Atlantic First was not left long in doubt. Roosevelt and his military chiefs quickly made clear that—even under the frightful pressure of Pacific defeats—the Americans still saw Germany as the main enemy and victory in Europe as crucial to the whole global effort. Indeed, little time was spent during these tumultuous days on any fundamental reconsideration of the long-planned priority. The old Plan Dog was almost taken for granted. Reassured, Churchill, in the first evening’s discussion, plunged into the next question-strategy for Europe.
The Prime Minister had rarely been in better form. He had carefully worked out his plans for Europe and cleared them with his military men on the way across the ocean. Now, flanked by Beaverbrook and Halifax, he presented his case to Roosevelt, Hull, Hopkins, and Welles. If the Germans were held in Russia, he said, they would try something else—probably an attack through Spain and Portugal into North Africa. It was vital to forestall such a move. He than presented his plan—GYMNAST. He proposed that American forces invade Northwest Africa in the Casablanca area, and later hook up with British troops renewing their drive along the North African coast from the east into Tunisia.
The eager Prime Minister wanted to launch the attack quickly—in three weeks, he hoped. He had 55,000 troops ready to load onto ships at short notice. The actual plan of operation would depend largely on whether the French authorities in Northwest Africa cooperated or not. It seemed to Churchill—and so he reported confidently to his War Cabinet—that Roosevelt favored the plan “with or without invitation” from the French.
Perhaps Roosevelt was merely being the polite host this first evening; perhaps, as the absent Stimson and Marshall feared, he tended to be vulnerable to Churchill’s eloquence and zeal when his military staff was not with him. In any event, Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for a North African invasion had cooled markedly by next day, when the two leaders presided over a meeting of their staffs. The President now spoke on the basis of a War Department memorandum that stressed the safety of the British Isles as the central “fortress” and of Atlantic communications, but played down the value of American action anywhere in the Mediterranean. Stimson and Marshall had won the President’s endorsement of this approach at a war conference the day before the British arrived; but the Secretary was as surprised as he was delighted when his chief now used the memorandum to brief Churchill and his party.
While Churchill’s hopes for GYMNAST sank, the President posed other major possibilities. He was willing to take over the defense of Northern Ireland, thus freeing British troops for use elsewhere. He granted the importance of the islands in the eastern Atlantic, but inclined toward the Cape Verde Islands, rather than the Azores. He acclaimed the British successes in Libya but doubted the value of placing American troops there. He then moved across the globe to the Pacific. It was vital, he said, that Singapore be held; the United States would do its utmost to save the Philippines, or at least to help the defense of the Dutch East Indies.
By the time Churchill took over, the initiative had been gained by the President. The Prime Minister still clung to GYMNAST, emphasizing that British advances into Tunisia might arouse French support, or precipitate a showdown between Berlin and Vichy—and in either case Africa would be a fine opportunity. But Marshall remained cool to GYMNAST if it required a large American force.
The emergent difference between the Allies cast a long shadow on future strategy. In proposing GYMNAST Churchill had challenged the strategic assumptions and professional bias of Marshall and his fellow soldiers, and especially Stimson. The Americans were inclining toward a long build-up and then a massive, concentrated thrust toward the enemy center—Germany. Any other move was a dispersion of effort unless it directly supported this central thrust. The American mind in war planning, as well as in commerce and production, Churchill felt, ran to “broad, sweeping, logical conclusions on the largest scale,” while the British allowed more for the role of opportunism and improvisation, trying to adjust to unfolding events rather than to dominate them. To the American military such strategic assumptions led to expediency, dispersion of effort, to that “peripheralism” that had marked so much of Churchill’s thinking beginning with the Dardanelles in World War I. To the British, with their limited resources and perhaps more patient view of history, this kind of strategy was more supple, flexible, sophisticated. Churchill also feared that a long preparation for the final assault by the Americans would mean their hoarding the munitions and supplies that he had been planning on for the months directly ahead. GYMNAST was also being strangled by the rush of events. While the planners talked in Washington, the Japanese hurricane was sweeping south and west. Some in the White House feared that the Japanese might bombard the West Coast, lay mines in the ports, or even land troops from the sea or air. Roosevelt and his staff still did not flinch from their strategic commitment to Atlantic First, but the crisis in the Pacific could demand day-to-day commitments that might erode that strategy. Even to slow up the Japanese, Washington had to support and strengthen its outposts, and the shipping requirements were appalling. The Japanese were carving an enormous salient into the direct route between the West Coast and Tokyo, which ordinarily would run just south of Alaska. The turnaround time between the East Coast and Australia was three months. Shipping had been short all along; now it would clog Allied strategy in both oceans.
