The Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  On May 4 Anderson joined in the general offensive. Within two days the Germans in front of Anderson were in full retreat, and on May 7 the British moved into Tunis. The same day Bradley sent Eisenhower a two-word message—“Mission accomplished.” His II Corps had captured Bizerte.19 Only mopping-up operations remained to clear the Axis completely out of Tunisia and North Africa.

  Eisenhower spent the last week of the campaign at the front, and it made a deep impression on him. He spoke of it in a letter he dictated to his brother Arthur on May 18. He had just learned that a reporter had done a story on their mother, who was a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The story stressed the pacifism of the religious group and the irony of Mrs. Eisenhower’s son being a general. After telling Arthur that their mother’s “happiness in her religion means more to me than any damn wisecrack that a newspaperman can get publicized,” Eisenhower said of pacifists generally, “I doubt whether any of these people, with their academic or dogmatic hatred of war, detest it as much as I do.” He then spoke of his experiences on the Tunisian front and said the pacifists “probably have not seen bodies rotting on the ground and smelled the stench of decaying human flesh. They have not visited a field hospital crowded with the desperately wounded.” Eisenhower said that what separated him from the pacifists was that he hated the Nazis more than he did war. There was something else. “My hatred of war will never equal my conviction that it is the duty of every one of us, civilian and soldier alike, to carry out the orders of our government when a war emergency arises,” Eisenhower told his brother. “As far as I am concerned, Stephen Decatur told the whole story when he said: ‘Right or wrong, my country.’ ” Or, as he put it to his son, “The only unforgivable sin in war is not doing your duty.”20

  Immediately after the fall of Bizerte, Eisenhower recommended Bradley for promotion to lieutenant general (it was approved the following month) and told Marshall that he had been at the front nearly all week, “tremendously busy.” When the last Axis forces had surrendered, he declared, “I am going to take a 24-hour leave where no one in this world will be able to reach me.”21

  The work, however, drove him on. After the Tunisian campaign, Eisenhower wrote a memorandum to himself with a paragraph on each of his leading commanders, “for reference when I may need them at a later date.” He put Cunningham at the top of the list, ranking him first “in absolute selflessness, energy, devotion to duty, knowledge of his task, and in understanding of the requirements of Allied operations.”

  Tedder was a close second in every respect, although Eisenhower did wonder if Tedder was not a bit too much the airman, “not quite as broad-gauged as he might be,” a little too inclined to see problems only from the air point of view. Alexander had “a winning personality,” energy, and sound tactical conceptions. “The only possible doubt that could be raised with respect to his qualifications is a suspected unsureness in dealing with certain of his subordinates,” which was a polite way of saying that Alexander could not control Montgomery. Eisenhower thought Montgomery himself was “a very able, dynamic type” who “loves the limelight.” This was not necessarily a weakness, although Eisenhower usually frowned upon publicity seekers. Still, he found Montgomery to be intelligent, a good talker with “a flare for showmanship,” and said, “I personally think that the only thing he needs is a strong immediate commander.”

  Eisenhower had worked most closely in the campaign with Anderson, a soldier who had the virtues of being “an earnest fighter completely devoted to duty.” His trouble was that he instinctively thought in smaller terms, of battalions and brigades rather than divisions and corps, and thus was not really qualified to run an entire army.

  Turning to the Americans in North Africa, Eisenhower began with Mark Clark, “the best organizer, planner and trainer of troops I have yet met in the American Army.” Clark was orderly and logical. Eisenhower had once thought that “he was becoming a bit consumed with a desire to push himself,” but “all that has disappeared.…” Clark’s only drawback was his lack of combat experience. In the early days in Tunisia, Eisenhower had offered him command of II Corps, but Clark “rather resented taking any title except that of Army Commander” and declined. “This was a bad mistake on Clark’s part,” Eisenhower concluded, “but I still think that he could successfully command an army in operations.”

  Patton, as Eisenhower knew better than most, “believes in showmanship to such an extent that he is almost flamboyant.” He talked too much and too quickly and often “creates a very bad impression.” He was not a good example to subordinates. But he was the best fighting general America had, and Eisenhower intended to keep him, whatever the cost. Bradley, on the other hand, never gave Eisenhower any worry. He “is about the best rounded, well balanced, senior officer that we have in the service.” Bradley’s judgments were always sound and he was respected by British and Americans alike. “I feel that there is no position in the Army that he could not fill with success,” Eisenhower declared.22

  Eisenhower’s considered judgment on his subordinates revealed, among other things, his abilities to see a man’s strengths and weaknesses quickly. He had known Cunningham for less than a year, Tedder, Montgomery, and Alexander for only a few months. He had known Patton and Bradley for years but had seen each in action only briefly. He did not know how Clark would react to combat. Yet all his judgments remained valid and he never had cause, in the campaigns that followed, to change any of them.

  Eisenhower’s memorandum was as revealing about himself as it was about the men he discussed. There was, first of all, the obvious prejudice of the ground officer toward the airmen, especially those airmen who wanted a separate air force. More important was what the memorandum showed about Eisenhower’s value structure. The key words were selflessness, energy, duty, and the allegiance to alliance. The thing he abhorred most was publicity seeking.

