by Kai Bird
McCloy thought the president should leave strategic planning to such military professionals as Marshall. He believed it “took a hard-driving, ruthless man to win a war and that the President was not of this type.”14 Nevertheless, he disagreed with Marshall’s estimation that only a cross-Channel attack into the heart of Nazi Europe would win the war. He shared the same reservations Churchill had about Operation Sledgehammer, feeling that, “. . . even after a most terrific assault from the air and water, there would be German fortifications and German troops ready to resist our advance.” If the Allied assault troops were thrown back, a very good possibility, the “whole free world will feel discouraged.”15 Throughout the summer, he tried to impress upon Stimson the importance of Middle Eastern oil and the strategic viability of a North African operation. Stimson would have none of it; he began to call McCloy his “Middle Easterner,” and regularly threw him out of his office whenever he started to argue the point.16
The issue came to a head on July 8, when Churchill cabled Roosevelt that under no circumstances would Britain participate in a cross-Channel invasion in 1942. Instead, he said, Operation Gymnast, a landing in French West Africa, posed “by far the best chance for effecting relief to the Russian front in 1942.” Gymnast “is the Second Front of 1942.”17
Stimson, Marshall, General Thomas T. Handy, Admiral Ernest J. King, and the rest of the American High Command were outraged by Churchill’s unilateral decision. Stimson raged that “if they [the British] persist in their fatuous defeatist position . . .” he would recommend that an ultimatum be issued. On July 12, he accepted a memorandum for Roosevelt drafted by Marshall and Handy which warned that, if “the British won’t go through with what they agreed to, we will turn our backs on them and take up the war with Japan.”18 After having a “vigorous discussion” with McCloy over the issue, Stimson thought his arguments “had pretty well knocked that [McCloy’s Middle Eastern views] out of him.”19 McCloy, in his amiable fashion, may have left that impression with his boss, but he was not in fact convinced. Nor was Roosevelt, who quickly vetoed the ultimatum.20
Instead, the president ordered Marshall, Harry Hopkins, and Admiral King to join General Eisenhower in London in order to reach immediate agreement with the British on strategic plans for the remainder of 1942. In London on July 22, Marshall did his best to convince the British Cabinet that “without Sledgehammer we were faced with a defensive attitude in the European theatre.”21 The British, however, were steadfast in their opposition. Two days later, Marshall told his British counterparts that Roosevelt had agreed to scrap Sledgehammer in favor of an expanded North African invasion, now to be called Operation Torch. This news greatly angered Joseph Stalin, who had been promised that the British and Americans would open a second front in Europe sometime in 1942. He protested the decision in most emphatic terms, telling Churchill in a cable on July 23 that “the Soviet government cannot acquiesce in the postponement of a second front in Europe until 1943.”22 There was, however, nothing Stalin could do except to hope that his troops could hold the Eastern front. Many British and American lives were no doubt saved by the decision to delay a cross-Channel attack. But these lives were paid for at the cost of many more Soviet lives. This fact cast a pall of bitterness and distrust among the Allies for the duration of the war—and long afterward.
In retrospect, it is easy to see that the decision to invade North Africa delayed the decisive cross-Channel invasion of Europe until 1944. Churchill, McCloy, and other critics of Sledgehammer may have been right that a premature cross-Channel invasion in 1942 could have been very costly. And there is no reason to question their judgment regarding the importance of the Middle Eastern theaters, both for their oil resources and as a supply route to the Soviet Union. Hitler himself had focused much of German strategy on seizing the Caucasus oil fields from the Soviet Union and pushing the British out of Egypt. But by the time the decision was made to divert resources from a cross-Channel invasion of Europe to an invasion of North Africa, the British had finally halted the advance of Rommel’s armies at the first Battle of El Alamein, on July 1-3, 1942. Egypt and the Middle Eastern oil fields to the east were secure, and therefore the justifications McCloy had given Stimson for a North African invasion ever since December 1941 were no longer so compelling. Stimson and Marshall were never impressed by these arguments to begin with, and now had only acquiesced to Torch in the face of Churchill’s intransigence. They were convinced that a strategic mistake had been made which would prolong the war.
The invasion of North Africa began at midnight on November 8, 1942, and it immediately precipitated a political crisis within Allied ranks. Eisenhower had been assured by his own intelligence people that the Vichy French troops would lay down their arms without a fight. The president’s emissary to the Vichy government, Robert Murphy, was sure that the Vichy would respond to an appeal for cooperation broadcast by General Henri Giraud, a French general of some stature who had recently escaped from a Nazi prison in France. But Murphy had greatly miscalculated Giraud’s stature, and the Allied troops encountered fierce resistance at several points. Within three days, Eisenhower’s troops were in control of Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers; but they had suffered eighteen hundred casualties, and continued resistance by Vichy troops now jeopardized Eisenhower’s major objective, Tunis. When Ike discovered that Admiral Jean Darían, the commander-in-chief of all Vichy forces in France, happened to be in Algiers on the night of the invasion, he quickly authorized a deal: in return for his cooperation, Darían would be made high commissioner of Allied-occupied North Africa. On November 13, Darían met Eisenhower in Algiers and accepted these terms.
