I can’t help feeling a little bit uneasy about the influence of the Prime Minister on him at this time. . . . The trouble is WC and FDR are too much alike in their strong points and in their weak points. They are both penetrating in their thoughts but they lack the steadiness of balance that has got to go along with warfare.1
Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950), diary, June 20, 1942. In an attempt to add a bipartisan flavor to his administration, President Roosevelt appointed Stimson, then 72, as U.S. secretary of war (1940–1945). Republican Stimson had previously served both as secretary of war and secretary of state. Stimson supported early American entry into the war, but opposed harsh postwar treatment of Germany.
Churchill, I thought, was at his best at Yalta. He was completely and wholeheartedly devoted to the interests of the British Empire. I could take no exception to that attitude, even when his proposals were not in full accord with what I believed to be the best interests of my own country. He was a great Englishman, as Roosevelt was a great American.2
William D. Leahy (1875–1959), in his memoirs. A former chief of naval operations, Admiral Leahy in late 1940 became U.S. Ambassador to the Vichy French government of Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain. In the summer of 1942, Leahy returned to the United States and was appointed to the dual role of chief of staff to President Roosevelt and the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Anglo-American victory celebrations disguised the relative unimportance of many of the high-ranking decision makers on both sides of the Atlantic, often excluded from the inner circle of policy making. Some, like Secretary of State Cordell Hull, were deliberately kept poorly informed by President Roosevelt. It was FDR who prevented Hull from attending the key Casablanca summit in January 1943. The president pressed Churchill successfully to exclude Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden from this meeting as well. In the fall of 1940, Roosevelt had instructed Robert Murphy, the American chargé to the Vichy government, to strike up a relationship with French General Maxime Weygand. “Don’t bother going through the State Department,” FDR instructed Murphy.3 Hull resented Roosevelt’s high-handed treatment—left out of major conferences as he was, even excluded from important channels of information.
At the Yalta Conference. Left to right: Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Major General L. S. Kuter, Admiral E. J. King, General George C. Marshall, Ambassador Averell Harriman, Admiral William Leahy, and President Roosevelt.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Churchill dispatched Lord Halifax, British foreign secretary under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, to the British embassy in Washington, in January 1941. Anthony Eden then took over the Foreign Office. Presidential aide Harry Hopkins tried to keep Halifax informed of military and diplomatic developments. “There were few people I genuinely admired more, and whose good opinion I thought more flattering to have,” Halifax wrote of Hopkins. The American ambassador in London, John “Gil” Winant, was not always included in top Anglo-American meetings. But early in the war, Winant had direct and frequent contact with Prime Minister Churchill, especially on weekends at the prime minister’s Chequers estate, where Winant developed his own channels of communication.
Roosevelt failed to keep U.S. military chiefs always informed of important strategic and tactical discussions with the prime minister.4 This profound defect, even negligence, in presidential leadership was remedied by the head of the British military mission to Washington, General John Dill, who received regular reports from the British War Cabinet and British Chiefs of Staff. Surreptitiously, Dill passed them on to Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, to keep him informed. “Britain,” wrote historian Andrew Roberts, “was fortunate that, despite the undoubted presence of some Anglophobes in the higher reaches of the American Army and Navy Departments, the President and US Army Chief were not of their number.”5 Dill, who had been Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) until Churchill sacked him in December 1941, was a crucial information link between the British and American military leadership in Washington. The prime minister did not fully appreciate the talents of the man he called “Dilly-Dally,” but Marshall clearly did. So did Marshall’s British counterpart, Alan Brooke, who described Dill as “the most invaluable link between Marshall and me.”6 Brooke had been the one to persuade Churchill to send Dill to America. After his appointment, Dill admitted: “It is odd that Winston should want me to represent him here when he clearly was glad of an excuse to get me out of the CIGS job.”7 Brooke recalled: “From the very start he built up a deep friendship with Marshall. It is unfortunate that Winston never gave him the credit that was due him.”8 In Churchill’s desperate hour of 1940, Dill had not been aggressive enough to suit the prime minister, whose impatience intensified as losses to the Germans focused responsibility on the CIGS.
