A few minutes after ten on a cold, clear January night, an automobile quietly pulled up next to a railway siding near the federal government’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Waiting in the frozen darkness was a five-car train, its markings obscured by black paint. One car stood out—armor-plated, it had thick, bulletproof glass windows that could withstand a close-range burst of machine-gun fire. A small party emerged from the automobile, including one man who was lifted into a wheelchair. Once the party was safely aboard the armored car, the train began to clank slowly north.1 Any bystander who had recognized the man in the wheelchair would have assumed that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on his way to Hyde Park for a well-earned rest.
Several miles outside of Washington, the train abruptly changed course, swinging south. The president was heading not to the Hudson Valley but to Miami, Florida, and, eventually, Morocco, though not even his White House staff knew of the plan. In North Africa, US forces had taken over most of French Morocco and Algeria following the successful Torch landings in November 1942. A thousand miles to the east, the British 8th Army, led by Gen. Bernard Montgomery, had defeated Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps during the Battle of El Alamein. In Russia, the Nazis had been halted at the Volga River, with the German 6th Army entombed in the frozen hell of Stalingrad. Now, with the German military machine stopped in its tracks, Franklin Roosevelt was on his way to see Winston Churchill to plan for final victory in World War II. The question was not if Germany would be defeated but how.
Every aspect of the trip was historic: Roosevelt was to be the first president to leave the country during wartime, the first to fly across the Atlantic, and the first to visit Africa while in office. Joining him were his doctor, Adm. Ross McIntire; his aide, Capt. John L. McCrea; Harry Hopkins; and William Leahy.* Yet those not aboard his train were as revealing as those who were. George Marshall, Ernest King, and Hap Arnold traveled separately to Casablanca. Journeys with the president were social affairs, when he would bond with those at this side over cigarettes and cocktails, gossiping and talking through politics and strategy. But his chiefs had been excluded, a separation that spoke of their secondary position in his life.
What’s more, the three cabinet members supposedly most involved in making American foreign and strategic policy—the secretary of state, the secretary of war, and the secretary of the navy—were nowhere to be found. Not only were Cordell Hull, Henry Stimson, and Frank Knox forbidden from attending the conference, they were not even allowed to partake in the most important planning meetings and were kept from seeing many of the key agreements for months afterward. So determined was Roosevelt to emasculate his senior cabinet colleagues that he asked Churchill not to include Hull’s counterpart, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, in the British delegation.2
Upon reaching Miami, Roosevelt’s party switched to a flying boat for a series of hops through the Caribbean to Brazil, and then across the Atlantic to Africa.3 Their first landing was Port of Spain, Trinidad, where the party disembarked for an evening’s rest. Leahy, running a high fever, was examined by McIntire. Diagnosed with a serious case of bronchitis, the admiral was ordered to remain in Trinidad until he had recovered.4 The president’s most trusted adviser had no choice but to miss the Casablanca Conference.
When Roosevelt was told that Leahy could not continue, his mood soured. “This is not civilized,” he moaned in a letter to a confidante, Margaret Suckley. “[Leahy] hated to stay but was a good soldier & will go to the Naval Hospital & get good care—I hope he won’t get pneumonia—I shall miss him as he is such an old friend & a wise counsellor.”5 Yet, while Roosevelt thought Leahy was disappointed to be left behind, Harry Hopkins suspected that the admiral was secretly relieved. “I felt that he never had his heart in this trip and was going only because the President wanted him to,” Hopkins wrote. “He doesn’t seem unhappy at the idea of remaining in Trinidad till we get back.”6 Hopkins may very well have been correct about Leahy’s reluctance to attend the conference, for Casablanca held the risk of a disastrous performance by the American delegation. Faced with the responsibility of planning the war’s next steps with their British allies, Roosevelt’s chiefs could not even agree on a basic strategy.
The run-up to Casablanca showed that William Leahy had developed a profound strategic difference with George Marshall, one he had kept partly under wraps. While Marshall, eager to defeat Hitler, pressed for a Germany-first approach, Leahy wanted to fight a more balanced war. Not that the admiral took the Nazis lightly; indeed, he believed Germany represented a greater threat to America than did Japan, and that Nazism needed to be crushed. Yet he opposed a Germany-first strategy for two important reasons.
