Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  In the south, Montgomery encountered little opposition. Kesselring chose not to defend every inch of Italian territory, and with Sicily already in Allied hands, southern Calabria was of little strategic value. But at Salerno it was a different story. Fifth Army came within an eyelash of being driven back into the sea. Eisenhower ultimately deployed every bomber in the theater and every warship Cunningham could muster to protect the beachhead, and eventually the German counterattack was turned back. But it was truly the most dangerous moment of the war in Europe for the Western Allies. An entire field army of two corps and four divisions was on the verge of annihilation.17

  Eisenhower had gambled that the Italian surrender would change the nature of the war and that Clark would face little opposition. The fact is, both he and Marshal Badoglio were playing a double game. Ike and Bedell Smith led Badoglio and his representatives to believe that the Allies would land at various points along the Italian coast with no fewer than twelve divisions. Assuming that so many American and British troops would be coming ashore so quickly, Badoglio pledged that the Italian Army would switch sides and assist the Allies. Eisenhower and his staff became so enthralled with the possibility of Italian support that they devised a last-minute scheme to land an airborne division in Rome (almost two hundred miles north of Salerno) to protect the Badoglio government and “stiffen the Italian formations” (GIANT II).

  Four days before Fifth Army was scheduled to land at Salerno, Ike snatched the 82nd Airborne from Clark and ordered it to drop on the Eternal City at the same time Clark’s men went ashore. Eisenhower assured Matthew Ridgway, the division commander, that the Italians would prepare the way. Ridgway was skeptical. Having lost a quarter of his division on the way to Sicily because of faulty Allied planning, he was reluctant to take Ike’s word for it. At Ridgway’s insistence Brigadier General Maxwell D. Taylor, who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division’s artillery, and who spoke Italian fluently,e was smuggled clandestinely into Rome to reconnoiter the situation.18 Twenty-four hours after arriving, Taylor radioed back that there was no hope whatsoever of receiving Italian support and that any landing in Rome was doomed to failure. At the last moment, with the troop-carrying planes on the runway and some already in the air, GIANT II was canceled. For years afterward Eisenhower believed that the airdrop on Rome had been feasible, and Bedell Smith to his dying day thought Taylor a coward.19 To their credit, Ridgway and Taylor resisted the quixotic, dangerously ill-conceived plan of the high command and saved their division from catastrophe. At Chattanooga in 1863, George Thomas refused Grant’s order to attack until he was resupplied with draft horses to pull his artillery. Grant was furious, but Thomas was right and, by refusing to attack prematurely, he probably saved Grant’s career. Ridgway and Taylor were also correct, and may well have saved Ike from certain disaster.f

  At 0200 on September 9, 1943, the men of the assault wave of Fifth Army clambered into their landing craft and headed toward the Italian shoreline. Instead of the seven divisions that went ashore in Sicily, Clark would hit the beaches with only three, one of which—the 36th Infantry—was a Texas National Guard unit that had never seen combat. In Sicily, the Allies had put a half million men ashore by D-Day plus two. Clark would command fewer than sixty thousand. Eisenhower believed that with Italy out of the war, the Germans would not make a stand at Salerno but would fall back to a defensive line north of Rome along the Arno River, roughly from Pisa to Rimini, and protect the Po Valley. Alexander and Clark shared that view. Montgomery objected, but his reclama had little impact.20 The fact is, after Mussolini’s ouster, Hitler had rushed fourteen divisions into Italy, in addition to the four evacuated from Sicily. Six of those divisions, including three fully refitted panzer divisions, were within two days’ march of Salerno. And Kesselring had no intention of withdrawing.

  To complicate matters further, the news that Italy had surrendered was announced shortly before the troops boarded their landing craft. Many believed the beaches would not be defended. Admiral Henry Hewitt, commanding the naval task force, noted with alarm that Fifth Army’s “keen fighting edge” had been dulled.21 Incredible as it seems in retrospect, the 36th Division elected to forgo a preparatory naval barrage to soften enemy defenses. “I see no point to killing a lot of peaceful Italians and destroying their homes,” said Major General Fred L. Walker, the division commander.22 Clark supported that decision. As a consequence, German artillery and mortar fire pummeled the beaches at will. Allied planners had assumed Fifth Army would be four thousand yards inland by daylight. Instead, by midmorning the beachhead scarcely extended four hundred yards.23 At that point the destroyers and cruisers accompanying the invasion force moved close to shore and began to shell the German positions on Monte Soprano. The Germans pulled back, and by nightfall the beachhead was secure.

