Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  —Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the imperial general staff1

  “WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT”

  D-Day's seeds were first planted on Dunkirk's beaches. Almost from the day in 1940 when the British and French forces were evacuated from France, the British began to consider where, when, and how they would return to free northwestern Europe from Nazi occupation. Much of this speculation was premature. Only when the United States dropped its neutrality would the combined manpower and firepower of Britain and America be available to guarantee the success of such a massive amphibious invasion of northwestern Europe. In this chapter, we will detail how difficult it was for the Allies to decide on when and where to launch this invasion.

  Soon after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Britain's prime minister Winston S. Churchill called Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Mr. President, what's this about Japan?” “It's quite true,” Roosevelt replied. “We are all in the same boat now.”2 Churchill immediately proposed traveling to Washington, DC, so that “[w]e could review the whole war plan in the light of reality.” On December 14, 1941, he left for America. Churchill spent Christmas with Roosevelt as his guest at the White House.3

  In their wide-ranging discussions, Roosevelt and Churchill made several unprecedented decisions that had a broad impact on future military operations. First, in order to unify Anglo-American strategy, they agreed that one supreme commander would be appointed in each theater of operations with final authority over all British/American land, sea, and air operations. Secondly, a new Combined Chiefs of Staff based in Washington, DC, would be appointed with representatives from the British and American chiefs of staff to coordinate joint strategic military decisions. They also decided that the Allies should be called the “United Nations” instead of “Associated Powers.”4

  Fig. 1.1. Meeting of Combined Chiefs of Staff, Quebec Conference. August 1943. Left to right (at Chateau Frontenac): Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, General Sir Alan Brooke, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Air Marshal L. S. Breadner, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Lieutenant General Sir Hastings Ismay, Admiral Ernest J. King, General Henry H. Arnold, Admiral W. D. Leahy, Lieutenant General K. Stuart, Vice Admiral P. W. Nelles, and General George C. Marshall. (© Imperial War Museums [A 18826])

  Achieving this complete unification of military operations proved to be easier said than done. It set the stage for the future Allied invasion of France, an operation filled with controversy that extended to the war's final conclusion.

  Germany did not necessarily have to declare war on America after the Pearl Harbor attack. Since Japan was the obvious aggressor, under the terms of the Tripartite Alliance (Germany-Italy-Japan), Germany was not obligated to help the Japanese. However, on December 11, 1941, Hitler elected to make a formal declaration of war against the United States, and America reciprocated on the same day. Hitler seriously underestimated America's industrial might—an error he would live to regret.5

  “WHY ARE WE TRYING TO DO THIS?”

  Once the industrial might of America was mobilized, there was little doubt that the Axis powers would face inevitable defeat. It became a question of strategy.

  In spite of the Pearl Harbor debacle and the growing number of Japanese victories across the Pacific, the US government reaffirmed its prewar policy of defeating Germany first. To the relief of the British, both President Roosevelt and General George C. Marshall, the chief of staff of the US Army, acknowledged that Germany's war-making capacity was far more dangerous. They agreed that Japan's defeat would soon follow the collapse of the Third Reich. The most contentious issue between Britain and America became how to best defeat Germany.

  From the first day of the war, America's leaders were determined to speedily confront and defeat the German army by invading northwestern Europe. But because the British had recently been decisively defeated by German forces at Dunkirk and in Norway and Greece, Churchill and the British armed forces chiefs of staff were much more cautious. They also remembered the slaughter of an entire generation in Flanders field battles of the Somme and Passchendaele during World War I. Winston Churchill recounted,

  While I was always willing to join with the United States in a direct assault across the Channel on the German sea-front in France, I was not convinced that this was the only way of winning the war, and I knew that it would be a very heavy and hazardous adventure. The fearful price we had to pay in human life and blood for the great offensives of the First World War was graven in my mind.6

  Britain's war leaders also harbored grave doubts about the battle readiness of US soldiers, believed that American generals lacked combat experience, and were skeptical about America's ability to rapidly increase the production of war materials.7