As soon as the Darían deal became public knowledge, there was an outcry in the American press, which depicted Darían quite accurately as a Nazi collaborator and an anti-Semite. McCloy, however, had no doubts about the Darían agreement.23 If Eisenhower thought it had saved lives, then Washington had to support him. In any case, since the collapse of France in June 1940, Roosevelt had continued diplomatic relations with Marshal Henri Pétain’s government and denied recognition of General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Committee. Both Stimson and McCloy had supported Roosevelt’s Vichy policy. McCloy’s early attitude toward de Gaulle had been influenced by his good friend Jean Monnet, who thought the general sounded like a dictator.24 Over the next few months, however, both Monnet and McCloy began to alter their views.
In this, McCloy was influenced by Walter Lippmann, who had met de Gaulle in August 1942. Treated to an hour-long monologue of the general’s opinions, Lippmann had returned to give a speech in which he proclaimed de Gaulle and his French National Committee the “true leaders of the French nation.”25 Lippmann was decidedly critical of the Darían affair. After being read a cable from Eisenhower justifying the deal, he sent McCloy a long memorandum on “Our Relations with Darían.” Lippmann acknowledged the military necessity of using Darían, but he skewered the War Department for a failure of political intelligence: “On the critical points of resistance and collaboration in North Africa, General de Gaulle’s intelligence service was more accurate than our own, and it will be a grievous error to continue to ignore it.” He told McCloy that Washington’s attitude should be that Darían “is being spared from the consequences of his treachery to France and to the Allies by making partial restitution for his crimes.” The admiral should be compelled to “annul step by step the Vichy decrees” that discriminated against Jews.26 Lippmann’s arguments impressed McCloy, and his pragmatic instincts led him to conclude that, if de Gaulle and his “Fighting French” could do more for the war effort, then Washington should deal with the imperious general.
Viewed from Washington, the situation in North Africa had now become a major political embarrassment. The president issued a statement backing Eisenhower, but emphasized the “temporary” nature of the arrangement. By the end of November, it was clear that Eisenhower had paid a high political price for marginal military gains. Churchill, who had pushed so ardentl
y for the North African campaign, now complained, “I never meant the Anglo-American Army to be stuck in North Africa. It is a spring-board and not a sofa.”27 With twenty-five thousand new German troops landed in Tunis, and Eisenhower spending a good deal of his time on political matters in Algiers, the North African front was indeed beginning to look like a sofa.
Then, on Christmas Eve, a French royalist named Bonnier de la Chapelle disposed of the Allies’ most embarrassing irritant by assassinating Admiral Darían. Motivated by his royalist political beliefs, the assassin nevertheless had been supplied with a weapon and encouraged by the British Secret Operations Executive.28 McCloy was not aware of the plot, but he certainly welcomed its outcome. Several days later, he wrote Walter Lippmann a short note saying, “I hope the de Gaulle people can work out a policy which will permit them quickly to fight with Giraud.”29 These sentiments marked McCloy as a Gaullist, particularly in an administration that was still vigorously promoting de Gaulle’s remaining rival, General Giraud.30
Though it eliminated a political embarrassment, Darlan’s assassination did not lay to rest the animosities between de Gaulle’s Free French organization and the Giraudists. Eisenhower did not have the patience to deal with such political annoyances; he was tired of all these “Frogs,” these “little, selfish, conceited worms that call themselves men.”31 In early January 1943, he begged that McCloy be sent to handle political affairs in occupied North Africa. Marshall liked the idea, if only because he thought it would allow Eisenhower to concentrate on capturing Tunis. But when he approached Stimson and explained that Eisenhower needed McCloy as a “loan” for a “month or two,” Stimson balked. Informed of Marshall’s request while on vacation in North Carolina, Stimson immediately phoned McCloy and had him fly down to discuss the proposed “loan” in person. Over dinner, Stimson told McCloy that, though it was important not to disappoint Eisenhower, he had decided that, if his most valuable aide was to be loaned, he was going to write the terms of the contract. When McCloy returned to Washington the next day, he had in his pocket strict instructions to spend no longer than a month in North Africa.32
McCloy was ecstatic. At last he would get a tour of the front lines. The trip was set, though his departure date was postponed until after the president returned from his meeting with Churchill in Casablanca. A few days later, he had a private session with the president, who typically spent the entire meeting telling stories about his recent trip. Later that afternoon, McCloy and Ellen came by Stimson’s for tea, and everyone was amused at his description of his first private meeting with FDR.33
Before leaving for North Africa, McCloy hosted a party for Harvey Bundy’s son William, who was marrying Dean Acheson’s daughter, Mary. The marriage and McCloy’s party were major events on Washington’s social calendar that month, bringing together dozens of Washington’s wartime elite. McCloy enjoyed these social events, but on occasion he found some Washington affairs far too lavish. Earlier in January 1943, he had told Ickes about a recent dinner hosted by Bernard Baruch. Food of all sorts was extravagantly stacked across buffet tables, and half the guests, said McCloy, seemed to be high-ranking army and navy officers, while the other half “consisted of very rich people from Long Island.” Ellen had cast her eye over the affair and called it all very “vulgar.”34
On February 10, 1943, McCloy boarded a plane for North Africa. Five days later, having flown by way of Brazil, Gambia, and Senegal, his party of eight arrived in Casablanca. On the plane, McCloy devoured a number of reports about the political mess in North Africa. One of these focused on the fact that Vichy restrictions against Jews were still actively enforced in Giraud’s North Africa. The Gaullists—and the American press—were having a field day excoriating this blatant marriage of Eisenhower’s North African occupation with French fascism. McCloy realized his first task would be to convince Giraud to abrogate any of the Vichy laws discriminating against Jews. In this, he had the good fortune to be assisted by Jean Monnet, who arrived in North Africa the same month to become Giraud’s political adviser.
