Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (7 page)

Meanwhile, Churchill did not dismiss the suggestion in the ABC report that an accelerated bombing campaign and economic privation in Europe might lead to significant unrest among Hitler’s unwilling subjects. He never gave up on the idea that “an internal collapse is always possible.” That was no sure thing, of course, and so it was necessary to prepare “for the liberation of captive countries of Western and Southern Europe by the landing at suitable points, successively or simultaneously, of British and American armies strong enough to enable the conquered populations to revolt.”
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A central conundrum in this view was that if an invasion was not possible until 1943, what were the Allies to do in the meantime? The summer of 1943 was eighteen months away, and surely the Allies could not spend all that time merely accumulating the necessary wherewithal for the eventual thrust onto the continent. This was especially true in light of the facts that the Russians were dying by the hundreds of thousands on the Eastern Front and the American public, eager to avenge Pearl Harbor, wanted to send forces to the Pacific. Given those pressures, it was absolutely essential to do
something
in the Atlantic theater in 1942, and for Churchill that something was obvious: “A campaign must be fought in 1942 to gain possession of, or conquer, the whole of the North African shore.” He argued that such a campaign would close the ring around Hitler’s European empire, forestall an Axis move into Iberia (Spain and Portugal), and, by regaining use of the Mediterranean sea lanes, obviate the need to send Middle East convoys all the way around Africa. Finally, it would compel Vichy France to choose sides once and for all. With the United States now in the war, French antipathy for the British would be ameliorated; they might even be encouraged to rejoin the Allied cause. At the very least, an Allied presence in North
Africa would compel the Germans to occupy the rest of France, which would tie down more German divisions and thereby provide relief to the hard-pressed Russians. For all these reasons, Churchill argued, “the Northwest African theater is one most favorable for Anglo-American operations.” But first he had to sell that idea to the Americans.
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The
Duke of York
eased into the commodious anchorage at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on December 22. The official itinerary called for Churchill and his party to journey from there to Washington by boat, but Churchill was in a hurry, and he arranged to have a plane fly him from Hampton to Washington’s National Airport, where he was met by Roosevelt. The two men greeted each other as old friends. During the drive to the White House, Churchill found it a bit jarring that despite the onset of war, much of the city was brightly lit with Christmas illuminations. It had been three years since there had been any Christmas illuminations in London. Churchill moved into the White House, where he was assigned the Rose bedroom on the second floor, directly across the hall from Harry Hopkins.
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Over the next several days, Churchill became, in effect, a member of the family. Given his habit of staying up late and sleeping in, he missed every breakfast, but he had lunch with the president and Hopkins each day, and he was there every afternoon for cocktails at what Roosevelt puckishly called “the Children’s Hour.” After drinks, which Roosevelt mixed himself, Churchill personally pushed Roosevelt in his wheelchair over to the elevator to go down to dinner. He later insisted that he did so “as a mark of respect,” likening it to Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak for Queen Elizabeth, a somewhat labored analogy. Aware of Churchill’s nocturnal habits, Roosevelt stayed up later than he liked after dinner so as not to miss out on the conversations with Churchill and Hopkins. Both the British and American senior officers worried about these private sessions between president and prime minister. The Americans feared that the wily Churchill would convince Roosevelt to act in support of British interests rather than those of the United States. They were aware of Roosevelt’s rather haphazard administrative style and his habit of agreeing, at least initially, with whatever views were presented to him most recently. Meanwhile, the British heads of service feared that decisions would be made, and deals struck, that would force them into some untenable or unrealistic commitment.
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In addition to Dill, Pound, and Portal, Churchill had also brought along a full suite of junior officers and servants, for Churchill was notoriously high-maintenance, and on some days there seemed to be more British officers with their red tabs (indicating a staff position) striding purposefully down the White House corridors than there were Americans. One of the young officers in the White House later recalled catching glimpses of Churchill “always with a sheaf of dispatches in hand, shuttling back and forth between his bedroom, Harry Hopkins’s tiny office, and the president’s study.” In addition to his bedroom, Churchill also took over the Madison Room next to the Oval Study, where his staff installed what the prime minister called his traveling “map room,” featuring giant theater maps with colored pins showing the current location of Allied and enemy forces around the world. Roosevelt greatly admired it, and after the conference was over, he ordered that a map room of his own be set up in the basement of the White House.
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As far as the American public was concerned, the highlights of the visit were the joint lighting of the White House tree on Christmas Eve by Roosevelt and Churchill, their attendance at the Foundry Methodist Church on Christmas morning, and Churchill’s formal address to a joint session of Congress on the day after Christmas. All three events were triumphs for Anglo-American unity. Churchill won over the members of Congress immediately with his opening quip: “I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.” Showman that he was, he brought the congressmen roaring to their feet when, in reference to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he growled, “What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realize we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”
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The real work of the conference, however, took place out of the public eye, when the British and American heads of the military services met to contrive a joint strategy.

