what went to each local commander it would take all their time. By the same token no local commander could see the situation whole and each would be demanding everything he could think of for his particular locality. In a world-wide war this was intolerable. The Allies needed someone in between the Chiefs and the local commanders—they needed, in short, a supreme theater commander.

  The most important consideration before the ARCADIA conference, Marshall maintained, was unity of command. “I am convinced,” he said, “that there must be one man in command of the entire theater—air, ground, and ships. We cannot manage by cooperation. Human frailties are such that there would be emphatic unwillingness to place portions of troops under another service. If we can make a plan for unified command now, it will solve nine-tenths of our troubles.” Marshall realized there were objections but felt they were “much less than the hazards that must be faced” by the Allies if they failed to achieve unity of command. He wanted one man, operating under instructions from a combined body in Washington, to direct operations in each theater. “We had to come to this in the First World War,” he concluded, “but it was not until 1918 that it was accomplished, and much valuable time, blood and treasure had been needlessly sacrificed.”10

  Raising the specter of World War I failed to move the British. They had not expected Marshall’s proposal and were unwilling to discuss it until they had an opportunity to sound out the Prime Minister. Realizing that he had made a tactical blunder by not preparing the ground, Marshall closed the meeting, cornered Eisenhower, and told him to draft immediately a letter of instruction for the prospective supreme commander of the Pacific area, the only theater in which combined (multinational) forces were then operating. By showing the British something concrete, Marshall hoped to convince them that “no real risk would be involved to the interests of any of the Associated Powers, while on the other hand great profits should result.”

  Eisenhower, made cautious by Marshall, placed drastic limits on the supreme commander. In his draft he said that the commander had no authority to move ground forces from one territory to another within the theater and could move only those air forces that the governments concerned chose to put at his disposal. He had no power to relieve national commanders or their subordinates, to interfere in the tactical organization and disposition of their forces, to commandeer their supplies, or to control their communications with their respective governments. These limitations, as severe as those under which Marshal Foch operated in 1918, were drastic. Eisenhower and Marshall defended them on the grounds that they represented the best that could be accomplished. Marshall declared, “If the supreme commander ended up with no more authority than to tell Washington what he wanted, such a situation was better than nothing, and an improvement over the present situation.” The command would be called ABDA—Australian, British, Dutch, American.11

  Marshall showed Eisenhower’s draft to the President, who approved. To sweeten the pill for the British, Marshall proposed that General Sir Archibald Wavell, a British ground commander, become Supreme Commander, ABDA. The United States Navy objected to Wavell, but Marshall won them over. He then presented the proposal to the next ARCADIA meeting. The British Navy “kicked like bay steers,” but after some backing and hedging, Marshall received their assent. He had achieved his main goal for ARCADIA—agreement on unity of command.12

  A long discussion over who should give directives to Wavell followed; eventually, following the British lead, the Chiefs agreed that Wavell should report to and receive his directives from a committee—the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS). It would be composed of the Chiefs of Staff of the two nations, and would sit permanently in Washington, where the British Chiefs of Staff (BCOS) would be represented by a permanent Joint Staff Mission, headed by Field Marshall Sir John Dill, former Chief of the Imperial General Staff. In international conferences—such as ARCADIA—the BCOS members would act for themselves.13 To create a parallel organization to BCOS, the Americans created the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), composed of Marshall, General Henry H. Arnold of the Army Air Forces, the Commander in Chief, U. S. Fleet, and soon to be Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King, and—somewhat later—Roosevelt’s personal Chief of Staff, Admiral William Leahy. The JCS would be responsible for the higher direction of the American war effort.14

  This meant, in practice, increased work for WPD, for Marshall was the dominant personality on the JCS. He would now be involved daily in discussions of world-wide strategy, and it was to WPD that he looked for help. The work load was already great enough; as Eisenhower told a friend who was coming to Washington to join the War Department, “Just to give you an inkling as to the kind of mad house you are getting into, it is now eight o’clock New Year’s Eve. I have a couple hours’ work ahead of me, and tomorrow will be no different from today. I have been here about three weeks and this noon I had my first luncheon outside of the office.” Usually he ate a hot dog at his desk. He lived with his brother Milton, a government employee who had a home in Falls Church, Virginia, and not once did he see the house in daylight. He would arrive after dark, have a drink and dinner, play with Milton’s children for a few minutes, and fall into bed. In the morning he left before daylight.15

  Despi
te the daily strain and tension under which he worked, Eisenhower bore up well, presenting the appearance of a faceless, tireless staff officer. The mask came off, briefly, when on March 10 his seventy-nine-year-old father died. Eisenhower confessed that he felt terrible. “I should like so much to be with my Mother these few days.” He could not, for “we’re at war! And war is not soft—it has no time to indulge even the deepest and most sacred emotions.” On March 11 his father was buried. For thirty minutes Eisenhower closed his office door and shut off all business, “to have that much time, by myself, to think of him.” Eisenhower thought of his five brothers, of his mother, of his father’s reputation in Abilene, of how proud he was to be his father’s son. “He was a just man,” Eisenhower said, “well liked, well educated, a thinker. He was undemonstrative, quiet, modest, and of exemplary habits.… He was an uncomplaining person in the face of adversity, and such plaudits as were accorded him did not inflate his ego.” Finally, the only regret: “It was always so difficult to let him know the great depth of my affection for him.”

  At 7:30 P.M. Eisenhower noted simply, “I love my Dad,” closed his office, and went home. “I haven’t the heart to go on tonight.”16

  On February 16 Gerow assumed a field command and Eisenhower took charge of WPD. At the time Marshall was in the midst of a reorganization of the War Department. For Eisenhower, the result was increased responsibility. After noting in his desk pad that “The Joint and Combined staff work is terrible! Takes an unconscionable amount of time,” he declared. “We are faced with a big reorganization of W.D. We need it! The [General Staff] is all to be cut down, except W.P.D.—which now has all the Joint and Combined work, all plans and all operations so far as active theaters are concerned!” Continuing to pour out his frustrations, he added, “Fox Conner was right about allies. He could well have included the Navy!”17