The Mantle of Command

by Nigel Hamilton

  2. Ibid., entry of 21.7.1942, 160.

  3. Ibid.

  4. As far back as March 9, 1942, the President had met with his U.S. ambassador to Spain, Alexander Weddell, asking him to consider the disadvantages versus advantages “were an expeditionary force sent to effect a landing ’either in Algeria or on the northwest coast of Africa,’” as Weddell quoted Roosevelt’s instructions. There were the four “Favorable results” to be had, Weddell acknowledged when responding on March 24, 1942—two of which were: “to provide a base from which Europe might be invaded” and “To place hostile elements [Rommel’s army] between United Nations’ forces in East and West”: Weddell Memorandum for the President, March 24, 1942, in “Safe” and Confidential Files, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  5. William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1950), 116.

  6. The final vote, taken on July 1, 1942, was 475 to 25 in favor of Churchill’s government.

  21. Citizen Warriors

  1. “Shangri-la,” Papers of Captain John McCrea, Box 11, Library of Congress.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), diary entry of July 5, 1942, 168.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid., undated entry, week of June 21, 1942, 167.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  22. A Staggering Crisis

  1. Cable C-107, July 8, 1942, Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, Alliance Emerging, October 1933–November 1942 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 520–21.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid., 520.

  5. Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the Army, 1953), 268.

  6. Michael Schaller, Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 70–71.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. “Memorandum for the President, July 10, 1942, Washington D.C.,” The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, The Right Man for the Job, December 7, 1941–May 31, 1943, ed. Larry Bland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 271.

  10. Ibid.

  11. William D. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 1942–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 87.

  12. Entry of July 10, 1942, p. 2, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  13. “Memorandum for the President, July 10, 1942,” The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 3, 271.

  14. Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 270.

  23. A Rough Day

  1. Entry of July 12, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid., 2.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Leonard Mosley, Marshall: Organizer of Victory (London: Methuen, 1982), 151.

  7. George C. Marshall, George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest Pogue, rev. ed. (Lexington, VA: G. C. Marshall Research Foundation, 1991), 546.

  8. Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 416.

  9. Marshall, George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences, 546.

  10. Entry of July 12, 1942, 2, Stimson Diary.

  11. “Memorandum for the President, Subject: Pacific Operations,” July 12, 1942, Stimson Papers.

  12. Entry of July 13, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  13. Ibid., handwritten annotation on typed Marshall-King Memorandum to the President of July 12, 1942.

  14. Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945 (New York: Harper, 2009), 233. FDR was also aware that in the North Atlantic, with almost two million tons a month of merchant shipping being sunk by German U-boats (a figure that doubled by the fall), sinkings were exceeding Allied ship-construction, and would make a cross-Channel Second Front that year impossible to support logistically: B. J. C. McKercher, Transition of Power: Britain’s Loss of Global Pre-eminence in the United States, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 317. The President declined to use that argument, however, lest it lend credence to Marshall and King’s case for a switch to the Pacific.

  15. Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the Army, 1953), 272.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid., 272–73.

  18. Entry of July 15, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  19. Ibid., entry of July 13, 1942.

  20. Ibid., entry of July 15, 1942.

  21. Ibid., pp. 1–2.

  22. Henry Stimson, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper, 1948), 425.

  23. Entry of July 15, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 346; Mark A. Stoler, George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century (Boston: Twayne, 1989), 101.

  24. Stimson’s Bet

  1. Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the Army, 1953), 272–73.

  2. Viz. Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945 (New York: Harper, 2009).

  3. Entry of July 18, 1942, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.

  4. Ibid., entry of July 22, 1942.

  5. Entry of July 20, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  6. Ibid., entry of July 23, 1942.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Personal and Confidential letter of July 23, 1942, Stimson Papers.

  11. Entry of July 24, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  12. Entry of July 24, 1942, Leahy Diary.

  13. Entry of July 24, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid., entry of July 25, 1942.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 282.

  20. Entry of July 25, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid.

  24. “Memorandum for the President: My Views as to the Proposals in Message 625 [message from General Marshall in London],” attached to Stimson Diary, July 25, 1942.

  25. Entry of July 25, 1942, Leahy Diary.

  26. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 347.

  27. Henry Stimson, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper, 1948).

  28. Annotations to entry of July 27, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  29. Ibid., entry of July 27, 1942.

  25. A Definite Decision

  1. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 348.

  2. According to American concentration camp historian Roger Daniels, “more than 120,000 individuals were held in relocation centers at one time or another,” and the “camp population peaked at a little over 107,000” by early 1943. “By the beginning of the following year it was down to 93,000,” and by January 1, 1945, “it had dropped to just 80,000,” ending the war at 58,000. By the end of 1945, “every camp but Tule Lake had been emptied,” leaving 12,545 detainees: Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 73. President Roosevelt opposed the idea of such camps, reasoning that it was far better to arrange that J
apanese immigrants and Japanese Americans “whose loyalty to this country has remained unshaken through the hardships of the evacuation which military necessity made unavoidable” should be dispersed and distributed across the country: “75,000 families scattered around on the farms and worked into the community” were “not going to upset anybody”; while Roosevelt declared himself deeply impressed by “the very wonderful record that the Japanese in that battalion in Italy have been making in the war. It is one of the outstanding battalions that we have”: White House Press Conference of November 21, 1944, in Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), vol. 24, 245–47.

