Dykes privately recorded the American reaction when Brooke said that the President was ‘worried because US troops would not be engaged with the enemy on any scale this year’. Because this effectively meant that ‘Bolero had dropped back in the batting,’ Dykes could see that Marshall and Eisenhower ‘were considerably perturbed by this’.40 After lunch, Marshall, Brooke, Dill, Ismay, Eisenhower and some other members of the US War Department sat down at 2 o’clock for an ‘informal meeting’ in Marshall’s office, one which was nonetheless minuted. The discussions, in the catch-all phrase, ‘generally revolved around the basic reasons that led initially to the adoption of Bolero as the principal effort of the United Nations and the possibilities of conducting an offensive operation either in Western Europe or North-west Africa during 1942 as a means of assisting Russia’.41
Brooke and Marshall seem to have agreed at that meeting that, although Bolero ‘should constitute the basis of our future strategy’, nonetheless logistical factors precluded its being mounted before the spring of 1943. Any other offensive operations undertaken in 1942 must ‘not materially delay the date at which Bolero can be mounted’, they agreed, and ‘should contribute directly to the success of Bolero’. Both men used Bolero as shorthand for Roundup and Sledgehammer, which stemmed from it.
As for Gymnast in 1942, Marshall and Brooke agreed that it ‘would seriously curtail reinforcements in the Middle East with possibly disastrous consequences in that theatre’, that it would ‘thin out’ naval concentrations in other theatres, especially aircraft carriers and escort vessels, that it was impossible to predict the various psychological factors pertaining in North Africa that would be crucial to its success (that is, the French reaction), that it would have a ‘marked effect in slowing up Bolero’, and that it would generally ‘tend to disperse further our available resources and weaken our effort’. Pressing his theme, Marshall had the conclusions minuted that ‘It was the considered opinion of the conferees (a) That Gymnast should not be undertaken under the existing situation. (b) That United States and Great Britain should adhere firmly to the basic decision to push Bolero with all possible speed and energy.’ From this is it clear that Brooke was almost as sceptical about Gymnast as Marshall, however much Churchill liked the idea.
Brooke did agree that any 1942 operation–that is, including Gymnast–‘should be undertaken only in case of necessity or if an exceptionally favourable opportunity presented itself’. Anyone present at that meeting on 19 June 1942 would have been forgiven for assuming that there would be no Operation Gymnast at all, but a cross-Channel invasion some time around May 1943. Yet in fact American troops were to go ashore in North Africa that very November, and Operation Bolero–by then conflated with Roundup and renamed Operation Overlord–would not take place until June 1944. Brooke’s principal objective for Argonaut was to scotch Sledgehammer and a pre-1943 Roundup, as well as the northern Norway operation, whereas Churchill’s principal objective was to secure Roosevelt’s support for Gymnast.
Brooke concluded, after the two Combined Chiefs of Staff meetings on 19 June, that ‘we made further progress towards defining our policy for 1942 and 1943. Found that we were pretty well of the same accord as to our outlook.’ That was a fair summation, but although Marshall and Brooke were agreeing in Washington, so too were Roosevelt and Churchill in Hyde Park–to something quite different. After dining with Dill at his house that night, Brooke noted: ‘On the whole made fine progress today, but am a little doubtful as to what PM and President may be brewing up together.’42
After the meetings that day, Eisenhower composed a memorandum that neatly encapsulated American strategic thinking about how to win the war against Germany. This read suspiciously like the letter Stimson had written to the President which Marshall had already copied on to Eisenhower. ‘To defeat Germany we must operate against her with overwhelming superiority,’ it began in classic Clausewitzian style. ‘For logistic reasons North-west Europe is the only front on which this superiority can be achieved.’ Eisenhower assumed that it would be clear by September 1942 whether Russia would ‘crack’ or not, and Bolero covered both eventualities. In the event of a Russian collapse, Eisenhower accepted that a cross-Channel attack in 1943 could not take place and ‘an alternative front would have to be found,’ but overall he concluded that ‘Continental operations on a large scale at the earliest possible moment should be the principal offensive effort of the United Nations.’43
