After a day’s rest and relaxation at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and visiting the holy sites, the Staffs returned to the Mena House Hotel in Cairo by lunchtime on Thursday 2 December 1943. For the next three days the Combined Chiefs of Staff debated hard whether to use the available landing craft for attacking the Andaman Islands, or for the Anzio operation scheduled for the following month. Marshall feared that cancelling Buccaneer might encourage Chiang Kai-shek to stop fighting in Upper Burma, which would in turn threaten the air routes to China and possibly allow the Japanese to transfer forces to the Pacific. Finally, on the evening of Sunday 5 December, Roosevelt supported Brooke over Marshall and agreed to postpone the Andaman assault.
A newspaper in Tucson, Arizona, with reputed connections to Pershing, claimed that ‘the British were trying to kick [Marshall] upstairs’ in order to get a more pliable chief of staff, which Marshall dismissed as ‘absurd’. Conspiracy theorists also claimed that Roosevelt wanted to replace Marshall with General Somervell and ensure the use of Army contracts to secure re-election, which was equally ludicrous. Yet the decision over who was to be supreme commander for Overlord–with the British refusing to have an American supreme commander over the whole of the west because of the effect on Italy–could not be long delayed after Stalin’s enquiry.
There is no reason to doubt Marshall’s own account to Pogue about how he visited the President at Cairo where Roosevelt, ‘after a great deal of beating about the bush’, asked him what he wanted to do. Marshall repeated that he would ‘cheerfully’ do whatever the President said. He could advise the Commander-in-Chief on all Army appointments, which would usually be accepted unhesitatingly, but not his own. Roosevelt finally said, ‘Well, I didn’t feel that I could sleep at ease with you out of Washington,’ so Eisenhower was appointed instead. Marshall himself recalled that Churchill, sensing Roosevelt’s hesitation in confirming his appointment, offered the job to Brooke yet again, and was ‘very much embarrassed’ when it went to Eisenhower.65 There is no confirmation for this from any other source, and Brooke would certainly have fumed to his diary if it had happened. No other Americans but Marshall and Eisenhower were in the running, because Marshall championed Eisenhower. After the war Marshall said that if he had taken the Overlord command he probably wouldn’t have been able to put up with Montgomery’s ‘overwhelming egotism’ in the way that Eisenhower did.
Discussing the situation with Stimson afterwards, Roosevelt said that ‘he had got the impression that Marshall was not only impartial between the two but perhaps preferred to remain as Chief of Staff.’66 Of course this was inherently contradictory: Marshall could not be both impartial between the two and also prefer to remain, so was Roosevelt salving his conscience in persuading himself that Marshall preferred the post that he, Roosevelt, wanted him to stay in? Stimson believed he knew from Marshall’s phrase about ‘any soldier preferring a field command’ that Marshall actually wanted Overlord.
The realities were spelt out to Stimson by Roosevelt after Marshall had specifically refused to ask for the Overlord post: ‘The President said that he had decided on a mathematical basis that if Marshall took Overlord it would mean that Eisenhower would become Chief of Staff.’ Yet Eisenhower was unfamiliar with the war in the Pacific and, in Stimson’s view, he ‘would be far less able than Marshall to handle the Congress’, both of which were vital aspects of the Chief of Staff’s duties. Roosevelt told Stimson that he ‘would feel far more comfortable if he kept Marshall at his elbow in Washington and turned over Overlord to Eisenhower’.
Afterwards, as Stimson attested, ‘never by any sign did [Marshall] show that he was not wholly satisfied with the President’s decision.’ That in itself shows tremendous strength of character if indeed he wasn’t satisfied. Stimson himself was deeply disappointed, and always regretted not going to Cairo where he thought he could have emphasized that Marshall had definitely wanted to command Overlord and was the right man for the job, because he could ‘push through the operation in spite of the obstacles and delays’ which he feared Churchill and Brooke were putting up against the operation.67 Handy, who ended the war as a four-star general and worked closely with both men as assistant chief of staff in the OPD up to 1944 and then as deputy chief of staff thereafter, thought that Eisenhower was chosen over Marshall because ‘There were situations back home and a lot more people had confidence in [Marshall] than they had in the President…They were very strongly anti-New Deal.’68
As they drove together to see the Egyptian monuments during this Second Cairo Conference, Roosevelt remarked ‘almost casually’ to Churchill that ‘as Marshall was not to have the Mediterranean and Overlord in his hands, he would prefer to keep him in Washington. He could not spare him except to have this supreme direction of the final phase of the war.’ In refusing to allow Marshall to take both western commands, therefore, Churchill was being blamed by Roosevelt for blocking Marshall’s chances of taking on Overlord alone, yet the final draft of Churchill’s war memoirs makes almost no mention of this. It was unmerited, in any case, because Churchill had been enthusiastic about Marshall commanding Overlord, just not both theatres simultaneously.
