Dear Bill:
I have written you very seldom of late because I have been more or less laid up with a low-grade infection, probably intestinal flu, since the first of May. The result is that my actual output of mail is about cut in half.
You have certainly been going through a life that has aspects akin to punching bags, roller coasters, mules, pirates, and general hell during these past months.
I think both you and I have given up making prophecies as to what will happen in and to France tomorrow or the next day.
I feel as if every time we get some real collaboration for the good of the French (especially for the children) started, Darlan and some others say or do some stupid or not wholly above-board thing which results in complete stoppage of all we would like to do.
Now comes the Russian diversion. If it is more than just that it will mean the liberation of Europe from Nazi domination—and at the same time I do not think we need worry about any possibility of Russian domination. I do wish there were a nice central place in the ocean to which you and I could fly in a few hours and spend a few days together. I think of you both often.
My affectionate regards,
As Ever,
Franklin D. Roosevelt 1
When the president wrote this letter in late June 1941, he was well aware that Bill Leahy was under great pressure. The previous two months had seen not only the confrontation over French Indochina but a growing crisis regarding the depth of Vichy’s collaboration with the Nazis. In May, the Darlan government had commenced negotiations with the Nazis that opened up the possibility of France becoming a German ally. Leahy, whose first priority as America’s ambassador was to limit French collaboration, began to feel the squeeze. Tokens of friendship such as Roosevelt’s thoughtful note were crucial in helping him cope with the stress.
Despite the strain, Leahy remained convinced that the Germans would eventually lose the war. At dinner one night, he lectured the visiting Japanese ambassador to Spain against believing in Germany’s final victory.2 Yet repeated German conquests on the battlefield must have made his confidence seem unreal to Vichy leaders. In the Balkans, Greece, and North Africa, the British Army seemed powerless to stop German advances. Admiral Darlan was as convinced of Germany’s inevitable triumph as Leahy was of Britain’s. Despite Leahy’s warnings against allowing the Axis greater access to the French Empire, he expected his words of caution had little impact. “I received . . . a definite impression that following British defeats in Libya, Yugoslavia, and Greece,” he wrote, “the Marshal [Pétain] and his Government are moving rapidly toward ‘collaboration’ with Germany and that there is now likely to be no effective objection made by France to any demands that may be received from Germany.”3
Indeed, Germany’s successes were a key reason that Darlan, then at the height of his power, made his Laval-like gambit.4 He hoped to make France a more reliable actor in German eyes and to secure concessions, most important the return of the hundreds of thousands of French soldiers still being kept as prisoners of war under the armistice terms.5 In Darlan’s eyes, collaboration was a policy that was beginning to look more attractive.6
Leahy first heard rumors in April that Darlan was thinking of cozying up to the Nazis. In May, he was given credible reports that the Germans would be allowed extensive access to French North Africa.7 At the time there was a constant stream of sources from within the French government telling Leahy that Vichy would soon allow German troops into the French Empire or were to pass over to the Germans supplies such as fuel from French stockpiles. Leahy turned to media pressure to let Darlan and Pétain know he was aware of what they were doing. New York Times reporter G. H. Archambault penned a front-page story on May 14 that highlighted the warning Leahy had given Pétain about more collaboration.8 Roosevelt also let Leahy know that he had passed to Cordell Hull the admiral’s information that the French would soon sign a deal with the Germans for greater collaboration.9 On May 16, in response to Leahy’s making public his warning, the Vichy government issued a public statement that any deal it struck with the Nazis would not see France go to war with Britain.10 Despite the smoke screen, Darlan and Pétain continued playing their dangerous game.
On May 28, it even seemed, briefly, that Darlan had concluded his pact with the devil. He signed the Protocols of Paris, which went far beyond the terms of the 1940 armistice in allowing the Germans to make use of the French Empire in their war against the United Kingdom. Three specific concessions were agreed to: the Germans were allowed to use Dakar (in present-day Senegal) as a U-boat base to attack British trade; they could use the Tunisian port of Bizerte to supply Rommel’s Afrika Korps, which was fighting the British in Libya and Egypt; and they could make use of French bases in Syria to attack British oil interests in present-day Iraq as part of the nationalist uprising led by Rashid Ali.11 In return, French payments to the Nazi state were reduced and some highly skilled French prisoners were released from German prisoner-of-war camps. Darlan had allowed his pathological hatred of the British and his cringeworthy respect of the Germans to take a series of dangerous steps down the road to making Vichy France a German ally.
