With the President’s main goals of big tax boosts still unrealized, Congress seemed exhausted by its forays against salary limitation and for pay-as-you-go. The administration seemed exhausted, too, and divided. Morgenthau was distressed to hear that War Mobilizer Byrnes and Director of Economic Stabilization Vinson were to have a leading role in tax policy. He protested to Roosevelt, who replied that taxes were part of the whole fiscal situation and that the Secretary and Byrnes should deal directly with each other and not through the President. As Byrnes and Vinson continued to negotiate with tax makers on Capitol Hill, Morgenthau seethed over the role of the Kitchen Cabinet. The pattern was perfectly obvious, he told his staff. The people sitting “over there in the left wing of the White House” were trying to run the show, and if they did they could take the blame, too. They were a bunch of ambitious politicians, maneuverers, finaglers. He told his staff to prepare a direct letter to the President as to who was in charge of tax policy. He wanted it straight from the shoulder.
“AW HEN,” the President wrote back. “The weather is hot and I am goin’ off fishing. I decline to be serious even when you see ‘gremlins’ which ain’t there.”
The President talked with Morgenthau soon after, reassured him as to his primacy in tax policy, and said he wanted twelve billion in new taxes. He advised Morgenthau to put up to Congress various plans that totaled eighteen billion, and let Congress decide on any combination necessary to raise the total. But he would not sign a memorandum to this effect to Byrnes or Vinson. “This is all one big family and you don’t do things that way in a family.”
This led to a sharp family quarrel early in September when Morgenthau met with the President and Byrnes. Byrnes was pretty bitter and hot, Paul reported; the President tried to stop him a couple of times but Byrnes slugged right on. Who was in charge of tax policy? “I am the boss,” Roosevelt said. “…We must agree….Then when we agree, I expect you fellows to go in and do the work just like soldiers.” Byrnes said he would not work for the bill unless he had a voice in it. He got along with people all right—he got along with Knox and Stimson—but he couldn’t get along with Morgenthau. Roosevelt was now aroused. Pounding the table, he insisted again, “I am the boss. I am the one who gets the rap if we get licked in Congress.…I am the boss, I am giving the orders.”
Despite the raw tempers, Morgenthau and his staff plugged away at new tax proposals and Social Security expansion. For a time the Treasury toyed with the idea, radical in the United States, of including medical insurance under Social Security, but Roosevelt was wary. The people were not ready, he felt. “We can’t go up against the State Medical Societies,” Roosevelt reassured Senator George, “we just can’t do it.” Morgenthau concentrated on a tough tax program. Early in October 1943 the Secretary, with the President’s blessing, presented the administration’s new proposals to Congress. They called for 10.5 billion dollars of additional taxes; four billion of estate and gift taxes, corporate taxes, and excises. Morgenthau also proposed repeal of the victory tax, which would take nine million low-income taxpayers off the tax rolls.
The reaction of most congressional leaders ranged from cool to hostile. The legislators seemed far removed from the new memorial in the Tidal Basin and the egalitarian figure who occupied it.
THE BROKEN PLEDGE
During late 1942 and early 1943 British leaders were concerned less with long-run peace planning than with immediate postwar settlements and arrangements. Anthony Eden had taken the lead in exploring such questions. In February 1943 Churchill suggested to Roosevelt that the Foreign Secretary talk with him on the subject. “Delighted to have him come—the sooner the better,” Roosevelt replied. Hull was vacationing in Florida at the time; when Welles told him that the President and he felt that they could carry on the conversations with Eden and hence Hull need not interrupt his vacation, the Secretary took the next train to Washington.
He hardly needed to worry. Roosevelt was even more cautious in approaching immediate postwar arrangements than in long-term planning for peace. The aftermath of Versailles was a constant, nagging reminder to him—a factor as crucial in his thinking as Passchendaele and the Somme were in Churchill’s military planning. Roosevelt still preferred to put off making postwar political plans, but increasingly, it seemed, key wartime military decisions had a sharp political edge and crucial postwar implication. So Roosevelt decided to go ahead with Eden, but quietly and tentatively.