Arriving in Washington in late 1941, after Pearl Harbor, Dill saw clearly that America was not ready for conflict. “[T]he ordinary American firmly believes that they can finish off the war quite quickly—and without too much disturbance,” Dill reported to Brooke. “Never have I seen a country so utterly unprepared for war and so soft.”9 Like many World War II leaders, the grind of war took its toll on Dill’s health, and by late 1944, he had slowed considerably. On November 4, Dill died of aplastic anemia.10 Dill’s death diminished British influence at a time when the Americans had become the dominant force in the Anglo-American alliance. As Churchill himself later admitted: “No British officer we sent across the Atlantic during the war ever acquired American esteem and confidence in an equal degree. His personality, discretion, and tact gained him almost at once the confidence of the President. At the same time he established a true comradeship and private friendship with General Marshall.”11 Churchill embraced Dill’s work in Washington, but he never knew the full scope of Dill’s collaboration with Marshall.12
Roosevelt’s relationship with top American generals and admirals was more formal, distant, and infrequent. Thus, American military leadership was less informed and coordinated by the commander in chief than were the top military leaders organized by the prime minister. Churchill worked day and night with his military staff; FDR did not. Robert H. Jackson, who served as attorney general in 1940–1941, recalled: “Roosevelt was not over-awed by military or naval rank and did not feel any sense of inferiority in the presence of a general or an admiral. He knew that the winning of a war is not all seamanship or generalship but in large part politics and economics. He often repeated that war is too important a matter to be left to the generals.”13 The prime minister was neither awed by military rank nor was he oblivious to the need for close coordination with military leaders. As a former assistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt was more confident about seaborne affairs than land operations. He did not micromanage well-chosen admirals or generals. As commander in chief, however, he was inclined to reserve key strategic decisions for himself. There were at least two Roosevelts: the cagey politician, slow to action and carefully following public opinion; and the war strategist, ready and able to make big and wise decisions, such as the invasion of North Africa in 1942 and upholding Churchill and overruling Marshall on the timing of the cross-channel invasion of France. During 1941–1943, FDR often deferred to the charismatic persuasion and war experience of Churchill. In the last two years of the war, after America and Russia came to dominate the alliance, Roosevelt no longer did so.
* * *
Following the French collapse in June 1940, U.S. Ambassador Bullitt left France. On November 7, he resigned. Two days later, President Roosevelt rejected the resignation. Over the next few days, a decision on Bullitt’s successor was made. When the president met with Bullitt on November 16, he failed to tell Bullitt about his replacement. When Bullitt learned about it a few hours later, he was furious. “I forgot about the whole business completely!” explained FDR, who asked Bullitt’s forgiveness.14 FDR could repeatedly forget inconvenient decisions that might lead him into confrontations he sought to avoid. Under Secretary Sumner Welles recalled the deliberations within the Roosevelt administration to find a successor to Bullitt, who had alienated FDR when he disobeyed his orders the previous summer.15 “It seemed to us that Marshal Pétain would probably be favourably impressed by the appointment of a very high-ranking officer of the American armed services.”16 Welles and Roosevelt discussed several names that were rejected.
