The Mantle of Command
Page 56
80. Entry of Monday, December 26, 1941, Halifax Diary.
81. Winston S. Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle: War Speeches by the Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill, C.H., M.P, comp. Charles Eade (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942), 337.
82. Ibid.
83. Smith, Thank You, Mr. President, 67.
84. Charles Wilson, Moran Papers, typescript notes.
85. Copy in Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.
86. “Report on the meetings of the nucleus of America First,” December 17, 1941, in the home of Edwin S. Webster, copy in Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.
87. Rudolf Schröck, with Dyrk Hesshaimer, Astrid Bouteuil, and David Hesshaimer, Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh [The double life of Charles A. Lindbergh] (Munich: Heyne Verlag, 2005). See also Joshua Kendall, America’s Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation (New York: Grand Central, 2013), 184–94.
88. Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 1117 et seq.
5. Supreme Command
1. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper, 1949), 243.
2. “Operation Arcadia: Washington Conference, December 1941,” “Some Personalities,” Diary of Ian Jacob, 26 and 24, Liddell Hart Centre for Military History, King’s College London.
3. Ibid., 24.
4. Entry of December 27, 1941, “Secret Diary” of Lord Halifax, Papers of Lord Halifax, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Yorkshire, England.
5. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 320. See also Alonzo Fields, My 21 Years in the White House (New York: Coward-McCann, 1961), 82, 88–89.
6. “The President’s Secretary to the Secretary of State,” with attachment, in Documents and Supplementary Papers, The First Washington Conference, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1941–43), 375.
7. Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The War President, 1940–1943: A History (New York: Random House, 2000), 372.
8. “Operation Arcadia: Washington Conference, December 1941,” “Some Personalities,” Jacob Diary, 37–38. President Roosevelt later verified the story to Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King: entry of December 5, 1942, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.
9. War Cabinet verbatim report, January 18, 1942, Papers of Lawrence Burgis, in Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945 (New York: Harper, 2009), 87.
10. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 276.
11. Entry of December 27, 1941, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT, 148.
12. “Operation Arcadia: Washington Conference, December 1941,” “Sunday, December 28th to Wednesday, December 31st,” Jacob Diary, 20.
13. Ibid.
14. Alan Brooke, War Diaries 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 215.
15. Ibid.
16. Cable of December 28, 1941, quoted in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 598.
17. Ibid.
18. Brooke, War Diaries, 215.
19. Ibid.
20. “Address to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 6, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, Humanity on the Defensive 1942 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 32–42.
21. Entry of January 4, 1942, Halifax Diary.
6. The President’s Map Room
1. Richard Holmes, Churchill’s Bunker: The Secret Headquarters at the Heart of Britain’s Victory (London: Profile Books; Imperial War Museum, 2009), 55.
2. Ibid., 72.
3. Ibid., 83.
4. “Re: Air Raid Shelter,” December 15, 1942, Morgenthau Office Diaries, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.
5. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 331.
6. “Re: Air Raid Shelter,” Morgenthau Office Diaries.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Vivian A. Cox, Seven Christmases, ed. Nick Thorne (Seven Oaks, Kent, UK: Nickay Associates, 2010), 127–28.
10. Ibid., 284.
11. Ibid., letter of 24.1.41, 134.
12. Ibid., letter of 30.1.41, 285.
13. Ibid., 134.
14. Commander George Elsey, interview with author, September 10, 2011. All Elsey quotes in chapter are from this interview.
15. Cox, Seven Christmases, 130.
16. Sublieutenant Cox stayed in Washington until early February 1942. His report to the British Admiralty, detailing the site, the room, its construction, the charts, the personnel, information displayed, manner of display, etc., is reproduced in his memoir: Cox, Seven Christmases, 311–19. Cox was distressed, initially, by the failure of the U.S. Navy to cooperate in providing “anything like the complete picture of the [war] situation” that the President “could and should have had”: ibid., 314.
7. The Fighting General
1. Alonzo Fields, My 21 Years in the White House (New York: Coward-McCann, 1961), 52–53.
2. Baltimore Sun, February 1, 1942, Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), Press Excerpts, January 27–February 1942, Papers of General Douglas MacArthur, Record Group (RG) 2, MacArthur Memorial Archives [hereafter MMA]; Richard Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2001), 258.
3. February 2, 1942, COI Press Excerpts, January 27–February 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA; Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 258.
4. Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 257.
5. Ibid.
6. January 27, 1942, COI Press Excerpts, January 27–February 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA; Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 257.
7. January 27, 1942, COI Press Excerpts, January 27–February 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA; Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 257.
8. Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 93.
9. William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 152, quoting Rexford Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), 348–51.
10. MacArthur, Reminiscences, 101.
11. Ibid.
12. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt, 349–50.
13. One of the star performers in establishing the Conservation Corps was Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall. Instead of making Marshall a brigadier general, as General Pershing, Marshall’s former commanding officer in World War I, had requested, MacArthur—who was known to be pathologically jealous of able subordinates—made him an instructor with the National Guard, without promoting him.
