Overcoming Stalin’s leeriness of Churchill with regard to a Second Front had been a tough assignment, Davies had told the President on his return to Washington on June 3. “Stalin said to me expressly that he could accept neither the African invasion [Torch] nor the Air Attack on Germany as the Second Front . . . He was suspicious, not only of the British, but of us, as well,” Davies had reported. “They are convinced that Churchill, if he can help it, will consent to a cross-channel crossing only when there is no risk to them”—the British. “They believed that Britain is stalling on a cross-channel operation,” both to “save her manpower” and to “divert the attack through the Balkans and Italy” in order to “protect the classic British Foreign policy of walling Russia in, closing the Dardanelles, and building a countervailing balance of power against Russia.”
This was a pretty astute reading of British policy—but one that completely ignored the problem of defeating Hitler and the Nazis. As Stalin had pointed out to Davies, Allied operations in the Mediterranean were simply not on the scale of war as on the Eastern Front—where the “Germans had not less than three million” troops “attacking another three million of the Red Army—a total of at least six million—ten times as many as engaged in the African campaign.”3
Stalin had seemed to Davies to be disappointed in the Western Allies, yet mollified by Davies’s sincerity—and the President’s firm commitment to mounting a Second Front as soon as feasible.
For his part, the President nevertheless continued to worry lest his “active and ardent lieutenant” become too ardent in terms of Mediterranean operations in the wake of success in Sicily. He’d heard from General Marshall that the Prime Minister was once again seized by excitement, and was plotting a new course in London—one he’d coyly revealed to Secretary Stimson, who was visiting American forces in Britain.
The Prime Minister was still only paying lip service to the Trident agreement, Stimson reported to Washington, after meeting with Churchill—and might well go off on a Mediterranean tangent unless leashed by the President. So worried had Stimson become, in fact, that he’d made a transatlantic telephone call to the Pentagon on July 17, a week after the invasion of Sicily. “The scrambling noise over the wires produced a peculiar effect on Marshall’s voice,” Stimson noted in his diary that night, “rendering the tones quite unrecognizable,” but the secretary found he could “recognize the peculiarities” of Marshall’s speech. “I began telling him of my conferences with the P.M., particularly last Monday the 12th. I summed up what I thought was his position, namely, that he was honestly ready to keep the pledge as to ‘Roundhammer’ [Overlord] but was impulsively likely to branch out into commitments which would make it impossible”—tying up in the Mediterranean the very battle-hardened U.S. and British forces and landing craft needed for a successful cross-Channel invasion early in 1944. Churchill seemed to Stimson to be fixated on seizing the Italian capital—that “he was very set on a march to Rome.” More worrying still in terms of the suction-pump effect of the Mediterranean, Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, “was dead set on the Balkans and Greece.”
The President had winced at the news. Churchill had even claimed that General Eisenhower’s “heart,” too, was invested in a bold new stroke in the Mediterranean—such as an airborne drop near the Italian capital: Operation Giant. Stimson was concerned that a dangerous overconfidence seemed to be infecting not only Churchill’s bunker in London, but possibly Algiers.
The acting commander of American forces in Britain, General Jacob Devers, had assured Stimson, however, that Eisenhower’s three service commanders in the Mediterranean—all of whom were British—had poured as much cold water on Eisenhower’s idea as did Devers. Not only was this because of “the danger of executing an operation beyond the reach of air cover,” but because of the “drain on landing craft”—craft that would be needed for Overlord. Others, too, were putting an oar into the debate—Stimson even told Marshall of a telegram to Churchill from Field Marshal Smuts, supporting Anthony Eden’s Balkan aspirations. Marshall responded that he had not seen this—and was worried by the news. “Marshall said that in the light of these circumstances he thought I ought to go as promptly as possible to see Eisenhower where I would be able to round out what I had gotten here in London with the views of the people in Africa.”4
The U.S. secretary of war having to fly to North Africa to try and head off an abrogation of the Trident agreements?