The next day, Welles arrived at the White House while the president was having breakfast in bed. “When I suggested Admiral Leahy, the President’s face immediately lit up as it always did when a new idea appealed to him. Without further ado he seized the telephone at his bedside and asked the operator to get the Admiral on the long-distance telephone.” Leahy’s relationship with Roosevelt dated back to World War I; in 1939, FDR had appointed Leahy as governor of Puerto Rico, after the admiral finished a term as chief of naval operations. FDR informed Leahy: “I feel that you are the best man available for this mission. . . . [T]he position which you have held in our own Navy would undoubtedly give you great influence with the higher officers of the French Navy who are openly hostile to Great Britain.” Appointment of the balding, outspoken, emotionally reserved admiral aimed to keep the French fleet out of Nazi hands.17 The German ambassador in Washington accurately reported to Berlin: “Ambassador Leahy’s task will consist in intervening wherever possible and obstructing cooperation between Germany and France.” Roosevelt had indeed instructed Leahy that “United States Policy [was] to give Britain all possible assistance short of war.”18 Churchill approved, saying that FDR had appointed an ambassador “of so much influence and character as Admiral Leahy, who was himself so close to the President.”19 FDR’s instructions to Leahy show that the president, reelected to a third term, had privately abandoned masquerades at neutrality, despite the restrictions of the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s and his own campaign promises of 1940.20
American war policy toward Vichy began with accommodation to Hitler’s victory over France. The policy attracted much criticism in the United States and United Kingdom, including that of Churchill. Sumner Welles wrote of Hull’s sensitivity to such attacks: “As long as he was Secretary of State he regarded any public criticism of his department or of a policy for which he assumed responsibility as a personal affront, and an affront that he would not forgive.” Welles argued that “it was perhaps not unnatural that the Secretary came to believe that the increasingly sharp attacks upon the Department of State as the Vichy policy was continued were instigated chiefly by the more liberal advisers in the White House, with at least the tacit, if not open, approval of the President himself.”21 The Americans and the British had embraced conflicting positions regarding the Vichy government. Churchill backed the anti-Vichy, Free French movement led by General Charles de Gaulle, who at the beginning of the war had little support either in France or among French citizens living in the United States. “We could understand the British were righteously indignant at the role played by the [pro-German] Vichy regime; we conceded the logic of their desire to build up de Gaulle so that he would be more likely to gain the adherence of France’s possessions overseas,” maintained Welles in his memoirs. “Still it was often highly difficult for us to understand how Mr. Churchill himself could urge us to stretch our diplomatic influence in Vichy to the fullest possible extent in Britain’s behalf, while at the same time agencies of the British Government, over which he possesses full authority, used every propaganda weapon at their command to convince both the British and the American people that our Vichy policy was one of contemptible appeasement, and that in Britain’s best interest we should withdraw our Ambassador and sever all relations with the regime.”22 Ambassador Leahy’s responsibility was to put pressure on Admiral François Darlan to keep France’s military resources, especially its navy, out of German hands. On December 22, 1941, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Leahy wrote Roosevelt that “French opinion has reacted with a leaning over toward our side of the question but with reservations and with preparations to jump back on a moment’s notice.”23
As the Anglo-American conflict over policy toward the Vichy French government demonstrated, U.S. entry into World War II would require much tighter Allied coordination of strategy, including the use of U.S. armed forces. The American military hierarchy had long been less integrated than its British counterpart—opening the way for the far-seeing General Marshall to urge adoption of the British chiefs of staff system. He knew that an institutional reform of the armed forces was necessary, once war was declared in December 1941. According to Andrew Roberts: “Part of the reason Marshall wanted to institute a Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee to mirror the British Chiefs of Staff Committee was his recognition that the way the British High Command had been organized since the early 1920s gave them an undoubted edge in military planning.”24 Churchill’s hands-on leadership as prime minister and minister of defence enhanced the advantage.