Elliott Roosevelt also blamed Churchill for effectively preventing Marshall from taking command of the cross-Channel attack. He stated that his father had said: ‘It seems pretty clear that Winston will refuse absolutely to let Marshall take over…It’s not that he’s argued too often with the PM on military matters, it’s just that he’s won too often.’ Elliott’s own view was that Marshall’s great qualities as a commander were the same ones ‘which had made him an enemy in Winston Churchill’.69 However ridiculous that might sound, it was Elliott’s genuine view. The publication of these judgements in his bestseller As He Saw It in October 1946 understandably pained Churchill.
17
Anzio, Anvil and Culverin: ‘The inevitable stumbles on a most difficult course’ December 1943–May 1944
There was no division, as in the previous war, between politicians and soldiers, between the ‘Frocks’ and the ‘Brass Hats’–odious terms which darkened counsel.
Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour1
Having read the minutes of the Eureka Conference, Major-General John Kennedy concluded that the Russians and Americans had got their way on Overlord at Teheran, an operation that Stalin wanted even if it failed, and one that if the Americans had ‘had their way they would have launched more than once in the past when they would certainly have failed’.2 One can see from this response why the Americans felt the British were lukewarm about the operation.
Eisenhower’s appointment as supreme commander for Overlord meant that changes were needed elsewhere. Churchill and Brooke conferred on 18 December 1943 and asked Roosevelt to approve Jumbo Maitland Wilson to take Eisenhower’s place as supreme commander Mediterranean, with an American commanding in Algiers, Alexander in Italy, Tedder as Eisenhower’s deputy and Mark Clark commanding Anvil. ‘We understand that this was what you and General Marshall had in mind,’ Churchill wrote to Roosevelt, copying his message to Brooke: ‘If so, we concur.’ Maitland Wilson, despite being sixty-two, ‘has all the qualifications and the necessary vigour. This is also the opinion of the CIGS. When I mentioned this idea to you at Cairo you seemed to like it.’3 Meanwhile Walter ‘Beetle’ Bedell Smith would stay on as Eisenhower’s chief of staff and move to London with him. Roosevelt and Marshall approved all the major appointments except Clark, who stayed in Italy. The Anvil attack was to be commanded by Lieutenant-General Jacob L. Devers of the US Sixth Army.