The first was unnecessary casualties. Too aggressive an approach to Germany could very well lead to an attack too soon, before the United States was prepared. Only a month before departing for Casablanca, during a meeting with the president and his Joint Chiefs, Marshall had pushed for a cross-Channel invasion of France in 1943. Roosevelt was seemingly supportive of a heavy focus on Germany yet fended off his army chief’s proposal with his typically light touch. But a few days before leaving, Marshall tried again, calling for an invasion of the Brittany peninsula. Heavy casualties could be expected, he admitted, but callously remarked, according to the meeting’s minutes, “we could replace troops.”7 Leahy was undoubtedly appalled. For him, the operation was simply too risky. Until the Allies had secured complete air and sea control in the Atlantic and over any landing beaches in France—something that did not look possible in 1943—an invasion had too high a chance of “failure or great loss of life.”8
Leahy and the president had spent much of their time discussing military strategy in the run-up to Casablanca, and he understood Roosevelt’s thinking on the subject.9 The two shared a similar outlook, and it is doubtful that the admiral had to do much lobbying against an early cross-Channel invasion. Indeed, there is no strong evidence that Roosevelt supported such an operation. In January Roosevelt even blocked Marshall’s idea, refusing to authorize any assault on Brittany. Instead, he argued for more delay, asking “if it wouldn’t be possible for us to build up a large force in England, and leave the actual decision in abeyance for a month or two.” Leahy leapt in with support, saying the president’s suggestion “had considerable merit” and that the United States should delay making any decision until the situation was clearer.10 The closeness between Roosevelt and Leahy had quickly steered the debate away from what could have resulted in a catastrophic decision; the president and the admiral wielded power, not Marshall. At no time was there ever to be an official American policy to argue for a cross-Channel invasion in 1943. As events would show, it was always Marshall and the army driving this position, with little support from other quarters.11
The second reason Leahy opposed a Germany-first strategy was that it would hinder the fight against Japan. Though the US government had declared after Pearl Harbor that war against Germany would be its highest priority, in 1942 it did the exact opposite.12 As the Japanese expanded their power rapidly across the southern and western Pacific, the United States spent the first twelve months of the war sending equipment to stem the Japanese tide—significantly more than was used to fight the Germans.13 This imbalance was exacerbated by the enervating struggle for control of Guadalcanal, a six-month battle that caused unprecedented sea and air losses on both sides. In August 1942, US Marines surprised Japanese forces on the island, seizing an airstrip they had just completed. The next few months would witness one of the greatest attritional struggles of the war. The Japanese, determined to retake the airfield, which the Americans renamed Henderson Field, committed some of their best naval and army forces to the fight. They inflicted the greatest-ever defeat at sea on the US Navy, the Battle of Savo Island, and the Marines protecting Henderson Field were constantly besieged. Roosevelt was so worried about the island that he often ordered new production to be sent there instead of diverting it to North Africa or Europe. By the end of 1942, the United States had a clear majority of air assets and an overwhelming majority of its sea power in the Pacific.
In December, when the situation on Guadalcanal had stabilized and the Americans were working on taking the entire island, Roosevelt told the Joint Chiefs that from now on only 20 to 35 percent of American forces should be sent to the Pacific, with the remainder deployed against Germany. This put Leahy in a bind. A Germany-first strategy, he felt, would stunt America’s progress in the war with Japan. He believed Japan would eventually lose that war, but he worried that if the Japanese were ignored for two or three years while Germany was defeated, they would turn the Pacific into a giant island-to-island death trap that would consume American lives. In addition, the extra time it would take to defeat Japan could lead to a catastrophic collapse in China.
In his diary, Leahy worried that the strategic importance of the war against Japan was not understood—in particular that the British were so obsessed with Europe that they would hinder his policy goals. “I have an idea that Great Britain will not give any useful assistance to a Burma expedition at the present time,” he wrote, “and it is my opinion that from the long distance American view point of essentials in our war effort, the opening of the Burma Road and the support of China should have a very high priority.”14 A few weeks later, as the fighting around and on Guadalcanal was reaching a crescendo, he went even further, claiming that, far from focusing on Germany, the US war effort “should now be concentrated against Japan.”15 He also argued that commitments to Great Britain and Russia might make this impossible—tying his skepticism about an early invasion of France into his larger geopolitical outlook.
