The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Churchill to Roosevelt, August 27, 1942: “We are all profoundly disconcerted” by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff proposal to throw the weight of the assault against Casablanca. “It seems to me that the whole pith of the operation will be lost if we do not take Algiers as well as Oran on the first day.” The crucial thing was to move quickly east to Tunisia before the Germans could reinforce it. Casablanca might easily become an isolated failure. If a choice had to be made between Algiers and Casablanca, Churchill favored attacking the former and dropping the latter.

  Roosevelt to Churchill, August 30: “I feel very strongly that the initial attacks must be made by an exclusively American ground force, supported by your naval, transport, and air units. The operation should be undertaken on the assumption that the French will offer less resistance to us than they will to the British.” He would need a week after the landing to secure the nonresistance of the French. “Then your force can come in to the eastward.” It would take German air and parachute troops at least two weeks to get to Algiers or Tunis. Meanwhile British troops would be ashore, without much opposition, it was to be hoped, and moving east. The landings must be near Casablanca and Oran; possibly there could be a third.

  Churchill to Roosevelt, September 1: “We could not contest your wish, if you so desire it, to take upon the United States the whole burden, political and military, of the landings.” But would not the British participation be revealed quickly? How would Americans be distinguished from British? “In the night all cats are grey.” What if high surf prevented disembarkation on Atlantic beaches? And if a political bloodless victory should go amiss—and the bungled attack on Dakar two years back had been a sad case of cluttering things up with “preliminary conciliatory processes”—would Roosevelt have enough trained forces to do the job directly and simply?

  Roosevelt to Churchill, September 3: “Your willingness to cooperate by agreeing that all initial landings will be made by United States ground forces is appreciated.” True, British participation would soon be discovered, but this would not have quite the same effect as British forces making the first beach landings. “Bad surf conditions on the Atlantic beaches is a calculated risk.” In view of Churchill’s urgent desire that Algiers be occupied simultaneously with Casablanca and Oran, he proposed to add Algiers, with 10,000 American troops, if the British could supply the additional forces.

  Churchill to Roosevelt, September 3: “We have spent the day looking into physical possibilities.” Accepting Roosevelt’s general outline, he proposed that Casablanca be reduced by 10,000 or 12,000 troops and the other landings strengthened.

  At this point he composed a despairing letter to Hopkins. What was behind all the difficulty? The President’s enterprise was being wrecked bit by bit, Eisenhower and his staff officers in London were distressed, every day’s delay was helping the Germans forestall the venture.

  Roosevelt to Churchill, September 4: “We are getting very close together.” He was willing to reduce the Casablanca force by 5,000 men. “Since a similar reduction was made in original Oran assault force, this releases a total of British and United States combat loaders for some 10,000 men for use at Algiers.”

  Churchill to Roosevelt, September 5: “We agree to the military layout as you propose it. We have plenty of troops highly trained for landing. If convenient, they can wear your uniform. They will be proud to do so.” He put away the letter to Hopkins.

  Roosevelt to Churchill, September 5: “Hurrah!”

  Churchill to Roosevelt, September 6: “O.K., full blast.”

  He had very good reason, Roosevelt felt, to ask that American troops be the more visible forces on the beaches. Over six months before, Intelligence officials had visited Cantril at Princeton to ask his help in gauging French attitudes toward the Americans and the British. Cantril’s new assignment was a challenging one. He would have to gauge likely opposition to, or co-operation with, an American landing without his investigators revealing their goal. Northwest Africa, with its split populations and ethnic diversity, would have been a challenge to the pollster under the most controlled conditions. Opinions of various populations would have to be weighted in terms of their importance in relation to a possible landing. Interviewing could not be straightforward, but would have to be indirect and guarded, for suspicion must not be aroused. Despite all the difficulties, a group of Americans in North Africa under Cantril’s absentee direction were able to conduct 142 usable interviews. Although the sample was askew, the returns clearly indicated that an American landing would meet less resistance than an Anglo-American invasion, because of Vichy suspicion of British imperialistic aims and memories of Anglo-French rivalry. The study also led to a proposal that the American voice most known and respected in France—that of Franklin D. Roosevelt—speak to the French in French just after the landing.