Although Tedder was to be Eisenhower’s deputy, an acknowledgement of the importance of air power in the operation, Britons also took the next three most important roles, much to American ire. Montgomery was given the subordinate command on land, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay at sea, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory in the air. Ike had initially wanted Alexander as his land commander, but the post went to Montgomery. ‘The support of one man, the CIGS Sir Alan Brooke,
had carried Montgomery first to the army command in which he gained fame in the desert, and then to the principal British role in Overlord,’ records the historian of the operation. ‘Without Brooke, it is unlikely that Montgomery would ever have gained the chance to display his qualities in the highest commands.’4
At a military conference at his Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) headquarters deep inside East Prussia on the evening of 20 December, Adolf Hitler, after considering the situation in Russia and Italy, stated that he had studied all the intelligence files, and ‘There’s no doubt the attack in the West will come in the spring; it is beyond all doubt.’ He worried that too many troops were stationed in Norway–at 430,000, he was right–and considered whether diversionary attacks might be made in the Bay of Biscay and the Balkans. He added, ‘We have one advantage; [the Allies] will come with units that are not combat-experienced.’ In answer to General Walter Buhle’s complaint that they were taking too many forces from the west to reinforce the east, Hitler said: ‘Who are you saying that to?…It is hard for me as well. Every day I see the situation in the East. It is horrible…But I’ve always had these concerns in the West.’5 These comments would have delighted Brooke, whose role as a master of strategy was acknowledged on New Year’s Day 1944 when Churchill personally insisted that he be immediately raised to the rank of field marshal, the highest in the British Army.6
Operation Shingle was a daring plan of Alexander’s to land troops on the beaches of Anzio, in the rear of the Gustav Line and only 20 miles south of Rome, thus it was hoped forcing the enemy to abandon first one and then the other. On closer investigation in December 1943, the fear that the beachhead could not link up with the Allied armies further south meant that Eisenhower tried to shelve the operation, but it was revived once he had left the Mediterranean command. On 6 January 1944 the Prime Minister tried to persuade Brooke to fly out to visit him in Marrakesh, where he was recovering from pneumonia, saying, ‘We must get this Shingle business settled, especially in view of the repercussions of the new proposals about Anvil which will certainly make the US Chiefs of Staff Committee stare.’7
Because the Germans had fiercely defended the Gustav Line that winter, Anvil started to resemble not an associated but a rival operation to the Anzio attack, to both Churchill’s and Brooke’s chagrin as they had never thought its strategic value matched the investment it would require. Although Brooke did not fly out, Bedell Smith, Alexander and Maitland Wilson all conferred with Churchill in early January, and Shingle was resuscitated, in conjunction with an attempt to smash through the Gustav Line to the Liri Valley, which led to Rome. (On his return from Marrakesh, Churchill insisted that a Customs official came to Downing Street in order to assess the duty on everything he had brought home; Lawrence Burgis saw the cheque duly made out to HM Customs and Excise.)
Marshall later acknowledged that the struggles over the size, composition and timing of Operation Anvil had constituted ‘a bitter and unremitting fight with the British right up to the launching’.8 The mutual suspicion was evident at the time, and even in 1949, when Marshall was asked by Pentagon historians whether the British had attempted to use Anvil in order to secure additional resources for the Mediterranean theatre, ‘although they never seriously considered actually invading Southern France’, he replied that ‘this was the case’ and ‘that’s what the British always were doing.’
As Eisenhower’s Planners in London increased the number of divisions needed in the initial Overlord assault from three to five, so pressure mounted for extra landing craft and naval assault vessels to come from the Mediterranean. Montgomery and Bedell Smith, who both worked under Eisenhower, agreed in early January that Anvil would be greatly reduced in size as a result. Eisenhower, who like Marshall saw Anvil as an important concomitant to Overlord which would hopefully draw away German troops from northern France, complained vociferously to Washington on 17 January, saying that at Teheran the Combined Chiefs of Staff ‘definitely assured the Russians that Anvil would take place’. Since French, British and American troops ‘cannot profitably be used in decisive fashion in Italy’, Anvil must go ahead, although he accepted that it had to be postponed until early June, to coincide with the new date for Overlord.
Both Churchill and Brooke believed that Allied troops could be used more profitably in Italy than on the French Riviera; the scene was thus set for another titanic clash between Marshall and Brooke, and not one in which Marshall would this time accept compromise, not least because January 1944 was the first month of the war when more American than British Commonwealth troops were engaged fighting Germans in the European theatre.
Yet not all Americans agreed with Marshall and Eisenhower. ‘The weakening of the campaign in Italy in order to invade Southern France, instead of pushing on into the Balkans, was one of the outstanding political mistakes of the war,’ wrote Mark Clark in his 1951 autobiography, Calculated Risk. His Fifth Army had been trying to break through the Gustav Line for several months, with mixed results.
I am firmly convinced that the French forces alone, with seven divisions available, could have captured Marseilles, protected Eisenhower’s southern flank, and advanced up the Rhone Valley to join hands with the main Overlord forces. The American VI Corps, with its three divisions, could then have remained in Italy…and we could have advanced into the Balkans.9
The very mention of an Allied offensive in the Balkans, which Churchill saw as the natural next step after the Germans were expelled from northern Italy, was anathema to Marshall. Michael Howard believes that minds in the OPD were completely closed over the Balkans, ‘with its overtones of European subtlety and intrigue’.10 They also suspected British neo-imperialist designs there, rather as they did in the Far East, however absurd that might have been for the area north-east of the Adriatic Sea in the mid-1940s.