THE CONFERENCE WAS CODE-NAMED ARCADIA
, a word that conjures a bucolic retreat where peace and serenity are broken only by the gentle song of birds or the lilting notes of a shepherd’s flute. The crusty and humorless
Ernest J. King, whom Roosevelt had appointed U.S. Navy commander in chief (COMINCH) only six days before, opined that the name was “singularly infelicitous.”
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Churchill wasted no time in pressing his agenda. At dinner on the very day he arrived, he broached the subject of an Anglo-American joint intervention into French North Africa. Roosevelt was not averse to the idea. Political animal that he was, he understood instinctively that if American troops did not become engaged somewhere in the European theater fairly soon, there would be tremendous pressure for them to be employed in the Pacific. Then they would have to be supported and supplied, and soon the Pacific would become the dominant theater, thereby wrecking the agreed-upon grand strategy. Since assaulting occupied Europe itself was beyond the Allies’ capability in 1942, perhaps North Africa offered an interim solution. Moreover, Roosevelt had had his eye on Africa even before Pearl Harbor. An avid student of world geography from his youth (inspired in part by his world-class stamp collection), he had already picked out Dakar, a French colony on the westernmost tip of Africa, as a potential problem for both the Atlantic trade routes and for South American security. He saw that an Allied occupation of French Africa would prevent the Germans from developing Dakar into an important base. Churchill was convinced that “the President was thinking very much along the same lines as I was about action in French Northwest Africa.”
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Churchill renewed his campaign the next day at the first official session of the Arcadia conference. He delivered a broad overview of the war, emphasizing the importance of the bombing campaign against Germany, the favorable prospects for an early victory in Libya, the conundrum of Vichy France (especially the disposition of the rest of the French fleet), and how the United States might contribute. He suggested that American soldiers might be sent to Iceland and Ireland to relieve British soldiers there, who would then become available for combat missions. It irked Marshall that Churchill assumed that American GIs were not ready yet for actual combat, though he also knew that he was probably right. Finally, Churchill brought up the idea of an Allied incursion into French North Africa, whether the French invited them in or not.
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When it was Roosevelt’s turn, he seconded Churchill’s emphasis on an accelerated bombing campaign, and he agreed that American ground forces could go to Iceland and Ireland. But he downplayed the idea of an Allied intervention in North Africa in favor of securing and maintaining global lines of communication. Churchill was disappointed; the president had seemed so much warmer about a North African campaign the night before. Apparently someone had gotten to him.
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Someone had—probably several someones. The American service chiefs were far less enthusiastic about a campaign into North Africa than their president was. One problem was shipping: there simply wasn’t enough of it. Mounting an invasion of North Africa from the American East Coast meant crossing and recrossing the Atlantic Ocean—a distance of thirty-eight hundred miles—at a time when the U-boats were still winning the Battle of the Atlantic. And there were so many other demands on scarce shipping, including MacArthur’s beleaguered forces in the Philippines, that it was hard to see how the necessary ships could be found. Moreover, in North Africa, so much depended on the French. Were the Anglo-Americans invited in, that was one thing, but to wrest control from a defending army was quite another. Thus cautioned, Roosevelt soft-pedaled his support of a North African campaign in his opening remarks. He would wait to see what the admirals and generals came up with.

After these formal introductions, Churchill and Roosevelt left, and the service chiefs got down to business.
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On the American side, that group included both Marshall and Stark, plus King and Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps, which had been rechristened the U.S. Army Air Forces in June. Despite his nickname, Arnold was a ferocious defender of his service and, like Portal, a champion of strategic bombing. The British
delegation consisted of Dill, Pound, and Portal. Each country also had a civilian production expert on hand: Hopkins for Roosevelt, and Beaverbrook for Churchill. There was a small kerfuffle when, at their first meeting in the new Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue, it was discovered that the room assigned to them was too small. Soon enough, however, they found a suitable space and began work in earnest.
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The British were undoubtedly pleased when Stark began the meeting by asserting that the British Isles “must be protected at all cost,” and by reaffirming America’s commitment to the Germany-first strategy. Thus one of the principal goals that had brought the British across the Atlantic was achieved in the first minutes. Beyond that, however, the British officers were rather taken aback to discover that the Americans had no particular proposals to offer, or even a very clear notion of what to do next. Dill wrote his successor, Alan Brooke, back in London, that “the country has not—repeat not—the slightest conception of what the war means, and their armed forces are more unready for war than it is possible to imagine.” For their part, the Americans were suspicious of the political motives behind the British proposals, fearing that they concealed some hidden agenda connected to their own imperial interests. That suspicion was reinforced when Marshall learned that Roosevelt had agreed to divert U.S. ships headed for the Philippines to beleaguered Singapore. Marshall went to see Secretary Stimson about it, and together they confronted Roosevelt, who in his offhand way dismissed the story as “nonsense.”
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The conversation continued on Christmas Day, the timing suggesting a lot about the sense of urgency. As one member of the American delegation wrote to a friend, “We just grind away all day long…. Christmas meant no more to us here than religion does to a dog.” Christmas was Dill’s sixty-first birthday, though an effort to surprise him with a singing telegram fell flat when the security guards refused to let the Western Union man in the door. Before revisiting Churchill’s North Africa scheme, the chiefs reviewed the dire situation in the Far East where the Japanese rampage was still at full flood. Marshall brought up the fact that the Japanese had an advantage because they had unity of command, whereas the Allies had to work through four governments and at least eight service chiefs. To overcome
the Japanese in the Far East, he argued, the Allies would need “unified command” in the field.
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