Leahy’s doubts about British intentions were not driven by a dislike of the British, a common prejudice among US naval officers of his generation; rather, they had everything to do with his conception of American national interest. Leahy was an anti-imperialist with isolationist proclivities. He wanted to fight the war to win it as quickly as possible, with as few American casualties as possible, and he wanted to ensure that the United States was in the best strategic position as possible at the war’s conclusion. He had no interest in fighting to preserve the British Empire and was determined that when the interests of the two nations clashed, he would do everything possible to make sure the American position triumphed.
Heading to Casablanca, Leahy was thus at complete strategic odds with George Marshall about both Europe and the Pacific, and this would have led to unbearable tension in the American delegation. Missing out on the conference lanced that particular boil. Yet losing Leahy was also a disaster for the Americans. The admiral was, more than anyone else, the force that bound the president and the Joint Chiefs together, working as a team. Without him, the American leadership immediately reverted to the dysfunctionality of its early months. At Casablanca, Roosevelt, Marshall, Arnold, and King all had different agendas that either ignored, or even undermined, the positions of the others.
After a tortuous series of flights across the Caribbean, to Brazil, over the Atlantic to West Africa, and then north to Morocco—McIntire, who worried about Roosevelt’s high blood pressure and weakening heart, ordered the plane, where possible, to cruise at no higher than 9,000 feet—the president’s contingent arrived in Casablanca on January 14. They were led to the suburb of Anfa, an old Phoenician settlement far from the city center, and housed in a modern hotel complex that resembled a California bungalow, ringed with barbed wire and hastily constructed fortifications. Waiting for the Americans was the British delegation. Well drilled, well rested after a much shorter flight, and ready to fight for what they wanted, the British, from Churchill on down, had arrived with a more coherent war strategy than the Americans. They were committed to Germany-first and wanted to make as little effort as possible in the Pacific until the Nazis had been defeated. Their view of how to defeat Germany, however, was very different. Unlike Marshall, the British did not want to invade France in 1943, and probably not in 1944 either. Churchill, a World War I combat veteran, was haunted by images of British youth being mowed down by ruthless, gray-faced Germans as they slogged across the fields of northwest Europe. As the British prime minister well knew, the United Kingdom was suffering from a personnel crisis far more acute than that in the United States. The British population, the smallest of the Great Powers, had been fully mobilized since 1940, and there was no way to increase the size of the British Armed Forces without reducing the productive workforce. Keeping British casualties down was therefore a political and economic imperative. The fight over this issue promised to be bitter.
Instead of invading France, Churchill wanted to fight the Germans in the Mediterranean, leaving the Russians to deal with the bulk of the German Army. He favored operations against Italy, Greece, or Yugoslavia, which he optimistically—and nonsensically—called the “soft underbelly” of Europe. Fighting in such areas, he believed, would not only save British manpower, it would secure the eastern Mediterranean, an area considered vital to the maintenance of the British Empire. In Churchill’s mind the United Kingdom was fighting World War II to protect the existence of the empire, not to see its “liquidation.”16
Dealing with such British unanimity, the American delegation at Casablanca broke into pieces, unable to mount effective counterarguments without Leahy. The first gathering of the Leahy-less Combined Chiefs was held on January 14 and showed just how poorly Marshall and King operated together.17 Marshall opened by stating the president’s policy that the Allies should devote 30 percent of their effort to the war against Japan and 70 percent against Germany (without letting the British know that this was Roosevelt’s figure and not his own). King added that the United States at present was sending only 15 percent of its available forces to fight Japan, a remarkably deceptive statement; the reality was that it had more than half in the Pacific. His deception revealed his true intention: to get tacit approval to devote as many resources as he could to the Pacific war. King had tipped off the British that he, at least, had no interest in invading France in 1943 if it undermined the war against Japan. The American chiefs were obviously divided.
In response, the British chiefs offered their own perspective. The chief of the imperial general staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke (later Lord Alanbrooke); the First Sea Lord, Adm. Sir Dudley Pound; and the chief of the air staff, Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, all spoke at length, but together they outlined their coherent vision of a war in the Mediterranean or, in the case of Portal, in the skies over Germany.