When the protocols were announced, they were met by fierce American opposition. Roosevelt had Cordell Hull (who had been kept out of the loop in the discussions between himself and Leahy) issue the most forthright American statement condemning the agreement.12 However, it was not the American response that neutered the Paris Protocols. It was the overall weakness of the French position. Darlan’s Syria gambit was quickly foiled when the British worked with Charles de Gaulle’s Free French to invade the colony and replace the pro-Vichy forces then in power.13 With Syria taken out of the equation, much of the German interest in the protocols evaporated.14 The Germans had no wish to make concessions to Vichy if they had little to gain. So, instead of allowing France to become an ally, the Germans preferred to continue using the powers of the victor over the vanquished and backed away from Darlan.15
There were some elements within Vichy that seemed to react immediately to the strong American condemnation of the protocols. Some have argued that Gen. Maxime Weygand, who was playing a careful game of cozying up to American diplomats while still solidly supporting Pétain, played an important role in keeping the protocols from being ratified.16 The fact that the United States made its displeasure so clear certainly affected the pro-Vichy French press, which started accusing the Americans in general, and Leahy in particular, of being a constant block to the brave new world of Franco-German cooperation. The New York Times picked up on this theme, publishing a story that included a quote from the strongly collaborationist French journal L’Oeuvre: “Each time that, for more or less avowable reasons, the brake has been applied to the development of Franco-German collaboration there reappears the disquieting figure of Admiral William D. Leahy, Ambassador of President Roosevelt, of Churchill and of Stalin, all at once.”17
This struggle over Vichy collaboration marked an important transition in Leahy’s expectation for a constructive relationship between France and the United States. Though he had always been skeptical that Pétain would do much to oppose the Germans, Leahy grew to believe that the marshal, for all his protestations, was a deceiver and a much stronger advocate of collaboration than he let on.18
A few weeks later, his fears about Pétain’s true intentions received a boost. On August 12, while Leahy was attending the opera with the cream of Vichy society, Marshal Pétain’s speech announcing the outlawing of parties and the de facto suspension of the French Assembly was broadcast over the theater’s sound system. It marked the formal beginning of a Pétainist dictatorship and represented the extinguishing of Leahy’s last bit of hope in the old marshal. A few days later he unburdened himself in one of his personal letters to Roosevelt: “It is discouraging, from the point of view of those of us who are confirmed believers in representative government, to see France completely in the hands of a dictator.”19
Leahy was so worn-out by the dispute that he finally took Roosevelt’s concern to heart, and he and Louise set off on a holiday to Switzerland, driving through beautiful mountain valleys and along the lakes of a country still at peace. In the absence of rationing they ate their fill, excited to indulge in steaks that could be found nowhere in France. The contrast between a defeated and depressed France and the calm prosperity of Switzerland put Leahy in a reflective mood. In Geneva, he visited the headquarters of the defunct League of Nations, now being used as a children’s center.20 For Leahy, who believed that the intentions behind the league were laudable, if its failure was to be expected, it was a “sad awakening from the dream of Woodrow Wilson and his collaborators.” Despite his sorrow, his trip represented one of the final moments in which he felt relaxed during his last nine months in Vichy. The coming months would be some of the worst of his life, and culminate in a life-changing catastrophe.
Leahy had so little faith left in Vichy that he started speaking positively about French Communists, writing that they were “the only organized self-styled political party and the only group with sufficient courage to act against the invaders.”21 His sympathy for the Communists was also motivated by the fallout from Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. When the German Army surprised Stalin and the Red Army by pouring across the border, it marked the beginning of the largest and most horrific land war in human history. Millions of German troops and thousands of German tanks in four massed spearheads smashed through Soviet lines, killing, capturing, and laying waste to everything in their path. As the German Army marched, black-booted, seemingly unstoppable, it seemed to many in Europe that the entire continent would be theirs by Christmas. William Leahy thought otherwise.
From the moment the Germans launched Barbarossa in 1941, Leahy believed that they had started a fight they could never win. He knew that conquering such a vast and unpredictable land would be beyond German capabilities, and he also knew Franklin Roosevelt well enough to know that the American president would do everything in his power to stop them. The day after the invasion commenced, Leahy met with the Soviet ambassador to Vichy and, even without official guidance from Washington, told the Soviet diplomat that he believed the US government would have “full sympathy” for the Soviet Union in its struggle with Nazi Germany.22
News of great German victories trickled into Vichy, but also whispers of heavy German losses. Leahy believed he could tell the truth by how he was treated by pro-Germans in the government: the friendlier they were toward him, the more he suspected the war in the east was going badly for the Reich.
