In September 1944, as Douglas MacArthur was preparing to launch an invasion of the Philippine island of Leyte, Leahy sat down to compose a memo about the next steps to take once the island had been seized.* Two options were being debated by the Joint Chiefs: allowing MacArthur to expand his attacks in the Philippines—MacArthur’s and Marshall’s preference—or leaving the Philippines behind to strike the Japanese-held island of Formosa, King’s preference.
Leahy’s thinking on the matter was decidedly different from everyone else’s. He was convinced that as soon as the Philippines were secure, Japan was doomed. Without those vital naval and air bases, Japan would lose all ability to transport supplies and raw materials around its far-flung empire. Most consequentially, their ships and aircraft would be starved of oil. With its war machine left sputtering, even Japan’s fanatical leadership would have to eventually admit defeat. For the United States to launch another major amphibious assault after securing the Philippines, particularly assaults on large islands, seemed to Leahy to be strategically unnecessary, politically dangerous, and ethically dubious. Forcing an engagement with the one large military force the Japanese had left, their army, might even be counterproductive. Assaults on Formosa or even Japan itself would cost too much blood and treasure while making not the slightest difference in the outcome of the war.
With the desire to limit fighting as much as possible, Leahy eventually opted to support MacArthur’s attack into Luzon after Leyte—indeed, he would prove instrumental in getting the plan approved—but only to complete the Allied reclaiming of the Philippines and try to limit other operations. Once it was taken, Leahy believed the United States would have no need to launch any more amphibious assaults closer to Japan. Instead, he pointed to “our overwhelming air and sea supremacy” as the key to victory. “My conclusion,” Leahy wrote, “is that America’s least expensive course of action is to continue and intensify the air and sea blockade, with an intensified air bombardment of Japan’s war industry, and at the same time reoccupy the Philippines.”1 By halting Japanese mobility on the seas and destroying her transportation and factories ashore, American lives would be saved and the war would be won.
“It seems necessary that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should obtain a decision on the highest political level as to whether we should take a shorter course toward the already certain defeat of Japan at greater cost in life and material, or a longer course at much less cost,” he concluded.2 On September 5, he read the memo aloud to the Joint Chiefs, then had it placed, verbatim, into the minutes.3 It was the work of a strategist at the height of his powers, its clarity and force a testament to Leahy’s vision.
Indeed, over the previous two years Leahy had done more than any other American to determine the strategic choices of the United States. So effectively had he wielded power in the White House, among the Joint Chiefs, and during the grand strategic conferences, that America had fought Leahy’s war more than anyone else’s, including George Marshall’s. In fact, examining the issues that the two men fought over during Leahy’s first year in office, it’s obvious who was more powerful. Leahy won every major argument.
|
Date/Issue |
Leahy Position |
Marshall Position |
Roosevelt Choice |
|
July 1942: Should the US invade North Africa? |
Yes, had even devised a similar plan in 1941. |
Consistently fought against the idea. |
Leahy Position |
|
October–December 1942: What military equipment should receive priority for US construction? |
Air- and sea power should dominate. Wants large aircraft program as long as aircraft-carrier construction is protected. |
Resisted cuts to land-army construction, fights against aircraft getting absolute priority. |
Leahy Position |
|
September 1942–early 1943: What is the right size of the US Armed Forces, and how will this affect labor policy? |
Must keep war production high and happy to limit armed forces size. Don’t bring in coercive labor laws. |
Wants large army as highest priority, willing to countenance large extension to working week. |
Leahy Position |
|
November 1942–January 1943: Should the US government press for a cross-Channel invasion in Europe in 1943? |
No, too risky and could lead to very high casualties. Wait until 1944, when air and sea control is guaranteed. |
Yes, willing to undertake risky invasion and suffer high casualties. |
Leahy Position |
|
1942–1943: Should the US fight a Germany-first war or a balanced war between Europe and Asia/Pacific? |
Balanced war. Cannot let the Japanese get entrenched in the Pacific; need to show support for China. |
Consistently Germany-first. The war against Japan can wait until Germans defeated. |
Leahy Position |
Having determined what the US Armed Forces would be, and where they would fight, Leahy’s next challenge was to subvert the policy of Germany-first so that the United States sent the forces he thought necessary to fight the Pacific war. In this he walked in lockstep with Ernest King. At Trident and Quebec and in Washington he argued strenuously for making the war against Japan a major priority, eventually neutering Germany-first to such a degree that it became meaningless. His efforts provided backing for the rather schizophrenic war that the United States fought in 1943 and early 1944. In 1942, as mentioned earlier, there was no considered plan for the allocation of US forces, so that, when made available, men and equipment were sent much of the time on an ad hoc basis to any area of the world that was considered most important. If anything, it meant that the United States fought a Japan-first war for much of the time, especially as the struggle over Guadalcanal intensified.