  He never sought publicity for himself. On May 13 the last Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered and the continent of Africa was in Allied hands. Eisenhower’s forces had captured 275,000 enemy troops, a bag of prisoners even larger than the Russians had gotten at Stalingrad. Eisenhower saw to it that the men responsible got their full share of credit, but failed in a final press conference to mention his own role. As a result the British and American press hardly mentioned his name. This upset Marshall, who ordered the director of public relations, Major General Alexander Surles, to see to it that Eisenhower be given his proper credit for the “magnificent job” he had done. “You can tell some of these newsmen from me,” Marshall told Surles, “that I think it is a damned outrage that because [Eisenhower] is self-effacing and not self-advertising that they ignore him completely when, as a matter of fact, he is responsible for the coordination of forces and events.…”23

  If the press ignored Eisenhower, others did not. Congratulations poured in on him from all sides—from the President, the Prime Minister, Anderson and the rest of the British, the Russians, and soldiers, sailors, and private citizens throughout the world. Eisenhower claimed not to be impressed. He told Marshall he wished he had a disposition that would allow him to relax and enjoy a feeling of self-satisfaction, but he did not. “I always anticipate and discount, in my own mind, accomplishment,” he said, “and am, therefore, mentally racing ahead into the next campaign” before the current one was complete. “The consequence is that all the shouting about the Tunisian campaign leaves me utterly cold.”

  He said that he was so impatient and irritated because of the slowness with which HUSKY* was being developed that “I make myself quite unhappy.” He suffered physically for every additional day that the Axis had to perfect and strengthen the Sicily defenses, so much so that his “chief ambition in this war” was to get to a place where the next operation would not be amphibious, “with all the inflexibility and delay that are characteristic of such operations.”24

  Despite his protests, Eisenhower was not “utterly cold” to his own accomplishments or the praise they brought forth. He was pro
udest of the progress he had made in welding the Allied team together, not only at AFHQ but among the field units. He was most pleased by the way II Corps had fought in the final phases of the campaign, with the proof it offered that American troops, once blooded, would be able to take on the best Germany had to offer and win.

  His deepest personal satisfaction came from having won Marshall’s praise. The Chief sent his congratulations to Eisenhower. In reply, Eisenhower said that, since he had been given the mission of clearing North Africa almost ten months earlier, “my greatest source of inspiration and strength has been my confidence in your understanding of the intricate problems involved and the generosity of your support.

  “Praise from no other individual could mean so much to me as yours,” Eisenhower told his Chief, who hardly ever praised anyone. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.…”25

  * There is much confusion over the terms used here, and I have perhaps been guilty of overstressing the difference between political and military decisions. Our vocabulary is geared to discussing political-military relations in a way that emphasizes either one side or another—that is, a decision is “political” or it is “military.” Actually, it is difficult to distinguish between a political and a military decision. What we really need is a new word that can combine both military and political decisions into a single word, as a single concept.

  * Code name for the invasion of Sicily.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Local Political Mess

  Conceived in the disaster of the fall of France, born out of wedlock in London, with no national state to support it and thus an orphan as a child, it was inevitable that Free France would be a juvenile delinquent. The forms that the delinquency took, however, would depend in large part on the actions of others, especially the United States and the United Kingdom.

  Roosevelt’s attempt at Casablanca to bring De Gaulle and Giraud together had failed. Something simply had to be done to bring De Gaulle to Algiers and into an alliance with Giraud.1 In February, in furtherance of his aims, Roosevelt sent Jean Monnet to Algiers to be Giraud’s adviser and to work for unity. Monnet had been the first deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations and was an internationally known banker. He had been in London when France surrendered but had not rallied to De Gaulle’s Free French cause; thus Roosevelt felt he was safe. But Monnet’s only interest was in France, not personalities, and he refused to be the President’s tool. He quickly assessed Giraud and found him wanting. “When the general looks at you with those eyes of a porcelain cat,” Monnet said of Giraud, “he comprehends nothing!”2 Since this was also the view of most of the leading British and Americans in Algiers, the only thing supporting Giraud was the influence and power of the President of the United States.

  Monnet, Eisenhower, Murphy, and Macmillan set to work to draft a formula that would allow De Gaulle to come to Algiers and join with Giraud. Everyone was for this, for different reasons. Monnet was sure that De Gaulle would quickly overshadow Giraud, which would be good for France. Macmillan agreed, for he too wanted a strong France in postwar Europe and felt that only De Gaulle could provide one. Churchill, at least at times, seemed interested only in getting De Gaulle out of London. Murphy on the other hand thought that Giraud and Monnet could control De Gaulle and, like Eisenhower and Smith, felt that bringing De Gaulle into Algiers would ease political problems there. Roosevelt evidently thought that in Algiers, surrounded by visible evidence of America’s military might, De Gaulle would be more tractable.

