Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  Before leaving Washington, Eisenhower had asked Marshall for Bedell Smith as his chief of staff. At the time, Smith was secretary of the Army general staff and Marshall’s principal assistant. Smith and Marshall had first met at the Infantry School at Fort Benning in the late twenties when Marshall had been assistant commandant and Smith was the school’s secretary. A former enlisted man, Smith was abrasive, bad-tempered, foulmouthed, and addicted to duty. Perhaps because his grandfather had been an enlisted man in the Prussian Army, he had a passion for order and discipline. Forrest Pogue, Marshall’s biographer, said, “Those who worked under Smith dreaded both his tongue and his exactions. In an Army where Marshall depended on officers like Eisenhower and Bradley to do their jobs quietly, to conciliate, and to persuade, he required others like Smith who could hack a path through red tape and perform hatchet jobs.”8 Eisenhower needed Smith in precisely that capacity. As Drew Middleton of The New York Times put it, “Smith had a mind like a steel trap and was just naturally mean. He was Ike’s sonofabitch.”9 Marshall initially did not want to release Smith, but eventually relented, and Beetle (as he preferred to be called) reported to London in September.

  Walter Bedell Smith when appointed as Ike’s chief of staff. (illustration credit 9.2)

  The long relationship between Eisenhower and Smith never became anything other than professional. Unlike Patton, Clark, and Bradley, with whom Ike felt kinship, he and Smith were never close. Smith played chess; Eisenhower preferred bridge. Smith read history and biography, leavened by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford; Eisenhower (like von Rundstedt) chose lighter fare. Eisenhower enjoyed singing hit tunes loudly and off-key; no one ever heard Smith sing. Ike smiled habitually. Smith never did.10 Like Hindenburg and Ludendorff (who were also distant personally), Eisenhower and Smith made a perfect pair. Smith did everything that was expected of a chief of staff, and relieved Eisenhower from headquarters routine. Ike said later that Smith was like a crutch to a one-legged man. “Remember, Beetle is a Prussian and one must make allowances for it.”11

  After putting his command structure in place, Eisenhower turned to theater headquarters. “Now that everyone here is at liberty to talk to me freely,” he wrote Marshall on June 26, 1942, “it becomes abundantly clear that some change was necessary.”12 Eisenhower immediately put the Army on a seven-day week. He was shocked when on his first Sunday several division heads sauntered into their Grosvenor Square offices at ten o’clock. He was even more surprised when he found that many at headquarters routinely left work before he did. “I’ve served on general staffs probably longer than any officer in the Army,” he told Butcher, “and I never left headquarters until my ‘Old Man’ departed.”13 Eisenhower did not belong to the “counsel and correct” school of military leadership. If an officer underperformed, he was summarily relieved and sent back to the United States. “Colonel Summers requested today that I revoke his orders for returning to the states,” Ike recorded in his diary on June 27. “I declined but told him I would carry him over for a month to avoid the implication that I relieved him immediately upon arrival.”14

  High on Eisenhower’s personal agenda was to engage Kay Summersby as his driver. He assigned the task of locating her to Tex Lee, but Lee, who evidently did not give it the priority Ike desired, had little success. Eventually Summersby was located driving for Tooey Spaatz. “Kay, where have you been?” asked Eisenhower. “I’ve been looking all over London for you.”

  He said to Spaatz, “Tooey, you’ve been hiding her in the Air Force.”

  “Now don’t take Kay away from me,” Spaatz replied. “She’s the only driver who knows her way around.” Two days later Summersby was driving for Ike.15

  While Eisenhower established himself as theater commander, Harry Butcher renewed his friendship with the CBS contingent in London: Edward R. Murrow, Robert Trout, and Charles Collingwood, as well as Ray Daniell of The New York Times and Quentin Reynolds of Collier’s. “I trained Bob [Trout] from a pup at WJSV,” Butcher recorded.16 The press corps, most of whom had been in London during the Blitz, were far better informed about the conduct of the war than most officers at Eisenhower’s headquarters. Daniell and Murrow were often briefed by Churchill himself, and all had contacts at the highest level in Whitehall. For Butcher, it was a two-way street. The journalists provided a back channel that kept Ike informed, and Eisenhower enjoyed favorable press coverage from the beginning.

  As the commander of all American forces in the European theater, Eisenhower met daily with one or more of the British chiefs of staff, or with Lieutenant General Sir Hastings (“Pug”) Ismay, Churchill’s personal chief of staff. He saw Churchill several times a week, often at a private lunch, and was occasionally invited to spend the weekend at Chequers, the prime minister’s country estate. Early on, Ike sensed the British were not happy with a cross-Channel attack, certainly not in 1942. “There seems to be some confusion of thought as to the extent of the British commitment,” he alerted Marshall on June 30, 1942.17

  What Eisenhower sensed was a fundamental resistance, particularly on Churchill’s part, to crossing the Channel under fire. Although the British had agreed “in principle” to an invasion of the Continent in the spring of 1943 (ROUNDUP), Churchill was never fully convinced. His doubts surfaced in mid-June following a visit by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov to Washington. At the conclusion of Molotov’s visit, the White House and the Kremlin announced in a joint communiqué that “full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.”18

  Washington’s announcement of a second front in 1942 galvanized Churchill. To cross the Channel in 1943 might be feasible; 1942 was out of the question. The last thing the British government wanted was a premature cross-Channel attack. The enormous battlefield losses of World War I, Churchill’s own unfortunate experience with the amphibious landing at Gallipoli in 1915, plus an awareness of how ill-prepared the Allies, particularly the United States, were to take on a battle-tested German Army, caused the British government to rethink its earlier commitment. Scarcely before the ink was dry on the Washington-Moscow communiqué, Churchill boarded a plane for the United States determined to dissuade Roosevelt from any thought of a second front in 1942, and possibly in 1943 as well.

