Marshall presented a draft of a memorandum for the president indicating the views of the U.S. chiefs. After some discussion and a few amendments, the chiefs signed and dispatched this memorandum to the president by air via officer courier. It stressed that execution of Operation Gymnast, even if found practicable, would definitely mean an end to Sledgehammer in 1942 and would curtail if not render impossible Bolero and Roundup for 1943. Furthermore, the chiefs contended that Gymnast would be indecisive, a major drain on resources, and would jeopardize America’s position in the Pacific. The Joint Chiefs concluded by stating, “If the United States is to engage in any other operation than forceful, unswerving adherence to full 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.”21
The president immediately called them to account. From Hyde Park, he responded “that he desired to have dispatched to him at once, by airplane, a comprehensive and detailed outline of the plans for redirecting the major effort of the United States to the war against Japan—including the effect of such a decision on the Soviet and Middle East fronts during the balance of 1942.” Roosevelt also demanded definite plans for the remainder of 1942 and tentative plans for 1943. He did agree, however, that dispersions of forces should be avoided and that coordinated use of U.S. and British forces was essential. On the other hand, once again Roosevelt emphasized, “it is of highest importance that U.S. ground troops be brought into action against the enemy in 1942.”22
Inasmuch as no one had foreseen any possibility of such a change of strategy, there were no detailed plans in Washington for major offensives in the Pacific. A hasty survey was made, however, and a paper drawn up outlining in general terms immediate adjustments that could be made. Roosevelt rejected these new proposals out of hand and made it clear he was not in favor of transferring the major effort to the Pacific. He referred to the proposal as a “red herring” and went so far as to suggest that “the record should be altered so that it would not appear in later years that we proposed what amounted to the abandonment of the British.”23
Momentarily put off, Marshall came back to the matter with a vengeance when Roosevelt returned to Washington on 15 July. According to Sherwood, this was the one occasion that Marshall, whose patience had been exhausted by the off-again on-again status of the Second Front planning, strongly asserted that the United States forsake major operations in Europe in favor of an all-out offensive in the Pacific. Unsettled by this change of direction by his Joint Chiefs, Roosevelt determined to settle the matter and cabled Churchill to inform him that Marshall, King, and Hopkins were leaving for London at once.24
Before sending the party off to London, the president issued detailed formal instructions to guide the conduct of negotiations. The final points of the letter formed the crux of the president’s agenda. Here Roosevelt spelled out that he was unalterably opposed to an all-out effort in the Pacific against Japan. He reminded all concerned that the defeat of Japan would not defeat Germany, and that American concentration against Japan in 1942 or in 1943 would increase the chance of complete German domination of Europe and Africa. The president also asked his representatives to keep three cardinal principles in mind: speed of decision on plans; unity of plans; and attack combined with defense, but not defense alone. He concluded by stating that he expected U.S. ground forces to be engaged against the Germans in 1942, and finally that he wanted this matter settled within a week.
Under these instructions Marshall had lost politically before his mission even began, while Churchill prepared to exploit Marshall’s weak hand.25 According to Marshall’s biographer, Churchill sensed that the president had given up the fight. Although he still supported Sledgehammer and Roundup, Roosevelt had let it be known weeks before that American forces had to be in action somewhere before the end of the year.26 The British were certain they faced a divided delegation: “Hopkins is for operating in Africa, Marshall wants to operate in Europe, and King is determined to stick to the Pacific,” Brooke wrote even before the party arrived.27 If the British stood firm against the cross-Channel attack, there was no chance for Marshall to win.
In the event, the British did stand firm, while the unity of their American counterparts crumbled.
Throughout the debates over the launching of Operation Torch (the new code name for Gymnast), Marshall had told anyone who would listen that an Allied attack on North Africa would not only end any chance of conducting Sledgehammer in 1942, but also would make Roundup extremely unlikely for 1943. In a memo to General John Dill, British liaison to the Joint Staff, Marshall wrote that U.S. grand strategy held that only the minimum forces necessary to safeguard the country’s vital interest should be diverted from operations against Germany. In Marshall’s opinion, the decision for Torch violated that principle. Such a course meant that the Allies had accepted a defensive, encircling line of action for continental Europe except for air operations and blockade. He concluded his note by stating, “The requirements for the effective implementation of TORCH as now envisaged and agreed upon would, in my opinion, definitely preclude offensive operations against Germany.”28
In a late July JCS meeting, however, both Marshall and Leahy brought King up short when he questioned the feasibility of Roundup in 1943. King claimed that Operation Torch would have the same results as Salonika during the last war, where the diversion of forces to a secondary effort had considerably weakened the main front.29 Leahy responded, “We should not discount ROUNDUP entirely for 1943 and should prepare for the operation in the event the Germans were considerably weakened in their Russian campaign.”30 From this point forward, however, Marshall was beginning to have doubts about a cross-Channel invasion in 1943.
