Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (13 page)

That left Marshall with only one card to play. He shared with Stimson an idea for a “showdown” with the British, and to some extent with the president, too. “As the British won’t go through with what they agreed to,” he told the secretary of war, “we will turn our backs on them and take up the war with Japan.” Stimson encouraged him, and when Marshall brought
the idea up with the JCS, King naturally thought it a splendid idea. So Marshall prepared a memo for the president in which he advocated a complete reversal of American strategy: “If the United States is to engage in any other operation than forceful, unswerving adherence to
BOLERO
plans,” he wrote, “we are definitely of the opinion that we should turn to the Pacific and strike decisively against Japan; in other words, assume a defensive attitude against Germany, except for air operations; and use all available means in the Pacific.”
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Long after the war was over, Marshall admitted to his biographer, Forrest Pogue, that his proposal had been “a bluff” designed to get the British to back down. Roosevelt, however, was an old poker player and recognized it for what it was. He received Marshall’s astonishing memo at Hyde Park, discussed it briefly with Hopkins, and then called Marshall’s bluff by asking him to show his cards: that is, to produce a detailed plan that included a list of Pacific targets, a timetable for the landings, a logistics program to support them, and an explanation of how such a move would help the Russians. Marshall had to confess he had no such plan, and so on Monday, July 13, Roosevelt officially rejected the proposal, saying that it would be like “taking up your dishes and going away.” At the same time, he reiterated to Marshall that he must find a way to get United States troops into combat in the European theater
that year
, and to accomplish that, he was sending Marshall back to London with King and Hopkins to reach a final agreement with the British. He signed the memo “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Commander-in-Chief,” a not-so-subtle reminder of the chain of command.
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Marshall, King, and Hopkins landed at Scotland’s Prestwick Airport on July 18. Churchill had sent a special train to bring them to Chequers, where he planned an elaborate dinner. Marshall and King, however, still resentful of what they perceived to be British faithlessness, instead boarded a train that took them to Euston Station in London and made their way to Claridge’s Hotel. Churchill was furious at the snub, and Hopkins took it upon himself to play peacemaker, going out to Chequers to try to calm the irate prime minister. He may have done more than that. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he also shared with Churchill that Roosevelt had taken the Pacific option off the table. That, of course, greatly strengthened Churchill’s hand in holding out for Gymnast.
⁴⁵

The showdown came on July 22. Ordered by Roosevelt to obtain an agreement for a 1942 operation, Marshall and King pushed hard for Sledgehammer, or at least a modified version of it. Churchill and the British were unmovable. Churchill had made a
permanent
lodgment a condition of any cross-Channel effort, and the wherewithal to establish and maintain such a foothold simply did not exist. As Hopkins listened to the back-and-forth, he saw that the two sides had reached an impasse, and he scrawled a note to Marshall: “I feel damn depressed.”
⁴⁶