Out of his depth, Marshall showed that the debate was already lost. Instead of taking the British head-on, he said meekly that he was “concerned” that operations in the Mediterranean would not be worth the effort. When it came to invading France, all he could muster was a statement that he was “inclined to look favorably” on operations that would be launched from the United Kingdom.18 He got the limpest of support from King, who only really came alive when he discussed the importance of the war against Japan. Two days later, King finally said that an invasion of Brest “needed careful consideration,” but that was about the extent of his support for European operations.19 Arnold, meanwhile, mostly stayed out of the invasion discussions, focused instead on the launching of a strategic air campaign against Germany—on which he was much closer to Portal than Marshall and King. By the end of the conference, the war in Europe was agreed very much along British lines, with an invasion of Sicily given precedence in 1943 and any invasion of France shelved for at least a year. The Mediterranean would become the main theater of Anglo-American effort for 1943.
To be fair to Marshall, his lack of success was partly due to the president basically hanging his army chief of staff out to dry. At Casablanca, Roosevelt seemed uninterested in a 1943 invasion of France. When he sat down with Churchill and the Allied Combined Chiefs, or just Hopkins, Marshall, King, and Arnold, it was to receive briefings about the state of the war, not to construct a united war-fighting strategy. Roosevelt was much more excited by being an international statesman than an Allied warlord. He spent much of his time on French affairs, trying to curb the influence of Charles de Gaulle and the Free French in favor of Gen. Henri Giraud. His one great contribution to the conference came as a surprise to almost everyone else: the doctrine of Axis Unconditional Surrender. This controversial demand, which made it clear to the Germans, Italians, and Japanese that there would be no negotiated peace, only total defeat, had been discussed before Casablanca but was not on the American agenda going into the talks.20 Yet Roosevelt became attracted to the idea and had it added to the final communiqués. To some it was a blunder that stiffened German and Japanese resistance and turned the war into a fight to the death.
On January 24 the Casablanca Conference concluded, but not until the twenty-eighth did Leahy receive an update of the summit when Marshall and King, again traveling apart from Roosevelt, touched down in Trinidad. Not long after the two had departed, Roosevelt arrived with Hopkins to pick up his convalescing chief of staff. They lingered on the island for a day as the president recovered from the exhaustion of travel, showing off the gifts he had received from the sultan of Morocco, including a gold mounted sheik’s knife.21 On January 30—the president’s sixty-first birthday—Leahy, Roosevelt, and Hopkins boarded a flight back to the United States. The three men, the apex of America’s strategic power, drank Champagne, ate cake, and admired the view as the plane passed over Haiti. Marshall, out of touch with the president, remained blissfully unaware of Roosevelt’s stopover in Trinidad, as well as his impromptu celebration.
When Leahy learned of the decisions made at Casablanca, he was underwhelmed. Faced with the opportunity to outline the quickest and most humane path to end the fighting, the American delegation had been outfoxed by the British. The United States was now committed to a Mediterranean strategy about which Leahy had mixed feelings, while at the same time, they had received no guarantees from the British that they would help open a route into China or even a British commitment to invade France in 1944. Back in Washington, Leahy thoroughly analyzed the conference with the president, Marshall, and King, later venting in his diary that “little of value to ending the war” had been accomplished.22 The president, likewise, was unimpressed with the chaotic American performance at Casablanca. Roosevelt was embarrassed by how little he, the other chiefs, and Hopkins had accomplished, believing that their only clear success was the announcement of the unconditional surrender policy.23
Though Casablanca had mostly been a disappointment, the failure highlighted two important points. For Leahy, the Casablanca agreements solved the problem of his doubts over Marshall’s European strategy. With a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 out of the question, Leahy could now make common cause with Marshall in pushing for D-Day in 1944. Overall, the American Joint Chiefs had far fewer grand strategic differences after Casablanca than before. Furthermore, it was a stark reminder that Roosevelt, Marshall, King, Arnold, and Hopkins, left to their own devices, were a mess. They needed the kind of subtle organization and direction that only Leahy could provide—and Leahy and Roosevelt were determined they get that guidance for the rest of the war. The president looked at the results of Casablanca and practically the first thing he did after returning to Washington was to issue an order that gave Leahy greater access to information than any other person in the US government. On February 11, 1943, the president issued a written order for Leahy that “the Map Room was to make a copy of each incoming dispatch for the President from any of the heads of Government with whom he corresponds. This copy is to be available at all times in the Map Room for your perusal.”24
Franklin Roosevelt was making William Leahy his go-to figure, for the precise reason that the president understood that he needed Leahy to organize American grand strategy. From now on, because of Leahy’s unlimited access to Roosevelt’s correspondence, along with the military intelligence he received through the Joint Chiefs and his direct connections to high-ranking members of the State Department, the admiral would have a more complete picture of the American war effort (and international geopolitics) than any other person in the American government, including the president. It was what made him the second most powerful man in the world—for as long as Franklin Roosevelt lived.
