Commander in Chief
Page 49
4. Kenney, George C. Kenney Reports, 215.
5. See Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 123–24.
6. William Rigdon, White House Sailor (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 19. For an account of how Ultra/Magic messages were relayed to the President, see David Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1999), 118–19; Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, 103–11; and David Kahn, “Roosevelt, Magic, and Ultra,” Cryptologia 16, no. 4 (October 1992).
7. Signal NTF131755, in Japanese Naval Cipher JN-25D, decoded by the U.S. Fleet Radio Unit Pacific in Hawaii: Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), 182–83.
8. John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), 453–58; Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 73.
9. Donald A. Davis, Lightning Strike (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), 220.
10. Ibid., 222.
11. Ibid., 227.
12. Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, chief of staff to Admiral Yamamoto, in Burke Davis, Get Yamamoto (New York: Random House, 1969), 207.
13. Lewin, The American Magic, 185.
14. Burke Davis, Get Yamamoto, 128; Carroll V. Glines, Attack on Yamamoto (London: Orion Books, 1990), 9; Thomas Lanphier, “I Shot Down Yamamoto,” Reader’s Digest, December 1966, 48.
15. According to subsequent Japanese accounts, U.S. code breakers may have misinterpreted Admiral Yamamoto’s flight schedule, which had the airfield of Buin, not Ballale, as its destination. “In the end it didn’t matter,” given the proximity of the two: Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 462.
16. Donald Davis, Lightning Strike, 273. Admiral Yamamoto was widely thought to have said, before Pearl Harbor, that he would take the surrender of America riding down Pennsylvania Avenue on a white charger; in truth he had pointed out that the United States would never surrender to Japan unless Japanese forces reached Washington, D.C., and the White House—which, having earlier studied at Harvard and having twice served as naval attaché in Washington, Yamamoto thought unlikely to eventuate.
23. “HE’S DEAD?”
1. Donald Davis, Lightning Strike, 304–8.
2. The airfield at Ballale was constructed in November 1942 by the Japanese, using forced labor of British artillery officers and men who had surrendered at Singapore. All 517 men were murdered by the Japanese on completion of the air base, in March 1943. See Don Wall, Kill the Prisoners! (Cambridge, UK: Peter Moore, 1996). Also Australian War Memorial Archives.
3. Burke Davis, Get Yamamoto, 196.
4. Ibid.
5. Donald Davis, Lightning Strike, 306–8.
6. Ibid., 309.
7. Ibid., 289–90. See also Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, 138, and Walter Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King—the Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), 315.
8. Burke Davis, Get Yamamoto, 210.
9. Presidential Press Conference No. 891, April 19, 1943, FDR Library.
10. In the first three weeks of March, 1943, more than three-quarters of a million tons of Allied shipping were still being sunk in the North Atlantic gap “not yet covered by air search,” War Secretary Stimson complained to the President: Henry Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). For the best summary of the interservice controversy see Samuel Eliot Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic: September 1939–May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), 237–47.
11. Presidential Press Conference No. 898, May 21, 1943, FDR Library.
12. Grace Tully Archive, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Box 11, Yamamoto (joke letter to), May 23, 1943, FDR Library.
13. Donald Davis, Lightning Strike, 315.
14. John C. Fredriksen, The United States Air Force: A Chronology (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 104.
24. SAGA OF THE NIBELUNGS
1. Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 489–90.
2. Ibid., 484.
25. A SCENE FROM THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
1. Kenneth Pendar, Adventure in Diplomacy (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co, 1945), 43.
2. Ibid., 147.
3. Ibid., 148.
4. Ibid., 149.
5. Ibid., 152.
6. Ibid., 150.
26. THE GOD NEPTUNE
1. Entry of May 2, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.
2. Entry of May 7, 1943, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.
3. Ibid., entry of May 10, 1943.
27. A BATTLE ROYAL
1. Entry of May 11, 1943, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.
2. Entry of May 9, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.
3. Ibid., entry of May 9, 1943.
4. Ibid., entry of May 11, 1943.
5. Entry of May 11, 1943 in Alan Brooke, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 402.
6. Ibid.
7. Entry of May 12, 1943, Stimson Diary.
8. The figure of 150,000 Axis troops who had already surrendered by May 12 was announced to the press the next morning, May 13, 1943, by the secretary of war: see entry for May 13, 1943, Stimson Diary.
9. “Meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, May 13, 1943, 10:30 A.M.,” in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943 (hereinafter FRUS II) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970), 24–25.