The Pacific crisis also precipitated the whole problem of unified command. On Christmas afternoon, at a meeting of the American and British military chiefs in the Federal Reserve Building, across Constitution Avenue from the War and Navy buildings, Marshall seized the initiative. The Japanese could not be stopped, he said, unless there was complete unity of command over naval, land, and air forces. “With differences between groups and between services, the situation is impossible unless we operate on a frank and direct basis.” He was no orator, but he was so earnest that his words became eloquent. “I am convinced that there must be one man in command of the entire theatre—air, ground, and ships.” Cooperation was not enough; human frailties were such that local commanders would not put their troops under another service. He was ready to go the limit.
Marshall had a special reason to speak feelingly; at this point he was still smarting from a brief skirmish with the President. That morning he had heard that on Christmas Eve his Commander in Chief had blithely discussed with Churchill the possibility that if American forces assigned to MacArthur were not able to get to the Pacific, they be turned over to the British. When Marshall and his colleagues took this report to Stimson, the Secretary became so heated over this threat to his precious reserves for MacArthur that he telephoned Hopkins that he would resign if the President persisted in this kind of thing. Hopkins raised this matter with Roosevelt and Churchill, who both denied that they had reached such an agreement—but Stimson cited the minutes that a British secretary had made of the evening meeting. The episode bolstered Marshall’s view that only a unified Pacific Theater command would permit orderly planning and decision making.
That way of running things was not much to Roosevelt’s taste. Typically he had not made basic changes in his own command arrangements. He had put the old Army-Navy Joint Board under the White House in 1939, but he preferred to deal informally and often separately with his military chiefs. His British guests were agog at the American command setup. “There are no regular meetings of their Chiefs of Staff,” Dill wrote home to Brooke, “and if they do meet there is no secretariat to record their proceedings. They have no joint planners and executive planning staff….” Simply informing the President was a problem. “He just sees the Chiefs of Staff at odd times, and again no record. There is no such thing as a Cabinet meeting….The whole organization belongs to the days of George Washington.…”
In the press of crisis, though, Roosevelt was willing to change his ways—at least for a theater 8,000 miles away. He supported Marshall’s specific proposal that the combined American, British, Dutch, and Australian—ABDA—sea, land, and air forces in the Southwest Paci
fic be placed at once under a single top commander with an inter-Allied staff. The huge theater would embrace not only the East Indies, Malaya, the Philippines, New Guinea, and Burma, but would also stretch limitlessly to New Britain, the Solomons, the Fijis, Samoa. Marshall won the grudging backing of Knox and some of the admirals. The main obstacle would be the British—and here Roosevelt tried some reverse English. “Don’t be in a hurry to turn down the proposal the President is going to make to you,” Hopkins said to Churchill, “before you know who is the man we have in mind.” It was Wavell. Churchill was dubious about unity of command over such a vast expanse; some of his staff wondered whether Wavell was slated to be a British scapegoat who would preside over a rapidly disappearing command. But in the face of Roosevelt’s and Marshall’s persuasiveness, backed by Beaverbrook at a timely moment, Churchill agreed to the new command and commander.
This step in turn forced a far bigger decision on the structure of the top command. To whom was the ABDA commander to report? The British proposed a divided chiefs of staff committee, operating in both Washington and London and clearing with the Dutch, Australians, and New Zealanders. After some hesitation Roosevelt rejected this cumbersome arrangement and substituted a simple meeting in Washington between the American and British staffs, in turn reporting to the President and the Prime Minister, with the other nations consulted “if advisable.” It was no embarrassment to Roosevelt that he had no joint chiefs in the British sense, and that he had no air chief as a counterpart to the head of Britain’s RAF. He simply created, as the American component of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, a Joint Chiefs of Staff composed of Marshall, King, a hard-bitten old salt slated to replace Stark as Chief of Naval Operations, and General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, whose genial manner masked a flair for organization and management. In this rather backward fashion were the Allied and American command structures established.
“The Americans have got their way and the war will be run from Washington,” wrote Churchill’s observant personal physician, Sir Charles Wilson (later Lord Moran), doubtless reflecting feeling among the British chiefs, “but they will not be wise to push us so unceremoniously in the future.” Churchill accepted the decision with good grace, largely because of his profound confidence in Roosevelt, Marshall, and Hopkins.
SENIOR PARTNERS, AND JUNIOR
During these days of long conferences in Washington and deepening crisis in the Pacific, the President continued work on the declaration of Allied unity. He was discovering that gaining agreement from a score of allies on even a simple proclamation was full of snares. One arose over a “freedom of religion” clause. The President, much to his later remorse, had left religion out of the Atlantic Charter; now surprisingly he left it out of his and Churchill’s Christmas Day draft. Hopkins urged him to put it in—but this meant gaining the concurrence of the Russians. Litvinov had flown in; perhaps he could help.
