(Not everyone saw Dill as an honest broker: Leonard Mosley claimed that the British Chiefs of Staff lacerated Marshall’s plans for a 1943 cross-Channel invasion because Dill had leaked the full US programme for Casablanca to them beforehand. ‘They now proceeded to tear it to pieces, not least Marshall’s pet plan for the invasion, which was ridiculed out of existence.’ Wedemeyer, who spoke into Mosley’s tape-recorder at length, told Mosley that Dill ‘got extremely close to Marshall, and provided the British Chiefs and the PM with information on Marshall’s thinking which Marshall shouldn’t have given him’ and that Dill had ‘sold Marshall short’.36 Like much of Mosley’s history and Wedemeyer’s testimony, this was inaccurate and simplistic.)
When the Combined Chiefs of Staff met again at 3 p.m. the compromise paper was accepted with only a few minor alterations. The recapture of Burma through Anakim and a south-west Pacific offensive to Rabaul and then on to the Marshall and Caroline Islands would be conducted with whatever means could be spared without compromising the objective of defeating Germany first. Anakim was promised American assault ships by King, but only once he had protected his Pacific resources from depletion. The British also promised that they would concentrate everything against Japan once Germany surrendered. Truk was left off the agenda. Crucially, Eisenhower would command Husky (the attack on Sicily), and Roundup would be undertaken whenever it was thought likely to succeed.
Meeting Roosevelt and Churchill at 5.30 p.m., Brooke sat next to Churchill, who asked who had chaired the Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting. Brooke said Marshall had, as Casablanca was under US occupation, so the Prime Minister called on him to report. The US Army Chief of Staff instead asked the CIGS to expound upon their report. ‘It was a difficult moment,’ wrote Brooke that evening, ‘we had only just succeeded in getting the American Chiefs of Staff to agree with us.’ Churchill did not know how tough it had been to find the compromise, and he could have upset it easily. However, the statement was approved by him and Roosevelt. ‘We were then all photographed together!’ recorded Brooke, and if some smiles seemed to be through clenched teeth, others were perfectly genuine.
The compromise report based on Dill’s draft note was therefore ratified as Allied policy, and it contained the advantages and disadvantages of any such brokered solution. ‘Roosevelt’, his biographer records, ‘was happy with this hard-fought outcome,’ as were Churchill and Brooke.37 Although Marshall also seemed content at the time, many American Planners came to see the Casablanca compromise as a serious setback, because it took large numbers of American troops on to Italian territory in 1943 rather than on to French beaches. So why did Marshall permit a major attack on Sicily, considering he had come to Casablanca opposed to a Mediterranean strategy? Jacob believes that because Roosevelt ‘was quite of the Prime Minister’s way of thinking, it was not long before everyone accepted Sicily as the thing to do.’38 Richard Overy argues that Sicily was simply somewhere that the Germans could be convincingly engaged and defeated. In the end, if the British were not going to cross the Channel in 1943, and there weren’t enough Americans to do it on their own, what else was there to do, other than drop Germany First and turn over the running of the war to Admiral King? Under those circumstances American troops would probably not get around to a ground assault on Germany until much later in the decade. For Marshall looking at the Sicilian operation in January 1943, most of the alternatives, except the Norwegian adventure which in his view was equally diversionary, had been blocked off by Roosevelt, Churchill and Brooke. Sometimes grand strategy, involving the lives of millions–and the deaths, wounding and capture of tens of thousands–has to be a question of taking the least bad compromise alternative.
There was still much left to agree now that the grand strategy had been set out. At 10 o’clock the next morning, Tuesday 19 January, a revised programme of meetings was disseminated, whereby it became clear that Anakim and the south-west Pacific would be considered in detail only at the very last meeting of the conference, that Saturday. In the meantime there would be meetings on every other conceivable subject, under the headings ‘System of Command in French West Africa’, ‘Turkey and Axis Oil’, ‘Operation Husky’, ‘Bomber Offensive from North Africa’, ‘The U-Boat War’, ‘Landing Craft’, ‘The Bomber Offensive from the UK’, ‘Bolero Build-up’ and several others, with Dill, in Jacob’s words, ‘often acting as go-between and general lubricator’.