  From December 1941 to June 1944 this British foreboding cast a pall over the very idea of mounting a successful cross-channel invasion. “Why are we trying to do this?” Churchill was shouting even as late as February 1944. Almost up to the day of the actual Normandy landings, Churchill continually bombarded the Americans and his own generals with alternatives such as invading Norway, Portugal, or the Balkans. This continued insistence on these diversionary maneuvers weakened his relationships with the American commanders.8

  The British chief of the imperial general staff, Sir Alan Brooke, voiced similar doubts about a Normandy invasion.9 From the beginning of the American push to speedily invade northwestern Europe, he instead advocated first invading Italy to weaken German forces in the West. Alan Brooke also insisted that the Allies must win the Battle of the North Atlantic before launching a massive invasion. More time was also needed for a bomber offensive to severely cripple German arms production and win air superiority over Europe.

  Overall Brooke did not believe that the Wehrmacht would be sufficiently weakened before 1944. Furthermore he doubted that US war production would be able to turn out the huge quantity of goods required for an invasion and that America could train an adequate number of troops before this date.

  Above all Brooke believed that the way to victory was conducting a war of attrition. This strategy had been the linchpin for the Allied victory in World War I. He continued to preach this attritional doctrine throughout World War II, much to the annoyance of Churchill and US war leaders. As we will see the final irony is that during the Normandy campaign, the US commanders applied their adaptation of attritional warfare to end the war in Europe.10

  On the eve of D-Day Brooke wrote in his diary, “At least it will fall so very short of the expectations of the bulk of the people, namely all those who know nothing of its difficulties. At the worst it may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war.”11

  THE SECOND FRONT DEBATE

  The exact timing for an invasion of northwestern Europe became the key decision of the Second World War in Europe. It took a long time in coming.

  Even before the United States entered the war, American, British, and Canadian military staffs had met at the ABC Conference in Washington, DC (January–March 1941). They agreed on a “Germany first” strategy to defeat the Axis. After Pearl Harbor a bewildering succession of military meetings and conferences convened to argue over Allied differences in strategy and tactics. The future invasion of northwestern Europe was postponed again and again.

  At the Washington, DC, Arcadia Conference, the first war meeting of the Allied political and military leadership (December 1941–January 1942), the United States committed to Operation BOLERO, the buildup of American forces in the United Kingdom prior to the invasion of Europe. Shortly afterward the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) agreed to combine with the representatives of the British Chiefs of Staff (BCS), creating the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) (February 9, 1942). They would meet over two hundred times, mostly in Washington, DC, during the course of the war.12

  That March Admiral Ernest J. King, the new chief of US naval operations, met with General George C. Marshall, the chief of staff of the US Army. They agreed on a two-sta
ge plan for an immediate invasion of northwestern Europe. Operation Sledgehammer, stage one, envisioned a landing in mid-September 1942 on the French Cherbourg Peninsula. The second stage, Operation ROUNDUP, in the spring of 1943 called for either an expansion of the original Sledgehammer invasion area or another landing in the Normandy region.

  The plans for Operations Sledgehammer and ROUNDUP had originated in the US War Department's War Plans Division. Major Albert Wedemeyer prepared the report entitled the Victory Program and submitted it on July 9, 1941, to fulfill President Roosevelt's request for an operations plan if the United States ever went to war with Nazi Germany. The strategy behind these plans was eventually developed into Operation OVERLORD for D-Day in 1944. The Victory Program was approved by General Dwight D. Eisenhower before its submission to Roosevelt and Marshall. William Weidner observes, as a result, “It could honestly be said that Eisenhower helped to determine the strategy, while General Montgomery prepared the operational plans.”13

  In April 1942, Churchill met with Marshall in London and agreed to this plan, overriding objections from his own chiefs of staff. Soon afterward, the British designated Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay as the Allied commander of the Naval Expeditionary Forces (April 23, 1942). Ramsay's appointment was the result of his unrivalled experience in commanding the massive Dunkirk military evacuation of British and French forces across the English Channel in June 1940.14

  However, it soon became apparent that the manpower and logistical shipping numbers just did not add up. America's mobilization was rapidly expanding its military forces, but there were other demands. At the Arcadia Conference the United States agreed to occupy Iceland and Ireland to free up British troops, and the Pacific war with Japan had urgent manpower requirements.

