The Mantle of Command
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Coalition War. FDR greets WSC in Washington, Dec. 22, 1941: FDR Library; FDR and WSC give White House press conference, Dec. 23, 1941: FDR Library; FDR broadcast to nation from White House, Feb. 23, 1942: FDR Library
Spring of ’42. Close-up of Commander in Chief, 1942: FDR Library; the Map Room, White House: FDR Library; communicating with MacArthur, Map Room: FDR Library; “Field Marshal” MacArthur and President Quezon in the Philippines: FDR Library
The Raid on Tokyo. Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle flies B-25 off USS Hornet, April 18, 1942: FDR Library; FDR decorates Doolittle in Oval Office, May 19, 1942: FDR Library
Hawaii Is Avenged. Aircraft carrier Agaki, sunk in Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942: FDR Library; Marine General Thomas Holcombe shows FDR Japanese flag at White House, Sept. 17, 1942: FDR Library
The Fall of Tobruk. FDR with WSC at Hyde Park, June 20, 1942: FDR Library, Margaret Suckley Collection; Rommel in triumph, British surrender of Tobruk fortress and port, June 21, 1942: Bundesarchiv, Federal Archives of Germany; FDR, with Canadian premier Mackenzie King behind him, at Pacific Council, June 25, 1942: FDR Library
Dieppe. General Marshall and War Secretary Stimson plot against the President to insist on cross-Channel landings in 1942: U.S. Signal Corps / National Archives; Canadian dead litter beaches of Dieppe, Aug. 19, 1942: National Archives of Canada; Admiral Bill Leahy, new chief of staff to the Commander in Chief, July 21, 1942: FDR Library / Life
FDR Inspects the Nation. FDR aboard his touring train, Sept. 17–Oct. 1, 1942: FDR Library, Margaret Suckley Collection; FDR disembarking at Fort Lewis, Sept. 22, 1942: FDR Library; FDR waves from rear platform: FDR Library
Gearing Up for Victory. FDR watches launch of Joseph N. Teal, Kaiser Shipyard, Oregon, Sept. 23, 1942: FDR Library; inspects aircraft carrier construction, Bremerton Naval Shipyard, Sept. 22, 1942: FDR Library; receives clip at Federal Cartridge Plant, Minnesota, Sept. 19, 1942: FDR Library; reviews tank unit at Fort Lewis, Washington, Sept. 22, 1942: FDR Library; inspects bomber production, Douglas Aircraft Corp., Long Beach, California, Sept. 25, 1942: FDR Library; inspects Ford bomber production, Willow Run, Michigan, Sept. 18, 1942: FDR Library; inspects army units, Fort Lewis, Washington, Sept. 22, 1942: FDR Library; watches rehearsal landings of U.S. Marines, San Diego: FDR Library
Waiting for Torch. FDR dining with staff at Shangri-la, Aug. 1942: FDR Library, Margaret Suckley Collection; close-up of FDR, fall 1942: FDR Library
Torch. General Patton, on Desert Training Center maneuvers prior to Torch invasion: National Archives; General Eisenhower before appointment as supreme commander, Torch invasion: Eisenhower Library; U.S. troops landing near Surcouf, Algeria, Nov. 8, 1942: National Archives; U.S. troops marching toward Algiers, Nov. 8, 1942: National Archives
Armistice Day. President gives address at Arlington Cemetery on Nov. 11, 1942, accompanied by General Pershing: FDR Library; a wreath is laid, Nov. 11, 1942: FDR Library
Notes
Prologue
1. Ross T. McIntire, White House Physician (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 141.
2. See David Reynolds, “FDR’s Foreign Policy and the Construction of American History, 1945–1955,” in FDR’s World: War, Peace, and Legacies, ed. David B. Woolner, Warren F. Kimball, and David Reynolds (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 7.
3. Viz. Eric Larrabee, Commander-in-Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), in which only one of the work’s eleven chapters is devoted to the Commander in Chief. Joseph E. Persico’s more chronological and wide-ranging narrative of the generals who served under FDR, and their relations with the Commander in Chief, Roosevelt’s Centurions: FDR and the Commanders He Led to Victory in World War II (New York: Random House, 2013), was published as The Mantle of Command went to press.
4. Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 247.
5. For a recent brief summary and refutation of the “mythology” surrounding the relationship between FDR and his chiefs of staff, see Mark Stoler, “FDR and the Origins of the National Security Establishment,” in FDR’s World, ed. Woolner, Kimball, and Reynolds, 69–78.
6. Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 241.
7. Mark Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941–1943 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 26.