  By Sunday, September 12, Fifth Army had pushed inland to an average depth of six miles along a thirty-five-mile front. “Combat efficiency of all units excellent,” Clark reported. “Ready to march toward Naples.”24 It was another pipe dream. Rather than withdrawing, General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, Kesselring’s field commander, had been concentrating his forces and now had five divisions, including the Hermann Göring and 16th Panzer, ready to counterattack. With six hundred tanks and self-propelled guns he struck Clark’s lines at dawn on September 13—“Black Monday”—intent on driving Fifth Army back into the sea. Vietinghoff concentrated his attack along the seam between Clark’s two corps, and by evening of the thirteenth, Fifth Army was on the ropes. Clark ordered the 82nd Airborne (which had been restored to his command) to drop inside the beachhead, and at the same time commenced contingency planning to evacuate, beginning with his own headquarters (Operation BRASS RAIL).

  When Eisenhower learned that Clark contemplated evacuation, he was thunderstruck. Had he made a mistake in giving Fifth Army to Clark? he asked Butcher. Should he have selected Patton, who at least “would prefer to die fighting”? A commanding general should stay with his men to give them confidence, said Ike. “He should show the spirit of a naval captain and, if necessary, go down with his ship.”25 Eisenhower told Butcher that “if the Salerno battle ended in disaster, he would probably be out.”26

  Faced with impending doom, Eisenhower sprang into action, determined, as he put it, “to move heaven and earth to save Fifth Army.” Tedder was ordered to deploy the full strength of the Allied air force—including B-17 strategic bombers—to protect the beachhead; Cunningham rushed the main battle fleet to the Gulf of Salerno; Alexander was dispatched to bolster Clark’s resolve; and Montgomery was ordered to hasten his advance from Calabria. “An evacuation from Salerno,” Cunningham wrote later, “would have resulted in a reverse of the first magnitude—an Allied defeat which would have completely offset the Italian surrender.”27

  The battle at Salerno lasted four days. Allied bombers dropped almost a thousand tons of high explosives per square mile, annihilating intersections, rail lines, and whole villages.28 Cunningham’s fleet delivered more than eleven thousand tons of highly accurate five- and six-inch shells in direct support of Clark’s troops. “The attack this morning had to endure naval gunfire from at least 16 to 18 battleships, cruisers and large destroyers,” Vietinghoff informed Kesselring on September 14. “With astonishing precision and freedom of maneuver, these ships shot at every recognized target with overwhelming effect.”29

  By the evening of September 16 the crisis was over. Elements of Eighth Army had made contact with Clark’s forces forty miles south of Salerno, and Kesselring ordered Vietinghoff to pull back to a defensive position on the Volturno River north of Naples. Allied casualties totaled about nine thousand, of whom twelve hundred were killed in action. Total German losses numbered roughly thirty-five hundred, including six hundred dead.30 Once again overwhelming Allied firepower saved the day.

  In postwar interviews, as well as in their memoirs, Eisenhower, Clark, and Bedell Smith planted the idea that much of Fifth Army’s problem at Salerno was attributable to Montgom
ery’s failure to move up from Messina more rapidly.31 It is another illustration of Ike’s ability to reshape the record. Not only did the initial orders given Montgomery not contemplate his direct support of AVALANCHE, but Eighth Army was not provided sufficient transport to move beyond Calabria. When he was belatedly ordered to rush to Clark’s support, additional transport was provided and Montgomery closed the gap in three days. For Monty it was old hat. In February he had been asked by Alexander to hasten his advance into Tunisia to ease the pressure on Fredendall at Kasserine Pass. Now he was hustling to assist Clark.g