  3. Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT. President Roosevelt had authorized establishment of the Uranium Committee in October 1939 to coordinate research on nuclear fission, and on October 9, 1941, he created the Top Policy Group comprising himself, Vice President Wallace, Dr. Vannevar Bush, Dr. James Conant, General George Marshall, and War Secretary Henry Stimson to expedite development of an atomic bomb. Concerned lest the Germans outrace the Allies, the President demanded tougher supervision and on September 18, 1942, Colonel Leslie Groves of the Corps of Engineers was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and formally placed in command of the Manhattan Project, with Secretary Stimson having overall responsibility under the President.

  4. “Safe” and Confidential Files, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Stimson Diary.

  7. Entry of July 28, 1942, Leahy Diary, Papers of Admiral William D. Leahy, Library of Congress.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the Army, 1953), 283.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  26. A Failed Mutiny

  1. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 615.

  2. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 349.

  3. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 612.

  4. Pogue, Ordeal and Hope, 349.

  5. Entry of August 7, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid., 4.

  10. Ibid., entry of August 7, 1942.

  11. “DRAFT,” Letter to the President, August 10, 1942, Stimson Papers.

  12. Entry of August 7, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  13. Ibid., entry of August 10, 1942.

  14. Ibid., entry of August 11, 1942.

  27. Stalin’s Prayer

  1. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 428.

  2. Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945–1953 (New York: Harper, 2010), 31. A full account of Churchill and Harriman’s trip to Moscow is in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7, Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 172–208.

  3. Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1952), 349.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 62; W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 168.

  6. Ibid., 169.

  7. Entry of September 3, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  8. “Meeting at the Kremlin on Wednesday, August 12, 1942,” in Gilbert, Road to Victory, 181.

  9. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 169.

  10. Entry of October 21, 1942, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  11. “Meeting at the Kremlin on Wednesday, August 12, 1942,” in Gilbert, Road to Victory, 182.

  12. Ibid., 181.

  28. A Trip Across America

  1. Cable R-180, Draft A, not sent, initialed GCM, in Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, Alliance Emerging, October 1933–November 1942 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 581.

  2. Ibid., Cable R-180, 584.

  3. Ibid., 583.

  4. August 31, 1942, quoted in Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Armies, President-elect (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 191.

  5. Cable R-183, in Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 590.

  6. Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk (New York: Harper, 1950), 36; Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 419; Piers Brendon, Ike, His Life and Times (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 86.

  7. Arthur L. Funk, The Politics of TORCH: The Allied Landings and the Algiers Putsch, 1942 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974), 100.

  8. Cable C-144 of September 5, 1942, in Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 591.

  9. Ibid., Cable R-185 of September 5, 1942, 592.

  10. Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, comp. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 11, Humanity on the Defensive, 1942 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 350–51.

  11. Linda Lotridge Levin, The Making of FDR: The Story of Stephen T. Early, America’s First Modern Press Secretary (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008), 294–97.

  12. Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 174.

  13. Ibid., 175.

  14. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1970), 268.

  15. Ward, Closest Companion, 175.

  16. Arthur Herman, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (New York: Random House, 2012), 200.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ward, Closest Companion, 175.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Ibid., entry of September 23, 1942, 179.

  22. Herman, Freedom’s Forge, 67.

  23. Ibid., 200.

  24. Entry of September 29, 1942, in Ward, Closest Companion, 182.

  25. Ibid., 183.

  29. The President’s Loyal Lieutenant

  1. Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), entry of September 29, 1942, 183.

  2. Cable R-187, September 26, 1942, in Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, Alliance Emerging, October 1933–November 1942 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 613.

  3. Ibid., 645.

  4. W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 166.

  5. Arthur Herman, Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (New York: Bantam, 2008), 495. For an account of Churchill’s use of propaganda in the United States to cast the Quit India movement in the worst possible light, see Auriol Weigold, Churchill, Roosevelt, and India: Propaganda During World War II (New York: Routledge, 2008), 140–60.

  6. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 172.

  7. Cable C-148, September 14, 1942, in Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 594.

  8. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 172.

  9. Cable C-148, September 14, 1942, in Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 594.

  30. A Canadian Bloodbath

  1. “Meeting at the Kremlin on Wednesday, August 12, 1942,” in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7, Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 181.

  2. Ibid.

  3. “Cairo, August, 1942,” in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (Boston: Hou
ghton Mifflin, 1966), 66.

  4. For a full account, see Nigel Hamilton, The Full Monty, vol. 1, Montgomery of Alamein, 1887–1942 (London: Allen Lane, 2001), 427–73.

  5. Entry of 20.7.1942, Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1995), Teil II, Band 5, 348. Quotes from this source have been translated by the author.

  6. Ibid., 349.

  7. Ibid., 352.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid., 353.

  11. Ibid., 371.

  12. Ibid., 354.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Entry of August 19, 1942, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  15. Ibid., entry of August 21, 1942.

  16. Ibid., entry of August 24, 1942.

  31. Something in West Africa

  1. Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, comp. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 11, Humanity on the Defensive (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 417–18.

  2. Entry of 8.9.1942, Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1995), Teil II, Band 5, 460. Quotes from this source have been translated by the author.

  3. Ibid., 464.

  4. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 417–18.

  5. Entry of 16.10.1942, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, Teil II, Band 6, 133–34.

  6. Ibid., 134.

  7. Ibid., entry of 15.10.1942, 125.

  8. Ibid., entry of 26.9.1942, 571–72.

  9. Ibid., entry of 9.9.1942, 464.

  10. Ibid., 465.