Even though consideration of several of these issues obviously overlapped with Anakim, the decision was taken to relegate the matter most likely to cause another rift with Admiral King to the very end of the conference, and to try to get as much else as possible settled in the meantime. Thus it was agreed that 938,000 US troops would be assembled in the United Kingdom by the end of 1943. Marshall’s earlier calculations of attacking across the Channel with four hundred thousand men had had to be more than doubled once the formidable German capacity to resist and counter-attack had been witnessed in Tunisia.39
Jacob wrote of this second phase of the conference, conducted in long morning and afternoon sessions:
The remarkable thing about it all was that the gradual education of the Americans to our way of thinking was found to have proceeded even farther than we had thought possible. The beneficial results of holding such a conference for so long a period and on a neutral pitch made themselves clearly manifest. Everyone in these circumstances is freed from the irksome routine of the office, and there is nothing to distract attention from the work in hand…In Casablanca…everyone fed, slept and worked in the same building or group of buildings. British and Americans met round the bar, went for walks down to the beach together, and sat around in each other’s rooms in the evenings. Mutual respect and understanding ripen in such surroundings, especially when the weather is lovely, the accommodation is good, and food and drink and smokes are unlimited and free.40
This implies that in an atmosphere of sweet reasonableness the superior British view naturally emerged triumphant, which is not what happened at all. The American Planners long afterwards counted Casablanca as a defeat at the hands of the British, and universally blamed their own inferior preparation and Staff work. ‘The outcome was as we had predicted,’ stated Paul Caraway. ‘Our people lost their shirts. The only conference we did lose, I might add.’ Tom Handy agreed, saying of Wedemeyer and Cooke, ‘The British on the planning level just snowed them under…If a question comes up and you have a paper ready to present on it, you have a big edge on the other guy who hasn’t. Consideration can start on the basis of your paper, but the reverse is true if you’ve got none and if he’s got a prepared thing…These British Planners were just smarter than hell.’41 Savvy Cooke clearly wasn’t quite as savvy as all that.
‘We were overwhelmed by the large British staff,’ Ed Hull agreed. ‘The only staff that General Marshall had was small and the other chiefs of staff were no better fixed. He had Wedemeyer and one assistant…The British had come down there in droves and every one of them had written a paper about something and that was submitted by the British Chiefs of Staff to the American Joint Chiefs of Staff for agreement…It taught us a lesson. Never go to a meeting like that without plenty of help, because you need it.’42 One of the complaints Handy had about the way that Dykes and his team operated was that when they queried agreements that had been minuted, Dykes would say, ‘You didn’t object,’ as ‘the British way was to take anything not objected to as accepted.’
The War Office had commandeered a special ship that was moored in Casablanca harbour. HMS Bulolo was a 6,000-ton liner converted for use as a floating HQ for combined operations and had taken part in the Algiers landing. Fitted up with an operations room and a complete set of wireless instruments so that contact could be maintained with the landing forces, she was perfect for enabling the Planners to stay in touch with London, requesting any information they needed. ‘We could operate exactly as if we were in Great George Street,’ recalled Jacob. Harold Macmillan noted: ‘In the Bay stood the fa
mous communication ship which can send off as many as thirty wireless messages at the same time, and hosts of cypherers and so on.’43
Jacob was surprised by the tiny numbers of Staff officers that the Americans had brought with them, claiming with pardonable exaggeration that when the Joint Chiefs of Staff saw the size of the British operation, ‘they went out into the highways and byways of North Africa and scraped together some sort of a Staff…but…nearly every paper produced during the Conference had to be produced by our people with little or no help from the Americans.’44 For all his complaining tone, this was of inestimable advantage to the British in guiding the Staffs to the conclusions they wanted. Matters were made worse by the fact that Cooke and Wedemeyer sat in on all the meetings, meaning that they had little time to do ‘solid work’ with the British Planners. Furthermore there were personality clashes, since according to Jacob, ‘Cooke’s personality was so repellent that our people found it hard to get on with him at all.’
