American Warlords

by Jonathan W. Jordan

  He then spoke off the record in a voice that told every reporter there would be hell to pay. The Times-Herald’s report, he said, “compromises a vital and secret source of information which will henceforth be closed to us. The military consequences are so obvious that I do not need to dwell on them, nor to request you be on your guard against, even inadvertently, being a party to any disclosure which will give aid and comfort to the enemy.”3

  • • •

  Someone sure as hell gave aid and comfort to the enemy, and King figured that someone was Robert McCormick, owner of the Chicago Daily Tribune, a sister publication of the Times-Herald. The Tribune ran the same Midway story under the even more treasonable headline “NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA.” McCormick, fumed one of King’s staffers, was a “goddamn traitor. We’re going to hang this guy higher than Haman.”4

  All King needed was a rope, a foreyard, and a drumhead court. With the blessing of Secretary Knox—whose newspaper, the Chicago Daily News, was the Tribune’s archrival—King launched an investigation that quickly uncovered the source of the leak. The late Lexington’s executive officer, Commander Morton Seligman, inadvertently gave access to the Japanese order of battle to a McCormick reporter, who used the information in a short article on the Japanese fleet. A Tribune editor who knew nothing of the Navy’s codebreaking work decided to run the story under an eye-grabbing headline suggesting—correctly, as it turned out—that the Navy was decoding Japan’s naval signals.5

  FDR’s attorney general, the affable-looking Francis Biddle, prepared an indictment under the Espionage Act of 1917. But when the decision was put to King, the admiral reluctantly concluded that the Navy could not afford to provide prosecutors with evidence, for fear of leaking additional secrets to the enemy through a public trial. McCormick and his employees would escape the wrath of Roosevelt, Knox, and King.*6

  •

  Victory at Midway gave the Americans some desperately needed breathing room. In a battle decided by luck as much as skill, Yamamoto lost the carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, cutting his mobile airpower in half. The United States lost the old Yorktown, but with the new Essex-class carriers in production on East Coast shipyards, the U.S. Navy was far better equipped to make good its losses. As Midway’s echoes died and the battle’s outcome became clear, Marshall and King knew that Nimitz’s masterstroke had opened a road that would end in Tokyo with Japan’s surrender.

  But they needed to agree on where that road began.

  The islands of the Pacific dot the ocean like constellations, some in tight clusters and others far removed from their neighbors. With Tokyo as the ultimate goal of the Pacific war, two island strands beckoned to American planners.

  The first strand runs from Australia through the Southwestern Pacific. It begins with New Guinea and the Solomon, Bismarck, and Admiralty islands, which lie along New Guinea’s northeastern coast. From the Admiralties, the path banks north to the Philippines, then to the Chinese island of Formosa (called “Taiwan” by the locals), then finally to the Japanese Home Islands. With a growing ground and air force under MacArthur in Australia, the southwestern route seemed the surest way to move a large land force into striking position against Japan. It would also be the more costly route, because the Americans would first have to neutralize the imposing Japanese base at Rabaul, on the Bismarck island chain.

  The second strand runs through the Central Pacific across small islands suitable only as air and naval bases. It stretches from Hawaii to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, and the Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Using the Marianas as a base, Nimitz could project America’s sea and air power against the Philippines, Formosa, or Japan itself. Like the southwestern route, an imposing enemy naval base stood in the way—the island of Truk, between the Marshall and Caroline chains.

