Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  For the Allies, it was just the opposite. In late January, Eisenhower asked Washington for more trucks. Three weeks later a convoy of twenty ships sailed from American ports with 5,000 two-and-a-half-ton trucks, 2,000 cargo trailers, 400 dump trucks, and 80 fighter planes. From late February to late March, 130 ships crossed the Atlantic with 84,000 soldiers, 24,000 vehicles, and a million tons of cargo. When Patton demanded new shoes for his troops, 80,000 pairs arrived almost overnight. By April, the Allies could put 1,400 tanks in the field. The Germans could muster only 80. Tunis fell on May 8, 1943, and the last German units surrendered on the thirteenth. Axis losses in Tunisia totaled 290,000 killed or captured—an Allied victory in some respects comparable to the Russian triumph at Stalingrad.

  Brute force prevailed. As General Lucius D. Clay, who headed all U.S. military procurement in World War II, noted: “We were never able to build a tank as good as the German tank. But we made so many of them that it didn’t really matter.”109 Rommel made a similar observation. “The battle is fought and decided by the quartermaster before the shooting begins.”110

  * * *

  a Eisenhower received an unsigned cable shortly afterward from London reporting “Telek is fine.” On November 11, he wired Beetle, “You would scarcely believe me if I should tell you how much the good news about Telek meant to me. The little black imp has a real personality that appeals to me tremendously. While I think this is the one thing in which I did not accept your advice (I mean the choice of the two dogs), I am delighted I took him on ‘love at first sight.’ ”

  Telek accompanied Ike throughout the war. When Eisenhower returned to Washington to become chief of staff in November 1945, Telek remained with Kay and died in New York in 1959 at the age of seventeen. The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 2, The War Years 693–95, cited subsequently as 2 War Years; Kay Summersby Morgan, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower 281 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976).

  b Eisenhower’s assessment of Giraud’s motives proved correct. After a night’s sleep, Giraud capitulated. “Have just concluded gentleman’s agreement with KINGPIN [Giraud’s code name] that is entirely acceptable,” Ike cabled Marshall on November 8, 1942. “The basis of the agreement is exactly what I offered KINGPIN throughout the long conference of yesterday.” Eisenhower to Marshall, November 8, 1942, in 2 War Years 675–76.

  c On October 27, 1942, Brigadier General Everett Hughes, working as deputy chief of staff at Eisenhower’s London headquarters, wrote in his diary, “I suspect from the females that Ike is taking that Butch [Commander Harry C. Butcher] has his eye on a bit of **** for the C[ommanding] G[eneral].”

  General Hughes was an old friend of the Eisenhowers from their days at the Wyoming in Washington and the Army general staff. A charter member of Club Eisenhower, he was called “Uncle Everett” by young John. Hughes remained with Eisenhower throughout the war, and was widely regarded as Ike’s “eyes and ears.” Simply put, Everett Hughes was one of Eisenhower’s closest friends. His assessment was that of someone who had known Ike and Mamie for over twenty years. Everett Hughes diary (handwritten), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Also see John S. D. Eisenhower, Strictly Personal 7 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974).

  d General Juin, who lost the use of his right arm in World War I, had been a classmate of Charles de Gaulle’s at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. In 1940, he commanded the 15th Motorized Infantry Division, whose heroic defense of Lille provided time for the British evacuation at Dunkirk. Despite the senior position he held under Vichy, his sympathy for the Allies was well known. Later, as head of the French Expeditionary Corps fighting as part of Fifth Army in Italy, he asked to be reduced in rank from full general to lieutenant general so as not to outrank Mark Clark. After the war Juin became French chief of staff, represented France at the San Francisco conference that established the United Nations, commanded allied ground forces under NATO, and was made a marshal of France in 1952—the last person invested with that office. He is entombed in Les Invalides. Anthony Clayton, Three Marshals of France: Leadership After Trauma 10–38, 65–92, 165–97 (London: Brassey’s, 1992).

  e The Clark-Darlan Agreement, some twenty-one articles, is reprinted in United States Department of State, 2 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942: Europe 453–57 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962).

  f As the symbol of the Free French movement, de Gaulle chose the tricolor flag of the republic with the cross of Lorraine superimposed, reflecting for the first time in French history the union of Christianity and the republic.

  g Alerted by Beetle Smith in London and by Marshall that a storm was brewing over the Darlan deal, Eisenhower dispatched a lengthy justification to the Combined Chiefs of Staff that acknowledged that the situation in North Africa “does not repeat not agree even remotely with some of prior calculations.” He pointed out that the end of French resistance had come about from Darlan’s orders, not because the Allies had prevailed in battle, and that if they did not cooperate with Darlan additional trouble might ensue. “I realize there may be a feeling at home that we have been sold a bill of goods, but I assure you that these arrangements have been arrived at only after incessant examination of the important factors and with the determination of getting on with the military objectives in winning the war.” Eisenhower made no mention of the political aspects of the agreement. DDE to CCS, November 14, 1942, 2 War Years 707–11.