Wedemeyer in particular seemed to believe that the British had been somehow cheating with their meticulous preparation for the conference. ‘The British brought a much larger team of Planners and advisers,’ he grumbled. ‘I was the only one that Marshall had, and Hap Arnold didn’t have any air men with him at all…We were overwhelmed by the British. They had so many arguments. This was all pre-arranged obviously, and the strategy was prejudged and they presented a united front concerning continued operations in the Mediterranean area, which I opposed, but only through Marshall.’45 Wedemeyer was right; of course Brooke had ‘pre-arranged’ his arguments over future strategy: to have taken any other approach to what was manifestly going to be one of the most important military conferences of the twentieth century would have been profoundly negligent.
Occasionally Wedemeyer took his Anglophobia to truly absurd limits, telling his SOOHP interviewer at his farm in Maryland thirty years later that ‘There was a considerable amount of British investment in German industry in the Ruhr during World War II,’ and so ‘there was a reluctance on the part of the British to bomb certain areas. British commercial interests insisted they be avoided.’46 It is hard to think of anything more ludicrous, not least because Wedemeyer must have known that the RAF at great cost in lives tried to flatten–and also to flood–the Ruhr. But it does indicate the level of suspicion, indeed of paranoia, that existed in the mind of a senior US Planner whose subsequent writings and appearances on television programmes such as The World at War have affected our view of the making of grand strategy.
‘There was too much anti-British feeling on our side,’ Marshall admitted to his biographer Forrest Pogue after the war; ‘more than we should have had. The British were accustomed to Staff business and we were not. When we went to Casablanca the President…only wanted about five people. The British had a large Staff; they brought along a ship for them to use. I had few people with me so I was shooting off the hip. Dill had told me the British would be ready.’ Marshall privately recalled in 1949 that ‘the long ingrained traditional skill of the British in the committee system’ had shown up the ‘freshman innocence’ of the Americans at Casablanca.47 The Americans would not allow it to happen again.
Wednesday 20 January started early for Brooke and Kennedy, who drove off to go bird-watching just beyond the Casablanca aerodrome. They saw a few larks, including a calandra. ‘While we were studying it there was a curious loud gurgling noise in our ears,’ recalled Kennedy; ‘a camel had strolled up and was looking over our shoulders.’48
At 2 p.m. the Combined Chiefs of Staff ‘thrashed out’ plans for the capture of Sicily. Although it went well, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff conceded almost everything Brooke wanted, he could not help noting in his diary that Americans in general ‘are difficult though charming people to work with’, and Marshall in particular ‘has got practically no strategic vision, his thoughts revolve round the creation of forces and not on their employment. He arrived here without a single real strategic concept, he has initiated nothing in the policy for the future conduct of the war. His part has been that of somewhat clumsy criticism of the plans we put forward.’ By contrast, Brooke regarded Ernest King as ‘a shrewd and somewhat swollen headed individual’ obsessed with the Pacific war, while Arnold concerned himself solely with the air. ‘But as a team to have to discuss with they are friendliness itself, and although our discussions have become somewhat heated at times, yet our relations have never been strained.’49
Although it had been a full week since the conference began, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff had only just got down to discussing practical plans, Roosevelt was happy with progress, telling his cousin Daisy Suckley that despite what he called ‘the Winston hours’–‘sleep to 9 a.m., then morning conferences then a luncheon, then a nap for one hour, then more talk and a dinner at 8 p.m. which lasts to an average of 2 a.m.’–nonetheless ‘We are getting on very well with our Staff conferences.’
The next evening, Thursday 21 January, Brooke suddenly found himself in a difficult position since Portal, Pound and much of the Joint Planning Staff now said that they thought Operation Brimstone, the invasion of Sardinia, ought to precede or possibly replace altogether Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. The arguments went on for three hours until midnight. ‘I have the most vivid recollection of that exhausting evening!’ Brooke wrote later. He had only just managed to persuade Portal and Pound over Husky before leaving England; now they sought to reopen the question in what amounted to the most serious mutiny against his authority during the whole course of the war.
‘All my arguments with Marshall had been based on the invasion of Sicily and I had obtained his agreement,’ recalled Brooke. Yet now the other Chiefs wished to unravel that. As well as the merits of the case itself, Brooke’s credibility with the Americans was on the line, something he could not risk losing in the coming no-holds-barred meetings at Anfa Camp. The revolt had started in the Joint Planning Staff, after which Mountbatten–who Brooke believed ‘never had any very decided opinions of his own’–had supported them. Mountbatten’s support was not significant in itself, thought Jacob, because ‘His invariable habit of butting in on detail in the middle of discussion of matters of large principle had destroyed any influence he might have had in the Committee.’50 Nonetheless, with Portal and Ismay also doubtful about Husky, Brooke had a serious problem even though ‘dear old Dudley Pound was, as usual, asleep and with no views either way!’ When awake, however, Pound did not support Husky either.