14. Michael Schaller, Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–14 and 18–20; Manchester, American Caesar, 156.
15. MacArthur, Reminiscences, 96.
16. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Holt, 2002), 238.
17. Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 109.
18. James Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory: A Biography of Admiral Thomas C. Hart (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 218.
19. Schaller, Douglas MacArthur, 26.
20. War Department 749 to MacArthur: “Reports of Japanese attacks show that numbers of our planes have been destroyed on the ground. Take all possible steps at once to avoid such losses in your area, including dispersion to maximum possible extent, construction of parapets and p
rompt take-off on warning”: Records of Headquarters, United States Army in the Far East (USAFFE), years 1941–42, USAFFE, Chief of Staff and Commanding General, Radios and Letters Dealing with Plans and Policies, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA. MacArthur also had his own code-breaking unit that had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes (Magic) and a number of Japanese naval codes.
21. William Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 1942–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 88.
22. Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory, 212.
23. Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), 207.
24. Manchester, American Caesar, 215; D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 33.
25. Telegram of December 22, 1941, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
26. James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 54.
27. Schaller, Douglas MacArthur, 72.
28. Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 225.
29. James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 89.
30. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 88.
31. Entry of January 29, 1942, in Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Eisenhower Diaries, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (New York: Norton, 1981), 46.
32. Letter of November 9, 1941, in Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory, 218.
33. Ibid., 212.
34. Telegram of December 13, 1941, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
35. Ibid., telegram of December 22, 1941.
36. Ibid., telegram of January 2, 1942.
37. Ibid., telegram of January 7, 1942.
38. Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory, 265.
39. “Message from General MacArthur, To All Unit Commanders” (100 copies), MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
40. Manchester, American Caesar, 237.
41. Telegram of January 17, 1942, to General Marshall, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
42. See Marshall telegrams to MacArthur 913, 917, 855, 949, 991, inter alia, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
43. Entry of January 29, 1942, The Eisenhower Diaries, 46.
44. Ibid., entry of February 3, 1942.
45. Telegram 855, December 22, 1941, Records of Headquarters, USAFFE, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
46. Telegram 1024, February 8, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
47. Manuel Quezon, The Good Fight (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1946), 261–62.
48. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 492.
49. Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory, 240.
50. General George McClellan was dismissed as general in chief of the Union Army by President Lincoln on November 13, 1862, having failed to exploit his victory at Antietam, and having referred, it was said, to the President and Commander in Chief as a “gorilla.” General McClellan later stood against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election, where he “met with no better success as a politician than as a general”: James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin, 2008), 141.
51. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 492.
52. Ibid.
53. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 8.
54. Ibid., 14.
55. Ibid., 17.
56. “We’ve got to go to Europe and fight, and we’ve got to quit wasting resources all over the world, and still worse, wasting time,” Eisenhower noted in his diary on January 27, 1942—reversing his earlier views. “If we’re to keep Russia in, save the Middle East, India, and Burma, we’ve got to begin slugging with air at West Europe. To be followed by a land attack as soon as possible”: Entry of January 27, 1942, The Eisenhower Diaries, 43.
57. Ibid., entry of January 23, 1942, 44.
58. Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 236.
59. James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 66.
60. Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory, 265.
61. Telegram of February 4, 1942, in MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
62. “Another long message on ’strategy’ from MacArthur. He sent one on extolling the virtues of the flank offensive. Wonder what he thinks we’ve been studying for all these years. His lecture would have been good for plebes”: Entry of February 8, 1942, The Eisenhower Diaries, 47.
63. Entry of December 31, 1941, 161, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.
64. Quezon, The Good Fight, 248.
65. MacArthur, Reminiscences, 136; full text in MacArthur Papers, RG 4, MMA.
66. Transcript copy of telegram of January 30, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA. The original wording is different from the paraphrase published in Quezon, The Good Fight, 261–63.
67. Telegram to General Marshall of January 31, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
68. MacArthur, Reminiscences, 137.
69. Telegram of February 8, 1942, to General Marshall “from President Quezon for President Roosevelt,” MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
70. Entry of February 8, 1942, Stimson Diary.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., entry of January 5, 1942.
73. Leutze, A Different Kind of Victory, 209.
74. Entry of January 5, 1942, Stimson Diary, 12.
75. Ibid.
76. Congressional Record, March 5, 1942. Several congressmen urged the appointment of Congressman John Wadsworth of New York—who wrote to Stimson blaming the Washington Times Herald for stoking the Washington “hot bed of rumors . . . It is a dirty business”: Letter to Stimson of March 5, 1942, Stimson Papers.
77. Entry of February 9, 1942, Stimson Diary.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Telegram of February 8, 1942, to General Marshall “from President Quezon for President Roosevelt,” in MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
81. Ibid.
82. Entry of February 9, 1942, Stimson Diary.
83. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 247–48.