The situation, from the point of view of clear Allied purpose, was alarming, but it only became worse in the days that followed. On July 19, the day Hitler flew to Italy, the Prime Minister had warned his chiefs of staff, Stimson learned, to prepare plans to dump the Second Front if operations in the Mediterranean prospered and the seven battle-hardened divisions were not sent back to the U.K. In which case, the Prime Minister had said, he favored Allied assault landings in Norway, mounted from England with whatever forces remained in Britain or could be scraped together.
Norway?
Occupied by some four hundred thousand German troops, Norway was the mountainous country where Churchill’s ill-fated Franco-British Expeditionary Force had been completely worsted by a German counterinvasion and its survivors evacuated in the spring of 1940.
It was a disturbing scenario. On Thursday, July 22, Stimson had had it out with Churchill—who was soliciting Stimson’s help in getting U.S. restrictions on the sharing of atom-bomb research lifted between the two nations.
The latest reports of heavy fighting around Catania had only reinforced Churchill’s continuing skepticism regarding Overlord. He “said that if he had 50,000 men ashore on the French channel coast, he would not have an easy moment because he felt that the Germans could rush up in sufficient force to drive them back. On my direct questioning he admitted that if he was C-in-C, he would not figure the Roundhammer [Overlord] operation [as feasible]; but being as it was, he having made his pledge, then he would go with it loyally. I said to him that was like hitting us in the eye and he said ‘Oh, no, if we start anything we will go through with it with utmost effort.’”5
In the meantime, Churchill pointed out, there was Italy—a country begging to be invaded by the Allies. The Prime Minister was, as he told Stimson, surely “justified in supporting his faith in the Italian expedition,” given the potential rewards. “He spoke of two possibilities; one, going to Rome with the advantages that would come from this, even without capitulation; and second, with an Italian capitulation, it would throw open the whole of Italy as far as the north boundary and would give us opportunities to go and attack southern France. He asserted that he was not in favor of attacking the Balkans with troops, but merely wished to supply them with munitions and supplies.”6
This was, at least, a mercy. For an hour and a half the two men—one approaching sixty-nine, the other, seventy-six—battled over strategy and tactical operations: Stimson attempting to point out the inevitable suction effect of major operations in the Mediterranean that would “hinder” Overlord, Churchill denying this; Stimson claiming he had the support of the “entire General Staff” in the “Roundhammer [Overlord] proposition,” Churchill claiming Eisenhower to be “strongly in favor of going as far as he could in Italy.”7
Stimson had been understandably perturbed—unaware, even as he spoke and exchanged cables with Marshall, that it was not only Churchill who now favored immediate exploitation of seeming Allied success in the Mediterranean. For Churchill’s excitement was being replicated among senior U.S. generals in the Pentagon, in Marshall’s own War Department.
On July 17, as tanks of Patton’s Seventh U.S. Army raced to Palermo in the west of Sicily, the War Department’s chief of Operations Division, Lieutenant General John Hull, declared he’d had a change of heart.
Hull’s defection from the Trident strategy aroused fierce debate in the Pentagon. From “the very beginning of this war,” Hull—who had hitherto been General Marshall’s most loyal subordinate—wrote, “I have felt that the l
ogical plan for the defeat of Germany was to strike at her across the channel by the most direct route.” He’d now changed his mind, he declared. In a document he drew up for his deputy, General Handy, and his War Department team, Hull pointed out the strategic harvest to be garnered in the Mediterranean. As he put it, “it is a case where you cannot have your cake and eat it.”8 With half a million U.S., British, and Canadian troops in the Mediterranean, and barely 180,000 U.S. troops in England, he’d come to “the belief that we should now reverse our decision and pour our resources into the exploitation of our Mediterranean operations.” Summarizing his extraordinary change of mind, he concluded: “As to Germany, in my opinion, the decision should be an all-out effort in the Mediterranean.”9
Not only did General Hull’s renunciation set off furious disputation at the Pentagon, it played straight into the hands of senior admirals in the Navy Department: sailors who had refused to move their offices into the Pentagon and were now in favor of backing out of a cross-Channel “Germany First” strategy, too—a change of objectives that would permit Japan to become America’s Enemy Number One. Reexamining the Trident agreement to send seven battle-hardened divisions from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom by November 1, 1943, the Joint War Plans Committee, representing the three U.S. armed services, now declared it “unsound.”