Brooke, who had gone over the strategic and tactical issues in minute detail in London and was as usual certain that he was right, flatly refused to go back to tell Marshall that ‘we did not know our own minds’, which would ‘irrevocably shake their confidence in our judgement’. He thought that soon after the Allies seized the south of Sardinia the Axis would pour into the north, leading to a long and difficult campaign, and losing the chance of taking Corsica easily. ‘Being a very obstinate man, further argument only annoyed him,’ recorded Jacob, ‘and he became more and more rabidly against Sardinia, and in favour of Sicily.’ There is a slight indication that Brooke might privately not have considered the Husky plan to have been perfect, writing at the time: ‘A good plan pressed through is better than many ideal ones which are continually changing.’51 He was not about to vouchsafe this view to anyone else at the time.
It was by sheer force of character, therefore, and an implied threat of resignation sooner than go back to Marshall with a change in his proposals, that Sicily was chosen rather than Sardinia. It was a classic case of the influence of personality in strategy-making. Kennedy’s diary implies there was also another threat that Brooke used, that ‘any variation in the programme at this late stage…might result in the Americans doing nothing in the Mediterranean’. As Brooke wrote, ‘so few people ever realize the infinite difficulties of maintaining an object or a plan and refusing to be driven off it by other people for a thousand good reasons!’ Although he was completely outnumbered by all his British inter
locutors, he was on strong ground since Churchill, Roosevelt and Marshall now all supported Sicily over Sardinia. Churchill supported Brooke because whatever was done in 1943 ‘must look big to Stalin’ and he described the capture of Sardinia as ‘that piddling operation’.52 As well as wanting an attack on Sicily, Churchill pressed for one on the Dodecanese soon afterwards, and claimed that he also wanted an assault in northern France in the summer if possible, as well the Anakim attack on Burma in the autumn. Some of these were of course mutually exclusive, but, in Jacob’s view, ‘He was indulging to the full in his usual pastime of having his cake and eating it–or trying to.’
Friday 22 January saw no fewer than six meetings, as Roosevelt was anxious to leave Casablanca. Arnold noted that at the 10 a.m. Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting, ‘much to everyone’s surprise’, they managed to ‘agree on a lot of things’. They concurred on the Husky plans, to the relief of Brooke who had feared the Joint Planners might try a last-minute ambush. Marshall spoke with ‘great earnestness and feeling’ about ‘sticking to the big thing. He said he had come to England before to advocate the invasion of France and had been put off with North Africa.’ If Husky fell through, and he had to accept Brimstone instead, then ‘he thought they would have to find some one else to sit in his chair’.53
For both Brooke and Marshall to threaten resignation over Husky within twelve hours of each other shows how important the capture of Sicily was to both of them, and doubtless explains why the Joint Planning Staff did not bother to pursue its campaign against the operation. After the meeting Brooke told Kennedy: ‘So it is settled that we go bald-headed for Husky.’ From one ornithologist to another, the eloquent image was of a bald-headed eagle swooping down on its prey. Before lunch, when they arrived at Roosevelt’s villa for photographs, Kennedy noticed the small ramps that had been fixed to allow the President’s chair to be wheeled smoothly from room to room. ‘What a fine head and face he has,’ he wrote. ‘It is pitiful to see that great torso and those withered legs.’54 (Such were Kennedy’s powers of observation that he even spotted that Churchill had had a button sewn on to his left shoulder in order to hold his gas mask in place.) Arnold was happy to be summoned to the villa, because in the great wartime conferences he had observed that ‘when the photographers appeared, the end was usually in sight.’ They were all exhausted, with Brooke noting, ‘It has been quite the hardest 10 days I have had from the point of view of difficulty of handling the work.’55 Kennedy thought that much had been achieved in the time, ‘But it is a good thing it is nearly over for we should all be getting on each other’s nerves if we stayed here much longer.’ He was good at understatement.
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