  Churchill spent two days cloistered with FDR at Hyde Park. Whenever the two Allied leaders were alone together, policy makers down the line became nervous. “The President was always willing to do any sideshow, and Churchill was always prodding him,” said Marshall.19 Stimson said, “It looks as if the President is going to jump the traces.”20 The fact is, Churchill’s arguments against a 1942 cross-Channel attack were remarkably sound. There was a severe shortage of landing craft, the Luftwaffe held a six to one advantage in tactical air, Britain’s forces were too thinly spread, America’s were unproven, and the time to prepare was too short. “No responsible British military authority has so far been able to make a plan which has any chance of success unless the Germans become utterly demoralized, of which there is no likelihood,” said Churchill. The prime minister conceded that the Western Allies could not remain idle “during the whole of 1942,” and suggested they redirect their efforts toward landing in North Africa (GYMNAST).21

  Roosevelt was impressed by Churchill’s arguments. Returning with the prime minister to Washington, he summoned Marshall and King to the White House. When Churchill held forth on the advantages of invading North Africa, Marshall and King just as vigorously defended a cross-Channel attack. Marshall argued that GYMNAST was an unnecessary diversion, a pinprick at the periphery that would inevitably postpone the invasion of Europe. King doubted if the British would ever agree to invade the Continent. Tempers rose. At one point, Marshall and King suggested that if Britain persisted in its opposition to a cross-Channel attack, the United States should abandon the “Germany first” strategy agreed to at Placentia Bay and strike decisively against Japan.22 Roosevelt came down hard. The chiefs’ suggestion, he said, was “a
little like taking up your dishes and going away.”23

  The president’s principal concern was to bring U.S. ground troops into action against the German Army as soon as possible. American public opinion was clamoring for vengeance against Japan. To keep the nation’s strategic priorities straight, it was essential to join the battle against Hitler as soon as possible, regardless of the location. There was also the need to assist Russia, which could not be done so long as American forces sat on the sidelines. Finally, congressional midterm elections were set for November. It was inevitable that the Democrats would lose seats, the question was how many? If the United States had not mounted an offensive by then, the loss might be catastrophic.

  The June conference in Washington (ARGONAUT) failed to find a solution. Meanwhile, the military situation continued to deteriorate.24 The British garrison in the Libyan port city of Tobruk surrendered, opening the door for Rommel to move on Alexandria, Cairo, and the Suez Canal. In Russia, the German Army had crossed the Don and was approaching Stalingrad on the Volga; the Crimean fortress of Sevastopol had fallen; and the oil fields of the Caucasus appeared within Hitler’s reach. The Chinese war effort had all but collapsed, the fighting on Guadalcanal hung in the balance, four of America’s seven aircraft carriers had been sunk, and two were in dry dock for repairs. In the Atlantic, German U-boats prowled virtually unmolested. A thirty-three-ship convoy bound for Archangel lost twenty-four vessels en route, causing shipments to the Soviet Union’s Arctic ports to be suspended indefinitely.25

  An agreement on an offensive strategy was urgently required. On July 16, FDR dispatched Hopkins, Marshall, and King to London to settle the matter. “It is of the highest importance that U.S. ground troops be brought into action against the enemy in 1942,” said the president.26 Eisenhower, who had not been privy to the discussions thus far, met Marshall upon his arrival in London. At the chief of staff’s direction, he prepared what amounted to a legal brief detailing the advantages of a cross-Channel assault in 1942 and negating any benefit that might accrue from landing in North Africa—which Marshall considered “completely out of the question.”27

  Ike did not participate in the conference with the British chiefs, but the meetings were tense and sometimes acrimonious. Marshall continued to press for crossing the Channel, but he was fighting a losing battle. On July 22, the British announced that the matter had been submitted to the war cabinet, which had voted unanimously against any cross-Channel operation in 1942.28 For all practical purposes that decided the issue. When Eisenhower learned of the decision, he told Butcher, “July 22, 1942 could well go down as the ‘blackest day’ in history”—a silly overreaction he later regretted.29

  After the British made it clear that they would not cross the Channel in 1942, Hopkins asked Roosevelt for instructions. The president said he was not surprised at the British refusal. He repeated his insistence on coming to grips with the Germans as soon as possible, and suggested that North Africa was the best place to do so.30 Marshall and King grudgingly acknowledged the president’s wishes but remained skeptical. At their final meeting on July 25, the CCS tentatively agreed to a largely American-led landing in North Africa in October, and repledged themselves to a cross-Channel attack in the summer of 1943.

