‘Why did Brooke grate on the Americans?’ Moran asked. Whereas Dill managed to make them feel that every word they uttered mattered enormously, by total contrast ‘Brooke had an inborn suspicion that there might be an element of insincerity in this kind of approach. He swung instinctively to the opposite pole, throwing down his facts in the path of understanding with a brusque gesture. In his opinion it was all just common sense; he had thought it all out. Not for a moment did it occur to him that there might be another point of view.’ Such utter certainty in one’s own judgement might have been a necessary part of a grand strategist’s mental armament in a world war, but ‘He hurled facts at them like hand grenades, it did not matter if they went off and left wounds. Brooke’s insensitive handling of his American colleagues had echoes, for it was what was American in Winston that most disturbed him.’
It is doubtful that the Combined Chiefs of Staff sessions of 16 January were a success in terms of mutual comprehension. In a meeting with Roosevelt, King complained that the British ‘do not seem to have an overall plan’ to win the war, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff would nonetheless go along with Churchill’s and Brooke’s Mediterranean schemes if the President ordered them to.25 Kennedy heard from Brooke that ‘much progress was made towards seeing each other’s point of view’ although the main points ‘have had to be reiterated a good deal. Marshall gives an impression of great honesty and friendliness and soundness. He takes time to consider everything and although not rigid needs to be thoroughly convinced.’ Brooke told Kennedy of a wordplay of Marshall’s about American politicians, that ‘There were more brass heads among them than brass hats among the soldiers.’ Perhaps the truth was that, as Arnold confided to his diary, ‘We are getting things done but awfully slow.’26 His opposite number Charles Portal, meanwhile, explained to Dill, apropos of nothing in particular, how the sap travels in cactus plants.
For all its acerbity, King’s complaint to Roosevelt had some validity. ‘The “Mediterranean Strategy” was in gestation between September and December 1942,’ writes Michael Howard; ‘at Casablanca it was born and legitimized. This strategy was not one of manoeuvre, but of attrition.’27 It had a number of advantages, namely that it could simultaneously release shipping, provide bases for bombing German-controlled Europe, divert troops from the Eastern Front, and knock Italy out of the war. It could not knock Germany out of it, however, which was the principal objection that Marshall and King had, and why the latter was so bitter in his remark to his commander-in-chief.
With large numbers of American troops in North Africa and British forces in the Middle East, the Masters and Commanders had a clear choice. The shipping was not available to transfer them all back to the United Kingdom for a cross-Channel operation, so, as Howard has summed up, ‘Unless they were to remain idle for a year while the Russians continued to fight single-handed, some employment had to be found for them in the Mediterranean Theatre.’28 The idleness option was not politically acceptable to either Roosevelt or Churchill, and while Brooke did not see the region as a soft underbelly he did hope that, were Sicily to fall, Italy would collapse and the Germans would be forced to reinforce Italy, and perhaps also the Balkans and the Aegean, from the Eastern Front. Allied sea and air power could then be concentrated against a long thin peninsula jutting into a sea that contained the Allied strongholds of Gibraltar, Malta, Tunisia, Alexandria and Cyprus.
Any advances made towards getting the Americans to support this strategy on Saturday 16 January, however, were lost the next day. ‘We seem to be back at the beginning,’ wrote Kennedy. ‘Marshall and King expounded all their first ideas of Pacific strategy once again and CIGS repeated our side of the case. At the moment we seem to have reached an impasse, and we are still poles apart.’ Brooke agreed, calling it ‘A desperate day!’ and concluding that agreement was further away than ever. After discussions on Burma and Iceland, it was decided that further conferring was useless until the Joint Planners had made much more headway together.