  The date for the attack was another problem. Originally Roosevelt had set it for some time in October, with October 30 the latest. Discussing TORCH with Marshall, he held up his folded hands in mock prayer and said, “Please make it before Election Day.” But the expansion of the operation caused Eisenhower and his colleagues to postpone it until November 8, five days after the election. Roosevelt took the delay gamely. This was a decision that rested with Eisenhower, he told friends, not with the Democratic National Committee. He doubtless had few illusions, however, about an automatic relation between an African landing—which might, after all, fail—and votes for Democratic candidates for Congress. He was probably content to settle for the plaudits he would receive for “rising above politics.”

  At the moment he was more interested in French African politics. He coached Murphy on the reasons to give the French for the invasion. Murphy must state that information had been received of Axis plans to intervene in French North Africa, that American troops would land to protect French sovereignty and administration, that no change in the existing French administration was planned, that the Americans hoped for and would welcome French assistance—and would guarantee salaries, death benefits, and pensions for French officials who helped the enterprise.

  “You will restrict your dealings to French officials on the local level, prefects, and the military,” Roosevelt admonished Murphy. “I will not help anyone impose a Government on the French people.” Murphy returned to Africa hoping he could enlist General Henri Giraud, who had been captured by the Germans in 1940 and had escaped two years later, to arouse support for the Allies. But he was specifically authorized to negotiate with Darlan if necessary. Churchill said that much as he hated Darlan he would crawl on his hands and knees a mile if Darlan would bring over the French fleet. De Gaulle was to be left completely out of the venture.

  Anxiety mounted in Washington and London during the final days. A new battle commander in Egypt, Bernard Montgomery, launched a heavy counterattack against Rommel on October 23, and for a week the armies grappled with each other inconclusively. Battles were also raging in Stalingrad and in the Solomons. Then, from the United States and from the British Isles the vanguard of a fleet of over six hundred ships carrying an assault force of 90,000 men plowed through the Atlantic. The task force of over one hundred ships sailing directly from the United States moved across the Atlantic like a drunken sailor, now pointing toward Dakar, now toward Britain. A British fleet of three battleships, two carriers, and twenty-one cruisers and destroyers covered the Oran and Algiers task forces.

  Eisenhower was now at his Gibraltar command post deep in the cold, dripping tunnels of the Rock. So discouraged during previous weeks that he could barely put on a confident mien, he was now having the most anxious night of his whole military career. At the last moment Murphy had asked that the invasion be postponed because political prospects seemed poor, but it was much too late; the vast machinery had long been set in motion. Stimson had spent sleepless hours in bed wondering if Hitler would strike through Spain. Marshall was on edge. Steve Early heard about the invasion just before it started. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “why couldn
’t the Army have done this just before election!”

  Roosevelt was at Shangri-La on Saturday night, November 7, with Hopkins and a few friends, as the invasion was starting in the early hours of the morning, African time. He was tense and preoccupied. The telephone rang. Grace Tully answered. It was the War Department. The President’s hand shook as he took the receiver. He listened intently, then burst out:

  “Thank God. Thank God. That sounds grand. Congratulations. Casualties are comparatively light—much below your predictions. Thank God.”

  He put down the receiver and turned to the group.

  “We have landed in North Africa…. We are striking back.”

  TO WALK WITH THE DEVIL

  War is the grand totalizer. The fits of luck and chance that make or break single operations tend to be canceled out in the numberless collisions of vast and extended forces. Roosevelt’s luck rose with the military landings in Africa, which evaded almost all the perils that the soldiers had feared, and fell with the political operation, on which he had lavished such effort and thought.

  In the early hours of November 8 troops scrambled ashore from a dozen target points along the shoulder of Northwest Africa from south of Casablanca to east of Algiers. Some landings went according to plan, and the troops moved quickly inland against little or no resistance; in other places boats got lost and milled around, soldiers were landed miles from their objectives, and fire fights broke out with the French defenders. But luck prevailed: the Atlantic surf was amazingly calm: the U-boats had been successfully feinted off; the French troops, although quickly rallying to action at some points, suffered from strategic surprise. Key airports and installations fell quickly into Allied hands. And the sheer numbers and spread of invading troops made up for the hasty training and inadequate equipment.

