Supreme Commander (4 page)

On February 9 Marshall and Secretary of War Harry Stimson discussed the proposal with President Roosevelt. “We can’t do this at all,” Roosevelt firmly declared, and asked Marshall to prepare a reply.
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Marshall had Eisenhower draft one for the President’s signature.

Eisenhower began by authorizing MacArthur to arrange for the capitulation of the Filipino units but declining even to consider the neutralization of the islands. MacArthur should keep the flag flying “so long as there remains any possibility of resistance.” Eisenhower emphasized that the duty and necessity of resisting Japanese aggression to the last transcended in importance any other obligation facing the United States in the Philippines. Eisenhower had the President express great sympathy for the plight of those on the island (Quezon and Eisenhower were close friends), then declare that the service the troops on the Philippines could render to the country in the struggle then developing “is beyond all possibility of appraisement.”
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MacArthur replied, with some heat, that he had no intention of surrendering the Filipino units and planned to fight on until his forces in Bataan were destroyed.
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He would then take up the struggle on the island of Corregidor. Marshall, horrified at the idea of MacArthur
going down with the garrison, decided to order him to leave the islands and go to Australia. The whole thing had to be handled with some care, for there was always a possibility that MacArthur would strike a pose, refuse to leave, and fight until killed or captured. Eisenhower took care of the delicate arrangements, and eventually MacArthur agreed to leave.
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In the second week of March MacArthur made his dramatic escape on a PT boat from the Philippines. On March 17 he arrived in Darwin, from whence he proceeded to Melbourne. The trip signified an end and a beginning; the end of the Allied attempt to hold onto anything substantial in the Southwest Pacific north of Australia, as well as the end of a policy of meeting Japanese thrusts with haphazard measures, and the beginning of the implementation of a well-thought-out, comprehensive, world-wide strategy.

It did not mean the abandonment of MacArthur’s successor, Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, to his fate. Eisenhower kept trying, despite increasing feelings of helplessness, to get aid into the islands. “For many weeks—it seems years—I’ve been searching everywhere to find any feasible way of giving real help to the P.I.,” he noted in his desk pad. “We’ve literally squandered money; we wrestled with the Navy, we’ve tried to think of anything that might promise even a modicum of help. I’ll go on trying, but daily the situation grows more desperate.”
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Marshall had asked Eisenhower to see what he could do about saving the Philippines and, by implication, to mollify MacArthur. In addition, Marshall had wanted Eisenhower to attempt to retrieve the situation in the Southwest Pacific. In none of these objectives had Eisenhower achieved success. But he had never thrown up his hands at the herculean task, had shown himself willing to assume responsibility, and had made himself invaluable to Marshall not only in handling details but in dealing with larger policy questions. Eisenhower had done as much as any man could have, but his efforts were fruitless.

The American problems in 1942 were to build an army, secure the shipping to get it overseas, establish an organization through which agreement could be reached with the British on a strategy to defeat Germany, and resist the pull of the Pacific. The Army’s contribution to the solution to these problems was Marshall’s responsibility and therefore Eisenhower’s job. The way in which Eisenhower carried it out would depend, in part, on the nature of his relations with the Chief. Establishing an intimate relationship would not be easy, for the Chief was a stern man.

George Marshall’s back had no bend to it. He carried himself lightly, with great dignity. His movements were deliberate, his shoulders square, his dress immaculate. His face looked as if it were chisled out of stone. Quietly handsome, a little too thin, he had a determined jaw, a firm mouth, and deep-set, penetrating eyes. The Chief of Staff commanded attention.