10. Entry of May 12, 1943, Brooke, War Diaries, 402.
11. Entry of May 13, 1943, Leahy Diary.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960), 296.
28. NO MAJOR OPERATIONS UNTIL 1945 OR 1946
1. Letter of May 13, 1943, in Mary Soames, Speaking For Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, Edited by Their Daughter (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 479–80.
2. “A Global Strategy: Memorandum by the United States Chiefs of Staff,” in FRUS II, 222–23.
3. “Conduct of the War in 1943–44, Memorandum by the British Chiefs of Staff,” in FRUS II, 223–27.
4. “Meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, May 13, 1943, 10:30 A.M.”, FRUS II, 39–40.
5. Ibid., 41.
6. Ibid., 43.
7. Ibid., 44.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. C-294, Churchill cable to Roosevelt, May 10, 1943, in Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 2, Alliance Forged (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 212.
12. Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 206–10.
13. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 728.
14. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassel & Company, 1951), 713.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 95.
18. Ibid., 95–96.
19. Ibid., 96.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Entry of May 17, 1943, Stimson Diary.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Letter of May 12 (on “Office of the Secretary, Department of the Navy” notepaper), Bullitt Files, FDR Library.
29. THE DAVIES MISSION
1. “This is a si
tuation full of ugly possibilities, and engendering it is a triumph for Goebbels”: entry of Monday, April 26, 1943, in Alan Lascelles, King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War: The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, ed. Duff Hart-Davis (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 126.
2. Walter Reich, former director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, “Remember the Women,” New York Times Book Review, April 12, 2015, 23.
3. Roosevelt to Stalin, Document 88, March 16, 1943, in Susan Butler, ed., My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 121.
4. Elizabeth MacLean, Joseph E. Davies: Envoy to the Soviets (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 100.
5. “Meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, May 18, 1943, 10:30 A.M.,” Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943 (hereinafter FRUS II) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970), 101.
6. Sir Alan Brooke, Proceedings of the Conference, “Defeat of the Axis Powers in Europe: discussion, Combined Chiefs of Staff,” FRUS II, 101.
7. Entry of May 19, 1943, Stimson Diary.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
30. A DOZEN DIEPPES IN A DAY
1. Entry of May 18, 1943, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON (hereinafter Mackenzie King Diary).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., “Conversation with Hon. L. McCarthy, at Canadian Legation after luncheon, Washington.”
5. Ibid., “Conversation Mr. Mackenzie King had with Mr. Winston Churchill, Tuesday, May 18, 1943—White House, Washington, 6.00 p.m.”
6. Ibid., “Meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, May 20, 1943.”
7. Ibid., “Conversation Mr. Mackenzie King had with Mr. Winston Churchill, Tuesday, May 18, 1943—White House, Washington, 6.00 p.m.”
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., “Memorandum re questions asked Mr. Churchill by members of the Senate of the U.S. and representatives of the Foreign Committee and answers given by Mr Churchill, Washington, May 19, 1943.”
10. Ibid., entry of May 19, 1943, “Quotations and answers, members of Senate of the U.S.—19.v.43.”
11. Ibid.
12. Meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, May 19, 1943, 10:30 A.M., in FRUS II, 113.
13. Ibid., 114.
14. Entry of May 19, 1943, in Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide: A History of the War Years, Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 509.
15. Meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff with Roosevelt and Churchill, May 19, 1943, 6 P.M.,” in FRUS II, 122–23.
31. THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD AT STAKE
1. Entry of May 19, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., “Meeting of the Joint Staffs—May 20, 1943.”
4. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram, 21 February 1943, in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), 343.
5. E.g., entry of Wednesday, May 26, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary.
6. Entry of May 20, 1943, in “Secret Diary” of Lord Halifax, Papers of Lord Halifax, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Yorkshire, England.
7. “Meeting of the Joint Staffs, May 20, 1943,” Mackenzie King Diary, Library and Archives Canada.
8. Under the Canadian constitution, command of Canada’s all-volunteer forces to serve overseas (conscription was confined to service in Canada only) was vested in the British monarch, and exercised by the Canadian federal Cabinet, who deferred largely to the authority of Winston Churchill in his role as minister of defense and prime minister of Great Britain.
9. “Meeting of the Joint Staffs, May 20, 1943,” Mackenzie King Diary.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., entry of Friday, May 21, 1943.
