At a time of unease in Washington political circles over ultimate Soviet intentions, there was considerable truth in this. The President was certainly banging a proud American drum to remind the American public of the war’s global dimensions—the manner in which control of the Mediterranean would release naval vessels for the Far East, closing the gap between Northwest Australia and Ceylon, thereby forcing “General Tojo and his murderous gang” to “look to the north, to the south, to the east, or to the west,” where he would only see “closing in on them, from all directions, the forces of retribution under Generalissimo Chiang-Kai-shek, General MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz, and Admiral Lord Mountbatten,”2 the new supreme commander of Allied forces in the Indian Ocean. But the President’s target audience went beyond American or even English shores. Published not only in nearly every newspaper in America and abroad, the President’s long congressional address was once again directed at Moscow.
Whether at Hyde Park, Quebec, Ottawa, or the White House, the President had taken great pains to demonstrate over recent weeks just how solid was the U.S.-British alliance. Now he wished to back that image, in writing, with quotable numbers: statistical proof of new, global American power that would not be content with Hitler’s fall, but was to be harnessed to a postwar democratic agenda.
His conversation with Archbishop Spellman had reflected his unusually despondent mood; two weeks later, though, with American and British troops having established a hard-won lodgment on the mainland of Italy, and U.S. air forces already beginning to bomb factories in southern Germany, he seemed to have recovered his confidence: a confidence he would certainly need if he was to bring the American electorate, via his own efforts and the Congress, to ditch isolationism for good and take responsibility for the survival and development of a democratic postwar world.
Churchill’s stay, in other words, had acted as a tonic, despite the crisis at Salerno—and the President was fired up.
Ranked seventeenth in the table of world military strengths in 1939, the United States was now primus inter pares, with an all-American military, economic, and political agenda, based on the clear goals of the four freedoms, that the President was determined to fulfill come hell or high water—with or without Soviet participation.
Exactly what would happen if the Soviets did not participate in an endgame agreement—indeed, what exactly such a political agreement should comprise—was still to be decided.
As Churchill had said to Mackenzie King before leaving Quebec to join the President in Washington, it was impossible to predict whether the “Germans will give up this autumn.” It was, as Winston put it with characteristic wit, “like trying to bet on the Derby. No one could tell exactly what would happen. He spoke of the small numbers the British and Americans have in armies compared with the Germans”—and with the Russians.3
The President had been “very mad” at Stalin at the time, and had deliberately refrained from responding to the Russian’s rude cables—ignoring him and working with Churchill to show the strength of the Western, Anglo-American coalition. Somehow, though, in the interests of postwar peace, agreement would nevertheless have to be obtained on the “post-war order,” however powerful the Russian land armies. Compromise would be necessary, involving sad concessions—ones that would hopefully preserve, at least, the western nations of Europe within an Allied, democratic embrace: the “Allied side.” While meantime encouraging the Soviets to join an international security system, not stand outside it.
Could such a system of postwar security be negotiated with the inscrutable Russians? Would it be effective? Would the American public even support security guarantees of foreign countries on another continent, in another hemisphere, at the risk of a further war? It was small wonder that, in relation to the “post-war order,” Churchill had given to Mackenzie King a “desultory sort of account of the scheme that he, himself, had in mind, and what the President had talked of, but there was nothing very definite about it. Nothing is to be published at present as coming out of the [Quebec] Conference. Some months will be needed to consider the matter.”4
With Stalin’s sudden willingness to tackle “the matter”—first through a preliminary meeting of foreign ministers, then a summit of the Allied leaders, perhaps—planning for the future of the world was, however, becoming hot: red hot.
In the hopes therefore of obtaining formal Russian participation—participation in a four-power postwar security structure; participation in a global United Nations authority; and formal international agreements to be made on the future of Germany and the countries that had aided Hitler militarily, from Austria to Bulgaria and Rumania—the President thus authorized Secretary Hull to attend the preliminary Moscow Conference of foreign ministers of the Big Three, plus a representative from China.