He was a cold, aloof person who forced everyone to keep his distance. Franklin Roosevelt had tried at their first meeting to call him “George,” but Marshall let the President know the name was “General Marshall,” and “General Marshall” it remained. He had few intimate friends. When he relaxed he did it alone, watching movies or puttering in his garden. His sense of humor was limited at best and he kept a tight grip on his emotions. If he had a weakness, it was that his sense of duty was so highly developed that he seemed almost inhuman, a sort of intellectual superman, and made small allowance for failings in others. Throughout his career he kept a little Black Book in which he listed the names of officers who had, at one time or another, disappointed
him. When war came he used the book ruthlessly, shucking aside dozens of high-ranking officers without explanation or apology.
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To those who could do the work and who shared his sense of duty, Marshall was intensely loyal. He also felt deep affection toward them, but something, perhaps a natural shyness, or a fear of indulging in emotion, or a half-thought-out notion that it would make him appear weak, prevented him from ever showing his feelings, even to someone as close to him as Eisenhower came to be. Hardly anyone could resist Eisenhower’s infectious grin and he was known throughout the Army by his catchy nickname “Ike.” Eisenhower worked under Marshall for four years. For the first six months they met several times a day; thereafter they communicated almost daily and met often. Eisenhower was Marshall’s personal protégé, and in four years the younger man never let the Chief of Staff down on a major matter. Yet in all that time Marshall never called him anything but “Eisenhower.” (Only one time did Marshall slip and call him “Ike”; to make up for it he used “Eisenhower” five times in his next sentence.
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Once, when Eisenhower was in Marshall’s office, a detail arose about an officer’s promotion. After settling it, Marshall leaned forward and explained to Eisenhower his attitude toward promotion. “The men who are going to get the promotions in this war are the commanders in the field,” he declared, “not the staff officers who clutter up all of the administrative machinery in the War Department.… The field commanders carry the responsibility and I’m going to see to it that they’re properly rewarded so far as promotion can provide a reward.” In the last war, Marshall explained, the staff had gotten everything. This time he was going to reverse the process.

“Take your case,” he continued, looking right at Eisenhower. “I know that you were recommended by one general for division command and by another for corps command. That’s all very well. I’m glad they have that opinion of you, but you are going to stay right here and fill your position, and that’s that!” He had already made Eisenhower head of WPD, but no promotion accompanied the advance in status and responsibility.

Preparing to turn to other business, Marshall muttered, “While this may seem a sacrifice to you, that’s the way it must be.”

Eisenhower’s sense of duty was almost as keen as Marshall’s and he had already reached a rank he had not thought possible. He resented being singled out for the lecture, so impulsively he blurted out, “General, I’m interested in what you say, but I want you to know that I
don’t give a damn about your promotion plans as far as I’m concerned. I came into this office from the field and I am trying to do my duty. I expect to do so as long as you want me here. If that locks me to a desk for the rest of the war, so be it!”

Pushing back his chair, Eisenhower strode toward the door. It was a big office and a long walk. By the time he reached the door his anger had subsided. He turned, looked at Marshall, and grinned. As he closed the door he thought he detected a tiny smile at the corners of Marshall’s mouth.

Two weeks later Marshall recommended Eisenhower for promotion to major general. In his recommendation to the President, Marshall explained that Eisenhower was not really a staff officer, but was his operations officer, a sort of subordinate commander. On March 27 Eisenhower got his second star.
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Eisenhower knew enough about the Chief not to try and thank him. When other promoted officers did try, Marshall would brush them aside with a terse “Thank yourself; if you hadn’t earned it you would not have received it.” After the war Eisenhower recalled, “The nearest that he ever came to saying [anything] complimentary directly to my face was, ‘You are not doing so badly so far.’ ”
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There was a father-son quality to the Marshall-Eisenhower relationship, but it had a nineteenth- rather than twentieth-century flavor to it. They were never “pals.” To the Chief’s face, and in discussing him with others, Eisenhower always called him “General.” Marshall was proud of Eisenhower and tried to guide him. Eisenhower respected the general, who had an enormous influence on his thought—there was never any doubt, throughout the war, that Marshall’s was the guiding hand behind the broad policies.