84. Entry of February 9, 1942, The Eisenhower Diaries, 47.
85. Stimson’s earlier draft for a cable to President Quezon gave an unfortunate indication of the war secretary’s unprepossessing language. “I am much distressed . . . we endeavored to defeat the aggression of Japan . . . we have been marshaling our forces. . . . These difficulties have been accentuated . . . The British have been most co-operative . . . we have every hope . . . our plans are comprehensive but must not be jeopardized by reckless or hasty steps . . . You must rest assured that we shall proceed continuously and with all possible speed. . . .”: “Draft for president’s reply to Quezon, prepared by HLS February 9, 1942,” Stimson Papers. In his diary on February 13 Stimson was still worried about “the President’s rather severe telegram of two or three days ago” and “the President’s castigation”: Stimson Diary, February 13, 1942.
86. Telegram 1029 of February 10, 1942, from President Roosevelt to General MacArthur, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Arguably, World War II had begun not in Europe but in Asia, in 1937, when Japan invaded China.
92. Telegram 1029 of February 10, 1942, to Commanding General, USAFFE, Fort Mills, February 10, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
93. Entry of February 9, 1942, The Eisenhower Diaries, 47.
94. Telegram of February 10, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
95. Ibid., telegram 1037.
96. Ibid., telegram 1031, February 10, 1942.
97. Entry of January 13, 1942, Papers of Paul P. Rogers, Corregidor Diary and Selected Letters, RG 46, 1941–1989, 20 October 1941–11 March 1942, MMA.
98. Ibid., entry of February 12.
99. Telegram from General MacArthur to AGWAR, “For President Roosevelt,” February 11, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
100. Ibid.
> 101. Ibid.
102. Ibid. In fact, General Marshall had already twice raised the issue of MacArthur’s own evacuation, cabling first on January 13, then on February 4, 1942, stating that “under these conditions the need for your services there [in the Philippines] might be less pressing than at other points in the Far East”: see Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines, 259. Jean MacArthur was adamant she would not leave without her husband, declaring, “We have drunk from the same cup, we three shall stay together”: Manchester, American Caesar, 249.
103. Manchester, American Caesar, 249.
104. James K. Eyre, The Roosevelt-MacArthur Conflict (Chambersburg, PA: printed by author, 1950), 40.
105. Ibid., 41.
106. Ibid.
107. Carlos P. Romulo, I Walked with Heroes (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1961), 219.
108. Ibid., 223.
109. Eyre, The Roosevelt-MacArthur Conflict, 40.
110. Ibid., 42.
111. Ibid.
112. “Secret Priority” Telegram No. 262 to General George C. Marshall, War Department, February 12, 1942, MacArthur Papers, RG 2, MMA.
113. Quezon, The Good Fight, 274.
114. Ibid., 275.
115. The matter of MacArthur’s controversial payment, solicited from President Quezon, was first raised by Carol M. Petillo in the Pacific Historical Review in 1979, later republished as “Douglas MacArthur and Manuel Quezon: A Note on an Imperial Bond” in William M. Leary, ed., MacArthur and the American Century: A Reader (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 52–64.
116. Paul P. Rogers, The Good Years: MacArthur and Sutherland (New York: Praeger, 1990), 165; entry of February 13, 1942, Rogers Diary, in Papers of Paul P. Rogers, Corregidor Diary and Selected Letters, RG 46, 1941–1989, 20 October 1941–11 March 1942, MMA. In a memorandum describing his diary, Rogers noted that the money was ordered to be given to MacArthur in a Philippine Presidential “Executive Act Number One,” backdated on February 13, 1942, to January 1, 1942. In retrospect Rogers—who admired MacArthur—wondered if possibly he had that day typed an earlier version of the executive order, which was later amended, and the numbers increased—for he specifically recalled MacArthur “at the time saying to Sutherland that the amounts hardly compensated for the salaries they had lost by serving on the Military Mission”—even though MacArthur had been the highest-paid military officer in the world. There was “uproar in Washington,” Rogers later learned, for the “radio went from Marshall to Stimson. After some discussion the request was transmitted to Chase National Bank for action, and a copy was sent to the Department of the Interior. [Secretary] Ickes apparently refused to sanction the transfer, and the action seems to have been taken over his head”: Rogers, The Good Years, 166. For forty years the matter was then hushed up, but looking back, long after the general’s death, Rogers, in his note accompanying the donation of his wartime diary to the MacArthur Memorial Archives, was minded to believe that he had “intentionally changed the dollar amount in the diary entry” to protect MacArthur’s reputation. “I am sure,” he wrote, “in making the entry I changed the $500,000 to $50,000; then I changed [Lieutenant General] Sutherland’s figure to $45,000 [instead of $75,000] to keep it in line with MacArthur. The amounts given to [Brigadier General Richard] Marshall and [Lieutenant Colonel Sidney] Huff, being relatively minor as compared with $500,000, were recorded without change”: Notes on “The Diary” filed in Papers of Paul P. Rogers, Corregidor Diary and Selected Letters, RG 46, 1941–1989, 20 October 1941–11 March 1942, MMA. Rogers published his account of the matter in The Good Years, 165–69.