  The basis of the formula was the creation in Algiers of a provisional government based on cabinet responsibility rather than personal rule. Monnet insisted upon this, and together with Macmillan and Murphy worked out a formula that called for a committee of seven leading Frenchmen, with De Gaulle and Giraud as co-presidents, to assume office as “the central French power.” In May, Macmillan flew to London to present the proposal to De Gaulle. After much discussion, De Gaulle agreed to come to Algiers.3

  The only difficulty in bringing De Gaulle and Giraud together, so it seemed on the surface, was their individual, monumental egos. But, as Macmillan also later admitted, “many of us did not altogether realize the fundamental difference between the position of [De Gaulle] and that of Giraud and his friends.”4 De Gaulle represented a new France, while Giraud stood for the old. De Gaulle believed that France had to be reconstituted from top to bottom. All the Vichy scum—the police chiefs and their brutality, the clerks and their petty graft, the generals and their lust for glory and position—had to be flushed out. “It is not our fault,” he declared, “if France is undergoing a virtual revolution at the same time as being at war.”5 Thus when Macmillan proposed to De Gaulle that he join with Giraud, De Gaulle said one of his conditions would be that Giraud dismiss from office all Vichy “capitulators and collaborators” and announce that the armistice was null and void. Giraud bristled at this. For him, the armistice was fact. He had his duty to perform. The danger was Communism, and he would not yield to it. This point had not been settled when De Gaulle came to Algiers.6

  Aside from the immediate problem of whether of not to dump the Vichy administrators, there were long-range differences between the two that would have to be settled. For Giraud, what mattered was to maintain order and stability, to keep competent officials at their posts, to insure that pensions for officers and civil servants remained intact, and most of all to keep the forces of radicalism within France under control. All this could best be done by co-operating with the Americans, who seemed to have essentially the same aims. Like many soldiers, Giraud contended that he was apolitical, which in his case meant that he would do nearly anything to support the status quo.

  Roosevelt’s policy toward De Gaulle, with its strong element of personal bitterness, has mystified many observers. No adequate analysis, taking into account all the factors, has been made. One thing is clear—something more than personal pique was involved. Roosevelt’s view of the world was complex, and no one as yet knows what he intended for his postwar program. At times he seemed to favor collective security, modeled on Wilson’s concept of the League of Nations and later implemented through the United Nations. On other occasions he advocated a traditional spheres-of-influence doctrine, best seen in his “Four Policemen” expression, which would have Russia and America rule the world, with some help from Britain and China. Within either context, Roosevelt wanted a stable France. Given American determination to withdraw the G.I.s from Europe once Germany was defeated, stability in France was essential to stability on the Continent.

  But how could this be achieved? The great fear was that the French people would, as they had done in the past, run to an extreme. Either the weak, inefficient, radical governments of the Popular Front type would take over, with consequences neither Roosevelt nor Churchill liked to think about, or there would be a man on a white horse, a Boulanger or even a Napoleon. Either result would be a disaster.

  De Gaulle was dangerous on both counts. He had the aura of the man on the white horse about him. Without any mandate whatsoever from the French people, he had set himself up as head of the French state. He carried himself like a dictator, deliberately insulted foreigners and Frenchmen who did not agree with him, was totally ruthless in his relations, and used personal loyalty rather than efficiency as a criterion for advancement within his organization. What made him even more dangerous was the way he flirted with the forces of the left. From Roosevelt’s point of view, this made De Gaulle dangerous. “France faces a revolution when the Germans have been driven out,” the President once said, and he felt that the man most likely to profit from it would be De Gaulle. He would ride whatever popular mood existed into power. That Roosevelt was wrong is obvious—there was no fundamental revolution in France and De Gaulle, within a year of the end of the war, held free elections and relinquished his power. But there was in De Gaulle’s behavior a real basis for the President’s fears, which in any case nearly every member of the European section of the State D
epartment shared.

  Roosevelt spent much effort trying to find an alternative to De Gaulle. The best hope was the French Army, more specifically Giraud, who represented the forces of stability and conservatism without carrying in addition the tar of the Vichy brush. The trouble here was Giraud’s political innocence, and he soon fell by the wayside. This left the President without a candidate and, because of his tendency to personalize, meant that the United States had no definite policy regarding France. Under the circumstances, the most the President could do was to try to buy time and hope for the best, which in practice meant he followed the dubious course of attempting to stop De Gaulle.

  The President expressed his views most clearly in a May 8, 1943, message to Churchill. He said De Gaulle was becoming “well-nigh intolerable,” for he was stirring up strife between various elements in Algiers, making promises to the Jews that incited the Arabs, “expanding his present group of agitators,” and so on. “I am inclined to think that when we get into France itself we will have to regard it as a military occupation run by the British and American generals,” Roosevelt said. “The top line, or national administration, must be kept in the hands of the British or American Commander-in-Chief.”7

  As Milton Viorst has put it, “Roosevelt, irritated by French politics, without deep understanding of French history, with no experience in European diplomacy, took a condescending view of France and its prospects as a nation.” The Americans were already working out a program to bring democracy to Germany; Roosevelt evidently thought that the United States would have to show France the way too. Hull was in “complete agreement” with this policy, which he felt was needed to “prevent anarchy.”8