The memorandum was discussed at a meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff at 11 a.m. the next day, Saturday 20 June, at which Brooke met Admiral King for the first time. Brooke–who sweltered in the intense heat as he had put on the wrong uniform–said ‘that he had been much encouraged to find that there was complete unanimity of opinion between the US and British Staffs on general strategic policy and the merits of the Bolero plan as a whole’. This was slightly disingenuous, since it was not Bolero but Sledgehammer that had been the bone of contention between them, and was another example of codeword nomenclature being used with advantages.44
Ernest King then bluntly stated that he was ‘entirely opposed to any idea of carrying out Gymnast in 1942. An entry into North-West Africa would open a ninth front with all the increase in overheads and escort and transportation problems involved therein.’ He did not want naval forces withdrawn from the Pacific even for Bolero, let alone for Gymnast. ‘He was tough as nails and carried himself stiffly as a poker,’ recalled Ismay of King. ‘He was blunt and stand-offish, almost to the point of rudeness. At the start he was intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy; but he was almost equally intolerant and suspicious of the American Army.’ King resented any American resources being used for any other purpose than to attack Japan, and–like Marshall, Leahy and Wedemeyer–he deeply mistrusted Churchill’s powers of advocacy and was apprehensive that the Prime Minister was persuading the President to neglect the war in the Pacific.
As a fellow Anglophobe, Wedemeyer predictably admired Ernest King, declaring, ‘I thought he was the strongest man on our Joint Chiefs of Staff.’ Yet even he described the admiral as ‘rather cold–not an attractive man.’ He added:
They say in the Navy he kept a tight ship and didn’t have many good friends although he was highly respected. I would say that he protected America’s interests more than any other member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. People say that he made the remark, ‘What’s good for the American Navy is good for the United States.’ He was always thinking in terms of conserving US men and materials, and he resisted the British, who were trying, always, to get everything they possibly could from us.45
Brooke also met Henry Stimson for the first time on this occasion, characteristically noting that he had ‘a limited strategic outlook. He was one of the strong adherents of breaking our heads in too early operations across the Channel. Consequently a strong supporter of Marshall.’
At the 20 June meeting, Marshall added that since a commitment to a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 would concentrate all efforts, any change of plan, by which he meant the adoption of Gymnast, would achieve nothing. ‘To defeat the Germans we must have overwhelming power,’ he said–paraphrasing the Eisenhower memorandum–‘and North-west Europe was the only front on which this overwhelming superiority was logistically possible. It was, therefore, sound strategy to concentrate on this front and divert minimum forces only to the other fronts. From the military point of view, therefore, there seemed no other logical course than to drive through with the Bolero plan.’46 This too was pure Clausewitzian military thought, the concentration of maximum forces on the most important point of the battlefield. It was what Napoleon, Grant and the elder Moltke did whenever possible, and it was what was taught at the US military academies. In arguing for this strategy, Marshall had history as well as classic strategic teaching on his side. But did he have his commander-in-chief?
At lunch at Dodona on the 20th, Marshall and Brooke speculated about what Roosevelt and Churchill, in Brooke
’s words, ‘were brewing up together at Hyde Park…We fear the worst, and are certain that North Africa and North Norway plans for 1942 will loom large in their proposals, whilst we are convinced that they are not possible!’ The ‘We’ in this sentence definitely includes Marshall and possibly King too.47 They were right to worry, for just as the two military Commanders were damning Gymnast in Washington, Churchill was handing Roosevelt a note at Hyde Park that was to alter the whole course of the war.
8
The Masters at Argonaut: ‘Please make it before Election Day’ June 1942
Mr Churchill was sure that only by the premature invasion of France could the war be lost. To postpone the evil day, all his arts, all his eloquence, all his great experience were spent.
Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival1
‘We are bound to persevere in the preparation for Bolero if possible in 1942 but certainly in 1943,’ conceded Churchill in his 20 June memorandum to his host, Franklin Roosevelt, at Hyde Park. ‘The whole of this business is now going on.’ He stated that arrangements for Sledgehammer–‘a landing of six or eight Divisions on the coast of Northern France’–were under way, but the British Government were firmly opposed to any operation ‘that was certain to lead to disaster for this would not help the Russians whatever their plight’. Furthermore, it would ‘compromise and expose to Nazi vengeance the French population involved’ and would also seriously delay Roundup. ‘We strongly hold to the view that there should be no substantial landing in France this year unless we are going to stay,’ he wrote, adding in a phrase that he was to use often in the future: ‘No responsible British military authority has so far been able to make a plan for September 1942 which had any chance of success unless the Germans became utterly demoralized, of which there is no likelihood.’2
Quite why Churchill felt the need to write an official memorandum to the man whose bedroom was only a few yards up the corridor from his, and whom he was with–often alone–throughout the weekend, is hard to explain, except that he always had an eye to history and found that his brain worked especially well through the written word. Roosevelt would also need it in order to convince Marshall and the other service Chiefs. Whatever the reason, he then posed a barrage of questions that Marshall had to answer supposing the Germans were in no way demoralized by 1943. ‘Have the American Staffs a plan?’ he asked. ‘If so, what is it? What forces could be employed? At what points would they strike? What landing craft and shipping are available? Who is the officer prepared to command the enterprise? What British forces and assistance are required?’3 These were not rhetorical, although they sounded it, and of course Marshall was not present to answer them.
If any of those questions could not be answered satisfactorily, Churchill had more: ‘What else are we going to do? Can we afford to stand idle in the Atlantic theatre during the whole of 1942? Ought we not to be preparing within the general structure of Bolero some other operation by which we may gain positions of advantage and also directly or indirectly to take some of the weight off Russia?’ Then came his own answers to these questions: ‘It is in this setting and on this background that the Operation Gymnast should be studied.’ Churchill was straining credibility in putting Gymnast ‘within the general structure of Bolero’, because it necessitated the severe postponement of Sledgehammer and Roundup, yet he understood that it was necessary to present it that way after his enthusiastic reception of Bolero in London only two months before.
So, just as Marshall, King and Eisenhower were trying to consign Gymnast to a strategic, logistical and even ‘logical’ grave in Washington–hardly resisted by an almost equally sceptical Brooke–Churchill resurrected it at Hyde Park. In getting Roosevelt on his own there, Churchill had a considerable advantage, as the ‘amateur strategist’ President tended, at least at this stage in the war, to defer to him on military matters in a way that he would not have done had Marshall been present.
‘I must emphasize’, admitted Wedemeyer after the war,
that President Roosevelt did not have the knowledge, the military knowledge, the strategic knowledge that Prime Minister Churchill did. He wasn’t in close proximity with the leaders of our Army and Navy. Churchill worked with his [Chiefs of Staff] and Planners down in his offices and Map Rooms…He supported his chiefs on their negotiations. I am sure it wasn’t a question of supporting General Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff with Roosevelt. He really didn’t know enough about it and didn’t pretend to.4
Although Churchill’s visit to Washington was public, his trip to Hyde Park was not. During those few days the two men held long confidential conversations with only the house staff, the secret service and a very small group on hand, including John Martin, Commander Thompson and FDR’s secretary Grace Tully. Tully recalled her boss saying to her, ‘I think Winston is terribly worried, Grace, and well he might be.’5 She had been ordered specifically not to make any appointments or permit any callers whatever; even when Marshall’s aide-de-camp Frank McCarthy arrived with an important message he was kept waiting outside the main house.