  Marshall's SLEDGEHAMMER/ROUNDUP plan envisioned 800,000 troops being shipped to England by the spring of 1943. However in the fall of 1942, only 105,000 men were available.15 More time was needed to amass the American forces required for a cross-channel invasion of France.

  The sealift capacity in 1942 was also insufficient for such an operation. In the fall of that year, all the landing craft available in the United Kingdom could carry only 20,000 men. At least another year was required for US shipyards to build a sizeable invasion armada.16

  Churchill and Brooke continually evidenced a lack of enthusiasm for the Normandy operation. Neither opposed it outright but believed it impossible in 1942. Perhaps the summer of 1943 might be possible, if the Allies secured both air and naval superiority, and America produced the promised vast numbers of weapons, ships, supplies, and men required for a successful enterprise. The British preferred to avoid a direct assault on a powerful German Wehrmacht, an army that many historians today consider the overall best professional fighting force in World War II.

  Since being pushed off the European continent at Dunkirk, Britain had been fighting a peripheral war. The Royal Navy confined the Germans to the European mainland and kept the Allied supply lines open. British bomber command pursued an all-out strategy of strategic saturation raids to destroy German industry, infrastructure, and morale. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) supported the underground resistance movements in occupied countries to, in Churchill's words, “set Europe ablaze.”17 Because of its economic and manpower limitations, an indirect war strategy better suited Britain.

  Manpower and war production concerns also fueled British reluctance to mount an invasion of France. Its already-battered empire could ill afford the prospect of huge casualties. By the time of the actual invasion, spring 1944, the British army was at the very limit of its final growth—2,750,000 soldiers. In contrast the US Army numbered 5,750,000, and was still not at its potential maximum. Britain's production had fallen from fulfilling over 90 percent of the Commonwealth's war needs in 1940, to only about 61 percent by 1944.18 American shortages of war materials lessened as the war continued. For the British such shortages were perpetual, to be lived with indefinitely. As a result of all of these issues, difficulties continually arose between the two allies regarding planning, logistics, and tactics.

  Churchill and the British general staff saw many hazards in haste and great virtue in delay. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, their implicit game plan was to allow the Wehrmacht and Russian armies to bleed each other to death. Their preferred underlying strategy called for the British and other Allied forces to strike when the Nazi regime was on the verge of collapse. With a weakened Germany and Soviet Union, the Allies could invade and establish a “new order” for the European continent. Churchill hoped to thereby prevent the potential Communist Russian dominance of postwar Eastern Europe.

  Operation RANKIN was the British chiefs of staff plan to implement this peripheral strategy with attacks in the Mediterranean region, the Balkans, Norway, and elsewhere. These thrusts would help to wear down the Nazi empire in Europe until it collapsed. Perhaps it was all wishful thinking on their part, but as late as November 1943 the British chiefs still considered the possibility of implementing RANKIN as an alternative to a major landing in Normandy. Thus by the time of the Second Washington Conference in June 1942, Churchill had persuaded Roosevelt to issue a joint veto for a 1942 Allied landing in France.19

  THE MEDITERRANEAN STRATEGY

  However, pressure for Allied action in Europe was building. In early 1942 the American public was clamoring for some immediate major military operation as revenge for Pearl Harbor. Stalin was also pressing the Allies for a major invasion of Western Europe that would open a second front, thereby siphoning German forces out of the Soviet Union. British and American military commanders needed to agree soon on a significant Allied military operation in the European area.