As Leahy realized, the invasion also played into the hands of the collaborationists by strengthening their personal and political stake in a German victory. Barbarossa unleashed a type of exterminatory warfare that had so far only been hinted at in Europe. Atrocities and mass killings had, of course, plagued Germany’s invasion of Poland, but the Nazis’ incursion into the Soviet Union unleashed even more grotesque behavior, and the rate and extremity of the bloodshed spiraled upward. It became more and more apparent that the postwar world would have to go decisively one way or the other, and the losers would be faced with a particularly bleak, maybe even nonexistent future.
For Darlan, the immediate reaction to Barbarossa was to collaborate even more, regardless of the failure of the Protocols of Paris.23 In July the Vichy government allowed for the establishment of a French volunteer force to fight with the Germans against the Soviets, with whom, legally, Vichy France was still at peace.24 Also, mostly under Darlan’s direction, France handed over 1,700 vehicles and 3,600 tons of fuel to Germany.25 Finally, Darlan attempted to please the Germans (and satisfy a personal prejudice) by instituting internal crackdowns on Communists and Jews. Leahy remarked in his diary that the Jews were now scapegoats for everything going wrong in France.26
Indeed, the Pétainist regime’s anti-Semitic laws discriminated against Jews in everyday life in France, representing a first step in the Vichy government’s cooperation with the Holocaust.27 Leahy was aware that the new laws represented something ominous, but as the American ambassador, he felt there was little he could do to intervene.28 He had seemed to accept certain common prejudices about Jews in his own life, but never seemed to think much beyond this. In Vichy, his basic prejudice seemed unchanged, but at the same time he believed that some Jewish figures were among the strongest fighters against Nazi power. He took pleasure in being attacked by the most virulent anti-Semitic press in France, and even sent one of the articles to “Pa” Watson in case the president wanted to read it.29
Leahy tended to view the plight of Jews in Vichy as an issue that required him to be personally detached. Roosevelt had not mentioned the Jewish question to him during their original meeting, in his letter of instruction, or in any of the communications sent to Leahy in France. On the other hand, Leahy was told repeatedly that he was to do everything possible to win over the confidence of Pétain. What he did was take the omissions and commissions and judge that he should not make an issue of Vichy’s anti-Semitic policies. He could compliment Jewish resistance and commiserate about Jewish suffering, but he would only complain about the discrimination against them quietly and irregularly. History must also assume that is exactly what Franklin Roosevelt wanted him to do.
One issue that did cause Leahy to act was the fate of Maxime Weygand. A French hero of World War I, Weygand had been brought back into military service after the German breakthrough of May 1940, and conducted the defense of France during its remaining weeks of independence. This he did with skill and some élan. The French Army fought with considerably more determination under Weygand when their situation was hopeless than they had when the Germans first attacked. After the armistice, Pétain made Weygand his defense minister, but then sent him to North Africa to oversee the French colonies, entrusting him with the most important job outside of France itself. Weygand played a subtle game, manipulating American sentiment brilliantly. Roosevelt referred to Weygand as “our friend,” and in the State Department his fate was accorded huge importance.30 Unlike other major Vichy figures, Weygand stated clearly to the Americans, including Leahy, that he wanted Germany to lose the war and, echoing what Marshal Pétain said earlier, that the United States was France’s greatest hope for the future. He even talked about doing everything possible to help the United States if and when America joined the war. Because of this stance, he convinced the Americans to send him a significant amount of aid for North Africa, which bolstered French control.
Leahy remarked that in giving Weygand so much aid in North Africa, they had made it possible for him to block the approval of the Paris Protocols.31 Yet Weygand had no intention of ever betraying Pétain. He spoke of the older man in terms of greatest respect and saw his role as one to support Pétain at almost any cost. As such he was, perhaps unconsciously, one of the great success stories of the Vichy government in 1941. He kept French North Africa wedded to Vichy France while gaining material aid from the Americans to keep it stable.
