Telling his son Elliott about the trip that evening, the President certainly brimmed with pride and excitement. “I wish you could have seen the expression on the faces of some of those men in the infantry division. You could hear ’em say, ‘Gosh—it’s the old man himself!’ And Father roared with laughter,” Elliott recalled. He’d eaten field rations there with Generals Clark and Patton. And Harry Hopkins. “Harry!” he now called upstairs. “How’d you like that lunch in the field, hunh?”15
Hopkins, running a bath, thought for a moment. Then he called back down that, although the food had been somewhat Spartan, he’d loved the music. “‘Oh yes,’ said Father. ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Alexander’s Rag-Time Band, and that one about Texas, where they clap their hands, you know . . .’
“‘Deep in the Heart of Texas?’
“‘That’s right. And some waltzes.’” The President paused. “‘Elliott, tell me,’” he continued: “‘Would any army in the world but the American army have a regimental band playing songs like that while the Commander-in-Chief ate ham and sweet potatoes and green beans right near by? Hmmm?” He even showed Elliott the mess kit he’d eaten lunch out of, which he’d brought back with him. When Elliott said he would surely have been able to obtain one in America, if he wanted, the President was appalled. “But I ate out of this one, at Rabat,” he told his son with childlike pride, “the day I saw three divisions of American soldiers, who are fighting a tough war. It’s a good souvenir. I’ll take it home with me.”16
The President had also visited Port Lyautey, he told Elliott, and seen the sunken warships. He’d laid a wreath at the American section of the local cemetery—and had looked at the graves of the French who’d opposed them.
In a world at war, the Commander in Chief wanted to do right by those men—and if it was hubris to imagine he could in person get America’s allies to combine in effecting his two-part vision of the world war and the postwar, then that was a designation the “Emperor of the West”—as Eisenhower’s British political adviser, Harold Macmillan, described him17—accepted. Inspecting three entire U.S. divisions in the theater of combat, he felt his vision was at least grounded in America’s burgeoning emergence as a world power: a power that would soon become capable, with its allies, of slaying the Nazi monster, unconditionally—and the Japanese demon thereafter. For this he would need, however, not only the Prime Minister, but the Emperor of the East: Joseph Stalin. Also, probably, the two rivals for leadership of the French empire: Generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle—the latter due to arrive the next day.
14
De Gaulle
GETTING Major General de Gaulle to appear in Casablanca had been a trial from the start. “On our arrival at Casablanca at the first military meeting with the Pres.,” Captain McCrea later recalled, “the Prime Minister informed the Pres. that General De Gaulle, despite his invitation to the Casablanca conference by the P.M., had decided not to attend.”1
Since Major General de Gaulle was the leader of the Free French movement in London, it was considered vital to get him and General Giraud, the French high commissioner under Eisenhower, to meld the forces under one authority, if they were to contribute to the liberation not only of North Africa and France but of Europe.
De Gaulle’s refusal to come to Casablanca had thus been a nasty shot across the President’s bows. Roosevelt was “greatly” annoyed, McCrea recalled. “The Pres. told the P.M. rather sternly, I thought, that it was up to the P.M. to get De Gaulle there. At this the P.M. took off on De Gaulle about as follows: ‘I tell you Mr. President, Gen. De Gaulle is most difficult to handle. We house him. We feed him. We pay him and he refuses to raise a finger in support of our war effort. He states vigorously every time he gets a chance to do it that he is entitled to military command. I ask you Mr. President what sort of a military command could either of us give him?’
“The Pres. acknowledged that no doubt De Gaulle was hard to handle and there continued about as follows: ‘Winston, this is a shotgun marriage’—referring of course to the hoped-for collaboration between De Gaulle and Giraud—and continued, ‘We have our party here, referring to Giraud, and I feel it is up to you to get your party here.’ I inwardly squirmed a bit,” McCrea confessed, “at the bluntness of the Pres. remarks, but he, of course, put a light touch on the proceedings with a hearty laugh. I felt easier.”2
This was typical FDR. Whether it was wise was another matter. It bespoke, however, Roosevelt’s urgency—for it was vital, in his mind, for the Western Allies to retain the cohesion of their military coalition if they were to persuade the Soviets to go on fighting the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. Especially once the time came to inform Stalin that the Allies were not going to launch a Second Front in 1943 unless the Germans collapsed that summer—which seemed unlikely.