Admiral Leahy’s long relationship with Roosevelt became an important factor in his eventual appointment as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the spring of 1942, Marshall had proposed the creation of a new post: chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). He then proposed Admiral Leahy as the ideal chairman. Marshall pressed his case to FDR: “I explained to him in great frankness that it was impossible to conceive of one man with all of his duties as president being also, in effect, the chief of staff of all the military services.”25 Marshall shrewdly overcame the opposition to the joint chiefs system by Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Ernest King—by proposing an admiral rather than a general to take the position of chairman. Marshall also sidestepped FDR’s jealous aversion to competitive centers of power in the White House; the president liked Leahy and, in early July 1942, met with him about the idea. On July 21, while Marshall was out of the country, Roosevelt acted on the proposal and named Leahy as his chief of staff. (The retired admiral was seven years older than the president; he would outlive FDR and outlast him in office, working under President Harry Truman until 1949.26) The responsibilities and power of the new position were unclear; historian Mark A. Stoler noted that “as Roosevelt defined his [Leahy’s] task he was to represent the president’s position to the JCS rather than vice versa.”27
Leahy had to improvise on his authority as he went along. His job had three clear duties. First, he was the president’s chief of staff, handling a variety of issues and complaints that came to the White House and filtering those that should reach Roosevelt. Leahy recalled: “Almost immediately it developed that there were matters to take up with the President every day, so I made arrangements to meet him every morning at about a quarter of ten. I usually arrived at the office between 8:30 and 8:45.” Leahy went through the dispatches and reports that had been received overnight, and brought the most important to Roosevelt, sometimes while Roosevelt was shaving in his bathroom.28 Second, Leahy was chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Third, he was the president’s chief military aide. Leahy wrote: “The most important function of the Chief of Staff was the maintaining of daily liaison between the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was my job to pass on to the Joint Chiefs of Staff the basic thinking of the President on all war plans and strategy. In turn I brought back from the Joints Chiefs a consensus of their thinking.”29 Leahy had an aversion to any involvement by the JCS in “political matters,” and rejected any discussion of “grand strategy” by the JCS.30 Unlike Churchill’s relations with the British Chiefs of Staff, little was committed to written records by FDR and his staff. 31 Such was the Roosevelt preference.
Although Leahy’s importance to FDR grew with time, the president self-consciously prevented Leahy from developing a competing power center. Stoler wrote of Leahy: “FDR insisted on using him primarily as a ‘legman’ and messenger to the chiefs, not a JCS chairman and personal strategic adviser representing them [the Joint Chiefs] as Marshall had desired when he first proposed the appointment.”32 Nevertheless, observed historian S. M. Plokhy, Leahy’s “discretion, loyalty, and ability to get along with people made him indispensable to Roosevelt. He successfully competed for the president’s ear with his more liberal advisers and allies.”33
The Leahy-Marshall relationship became crucial to Anglo-American prosecution of the war. Marshall diplomatically guided Leahy into his new role as chairman of the nation’s highest military team.34 As Leahy noted, the duties of the JCS “never were defined precisely. I have heard that in some file there is a chit or memorandum from Roosevelt, setting up the Joint Chiefs, but I never saw it.”35 Although Leahy was chairman of the JCS, the diplomatic but decisive Marshall remained the real leader of the group, working carefully to develop a consensus with the crusty Admiral King. “Everybody knows who runs the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” observed a leading Republican.36 Still, Leahy exercised a quiet influence. As JCS chairman, Leahy exhibited a calm, down-home demeanor. Addressing Marshall, he might say: “Well George, I’m just a simple old sailor. Would you please back up and start from the beginning and make it simple, just tell me step one, two and three, and so on.” One aide to the Joint Chiefs recalled that Marshall “kept falling for this thing, and they would back up and explain to this ‘simple old sailor.’ And as they did it—which is what Leahy knew damned well would happen—and went through these various steps, they themselves would find out the weakness of misconception or that there was something wrong with it. So he [Leahy] didn’t have to start out by saying, ‘This is a stupid idea and it won’t work.’”37 Marshall was himself without excessive pride. Prudent and flexible, he could give up pet ideas when persuaded. General Marshall’s self-confidence and self-discipline regulated his temper and his willingness to listen. Widespread respect for Marshall set him apart from other leading generals and admirals.