Unaware of his duplicity, Leahy and Roosevelt also esteemed Weygand because the French marshal was so hated by the Germans, who began pressuring Pétain to sack Weygand and replace him with somebody more malleable. Leahy did everything possible to protect Weygand, once again turning to the New York Times to leak news that if Weygand were sacked, Leahy would be recalled to Washington.32 Working with Sumner Welles, Leahy called on Pétain on the same day that the undersecretary of state called on the Vichy ambassador to Washington, both demanding clarity about Weygand’s status and the future of French North Africa.33 If not given such assurances, both threatened to end all American aid to France and the French Empire. Yet the ultimatums fell short. Pétain, regrettably as he told the admiral, eventually had to sack Weygand, claiming that if he did not, the Germans would take over unoccupied France. It was an example of the limits of Leahy’s ability to influence Vichy policy. For Leahy, it was another sign that Pétain lacked the courage or even desire to take any step that could possibly irritate the Germans.34 The marshal, he vented to Roosevelt, had the backbone of a jellyfish.35
Leahy regretted Weygand’s dismissal because he viewed him as one of the few French actors who could help the United States win the war. This was not the case with Charles de Gaulle. The leader of the Free French movement was well known to Leahy. In March 1941 Pétain ranted about de Gaulle to Leahy, saying that the British had told him that de Gaulle was no supporter of their war effort and the marshal therefore wondered why they did not “eliminate” him.36 Leahy’s lack of support for de Gaulle and Gaullists during his time at Vichy has led to some fierce criticisms.37 This is rather odd. Leahy, perceptively, judged that the Gaullists had more support in France than was apparent on the surface, and told Roosevelt as much after Pétain’s rant.38 However, he also correctly judged that de Gaulle’s support was not strong enough at the time to affect Vichy policy. Moreover, as senior politicians in Vichy believed that they were operating under a death sentence issued by the Gaullists, it would have been disastrous for Leahy to have argued for de Gaulle to become the official voice of France.39 Finally, if Leahy had somehow thrown his support behind de Gaulle, it would have destroyed his relationship with Pétain, the nurturing of which was the most important task he was given by President Roosevelt.
Thus, Weygand became the great American hope, which is why Roosevelt and Leahy valued him as they did and reacted with such anger when, on November 18, he was removed as Vichy’s commander in North Africa. Before Weygand’s sacking could lead to a final break between the United States and Vichy, however, it was overshadowed by something infinitely more dramatic. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombarded the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Using six aircraft carriers and the finest trained naval aviators in the world, the Japanese Navy caught the US Pacific Fleet unawares early on that Sunday morning. Launching waves of torpedo and dive-bombing attacks, they laid waste to many of Leahy’s prized battleships. All eight of the Pacific Fleet’s dreadnoughts were hit, four of which were either sunk outright or put out of commission for years. Crucially, however, the Japanese revealed how little they understood the great transformation that was about to hit naval warfare. They left almost entirely unscathed all the fuel and repair facilities in the great base. Moreover, they made no attempt to find and sink the US aircraft carriers, a number of which had recently been dispatched from Pearl Harbor.
Though Leahy sat halfway around the world from the mayhem that engulfed the fleet he had done more than anyone else to create, the attack came as no shock to him. In late 1941, as American-Japanese relations were deteriorating and war looked distinctly possible, H. Freeman Matthews asked Leahy what the Japanese might do; Leahy replied, “I would not be surprised if they attacked Pearl Harbor.”40
In Vichy, Leahy first heard about the attack while listening to an evening radio show that was interrupted for a special announcement. His first thoughts were for his fellow sailors and the reputation of the American Fleet. But soon more immediate concerns came to light. It was feared that the Germans might use the attack to order their supporters in Vichy to seize the US embassy. Escape routes had to be worked out for the American diplomats—Leahy preferred one that headed directly down to the Mediterranean coast instead of trying to make for Spain—and plans to destroy all confidential material were reexamined.41
When Leahy heard President Roosevelt, over a surprisingly clear radio broadcast, describe December 7 as “a day which will live in infamy,” he was energized, believing it represented an important marker on the road to victory: “It made a dramatic picture of the most powerful nation of the world embarking on an all out war to destroy the bandit nation of the Orient. The war formally declared today will in my certain opinion result in the destruction of Japan as a first class sea power regardless of how much time and treasure are required to accomplish that.”42
Perversely, the attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by the German declaration of war on the United States, allowed Leahy a sense of hope for the first time in months. With America in the war, he could now talk to the Vichy government as a combatant, with the immense military resources of the United States backing up his every statement. He swung into action and started browbeating Vichy officials. The day after the attack, Leahy asked for, and received, a statement from Pétain that the French government would stay neutral. This was all window dressing for what happened a few days later.
