Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Dictating messages was, in fact, practically his sole occupation. He received directives, advice, and queries from Marshall, the CCS, Roosevelt, and Churchill, and had to answer them all. Since Roosevelt chose to ignore the State Department, Eisenhower became in effect the ambassador to French North Africa and had to handle all the responsibilities involved. He also had to communicate with Churchill and the BCOS. Smith’s presence in London was a great help, for Eisenhower could send candid messages to his chief of staff and let Smith then explain the position to the British, but frequently Smith’s statements were not enough to satisfy the Prime Minister and Eisenhower had to communicate directly with him. In addition, Eisenhower sent Marshall two, sometimes more, messages a day. The result of all this was an enormous volume of correspondence.

  Most of it concerned the Darlan deal. “I regret that I must use so much of my own time to keep explaining these matters,” Eisenhower told Smith. He was also irritated at the seemingly rampant attitude that he was a naïve soldier who was being taken in by shrewd politicians like Darlan. He said he could not understand how anyone could think he was being used by Darlan “or why it should be thought I fail to realize crookedness or intense unpopularity of Darlan.”22

  In a later message to Smith the same day, November 18, Eisenhower said he was now turning his entire attention to the military campaign for Tunisia. When he had captured it, he said, Churchill “can kick me in the pants and put in a politician here who is as big a crook as the chief local skunk.”23

  Eisenhower’s hopes of concentrating on soldiering, however, could not be realized. When he arose the next morning he found a message from Marshall. The State Department wanted to know exactly what Darlan’s position was and Eisenhower had to send another lengthy cable to Washington.24

  On November 19 Eisenhower got out from under sole responsibility for the Darlan deal. He forced his superiors to approve it and thus commit themselves. “Protocol No. 1,” the original Clark-Darlan agreement that gave the Allies military rights and kept the Vichy French in power, had been typed up at Algiers after Eisenhower made minor changes. It was ready to be issued. Eisenhower wanted to send it back to Clark and tell him it was in effect, but his staff protested. They advised Eisenhower to send it to the CCS for approval. Eisenhower felt this would look like an attempt on his part to escape his responsibility for the deal, which was exactly what the staff had in mind. He was ready to ignore them when Cunningham, whom Eisenhower considered “as bold a man as I know of,” joined in the chorus. Eisenhower “caved in” and sent the Protocol on to the Chiefs for approval.25

  The Chiefs simply turned the problem over to the heads of government and Churchill indicated he would follow Roosevelt’s lead. The President thus had one more opportunity to repudiate the deal. He knew that if he accepted the Protocol his liberal, New Deal supporters would accuse him of trafficking with Fascists, of selling out the honor of the United States in the first campaign of the war. For many Americans, and even more British, accepting Darlan implied a basic change in the nature of the war. The Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, would be forgotten. No longer would it be a struggle against Fascism. Instead, the war would be an old-fashioned balance-of-power conflict in which the Western Allies took help wherever they could find it, no questions asked.

  Roosevelt realized what the reaction would be. He may even, at this late date, have considered repudiating the deal. But Eisenhower’s explanations of its necessity, plus the pressure from Stimson, Hopkins, and Marshall, kept him from acting. He told the CCS that he accepted the terms of the agreement but wished to eliminate the word “Protocol,” as it implied recognition. The President preferred that it take the form of an “announcement” with a statement from Darlan on his “concurrence.” Roosevelt’s squeamishness over words aside, the Darlan deal had been ratified.26

  The President was fairly safe, for most of the critics denounced Eisenhower and ignored Roosevelt. In public, Eisenhower made no defense of himself, aside from pointing to the advantages the deal had brought. He was deeply hurt, however, by some of the names newspapermen had called him.* To his son John he said, “I have been called a Fascist and almost a Hitlerite.” The fact was that he had one earnest conviction about the war: “It is that no other war in history has so definitely lined up the forces of arbitrary oppression and dictatorship against those of human rights and individual liberty.” His single passion was to do his full duty in helping “to smash the disciples of Hitler.”27