The chief of staff to Admiral King, Admiral “Savvy” Cooke, agreed with the JWP Committee. He’d never been convinced a cross-Channel assault could succeed, and thought that, if the Western Allies simply limited their future operations to the Mediterranean, more U.S. vessels and resources would be available to send to the Pacific.10
General Marshall was understandably aghast. Other planners like Brigadier General Wedemeyer, who was actually visiting American headquarters in the Mediterranean, vociferously protested, feeling it folly to divide and disperse impending Allied effort in Europe, when all logistical and fighting focus should be concentrated on an agreed Schwerpunkt, or focal point. Analyzing combat reports from Sicily—where German troops were fighting to the death to defend an Italian island that not even Italians were willing to defend—Wedemeyer recognized how tough it was going to be to defeat the German enemy; he felt “our [English] cousins” must somehow be made aware “that this European theater struggle will never be won by dispersing our forces around the Axis citadel,” as he responded to General Handy, referring to Churchill’s “closing the ring” policy. “Even though HUSKY is successful after a bitter struggle,” he’d warned from Algiers the week before the invasion of Sicily, “we could never drive rampant up the boot, as the P.M. so dramatically depicts in his concept of our continued effort over here.” Not only would an Italian campaign require “greatly increased resources than those now envisaged or available in the area,” but to ensure success—or even security against German counteroffensive measures—the cross-Channel invasion “would be even more remote, in fact, maybe crossed off the books for 1944.”11
But if not Rome, where next? Even Wedemeyer had to concede the Allies must continue to do something in the next nine months, before Overlord was mounted.
This, then, was the strategic conundrum facing the President as U.S. commander in chief in the summer of 1943, even as the war seemed, for the Allies, to be so nearly won.
36
A Fishing Expedition in Ontario
IT HAD BEEN agreed at the Trident Conference in Washington in May that another high-level military parley would probably have to be convened, once the invasion of Sicily was completed. Though Churchill had suggested Washington as the venue, once again the President had demurred. As one of the President’s White House Map Room officers, Lieutenant Elsey—who encrypted and decoded almost daily signals between the White House and 10 Downing Street—recorded, “the President recommended to the Prime Minister that this Anglo-American conference be held in Quebec, a happier place in summer than Washington. Quebec offered the advantages of a delightful climate and appropriate and comfortable quarters at the historic Citadel and the Chateau Frontenac.”1
Before meeting with Churchill and his chiefs of staff, however, Roosevelt still hoped to meet with Stalin. “By mid-July when it seemed unlikely that Marshal Stalin would be able to leave his armies, even briefly, during their first summer offensive, the President suggested to Mr. Churchill that time would be ripe for their conference around the first of September.”2
The triumph of the Allied landings on July 10 had, however, made even this date seem too distant to Churchill, who now had the bit between his teeth—his wonderfully pugnacious head spinning with romantic excitement as he saw himself entering Rome like a victorious Caesar in the next few weeks. “The very rapid changes on the several fronts and, in particular, the overwhelming success of the Sicilian campaign made it imperative to hold the meeting earlier,” Lieutenant Elsey recounted. “The degeneration of Italian resistance and the possibility of complete Italian collapse, greatly increased by the unexpected fall of Mussolini on July 25th, gave birth to new problems only faintly foreseen in the spring. As Mr. Churchill said, ‘We shall need to meet together to settle the larger issues which the brilliant victories of our forces have thrust upon us about Italy as a whole.’ The Prime Minister pressed for a very early date in August but the President replied that he would be unable to arrive in Quebec earlier than August 17.”3
The tragedy of late 1943 was now to unfold, almost inexorably—Churchill seemingly blind to Hitler’s likely response to the Allied invasion of Italy. As Hitler’s war aims crystallized into a ruthless German defend-or-die strategy, without having to rely on weak allies, the Allies’ conduct of the war fractured—with grave political as well as military ramifications. If Churchill was right, the Third Reich might, if the Allies put every man into the field in Italy, collapse—with vast political ramifications on top of military, since the Wehrmacht still held a solid front deep inside Russia. But what if Churchill and the generals like Hull in the Pentagon were wrong? What if Hitler meant to fight to the bitter end on all fronts—and was backed wholeheartedly by his Volk?