Roosevelt’s order was also a sign that Hopkins’s plan to limit Leahy’s influence had failed; indeed, it showed that Leahy was replacing Hopkins as the president’s most trusted adviser. This passing of the torch happened for a number of reasons, including Hopkins’s declining health, new bride, and chaotic way of transacting business. In July 1942 Hopkins married Louise Macy, who was flirtatious, sixteen years younger, and very rich.25 At first, Macy moved into the White House to live with Hopkins but, not surprisingly, wanted to spend time alone with her new husband. She chafed at all the demands Roosevelt placed on their lives and began to resent the lack of independence. Macy made her feelings known, belittling life in the White House in a way that the suspicious Roosevelt thought insulted both himself and Eleanor.26 Franklin Roosevelt was a jealous man, and as he understood that Hopkins was no longer just his creature, his feelings toward his erstwhile favorite began to cool.
To make matters even more grim, Hopkins was dying. His stomach cancer, first diagnosed in 1937, had led to three-quarters of the organ being removed. For a while, after receiving plasma injections, he functioned at a surprisingly high level. Being so central in Roosevelt’s life provided him the adrenaline needed to cope. By 1943, however, he began to noticeably weaken, his weight dropped alarmingly, and he started suffering from malnutrition.27 The fact that he continued to smoke and drink hardly helped.
Hopkins’s declining health accentuated one of his real shortcomings as a presidential aide: his predilection for keeping things “fluid,” which masked his organizational chaos.28 He was known to walk out of the Map Room with the most confidential documents stuffed carelessly into his pockets.29 In comparison to Hopkins’s ramshackle appearance and habits, Leahy stood out to the president as paragon of controlled competence. The widowed admiral had no other loyalties, never lost papers, and was punctilious in bringing issues to Roosevelt’s attention and then reporting the president’s decisions to the rest of the government. Leahy was always at the White House at the allotted time and was rarely sick. His physical appearance was always tidy, and he made sure that his uniforms were crisp and clean. He even worked hard not to gain weight, which was not always easy, as he enjoyed socializing and good food and certainly did not deprive himself of alcohol. One of the ways that he controlled his weight was to limit what he ate for lunch. He was known to dine only on graham crackers and a glass of milk.30
Considering all this, it is not surprising that Roosevelt started shifting responsibility for many tasks from Hopkins to Leahy—not just strategic but also political. Leahy’s contacts with the State Department became even more regular. In the run-up to Trident—the next strategic meeting with America’s British allies—Leahy worked with Sumner Welles to articulate American policy toward France and, more important, the treatment of territories that the United States had occupied. The two men basically decided that the United States, in the short term, should maintain control over different occupied territories to increase American leverage in the upcoming strategy conferences.31 Leahy sent a telegram to General Eisenhower making this clear.
The admiral became, in the words of one perceptive observer, the “immediate court of appeal” for all American strategic plans.32 Leahy became so powerful as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he squashed a suggestion that the Joint Chiefs be formalized with a written charter. 33 He did not want any possible limitations on his interactions with the president. As he told Marshall and King, this “body now appears to function in a reasonable satisfactory manner . . . [I]f there is a question as to authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they now have access to the President and can seek guidance on any matter they desire.”34
Five days after Roosevelt issued his order giving Leahy complete access to his correspondence, the admiral set to work preparing for Trident. On February 16, the Joint Chiefs, having previously analyzed the meager results from Casablanca, started discussing what they wanted to achieve with the Brits. When it came to the war in Europe, there was now unanimity that France should be invaded in 1944. Leahy was convinced that by that year the Germans would have no reasonable possibility of stopping the invasion and that it was a political imperative both domestically in the United States and internationally to keep the Soviet Union in the war.