  h Stalin also came to Ike’s support. On December 13, 1942, he wrote FDR that, “in my opinion, as well as that of my colleagues, Eisenhower’s policy with regard to Darlan is perfectly correct. I think it is a great achievement that you have succeeded in bringing Darlan and others into the orbit of the Allies fighting Hitler.” USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2 Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidents of the United States and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the Great Patriotic War 44 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958).

  i Later, Brooke wrote that Eisenhower “was blessed with a wonderful charm that carried him far; perhaps his greatest asset was a greater share of luck than most of us receive in life. However, if Ike had rather more than his share of luck we, as allies, were certainly extremely fortunate to have such an exceptionally charming individual. As Supreme Commander what he may have lacked in military ability he greatly made up for by the charm of his personality.” 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 430–31n (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957). (Emphasis added.)

  j Charles de Gaulle puts the proposition with droll understatement in the second volume of his Memoirs.

  The man who killed [Darlan], Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, had made himself the instrument of the aggravated passions that had fired the souls around him to the boiling point but behind which, perhaps, moved a policy determined to liquidate a “temporary expedient” after having made use of him.… He believed, moreover, as he repeatedly said until the moment of his execution, that an intervention would be made in his behalf by some outside source so high and powerful that the North African authorities could not refuse to obey it. Of course no individual has the right to kill save on the field of battle. Moreover, Darlan’s behavior, as a governor and as a leader, was answerable to national justice, not certainly, to that of a group or an individual. Yet how could we fail to recognize the nature of the intentions that inspired this juvenile fury? That is why the strange, brutal and summary way the investigation was conducted in Algiers, the hasty and abbreviated trial before a military tribunal convened at night and in private session, the immediate and secret execution of Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, the orders given to the censors that not even his name should be known—all these led to the suspicion that someone wanted to conceal at any price the origin of his decision and constituted a kind of defiance of those circumstances which, without justifying the drama, explaine
d and, to a certain degree, excused it.

  Charles de Gaulle, War Memoirs 74–75 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959).

  k Patton’s virtues as a hell-for-leather combat commander have obscured the savoir faire he brought to the table. A well-traveled member of the horsey set, Patton admired French civilization, spoke the language easily, and was as much at home with first-growth Bordeaux as with bourbon and branch water. He related easily to the sultan of Morocco, and unlike Clark and Ike (who were culturally limited), quickly established a harmonious working relationship with French civil and military officials in Morocco.

  l Patton’s doubts about accepting the post may have been well founded. In May 1862, before the Battle of Corinth, General Henry W. Halleck took Grant away from troops and made him deputy commander of the Union Army in the West. Like Patton, Grant was a troop commander par excellence, not a paper pusher, and he became despondent in his new role. Sherman found Grant packing to leave the Army and return to St. Louis, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he convinced Grant to remain. Jean Edward Smith, Grant 208–10 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

  m Rudyard Kipling, the historian of the Irish Guards Regiment in World War I, said of Alexander, “At the worst crises he was both inventive and cordial and … would somehow contrive to dress the affair in high comedy.” Richard Doherty, Irish Generals: Irish Generals in the British Army in the Second World War 32 (Belfast: Appletree, 1993).

  n “My main anxiety is the poor fighting value of the Americans,” Alexander cabled London on February 25. “They simply do not know their job as soldiers and this is the case from the highest to the lowest.… Perhaps the weakest link of all is the junior leader, who just does not lead, with the result that their men don’t really fight.” Quoted in Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 377 (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).

  As a young lieutenant serving with the 6th Infantry Regiment in Berlin in the 1950s, I once accompanied our commander on a visit to the Black Watch. We arrived in the early afternoon, and no officers were present. My colonel asked the Scottish sergeant major where the officers were. “They are not here, sir,” he replied. It was during the duty day, and my colonel was surprised.

  “Not here?” he asked. “It’s only two o’clock. What do the officers do?”

  “They show us how to die, sir,” said the sergeant major, standing rigidly at attention. That effectively ended the conversation.

  ELEVEN

  Sicily

  I realize I did my duty in a very tactless way, but so long as my method pleased the God of Battles, I am content.