  This second approach appealed to Admiral King, as smaller islands of the Central Pacific could be taken by marines until they reached the big islands of the Philippines, Formosa, or Japan; they would need the Army’s help for those. As King saw it, the Navy could take the smaller islands far more cheaply than the Army could slug its way through New Guinea. Many enemy strongpoints could be bypassed, isolated from their supplies, and starved into submission.7

  On June 8, General MacArthur unveiled his plan to capture Rabaul, the Japanese citadel bristling with six airfields, an immense naval anchorage, hundreds of fighters, and 100,000 defenders. Rabaul’s capture would eliminate the single greatest Japanese threat in MacArthur’s theater and clear the way for his advance north to the Philippines. All he needed, he told Marshall, was an amphibious marine division to take the beaches, and the loan of two carriers for air support.8

  For Marshall, Pacific strategy was a dicey balancing act. His heart was with MacArthur, but the Navy would supply the transport and escort ships. He also knew he would get nowhere with the Navy unless MacArthur kept his mouth shut while Marshall worked out a deal with King. On June 10 he cautioned MacArthur, “Until I have had the opportunity to break ground with the Navy and British [here] please consider all this personally confidential, not discussing it at present with Navy, British, or Australian officials.” MacArthur’s reply acknowledged “the extreme delicacy of your situation,” and he held his tongue for the moment.9

  Those delicate negotiations with King hit a snag the next day, when King told Marshall he was considering landings he knew MacArthur would object to. King characterized his forthcoming operations as “primarily of a naval and amphibious character,” implying that the first big Pacific offensive would have an admiral at its helm.10

  The next day Marshall endorsed MacArthur’s Rabaul plan.11

  • • •

  Considering the Navy’s record thus far, Ernie King felt he had a right to dictate Pacific strategy. The Navy had studied the problem of Japan for twenty years, and the Navy had backed Marshall’s calls for the ROUNDUP invasion of France. It was time for the Army to repay the favor. If the Army didn’t want to play ball, the Navy had the forces to go it alone.12

  In late June, King ordered Nimitz to begin planning operations against Tulagi, a small Japanese seaplane base near the larger island of Guadalcanal. Tulagi lay slightly within the Southwest Pacific area, MacArthur’s territory, but King told Nimitz to assume that the Army would have no role in the landings; Tulagi would be a Navy show. He then informed Marshall that Nimitz would command the conquest of the Eastern Solomons.13

  Marshall, who had assured MacArthur that any attack on Tulagi would fall under Army command, insisted that MacArthur must lead the operation. The Joint Chiefs had agreed that everything west of 160 degrees longitude belonged to MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area; because the Solomons lay almost entirely west of that imaginary line, MacArthur had first claim to them.14

  King pushed back violently. In his logic-driven mind, a lawyer’s agreement pinned to degrees of longitude meant nothing; what mattered, he said, was the nature of the operation. The Tulagi landing was amphibious, so the Navy should run the campaign, regardless of where the islands happened to lie. To this King added a veiled threat. The Navy, he said, was prepared to take the Eastern Solomons, “even if no support of Army forces in the Southwestern Pacific is made available.” He wanted those islands, and he would have them.15

  While King argued with Marshall from Main Navy, MacArthur pushed him from distant Brisbane. He warned Marshall that any assault on Tulagi posed a grave risk if it were not combined with a sister operation to neutralize Rabaul, which would naturally send air and sea forces to Tulagi’s defense. Not content to let military logic decide command questions, he also peppered Marshall with warnings of a sinister naval conspiracy against the Army. “By using Army troops to garrison the islands of the Pacific under Navy command,” he wrote, “the Navy retains Marine forces always available, giving them inherently an army of their own.” He claimed that during the Hoover administration, when h
e was chief of staff, he had learned of a Navy plan to win “the complete absorption of the national defense function” by relegating the Army to basic training, garrison forces, and supply. King’s power grab for operations in the Pacific, he implied, was another brick in that intolerable wall.16

  A weary Marshall took stock of both sides’ positions. The Army had the ground and air forces, but King had the ships. This pointed to an eventual compromise. Statesmen when they had to be, the two chiefs agreed to split the offensive and give both Nimitz and MacArthur a chance to run the show. Admiral Ghormley, Nimitz’s South Pacific subordinate, would direct “Task One” of the offensive, against Tulagi, the nearby island of Santa Cruz, and any surrounding islands necessary for Tulagi’s capture. MacArthur would play a supporting role by providing air cover and garrison troops, just as King had asked.