  The Commander in Chief was present in his own way. A letter from him to his troops was handed out on all ships just before disembarkation: “Upon the outcome depends the freedom of your lives: the freedom of the lives of those you love.…” A few Frenchmen were startled to hear in the early hours the voice of Franklin Roosevelt over BBC London, in French: “My friends, who suffer day and night, under the crushing yoke of the Nazis, I speak to you as one who was with your Army and Navy in France in 1918. I have held all my life the deepest friendship for the French people.…I know your farms, your villages, and your cities. I know your soldiers, professors, and workmen.…I salute again and reiterate my faith in Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” He asked the French to aid the invasion. “Vive la France éternelle!”

  At this point Roosevelt’s man in Algiers was appealing to the Frenchmen’s “self-interest and national ideals”—and running into trouble. Murphy had planned that as the landings began at Algiers he would inform the local French authorities that a huge American force was invading Africa and that General Giraud was on hand to take charge. Two things were going wrong early in the morning of the eighth—neither Giraud nor the Allied troops had arrived. And unexpectedly the highest-ranking Frenchman at the moment in Algiers was Admiral Darlan, who was visiting his son, who was ill with polio. Only Darlan could act for Pétain. At first the Admiral was furious when Murphy told him the situation. Apparently the Americans were as stupid as the British, he said. But when Murphy intimated that half a million troops—only a several-fold exaggeration—were descending on the continent, Darlan’s indignation gave way to Gallic realism, or at least self-interest. He told Murphy he would co-operate if Pétain approved.

  In Vichy, far to the north, the old Marshal received the American Chargé d’Affaires. Roosevelt, “as the Chef d’Etat of the United States to the Chef d’Etat of the Republic of France,” had sent him a message. The Germans had “neglected no opportunity to demoralize and degrade your great Nation,” Roosevelt said. They were planning to invade and occupy French North Africa and would then threaten the Americas. He was hoping for the co-operation of the French authorities in North Africa. Pétain’s answer, composed by Laval and others, was ready for the Chargé. The Marshal had learned of the Allied aggression with stupor and sadness. Roosevelt was attributing false intentions to his enemies. He had always declared he would defend the empire; he would keep his word. The honor of France was at stake.

  “We are attacked; we shall defend ourselves; this is the order I am giving.” Actually, the Marshal’s feelings were far more mixed than his words, but he was as constricted as ever. Shortly, he broke diplomatic relations with the United States—but also authorized Darlan to act in his behalf.

  In the fog of politics French officers groped for instructions and order. By midafternoon of the eighth, with Algiers almost surrounded, its coastal batteries overrun, its forts under siege, Darlan agreed to the capitulation of the city. It was different elsewhere. Two cutters with a mixed commando force had stormed Oran harbor before dawn; both had been destroyed, with the loss of all but a handful of the force. Troops made rapid progress ashore at Oran, but the French were resisting and by evening were preparing counterattacks for the next day. The heaviest fighting erupted on the Atlantic beachheads. Noguès, in Casablanca, assumed from first reports that the attack was merely a commando raid; he ordered resistance. After some amateurish landings that produced endless delay and muddle, American troops ran into heavy French gunfire as they pressed into the main cities.

  The most dramatic action was a sea battle off Casablanca—“an old-fashioned fire-away Flannagan” between surface vessels, it was called by Samuel Morison, the combat historian present. French warships sortied from the harbor against the big American fleet; Jean Bart, the uncompleted French battleship lying immobile in the harbor, spoke with her fifteen-inch guns; American battleships, cruisers, and destroyers poured fire on the hapless French flotilla, sinking or disabling the Jean Bart at her berth and a dozen other warships. Among the numerous American sailors winning commendation that day was Lieutenant Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., a gunnery officer on a destroyer.

  During the following days young Roosevelt’s father, who had returned from Shangri-La to the White House, would doubtless have swapped his place for his son’s in a simple fire-away Flannagan. Reports from Algiers and Gibraltar were indicating a political situation of mounting complexity and danger. On November 9 Eisenhower’s deputy, General Mark Clark, arrived in Algiers, amid a Nazi bombing raid, with the hope of ending hostilities. Giraud arrived, too, with a long-time “promise” from Roosevelt that he would be top man in North Africa. Clark met with Darlan the next day. The American General, like his chief in Gibraltar, abhorred the political aspects of the war. He divided the French leaders into good guys and those he code-named, in reports to Eisenhower, YBSOBS—“yellow-bellied sons-of-bitches.” Clark’s overwhelming way had its immediate impact; Darlan wanted to wait for more definite orders from Vichy as to a cease-fire, but under Clark’s pressure he sent directives in the Marshal’s name to Oran and to Morocco, where Noguès ordered a cease-fire just in time to avert a heavy American attack.