8. Brooke, War Diaries, 273.
9. Kenneth Pendar, Adventure in Diplomacy: Our French Dilemma (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945), 152.
1. Before the Storm
1. “The White House, Washington: Memorandum of Trip to Meet Winston Churchill, August 1941,” August 23, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.
2. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: Norton, 2000), 385.
3. Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1960), 98.
4. Ibid.
5. See inter alia Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion 1935–1946 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), 1061, 1128, and 1162; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 210 and 289; and James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1970), 98–99.
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, comp. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 9, War—And Aid to Democracies (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969), 488.
7. The Neutrality Act forbade American flagged vessels from sailing into war zones; permitted belligerents, of any nationality, to be supplied on a cash-and-carry basis only; and mandated that such supplies be carried in non-American shipping, to avoid the United States being drawn into hostilities. At President Roosevelt’s request, the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 had modified the financial terms of trade to belligerents such as Britain, who had been confronting the Nazi menace to the great profit of the American armament industry. No deeper political commitment to war than that, however, was contemplated by Congress.
8. The U.S. Army Air Forces, amalgamating the Army Air Corps and the General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force, was created on June 20, 1941.
9. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 351.
10. Entry of August 3, 1941, John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 (New York: Norton, 1985), 424.
11. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6, Finest Hour: 1939–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 1148.
12. Ibid., 1155.
13. Conn and Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, 124.
14. Ibid., 119.
15. Mark A. Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941–1943 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 9.
16. Conn and Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, 137; and Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 51.
17. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 52–53.
18. “Our Chiefs of Staff believe that the Battle of the Atlantic is the final, decisive battle of the war and everything has got to be concentrated on winning it. Now, the President has a somewhat different attitude. He shares the belief that British chances in the Middle East are not too good. But he realizes that the British have got to fight the enemy wherever they find him. He is, therefore, more inclined to support continuing the campaign in the Middle East”: Hopkins to the Prime Minister and British Chiefs of Staff at 10 Downing Street, July 24, 1941, in Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 314. See also Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and America Against the Ax
is Powers, 1940–1945 (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 31.
19. Hitler later told Mussolini he would prefer to have “three or four teeth pulled” than endure another nine hours’ negotiation with the Spanish generalissimo, Franco: Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, 330.
20. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 41.
21. Letter of August 2, 1941, in F.D.R., His Personal Letters, ed. Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947–50), vol. 2, 1197.
22. Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 140.
23. Theodore A. Wilson, The First Summit: Roosevelt & Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 34.
24. Entry of August 9, 1941, Henry Harley Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age: General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold’s World War II Diaries, ed. John W. Huston (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2002), 226.
25. Ibid., entry of August 4, 1941, 218.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 61.
28. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 8, Diary of Ian Jacob, Liddell Hart Centre for Military History, King’s College London.
29. Ward, Closest Companion, 140.
30. Stark Diary, in Mitchell Simpson III, Admiral Harold R. Stark: Architect of Victory, 1939–1945 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 92.
31. Ward, Closest Companion, 140.
32. The toadfish proved hard to label definitively and was sent to the Smithsonian for further identification.
33. Henry H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper, 1949), 186.
34. Entry of August 8, 1941, Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age, 221.
35. Ibid., 221–22.
36. George C. Marshall, George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue, 3rd ed. (Lexington, VA: George C. Marshall Research Foundation, 1991), 285.
37. Wilson, The First Summit, 71.
38. Entry of August 8, 1941, Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age, 223.
39. Ibid., entry of August 10, 1941, 228.
40. Ibid., entry of August 8, 1941, 223.
41. Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR’s Global Strategist (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 303.
42. Sumner Welles, Where Are We Heading? (New York: Harper, 1946), 6. See also Wilson, The First Summit, 32 and footnote 65, 275.
43. Delivered to Congress January 6, 1941. See also Wilson, The First Summit, 154.
44. Conn and Fairchild, The Framework of Hemispheric Defense, 125.
45. Ibid., 126.
46. Wilson, The First Summit, 185. See also Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 153–54.
47. Wilson, The First Summit, 71.
48. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), 22.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 22–23.
51. Ibid., 24.
52. Ibid., 24–25.
53. Ibid., 25.
54. H. V. Morton, Atlantic Meeting (London: Methuen, 1943), 90–91.
55. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 9, Jacob Diary.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Ward, Closest Companion, 141.
59. Entry of August 10, 1941, Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age, 224.
60. Ibid.
61. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 285.
62. Morton, Atlantic Meeting, 85.
63. Ward, Closest Companion, 141.
64. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 365.