Marshall suggested a compromise in which serious preparations would begin at once for Gymnast but a decision to execute it would be postponed until September in order to assess circumstances at the time. The British were willing to accept that, but Hopkins was not. He feared that postponing the decision until September would mean no action at all in 1942. He cabled the president privately to suggest that Roosevelt should intervene. He should not only support Gymnast, Hopkins suggested, but also set a date for its execution, suggesting October 30, 1942, which was, not coincidentally, four days before the congressional elections. Accepting Hopkins’s advice, Roosevelt ordered Marshall and King to abandon Sledgehammer and choose instead one of several alternatives: North Africa, Norway, Egypt, or Iran. Given those choices, there was really only one possible outcome, and Hopkins cabled the final decision to Roosevelt that night in a single word: “Africa.” Roosevelt’s reply was similarly terse: “Thank God.”
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Churchill, of course, was delighted, writing Roosevelt that it was now “full steam ahead” for the new plan, which he rechristened Torch. He happily embraced the proposal that an American should be designated as the overall commander of the operation, and even accepted the unpleasant duty of going to Moscow to break the bad news to Stalin. Churchill continued to act and to speak as if this commitment to Torch would have little effect on Roundup in 1943. He certainly implied as much to Stalin, telling the Russian leader that in addition to Torch, the Allies planned to land forty-eight divisions in France in the spring. He may even have believed it. Two months later he claimed, perhaps disingenuously, that he was “astonished” that the execution of Torch was likely to affect a 1943 cross-Channel invasion. Roosevelt, too, optimist that he was, clung to the notion that the
Allies could eat their cake and have it, too. As he told one officer, “he could see no reason why the withdrawal of a few troops in 1942 would prevent
BOLERO
in 1943.”
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Marshall knew better. He saw clearly that once the Western Allies became fully committed, the momentum of events and the logistical realities of attempting to assemble, mount, and execute a large-scale amphibious assault in Africa would make a spring invasion of France in 1943 impossible. Bowing to reality, however, he acknowledged that the pressures of the moment, both political and logistical, compelled the decision for Torch. Time was running out. It was past midsummer, and the Germans had begun a two-pronged drive, code-named Case Blue, aimed at the capture of both the Baku oil fields and Stalin’s namesake city, Stalingrad. Something had to be done, and Torch was the only thing that seemed doable. On July 30, Roosevelt formally announced that “as Commander-in-Chief, [he] had made the decision.” The invasion of North Africa was now to be America’s “principal objective,” and the distribution of ships, men, and matériel for that operation was to take precedence over all other options, including Bolero. Disappointed but dutiful, Marshall prepared to execute the new strategy.
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E
VEN BEFORE ROOSEVELT STEPPED IN
to make the final decision for Gymnast/Torch at the end of July, Marshall sent Eisenhower to England to assume the role of commanding general of U.S. forces in the European theater. Eisenhower replaced Major General James E. Chaney, who suffered from two flaws: he maintained leisurely eight-hour work days, even wearing civilian clothes to the office, yet (according to Eisenhower) he betrayed “an excessive concern for minor regulations and rules.” Chaney returned to the States to take over training for the Army Air Forces, and Eisenhower assumed command in England on June 24. Because of that, Ike was present at Claridge’s Hotel in July when Marshall, King, and Hopkins laid their plans for the showdown with the British over Sledgehammer vs. Gymnast. Indeed, it was Eisenhower who wrote the briefing paper that had argued, “
GYMNAST
is strategically unsound as an operation either to support
ROUNDUP
or to render prompt assistance to the Russians.” He was initially depressed by the decision to go to North Africa, predicting that future historians would mark July 22 as “the blackest day in history.” Soon
enough, however, he accepted and even embraced it. That was just as well, for within days he was tapped to be its commanding officer.
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Fifty-two years old in 1942 and already bald, Eisenhower was a Texan by birth, though he had been reared in Abilene, Kansas, which he always considered his home. Having delayed his application to West Point for two years after high school in order to work, he was older than most of his classmates, and he was twenty-five when he graduated more or less in the middle of his class in 1915. It was a great disappointment to him that he did not get overseas during the First World War and instead spent most of the war training tank units near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the interwar years, his career was marked by a series of increasingly important staff positions under influential commanders: first Fox Conner, whom he always considered his mentor, then John J. Pershing, and finally Douglas MacArthur. His relationship with MacArthur was especially challenging since MacArthur preferred yes-men around him, and Eisenhower had to learn how to be loyal while remaining his own man—a delicate balancing act that prepared him to deal with the likes of Roosevelt and Churchill. Indeed, the key to both Eisenhower’s rise in the Army and his success during the war was his measured temperament. In a note for his diary, he wrote: “In a war such as this, where high command invariably involves a Pres., a Prime Minister, 6 chiefs of staff, and a horde of lesser ‘planners,’ there has got to be a lot of patience.” Like Marshall, who became his newest mentor, Ike was thoughtful and conscientious, a deliberate decision maker who worked long hours, maintained careful records, and ensured that everyone was kept well informed. Throughout it all he remained determinedly cheerful, often flashing that famous grin, which one officer thought was “worth twenty divisions.” The only visible evidence that he was roiling inside was the cigarette that was almost always to be found in his hand, for he smoked up to four packs of Camels a day.
²