The two men spent much of the next few weeks trying to educate Giraud—and Eisenhower—on the political and public-relations realities of the Jewish question. On March 1, just before leaving for an inspection of the front lines, McCloy admonished Eisenhower, “Things are moving too slowly toward the liberalization of restrictions on personal freedom. I can find no good reason why the Nazi laws still obtain here.”35 A few days later, Eisenhower and Giraud began dismantling the Vichy Nuremberg laws, specifically the quotas placed on the number of Jews allowed to engage in various professions and businesses.
McCloy’s political savvy in such matters was warmly welcomed by the newly appointed British resident minister for North Africa, Harold Macmillan, whom he met on February 26. Only four days earlier, Macmillan had survived a plane crash and had suffered severe burns across much of his face. But he made a point of briefing McCloy and greeting him at a formal welcoming dinner. He noted in his diary that McCloy was “very intelligent and interesting. . . . He seemed much more like a fellow member of the House of Commons or a minister in a British Cabinet than the ordinary American politician. I was able to say some things to him about the situation here which I cannot get Murphy to understand.”36
Through Macmillan and Monnet, McCloy’s previous impression of de Gaulle’s Free French was reinforced. All three men that spring could see that the politically adroit and ambitious general was rapidly undermining Giraud’s authority as high commissioner. Regular French soldiers and French merchantmen were defecting to join the “Fighting French” forces. In popular demonstrations in the streets of Algiers, the crowds changed de Gaulle’s name. The reality, as Monnet and others told McCloy, was that de Gaulle was no longer a mere symbol of French resistance. Even within occupied France itself, the organized resistance publicly swore allegiance to Charles de Gaulle. Built up and financed by the British since 1940, de Gaulle could now be discarded only at the risk of serious political and even military setbacks. American policy, in this instance guided by Roosevelt’s personal dislike of the Frenchman, was simply unrealistic. So, throughout the spring of 1943, while ostensibly serving as a political adviser to Giraud, Monnet quietly worked to achieve a peaceful transition of political power into the hands of de Gaulle’s French Committee of National Liberation. As Ambassador Murphy complained later in a memo to Roosevelt, “Jean Monnet arrived with a definite objective—to sell French unity. . . . He counts greatly on the support of Jack McCloy and Felix Frankfurter.”37
Eisenhower had little time to absorb such political dynamics. McCloy had arrived in Algiers in the midst of Ike’s first direct command of a set-piece military engagement, the Battle of the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia. Nothing had gone right. Rommel won a clear tactical victory, destroying hundreds of tanks and half-tracks, and inflicting more than five thousand American casualties at little loss to his own forces. Despite this humiliating defeat, McCloy still felt that Eisenhower was the right general in the right place. In an effort to shore up Ike’s confidence, he wrote him, “I have opposed the Germans in many ways during my adult life. They have a way of testing your complete strength and they are most apt to bring you to the point of exhaustion before you prevail. I have no doubt . . . that your strength will withstand any test they can apply.”38
McCloy spent a brief time at the battlefront during this period and grilled dozens of officers and enlisted men on everything from battle tactics to supplies. One day, during a tour of the front lines, he observed a soldier having difficulty firing a bazooka. He promptly got out of his jeep and showed the soldier how to assemble and fire the gun.
After three weeks in North Africa, Stimson impatiently began cabling his assistant to return home immediately. So, on March 9, 1943, McCloy and his party finally boarded a C-54 aircraft bound for America. A full week later, the plane landed safely in Charleston, South Carolina, where Stimson had been vacationing. The war secretary immediately took his favorite aide to the local club
house and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening listening to his “adventures which were very thrilling and interesting.”39
McCloy had returned convinced more than ever of the inevitability of de Gaulle’s political ascendancy. For the next few months, he quietly tried to educate Stimson and the president on the realities of the political situation in North Africa. Taken by Stimson one day to a Cabinet meeting, he put in a pitch for recognition of de Gaulle’s status. Roosevelt brushed aside these arguments; seeing how annoyed the president was, Harry Hopkins noted on a piece of White House stationery, “One more crack from McCloy to the Boss about de Gaulle and McCloy is out of here.”40