65. Alexander Cadogan, “Atlantic Meeting,” record of 1962, in The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M., 1938–1945, ed. David Dilks (London: Cassell, 1971), 398.
66. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 354.
67. Wilson, The First Summit, 163.
68. Ward, Closest Companion, 141.
69. Since May 10, 1940, Hopkins—whom FDR had once seen as a possible successor to him as president—had lived at the White House as special assistant to the President. In December 1937 he underwent surgery for stomach cancer, and though the cancer did not recur, he suffered many postgastrectomy problems and relapses. See James A. Halsted, “Severe Malnutrition in a Public Servant of the World War II Era: The Medical History of Harry Hopkins,” Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association 86 (1975): 23–32.
70. Cadogan, “Atlantic Meeting,” The Cadogan Diaries, 398; and David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–41 (London: Europa, 1981), 258 and footnote 28, 364.
71. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 29.
72. Ibid., 28.
73. Morton, Atlantic Meeting, 86–87.
74. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 29.
75. Entry of August 10, 1941, The Cadogan Diaries, 397.
76. Arnold, Global Mission, 252.
77. Entry of August 10, 1941, Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age, 226.
78. Arnold, Global Mission, 252.
79. Entry of August 10, 1941, The Cadogan Diaries, 397.
80. Wilson, The First Summit, 136–37.
81. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 386.
82. David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (New York: Random House, 2005), 261.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 10, Jacob Diary, 22–23.
86. Wilson, The First Summit, 98.
87. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 10, Jacob Diary, 21.
88. Ward, Closest Companion, 141.
89. Morton, Atlantic Meeting, 113–14.
90. Ward, Closest Companion, 141.
91. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 10, Jacob Diary, 24.
92. Ward, Closest Companion, 141.
93. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 10, Jacob Diary, 25–26.
94. Ibid., 26.
95. Entry of August 10, 1941, Arnold, American Airpower Comes of Age, 228.
96. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 12, Jacob Diary, 36.
97. Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front, 10. American planners felt the British paper amounted to “groping for panaceas,” in an effort to “bring the United States into the war at the earliest possible date”: ibid.
98. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 11, Jacob Diary, 27.
99. Ibid.
100. Churchill to Eden, May 24, 1941, regarding “Memorandum by Maynard Keynes on British War Aims,” Churchill Papers, 20/36, Churchill College, Cambridge, UK.
101. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 35.
102. Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 130.
103. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 35.
104. Ibid., 35–36.
105. Ibid., 36.
106. Ibid., 37.
107. Ibid., 38.
108. Ward, Closest Companion, 142.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid.
111. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 41–42.
112. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 12, Jacob Diary, 31.
113. Opinion polls showed no change in American reluctance to intercede in the war in Europe following the Atlantic Charter meeting: Stoler, Allies in War, 27.
114. Ward, Closest Companion, 142.
115. Ibid.
116. “Operation Riviera, Atlantic Meeting, August, 1941,” entry of August 12, Jacob Diary, 33. The departure of the Prime Minister’s battleship proved more dramatic than expected. The tw
o accompanying U.S. destroyers failed to notice the Prince of Wales slowing down, ahead of them, which the battleship did to pass an anchored American vessel. The destroyers almost collided with the battleship’s stern. Then, about an hour and a half into the voyage, one of the destroyers suddenly veered across the bow of the Prince of Wales. “Our captain ordered full speed astern and missed the destroyer by about 40 or 50 yards,” Colonel Jacob recorded with relief. “Apparently the destroyer’s helm had jammed hard over, and she came across quite out of control . . .”: Ibid., 34.
117. Ward, Closest Companion, 142.
2. The U.S. Is Attacked!
1. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper, 1949), 232.
2. Ibid.
3. See Ronald A. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 93–100; Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: Free Press, 2000); and Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 105–22, inter alia.
4. Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 487.
5. Ibid., 467.
6. Ibid., 468.
7. Ibid., 446.
8. Ibid., 468.
9. Ibid., 446.
10. Ibid., 485.
11. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 426–27.
12. Ibid., 427.
13. Kenneth S. Davis, FDR, the War President, 1940–1943: A History (New York: Random House, 2000), 398.
14. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 427.
15. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember, 233.
16. Station HYPO or Fleet Unit Radio Pacific was the U.S. Navy signals cryptographic unit in Pearl Harbor, but it had no Purple machine equivalent, and received no Purple signals to decrypt. Instead, the unit worked to break some of the Japanese Imperial Navy two-book code JN-25—which was changed on December 1, 1941, forcing U.S. code breakers in Hawaii to begin from scratch.