The President had wanted Sumner Welles to attend, despite his recent resignation as undersecretary of state, but Hull was insistent that he should represent the United States as secretary of state, and the President—needing congressional support for the mission and its outcome—had acquiesced. The war was moving toward a climax, as even the Russians were aware. After almost a year of pressure to get together and get with a formally agreed Allied program, the Russian dictator had, it appeared, finally seen the light. The foreign ministers’ conference would begin in only four weeks’ time—on October 11, 1943—and might last as long as a month.
There in Moscow, the President hoped, the secretary would pave the way for the leaders of the Four Policemen to sit down together and discuss postwar security—and how to avoid the fate of the League of Nations. The President, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek would also have to decide the war’s endgame: how, exactly, Nazi Germany was finally to be defeated and its military disarmed. Following which, the Empire of Japan.
With that vast challenge looming, the President wheeled himself from the Oval Office to the mansion, stopping by the Map Room to check on messages from London, Moscow, and Chungking. Where the national leaders would meet, when exactly, how he would travel—by air or sea—and how they would get along, Roosevelt had little idea, but he was suddenly supremely confident.
“Of course he knew better than anyone else what was good for the United States,” Lieutenant George Elsey remembered the spirit the President conveyed. “That was the attitude at that point. He was supreme in every respect!”—the Map Room off-limits to all but five people in the world, not only to safeguard the most sensitive and secret military information, including Ultra, but because it enabled the President to be the only person with a complete picture of the war’s progress—and perils. “‘I’m in control; this is the way it’s going to be—it’s going to be the way I want it’—this was the sense I had of his perception of himself as the war went on,” Elsey recalled.5
Franklin Roosevelt had every reason to feel supreme. As president he had not only brought America out of the Great Depression without resorting to the kind of tyranny that had been occasioned in Germany and elsewhere, but he had subsequently become—in the least dictatorial yet most dominating manner—a most successful U.S. commander in chief in war. A global “war for civilization,” as he rightly called it.
The President’s generals and admirals had “no reason to challenge or contradict his leadership,”6 Elsey pointed out, since in setting the ongoing strategy of the war—at times against their dissenting voices—he had so ably brought the United States now within sight of eventual victory.
Many great battles still lay ahead, as well as further disagreements with Churchill and the British over military operations and policy. Churchill’s obsession with war in the Mediterranean would continue, despite disastrous expeditions in the Greek islands that would drive his own generals as mad as it did the American military in the next weeks7—Churchill resisting to the bitter end the British commitment to the mounting of Overlord the following spring.8
For all his faults as quasi–commander in chief of British Empire forces, however, Winston Churchill’s loyalty
to the President, as the de facto commander in chief of the forces of the Western Allies, had never snapped; nor had Churchill’s acumen in terms of Stalin and the Russians, and his moral courage. This would be of inestimable value in the coming months.
There would be dire problems of agreement with the Soviet Union, the President was all too aware—Russians who would have no gratitude to the United States for having helped save them, nor genuine interest in the Four Freedoms in a postwar world. There was also the matter of a fourth presidential election, and the President’s always-precarious health. Moreover, what exactly should be done with Nazi Germany in the aftermath of victory—disarmament or dismemberment. How best to help the Chinese, and plan the defeat of Japan. And how best to then turn Japan from aggression to peaceful coexistence . . .
These were but some of the politico-military challenges remaining, as the President began planning his second trip to North Africa later that fall—hopefully there to meet with Chiang Kai-shek, Churchill, and Stalin.
The road from Torch had certainly been rocky, over the past year, but what a year of achievement it had been!
His secretary of war and Joint Chiefs of Staff were now finally on the same page—his page. So was Churchill—if he could be kept there. From faltering first offensive combat in Tunisia, the United States had in less than one year moved to the brink of what would become the greatest global military performance in its history: a massive American-led invasion and campaign in 1944 that would hopefully win the Second World War in Europe. And after that, Japan.