  The blame for the setback at Salerno rests squarely with Eisenhower and Clark and the rosy scenario they painted as to what would follow Italy’s surrender. As a consequence, too few troops were deployed, Montgomery’s Eighth Army veterans were dispatched on a wild-goose chase three hundred miles south of the main battle area, naval and air support were initially haphazard, and the quality of tactical leadership was manifestly inadequate. As General Rudolf Sieckenius, commanding the 16th Panzer, put it, the Americans and British were “devoid of offensive spirit, excessively dependent on artillery support, and reluctant to close with the enemy.”32

  Eisenhower learned from the crisis at Salerno, and the mistakes were not repeated at Normandy. Whether Clark learned anything continues to be a matter of debate. What is clear is that a foul-up as significant as Salerno required a scapegoat, and the victim was Major General Ernest J. Dawley, who commanded Clark’s VI Corps. Dawley’s performance was no worse than any other general officer’s at Salerno. Yet he quarreled repeatedly with Clark (Dawley vehemently objected to evacuating the beachhead), and Clark convinced Ike that Dawley was unstable. Eisenhower, with some misgiving, reduced Dawley to his permanent peacetime rank of colonel and sent him back to the United States, where he was assigned to a training command.33 “It was just as well,” Dawley said later. “I couldn’t work with Clark. He made decisions off the top of his head.”34 Dawley regained one star almost immediately, returned to the European theater in 1945, and retired as a major general two years later. “He is being promoted,” Marshall told Texas senator Tom Connally, “as a reward for keeping his mouth shut.”35

  On September 22, 1943, Churchill—who was deeply committed to the invasion of Italy—praised Ike for the outcome at Salerno. “I congratulate you on the victorious landing and deployment northwards of our armies,” he cabled. “As the Duke of Wellington said of the battle of Waterloo, ‘It was a damned close-run thing,’ but your policy of running risks has been vindicated.”36

  Marshall did not share Churchill’s enthusiasm. The following day he chastised Eisenhower for launching Montgomery in Calabria before Clark hit the beach at Salerno. “Quite evidently you and Alexander had a different view but at long range it would seem that you gave the enemy too much time to prepare and eventually find yourself up against very stiff resistance.”37

  Marshall said he and Field Marshal Sir John Dill, head of the British mission in Washington, feared that Eisenhower was about to repeat the same mistake. If he took the time to develop a secure position around Naples, said Marshall, “you will afford the other fellow so much time that he will be in a position to make things much more difficult in the matter of an advance to Rome.” Marshall asked Eisenhower if he had considered halting the advance on Naples and making a dash for Rome, perhaps by amphibious means.38

  According to Butcher, Marshall’s letter “took the starch out of Ike.”39 Accustomed to nothing but praise from his mentor in Washington, Eisenhower had been pulled up short. He fretted over a reply for a day, and then sent Marshall a whine reminiscent of George McClellan’s frequent responses to Lincoln in 1862. “I do not see how any individual could possibly be devoting more thought and energy to speeding up operations or to attacking boldly and with admitted risk than I do.”40 Eisenhower said there was no way that the landing at Salerno “could have logically preceded BAYTOWN [Montgomery’s landing in Calabria].” This reply was less than candid. Before BAYTOWN was launched, Montgomery told Eisenhower and Alexander that it was a mistake to send Eighth Army across the Strait of Messina and that everything should be concentrated at Salerno. But neither Ike nor Alexander listened. As one military historian has put it: “Instead of keeping Eighth Army concentrated for landing further north, Eisenhower committed himself to one of the most senseless assaults of the war, and then blamed Montgomery for being slow.”41

  Marshall’s rebuke disconcerted Eisenhower. While Churchill had applauded his willingness to take risks, Marshall and Dill, from their global perspective in Washington, questioned his judgment.42 It was the beginning of Ike’s autumn of discontent. The battle for Italy was not the cakewalk he had anticipated. Allied troops would not enter Rome for another nine months; the Germans now had twenty-four divisions south of the Alps; winter was approaching, and the mountainous hinterland north of Naples scarcely suggested a “soft underbelly.” The rivers in Italy flow east and west, and each provided a defense line for the ever resourceful Kesselring. Even worse, Italy was now a secondary theater. The Allies’ main tent was OVERLORD, and Eisenhower had already lost seven divisions and three strategic bombing groups to the buildup in Britain. His requests for men and matériel often went unheeded, and he was losing many of his best officers (such as Bradley) to the cross-Channel attack.