  Once Tulagi had been taken, Ghormley would hand over the reins to MacArthur for “Task Two,” the western Solomons and northeast New Guinea. Once those stepping-stones were crossed, MacArthur would get his shot at Rabaul, designated “Task Three.” All orders, King suggested, should come from the Joint Chiefs, “whose authority cannot be questioned by either principal—General MacArthur on the one hand or Admiral Nimitz on the other.”17

  The compromise was the best Marshall could do. To work around the geographic boundary problem, King and Marshall agreed to trim MacArthur’s theater by one degree—sixty nautical miles—to put Tulagi within Ghormley’s territory.18

  Marshall believed it was time for the Army to reward the Navy’s willingness to compromise by supporting Ghormley wholeheartedly in the fight for Tulagi. He told MacArthur he expected him to “make every conceivable effort to promote a complete accord throughout this affair.” He acknowledged there would be irritations and minor problems with Army-Navy cooperation, but in view of the importance of the mission, he said, MacArthur must make every effort to suppress his team’s disgruntlement and cooperate cheerfully with the Navy.19

  • • •

  The peace brokered by Marshall and King began unraveling almost as soon as it was settled, but strangely enough, it was not for reasons of Army-Navy jealousies. Ghormley and MacArthur, taking a closer look at Japanese defenses, gulped hard when they considered what they were up against. After calculating the response from Rabaul if they landed on Tulagi—which MacArthur had warned about—they both expressed “the gravest of doubts” over prospects of success. Ghormley and MacArthur recommended postponing the operation.20

  King was furious with Ghormley. The Navy had just beaten the enemy to a pulp at Midway, and King had used a great deal of clout with the Army to put Ghormley in command of the Tulagi invasion. Now Ghormley was giving the Army reason to doubt the Navy’s capabilities.

  He also roundly cursed MacArthur, whom he suspected of giving up on Tulagi because he couldn’t run the whole show. “[MacArthur] could not understand that he was not to manage everything,” King later frumped to an interviewer. “He couldn’t believe that. Of course he was absolutely against going into Guadalcanal, and he said so.”

  With a sneer King reminded Marshall that three weeks earlier MacArthur had boasted that he could run all the way to Rabaul with a couple of carriers. Now, having looked at a map, MacArthur seemed unsure whether he, Ghormley, and Nimitz could take a few small, badly supplied islands thousands of miles from Tokyo.21

  • • •

  In the first week of July, as orders for Tulagi were being distributed, the picture shifted dramatically. Word reached Washington that the Japanese had landed on Guadalcanal, Tulagi’s next-door neighbor, and had begun constructing an airfield that would play hell with MacArthur’s men. It might even sever the supply lines connecting the United States with Australia. As coolies staked out and graded Guadalcanal’s rough runway, Admiral King realized that Guadalcanal would be as important as Tulagi, perhaps more so.

  It was a race against time, and King grew frantic with Ghormley for not pushing his men faster. An airfield on Guadalcanal would be a disaster, and Ghormley was dragging his heels. Now, King bellowed, was the time to press the advantage of Midway.22

  TWENTY-TWO

  “THE BURNED CHILD DREADS FIRE”

  WHEN MARSHALL AND HOPKINS FLEW TO LONDON SIX WEEKS EARLIER, Churchill and his War Cabinet embraced the BOLERO buildup and the ROUNDUP invasion for 1943. Or so Marshall thought when he flew home.

  But he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that Churchill’s assurances were not what they had seemed. Before long, FDR received a cable from the prime minister referring to “complications” with ROUNDUP that Admiral Mountbatten would explain to him in person. In his message, Churchill returned to his North African theme, insisting the Allies “must never let GYMNAST pass from our minds.” To Marshall, that kind of strategic thinking didn’t sound good.1

  Roosevelt had been doing some strategic thinking of his own. Since December 1941, when the Red Army turned back the Wehrmacht from the gates of Moscow, the Russian front had become the war’s great slaughterhouse, a vast, corpse-strewn wasteland where Germans and their satellite soldiers were being butchered in stomach-churning numbers.