With that, the President left the Map Room and went up to bed.
Acknowledgments
Readers of The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942 will know how indebted I am to those who have helped me in recounting, afresh, one of the most important stories of the twentieth century.
My task was to challenge the widely held perception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a hands-off U.S. commander in chief in World War II, and to demonstrate, rather, just how important was his role in directing U.S. and Allied strategy, even though he did not live to record it. Now, with publication of Commander in Chief: FDR’s Battle with Churchill, 1943, I am in debt again to a number of people. First off, I’d like to thank my commissioning editor, Bruce Nichols, without whose guidance, editing, and support this book could not have been published. And his assistant, Ben Hyman; my copyeditor, Melissa Dobson; and the indefatigable manuscript supremo, Larry Cooper—indeed the whole team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. At a time when my longtime London publisher had rejected the manuscript of The Mantle of Command and pulled out of the project completely, claiming there was insufficient interest in Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Britain or in the British publishing territories (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, the West Indies, etc.) for a multivolume work on FDR as commander in chief in World War II, Bruce’s encouragement meant the world to me—and something, I think, to the many readers who have enjoyed The Mantle of Command. I hope this sequel will again repay Bruce’s faith in my project.
Second, I’d like to thank Dr. Hans Renders, Professor of Biography at Groningen University in the Netherlands, who has not only been a stalwart supporter and colleague of my work in biographical studies, but who encouraged me to include Commander in Chief as part of my submission for a doctorate at the Biografie Instituut, Research Faculty of Arts, Groningen University. For his and Professor Dr. Doeko Bosscher’s suggestions, corrections, and support I am deeply grateful.
Writing history and historical biography is a process of research and constant iteration—factual, interpretive, selective, and architectural—before a book is finished and goes to press. Many fellow historians have assisted me; in particular I’d like to thank Carlo D’Este, Roger Cirillo, James Scott, Mark Schneider, David Kaiser, Douglas Brinkley, David Reynolds, and Ron Spector. I’d like to acknowledge my debt as a historian also to Gerhard Weinberg, Rick Atkinson, Mark Stoler, Warren Kimball, Michael Schaller, H. W. Brands, Andrew Roberts, David Woolner, Evan Thomas, Douglas Porch, Michael Howard, and the late Martin Gilbert, Stephen Ambrose, and Forrest Pogue, for their many works on World War II and FDR’s role. Over the years as a military and presidential historian I have learned not only from them but from many hundreds of veterans, from generals to GIs, as well as other students of World War II, ranging from professors to archivists in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Without those years of grounding, going back to the decade I spent as official biographer of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, I could not have undertaken such an ambitious project, and I will always be grateful to them.
At the FDR Presidential Library I’d like to thank the Deputy Director, Bob Clark, as well as the staff of the Research Room and Photographic Records. At the Warm Springs Presidential Museum I’d like to thank the Manager, Robin Glass, and his staff. At the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene I’d also like to thank the Deputy Director, Timothy Reeves, and the Research Library staff. In New Orleans, where I winter, I’d like to thank Nick Mueller, the President and CEO of the National World War II Museum, as well as his Director of Research, Keith Huxen, and Conference Director, Jeremy Collins. At the Churchill Society of New Orleans I wish to thank the President, Gregg Collins, and his colleagues. In Washington, D.C., I’d like to thank especially Jeff Flannery, Head of Reference in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, and his staff, as well as the staff of the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Also John Greco and his colleagues at the Operational Archives of the U.S. Naval History and Command, Washington Navy Yard.
At the Imperial War Museum in London I’d like to thank particularly the Keeper of Documents, Anthony Richards. At the Churchill Centre in Chicago I’d like to thank Lee Pollock and David Freeman. At the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, England, the Director, Allen Packwood.