To sound out the Joint Chiefs as to their ideas for post-Torch strategic initiatives, the president convened a White House meeting on 25 November. Both the Joint Chiefs meeting minutes and Harry Hopkins’ notes bear out one notable fact: Marshall never brought up the topic of a 1943 cross-Channel invasion.31 In truth, his strategic conceptions at this point were definitely not anything that could be called a grand strategy. In fact, at the war’s end Marshall admitted that the United States had not had a strategy at the time of the meeting, and did not really settle on one until after the Casablanca Conference.32 According to the JCS minutes, the president and General Marshall discussed the possibilities for future operations. For a good portion of the meeting, the two men discussed various means of tempting Turkey into the war on the Allies’ side, or, failing that, options for action in Turkey. It was not until toward the end of the meeting that the discussion turned to future operations in the Mediterranean. Marshall, rather than being adamant against such a diversion as might be expected based on his past positions, presented only lukewarm opposition. He believed that clearing the Mediterranean for sea traffic would require the occupation of Sicily, Sardinia, and Crete, and that careful consideration should be given to whether or not the large air and ground forces required for such a project could be justified in view of the results to be expected.33
By mid-December, however, Marshall had come up with another concept: rather than the massive Roundup he had previously envisioned for 1943, he proposed a smaller invasion of the Brest Peninsula.34 This idea was considerably narrower in scope than anything Marshall had proposed before, and even as he stated it he understood that its prospects were not great. In fact, he ended up defending the proposal with the claim that the damage a Brest invasion would do to Germany’s 1944 defensive prospects justified the possible annihilation of the invading force.35 It was also a conception that was out of step with what his own Army planners were advocating.
On 11 December the Joint Strategic Survey Committee (JSSC), an organization Marshall set up under Lieutenant General Stanley Embick to plan long-term strategy, produced its first paper. In Embick’s formulation, the earliest practicable dat
e to conduct a strategic offensive directly against Germany was still 1943, but only on the assumption that the Allies would stand on the defensive in all other theaters. As a preliminary to this invasion, the JSSC advocated wearing down German strength by an integrated air offensive from bases in the United Kingdom and North Africa “on the largest possible scale.” According to the JSSC, the major effort would go into building up forces in the United Kingdom, including transfers from North Africa, to launch a decisive offensive against Germany in 1943.36
This recommendation was directly at odds with what Army planners outside the JSSC were advocating. While they had not given up the idea that there must be a decisive campaign in northwestern Europe, they could not see how or when it could be launched. Resuming plans for Roundup in 1943 meant ignoring the fact that a decisive, large-scale cross-Channel operation was infeasible, as a matter of logistics, before mid-1944. Accelerating preparations for an invasion of Europe also meant sacrificing all the psychological and tangible advantages promised by Torch. It also meant disregarding the fact that large ground forces were still required in the Mediterranean to safeguard North Africa and the Middle East. In addition, the heavy losses incurred in 1942’s Dieppe raid had made a strong impression on Army planners. Those planners thus accepted once more the indefinite postponement of Roundup.37 Left out of Matloff’s version is that by this time Army planners had received information on the level of cuts they would endure in munitions procurement as a result of the resolution of the feasibility dispute. The planners’ change from advocating a 1943 invasion to advocating one in 1944 can be pinpointed almost to the day: the day they were told how severe the cuts would be. According to the “Determination of Army Supply Requirements,” Army planners were officially notified on 15 December 1942 that the troop basis for 1943 would have to be cut in “order to bring production in line with new allowances.” The new troop basis was not published until 1 February 1943. The fact that large cuts in expected 1943 force structure were on their way, however, was well known and became the basis for future plans.38 When the JSSC prepared its strategic advice, it had no idea these cuts were on the way. It was also about this time that Marshall came to understand the implications that these cuts had for his own strategic concepts.39
The JCS discussed this report in closed session at their meeting of 15 December. Only four copies of the minutes were produced, all of which went to the members of the JSSC; none of them apparently survived the war.40 During this meeting, Leahy took exception to many of the points in the JSSC study, particularly the idea of directing the entire strategic direction of the war toward Germany. He agreed that Germany was currently the principal concern, but he was not certain that it was the “primary enemy.” Nor was he convinced that making the primary effort against Germany was “acceptable strategy.”
King, on the other hand, was willing to accept Germany as the primary enemy, but he expressed concern at the offhand manner with which he perceived the chiefs were addressing the Pacific situation. He believed that there should be constant pressure applied against Japan to avoid postponing the end of that conflict indefinitely. He then urged that the chiefs determine a fixed percentage of war effort for the Pacific and suggested that the appropriate proportion would be 25 to 30 percent. When Marshall asked how one would arrive at a percentage of the total war effort, King replied that it was probably not possible to make an exact analysis. However, he believed a reasonable overall estimate would be that only 15 percent of the current war effort was going to the Pacific.41 In effect, King was slyly putting forth a proposal for doubling the resources sent to the Pacific, a proposal that would surely kill any near-term prospects for a cross-Channel invasion.