Yet when Brooke met the British Joint Planners he thought he detected from their remarks that their American counterparts ‘did not agree with Germany being the primary enemy and were wishing to defeat Japan first!!!’29 Well might that have deserved Brooke’s treble exclamation mark were it true, but the British Planners had either misunderstood the US Planners’ view or had misrepresented it to Brooke, or he had misunderstood it, or had misrepresented it to his diary. What is most likely is that the American Planners, particularly Wedemeyer and Savvy Cooke, were threatening the Pacific strategy in the same way as Marshall did, ‘as a club’ to beat the British, but were bluffing. Brooke took his thoughts bird-watching, and saw ‘a new white heron, quite distinct from the egret, and a new small owl which we could not place’. It was evident to him that the ‘water on stone’ technique had not worked so far, and the next morning a more direct approach would be needed. Simultaneously, Marshall was arriving at much the same conclusion.
The key meeting of the Casablanca Conference came at 10.30 a.m. on Monday 18 January, when the contrasting underlying strategic philosophies of the war were debated very openly. Brooke began by saying that Operation Anakim was now definitely on the planning agenda, and ‘should be put to the front’. With the assistance of the US Navy in providing landing craft, he said, the amphibious capture of Rangoon was feasible. King said that it should be done in 1943 and the Combined Chiefs of Staff agreed. It was a fine start, and something of a compromise from Brooke, but soon afterwards profound differences emerged.
Brooke stated that the British Chiefs of Staff took exception to the first paragraph of an American memorandum–CCS 153–which failed to state that Germany must be defeated before Japan. Marshall replied that in his opinion the British Chiefs of Staff ‘wished to be certain that we keep the enemy engaged in the Mediterranean and…at the same time maintain a sufficient force in the United Kingdom to take advantage of a crack in the German strength either from the withdrawal of their forces in France or because of lowered morale’. He inferred from this that the British Chiefs of Staff would prefer to maintain a dormant force in the UK rather than use it elsewhere, whereas the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘know that they can use these forces offensively in the Pacific theatre’. Marshall’s threat was obvious, especially once he added that ‘to a large measure the shipping used in the Pacific is already committed and, therefore, could not be made available for a build-up of forces in the United Kingdom.’
Brooke answered plainly by saying that, in that case, ‘We have reached a stage in the war where we must review the correctness of our basic strategic concept.’ He was personally convinced that the Allies could not defeat Germany and Japan simultaneously and he and his colleagues believed that it would be better to concentrate on Germany first and indeed, ‘because of the distances involved’, they believed not only that the simultaneous defeat of Japan was impossible, but that ‘if we attempt [it], we shall lose the war’. He added that having decided ‘that it is necessary to defeat Germany first, the immediate question is whether to do so by an invasion of Northern France or to exploit our successes in North Africa’. The British Chiefs of Staff, he said, ‘consider that an all-out Mediterranean effort is best but that it must be “all-out”’. He admitted that American assistance was necessary in any Mediterranean operations, and that failure to ‘maintain constant pressure’ on Germany would give Hitler ‘an opportunity to recover and thus prolong the war’.30
Marshall replied to this forthright and all-embracing analysis reciprocally, by saying that the Joint Chiefs of Staff certainly did not propose ‘doing nothing in the Mediterranean or in France’. He confirmed that the Germany First policy still stood, but contended that an early end to the war ‘cannot be accomplished if we neglect the Pacific theater entirely’, adding that he ‘advocated an attack on the Continent but that he was opposed to immobilizing a large force in the UK, awaiting an uncertain prospect, when they might be better engaged in offensive operations which are possible’. Brooke r
eplied that the British Chiefs of Staff ‘certainly did not want to keep forces tied up in Europe doing nothing’.
To prove this he mentioned ‘the desirability of Anakim’, which could be undertaken by forces in the local theatre which would not detract from ‘the earliest possible defeat of Germany’. He then quoted from a Combined Planning Staff paper which stated that Anakim was acceptable to Britain, ‘provided always that its application does not prejudice the earliest possible defeat of Germany’. He was expert at always having to hand the apposite quotations from JPS papers that, since American Planners contributed to them equally, were hard for the American Chiefs to gainsay. At that point Admiral King complained that such wording ‘might be read as meaning that anything which was done in the Pacific interfered with the earliest possible defeat of Germany’ and that the Pacific theatre ‘should therefore remain totally inactive’. Portal intervened to say that perhaps the two Staffs had ‘misunderstood’ each other, and all that the British were saying was that as far as ‘getting at Germany in the immediate future’ was concerned, ‘the Mediterranean offered better prospects than France.’ As an airman, he also commended building up a large heavy bomber force, which he pointed out was ‘the only form of force that could operate continuously against Germany’.