  The following day, Marshall told Eisenhower that he would command the North African expedition, which had been rechristened TORCH for security reasons. “General Marshall added that my appointment was not yet official, but that written orders would come through at an early date. In the meantime, he said that I should get started on the planning.”31 Marshall did not tell him of the War Department’s skepticism about what it believed was a North African sideshow.

  FDR was delighted with the outcome of the London discussions. “I cannot help feeling that last week represented a turning point in the whole war,” he cabled Churchill on July 27.32 Despite the president’s clearly stated preference, Marshall and King continued to resist landing in North Africa. Their opposition surfaced at a meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington on July 30. The meeting was chaired by Admiral William D. Leahy, who had recently assumed his duties as chief of staff to the president. When the issue of North Africa arose, Marshall said he did not agree that a final decision had been made; King added that it was “his impression that the President and Prime Minister had not yet reached an agreement.”33 When Admiral Leahy reported the discussion to FDR, the president was furious. Marshall and King were ordered to the White House at eight-thirty that evening, and Roosevelt took the chiefs to the woodshed. As reported afterward by the War Department: “The PRESIDENT stated very definitely that he, as Commander-in-Chief, had made the decision that TORCH would be undertaken at the earliest possible date. He considered that this operation was now our principal objective and the assembling of means to carry it out should take precedence over other operations.”34

  For the first—but not the last—time during the war, Roosevelt asserted his constitutional prerogative as commander in chief and overruled his senior military and naval commanders.c FDR’s command decision to invade North Africa rather than attempt a cross-Channel attack in 1942 was the most far-reaching American strategic decision of the war. According to Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Rick Atkinson, Roosevelt had “cast his lot with the British … repudiated an American military tradition of annihilation … and based his fiat on instinct and a political calculation that the time was ripe.” His decision saved the United States from what would have been a military disaster.35 As the ill-fated amphibious assault by British and Canadian commandos on the French port of Dieppe in August 1942 proved, Hitler’s West Wall was a tough nut to crack. Of the 6,000 men who took part in the Dieppe attack, 3,600 were killed, wounded, or captured. Even more compelling was the lackluster performance of the American Army during the early stages of the North African campaign. War Department euphoria notwithstanding, the U.S. Army was not yet battleworthy (in Churchill’s words). Certainly it was not ready to take on the Wehrmacht, which would be fighting from behind prepared positions on the French coast.

  Uncharacteristically, General Marshall continued to throw sand in the gearbox. In this instance, Marshall’s determination served the nation poorly, and his recalcitrance delayed the North African landing by almost a month. Eisenhower, supported by the British, advocated landing on the Mediterranean coast of Algeria, as far east as possible, within striking distance of Tunisia. Both saw the swift occupation of Tunisia as the most crucial element in the invasion—vital to prevent Axis reinforcements coming from Sicily, and essential to trap Rommel’s Afrika Korps in Libya. By contrast, General Marshall and the War Department insisted on landing on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, some thousand miles to the west. Marshall argued that it was too chancy to risk passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. Having been aggressive to the point of recklessness when advocating a 1942 cross-Channel attack, Marshall was now consumed with caution. His opposition to sending troop convoys through the strait was either a red herring or the result of a faulty knowledge of geography.d At its narrowest point the strait is eight miles wide (scarcely a bottleneck) and it was completely controlled by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. There was also little risk of Spanish intervention to prevent passage since Generalissimo Francisco Franco was now hedging his bets. By contrast, a landing on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, given the unusually high surf that prevailed, was a far more hazardous undertaking. It would also render the early occupation of Tunisia virtually impossible. General Marshall’s stubborn refusal to consider landing in Algeria, combined with his continued preference for hitting the beaches in distant Morocco, caused British military leadership to question Marshall’s strategic ability and contributed to the friction that bedeviled the Combined Chiefs of Staff.36

  Ultimately Roosevelt and Churchill intervened in what Eisenhower called a “transatlantic essay contest,” and a compromise was reached.37 Allied troops would go ashore at three points: near Casablanca, in French Morocco, and close by the port citi
es of Oran and Algiers, in Algeria. Eisenhower set the date for November 8, 1942, barely two months away but five days after U.S. congressional elections.e

  “Hurray!” FDR cabled Churchill on September 5.

  “Okay full blast,” Churchill replied.38

  Eisenhower shared that sentiment. “The past six weeks have been the most trying of my life,” he wrote George Patton. “You can well imagine that my feelings at the moment are those of great relief that a final decision now seems assured.”39

  Privately, Eisenhower confessed doubts. “We are undertaking something of a quite desperate nature,” he wrote in his diary in early September. “In a way it is like the return of Napoleon from Elba—if the guess as to psychological reaction is correct, we may gain a tremendous advantage; if the guess is wrong, we will gain nothing and will lose a lot.… [W]e are sailing in a dangerous political sea, and this particular sea is one in which military skill and ability can do little in charting a safe course.”40