Holding the reins of global political as well as military unity on behalf of the Western Allies, at least, the President decided he must present to the people of America and the world a clear picture of the war’s positive progress—and ultimate aims. Calling in Robert Sherwood, Judge Rosenman, and Harry Hopkins, he therefore spent many days at Shangri-la and in the White House working on a major new Fireside Chat.
Broadcast from the White House on the evening of July 28, 1943, the President’s radio address certainly seemed a success: the President sounding confident, inspiring, and clear-minded: conveying to listeners a sense of wise direction in prosecuting the war to its appointed end—and beyond.
ROOSEVELT HAILS “FIRST CRACK” IN THE AXIS; OUTLINES POST-WAR AID FOR ALL U.S. FORCES, ran the New York Times front-page headline on July 29, the newspaper giving extended coverage to every aspect of his speech—the President’s first since February that year, “when he predicted invasion of the Continent of Europe.” It was, the Times described, “a radio address as varied in its subject matter as the vast pattern of total war,” one in which the President had “counseled against complacency, urged much greater efforts if Hitler and Tojo are to be defeated, as he promised, ‘on their home grounds,’”—and one which, the Times added, “announced the end of coffee rationing due to the improved shipping situation.”4
Was the war’s direction really so clear, though? Was the speech not in truth window-dressing? Was not the “first crack” a split less in the Axis ability to wage war—given that German troops were reported moving ruthlessly into new, former Italian positions across the Mediterranean, and Field Marshal Rommel was reported to be preparing for the German defense of Greece—than in the Allies’ own situation? Were not the Allies the ones with a problem?
At the State Department there were problems, as well. Former ambassador Bill Bullitt had been circulating throughout top circles in Washington a new paper urging an American
invasion of the Balkans, before Soviet forces could reach central Europe, regardless of the military inanity of such a scheme. And to cap this, there were stories that Secretary of State Cordell Hull—at the insistence of his wife—was demanding the head of the President’s right-hand man in postwar planning, Sumner Welles, on the grounds he was a homosexual—a story Bill Bullitt, who coveted Welles’s job as assistant secretary of state, had been leaking to the press.5
And as if all this was not enough, there were indications that the Russians were exploring possible peace-feelers with the Germans—suggestions bruited in “official circles” that Stalin “may have forsaken President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill on unconditional surrender” and was planning “to establish a European order on his own [communist] concepts and under the aegis of Moscow,” as the New York Times reported.6
So much happening, so fast—and so many conflicting voices and calls in the great democracies of America and Britain!
It was small wonder the President felt, once again, exhausted. He longed to get away from Washington, and in cooler climes think things through, so that he could hopefully keep the Allied coalition together and pointing in the same direction.
On July 30, he thus went ahead with his latest plan. It would be another secret trip: this time “to Canada on a fishing and vacation expedition,” as Admiral Leahy, his White House chief of staff, noted in his diary. On the beautiful lakes of Ontario, the weather would be less hot—and devoid of journalists, or anyone else. Away from the madding crowd the President could fish in peace, and think for a whole week.7
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