While Marshall and Brooke considered the risky strategic implications of Operation Gymnast, Roosevelt and Churchill had also to consider the risks of not getting American ground troops into direct combat against the Wehrmacht before the mid-term elections in early November. Roosevelt had served in Woodrow Wilson’s Administration when it lost control of Congress only days before the end of the Great War, and he had seen the disastrous effect that had on subsequent peace-making attempts. He therefore wanted American troops fighting Germans before the polls opened, if at all possible. If the isolationists and Republicans triumphed, both Roosevelt and Churchill reasoned, the whole Germany First policy might be placed in jeopardy. For all Admiral King’s talk of already having eight fronts, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt wished to contemplate a situation where no major offensive was undertaken on the ground against Germany for another ten months or so. After all, Hitler had declared war against the United States back in December, and had yet to feel her wrath anywhere. Roosevelt therefore had Churchill’s note telephoned through to Marshall in Washington, and Jacob was ordered to circulate it to Brooke, Dill and Ismay.
Churchill and Roosevelt returned to Washington on the night of Saturday 20 June on the presidential train. En route, Grace Tully was charmed by what she thought ‘an amusing manifestation of Victorian shyness’ on the part of Churchill, ‘this normally uninhibited statesman’. She was sitting with him and Roosevelt in the presidential carriage when Sawyers, Churchill’s short, bald valet who always travelled with him, came in carrying his master’s initialled slippers, leant down and proceeded to untie the prime ministerial shoelaces: ‘“God, no,” Churchill spluttered in obvious embarrassment, “not here.” Retreating hastily into his own compartment he made the change and came back–slipper-clad.’ Tully was surprised that Churchill should have been discomfited by other people witnessing this nightly ritual.6
The train arrived back in Washington at 9 o’clock on the morning of Sunday 21 June, and Brooke went to visit Churchill at 11 a.m. Marshall meanwhile saw the President, taking with him the Combined Chiefs of Staff memorandum agreed the previous day that had so deprecated Gymnast. As the Introduction depicts, at noon Roosevelt, Churchill, Brooke and Marshall all met for the first time together, along with Hopkins and Ismay. At lunch an hour later the President recalled Brooke’s father and brother.
Brooke was standing with Churchill next to Roosevelt’s desk after lunch when the news of the fall of Tobruk was brought in. Tobruk had long been a talisman for Churchill, a totem. A year earlier at Chequers–after a day seeing the ‘horror and desolation’ of bombed Plymouth, where he had kept repeating, ‘I’ve never seen the like’–he had fallen into one of his ‘black dog’ depressions, a deep melancholic despair. He had received a long telegram from Roosevelt explaining why the United States could not co-operate in preventing the Germans from seizing the Azores or Cape Verde islands, and had heard that
the sinking of one of Mountbatten’s destroyers HMS Jersey had probably blocked the entrance to the Grand Harbour at Valletta in Malta. It was then that Churchill explained to Harriman that the fall of Tobruk could lead to the eventual triumph of Hitler’s ‘robot world order’.7
After Tobruk’s fall, the place selected by Auchinleck to try to hold back Rommel’s victorious forces was Mersa Matruh, only 125 miles east of the Egyptian border, and a telegram from the Middle East Defence Committee warned that even if the vast quantities of stores in Tobruk had been successfully destroyed before the surrender–which it later transpired they had not been–the enemy was ‘now stronger than we are in all types of troops essential for battle in open country and is well provided with transport’. Furthermore, the political consequences of withdrawing to Mersa Matruh ‘may give rise to internal difficulties in Egypt and may change Turkey’s attitude towards us’.8
The American response to the news about Tobruk was instinctive, and was often later recalled with powerful nostalgia by all the Britons present. ‘For a moment or two no one spoke,’ recalled Ismay, but then the silence was broken by Roosevelt. ‘In six monosyllables he epitomized his sympathy with Churchill, his determination to do his utmost to sustain him, and his recognition that we were all in the same boat: “What can we do to help?”’9 Brooke also vividly remembered ‘being impressed by the tact and real heartfelt sympathy that lay behind these words. There was not one word too much or too little.’ Churchill agreed: ‘Nothing could exceed the sympathy and chivalry of my two friends,’ he wrote. ‘There were no reproaches; not an unkind word was spoken. “What can we do to help?” said Roosevelt.’10 Marshall offered an American armoured division, to be shipped off to the Middle East immediately.
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