Attempts to suggest that there are ‘misunderstandings’ rather than genuine differences of view are often simply a way to proffer an olive branch, so that neither side loses face, but Marshall brushed it aside when he replied that he was ‘most anxious not to become committed to interminable operations in the Mediterranean’ and he ‘wished Northern France to be the scene of the main effort against Germany’, something he rightly said ‘had always been his conception’. The debate was thus veering back towards those pre-Torch ones held in London the previous year, especially after Portal bluntly admitted that ‘it was impossible to say exactly where we should stop in the Mediterranean since we hoped to knock Italy out altogether. This action would give the greatest support to Russia and might open the door to France.’31
In response to this, Marshall repeated his view that operations in the Mediterranean and a build-up in Britain ‘might well prevent us from undertaking operations in Burma’ and therefore he was ‘not at all in favour of this’. Moreover, American forces in the south-west Pacific were ‘desperately short at present of their immediate requirements’. King of course agreed, stating that ‘We had on many occasions been close to disaster in the Pacific.’ For him, the real point at issue was to try to ‘determine the balance between the effort to be put against Germany and against Japan, but we must have enough in the Pacific to maintain the initiative against the Japanese.’ Hence his 30 per cent/70 per cent offer. The nature of these operations, he ‘felt very strongly’, should be decided not by the Combined Chiefs of Staff but by the Joint Chiefs of Staff alone–that is, a unilateral American rather than a joint Anglo-American decision. This of course flew directly in the face of the whole Combined Chiefs of Staff concept as set up by Marshall at Arcadia.
Marshall then argued that the notion of Germany First had been jeopardized by a lack of resources in the Pacific, for example heavy bombers set up to go to the UK had had to be diverted there, as under CCS 94. ‘Fortunately, disaster had been avoided, but if it had occurred, there would have been a huge diversion of US effort to the Pacific theater. The US had nearly been compelled to pull out of Torch.’ In order to make the Pacific secure, he said, Anakim and the reconquest of Burma ‘would be an enormous contribution to this and would effect ultimately a great economy of forces’. He also mentioned operations to capture Rabaul and Truk.
At this Brooke baulked, seeing a major extension of American commitment far from the Mediterranean. Rabaul was an important two-harbour naval base on the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain that dominated the entire New Guinea–New Britain–Solomon Islands area, the hub of the region that threatened Australia. Truk–which might be thought of as a Japanese Gibraltar–was a stronghold island in the central Carolines which served as the headquarters of the Japanese Combined Fleet, threatening Allied advances in the central and south Pacific and home port to one of the largest battleships in the world, the Musahi. Brooke began by arguing that it would be enough to stop at Rabaul, because to go on to Truk before Germany was defeated ‘would take up too much force’ and involve ‘large shipping losses’ which would be ‘a continuous drain on our resources’. King demurred, insisting that the same forces could, by stages, liberate the Marshall Islands after Rabaul was captured in May, with Anakim taking place after November 1943.
The two Staffs seemed poles apart, so Portal and Marshall came up with a compromise form of words. Portal said the British would not like to be committed to Anakim, even with forces released after the capture of Rabaul, ‘without first reviewing whether some other operation more profitable to the war as a whole might not be desirable’. To take an extreme case, he said, suppose a good opportunity arose, after the capture of Rabaul and owing to a crack in Germany, of attacking France? ‘Should we refuse to take advantage of it because we were already committed to Anakim?’ Marshall replied that he ‘felt that if such a situation arose we should certainly seize the opportunity’, agreeing that a further meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff might be necessary in the summer to decide.