Hour after hour Roosevelt and Eden talked together, sometimes with Hull and Halifax, sometimes only with Hopkins, sometimes with a larger company, but never with the military. Roosevelt was still keeping separate the discussion of military and political plans. With Eden he roamed around the globe, but the starting and ending place always seemed to be Russia. What would Stalin want after the war? Eden was sure he planned to absorb the Baltic states into the Soviet Union. This would antagonize American public opinion, Roosevelt felt; since the Russians would be in the Baltic countries when Germany fell, they could not be forced out. He wondered if Stalin would accept a plebiscite, even if a fake one. Eden was doubtful. Perhaps then, Roosevelt said, yielding on this score could be used as a bargaining instrument to get other concessions from the Russians.
The two men agreed that Russia would insist on its prewar boundaries with Finland, and that this was reasonable; they feared that Stalin would demand Hangö, too. But Finland would clearly be a postwar problem, and Poland even more so. The President and the Foreign Secretary agreed that Poland should have East Prussia; Roosevelt added that the Prussians would have to be moved out of the area, just as the Greeks were moved out of Turkey after World War I. This was a harsh method, he granted, but the only way to maintain peace; besides, the Prussians could not be trusted.
The roaming went on. Serbia: Roosevelt had long believed that Croats and Serbs had nothing in common and should be separated. Austria and Hungary: these should be established as independent states. Turkey and Greece: no problem from a geographical point of view. Belgium: the President proposed, while Eden listened skeptically, that the Walloon parts of Belgium be combined with Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine, and a part of northern France, to make up a new state of “Wallonia.” Germany: Roosevelt wanted to avoid the Versailles error of dealing with the defeated enemy; he preferred encouraging differences and ambitions that would spring up in Germany and lead toward separatism on the part of major regions. In any event Germany must be divided into several states in order to weaken it. Roosevelt agreed with Hopkins that it was to be hoped that Anglo-American troops would be in Germany in strength when Hitler quit and could prevent anarchy or Communism, but it would be well to work out with the Russians a plan as to just where the armies should stand, especially in the event Germany collapsed before the Americans and British got deeply into France. Hull favored a simpler approach. He hoped that Hitler and his gang would not be granted a “long-winded public trial” but would be quickly shot out of hand.
The major long-run issue was, of course, postwar world organization. Roosevelt and Welles were still emphatic that the United States would not join any independent body such as a European council, but, rather, that all the United Nations should be members of one world-wide body to recommend policies, while representatives of the Big Four and of six or eight regional groupings could make up an advisory council. Real power—especially policing power—should be exercised by the Big Four. Eden was doubtful that China, with its historic instability, could be part of a Big Four; China might well have to go through revolution after the war, he thought. There was some discussion of Asia after the war, but most of it inconclusive. Hopkins guessed that the British were going to be “pretty sticky” about their former possessions in the Far East.
Roosevelt told Churchill and others that he and Eden agreed on 95 per cent of “everything from Ruthenia to the production of peanuts!” Over oysters at the Carlton, Eden told Hopkins he was surprised at the President’s intimate knowledge of geographical boundaries. He enjoyed watching t
he play of Roosevelt’s mind, but he had misgivings. There was something almost alarming in the cheerful fecklessness with which the President seemed to dispose of the fate of whole countries. He was like a conjuror, Eden felt, deftly juggling with balls of dynamite whose nature he did not understand.
No conjuring could dispel the lowering clouds over the discussions. What was Stalin’s postwar design? Did he plan to dominate eastern and central Europe, establish a belt of satellites, foment revolution, even overrun the whole Continent? Or would he work for peace with the West, in the spirit of the United Nations? Roosevelt was not uninformed, naïve , or incredulous in facing these questions. He was prepared to bargain and demand, resist and compromise, like any good horse trader, in dealing with Moscow’s demands.
