The Conquering Tide (55 page)

Characteristically, King wanted to get the show on the road as early as possible, and he had exerted all his influence to send the needed forces to Nimitz. As usual, his efforts were doggedly opposed by the British, who wanted a concentration of all available Allied forces for the defeat of Germany, and by MacArthur, whose preferred road to Tokyo ran through the Philippines, and who wanted no competing offensive to the north. But King eventually succeeded in bringing his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs around to his way of thinking and gradually won their undivided backing. William Leahy, who had taken a direct hand in developing the Orange and Rainbow plans during his long naval career, was an instinctive ally. George
Marshall was anxious about the state of the South Pacific and determined to keep Japan on the defensive. Throughout late 1942, King worked behind the scenes to persuade Marshall of the strategic importance of the Marianas, which lay directly astride sea routes linking Japan's home islands to the resource-rich East Indies. The Marianas would provide suitable airfields for the army's B-29 “Superfortresses,” which would enter service in 1944 and could carry 10,000 pounds of bombs to a radius of 1,600 miles. From Guam and Tinian in the Marianas, the heavy bombers could strike major Japanese population centers and industrial areas. “I finally got General Marshall to understand,” King wrote after the war.
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In the Allied conferences of early and mid-1942, the British military chiefs had hoped to win Marshall and the U.S. Army leadership over to their concept of a minimalist and purely defensive war in the Pacific, pending the final defeat of Germany. But when the high command met in Casablanca, French Morocco, in January 1943, it was immediately clear that Marshall and King had reached an understanding, and were in agreement that the Pacific required more reinforcements.

In the first meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCOS), at Anfa Camp on the morning of January 14, Marshall proposed to allocate Allied troops, shipping, and munitions by a formula of “ 70 percent in the Atlantic theater and 30 percent in the Pacific theater.”
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King spoke immediately after Marshall, leaving little doubt that the two Americans were reading from the same playbook. According to his estimates, said King, the Allies were engaging “only 15 percent of our total resources against the Japanese in the Pacific theater,” a proportion that “was not sufficient to prevent Japan consolidating herself and thereby presenting ultimately too difficult a problem.”
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General Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the British Imperial General Staff, was knocked back on his heels. He had long since marked King as an irredeemable Anglophobe and a “Pacific-firster,” and now the ruthless admiral had apparently cast a spell over George Marshall. Brooke asked, Upon what basis had the Americans computed the 30 percent formula? King replied, somewhat lamely, that it “was a concept rather than an arithmetical computation,” but in any case 15 percent was insufficient to do more than hold the lines in the Pacific. Brooke held his tongue but later told his diary that the proposed figure was “hardly a scientific way” of fixing allocation between theaters.
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The official minutes of the Combined Chiefs meetings, recorded in strictly anodyne terms, tended to disguise the heated subtext of the debate. The British had lost much of their Asia-Pacific empire and wanted it back. In Malaya, especially, they had been disgraced; in order to retrieve their prestige in the region, they must have a role in the defeat of Japan. But until Germany was knocked out of the war, Britain could offer no meaningful contribution to the Pacific theater. If the Americans closed in on Japan too early, British military power might be rendered strategically irrelevant in the Pacific, with portentous consequences for the future of the empire. But Ernest King was not at all interested in the future of the British empire, and he even appeared to take an unseemly relish in the humbling of British seapower.