Marshall’s strengths were in the higher levels of policy, organization, and strategy. In these areas Eisenhower followed, for he was an operator rather than a theoretician, the perfect man to take Marshall’s concepts and translate them into practice. The Supreme Allied Command in Europe would never have come about had it not been for Marshall’s thought, driving force, and persuasive powers, but it would not have worked had it not been for Eisenhower.

The partnership began during the first weeks of the war; symbolically it took on the form it was to assume for much of the remainder of the conflict—a fight for American versus British ideas. Right after Pearl Harbor the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and his Chiefs of Staff came to Washington to discuss grand strategy. The meetings
began on December 4 (code name ARCADIA) and lasted until the middle of January. There were twelve meetings in all, several of which Eisenhower, as Gerow’s deputy, attended.
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The conference was essentially an exploration. Each side was feeling the other out, for the extent of American mobilization was not yet known with any degree of accuracy and the Americans were preoccupied with the crushing events in the Pacific. What stood out was the agreement on grand strategy. The British had feared that the Americans would react to Pearl Harbor and the impending loss of the Philippines by abandoning RAINBOW 5 and turning full force on the Japanese. The Americans laid those fears to rest at the opening of the conference.

It was a great achievement and must always be kept in mind, for it is easy enough to present a picture of the Grand Alliance as being not so grand, to concentrate on the disagreements and to argue that the real story of World War II is British-American infighting, with the climax coming when the Americans imposed their will on the British. Any account of Eisenhower and the alliance will inevitably lean toward a picture of Anglo-American irritation, harassment, bitterness, and disagreement, because it was the issues the two sides did not agree upon that they talked about.

But this was the firmest alliance in history. The partners agreed upon the broad goal and the broad strategy—the total defeat of the Axis powers brought about by first assuming a defensive role in the Pacific and an offensive one in the Atlantic. That they stuck to the agreement was their greatest accomplishment. Agreement on implementation was never easily reached, however, and except for Operation OVERLORD it is difficult to find an operation in the war about which both sides were enthusiastic. The disagreements began at ARCADIA.

In December 1941 Marshall and the Americans were willing to bide their time. They did not intend to defer to the British, but in the first wartime meeting they were ready to keep their own ideas in the background. The British had been at war for more than two years and had gained invaluable experience. Britain was fully mobilized and in terms of striking forces available much more powerful than the United States. American potential loomed in the background, but it would be a year or more before the country was tooled up for the war. The British were engaged with the European Axis; the Americans were not. Under the circumstances, the Americans allowed the British to take the initiative
and to make the proposals, contenting themselves with commenting upon them.

The British proposed, in briefest terms, to close and tighten a ring around Germany and then, when all the signs were favorable, plunge in the knife. They were detailed and exact in their proposals about closing the ring, vague about the final battle in northwestern Europe. Churchill argued that for the final attack “it need not be assumed that great numbers of men are required,” and contended that 600,000 troops would be sufficient. He did warn that enormous amounts of material would be required. He thought one of the Allies’ greatest advantages was the population of western Europe, especially France, and a major task of the British and Americans would be to get arms into the hands of these people. It was traditional British strategy writ large—England (and the United States) would supply the money and arms, while the Continentals did their own fighting. The program “was tailored to suit scattered interests, a small-scale economy and limited manpower for ground armies, and to exploit sea- and air-power.”
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For the immediate future, the British proposed operations in the Middle East and on the North African coast, looking toward a 1943 invasion of Europe “either across the Mediterranean or from Turkey into the Balkans.…” Churchill felt that the Vichy French could be persuaded to co-operate with the British and Americans, and offered as an initial step an invasion of North Africa by 100,000 men, mostly British. The idea had a great appeal for Roosevelt, who laid it down as a principle to Marshall that it was “very important to morale, to give this country a feeling that they are in the war, to give the Germans the reverse effect, to have American troops somewhere in active fighting across the Atlantic” in 1942.
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