On the evening of December 11, Leahy was ushered in for another meeting with Pétain and Darlan. It had recently been announced that Germany and Italy had also declared war on the United States, so that the world now was involved in one giant interconnected cataclysm. The atmosphere in the room was noticeably different from that at any other time in the past year. Leahy no longer had to threaten based on possibilities. Now he looked both Frenchmen in the eye and told them coldly that the United States would look on any aid given to the Axis as a hostile act and that Vichy would suffer. The United States would seize any part of the French Empire it wanted, or attack any French military force it thought a threat. Once again, he stated clearly that the Axis would be destroyed.
One can imagine the fear that gripped Darlan and Pétain as the American ambassador spoke. They still were living under a constant threat of German aggression, but they understood that with the United States fully engaged, the war, and Germany, could turn apocalyptic. Desperately trying to find common ground with Leahy, Darlan pronounced how wonderful it would be if the United States destroyed Japan, and attempted to row back from the past nine months of ever-growing collaboration, claiming that for three days he had thought of nothing but how to prevent a break between Vichy and the United States. For his part, Pétain spoke of this being “one of the great and terrible moments of history.”43 Considering his message delivered, Leahy left the meeting in a good mood and headed off for a dinner with diplomats friendly to the United States. Pétain and Darlan, one assumes, had a less relaxing evening.
The entry of the United States into the war also precipitated an event that made a lasting impression in Leahy’s vision of Charles de Gaulle. On Christmas Day, Gaullist forces seized the small French-controlled islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off the east coast of Canada. This move, done without US knowledge, struck Leahy as typical Gaullist grandstanding and made his relations with Darlan and Pétain even trickier.44 It confirmed in Leahy’s mind that de Gaulle was more concerned with restoring French pride and establishing his dominance in French politics than in winning the war as quickly as practicable with as few American casualties as possible. This was also the conclusion that Roosevelt and Welles came to at the same time. They could see no gain out of the move except for the personal glory of de Gaulle, and were more than aware of the problems it caused for Leahy.45
Leahy had had enough of quarrelsome Frenchmen. With America now in the war, he hoped he would be summoned back to Washington to take the promised post by Roosevelt’s side. He even took it upon himself to start acting like Roosevelt’s senior military adviser, sending the president a letter listing the officers whom he thought should have the most important naval commands. Leahy told Roosevelt that Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and his old friend Thomas Hart were the best men to lead the fleet through this crisis. It is impossible to say how much this one letter mattered to the president, but not long after receiving it, he gave them the three most important commands available at the time. Roosevelt named Ernest King his chief of naval operations and CINCUS, while Nimitz became commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. Hart was sent to take control in the most difficult area of operations in early 1942, becoming the overall Allied commander of naval forces in the Southwest Pacific.
The call for Leahy to return to Washington did not come as quickly as the admiral hoped. Both Roosevelt and the British government believed that Leahy needed to stay in place as a carrot dangled in front of Vichy to help Pétain resist the huge pressure coming from the Germans. A frustrated ambassador sent pleas to both Sumner Welles and Roosevelt to arrange his recall. One letter, sent on February 20, claimed that his recall was now necessary because the Vichy government was a lost cause.46 “While one should have great sympathy for the Marshal in his almost impossible position,” he wrote, “and a real affection for the unorganized, inarticulate, depressed people of France, it would appear that the time has passed when this war for the preservation of our civilization permits of giving further consideration to the pride or sensibilities of defeated France.”47
Roosevelt commiserated, but still felt it was too soon to break completely with Vichy. He wrote back only two days later saying that Leahy would have to wait for “weeks” because the military situation was so uncertain that he did not want to do anything that would force Vichy to become a German ally.48 Leahy thus had to keep doing his assigned job. At least he could now be ruthless. In early January the pro-German French press started complaining that Leahy was intervening too obviously in the Vichy decision-making process.49 They had a point. Leahy was so relentless with Darlan that the French admiral eventually cracked. In early March 1942, he sent Leahy an emotional letter complaining that the tone of warnings that Leahy was giving him were so harsh that he was treating the French government with “scorn.”50 Leahy, who detested impulsive writing, waited a day to respond and treated Darlan’s outburst with contempt. He claimed that the one thing he had learned from the whole experience was never to send a letter when angry.