Day after day Churchill had duly attempted to get de Gaulle to fly out to Casablanca. “De Gaulle refused Churchill’s invitation to come from London,” the President himself wrote Daisy with a mixture of amusement and irritation. “He has declined a second invitation—says he will not be ‘duressed’ by W.S.C. & especially by the American President—Today I asked W.S.C. who paid De Gaulle’s salary—W.S.C. beamed—good idea—no come—no pay!”3
The next day Roosevelt heard that de Gaulle had finally consented. “De Gaulle will come! Tomorrow!” the President wrote Daisy in excitement on January 21.4 But if the President thought that by bringing de Gaulle and Giraud together, he could achieve a genuine marriage, he was to be profoundly mistaken. By contrast Winston Churchill, who had been dealing with the quirky, proud, and imperious Major General de Gaulle for two and a half years, knew exactly what was to be expected.
Quite why the President would take personal charge of negotiations with the senior French leaders and officials was a mystery to the British prime minister—who possessed a far deeper understanding of political realities on the European side of the Atlantic than the President.
American political policy in Northwest Africa seemed disastrously amateur, even the U.S. vice consul at Marrakesh acknowledged. From public relations to economics and intelligence, the various Washington agencies “who came to North Africa were at loggerheads with State Department policy,” Kenneth Pendar afterward recorded. “The heads of all the agencies cooperated, but their subordinates left the French feeling that we, as Americans, had no clear policy or ideology of any kind.”5
This was all too true. It was also inevitable, perhaps, as the United States emerged from its long isolationist slumber and felt its way as the world’s foremost military power. Early in the twentieth century the United States had considered, then balked at, becoming an empire; now, however, it had little alternative, whether that empire was to be territorial or post-territorial. And this exposed a major weakness in the American system of government—for though the President might make military decisions as U.S. commander in chief, political decisions were another matter. Not only Congress but the free media of the country were entitled to “weigh in”—making unity of approach virtually impossible. Secretary Hull was even more skeptical of de Gaulle than the President. He was equally opposed to the restoration of France’s colonial empire in the postwar world save as trusteeships—for how could American sons be expected to give their lives merely to reestablish a colonial yoke they themselves had thrown off in 1783?
The President—like General Eisenhower—was thus faced with an awkward military task: harnessing British and French forces to the yoke of the Western Allies, without committing the United States to restitution of their colonial empires.
Not even Roosevelt’s personal representative at Eisenhower’s headquarters, Robert Murphy, had had any idea of the President’s long-range political plans when preparing the Torch invasion: namely, that “Roosevelt was planning to encourage extensive reductions in the French empire,” as the diplomat delicately put it in his memoirs. Once he met with the President at the Villa Dar es Saada, however, Murphy had been quickly brought up to speed—
and recognized the postwar agenda the President was seeking. Having congratulated Murphy on the “Darlan deal” that had brought such quick Vichy surrender, the President had then looked reproachfully at his emissary. “But you overdid things a bit in one of the letters you wrote to Giraud before the landings, pledging the United States Government to guarantee the return to France of every part of her empire. Your letter may make trouble for me after the war.”6 Without further ado, the President had gone on to discuss “with several people, including Eisenhower and me, the transfer of control of Dakar, Indochina, and other French possessions, and he did not seem fully aware how abhorrent his attitude would be to all empire-minded French including De Gaulle and also those with whom I had negotiated agreements.”7
It was the President’s long-term political agenda that set the cat among the pigeons, rather than his modest military expectations. And late on the evening of Friday, January 22, 1943, after a delightful meal with the Sultan of Morocco at the Villa Dar es Saada, the President realized he was playing with fire.