President Roosevelt remained protective of his prerogatives as the nation’s commander in chief. When he appointed Leahy, he told the press that Leahy was not the nation’s commander in chief—that as president, he was—a gratuitous remark in light of his constitutional responsibilities.38 In making the appointment, FDR was deliberately vague on any specifics, thus preserving his maneuverability.39 Nevertheless, as Secretary of War Stimson recalled, the Joint Chiefs had “a most salutary effect on the President’s weakness for snap decisions; it thus offset a characteristic which might otherwise have been a serious handicap to his basically sound strategic instincts.”40 With proximity to President Roosevelt, Leahy’s influence steadily increased, especially in 1944, as Harry Hopkins’s sickness and absence from the White House left a vacuum in foreign-policy affairs. Leahy had strong conservative convictions and connections; he met with conservative politicians of both parties. “When possible, I would tell Roosevelt about these and similar conversations I heard from time to time. If there was opportunity, I would tell the President in advance of my acceptance of invitations of this nature to be sure that he had no objection—not from the political angle—but because the conversation might turn to military matters. The President never objected, as he knew I wasn’t going to divulge any secrets.” The admiral recalled: “I followed a fixed policy of not becoming involved in any domestic partisan politics.” Leahy’s political leanings were not hidden, however, and he affably called Harry Hopkins “Pinko” and “Do-Gooder.”41
Contrary to Churchill’s transparent policy of command through written orders and records, the president followed a fixed policy of keeping his meetings with the JCS off the record. FDR explicitly overruled Marshall’s request, in November 1942, that minutes be kept of his meetings with the JCS.42 FDR’s decision to prevent meetings of the JCS from being recorded stemmed from the president’s determination to preserve his flexibility to change his mind and reject or deny positions or decisions previously taken. Despite his great talents, this trait of FDR was a character defect and a hindrance to accountability, war planning, written communication, and decision-making. It was this very defect, which Churchill had witnessed at the highest level among the British war planners of World War I, that led him to insist on the written record of decisions and orders. Thus, he held himself and his officials responsible in writing for their actions and their orders to generals and admirals in the field.
As at the State Department, officials in the Departments of the Army and the Navy, early in the war, fretted that Churchill’s global reputation, ingenious mind, military experience, prolific pen, and persuasive mastery of history and the facts too easily influenced Roosevelt. Secretary of War Henry Stimson had been a strong advocate in private and public for entering the war against Germany, but he nevertheless opposed FDR’s early assistance to Britain.43 “Aid to Britain remained at least as controversial at the War Department, where Stimson became almost apoplectic over yet another allocation of heavy bombers to the British in September [1941],” wrote historian David Kaiser.44 Those in the Roosevelt cabinet who were the strongest supporters of war with Germany—Stimson, Frank Knox, Henry Morgenthau, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes—were neither Anglophiles nor inclined to give Britain war materials that the United States might need in the future. In mid-October 1941, Stimson complained that FDR was “entirely in the hands of people who see only the side of the other nations and who are wedded to the idea that with our weapons they can win the war. I am perfectly certain that they cannot, and perfectly certain that eventually we will have to fight and this method of nibbling away at our store of weapons is reducing our weapons down to what I fear is a dangerous thing.”45 Stimson, a former New York lawyer who had served for nearly two years as secretary of war under President William Howard Taft, argued persistently that the United States should retain American-produced armaments. Like General Marshall, Stimson worried that Churchill exercised excessive influence over FDR. This observation was generally true of FDR from 1940 until early 1943—whereupon, with the huge American army and navy soon to dominate the western front and the Pacific, the president would turn on his charm campaign to impress Joseph Stalin. By late 1943, American and Russian power would lead the war against Hitler.