  They were butchering Russians in stomach-churning numbers, too, and keeping Stalin from being forced into a separate peace with Hitler was, in FDR’s view, the most crucial job the Allies faced. In a sermon he would preach time and again to the Joint Chiefs, he announced, “At the present time, our principal objective is to help Russia. It must be constantly reiterated that Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis materiel than all the 25 united nations put together.”2

  On May 6 Roosevelt sent Marshall and King a memorandum summarizing his thoughts on global strategy. The Pacific would remain a “holding theater,” though he wanted bomber bases pushed within range of Japan’s Home Islands. China and Burma would remain quiet for the moment. For Germany, he wanted action in 1942, not later. “I have been disturbed by American and British naval objections to operations in the European Theatre prior to 1943,” he said. “I regard it as essential that active operations be conducted in 1942.”3

  • • •

  As Allied strategy was batted around among the Munitions Building, the White House, Number 10 Downing, and Whitehall that May, a bald, stern-faced man known as “Mr. Brown” was ushered into the White House. He would be spending a few nights there, and valets unpacking Mr. Brown’s bags were startled to find a loaf of black bread, a log of sausage, and a pistol among his clothes and shaving kit.

  Mr. Brown, known to the rest of the world as Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, had been sent by Stalin to lobby for an invasion of Western Europe. Nicknamed “Iron-Ass” by Lenin for his ability to outsit opponents at the conference table, Molotov played his role with the meticulous diligence of a man whose life depended on it.4

  It was an extraordinary mission for an old revolutionary who, eighteen months earlier, had sat across the table from Adolf Hitler. In a stark example of the “enemy of my enemy” principle, the Bolshevik who had signed a treaty with fascists was now asking capitalists to help him defeat his former ally.

  FDR believed he could keep Stalin fighting Hitler. He had been the first U.S. president to recognize the Soviet government, he had been much more temperate in his anticommunism than Churchill, and he was the source of much of Stalin’s war materiel. “I know you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you that I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department,” Roosevelt wrote Churchill in March. “Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so.”5

  • • •

  On the morning of May 30, Roosevelt gathered Hopkins, Marshall, King, and Molotov to the White House. Speaking through an interpreter, Molotov asked his western allies to launch an invasion that would draw off forty or more German divisions from the Russian front. The next several months, he emphasi
zed, would be crucial for the Soviet Union’s survival. Unblinking through his round spectacles and showing no hint of human emotion, Molotov asked whether the United States and Britain intended to open a second front.

  When the question was translated, Roosevelt turned to Marshall and asked if he could assure Stalin that the western allies were preparing a second front.

  “Yes,” came Marshall’s reply.

  Roosevelt told Molotov he could inform Stalin “we expect the formation of a second front this year.”6

  The addition of the phrase “this year” alarmed Marshall, who immediately began to backpedal. A second front, he cautioned, depended on available transport ships. He told Molotov it would not be possible to give the Soviets a second front in 1942 and simultaneously fulfill U.S. Lend-Lease obligations. America had men and the munitions at home, but it lacked the ships to send divisions to Calais while sending supplies to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.

  When Molotov demanded his full measure of supplies and a second front, Marshall pushed back. “What do you want,” he asked testily, “a second front or Murmansk? It isn’t possible to provide both.”

  King seconded Marshall’s objection, and the meeting broke up as the two sides went back to study their cards.7

  The next day Roosevelt summoned King, Marshall, and Hopkins to his office. Worried that his response to Molotov had been dangerously vague, Roosevelt said he wanted to assure Stalin that a second front would be open for business by summer’s end.8

  Marshall warned Roosevelt that promising a second front in 1942 would create titanic problems. Transportation and air cover over France were not up to the task in 1942. The British would also object vehemently, since they would have to supply most of the divisions that year.