What the President did not seem to grasp in its fullest implications, however, was the relation between Soviet options and the immediate policies that the West was following. He and Eden discussed Soviet plans somewhat abstractly, as though Moscow had already set a definite course, whatever it might be. The two did see the possibility that the Kremlin might be caught between two sets of policies, benign and aggressive; thus Stalin, at the height of his disappointment with the West over the second front, dissolved the Comintern as a gesture of good will toward his allies. But Roosevelt did not fully recognize the implications of immediate military planning for long-run strategic questions.
April 5, 1943, Carl Rose, PM, reprinted by courtesy of Field Enterprises, Inc.
The burning issue was still the cross-channel invasion. The timing of the invasion had been left so vague at Casablanca that Roosevelt and Churchill agreed at the end of April that they must meet to discuss this and other pressing questions. At this point, though, the President was more interested in seeing Stalin than Churchill. Aware that relations with Moscow had fallen to a new low after postponement of the cross-channel plan and the suspension of northern convoying, Roosevelt reasoned that by talking face to face with Stalin he could take a direct measure of the man, establish a personal rapport, and reassure the Kremlin on Washington’s plans and motives. He thought he could satisfy “Uncle Joe” as to cross-channel and other harsh issues. They were both practical men, after all. Certainly he could do better than Churchill. Roosevelt was scornful of press reports from London that Churchill would be the good broker between Russia and the United States. If anyone was to be a broker, it would be he.
But how was he to get the evasive Stalin to rendezvous? He hit on the idea of emphasizing the importance of his invitation by sending it by a prestigious courier, former Ambassador Joseph Davies, an old favorite with the Kremlin. The letter was carefully composed. He wanted to get away, the President told Stalin, from a big staff conference and the red tape of diplomatic conversation. Therefore “the simplest and most practical method” would be a brief, informal meeting during the coming summer. Where? Africa was too hot, Khartoum was on British territory, and Iceland—“quite frankly,” there it would be “difficult not to invite Prime Minister Churchill at the same time.” So he proposed either his side or Stalin’s side of the Bering Strait. He would take only Hopkins, an interpreter, and a stenographer. He sought no official agreements or declarations—just a meeting of minds.
While Davies flew east to Moscow with the invitation, Churchill and his party were steaming west across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. The liner had been converted into a troopship big enough to carry an American division of 15,000 men; she was fast enough to evade and outrun U-boats. On this trip she was carrying several thousand German prisoners of war, and also some lice picked up on an earlier trip to southern waters. The Germans were sealed off from the VIP’s on the top deck, but the bugs were not, and they made life miserable for some of the lower echelon of the upper echelon. But Churchill and his military chiefs were unscathed; day after day, as before, they met, adjusted differences, and prepared a united front for the Washington conference. Churchill warned his soldiers not to appear too keen on any one plan at the conference, for it would simply arouse competing proposals, owing to the “natural contrariness of allies.”
Alerted that this formidable task force was bearing down on them, the American chiefs and their staffs resolved that this time they would not be overborne by superior numbers, unity, and staff work, as they felt they had been at Casablanca and earlier conferences. They hoped especially to end the step-by-step opportunism of the past and press on the British a long-term strategy. Preparations were feverish along Constitution Avenue and in the Pentagon, and lines seemed well drawn when Churchill, Dill, Brooke, Pound, Portal, and Ismay held their first meeting with Roosevelt, his Joint Chiefs, and Hopkins in the President’s study on May 12. Roosevelt, after gracefully noting the triumphant progress since the last dismal meeting in the White House less than a year before, declared that while it would be desirable to knock Italy out of the war after the battle for Sicily, he shrank from the thought of putting large armies into that country. He favored a strong build-up for a cross-channel attack in the spring of 1944.
Churchill replied for his side. He spoke feelingly of Roosevelt’s generosity, at the last White House meeting, when the crushing news of Tobruk’s fall had come in. His Majesty’s government, he emphasized, stood by the plan for the cross-channel attack, which could come in the spring of 1944 at the earliest, but what in the meantime? Hundreds of thousands of men could not stand idle in the Mediterranean. A strong blow at Italy might knock it out of the war, relieve Russia by forcing Hitler to divert troops from the Eastern Front to replace Italian troops withdrawn from the Balkans, nudge Turkey toward active participation, and allow the seizure of ports and bases necessary for launching assaults against the Balkans and southern Europe.