  Ike was also growing irritable and testy. Late that fall, after a tiring inspection trip to Italy, he asked Bedell Smith to join him for dinner. Smith was evidently just as weary as Ike, and said he would rather not. Eisenhower hit the roof. He accused Smith of being disrespectful. No subordinate, Eisenhower shouted, could abruptly decline his commanding officer’s invitation to dinner. Smith said he would ask for a transfer. Ike said that was OK with him. Both men sulked, and Smith finally calmed down and apologized. Eisenhower did, too, and the incident passed.43

  Eisenhower biographers uniformly attribute Ike’s funk in the fall of 1943 to his despair at the prospect of returning to Washington to replace Marshall as chief of staff. That possibility undoubtedly affected his mood. But he was also concerned that he might be trapped in a military sideshow. The battle for Italy would be long, hard, and thankless, and Ike despaired at finding a way out.

  In 1925, when Eisenhower believed he had been passed over for the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth, Fox Conner had executed an end run around the chief of infantry and Ike secured an appointment. When Eisenhower was stuck in the all-black 24th Infantry at Fort Benning, Conner intervened to have him assigned to Pershing’s Battle Monument Commission. And when duty with Pershing in Paris appeared to be a dead end, Conner arranged Ike’s transfer to the office of the assistant secretary of war in Washington. But Fox Conner had long retired and Eisenhower was stuck.

  George Patton often referred to Ike as “Divine Destiny.” The British—Brooke, Alexander, and Montgomery—never thought much of Eisenhower’s generalship but always welcomed his good luck. Napoléon also preferred lucky generals, and it was not long until fortuna came to Ike’s relief. On November 17, 1943, Prime Minister Churchill, accompanied by the British high command, stopped off in Malta for a preliminary conference with Eisenhower before meeting with FDR in Cairo, and then with Stalin in Teheran. Churchill pressed his Mediterranean strategy on Ike and confessed that the idea of crossing the English Channel left him cold. “We must take care that the tides do not run red with the blood of American and British youth, or the beaches be choked with their bodies.”44

  Both Churchill and Eisenhower were suffering from severe respiratory infections, and in the course of commiserating, Churchill hinted that the command of OVERLORD was not firmly fixed. He told Ike he was disappointed that the job would not go to Brooke, and that the final decision was in the president’s hands. “We British will be glad to accept either you or Marshall.”45 Whether Eisenhower was being actively considered is doubtful.h Churchill was simply stating a fact. The British could accept either Marshall or Ike. There was nothing in the prime minister’s statement to
suggest that the nod would not go to Marshall. Nevertheless, this was the first inkling Eisenhower had that the matter was undecided, and the message was clear.46 It was Roosevelt’s call.

  Two days after meeting with Churchill, Eisenhower stood on the pier of the great French naval base at Mers el-Kébir, six miles west of Oran, awaiting the arrival of the president. Standing with Ike were Admiral Cunningham and FDR’s sons Elliott and Franklin, Jr., who were stationed nearby. In the harbor, the USS Iowa, the latest of a new class of battleships, rode at anchor following a 3,800-mile passage from Hampton Roads.47 In addition to the president, the Iowa’s passengers included Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s White House aides, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a full complement of military planners. The eight-day crossing had allowed the president time to review plans for the war in Europe with his military chiefs before meeting Churchill and Stalin. “The sea voyage had done Father good,” Elliott recalled. “He looked fit and he was filled with excited anticipation of the days ahead.”48

  Roosevelt had initially planned to spend only one day, Saturday, November 20, 1943, in French North Africa, but ended up spending two. He and Ike had met briefly twice before, once in the White House in June 1942, before Eisenhower left for London, and again at Casablanca in January.49 But they did not know each other well. FDR anticipated a series of perfunctory briefings in Tunis, and would then leave by plane for Cairo the next morning.