Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  Field Marshal Albert “Smiling Albert” Kesselring. (illustration credit 10.1)

  By November 15, more than fifteen thousand veteran German soldiers had arrived, including the 10th Panzer Division, some battalions recently equipped with new Tiger tanks armed with a powerful 88mm gun. One week later, German strength exceeded thirty-five thousand, including a second panzer division and twenty squadrons of Stukas and Messerschmitts. Overall command was entrusted to Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, a former Luftwaffe chief of staff, who was Hitler’s commander in chief, south, and one of Germany’s most able military leaders. An eternal optimist—he was nicknamed “Smiling Albert”—he had risen through the ranks of the field artillery, was transferred against his wishes to the Air Ministry in 1931, learned to fly at the age of forty-eight, and had been shot down five times on the Polish and Russian fronts. He had commanded air fleets in close-support roles during the Polish and Dutch campaigns, orchestrated much of the Battle of Britain, and achieved air supremacy for the Third Reich in the first year of the Russian campaign. Of all of Germany’s senior commanders, including Rommel and von Rundstedt, few were more eager to attack than Kesselring, and none had his ability to combine air and ground operations. Kesselring recognized that the Allies had achieved strategic surprise. Yet he wondered why they had not landed in Tunisia, which was the key to control of the Mediterranean.46 As soon as the cities of Bizerte and Tunis were secure, he ordered his commanders on the ground to move westward against the oncoming Anderson and drive the Allies back into Algeria.

  Anderson’s advance guard reached the crest of the Dorsal range of the Atlas Mountains on November 17. Tunis lay less than thirty miles in the distance, its towers and rooftops visible to the naked eye. Remarkable as it appears in retrospect, it required another six months for the Allies to dislodge Kesselring’s forces—due largely to faulty preinvasion planning, poor performance, and inferior equipment, not to mention inexperienced leadership, including that of the supreme commander. “Had we struck out boldly and landed our forces far to the east, even in Tunisia,” Mark Clark wrote subsequently, “we would almost certainly have been successful.”47

  When Anderson moved out from Algiers to take Tunis, his army numbered fewer than twelve thousand men—barely one-tenth of the Allied invasion force. His armor consisted exclusively of light tanks: British Valentines and American M-3 General Stuarts. The Valentine was armed with a minuscule 40mm (two pounder) principal weapon. The General Stuart was even more lightly armed with a 37mm “squirrel gun,” a turret that had to be manually rotated, and an engine that was hand cranked.48 Neither came close to matching the main German battle tank, the Mark IV. When Eisenhower sought to reinforce Anderson with the medium tanks that had landed with Patton in Morocco, the vehicles proved too wide to fit through the narrow tunnels on the only rail line available—a fact that easily could have been ascertained had Allied planners consulted the dozens of Free French officers in London who had spent the bulk of their careers in North Africa.

  In the air it was a similar mismatch. Kesselring’s forces possessed seven all-weather airfields in Tunisia plus nearby support bases in Sicily and Sardinia. By contrast, Allied aircraft operated from crude dirt fields at such a distance from the front that they could rarely stay more than ten minutes over the battlefield. German pilots and the Luftwaffe command structure were battle-tested. The Allied air command was poorly coordinated and rent by national rivalry. The German planes—ME-109s, Stuka dive-bombers, and Junker 88s—proved far more reliable than American P-38s and P-40s. By late November, only half of the Allied planes in North Africa were still airworthy. American pilots lost twice as many planes from crashes and other accidents as from combat.49 The Germans not only gained air superiority, but air supremacy. Allied planes were destroyed on the ground, troop positions were bombed and strafed relentlessly, and the harbor at Bône—the closest Allied port to the fighting—was reduced to rubble. On one day alone in November, five Allied supply ships were sunk by German aircraft. Not one German ship on the Tunis run was sunk by Allied planes during the entire month.