It was the same old difference of emphasis, timing, and priority. Day after day the Combined Chiefs of Staff met, argued, and adjourned. Marshall, with Roosevelt’s backing, was adamant. He feared that once again the suction effect of the Mediterranean would drain away troops and supply and jeopardize cross-channel plans. King was still pressing for more effort in the Pacific, especially if the British were to have their way in the Mediterranean. Paradoxically, each side felt that the other was undercutting the cross-channel attack—that the British were doing so by diverting to the Mediterranean, the Americans by stressing the Pacific. The British were adamantly against a “premature” cross-channel invasion, with its risk of spilling oceans of blood; the Americans had resolved to resist their ally’s strategy of “scatteration” and “periphery-pecking” in the Mediterranean.
May 14, 1943, © Low, reprinted by permission of The Manchester Guardian
© Low, world copyright reserved, reprinted by permission of the Trustees of Sir David Low’s Estate and Lady Madeline Low
The result was a standoff. The British agreed, as first priority, to help mount a “decisive invasion of the Axis citadel,” with a target date of May 1, 1944; they also approved an escalating bomber offensive to disrupt and destroy the German military and industrial system and break down the morale of the German people. An emergency cross-channel operation—the old plan named SLEDGE-HAMMER—was kept on the books in case of sudden need. In exchange the President and his chiefs agreed to plan further operations in the Mediterranean to knock Italy out of the war. To counter the suction effect, a limit was put on Allied troop strength for the attack on Italy, and seven divisions were slated to be transferred from the Mediterranean to Britain, starting in the fall, to help the build-up there. But Eisenhower would still have twenty-seven divisions in the Mediterranean
At last a date had been fixed, a rough order of priorities set. Even so, the Americans were uneasy. Churchill did not seem wholly reconciled. And what about Stalin? From his view the only important result of the conference would be wholly negative—postponing a cross-channel invasion until May 1944. Stalin had been furious after the news from Casablanca that the attack had been postponed from spring 1943 to August or September. What would he say now?
This was the question assailing Roo
sevelt and Churchill as the conference ended. Grimly they sat down together to prepare a letter to their comrade in arms. Hour after hour they wrote and rewrote, sending scrawled passages out to be typed, and then scribbling over the drafts until they were almost illegible. Two of the most gifted expositors in the world at this moment were reduced to stammering schoolboys making a confession. At two in the morning, to Roosevelt’s relief, Churchill offered to take the latest draft away with him and “tidy it up” and return it. Both Churchill and Marshall were leaving for Algiers to consult with Eisenhower; Roosevelt agreed that the Chief of Staff could fly with the Prime Minister and work on the statement.
Next day, on the flying boat over the Atlantic, Marshall took the tattered drafts and in two hours wrote a message that aroused Churchill’s admiration for its clarity and comprehensiveness. He and Roosevelt approved it unchanged. The President held the message for a week before sending it, signed only by himself. Mostly it was a succinct statement of the whole range of Anglo-American global strategy. But almost hidden in the next-to-last paragraph was the fateful sentence: “Under the present plans, there should be a sufficiently large concentration of men and material in the British Isles in the spring of 1944 to permit a full-scale invasion of the continent at that time….”
By now Davies had returned to Washington with a hopeful report on his meeting with Stalin. Things had started awkwardly, he told the President, who listened eagerly and demanded specifics about Stalin and his comments. Stalin had bluntly reiterated that he could accept neither the African invasion nor the air attack on Germany as equivalent to the second front. He was suspicious of the Americans as well as the British. When Davies urged that if he and Roosevelt met face to face they could together win the war and the peace, Stalin replied tersely, “I am not so sure.” It took Davies a long time, he told Roosevelt, to penetrate the suspicion and near-hostility. But he had come back bearing a favorable response to Roosevelt’s invitation. Stalin was willing to confer with the President in Fairbanks in July or August.
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