Commander in Chief

by Nigel Hamilton

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid., 167.

  11. Ibid., Letter to Handy, July 4, 1943, 164.

  36. A FISHING EXPEDITION IN ONTARIO

  1. George M. Elsey, Introduction to “The Log of the President’s Visit to Canada, 16 August 1943 to 26 August 1943,” p. 3, FDR Library.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. “Will Punish Duce; President in His War Report Demands Total Surrender,” New York Times, July 29, 1943.

  5. FDR finally told Daisy Suckley “the whole story, which is unsavory,” later that summer, including Bullitt’s part. “The P. never wants to speak to Bullitt again”: entry of September 22 and 29, 1943, in Ward, ed., Closest Companion, 244.

  6. “Warning by Stalin to Allies Is Seen; U.S. Observers in Moscow Said to View German Manifesto as Russian Declaration,” New York Times, July 29, 1943.

  7. Entry of July 29, 1943, Leahy Diary.

  8. Entry of July 28, 1943, Ward, Closest Companion, 227.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Entry of August 9, 1943, Leahy Diary.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid.

  37. THE PRESIDENT’S JUDGMENT

  1. Davies Papers, mss for May 20, 1943, 9, Library of Congress.

  2. Ibid.

  3. David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (New York: Random House, 2005), 322–23.

  4. Davies Papers, mss for May 20, 1943, 10, Library of Congress.

  5. OSS Numbered Intelligence Bulletins, No. 39, 10 July 43, Roosevelt Map Room, Military Subject Files, Box 72, Section 2, MR 203 (12), FDR Library.

  38. STALIN LIES

  1. From Premier J. V. Stalin to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 8, 1943, in Susan Butler, ed., My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2005), 151.

  2. Albert Weeks, Russia’s Life-Saver: Lend Lease Aid to the United States (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 204), 1.

  3. Ibid, 146–47. By the end of the war, over 30 percent of Russian wheeled vehicles had come from the United States, as also aircraft; almost 60 percent of aviation fuel, and more than 50 percent of Russian ordnance (ammunition): Ibid., 8–9.

  4. Entry of August 9, 1943, in Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion, The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 228.

  39. WAR ON TWO WESTERN FRONTS

  1. Entry of September 29, 1943, in Ward, Closest Companion, 244.

  2. Entry of August 10, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.

  3. “Memorandum: Subject: Conduct of the War in Europe, 8 August, 1943,” in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943 (hereinafter FRUS II) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970), 467–72; also Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1959), 176.

  4. Even in the President’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House, General Marshall was more concerned with logistical waste than vital combat experience, chiding the President that it was “impossible to calculate the wastage that has accrued to the United Nations war effort from changes made to basic decisions”—i.e., the cross-Channel invasion, planned in 1942. “The first instance was carrying out TORCH which involved moving troops set up from the United States to England and thence to Africa”—“Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House Between the President and the Chiefs of Staff on 10 August at 1415,” in FRUS II, 503.

  5. “Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Strategic Concept for the Defeat of the Axis in Europe, 9 August, 1943,” FRUS II, 472–81.

  6. Ibid., 473.

  7. Ibid.

  8. “Memorandum for General Handy,” August 9, 1943, in The Papers of General George Catlett Marshall, vol. 4 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 85–86.

  9. Ibid.

  10. “Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House Between the President and the Chiefs of Staff on 10 August 1943 at 1415,” FRUS II, 499.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid., 500.

  13. Ibid., 500–501.

  14. Ibid., 501.

  15. Entry of August 10, 1943, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  16. “Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House Between the President and the Chiefs of Staff on 10 August 1943 at 1415,” FRUS II, 501.

  17. Ibid., 502

  18. “Minutes of meeting held at the White House at 1415 between the President and the JCS, 10 Aug 43, with JCS Memo 97 in ABC 337 (25 May 43),” in Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 215.

  19. Entry of August 10, 1943, Stimson Diary.

  20. “Dear Mr. President” letter, August 10, 1943, attached to Stimson Diary.

  40. THE FÜHRER IS VERY OPTIMISTIC

  1. “The Polish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to the American Embassy Near the Polish Government in Exile,” in FRUS II, 410.

  2. “Prime Minister’s Personal Minute,” July 19, 1943, in Gilbert, Road to Victory, 445.

  3. Entry of 10.8.1943 in Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Froehlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1993), Teil II, Band 9 (hereinafter Die Tagebücher 9), 250.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid., 254.

  6. “Er denkt nicht daran, bis zum Po zurückzuziehen” [“He has no intention of retreating to the Po”], entry of June 25, 1943, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Froehlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1993), Teil II, Band 8, 532.

  7. Entry of 10.8.1943, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher 9, 255.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid., 260.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid., 261.