Closer to home, at the University of Massachusetts Boston I’d like to thank Ira Jackson, the former Dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, where I am Senior Fellow; the new Dean, David Cash; and my many colleagues at the university, especially Provost Winston Langley. My thanks also to the staffs of the Widener Library, Harvard University, and its Microfilm Department, and the staff of Boston College Library.
In Boston I’m indebted, also, to my fellow members of the Boston Biographers Group, whose monthly meetings have offered the kind of support that only fellow biographers can, in the end, offer: collegial understanding, sympathy, advice, and reassurance in our necessarily often lonely biographical profession. I’d like also to acknowledge the friendship and intellectual fraternity of my fellow members of the Tavern Club—as well as my fellow members of Biographers International Organization (BIO), whose annual conference is both an inspiration to biographers and a chance to share a common passion for the study of real lives.
My literary agent, Ike Williams, has been once again my stalwart champion, together with his colleagues Katherine Flynn and Hope Denekamp. To my brother Michael and to my children, my thanks; and to my wife, Raynel, much more than thanks can ever repay.
As in the writing of The Mantle of Command, I have kept a portrait of my father, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Denis Hamilton, DSO, above my desk during the writing of Commander in Chief—for it is the memory of his service as a fighting infantryman, first at Dunkirk and then at D-day and the grim Battle of Normandy, that cautions me never to forget the men who had to carry out, in combat, the strategies laid down by the “brass hats” in World War II—and pay the price of their decisions, for good or ill.
Finally, to those readers of The Mantle of Command who wrote me with corrections as well as expressions of gratitude, my great appreciation.
NIGEL HAMILTON
John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy
and Global Studies, UMass Boston
Photo Credits
Total War. FDR addresses Congress, Jan. 7, 1943: FDR Library; boarding the Dixie Clipper at U.S. naval base, Trinidad, Jan. 12, 1943: National Archives
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sp; En Route to Casablanca. Stopover at Bathhurst, Gambia: National Archives; aboard the USS Memphis with Captain John McCrea: National Archives; FDR aboard C-54 with pilot, Captain Otis F. Bryan, Jan. 11, 1943: FDR Library; President’s C-54 and ramp, North Africa, Jan. 1943: FDR Library
Casablanca. The President’s villa, Dar es Saada: FDR Library; FDR dines with sons Elliott and Franklin Jr., and Harry Hopkins, Jan. 16, 1943: FDR Library; with Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jan. 20, 1943: FDR Library
Directing World Strategy. At the President’s villa, hosting Winston Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Jan. 1943: FDR Library; FDR with Admiral Ernest King: National Archives; with Generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle: National Archives
Visiting Troops on the Battlefield. FDR with General Dwight Eisenhower (seen flying together in December 1943): National Archives; with Generals Mark Clark and George Patton, Jan. 21, 1943: FDR Library; reviewing a U.S. armored division, Jan. 21, 1943: FDR Library; reviewing U.S. troops, Jan. 21, 1943: FDR Library
Unconditional Surrender. FDR and Churchill with Combined Chiefs, Jan. 1943: FDR Library; with Churchill at press conference, Jan. 24, 1943: FDR Library; press conference, Jan. 24, 1943: FDR Library
End of Empires. FDR with son Elliott, Jan. 1943: FDR Library; dining with the Sultan of Morocco, Jan. 22, 1943: National Archives; with Churchill at top of tower of Villa Taylor, U.S. vice consulate, Marrakesh, Jan. 24, 1943: FDR Library; with President Edwin Barclay of Liberia, Jan. 27, 1943: FDR Library
Totaler Krieg. Goebbels at the Sportpalast: Bundesarchiv, Federal Archives of Germany; FDR reviews military training camp: National Archives; Admiral Yamamoto saluting Japanese plane, ca. 1942: Corbis; group of U.S. Army Air Forces P-38 Lightning fighter planes, June 1, 1943: Associated Press
Churchill on the Wrong Warpath. The RMS Queen Mary in New York harbor, June 20, 1945: Interim Archives / Getty Images; Churchill addresses Congress, May 19, 1943: Corbis
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