Captain McCrea remembered the fateful night in Casablanca vividly. He had hand-delivered the President’s invitation to the Sultan at his palace near Rabat the day before. “No Hollywood director could have put on a more colorful spectacle,” McCrea recalled. “The Court Yard ankle deep in white sand,” the cavalry “dressed in colorful costumes, the white horses draped in red blankets”8—and the Sultan asking if he might bring with him his young teenage son, the Crown Prince, to meet the President.
At 7:40 p.m. on the twenty-second, the Sultan had duly arrived with his “entourage”—“magnificently attired in white silk robes” and “bearing several presents—a gold-mounted dagger for the President in a beautiful inlaid teakwood case, and two golden bracelets and high golden tiara for Mrs. Roosevelt.”9 In return, the Sultan was given a signed photograph of the President in a heavy silver frame, engraved with the presidential seal.
It was hardly a fair exchange—yet the Sultan of Morocco and his son were delighted, for the evening was historic: it was the first time the Sultan had ever been allowed to meet the head of any foreign state other than France.
Seating the Sultan on his right, the President had proceeded to lay out, verbally over dinner, a magic table of postcolonial dreams for the country. Morocco, after all, had only been colonized by the French early in the twentieth century, becoming a “protectorate” in 1912; it could become a sovereign country once again, in the war’s aftermath.
Churchill, seated on the President’s left, had grown “more and more disgruntled,” Elliott Roosevelt recalled, as the President discussed living standards for the nation’s Muslims, better education, and “possible oil deposits” in the country. “The Sultan eagerly pounced on this; declared himself decidedly in favor of developing any such potentialities, retaining the income therefrom; then sadly shook his head as he deplored the lack of trained scientists and engineers among his countrymen, technicians who would be able to develop such fields unaided,” Elliott wrote. “Father suggested mildly that Moroccan engineers and scientists could of course be educated and trained under some sort of reciprocal educational program with, for instance, some of our leading universities in the United States.”10
General Charles Noguès, who as the French resident general had also been invited to the dinner but had been placed further down the table, “had devoted his career to fortifying the French position in Morocco,” according to Robert Murphy’s account, and “could not conceal his outraged feelings” at Roosevelt’s talk of postcolonial development and American investment.11 At the end of dinner “the Sultan assured Father,” Elliott recalled, “he would petition the United States for aid in the development of his country. His face glowed. ‘A new future for my country!’”12
It was also a new approach to decolonization: discussion, both at table and beyond. As word spread, in the days and weeks afterward, the story of the dinner would become legendary among Moroccans as a “proof of our sincerity in the Atlantic Charter,” another American official remembered—almost every Arab in Morocco feeling “he knew the whole story of this diffa and everything that was said, just as if he had been there.”13
“It was a delightful dinner, everybody—with one exception—enjoying himself immensely,” Elliott later recalled.
The exception was not General Noguès, however; Elliott meant Mr. Churchill. For his part, Robert Murphy remembered the Prime Minister, thanks to his “rare abstinence,” being “unnaturally glum throughout the evening”—as well as uncomfortable at the mention of the end of colonial empires. Captain McCrea, however, recalled Churchill’s clever solution to the alcohol problem.