  13. See Karl-Heinz Friezer et al., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007) Band 8, 1192–1209.

  14. “die schon erwähnte Spekulation auf wachsende und letztlich bündnisprengde Divergenzen innerhalb der Feindkoalition”: Ibid., 1194.

  41. A CARDINAL MOMENT

  1. Cable of June 25, 1943, in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran 1943 (hereinafter FRUS III), 10.

  2. Entry of August 14, 1943, in Ward, Closest Companion, 229.

  3. Ibid.

  4. “Dear Mr. President” letter, August 10, 1943, attachment to entry of August 10, 1943, Stimson Diary.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Personal Minute of July 13, 1943, in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), 442.

  7. Ibid., Cable T.1043/3, July 16, 1943, 443.

  42. CHURCHILL IS STUNNED

  1. In London, Secretary Stimson had told Churchill that with regard to the sharing of atom bomb development (code-named S-1), “I could only promise to report the matter to the President for the final decision”: “Brief Report on Certain Features of Overseas Trip,” August 4, 1943, Stimson Diary.

  2. Entry of August 10, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  3. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring (London: Cassell, 1952), 73.

  4. Entry of August 14, 1943, in Ward, Closest Companion, 228.

  43. THE GERMAN WILL TO FIGHT

  1. Vice Admiral Mountbatten used his pistol to demonstrate the toughness of ice floes—his latest brainwave for floating harbors in the invasion of Normandy: Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945 (New York: Harper, 2009), 405.

  2. David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing The Second World War (New York: Random House, 2005), 363.

  3. Philip A. Smith, Bombing to Surrender: The Contribution of Air Power to the Collapse of Italy, 1943 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: School o
f Advanced Airpower Studies, 1997), 63.

  4. Sven Oliver Mueller, “Nationalism in German War Society 1939–1945” in Germany and the Second World War, ed. Jörg Echternkamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2014), vol. 9, no. 2, p. 32.

  5. Ibid., 34.

  6. Ibid., 30.

  44. NEAR-HOMICIDAL NEGOTIATIONS

  1. Entry of August 15, 1943, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke: War Diaries, 1939–1945, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 441.

  2. Reynolds, In Command of History, 374–82.

  3. “The Log of the President’s Trip to Canada, August 16–August 26, 1943,” 2, FDR Library.

  4. Entry of August 15, 1943, Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide: A History of the War Years, Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 578.

  5. Carlo D’Este, World War II in the Mediterranean, 1942–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1990), 196. Since over 200,000 Germans were reported “missing,” these may include many who surrendered at the war’s end.

  6. Carlo D’Este, Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874–1945 (New York: Harper, 2008), 626.

  7. Entry of August 16, 1943, Brooke, War Diaries, 443.

  8. Entry of August 15, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.

  9. Entry of August 15, 1943, Brooke, War Diaries, 442.

  10. Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943 (hereinafter FRUS II) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970), 865.

  11. Ibid., 866.

  12. Entry of August 16, 1943, Brooke, War Diaries, 443.

  13. Annotation to entry of August 15, 1943, in Brooke, War Diaries, 442.

  14. Commander George Elsey, interview with the author, September 11, 2011.

  45. A LONGING IN THE AIR

  1. “The Log of the President’s Trip to Canada, August 16–August 26, 1943,” compiled by Chief Ship’s Clerk William Rigdon, 4, FDR Library.

  2. Cable of August 22, 1942, in Susan Butler, ed., My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 155.

  3. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 225; and entry of August 31, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  4. Entry of August 23, 1943, Brooke, War Diaries, 447. Lieutenant General Henry Pownall, who became one of Churchill’s many assistants in writing his memoirs, claimed in his 1943–1944 diary that the Sumatra idea, code-named Operation Culverin, was “a typically Winstonian project, advanced with his usual fatuous obstinacy”: David Reynolds, In Command of History, 404.

  5. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 224.

  6. Ibid.

  7. FRUS II, 691ff.

  8. “The Log of the President’s Trip to Canada, August 16–August 26, 1943,” compiled by Chief Ship’s Clerk William Rigdon, 15, FDR Library.

  9. P. J. Philips, “President Is Grim: Only Long Peace Could Justify Sacrifices,” New York Times, August 26, 1943.

  10. Entry of August 25, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary.

  11. Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1952), 387.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Text in “The Log of the President’s Trip to Canada.” (President’s own copy. The alternative wording gave the President a choice, for extra emphasis, as he spoke.) Also as “Address at Ottawa, Canada, August 25, 1943,” in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 12, The Tide Turns, comp. Samuel Rosenman (New York: Russell & Russell, 1950; reissued 1969), 365–69.

  15. Philips, “President Is Grim,” New York Times.

  16. “Address at Ottawa, Canada, August 25, 1943,” in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  17. Entry of August 25, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary.