  Fortunately for all concerned, Darlan began to deliver. On November 24 he told Eisenhower he would conduct the affairs of North Africa on a “liberal and enlightened basis and in accordance with the principles on which the French Republic was founded.” He intended, as soon as possible, to restore property and individual rights to Jews, who under current law were not citizens, could not practice the professions of law and medicine, own property, and so on. Darlan had to go slowly, he explained, because of the anti-Semitism of the Arabs, but he promised progress. The admiral was also making arrangements to bring Dakar over to the Allied camp.28 Eisenhower had earlier told the CCS that although French West Africa was outside his theater he would assume responsibility for dealing with Pierre Boisson, the governor general, if the Chiefs wanted him to. The Chiefs gave Eisenhower the authority, and Darlan arranged for a meeting for November 28.

  The meeting threatened to break up in a shambles. Boisson held some British sailors in his prisons and British officials present shouted at him that he had to release them. Boisson, meanwhile, loudly demanded that the British make the Free French stop sending into French West Africa radio propaganda denouncing him. Darlan was simultaneously making his own suggestions.

  Eisenhower quietly took Boisson off into a corner. He told the governor general that it would take weeks to straighten out details and he could not afford to waste the time. If Boisson would sign an agreement, Eisenhower promised on his honor as a soldier to do everything possible to see that general arrangements were carried out on a co-operative basis. Eisenhower added that as long as he held his post Boisson could be sure that “the spirit of our agreement will never be violated by the Allies.” Without another word Boisson walked over to Eisenhower’s desk and, while the chatter continued in various parts of the room, sat down and signed. The port and airfield of Dakar, which the Allies had long desired, were safely in hand.29

  Darlan could take partial credit for the achievement, and he needed it, since his efforts to bring the French fleet over to the Allied side had failed dismally. On November 25, as the Germans prepared to board the warships, the French admirals at Toulon ordered their captains to scuttle. Three battleships, seven cruisers, and 167 other ships went to the bottom.30

  The Allies had, in short, paid a high political price for a minor material gain. By the time Darlan had ordered the cease-fire in Algiers, Casablanca, and Oran the French soldiers there had satisfied their honor and were ready to quit anyway. He had been of no help where it counted, in Tunisia, and Eisenhower’s promises were more important than Darlan’s orders in bringing Dakar over to the Allied camp. The French fleet was resting on the bottom of the sea. Darlan did deliver those “proven administrators” whom Murphy felt to be essential to domestic tranquillity in North Africa, but that was all. The Darlan deal had little to recommend it, but Eisenhower could not see then, or later, what he could have done differently. The CCS had not given him enough troops to impose a military occupation, and Roosevelt would not let him work with De Gaulle’s Free French, who provided the only alternative to the Vichy officers. Giraud was hopeless. Before the invasion Murphy had talked at length about working with Darlan and no one had cautioned Eisenhower at that time about possible political complications. The commander in chief had not been well served by his political advisers. He was beginning to learn that he would have to make his own decisions, based on his own observations. He was also learning about the complexities of foreign policy, especially in wartime.

  What stood out was the am
ount of time taken up in explaining the Darlan deal. Through the first two weeks of the invasion, Eisenhower could give only cursory glances at the battlefield situation. The result was a certain lack of direction to the campaign. Now that Roosevlet had finally ratified the Darlan deal, Eisenhower could turn his attention to Tunisia.

  * Eisenhower would never admit the reaction to the Darlan deal caught him by surprise. Three months later he told his brother Edgar, “The only thing that made me a little peeved about the matter was that anyone should think I was so incredibly stupid as to fail to realize I was doing an unpopular thing, particularly with those who were concerned with things other than winning the war—which is my whole doctrine and reason for existence.” To Edgar Eisenhower, February 18, 1943, EP, No. 825.