“As to no alcoholic beverage being served [in deference to the Sultan],” the President’s naval aide recalled, “the P.M. I think was taken by surprise. At any rate he started to glower, the glower being more pronounced during the small talk which preceded the dinner. The Pres. noted this and I think was rather amused.” In the meantime, “directly dinner was announced seats were taken,” and shortly after dinner started, an “amusing incident took place. One of our Secret Service men entered the dining area and whispered to me that a Royal Marine, the P.M.’s orderly, wanted to speak to me . . . He informed me that a most important message had been received at the P.M.’s nearby villa which required immediate attention. I indicated where the P.M. was seated and told the Marine to so inform the P.M.” This he did. “The P.M. after a word with the Pres, withdrew. In about twenty minutes or thereabouts the P.M. returned. No doubt the message referred to was urgent,” McCrea allowed, “but on his return it was evident that the P.M. had taken time out to have a quickie or so while handling the urgent dispatch. After dinner and when the guests had departed the Pres. had a good laugh about it all, remarking ‘Winston did not tell me what the message was about. Do you suppose he can have arranged it?’”14
It was already 10:00 p.m. “The Sultan obviously wanted to stay and discuss more specifically and with loving emphasis some of the points Father had raised during the dinner,” Elliott recounted, “but Father’s work for the evening was cut out for him. A signal to Captain McCrea then, to stay and take notes; one to Robert Murphy and Harry Hopkins; one to me to hold myself in readiness to act as Ganymede—and all the others left. The stage was set for Charles de Gaulle.”15
It had been Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum—using a supposed West African proverb—that a successful leader should “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Franklin Roosevelt preferred, however, to keep his stick well concealed, relying on the force of his personality, his high intelligence, his self-confidence, and his passionate interest in the future to steer people in what he considered the right direction. Even the generally dismissive General Patton, who despised politicians, had been won over by him.
General Marshall had disappointed Patton when dining with him at Casablanca on arrival—“Never asked a question,” Patton had noted in his diary.16 The President, by contrast, never stopped asking questions. Patton had spent one and a half hours with him on January 16—the President (whom Patton referred to as A-1) “most affable and interested. We got on fine.” The next day Patton had seen the President again, and “we all talked over one and one-quarter hours, then went to see B-1 ”—Churchill.
Churchill, the general had sniffed in his diary, “speaks the worst French I have ever heard, his eyes run, and he is not at all impressive.”17 On January 18 Patton had again ridden in the President’s car for an inspection of the battalion guarding the Anfa enclave. Then on January 19 he’d invited the President to dinner at his headquarters—the President afterward asking Patton to sit and talk with him, alone, “in car while P.M waited, for about 30 minutes. He really appeared as a great statesman,” Patton jotted in his diary18—and on January 21 the President asked Patton once again to ride with him in his car, together with General Clark, following lunch and his inspection of the three U.S. divisions at Rabat. “Coming back we talked history and armor about which he knows a lot,” Pa
tton recorded. “F.D.R. says that in Georgia,” in the Soviet Union, “there are Crusaders’ Castles intact and that hundreds of suits of armor exist. Then he got on to politics”19—with somewhat withering remarks about Vice President Henry Wallace as his potential heir, or even Harry Hopkins; “neither of them had any personality,” he claimed, which would rule out any hope of their winning election. Even Churchill drew the President’s less-than-complimentary appraisal in terms of empire and future global security. “He also discussed the P.M. to his disadvantage. Says India is lost and that Germany and Japan must be destroyed.”20 Above all, however, the President listened—especially to Patton’s military judgment. The general pointed out how green American forces still were, in terms of fighting. “People speak of Germany and Japan as defeated,” the general warned sagely, but “we have never even attacked them with more than a division.”21
Churchill’s ill grace at dinner with the Sultan particularly irritated Patton—who claimed the Sultan had “especially asked” to see the President in private, “before Churchill arrived,” as he did not seem to like the Prime Minister. Already on arrival the Prime Minister appeared, it had seemed to Patton, “in a very bad temper . . . No wine, only orange juice and water. Churchill was very rude, the President was great, talking volubly in bad French and really doing his stuff,” Patton recorded that night. The tanker had personally driven the Sultan home. “On way Sultan said, ‘Truly your President is a very great man and a true friend of myself and my people. He shines by comparison with the other one”—the “boor” Churchill.22
Patton was being unfair, however—for neither he nor Captain McCrea had any idea of the real cause of Churchill’s distemper.
The President did. After the Sultan’s departure, the Prime Minister quickly explained. De Gaulle had just visited him, before dinner, at the Villa Mirador—and had scotched any prospect that his arrival would lead to the unification of the Free French movement in London and the French Imperial Council in Algiers, under Giraud.
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