  —GEORGE S. PATTON,

  September 21, 1943

  American performance in North Africa was abysmal. An army must learn to crawl before it can walk, Omar Bradley famously said, and it was in Tunisia that the American Army first learned to crawl. “The proud and cocky Americans today stand humiliated by one of the greatest defeats in our history,” Commander Harry Butcher wrote in his diary after Kasserine.1 Censorship kept the home front ignorant of the extent of American losses, but the Army had been driven back eighty-five miles in less than a week—a rout that, if measured in miles alone, exceeded that of the Battle of the Bulge two years later. Ike was saved because of German logistical problems: Rommel ran short of fuel and ammunition. Speaking off the record to newsmen, Eisenhower assumed full responsibility for the defeat, and later acknowledged that he had erred by pressing II Corps too far forward. “Had I been willing to pass to the defensive, no attack against us could have achieved even temporary success.”2

  Few figures in public life have proved more adept at making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear than Dwight Eisenhower. His official report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the North African campaign proclaimed that the battle of Kasserine Pass, rather than being a military disaster, was, in reality, the turning point of the war. According to Ike, the “sands were running out” for Rommel, “and the turn of the tide at KASSERINE proved actually to be the turn of the tide in all of TUNISIA as well.”3 With positive thinking like that it is no wonder that Eisenhower was so popular with Churchill and Roosevelt, or why Patton persisted in referring to him as “Divine Destiny” rather than Dwight David.4

  Eisenhower radiated the certitude of victory. “I have caught up with myself and have things on a fairly even keel,” he wrote Marshall in early March 1943.5 Alexander’s timely arrival had rescued the ground war, and John C. H. Lee’s supply services had ensured that everything required to finish the job was always at hand.

  Ike’s optimism was contagious. He recognized that a few compelling ideas, preached relentlessly, would propel his forces forward.6 The foremost of those ideas was Allied unity. His problems were not so much with the British, who had been accustomed to fighting alongside allies for centuries, but with his American compatriots, who were notoriously insular. Mark Clark and Omar Bradley were viciously xenophobic, and George Patton, who got along famously with the French, despised the British with a particular passion. Ike’s chief contribution at this point in the war was to ride herd on his countrymen and keep them working in harness with the British, who were still doing the lion’s share of the fighting. Seventy-five percent of Allied ground forces in the theater were British, as were four out of every five naval vessels and half the air forces. As far as casualties, the British had lost eight times as many men since El Alamein as the Americans.7 “We are establishing a pattern for complete unity in Allied effort that will stand the Allied nations in good stead throughout the remainder of the war,” Ike advised the War Department in early April.8

  Eisenhower studied his mistakes. “We are learning something every day, and in general do not make the same mistake twice.”9 Ike learned to be tougher with subordinates such as Fredendall. “Officers that fail must be ruthlessly weeded out,” Eisenhower wrote his old friend Leonard Gerow. “Considerations of friendship, family, kindness, and nice personality have nothing to do with the problem.… You must be tough.”10 He learned the importance of training and discipline, and how to deploy airpower and massed armor, particularly when confronting Germany’s superior panzer formations. One lesson he did not learn was the need for a proper replacement system, and here he betrayed an unwillingness to challenge official doctrine. The United States, unlike the British, the French, or the Germans, treated soldiers as interchangeable parts. As parts wore out, new parts were shipped in to keep units at full strength. These replacements were invariably green, and unit cohesion suffered from the dribble of new men constantly coming in. The British, French, and Germans, by contrast, operated on a unit basis. When a regiment wore out, it was replaced in the line with a fresh regiment and sent to the rear to refit—usually with replacements from the same region. The American system reflected the assembly line attitude that worked well producing tanks and airplanes, but fell woefully short when it came to maintaining unit morale. A product of World War I, it was vigorously embraced by General Marshall. Ike and his field commanders knew it worked poorly, but they never challenged the system.

  Above all, it was in North Africa that Eisenhower made the transition from staff officer to senior commander. By the end of the Tunisian campaign he no longer felt that he had to keep Marshall and the War Department informed of his every move. He had confidence in his subordinates—Alexander, Cunningham, Tedder, and Lee—and they gave him their confidence in return. “The only man who could have made things work was Ike,” said Churchill’s chief of staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay.11 “He was utterly fair in his dealings,” said Alexander. “I envied the clarity of his mind, and his power of accepting responsibility.”12 Harold Macmillan, Ike’s political adviser, noted that Eisenhower was “wholly uneducated in any normal sense of the word. Yet compared with the wooden heads and desiccated hearts of many British soldiers I see here, he is a jewel of broadmindedness and wisdom.”13

  At Casablanca, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that after North Africa was liberated, the Allies should invade Sicily.
The extended fighting in Tunisia made a cross-Channel attack all but impossible in 1943, and Eisenhower’s forces could not sit idle for the remainder of the year. The island of Sicily, ninety miles north of Tunisia and separated from Italy by the narrow Strait of Messina, offered the best opportunity. An invasion could be mounted quickly, the occupation of the island would render Mediterranean shipping lanes more secure, and the invasion of Italy (which the British pressed relentlessly) would be facilitated. The operation was code-named HUSKY, and Eisenhower was instructed to prepare for a landing in early July.14

  Planning was delayed by the Tunisian campaign, but by May 12, 1943, the final order of battle was fixed. Thirteen Allied divisions—six British, six American, and one Canadian—were committed to HUSKY. The British and Canadian divisions would be commanded by Montgomery and his Eighth Army headquarters. The American divisions would comprise a newly created Seventh Army commanded by Patton. Both armies would be under Alexander’s overall command at Fifteenth Army Group.