  * It naturally bothered Eisenhower to be so extensively criticized, but he tried to keep the criticism in perspective. On December 20 he wrote his son, “From what I hear of what has been appearing in the newspapers, you are learning that it is easy enough for a man to be a newspaper hero one day and a bum the next. The answer is that just as one must not let his head get swelled too much by a bit of acclaim, he must not be too upset and irritated when the pack turns on him.” He added that a soldier had to do his duty as he saw it “and not be too much disturbed about popularity or newspaper acclaim.” To John Eisenhower, December 20, 1942, EP, No. 731.

  * “I can’t understand,” he told Harold Macmillan, “why these long-haired, starry-eyed guys keep gunning for me. I’m no reactionary. Christ on the mountain! I’m as idealistic as Hell.” Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War, 1939–1945 (New York, 1968), p. 174.

  CHAPTER 10

  The First Campaign

  Eisenhower had never commanded men in combat. Like the American troops and their officers, he had much to learn. The education began in Tunisia; it was long, painful, and expensive.

  When Marshall selected Eisenhower to command TORCH he did so on the basis of qualities that had little or nothing to do with leading men in battle. Eisenhower’s orderly mind, his intelligence, his experience in administration, his ability to get along with others, and his penchant for making others get along with each other—these were some of the traits that impressed Marshall. The Chief knew that if unity of command were to work in an Allied theater the commander in chief had to be a man who could force a mixed staff to work together. Eisenhower was outstanding at the job.

  But strengths can be weaknesses when operating in different areas. Eisenhower’s desire to be liked and his inner need to have others co-operate were essential to forming and heading a staff. Precisely because he had these virtues, however, he lacked that ruthless, driving force that would lead him to step into a tactical situation and, through the power of his personality, extract the extra measure of energy to get across the final barrier. He never forced his subordinates in the field to the supreme effort, and as a result until almost the very end of the war there would be, at critical moments, an element of drift in the operations he directed. It is entirely possible, of course, that had Eisenhower been as hard-driving as Patton he could not have held the Allied forces or the AFHQ staff together.

  The tendency toward drift first showed up in Tunisia. On November 24 Eisenhower decided that the communications system in Algiers was far enough advanced to allow him to move his headquarters there. When he arrived he found that things were not going at all the way he wanted them to. Clark had been busy at Algiers dealing with Darlan, so he had given no direction to the battle. As a result the whole operation toward Tunis was disorganized and getting nowhere. Eisenhower blamed the British, who had the bulk of the fighting forces in the area, reasoning that they had reverted to their traditional practice of fighting through “co-operation” between land, sea, and air officers. Not realizing that the trouble was the absence of over-all leadership and the hesitancy of subordinates to take risks unless the commander in chief encouraged them to do so, Eisenhower decided the thing to do was to “take the British by the horns.…”1

  The British thought the difficulty lay elsewhere. Ian Jacob, Ismay’s deputy, who visited AFHQ, decided that Clark was the disturbing factor. Clark imposed himself on Eisenhower “in the most extraordinary way,” refusing to work through the staff, causing immense irritation throughout the branches. Jacob believed that the U.S. officers were terrified by Clark, who “has all along been the evil genius of the [Allied] Force [Headquarters].” Clark wanted the command of the troops in Tunisia, who were operating under Anderson, which led him to an anti-British attitude.

  In Jacob’s view, the fact that Clark had been allowed to hold his position and create such havoc was a reflection on Eisenhower. “Though a man of decisive mind in immediate issues,” Jacob recorded in his diary, “General Eisenhower is far too easily swayed and diverted to be a great commander in chief.” Jacob admitted that Eisenhower had been forced to grapple with a baffling political situation and his “downright and honest character has been of great value in this task,” but his lack of experience “and his naturally exuberant temperament prevent him from preserving a steady course towards a selected goal.”2 Given the lack of progress in the campaign, it was inevitable that Jacob, and other British officers, would be critical—Eisenhower himself was deeply dissatisfied. But Jacob was exaggerating in blaming everything on Eisenhower. Circumstances were against the commander in chief. He did not have the men or equipment to do the job against the Germans, who in any case moved with great efficiency and speed.