  By the third week in November, Anderson had reached the end of his tether. His forces had managed to link up with General Barré’s French troops, who were holding firm on his southern flank, but his army was overextended. Troops faced constant bombardment from the air, resupply from Algiers was hampered by lack of transportation, and units were too thin on the ground. Rather than thrust directly toward Tunis, Anderson had divided his forces and advanced along a broad front. That was the preference of Eisenhower’s headquarters, and it was consistent with American battle doctrine since the time of Ulysses Grant. Lieutenant colonels at Leavenworth continue to debate whether a pointed drive would have served Anderson better than a broad-front advance. A more pertinent question is why land thirty-five thousand troops under George Patton in Morocco, one thousand miles from the objective?

  For the first two weeks of the Allied advance, Eisenhower remained on Gibraltar—far from the battlefield itself. Before the invasion he had neglected to prepare for the political implications of landing on French soil. Stung by that failure, he now devoted far too much attention to the consequences of the Darlan deal. “Since this operation started, three quarters of my time, both night and day, has been necessarily occupied in difficult political maneuvers in attempting to explain to people, far from the scene of action, the basic elements of the local situation,” he reported to Beetle on November 18.50 Eisenhower stayed on the Rock because the communications with Washington and London there were superior to anything available in Algiers. But the result was that he lost contact with the front. Shortly after writing Beetle, he advised London that he hoped “to complete the occupation of Tunisia by mid-December.”51 If Ike had seen what Anderson confronted, he would scarcely have made so optimistic an assessment.

  Eisenhower did not move his headquarters to Algiers until November 23, 1942, and even then he showed no inclination to travel to the front.52 Not until November 28—five days after he arrived—did he and Clark go forward to meet General Anderson. They traveled by armored car with escorts fore and aft, did not cross into Tunisia, and were never remotely close to the fighting. Eisenhower’s preoccupation with political issues served the military cause poorly. Churchill cabled as early as November 22 that he hoped Ike was not “too much preoccupied with the political aspect.”53 But Churchill’s warning had little effect. As Rick Atkinson observed in An Army at Dawn, Eisenhower had yet to learn the art of command. “But a quarter-century as a staff officer, with a staff officer’s meticulous attention to detail and instinctive concern for pleasing his superiors, did not slough away easily.”54

  Even after he arrived in Algiers, Ike remained fixated on the domestic situation in North Africa. “We sit on a boiling kettle,” he wrote Mamie on November 27.55 Unfortunately, Eisenhower’s perception of the North African situation was filtered through Murphy’s eyes. The French colons—the establishment class—were thoroughgoing reactionaries who found it easy to side with Nazi Germany. With their approval, Vichy had installed like-minded men to administer the country, who, in turn, appointed a larger number of fascist petty functionaries—mayors, police chiefs, postmasters—who were less than enthusiastic about an Allied victory.56 A much larger group of Frenchmen were vigorously anti-Nazi and supported the Allies wholeheartedly. But the Darlan deal retained the Vichyites in power on the flimsy supposition that only they could keep the native population in check. Eisenhower supported that arrangement. “We did not come here to interfere in someone else’s business,” he reminded Patton on Thanksgiving Day.57

  By the first week of December the initiative in Tunisia had shifted to the Germans, who had increased their forces much more rapidly than the Allies. Anderson’s men were dug in along a line that roughly paralleled the Dorsal range, from Cape Serrat, on the Mediterranean, to El Guettar, three hundred miles to the south. Superior German firepower, plus almost total air supremacy, had compelled Anderson to assume a
defensive posture. Battle losses had not been made good, fuel and ammunition were running low, and Anderson’s five-hundredmile supply line was stretched to the breaking point. The destruction of the port facilities at Bône had deprived the Allies of the only deepwater harbor available, which meant that everything shipped forward went over roads that had seen little improvement since the time of the Caesars. Even worse from an offensive standpoint, the weather had turned against the Allies. Tunisia receives sixteen inches of rain per year, almost all of which falls from December to February. The army was mired in a sea of mud that rendered any movement all but impossible.