By 1941, key American cabinet members explicitly favored U.S. entry into the war. Navy Secretary Knox and Secretary of War Stimson advocated a stronger response to the Germans. They were ahead of public opinion—to which FDR was acutely sensitive. Politically cautious, Roosevelt was reluctant to lead despite his reelection. Stimson persistently pressed Roosevelt to take stronger action against the Germans, believing that the U.S. help to Britain might be casus belli to the Germans and Japanese.46 After Roosevelt described American patrols in the Atlantic as a step forward, Secretary of War Stimson responded, “Well, I hope you will keep on walking, Mr. President.”47 Even among loyalists, there was impatience with the president’s failure to lead after his landslide victory in the 1940 election. Ickes and other war hawks, like Stimson and Knox, worked to get FDR to act in the spring of 1941. “I find a growing discontent with the President’s lack of leadership,” wrote Ickes. “He still has the country if he will take it and lead it. But he won’t have it very much longer unless he does something. It won’t be sufficient for him to make another speech and then go into a state of innocuous desuetude again. People are begging him to say, ‘I am tired of words; I want action.’”48
Roosevelt did keep raising the temperature of American belligerence, but he still worried about his imprudent 1940 campaign pledge to American mothers not to send their sons to war.49 Warning of Nazi aggression, FDR declared in a fireside chat at the end of 1940: “Our national policy is not directed toward war. Its sole purpose is to keep war away from our country.” The commander in chief aimed to arm the anti-Axis combatants, without sufficiently arming Americans to defend themselves if the war came—thus, America’s lack of readiness for war when it arrived at Pearl Harbor. Still, Roosevelt did argue “that there is a far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.”50 Of this outcome, the prime minister had warned the president. FDR was no appeaser, but he was not yet a warrior, denying as he did that U.S. military help to Britain made war inevitable. As Stimson implied, it is hard not to infer that somehow the president believed he would deceive Hitler into believing that U.S. aid to Britain was consistent with U.S. neutrality. American aid to the United Kingdom, he thought, was similar to neutral Sweden’s sale of iron ore to Germany.
However, with Roosevelt’s approval, U.S. military authorities had begun actively planning for war—after Admiral Harold “Betty” Stark produced the “Dog Memo” on strategy in November 1940. That led to the ABC (America-Britain-Canada) conference in early 1941 in Washington. The conference confirmed a Germany-first strategy in the event of war. After Pearl Harbor, Churchill and General Alan Brooke sought explicit American agreement that war in Europe was a higher priority than the Pacific war against Japan. The prime minister then pressed American leaders to commit to war in the Mediterranean and North Africa, as a prelude to a later cross-channel invasion of northwest Europe from Britain. After Germany declared war on the United States, Stimson and Marshall opposed FDR’s mid-1942 agreement with Churchill to attack North Africa before northern France. They energetically fought the North African initiative when Churchill visited Washington and Hyde Park in June 1942. “It looked like [FDR] was going to jump the traces over all that we have been doing in regard to BOLERO [the code name for the troop buildup in Britain] and to imperil really our strategy of the whole situation,” wrote Stimson as Churchill flew to Washington. Roosevelt “wants to take up the case of GYMNAST [attack on North Africa] again, thinking he can bring additional pressure to save Russia. The only hope I have about it at all is that I think he may be doing it in his foxy way to forestall trouble that is now on the ocean coming towards us in the shape of a new British visitor.”51
In his diary, Stimson confided: “I can’t help feeling a little bit uneasy about the influence of the Prime Minister on him at this time.” He added: “The trouble is Churchill and Roosevelt are too much alike in their strong points and in their weak points. They are both brilliant. They are both penetrating in their thoughts, but they lack the steadiness of balance that has got to go along with warfare.”52 Stimson biographer McGeorge Bundy wrote: “Stimson’s disapproval of TORCH [formerly called GYMNAST] was fully shared by the War Department staff, but after a final protest to the President on July 24, during which the two men offered to bet each other about the wisdom of the operation, Stimson limited himself to extracting a promise from Marshall that he would make a stand against the final execution of the operation if at any time ‘it seemed clearly headed for disaster.’”53 Collectively, their opposition to the attack in North Africa was well intentioned, but after FDR’s decision had been made, their continued opposition bordered on insubordination.
The president supported Churchill’s persuasive and well-reasoned strategy for an attack on North Africa. Still, if the British would not agree to an invasion of France instead of North Africa, American military leaders, led by Anglophobe Admiral King, threatened to switch U.S. military priorities to the Pacific.54 U.S. military authorities were playing two games of chicken: one with the British, the other with the president. “After the war, Marshall, King and Stimson insisted that this proposal [to focus on the Pacific] had been a bluff designed to scare the British into agreeing to SLEDGEHAMMER [a limited cross-channel invasion], and there is no question that the July 10 memorandum [suggesting a switch to a Pacific strategy] did contain an element of bluff,” wrote Mark A. Stoler. “Marshall and King were more than willing to use their proposal as a threat to scare Britain into a reconsideration of SLEDGEHAMMER, but they were equally disposed to make good on the threat if London remained adamant.”55 FDR cleverly called their bluff when he asked for the plan for a Pacific initiative—which they had not prepared.