In his diary, General Brooke confided a sour loathing for the “shrewd and somewhat swollen headed” admiral, whose objective seemed to be “an ‘all-out' war against Japan instead of holding operations.”
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At dinner that night, Brooke watched in amusement as King drained one glass too many and became “nicely lit up.” “With a thick voice and many gesticulations,” the admiral remonstrated stridently with Churchill, to the prime minister's evident embarrassment.
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Two days later, after another round of punishing negotiations, Brooke concluded wearily, “It is a slow and tiring business which requires a lot of patience. They can't be pushed and hurried, and must be made gradually to assimilate our proposed policy.”
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The scale of the Pacific effort was only one dimension of their quarrel. Marshall's view, shared by Secretary of War Henry Stimson and to varying degrees by the other American service chiefs, was that Germany could be defeated only by a direct invasion across the English Channel, the operation code-named
ROUNDUP
. The British feared a debacle in northern France and preferred new operations in the Mediterranean. In 1942, Churchill and his generals had persuaded FDR to back their proposed invasion of North Africa (
TORCH
), over the sharp objections of Marshall and Stimson. Marshall, still smarting from that reversal, now wanted a firm commitment to execute
ROUNDUP
in the summer of 1943. The British refused to commit to a date for
ROUNDUP
, and were dubious that such an operation was feasible before 1944. But still, they asked for an immediate buildup of forces in England so that
ROUNDUP
could be launched if and when opportunity offered—that is, if and when the Red Army gained the upper hand on the eastern front, and a German collapse
appeared imminent. Meanwhile, they favored further efforts in the Mediterranean, perhaps an invasion of Italy. Marshall did not much like this proposed southern line of attack, regarding it as a diversion from the “main plot” and a “suction pump” that would draw strength away from
ROUNDUP
.
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Selected excerpts of minutes of the Combined Chiefs meeting at Casablanca put across the substance of the opposing arguments, and show the degree to which King and Marshall now spoke with one voice on the importance of the Pacific:

ADMIRAL KING stated that the Japanese are now replenishing Japan with raw materials and also fortifying an inner defense ring along the line of the Netherlands East Indies and the Philippines.

SIR ALAN BROOKE inquired how far forward the U. S. Chiefs of Staff envisaged it would be necessary to go in order to prevent the Japanese from digging themselves in. He feared that if operations were too extended it would inevitably lead to an all-out war against Japan and it was certain that we had not sufficient resources to undertake this at the same time as a major effort against Germany.

GENERAL MARSHALL explained that it had been essential to act offensively in order to stop the Japanese advancing. For example, in New Guinea it had been necessary to push the Japanese back to prevent them capturing Port Moresby. In order to do this, every device for reinforcing the troops on the island had had to be employed. The same considerations applied in Guadalcanal. It had been essential to take offensive action to seize the island. Short of offensive action of this nature, the only way of stopping the Japanese was by complete exhaustion through attrition. It was very difficult to pause: the process of whittling away Japan had to be continuous.

SIR CHARLES PORTAL [RAF chief] asked whether it was not possible to stand on a line and inflict heavy losses on the Japanese when they tried to break through it. From the very fact that the Japanese continued to attack, it was clear that they had already been pushed back further than they cared to go.

GENERAL MARSHALL spoke of our commitments in the Pacific, of our responsibilities, with particular reference to the number of garrisons we have on small islands and the impossibility of letting
any of them down. He insisted that the United States could not stand for another Bataan.

SIR ALAN BROOKE stated that we have reached a stage in the war where we must review the correctness of our basic strategic concept which calls for the defeat of Germany first. He was convinced that we cannot defeat Germany and Japan simultaneously. The British Chiefs of Staff have arrived at the conclusion that it will be better to concentrate on Germany. Because of the distances involved, the British Chiefs of Staff believe that the defeat of Japan first is impossible and that if we attempt to do so, we shall lose the war.

GENERAL MARSHALL stated that, in his opinion, the British Chiefs of Staff wished to be certain that we keep the enemy engaged in the Mediterranean and that at the same time maintain a sufficient force in the United Kingdom to take advantage of a crack in the German strength either from the withdrawal of their forces in France or because of lowered morale. He inferred that the British Chiefs of Staff would prefer to maintain such a force in the United Kingdom dormant and awaiting an opportunity rather than have it utilized in a sustained attack elsewhere. The United States Chiefs of Staff know that they can use these forces offensively in the Pacific Theater.