  46. THE PRESIDENT IS UPSET—WITH THE RUSSIANS

  1. “Memorandum of conversation Mr. Mackenzie King had with President Franklin D. Roosevelt—Ottawa, Wednesday—August 25, 1943,” Mackenzie King Diary.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid., “Conversation with Mr. Roosevelt, Ottawa—August 25, 1943.”

  5. Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), 482.

  6. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1991), 486.

  7. “Conversation with Mr. Roosevelt, Ottawa, August 25, 1943,” Mackenzie King Diary.

  8. Ibid., entry of August 22, 1943.

  9. Gilbert, Road to Victory, 482.

  10. E.g. Susan Butler, Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership (New York: Knopf, 2015).

  11. Gilbert, Road to Victory, 484–85.

  12. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 536.

  13. Entry of Wednesday, August 25, 1942, Mackenzie King Diary.

  14. Ibid., “Conversation with Mr. Roosevelt. Ottawa—August 25, 1943.”

  15. Ibid., entry of August 31, 1943.

  16. Ibid., “Conversation with Mr. Roosevelt. Ottawa—August 25, 1943.”

  17. Ibid.

  47. CLOSE TO DISASTER

  1. Entry of August 26, 1943, in Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 231.

  2. Entry of August 29, 1943, Leahy Diary, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress.

  3. Entry of August 28, 1943, Ward, Closest Companion, 231–32.

  48. A DARWINIAN STRUGGLE

  1. Entry of 27.8.1943, Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1993), Teil II, Band 9 (hereinafter Die Tagebücher 9), 369. Quotes from this source have been translated by the author.

  2. Ibid., entry of 10.8.1943, 260.

  3. Ibid., entry of 10.9.1943, 464. Interestingly, addressing reporters’ questions in Washington, “Churchill said Britain wants no more territory: such as Sicily, Pantelleria, etc,” but that “islands of chiefly strategic value probably should be held by the Allies.” However, he also made clear the “British did not propose to give up any territory” they considered theirs—“this in answer to a question about Hong Kong”: “Churchill Luncheon with Correspondents, September 3, 1943,” in Raymond Clapper Papers, Personal File, 1942–43, Box 23, Library of Congress.

  4. Ibid.

  49. A TALK WITH ARCHBISHOP SPELLMAN

  1. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring (London: Cassell, 1952), 109.

  2. Entry of August 31, 1943, Mackenzie King Diary.

  3. Entry of September 6, 1943, Ward, Closest Companion, 236–37.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Mary Soames, A Daughter’s Tale (New York: Random House, 2011), 275–76.

  6. Ibid, 276–77.

  7. Robert I. Gannon, The Cardinal Spellman Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 218.

  8. Ibid., 223.

  9. “To many historians, especially but far from exclusively those writing in the first years of the Soviet-American Cold War that followed World War II, Roosevelt was exceptionally naive and foolish to believe he could collaborate with Stalin”: Mark Stoler and Melanie Gustafson, eds., Major Problems in the History of World War II: Documents and Essays (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 378.

  10. John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 271–73.

  11. Ibid., 255.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Gannon, The Cardinal Spellman Story, 223.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Susan Butler, Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership (New York: Knopf, 2015), 153.

  18. Gannon, The Cardinal
Spellman Story, 223.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid., 227.

  50. THE EMPIRES OF THE FUTURE

  1. Entry of September 2, 1943, Ward, Closest Companion, 234.

  2. Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Young Stalin (New York: Knopf, 2007), 193.

  3. Ibid., 193.

  4. Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), 492.

  5. Ibid.

  6. “Anglo-American Unity: A Speech on Receiving an Honorary Degree at Harvard University, September 6, 1943,” in The War Speeches of Winston Churchill, ed. Charles Eade, vol. 2 (London: Cassell, 1952), 510–15.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  51. A TRAGICOMEDY OF ERRORS

  1. E.g., Douglas Porch, The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 459–61.

  2. “Review of the Situation in the Light of Italian Collapse,” in RG 218: Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Box 307, National Archives.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Carl D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 533–55; Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 (New York: Holt, 2007), 147–49.

  5. Nigel Hamilton, Monty: Master of the Battlefield, 1942–1944 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), 390.

  6. Ibid., 398–402.

  7. Ibid., 399.

  8. Ibid., 388.

  9. Atkinson, The Day of Battle, 190.

  10. General Mark Clark to author, interview of October 26, 1981, in Hamilton, Monty: Master of the Battlefield, 414.

  11. Atkinson, The Day of Battle, 192.

  52. MEETING REALITY

  1. Atkinson, The Day of Battle, 195.

  2. Ibid., 196.

  3. Hamilton, Monty: Master of the Battlefield, 1942–1944, 393.

  4. Atkinson, The Day of Battle, 197.