In the ten months prior to his appointment to command Torch, Eisenhower had experienced an almost dizzying series of promotions. He made brigadier general in October 1941, major general in March 1942, and lieutenant general in July. Of course, there were any number of swift promotions in the rapidly expanding American army of 1941–42, but none quite
like his—a rise that was all the more noteworthy in light of the fact that he had never commanded a body of men larger than a battalion, and he had never seen combat at all. Now endowed with the command of the largest and most complex undertaking of the war—indeed of American history—he began to gather the reins of command into his hands. He soon found that making plans was the easy part; it was implementing them that was hard, for coordinating all the various moving parts of this complex multinational operation was daunting. In the end, the material, logistical, organizational, and political difficulties of Torch demonstrated just how problematic an attempt to invade Europe in 1942 would have been. On the other hand, the experience proved invaluable in preparing Eisenhower to exercise even greater responsibility eighteen months later as the commander of Neptune-Overlord.

Eisenhower’s first challenge was embracing the role of an
Allied
commander, not an
American
commander who had British troops serving under him. Though he (like Marshall) had advocated unified command for Allied operations from the start, it became immediately evident that the British and Americans had strikingly different command cultures and organizational habits. The American penchant for getting right to the point ran up against the British tradition of ensuring that all the boxes were properly checked before moving on to the next thing. Planning was slowed by the British preference for open discussion of most decisions at “large staff conference and committee meetings.” American officers found this frustrating, and a few made disparaging remarks about it. Eisenhower acted quickly to stop such comments. He lectured his subordinates in no uncertain terms about the need for full cooperation. “The winning of the war,” he insisted, “depends markedly upon … mutual feelings of respect and confidence.” Any friction with the British at any level, he wrote, plays
“completely into the hands of our enemies,”
and he underscored the phrase for emphasis. He had no tolerance for inter-Allied feuding. He didn’t mind if officers called each other a “son of a bitch,” he told an associate; soldiers would do that. But if anyone referred to a “
British
son of a bitch,” he was promptly sent packing. Throughout the war, Eisenhower’s determination to erase national distinctions within his command was a central element of his leadership.
³

Another constraint was Eisenhower’s lack of control over political issues. One of those was whether to use British or American troops in the invasion. That question grew out of the complicated and uncertain political status of North Africa. The putatively independent Vichy French government retained colonial oversight over Morocco and Algeria, so, officially at least, an American invasion of North Africa would constitute an unprovoked attack on a neutral country, one with which the United States maintained nominally friendly relations. On the other hand, most Frenchmen continued to consider Germany their real enemy, and the Allied hope was that many of them would welcome the Americans as liberators.

That was not likely to be the case if British troops were involved. Though England and France had been allied against Germany in both world wars, that partnership had suffered a blow in May 1940 during the German blitzkrieg, when British forces had retreated to the Channel coast at Dunkirk to save themselves, leaving the French to face the Germans alone. To be sure, by then the military situation had utterly collapsed and the only other British options were destruction or surrender. Nevertheless, the French felt betrayed by what they considered their abandonment. Far worse, however, was the Royal Navy attack six weeks later on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, near Oran in Algeria. The British had justified that attack as necessary to keep French naval assets out of German hands, but justified or not, it had been a deliberate and unprovoked assault in which more than twelve hundred Frenchmen had been killed. To the French, it was little different, and arguably even more infamous, than what the Japanese had done to the Americans at Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt feared that French anger would translate into fierce resistance to any invasion that included British troops, and he therefore wanted the North African assault to be an all-American show. Naturally enough, Churchill and the British did not want to be left out of this first Anglo-American counteroffensive of the war.
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