Forthwith, FDR sent General Marshall to Britain, to prepare military plans for Europe. Marshall and Harry Hopkins emplaned for London in July 1942. Churchill put a full-court press on Hopkins. “The Prime Minister threw the British Constitution at me with some vehemence,” wrote Hopkins to the president. “As you know, it is an unwritten document, so no serious damage was done.”56 Roosevelt ultimately chose Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa through Morocco and Algeria, but his military chiefs continued to fight for alternatives.57 Hopkins undercut their efforts when he asked FDR to set a date to launch TORCH. FDR did so on July 25, 1942. Then, on July 30, at a White House conference to which he had summoned General Marshall and Admiral King, Roosevelt ordered that “TORCH would be undertaken at the earliest possible date. He considered that this operation was now our principal objective and the assembling of means to carry it out should take precedence over other operations.”58 The president did not equivocate. Admiral King acquiesced, but he still prepared for war against Japan in the Pacific.59
By issuing the clear order that Operation TORCH should begin by October 30, Roosevelt finally set the North African attack in motion, but U.S. military planners continued to balk and plan their options.60 General John Dill wrote Marshall in August to complain: “I am just a little disturbed about TORCH. . . . For good or for ill it has been accepted [as joint Anglo-American policy] and therefore I feel that we should go at it with all possible enthusiasm and give it absolute priority. If we don’t, it won’t succeed,” wrote Dill. “From what our Planners tell me, there are some of your people who feel that TORCH is not a good operation. That, of course, must be a matter of opinion but those who are playing a part in mounting the operation must be entirely whole-hearted about it, or they cannot give it all the help it should have and overcome all the difficulties that will arise.” Marshall responded: “You may feel sure . . . U. S. Planners will enthusiastically and effectively support decisions made by the Commander-in-Chief.”61 The army chief had been given support from the newly appointed JCS chairman, Admiral Leahy, who had been concerned about the war in the Pacific.62 Despite the difficulties, TORCH did become the next Anglo-American military priority.
Unfortunately for amicable Anglo-American military relations, Churchill had produced plans not only for North Africa, but also for a second attack on Norway. Americans like Stimson and Marshall were single-minded hedgehogs, determined to open a second front in France. They were appalled by the fox-like tendency of the prime minister to devise many different tactics for attacking Hitler. And now he had a plan to attack Norway, a diversion from the main goal of a cross-channel assault on the German army in France. In an attempt to derail Operation TORCH, Marshall had argued to FDR: “The advantages and disadvantages of implementing the Gymnast plan as compared to other operations, particularly 1942 emergency Bolero operations [building up American troop strength in Britain], lead to the conclusion that the occupation of Northwest Africa this summer should not be attempted.”63 Marshall believed correctly that successful British and American support for TORCH and its execution would delay D-Day until the spring of 1944. Given the immense preparations D-Day required, and the strength of crack German troops in France, Churchill and British Army chief Alan Brooke argued for delay. They believed that the Allies were not yet ready for the colossal cross-channel invasion. They proved correct.64
As usual, President Roosevelt did not run a straight course. He tacked and trimmed with the political winds. Before December 7, 1941, Roosevelt anticipated war, but by arming Britain and Russia, he might avoid or delay American formal entry into the conflict. Historian Walter Reid wrote: “It is very difficult to be clear about Roosevelt’s deepest beliefs. He may have had few. He was essentially a political and pragmatic creature, reactive in instinct, seeking to achieve practical ends. General Douglas MacArthur typified some of FDR’s critics when he described the president as ‘A man who never told the truth when a lie would serve him just as well’. But his reputation for unreliability largely came from his desire to avoid making enemies unnecessarily.”65 FDR wanted to be liked. This characteristic surely helped with politicians and voters, but in the end, it would not serve him well in his negotiations with Joseph Stalin.