Leahy’s contempt was also combined with incredulity at Darlan’s behavior. Leahy believed any rational French actor should now want to back away from political power. He viewed the different players who were scheming to hold on to authority as deluded, scrambling to get the best deck chairs on the Titanic. To Leahy, a sensible Darlan would have jumped at this opportunity to escape from the odor of collaboration, as one that was going to end up on the wrong side of history. Yet, Darlan did the opposite, and as the tide turned inexorably against him, he begged, pleaded, and plotted to stay in power. The problem Darlan had was that the United States entering the war had increased Laval’s political leverage significantly, as the Germans lost any incentive to stay out of French internal affairs and wanted as pro-Axis a government as possible. The early months of 1942 saw a constant drip-drip of stories that Laval was going to be brought back by Pétain to try to appease the Germans. Even in April, after Laval had been named prime minister by Pétain, Darlan was begging for more time. One of Leahy’s final reflections about the French admiral was that if the true level of his collaboration became known, he would lose his head when the war was over.51
The one man Leahy knew would lose his head was Laval himself, and it was a fittingly bizarre ending to Leahy’s ambassadorship that his penultimate formal meeting was with the great collaborator. Laval’s appointment was in many ways a gift to Leahy, the final straw that led to his recall to Washington. However, Leahy still did not want to meet with him, detesting everything for which Laval stood. Yet the Frenchman was insistent that they meet, to the degree that he paid an official visit to the American embassy for the pleasure of Leahy’s company. Exactly what Laval wanted to accomplish is unclear, as he spent most of his time trying to convince Leahy that a German victory was inevitable. Laval portrayed himself as a patriot. Leahy thought he was a crook, writing in his diary:
M. Laval in a very frank discussion of the present and future policy of his Government gave the impression of being fanatically devoted to the interests of France with a conviction that they are bound irrevocably together with the interests of Germany.
The impression is necessarily qualified by persistent reports to the effect that he has always in the past and does now use his political office to advance his personal private fortune. It is a fact that starting with nothing he has advanced himself from the position of a delivery boy for a provincial town grocery to a very rich man and a power in French political life.
He is a small man, swarthy complexioned, careless in his personal appearance, and with a pleasing manner of speech.
As a result of this very frank discussion of the present situation and future prospects I am convinced that M. Laval is fully committed and may be expected to go as far as he can in an effort to collaborate with Germany and to assist in the defeat of what he termed Soviet-British Bolshevism.
Leahy then concluded in classic deadpan:
He definitely is not on our side in the war effort.52
Leahy’s bitter tone was not just due to the bizarre logic of French politicians. He was dealing with the greatest personal crisis of his life—the death of his wife. Louise had not only been a huge support during their entire married life, she had been particularly important in keeping him on an even keel in Vichy. In his diary, Leahy revealed almost nothing about her health until things became serious; it seemed that even in such a private outlet, he could not bear to address what was happening. On her birthday, February 15, he noted simply that no celebration was possible. On February 21, due to a doctor’s warning, Louise was not allowed to attend a formal luncheon. Still, he did his best to look after her in the midst of the great diplomatic crisis. March 21 was an unseasonably warm late-winter’s day in central France, so Leahy bundled Louise into the ambassador’s car and took her for a drive into the countryside. They passed through the lovely medieval village of Ris, enjoying their last happy journey together. A few days later Louise’s condition worsened and her Vichy doctors advised an operation for an “abdominal” problem, which probably meant a hysterectomy. She was thought to be in so much danger that she could not risk the journey back to the United States.53 The strain was so great that Leahy began suffering from nightmares.54 Following the operation she stabilized a bit, but on April 21, just as Louise seemed well enough that they could start planning the journey back to America, she suffered an embolism and died quickly and, it seems, peacefully.
Leahy was devastated. “Her death is a crushing emotional shock to me that is beyond understanding of anyone who has not had an identical experience,” he wrote. “It has left me not only crushed with sorrow, but permanently less than half efficient for any work the future may have in store for me and completely uninterested in the remaining future.”55
Leahy brooded for weeks, his grief exacerbated by the gruesome spectacle of having to travel with her coffin back to the United States. As he departed Europe for the comfort of America, he may have pondered his life spent in uniform, with Louise at his side, now all of it seemingly at an end. Had he chosen to retire now, no one could have failed to understand, and had he retired, he would have enjoyed a brilliant, if soon forgotten, career. But William Leahy would cope with his wife’s passing the only way he knew how—by devoting himself fully to his job, his nation, and his president. After some forty-five years in the US Navy, he had not yet seen the years that would shape one of the most significant careers in American strategic history. Leahy’s future would not be uninteresting.