  In their postwar memoirs, Eisenhower and Clark imply that General Anderson was to blame for the failure to take Tunis because he did not strike out boldly. Yet the primary responsibility rested with Ike. Churchill complained that Eisenhower’s army was “all tail and no teeth”—a reflection of the fact that less than one-tenth of the forces available were engaged in Tunisia.58 General Sir Bernard Montgomery, whose Eighth Army was slowly driving Rommel back across the Libyan desert toward Tripoli, looked on the failure to take Tunis with disgust. “The party in Tunisia is a complete dog’s breakfast,” he cabled London, concerned that Kesselring’s forces might defeat “the Western Army” and join forces with Rommel at the Libyan border.59

  George Patton, whom Ike sent to the front for a look-see, blamed Eisenhower for not taking personal command. “Ike is not well and is very querulous and keeps saying how hard it is to be so high and never to have heard a hostile shot. He could correct that very easily if he wanted to.”60 At the front, Patton found that he was the only general officer the troops had seen since the battle began three weeks earlier. “I think this is true, and it is a sad commentary on our idea of leadership.” When he returned to Algiers, Patton found Ike and Clark discussing what to do next. “Neither had been to the front, so showed great lack of decision. They are on the way out, I think. They have no knowledge of men or war.”61

  Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery. (illustration credit 10.2)

  No one was more critical of Ike’s handling of the assault on Tunis than General Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the imperial general staff. “Eisenhower seemed unable to grasp the urgency of pushing on to Tunis before the Germans built up their resistance there,” he wrote in his diary in late November 1942. Echoing Patton’s complaint, Brooke wrote: “It must be remembered that Eisenhower had never even commanded a battalion in action when he found himself commanding a group of armies in North Africa. No wonder he was at a loss as to what to do.… I had little confidence in his having the ability to handle the military situation confronting him, and he caused me great anxiety.”62 i

  General Marshall offered last-ditch advice. “I think you should delegate your diplomatic problems to your subordinates and give your complete attention to the battle in Tunisia,” he instructed Ike on December 22. “I want you to feel you can do this and depend on us to protect your interests and that you do not have to give your time to making lengthy explanations to us to justify your position.” Marshall said he wanted Eisenhower “to feel free to give your exclusive attention to the battle, particularly as German intentions against your right flank seem evident.”63

  Stung by Marshall’s admonition, Ike immediately set out for the front, uncertain what to expect. Because the Luftwaffe controlled the skies, he and Butcher traveled in a five-car motorcade to Anderson’s headquarters, five hundred miles away. Driving through steady rain, they arrived a day and a half later—midafternoon on Christmas Eve. Anderson had assembled his corps and division commanders for Ike’s benefit, and their message was uniformly grim. The winter rains would continue until February. Until the ground dried, no offensive action could be considered. The troops were taking a pounding from German artillery, and the lack of air cover was becoming a serious morale factor, but the weather affected the Germans just as much. They, too, were unlikely to mount any large-scale attack.

  The news was scarcely what Ike was hoping for. Nevertheless, his long-overdue visit to the front was salutary. Had he remained in Algiers, he might well have ordered Anderson forward—just as Grant had ordered George Thomas to advance against John Bell Hood from Nashville during an incredible ice storm in December 1864. Neither movement was possible. Grant had been unaware of the problem Thomas confronted, but Ike saw firsthand that a stalemate had settled in along the Tunisian front.

  “The continued rains have made impossible any decisive attack in the near future,” Eisenhower informed Marshall. “The abandonment for the time being of our plan for a full-out effort has been the severest disappointment I have suffered to date. However, the evidence is complete, in my opinion, that any attempt to make a major attack under current conditions in northern Tunisia would be merely to court disaster.”64 Sensing Eisenhower’s disappointment, Anderson offered to resign, but Ike dismissed the proposal.65

  As Eisenhower sat down to enjoy a Christmas Eve dinner with Anderson and General Juin, he received an urgent phone call from Clark asking him to return to Algiers immediately. Clark spoke in guarded terms, but from the message Ike understood that Darlan had been assassinated.66 At two-thirty that afternoon a twenty-year-old Frenchman, Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, had entered the summer palace in Algiers where Darlan had his office. He waited in an anteroom for Darlan to appear, and then shot him twice at close range. Darlan died an hour later on a hospital operating table. Bonnier was arrested, tried summarily, and executed by firing squad, all in less than thirty-six hours. To this day, his motivation remains a mystery, and the plot is unsolved. Immediate speculation was that Bonnier de la Chapelle was a monarchist who by assassinating Darlan hoped to aid the cause of the Comte de Paris, pretender to the French throne.