Pressing the opportunity, Brooke then proposed that ‘we should limit our outlook in the Pacific to Rabaul, which should certainly be undertaken, and to preparations for Anakim’, with the final decision to launch Anakim being taken later. Any decision on Truk, however, should be ‘deferred’. King complained immediately that that would be ‘strictly to limit commitments in the Pacific, although the British Chiefs of Staff apparently contemplated an unlimited commitment in the European theater’. Yet Marshall agreed that a decision on Anakim and Truk ‘could be left until later’. Brooke had spotted a gap between the positions of Marshall and King and had moved quickly to exploit it.
King argued, with some justification, that ‘on logistic grounds alone it would be impossible to bring forces from the Pacific theater to the European theater’ and that therefore Anakim was not a genuine alternative to Roundup, as Portal had hypothesized. He was supported in this by the American Planners Somervell and Cooke, but Portal was not to be put off now that an Army–Navy split seemed to be emerging in the American position, and he reiterated that ‘it would be unwise to accept a definite commitment for Anakim now, since a favourable situation might arise in Europe’. King countered this by saying that ‘favourable opportunities’ might arise in the Pacific too. At this point Marshall suggested an amendment to the Joint Planning document, so as to read that seizure of the Gilbert, Marshall and Caroline Islands up to and including Truk would be undertaken ‘with the resources in the theater’.
This might have been the point at which, in Wedemeyer’s account, Brooke ‘was visibly disturbed and impatient with King’s position’, and Cooke turned to John Deane, who was taking notes for the Americans, and said: ‘Nuts!’ Sir John Dill, sitting across the table with his British colleagues, overheard this remark and, ‘realizing that Anglo-American tensions were becoming acute, skilfully performed his role as peacemaker’.32 He whispered to Brooke the suggestion that he adjourn the meeting for lunch.
When the two sides resumed their meeting at 3 p.m., the Combined Chiefs of Staff had before them a draft note setting out tentative agreements. A deal had been brokered by Dill during the lunch adjournment, so that the topics under discussion could move on to the much less contentious issues of supply vessels, Polish forces, air raids on Berlin and the naval situation in the western Mediterranean. At one point Brooke revealed that a plan had been drawn up for seizing southern Spain with six divisions if it was deemed necessary to deny it to the Germans. Of the morning arguments with King, Kennedy recorded: ‘It is good to blow off steam and probably the process is necessary.’33 Brooke described the two-and-a-half-hour morning meeting as ‘very heated’ and thought King was ‘still evidently wrapped up in the
war of the Pacific at the expense of everything else!’
Years later Brooke showed that much of the credit for the lunchtime breakthrough and subsequent draft note had been down to Dill. ‘I was in despair and in the depths of gloom’ on leaving the conference room, he recalled, and as he walked upstairs to his hotel room had told Dill: ‘It is no use, we shall never get agreement with them!’ His friend and mentor replied: ‘On the contrary, you have already got agreement to most of the points, and it only remains to settle the rest.’ They sat on Brooke’s bed after lunch and went through each individual point on the agenda, Brooke occasionally protesting that he ‘would not move an inch’ on some of them. ‘Oh yes, you will,’ replied the former CIGS. ‘You know that you must come to some agreement with the Americans and that you cannot bring the unsolved problem up to the Prime Minister and the President. You know as well as I do what a mess they would make of it!’34 This was unfair: the successful Torch had been Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s operation, carried out against the initial wishes of Brooke and Marshall, but it was undoubtedly this imperative that drove the generals towards compromise.
Brooke authorized Dill to talk to Marshall as a go-between. Portal also helped draw up the compromise formula into the draft note, which both Brooke and Marshall agreed to adopt when the meeting reconvened that afternoon. ‘I am certain that the final agreement being reached was due more to Dill than to anyone else,’ wrote Brooke after the war, ‘acting as the best possible intermediary between Marshall and myself.’35
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