While Leahy was committed to invading France in 1944, he stood opposed to making the Mediterranean a permanent area of Anglo-American effort. Leahy did not want the United States to fight a war in the Mediterranean to protect the British Empire, and to forestall this he wanted American involvement in the region in 1943 to be limited to one island assault.35 As early as February 1943, he was even voicing doubts about the need for an invasion of Sicily, worried as he was by unnecessary American casualties.36 As it turned out, his support for Torch was not a sign of a commitment to a Mediterranean strategy—in many ways it was a repudiation of one.37 He supported an invasion of North Africa as part of his worldwide maritime strategy and to get US troops acclimated to battle in an area where he thought casualties would be low. He saw no benefit whatsoever in expanding the land war either onto the Italian mainland or into the eastern Mediterranean. To Leahy such operations would not shorten the war by a day and might even lengthen it by dispersing Allied force in to the areas the seizure of which would make no difference in compelling Germany to surrender.
Leahy now had a clearer idea of how he wanted to proceed in Europe, but he remained, as always, determined to make the Pacific a major priority. He was especially concerned that the Japanese not conquer more of China. To ensure this, he needed from the British a commitment to help open a land route into China through Burma, an operation code-named Anakim. Leahy was convinced that if more aid did not get through to America’s Chinese allies, the Nationalist regime might fall. So devoted was he to Anakim that he spent a great deal of his time on it in the months leading up to Trident. Sumner Welles saw how committed Leahy was to Chinese questions and started feeding the admiral as much information from the State Department as he could.38 At the end of February Leahy met with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the glamorous, intelligent, and powerful wife of the Chinese Nationalist leader, to express his commitment to China.39 Furthermore, he met with two senior Chinese diplomats to discuss his hopes for Anakim. Wellington Koo and T. V. Soong were both in Washington to argue China’s case for more support in the war against Japan, and in Leahy they found the most sympathetic of ears.40 The admiral and Koo had first become friendly in Vichy, where their ambassadorships coincided. Leahy thought Koo “highly attractive and very intelligent.”41 He was also fond of Soong, heir to one of China’s great industrial families and a leading politician in Nationalist Chinese circles, now serving as the Chinese foreign minister. Leahy and Soong closely coordinated their efforts to apply pressure on the British to proceed with Anakim. In early May, the admiral brought Soong to a meeting of the Joint Chiefs so that he could explain Chinese policies and desires to Marshall and King.42 Leahy even set up a special meeting between Soong and Roosevelt to reassure the Chinese diplomat about the president’s commitment to China. After the meeting Soong sent Leahy an effusive report, saying that the president was fully behind Anakim and had promised to press the British about it. Soong ended the letter with a tribute to all that Leahy had done for US-Chinese relations.43 It was a tribute the admiral richly deserved. Leahy even changed official American strategic language when it came to the importance of China. During Casablanca, with Leahy absent, the US delegation had signed up for a clear Germany-first policy that called for only enough force to be sent to the Pacific to maintain “pressure” against Japan.44 In the documents prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Leahy’s direction before Trident, the word “unremitting” was suddenly placed before “pressure.” He also made sure that Anakim was one of the top two American priorities. It was usually listed second, just behind the commitment to a cross-Channel attack in 1944.