  In Washington, White House officials, principally Admiral Leahy, disseminated a story alleging the assassin was a Gaullist.67 What is known is that Bonnier was a member of the Corps Franc d’Afrique, a paramilitary formation being trained west of Algiers under the direction of Carleton S. Coon, sometime professor of anthropology at Harvard, and the resident OSS official in the area. Coon was near the palace when the assassination occurred, and the weapon Bonnier used was a Colt Woodsman pistol, identical to one owned by Coon.68 Professor Coon and the Office of Strategic Services were never tied to the plot, and Coon was immediately transferred to a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) unit in Tunisia. Bonnier was executed before any investigation could be conducted. The fact that Admiral Leahy immediately dispatched a cable to Eisenhower authorizing him to appoint Giraud as Darlan’s successor,69 and that Ike immediately understood from Clark’s cryptic phone message that Darlan had been assassinated, is enough to suggest that the United States may at the very least have had prior warning.j

  Eisenhower returned to Algiers in the late afternoon on Christmas Day. He was delighted to find that the WAC detachment, including Kay Summersby, had arrived safely, following a harrowing sea voyage from Scotland. Rather than chance a flight through Luftwaffe-infested airspace, Beetle had sent the WACs by troopship, only to have the vessel sunk by a German submarine off the Algerian coast. The women spent a nervous night bobbing in a lifeboat, and were rescued the next morning by a British destroyer that landed them in Oran. Ike’s plane fetched them to headquarters, and the evening of Christmas Day, Beetle hosted a grand dinner party for everyone at his villa. George Patton had shipped two live turkeys from Morocco, and the festive atmosphere revived Ike’s sagging spirits.k During the duty day, Smith exhibited all of the warmth of an SS general, Summersby recalled, but off duty he was charming, witty, thoughtful, and a perfect host.70

  For Eisenhower, the stalemate at the front, the fallout from the Darlan assassination, and the growing criticism from London were more than enough for him to deal with. But Kay’s arrival softened the impact. “We’ve got a lot of bridge to play,” he told Summersby, and they soon settled into a nightly routine.71

  “Sat around with Ike after the party broke up,” Everett Hughes recorded in his diar
y. “Discussed Kay. I don’t know whether Ike is alibiing or not. Says he likes her. Wants to hold her hand. Doesn’t sleep with her. He doth protest too much, especially in view of the gal’s reputation in London.”72

  If Eisenhower was infatuated with Summersby, he retained his love for Mamie. At the same time that Hughes was recording Ike’s confidences in his diary, the supreme commander was writing to his wife.

  Sometimes I get to missing you so that I simply don’t know what to do. As pressure mounts and strain increases everyone begins to show weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the Commander to conceal his.… When the strain is long continued the commander gets to feeling more and more alone and lonesome, and his mind instinctively turns to something or someone that can help.… No one else could ever fill your place with me—and that is the reason I need you. Maybe a simpler explanation is merely I LOVE you!! Which I do always.73

  The next day, New Year’s Eve, he wrote a follow-up: “In my time I’ve been intrigued momentarily—I’ve never been in love with anyone but you! I never will.”74

  While Ike attempted to reconcile his love of his wife with his growing affection for Kay, Churchill fretted about the situation at the front. “I am most anxious about the military situation,” he cabled Roosevelt on December 31, 1942. “If [the Germans] can get enough transport—a big if—they might bring off the same kind of attack along the sea flank that Alexander and Montgomery did at Alamein with the disastrous results to all our forces that befell the Italians.”75 To Eisenhower, Churchill was more direct. “I am deeply concerned about the unfavorable turn in Tunisia, and our staffs take an even more serious view.”76