12. Ibid., “Conversation with Mr. Churchill, White House—May 21, 1943.”
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
32. THE PRESIDENT LOSES PATIENCE
1. Entry of May 24, 1943, in Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 513.
2. Ibid.
3. Entry of May 24, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.
4. Ibid.
5. Entry of May 25, 1943 in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 97.
6. Entry of May 24, 1943 Moran, Winston Churchill, 97–98.
7. Entry of May 25, 1943 (400c), Mackenzie King Diary.
8. Entry of May 28, 1943 Moran, Winston Churchill, 99.
9. Entry of 25 May, 1943, Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 514.
10. Entry of May 27, 1943, Stimson Diary.
11. Ibid., entry of May 25, 1943.
12. Ibid.
13. “He thought the time might be in August . . . He then said: if, by any chance, something should prevent Stalin making the trip, what I would like to do is to come to Ottawa just the same though perhaps this might be in July”—“Conversation with Pres. Roosevelt, White House—May 21, 1943,” Mackenzie King Diary.
14. Entry of May 25, 1943, Leahy Diary.
15. Entry of May 24, 1943, Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 512–13.
16. Entry of Tuesday, January 26, 1943, in Lascelles, King’s Counsellor, 93.
17. Entry of May 31, 1943, Diary of Harry C. Butcher, Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene.
18. Ibid.
19. Entry of 26 May, 1943, Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 517.
20. Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, 606.
33. SICILY—AND KURSK
1. Entry of July 9, 1943, in Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion, The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 225.
2. Entry of July 9, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.
3. Entry of July 9, in Ward, Closest Companion, 226.
4. Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: The True Story That Changed the Course of World War II (New York: Random House, 2010), 294.
34. THE FÜHRER FLIES TO ITALY
1. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories (London: Methuen, 1958), 448.
2. Ibid., 449. Manstein’s view has been much contested, especially by Russian military historians anxious to honor the Soviet defense of Kursk and the start of a major counteroffensive by Russian forces at Orel: see, inter alia, Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 586–87. However, it is clear from Joseph Goebbels’s private conversations with Hitler at Berchtesgaden before the battle that Hitler was far more worried by the next moves of the Western Allies in the Mediterranean than by what would happen at Kursk—essentially a “show” offensive to write down Soviet armies using the latest German firepower. “The Führer has decided to stay where we are,” on the Eastern Front, Goebbels recorded. “We have to keep our reserves up our sleeves. His old plan of seizing the Caucasus and fighting in the Middle East is redundant, thanks to last winter’s crisis . . . Under no circumstances is he prepared to give up the Italian mainland—he has no intention of pulling back to the Po, even if the Italians abandon the front. We will simply take over the running of the war in Italy. That is the overriding principle of German strategy: to keep the war as far from the German homeland as possible”: entry of 25.6.43, in Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Froehlich (Munich:K. G. Saur, 1993), Teil II, Band 8, 531–34.
3. Entry of July 14, 1943, Ward, Closest Companion, 226.
4. Ibid., entry of July 13, 1943, 226.
5. Ibid., entry of July 19, 1943, 227.
6. Entry of 17.7.43, in Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Froehlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1993), Teil II, Band 9 (hereinafter Die Tagebücher 9), 116.
7. Ibid., 114.
8. Ibid., 116.
9. Ibid., 114.
10. Despite being made aware of Soviet rather than Nazi responsibility for the massacre back in April 1943, both Roosevelt and Churchill had been unwilling to raise the issue in public—or even encourage others to do so, when continued Soviet resistance on the Eastern Front was crucial. General Sikorski, the commander in chief of all Polish forces in the West, on April 15, 1943, was thus begged not to make Katyn, however awful, a matter of contention, just before Hitler opened his expected summer offensive: Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), 385.
11. Entry of 19.7.43, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher 9, 126.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., entry of 20.7.43, 132.
14. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: Norton, 2000), 594.
15. Ibid., 597.
35. COUNTERCRISIS
1. See inter alia Trumbull Higgins, Soft Underbelly: The Anglo-American Controversy over the Italian Campaign, 1939–1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 91–124; Douglas Porch, The Path to Victory in World War II: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 459–76; Mark Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941–1943 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 97–129; and Mark Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and America Against the Axis Powers, 1940–1945 (New York: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 123–28.
2. Davies Papers, mss for May 20, 1943, 9, Library of Congress.
3. Entry of June 3, 1943, “Arrival in Washington and Report to the President,” Davies Papers, Library of Congress.
4. Davies Papers, mss for May 20, 1943, 9.
5. Entry of July 22, 1943, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1959), 165.