Where did Roosevelt stand? In October and November 1943, the US Planners feared that Overlord might be lost altogether because the President seemed to be interested in Churchill’s ideas about the Balkans. ‘We were always scared to death of Mr Roosevelt on the Balkans,’ Marshall told Pogue frankly in 1956. ‘Apparently he was with us, but we couldn’t bet on it at all.’11 There was always the possibility that the President might do over the Balkans in late 1943 what he had done over North Africa in the summer of 1942. It is clear from a telegram Churchill sent Roosevelt in late June 1944–‘Please remember how you spoke to me at Teheran about Istria’–that the two men had been at the very least ‘shooting the breeze’ together about a Balkan campaign. As for Brooke, after the war he wrote of the Americans, ‘At times I think that they imagined I supported Winston’s Balkan ambitions, which was far from being the case. Anyhow the Balkan ghost in the cupboard made my road none the easier in leading the Americans by the hand through Italy!’12 In fact Brooke had on occasion supported a Balkan campaign, whatever his later protestations.
The Anzio landings of the Allied VI Corps on Saturday 22 January 1944–initially comprising one British and one American division–might have succeeded had its American commander Major-General John Lucas got inland fast enough to capture the Alban Hills just south of Rome. He had come ashore with minimal opposition because the Germans had sent two reserve divisions from the Rome area to reinforce the Gustav Line, but he decided to get reserves, equipment and supplies ashore first, which proved a costly mistake. Kesselring despatched troops from central Italy to protect Rome, and then further reinforcements from France, Germany and Yugoslavia hemmed VI Corps into a beachhead of only 8 miles, which was defended gallantly for the next four months as Clark fought northwards to relieve it.
‘If we succeed in dealing with this business down there,’ Hitler told Warlimont, ‘there will be no further landings anywhere.’13 The Führer sent Eberhard von Mackensen’s Fourteenth Army, with its crack panzer, panzer-grenadier and paratroop units, to try to destroy the Allied beachhead, leaving the Tenth Army to hold the Gustav Line. The battlegrounds of Anzio and Monte Cassino were constantly reinforced by Hitl
er in early spring 1944, thereby denuding himself of divisions that he would need to deal with Overlord three months later. Marshall could not understand why Hitler did not merely withdraw his forces to the impregnable Alps, but it was evident from Ultra decrypts that he wanted to defend every inch of Italy instead.
This was Brooke’s plan for Italy, and disproves Basil Liddell Hart’s theory that it was the Germans who successfully diverted the Allies in Italy rather than the other way around. Throughout 1944, from nineteen to twenty-three German divisions–one-seventh of the entire Wehrmacht–were stationed in Italy, unable to operate in Normandy. In 1943, a full one-third of all Luftwaffe losses were sustained in the Mediterranean theatre, and in all the Italian campaign was to cost the Germans 536,000 casualties against 312,000 Allied.14 It was far harder to supply the Allies, of course, but the campaign was well worth undertaking in its earliest stages. It certainly tied down far more Germans than Anvil ever could have. The problem was that once committed emotionally–and in Churchill’s case chauvinistically–the British carried on fighting for objectives far removed from the central one that had taken them there in the first place.
According to Beaverbrook, who was lord privy seal at the time and had good access to his friend the Prime Minister, Anzio was ‘definitely an attempt to re-open the Mediterranean theatre in the hope that such progress might be made there that the Americans could be persuaded to delay D-Day until it would be little more than a mopping-up operation’.15 He claimed that at Marrakesh Churchill had been talking in terms of ‘driving the Germans headlong over the Alps and capturing Vienna’. It is most unlikely that Churchill referred to Overlord as a mere mopping-up operation, however, a phrase which smacks of Beaverbrook’s ex post facto rationalizations in favour of an early Second Front, of which he had been a chief advocate. For all that, Churchill did write a minute on 25 January saying that it was ‘very unwise to make plans on the basis of Hitler being defeated in 1944. The possibility of his gaining a victory in France cannot be excluded.’
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