  The weather, too, was working against the Allies. It had rained so hard the past week that the American B-17s had to be propped under the wings to prevent them from sinking hopelessly into the quagmire. The Germans had good, hard-surfaced airfields on Sicily, Sardinia, Tunis, and Bizerte from which to operate, but the Allies were mainly limited to small, muddy fields. The Anglo-American air forces had to park their planes close together because of inadequate facilities, which made them profitable targets for German bombing raids. They took a heavy toll of Spitfires. It did not help that the absence of strong central command had led to a lack of co-operation between the anti-aircraft gunners and the air forces and even to a certain confusion between the American and British air forces. Eisenhower saw an air raid soon after arriving in Algiers and thought the air defense shameful.

  He set to work to get his organization functioning. He crystallized the staff and the widely separated commanders into co-ordinated action, a job that had been beyond Clark. He also began to force his services into shape, concentrating at first on the air forces. He asked the British Chiefs to send him more fighters and replacement parts, explaining that his needs were excessive because “in rushing forward into Tunisia with every bit of available tactical strength that could be moved, we have been forced to do so without the methodical preparation and prior defense of bases and lines of communication that are normally the first concern of a commander.”3 The Chiefs sent the material Eisenhower wanted; equally important, they sent him for consultation an expert on the employment of air forces.

  Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder headed the Middle East Command of the RAF. A suave, handsome man, Tedder had strong prejudices and concepts which he never hesitated to express. He usually had a pipe stuck in his mouth and the amount of smoke it gave forth was a good indication of the amount of emotion he was feeling. He was an intensely loyal man who stuck with a friend or a superior without question or fail. His dedication to Anglo-American solidarity was as strong as Eisenhower’s. His World War I experiences had been in the Army (he joined the RAF in 1919), and perhaps as a result he had a wider view of the proper use of air forces than many of his colleagues in the RAF. He was by no means convinced that strategic bombing could win the war and felt that, at least in certain instances, the most efficient way to employ air power was in close tactical support of the infantry. He was also an organizational genius.

  Tedder, in short, had a great deal to offer Eisenhower. The Allied commander in chief had never met him but they quickly hit it off and beca
me close friends. When they were introduced, Eisenhower gave his big grin and thrust out his hand. “Well, another Yank,” Tedder thought to himself. Once Eisenhower started to talk, however, Tedder decided “he made a great deal of sense.”4 Tedder eventually became Eisenhower’s deputy and the Englishman who had the most influence on his thinking. After their first meeting Eisenhower asked the British Chiefs to lend Tedder to AFHQ for an indefinite period, a request that the authorities in London soon granted. Following a general reorganization early in 1943, Tedder became Commander in Chief, Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, under Eisenhower.

  In the Middle East Tedder had learned to arrange for close cooperation between air, ground, and naval units, to deploy air forces to make the best use of meager facilities, and to select air targets in a non-industrialized region. All this experience was valuable on the Tunisian front. After listening to Tedder, Eisenhower made some changes in his own procedures to apply the lessons learned in Egypt. For example, he had Air Marshal Sir William L. Welsh of the Eastern Air Command send a liaison officer to General Anderson’s headquarters and told Welsh that Anderson’s needs and desires would take precedence over everything else in determining missions. Eisenhower also placed all American air units in the area under Welsh’s command—they had been operating under Doolittle’s. Tedder insisted that all air units stationed on forward fields had to be subject to direct call from Anderson and Eisenhower saw that it was done.5

  After dealing with the air force problem, Eisenhower turned his attention to the ground forces. Anderson needed more of everything, but especially armor. Eisenhower’s staff in Algiers had denied Anderson’s request that half-tracks (personnel carriers with light armor and machine guns) be sent eastward under their own power on the grounds that the half-tracks would use up one third of the life of their treads in the march. When Eisenhower discovered this he boiled. “What are we saving them for?” he thundered. “To hell with the life of the half-tracks!” While the staff piddled around waiting for trains to carry the vehicles forward, Anderson’s men were stuck. Eisenhower told the staff to have the half-tracks move under their own power, reminding them that wars were won by marching and had been throughout history.6