The old Bolshevik had had his ups and downs since the cheerier days of 1933 when he was talking with Roosevelt about recognition. Dismissed by Stalin at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, in 1939, the long-time proponent of collective security had faded into obscurity, only to be plucked out as Washington and Moscow were forced into partnership. From his war-stricken capital Litvinov had flown across the Pacific just in advance of the Japanese attack and had landed in a Washington still full of shiny cars, traffic jams, food, and parties.
The President found Litvinov notably less ebullient than in the old days. The envoy was clearly reluctant to urge Number One in Moscow to endorse a religious pledge, but Roosevelt was insistent. When Litvinov said that the Kremlin might agree to the phrase “freedom of conscience,” Roosevelt assured him that it was exactly the same thing. Indeed, Roosevelt added expediently, the old Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom was so democratic that it included the right to have no religion at all; a person had the right to worship God or choose no god. Armed with this interpretation, Litvinov won the concurrence of Moscow.
The President took great pride in his feat. He regaled the White House company so often with his account of how he had talked with the Russian envoy about his own soul and the dangers of hell-fire, Churchill remembered later, that the Prime Minister promised to recommend him for appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury if he lost the next election.
The declaration ran into other obstacles, large and small. Roosevelt and Churchill wanted it to include “authorities” as well as “governments” as signatories, so that the Free French could sign, but Hull at this point had become indignant with the Free French to the verge of resignation over de Gaulle’s unauthorized occupation of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, French islands south of Newfoundland, and Litvinov said that he could not agree to such a major change anyway. Churchill was annoyed at Hull’s making so much of one small episode amid gigantic events, and contemptuous of Litvinov for acting like a frightened automaton. Roosevelt mediated the differences, but “authorities” stayed out. The Americans wanted India included in the signatories, but here Churchill resisted. The British wanted “social security” kept in the declaration, but Roosevelt dropped it, partly out of deference to congressional sensitivities. Another problem was Russia’s relation with Japan; the declaration could call for victory only over Hitlerism, rather than over the Tripartite powers.
On New Year’s Day, after a week of cabling among twenty-six countries, Roosevelt was wheeled into Churchill’s room with the final version in hand. “I got out of my bath,” Churchill said later, “and agreed to the draft.” Roosevelt proposed at the last moment that the term “United Nations” replace “Associated Powers.” Churchill was delighted; he showed his host the lines from Byron’s Childe Harold:
“Here, where the sword united
nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on
that day!”
And this is much—and all—which
will not pass away.
Roosevelt, Churchill, Litvinov, and T. V. Soong, the new Ambassador from China, gathered in the President’s study on the evening of New Year’s Day. The text lay before them.
DECLARATION BY UNITED NATIONS
A JOINT DECLARATION BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, BELGIUM, CANADA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GREECE, GUATEMALA, HAITI, HONDURAS, INDIA, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, NORWAY, PANAMA, POLAND, SOUTH AFRICA, YUGOSLAVIA.
The Governments signatory hereto,
Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter,
Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence, and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world, DECLARE:
(I) Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such Government is at war.
(2) Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.
The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other Nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism.
Done at Washington
January First, 1942
The President signed first. Eleanor Roosevelt, Lash, and a few other onlookers watched from near the door, and Lash recorded the scene in his diary: Roosevelt observed that perhaps he should have signed as “Commander in Chief.” “ ‘President ought to do,’ Hopkins said dryly. Churchill
then signed. The President looked and then called out, ‘Hey, ought you not to sign ‘Great Britain and Ireland?’ Churchill agreed, corrected his signature and then stalked around the study, a look of great satisfaction on his face. Litvinov signed next, and finally T. V. Soong for China. While Soong was signing, Churchill asked Litvinov whether he had not seen him once on a plane to Paris. Litvinov looked blank and then said, betraying the tension he was under, ‘It may have been my wife.’
“Four fifths of the human race,” Churchill remarked when Soong had finished signing. Four-fifths of the human race. But on this New Year’s Day at the White House, governments representing four-fifths of that four-fifths—hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indians, and Russians—were not given seats on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which was to frame global strategy, and these governments had worries and forebodings about the shape of United Nations command and strategy.
The Kuomintang’s elation at gaining two allies was soon offset by its growing fear that American aid, with many more mouths and guns to feed, might fall off rather than increase, at least for a time. Japan’s invasion of Burma threatened to cut the Burma Road, along which a trickle of supplies was coming in. The great connecting points with the West—Singapore, the Philippines, the East Indies—were already under attack. Chiang accepted supreme command of Allied land and air forces in the theater he already commanded. The only other step Roosevelt felt able to take was to arrange for a “political loan” to Chungking. “I am anxious to help Chiang Kai-shek and his currency,” he wrote to Morgenthau. “I hope you can invent some way of doing this.” Reluctantly—because he had little confidence in China’s capacity to fight—the Secretary obtained from Congress authorization for a half-billion-dollar loan to China, with repayment deferred until the end of the war. But Chiang still lacked what he wanted—massive aid in arms and a seat in the top strategic councils.
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