SIR ALAN BROOKE said that the British Chiefs of Staff certainly did not want to keep forces tied up in Europe doing nothing. During the build-up period, however, the first forces to arrive from America could not be used actively against the enemy; a certain minimum concentration had to be effected before they could be employed. His point was that we should direct our resources to the defeat of Germany first. This conception was focused in paragraph 2(c) of the British Joint Planning Staff's paper (C.C.S. 153/1) in which it was stated that we agreed in principle with the U. S. strategy in the Pacific “provided always that its application does not prejudice the earliest possible defeat of Germany.”

ADMIRAL KING pointed out that this expression might be read as meaning that anything which was done in the Pacific interfered with the earliest possible defeat of Germany and that the Pacific theater should therefore remain totally inactive.

SIR CHARLES PORTAL said that this was certainly not the understanding of the British Chiefs of Staff, who had always accepted
that pressure should be maintained on Japan. They had, perhaps, misunderstood the U. S. Chiefs of Staff and thought that the point at issue was whether the main effort should be in the Pacific or in the United Kingdom. The British view was that for getting at Germany in the immediate future, the Mediterranean offered better prospects than Northern France.

GENERAL MARSHALL said that he was most anxious not to become committed to interminable operations in the Mediterranean. He wished Northern France to be the scene of the main effort against Germany—that had always been his conception.

ADMIRAL KING said that we had on many occasions been close to a disaster in the Pacific. The real point at issue was to determine the balance between the effort to be put against Germany and against Japan, but we must have enough in the Pacific to maintain the initiative against the Japanese. . . . He felt very strongly . . . that the details of such operations must be left to the U. S. Chiefs of Staff, who were strategically responsible for the Pacific theater. He did not feel this was a question for a decision of the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

Brooke wanted to check the westward momentum of the Pacific offensive, for fear that it would divert shipping and other resources away from the Mediterranean. He asked that any decision to push past Rabaul to Truk be “deferred.” In the event that Rabaul fell into Allied hands, Brooke wanted surplus forces in the South Pacific transferred to the Mediterranean. King replied that whatever forces became available in MacArthur's theater would be needed by Nimitz for the conquest of the Marshalls. Moreover, he added, “on logistic grounds alone it would be impossible to bring forces from the Pacific theater to the European theater.”

The committee's final recommendations to Churchill and FDR represented a compromise skewed toward the American view. The Allies would aim to seize Burma and Rabaul by the end of 1943, with the proviso that “these operations must be kept within such limits as will not . . . jeopardize the capacity of the United Nations to take advantage of any favorable opportunity that may present itself for the decisive defeat of Germany in 1943.” The Americans could launch further operations against the Marshalls and Carolines only after the capture of Rabaul, using forces already allocated to the Pacific theater.

At the Trident conference in Washington the following May, the Allies remained largely divided over the same issues and along the same lines. While en route to Washington, Brooke confided to his diary that he dreaded the renewal of old arguments: “Casablanca has taught me too much. Agreement after agreement may be secured on paper but if their hearts are not in it they soon drift away again!”
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In fact, the Joint Chiefs did not intend to offer any concessions at all concerning the scale of the Pacific campaign. When the Combined Chiefs of Staff convened in the ornate marble Board of Governors Room at the Federal Reserve Building on May 13, the Americans took a brusque tone from the outset. Admiral Leahy, now serving as
de facto
chairman of the Joint Chiefs, flatly informed the British that any provision limiting freedom of action in the Pacific “would not be acceptable to the United States Chiefs of Staff.” He added that if the Americans suffered an unexpected reversal in the war against Japan, they would shift forces to the Pacific “even at the expense of the early defeat of Germany.”
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On the morning of Friday, May 21, King provided a long briefing on the progress of the Pacific War, ending with an analysis of possibilities for the latter half of 1943 and 1944. “Regardless of which route might be taken,” he concluded, “the Marianas are the key to the situation because of their location on the Japanese lines of communication.”
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