Leahy made sure that Roosevelt strongly supported his hard line with the British over Pacific strategy and the need for Anakim. Yet the operation presented a major strategic problem. If a land route were to be opened into China to allow supplies to reach the Nationalists, the British would have to take a lead by attacking out of India and into Japanese-controlled Burma. When it came to the war in the Pacific, the British were determined to do as little as possible until Germany had been defeated. They saw no reason to deploy their own equipment and lose valuable manpower making a risky offensive into Burma. British officials were far more skeptical than Leahy and Roosevelt about the future importance of China and saw little need to fight the war with that in mind. The lack of interest that the British had in China was made clear in their preparations for Trident. Churchill seems almost boastful in his memoirs about his intention going into the meeting to try to block American plans for an attack into Burma.45 He listed supporting the Chinese war effort as only the sixth highest strategic priority for the United Kingdom—which even then was probably an overstatement made to appease American concerns.46
The reality of British reluctance to exert force in the Pacific was one that Leahy understood, and as he told the president, if the British did not play ball, the United States should feel itself free to ignore Germany-first. “If Anakim proves impossible,” he wrote in a memo to Roosevelt, “due to lack of British support or other reasons, and no adequate alternative can be agreed upon, the United States will expand and intensify its operations in the Pacific, in order to counteract the advantage which Japan gains by Allied failure to support China.”47
On May 8, at a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, Leahy presented all the different strategy papers that had been prepared for the upcoming conference, then scripted how Trident would begin, saying that the US delegation would start by laying out its global strategy.48 Leahy was justifiably proud of the wide strategic scope and clarity laid out in these documents.49 He particularly commended a report entitled “Conduct of the War 1943–1944.”50 This paper, along with a memorandum Leahy sent to Roosevelt entitled “Recommended Line of Action at the Upcoming Conference,” provided the blueprint that the United States would follow exactly during Trident.51
The conference opened four days later in an unseasonably hot and humid Washington, DC. The heaviness in the air was appropriate. Although victory was heralded from every newspaper, with the German and Italian forces in North Africa surrendering on May 13, it quickly became clear that the Americans and British were not going to easily surmount their strategic differences. During the first meeting, Churchill, with typical eloquence, made a passionate case for a Mediterranean strategy. Yet he provided no commitment to a cross-Channel invasion in 1944 and, Leahy wryly observed, talked about a full effort in the war against Japan—once Germany had surrendered, of course.52 Roosevelt replied briefly, demanding a cross-Channel invasion in 1944 and an immediate effort to keep China in the war.
This fundamental disagreement set the tone of what would be, for most men in attendance, an exhausting two weeks. One exception was Leahy: he oozed confidence during Trident. When the Combined Chiefs first met alone, Leahy took the chair and gave a clear exposition of American strategic aims, the longest oration he would make during the entire conference. He called for an invasion of France in 1944 and a major commitment to help China in 1943, complete with his emphasis on wanting “unremitting” pressure placed on Japan.53 His gauntlet thrown, he sat back and allowed others to do most of the talking. Over the coming days he would let both British and American delegates go on at length, listening intently and judging. When he interjected, which he did with increasing regularity, it was always to provide a staccato statement that steered the conversation away from what he considered unnecessary diversions and back to the fundamental issues of grand strategy. He was relentless, willing to put both the British and George Marshall in their places. During the first meeting, after Alanbrooke and Marshall had gone on at great length about the war in Europe, Leahy gently chided them on their myopia, saying that “the Pacific could not be neglected; it was too vital to the United States,” and that immediate action was needed to “maintain China in the war.”54 A little while later, when the conversation once again bogged down over how much commitment the Allies should make to Mediterranean operations in 1943, Leahy asked pointedly how they all thought the Soviets would react if it looked like the cross-Channel invasion was being shelved in favor of operations in Italy.55
The next day the chiefs started again with a long statement by Alanbrooke about British strategy and the need for the Mediterranean to be the lead theater of operations in 1943 and beyond. He even accused the Americans of going back on their Casablanca pledges by not showing enough commitment to operations in that region. As soon as Alanbrooke was done, Leahy contradicted him outright, saying that nothing the Americans were arguing for contravened Casablanca, that France needed to be invaded in 1944 and that the Pacific remained a major area of strategic investment regardless of the Germany-first policy.56 Indeed, Leahy seemed to take a little pleasure in tormenting Alanbrooke, asking the British general point-blank if he honestly believed that an attack in the Mediterranean could strike a serious blow to Nazi power.
For Leahy, China was not to be abandoned, and his temper was put to the test when the British wheeled out Field Marshal Archibald Wavell. A repeated failure consistently promoted throughout his career as a way of moving him on, Wavell had been beaten soundly by Rommel in the Desert War of 1941 and deposited into India, where he was promoted to field marshal and put in command of the British Army. He was brought to Trident to explain the difficulties of a land offensive into Burma, which he did in great detail.57 Leahy’s response revealed a barely concealed contempt: What, he asked Wavell, did he plan to do, then, to help the Chinese?58 After Wavell blathered on again about all the problems involved in getting aid to China, Leahy dismissed his arguments by saying that, regardless of the tactical challenges, it remained “essential” for the Allies to find a way to aid the Chinese.