  It was one thing for Clark, with his bigger battalions, to obtain an armistice, something else to gain Roosevelt’s real objective-active French assistance in attacking Germans and Italians to the east. In his continuing negotiations with Clark, Darlan had some high cards: his seeming embodiment of the will and confidence of the Marshal; his influence over the officers, bureaucrats, and colons who ran France’s African domain; his ability to draw things out in contrast to Eisenhower’s desperate need to get Northwest Africa pacified and the French mobilized for the push into Tunisia before the Germans gained a foothold there. The French fleet at Toulon was the big pot in the game. One thing was rapidly becoming clear: American Intelligence had been grievously wrong in thinking that Giraud had strong support, existing or potential, among the French. He was simply dismissed as a dissident. Happily Giraud himself came to realize his political impotence and was willing to take military command in Africa under Darlan’s headship.

  While Clark and Darlan negotiated, Hitler acted with his usual dispat
ch. Meeting with Laval in Munich, the Führer demanded that Vichy at once make Tunisian ports and air bases available to the Axis. Laval proclaimed his fanatic hostility to Bolshevism—but only the Marshal could grant Hitler’s request. The Führer gave immediate orders. At midnight that evening—November 11—motorized German units stabbed across the armistice frontier and swept through southern France without resistance. Italian divisions moved into southeastern France and Corsica. The Axis took steps to fortify Tunisia, even at the expense of Rommel’s army retreating west under harrying attacks from Montgomery’s desert troops.

  Hitler’s gulp of the rest of France broke the impasse in Algiers. While Pétain publicly ordered Darlan to continue fighting, the Admiral could claim that the Marshal was acting under duress and in any event was sending out secret orders countermanding his public ones. Negotiations were soon concluded. Eisenhower, who made a brief trip to Algiers, Clark, and Murphy agreed with Darlan, Giraud, and other local French leaders that Darlan would be the political chief and would retain his command of naval forces; the French would actively help liberate Tunisia, and other matters would be left to further negotiations. To the Americans on the scene it seemed to be a safe and sensible arrangement—certainly nothing that could produce an explosion back home.

  “Prostitutes are used; they are seldom loved. Even less frequently are they honored.” The Darlan deal was only the latest and worst of a long series of concessions and bargains that had weakened and were still weakening democratic resistance. “The United States has only one claim on the allegiance of the peoples of the world: an honest and courageous democratic policy.” Africa had produced a “historic clash between two theories of political behavior—the ‘quarterback’ or opportunist theory, long indorsed by the President, and the theory which insists upon the importance of a thought-out, consistent political line.” But what doubtless appeared a reasonable military expedient was proving a costly political blunder. Darlan was America’s first Quisling. Appeasement was winning out. These were the words of Freda Kirchwey, editor and publisher of the Nation, but also the sentiments of a host of liberals, idealists, and independents when they got news of the Darlan deal. Walter Lippmann and Dorothy Thompson raised sharp and influential voices. Feeling was even stronger in liberal and left-wing circles in Britain. In both countries opposition developed in high councils of state. Concerned about the effect of the deal on de Gaulle’s status and morale, Eden wrangled with Churchill to the point where the Prime Minister shouted, “Well, Darlan is not as bad as de Gaulle anyway!” In Washington, Stimson was so alarmed at the reaction that he invited his best liberal friends—Morgenthau, Frankfurter, MacLeish—to his home and argued for the military value of the deal. Morgenthau was not placated. He passionately denounced Darlan as a man who had sold thousands of people into slavery, as a violent British-hater; no, the price was too high. The Secretary of the Treasury seemed to Stimson so “sunk” that he was almost for giving up the war. If Frankfurter had any misgivings about the deal, there is no record of his having communicated them to the President.