  Alan Brooke offered his own plan, Operation GYMNAST, a joint Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa. With Churchill's approval, the British argued that GYMNAST would encircle Hitler's Europe. It could help prevent a potential German occupation of Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar. Also this operation would clear Mediterranean shipping lanes to the Suez Canal and the Far East. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps was in full retreat after their defeat by the British forces led by Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery at the Battle of El Alamein (October 23–November 4, 1942). The goal of GYMNAST was an Allied entrapment of Rommel through an East-West pincer envelopment and the destruction of the Afrika Korps. This would ideally position the Allies to invade the so-called “soft underbelly” of Europe, thereby knocking Italy out of the war. However the British reassured the Americans of their full support for ROUNDUP in the spring of 1943.20

  Marshall and King were angry at being forced by Roosevelt to commit to GYMNAST. This was one of the few times during World War II that Roosevelt intervened in a military decision. Marshall and King perceived it as a “sideshow” operation in the Mediterranean much more in line with British Imperial interests than Allied strategic goals.21

  But as historian John Keegan points out, from the British perspective, “It was, however, deeply psychological. Not only was the sea a bridge between the homeland and the East, it was also the amphitheater in which for two hundred years they had played grand strategy, longer indeed than they had played it in India with quite as much personal involvement.”22

  Here two fundamentally opposing conceptions of war—the indirect versus direct approach—collided. For the British an invasion of northwestern Europe would come only as a final knockout blow. First the German Wehrmacht had to be worn out by fighting on many fronts. The Americans contended that the Allies should be using the Clausewitzian principle of concentration of their forces at the decisive point. Their dispute was never resolved and repeatedly hampered the successful course of the Normandy campaign.23

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff reluctantly approved GYMNAST that became the Operation TORCH landings in November 1942. To prevent any backsliding by Marshall and King, Churchill insisted that an American be appointed commander in chief of Operation TORCH.

  A Marshall protégé w
as selected, Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was then serving in Britain as commander of US Army forces. The remaining principal commanders would all be British. Ramsay, the deputy to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham who was the TORCH Naval Commander, was tapped to plan the two landings staged from Britain. Thus Eisenhower and Ramsay worked together, as they would later for the Normandy D-Day invasion.24

  “DO THE BRITISH REALLY BELIEVE IN OVERLORD?”

  In January 1943 while the fighting still raged across North Africa, the Allied leadership met at Casablanca for their second major conference. They chose this site largely for propaganda purposes, as they hoped to lure Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the third member of the “Big Three,” into a face-to-face meeting. This did not happen. He was too busy fighting the Battle of Stalingrad that would soon end in a great Soviet military victory. In declining Roosevelt's personal invitation, Stalin added a barbed reminder: “Allow me to express my confidence that the promises about the opening of the second front in Europe given by you, Mr. President, and by Mr. Churchill in regard to 1942, and in any case in regard to the spring of 1943, will be fulfilled.”25

  The Combined Chiefs had met fifty-six times since July 1942. At Casablanca it soon became apparent that they were still on two different planets. There Marshall and King sought to force a decision on the cross-channel Operation ROUNDUP later in 1943. They believed that an operation from the United Kingdom was essential to ultimate victory.26

  Fig. 1.2. Casablanca Conference, North Africa. 1943. Seated: President Franklin D. Roosevelt (left) and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill (right). Standing from left: Lieutenant General Henry H. Arnold, Admiral Ernest J. King, General George C. Marshall, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles F. A. Portal. (© Imperial War Museums [A 14122])

  Brooke cautioned that any immediate Allied invasion of France would pit twenty-five Allied divisions against forty-six German divisions.27 This offered the Germans a potential easy victory. Instead as a follow-up to TORCH, he argued that the Allies should mount an invasion of Sicily or Sardinia to knock a weakened Italy out of the war. This would force the Germans to overstretch their forces in order to replace Italian troops in Italy and the occupied Balkan and Greek territories.