Marshall agreed with King that continuous offensive operations in the Pacific were necessary to make progress.42 Nevertheless, the major thrust of Marshall’s remarks concerned the war against Germany. He showed little patience with operations based in North Africa, indicating that he believed landings in Sardinia or Sicily were just what the Germans themselves would recommend. Instead, he thought the Allies should build up strong forces in the British Isles as fast as possible and move against the Brest salient in spring 1943.43
In summary, Marshall headed to the Casablanca Conference in early January 1943 with the JCS severely divided as to courses of action for 1943, and with his own Army planners against a 1943 invasion. Most remarkable, there is no indication in the records that Marshall himself, by this time, actually supported an all-out invasion in 1943. His conception focused instead on a smaller lodgment on the isolated Brest Peninsula. Moreover, at the conference itself he barely mentioned even this reduced effort and was more than willing to concede any desires he may still have retained in favor of a 1943 cross-Channel invasion.
Casablanca Conference
According to an unpublished history of the JCS, “The British Chiefs of Staff had not changed their view, expressed in the pre-Casablanca interchanges on the question of a strategic concept, that a landing should be made in northern France in 1943 only in the event that Germany already showed definite signs of collapse. Early in the conference the U.S. Chiefs resigned themselves to this and concentrated on the problem of which operations in the Mediterranean area would be most desirable” (emphasis added).44
There in a nutshell is the Casablanca Conference. The JCS did not roll over at the behest of the British chiefs and their supposedly better-prepared staffs.45 They had already decided to acquiesce to the British strategic viewpoint, as far as the Atlantic theater was concerned, before they even sat down for their first combined meetings. It is worth making a quick review of some of the key points of the JCS meeting at Casablanca, held in the days prior to the combined meetings.
As for Marshall’s new pet idea—an invasion of Brest—General Mark Clark, Eisenhower’s second in command for the successful North African invasion (Operation Torch), threw cold water on the plan almost immediately. According to the minutes of the first JCS meeting in North Africa, General Clark told the assembled chiefs that operations against the Brest Peninsula would be “very hazardous, require overwhelming air support, extensive naval support and immediate heavy follow up.”46
Even Marshall took the opportunity to throw some ice water on his own plan. He told the other assembled chiefs that General Eisenhower had changed his viewpoint on the practicality of a European invasion as a result of his experiences to date in North Africa. In preconference conversations, Eisenhower had brought Marshall around to the idea that a successful invasion required that Roundup be organized on a much larger scale than previously envisioned. This meant that the invasion force would have to be double the size contemplated in any previous plan. More importantly, given lagging landing craft production, Marshall was disturbed over Eisenhower’s belief that it would be unsound to count on more than one trip from the first wave’s landing craft because only a very small proportion of them were likely to be available for a second trip.47
In fact, during the meeting Marshall only mentioned a cross-Channel attack one time, which was hardly a ringing endorsement of the plan. The following comes from the conference minutes:General Marshall said that we wanted to keep the German Army engaged with the Russian Army, and we wanted to make a landing on the Continent. Can we do that in time to support Russia in the summer? Will any other operation destroy our ability to make a Continental landing our main objective? We must insure that it does not. If we do Sicily we might not have the means to do anything on the Continent before October. We must determine what must be done to support Russia this summer. If it is essential that we attack, we must determine where. Everything now building up in the United Kingdom is composed of raw troops, which, however, are better than previous unseasoned troops.48
When the Joint Chiefs met with the president, Marshall not only failed to convince Roosevelt that an invasion of Europe was the best next strategic move, he often seemed to be trying to do the opposite by spelling out the difficulties. During meetings with the president, Ma
rshall pointed out that he agreed with Lord Mountbatten and General Clark that there must be a long period of training before any attempt could be made to land against determined resistance. Moreover, Marshall stressed the British point that the rail net in Europe permitted the movement of seven divisions a day from east to west, which would enable the Germans to rapidly reinforce their northern European defenses. Startlingly, Marshall also told Roosevelt that there would be an excess of troops available in North Africa when the Axis powers had been expelled and “this is one of the chief reasons Operation Husky [the invasion of Sicily] appears to be attractive.” When the president asked how many American divisions were currently in England, Marshall had to concede there was only one. However, he told the president he was hopeful that there would be six more by the following summer.49 Finally, Marshall quoted Eisenhower’s belief that an invasion of the continent would require a minimum of twelve divisions, which he admitted was double all previous estimates.50
Despite the claims of official historians that Marshall went to Casablanca determined to fight one more battle for Roundup in 1943, the evidence suggests no such thing. Even with his own president, Marshall listed the only factors weighing against the invasion without ever examining any benefit that a proposed 1943 cross-Channel invasion would possess. By the time the American chiefs had finished with the president and turned to meet their British counterparts, they were fighting a rearguard action to ensure that Roundup was still on the table for 1944.
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