Leahy’s impatience with Wavell and Alanbrooke stemmed from his conviction that both were typical soldiers, with a primitive, land-based understanding of war, out of their depth in grasping the fundamentals of modern industrial/technological warfare. Leahy was becoming convinced that it was the application of Anglo-American air- and sea power that would determine the course of the war—and that air- and sea power were the most effective ways to materially damage the Germans and Japanese. He thought generals such as Alanbrooke, who obsessed only over engaging German divisions, to be fighting more Napoleonic wars than modern ones.
Leahy’s persistence was one of the reasons that nerves frayed during the conference. Alanbrooke seemed close to exhaustion. His diary entries covering these days are a litany of gloom; after the war he confessed that the pressure he endured led him into a “deep depression.”59 In need of a break to regain their energy and calm their nerves, the Combined Chiefs traveled to Colonial Williamsburg, the eighteenth-century capital of Virginia, where they toured the historical pastiche—restored at great expense by John D. Rockefeller—and larked in a swimming pool like young boys. It barely helped.
When the chiefs returned to Washington, their profound differences surfaced once again. Trying to find some way to wiggle out of a commitment to Anakim, Alanbrooke delivered a long and deliberately obtuse interjection on Pacific strategy.60 Disastrously, his case was supported by the untrusted Wavell. Leahy listened to their rambling presentations, which involved no effort to open a road into China to get support to the Nationalists fighting Japan, and said that would not be enough. He wanted a British commitment to a ground offensive in Burma to open the road, and would accept nothing less.61
When it seemed no settlement was possible, Leahy placed a proverbial gun to the British head and dared Alanbrooke to pull the trigger. The admiral proposed that under the circumstances the American and British chiefs should submit separate reports to Roosevelt and Churchill.62 Presumably, the countries could then go their own way and fight the war as each saw fit. It was a catastrophic turn for the British; already strapped of manpower and supplies, going it alone would basically deprive them of any influence over American strategy. There was an immediate call for a closed session of the Combined Chiefs that afternoon, a talk so sensitive that no minutes were kept. When the doors finally reopened, the British had made the major concession of agreeing to Anakim in 1943—though only when the monsoon season was over.
The concession made, work began on the final report, which was delivered to Roosevelt and Churchill on May 24.63 Even then, negotiations were not finished. Though the Combined Chiefs had accepted the basic American strategy, Churchill made one final attempt to seize back the initiative. He asked for a delay and made an impassioned plea for his views. It failed: Roosevelt was not to be moved. Unlike at Casablanca, the president was a rock of support for his American chiefs during Trident. Leahy fondly remembered FDR’s faith in him for the rest of his life.
The final Trident communiqué contained commitments to the two operations Leahy most supported. In Europe, there would be a buildup to launch a cross-Channel invasion in the spring of 1944, with a target date of May 1; Mediterranean operations in 1943 could be attempted only if they did not interfere with these preparations. In the Pacific, the Allies would exert “unremitting” pressure against Japan. This included a clear commitment to a ground attack into Burma in 1943, the objective of which was to open a land route to get supplies into China.
Leahy’s satisfaction was obvious. The agreements represented a vindication of his personal strategic preferences. What’s more, the twelve days of intense discussions seemed to energize him. Whereas Alanbrooke was drained and irritable, Leahy was full of gusto and infused with an energy that belied his years.* Not only did he chair every meeting of the Combined Chiefs and attend many sit-downs with Roosevelt and Churchill, he met regularly with State Department officials and foreign diplomats. He attended dinners thrown by the Czech embassy, a reception in the Chinese embassy, and had many meetings with important figures such as T. V. Soong, financier Nelson Rockefeller, and the Australian foreign minister, H. V. Evatt. He even kept up a steady social calendar. Indeed, the social high point of the two weeks was more revealing of his unique status than any political meeting. At a dinner party thrown by one of Franklin Roosevelt’s relations, the admiral was seated beside the guest of honor, Roosevelt’s mistress du jour, Princess Martha of Norway. He had a wonderful time.64
The American delegation owed its success at Trident to a large degree to Leahy’s preparation and coordination of US efforts. Of course, securing a British commitment to operations such as Anakim and a cross-Channel invasion were not enough. There was still the question of forcing them to deliver. As the next six months and three more conferences would show, these issues were far from settled. In the end, while Leahy’s vision was more successful than not, a tortured road needed to be walked.