In 1943 and early 1944, however, the United States fought two very different wars.4 The US Army and Army Air Force sent approximately two-thirds, and sometimes more, of their equipment and manpower to fight the Germans. In doing this they were following the wishes of Franklin Roosevelt as expressed in December 1942, and the stated policy of the US government. The navy, by contrast, sent approximately 90 percent of its forces to the Pacific to fight Japan, including the vast majority of its major warships, almost all of its air force, and almost every member of the Marine Corps. Overall, this divided war meant that at no time did America fight a Germany-first war. Instead, from 1943 until Germany’s surrender in 1945, the United States divided its striking power approximately equally between Europe and the Pacific.
The only way to understand the disconnect between Roosevelt’s stated policy and the reality of the two wars is that Leahy allowed for it to happen, whether by misleading the president, which is doubtful, or by Roosevelt’s tacit consent. As the Joint Chiefs were the military body responsible for the allocation of US equipment as part of the global war, they were the officials who sanctioned the war being fought in this way. Marshall and Arnold were allowed to deploy the army and air force to Europe, and King was given a free hand to send the fleet to the Pacific. They could all operate with Leahy as their chairman, knowing that Roosevelt had no objection to what they were doing.
This evenly split American war deployment made a massive difference to the war against Japan. Far from being an insignificant industrial power, as many Eurocentric historians of the war imply, Japan built an impressive amount of advanced air and sea equipment between 1942 and 1944. In relative terms, Japan should be seen as the economic equivalent of the Soviet Union, only with the ability to manufacture technologically more advanced equipment.5 Had America allowed the Japanese time to consolidate their enormous gains of early 1942 and firmly establish a defensive perimeter around the western Pacific, the fight across the ocean would have been far bloodier than it turned out to be—even with US victory all but assured.
Because so much force was sent to fight the Japanese, the Joint Chiefs could, and did, start disagreeing about the best way forward in the Pacific. The parameters of this debate were to a large extent determined by the choices that Leahy had earlier shaped. His maneuverings, including protecting aircraft-carrier construction, prioritizing air-sea production instead of land munitions, and making sure that the United States sent far more war matériel to the Pacific than it admitted publicly, meant that starting in mid-1943 American commanders could conceive of the kind of far-ranging air-sea battles that heralded a new era in warfare. The US Navy was able to deploy large carrier battle groups—integrated naval task forces based upon large fleet carriers protected and constantly resupplied by phalanxes of support vessels—which allowed many hundreds of aircraft to be continually launched against Japanese targets far removed from any fixed American bases. Beginning with the assaults on the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, most famously Tarawa (November 1943) and Kwajalein (January 1944), the United States was able to bring the war more directly to the Japanese and start crippling Japan as a functioning power.
Until 1944 much of Leahy’s time was spent acting as a referee between the army and the navy about the command in the Pacific. In March 1942, the Joint Chiefs had divided the Pacific somewhat uneasily between the two famous officers who would dominate the war against Japan. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was given command in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), leading from Australia up through New Guinea to the Philippines. Adm. Chester Nimitz was made the commander in chief of the Pacific Operating Area (CinCPOA), and specifically assigned the Central Pacific as his personal responsibility. A constant tension arose between MacArthur and Nimitz over the amount of naval power that was to be given to the former to help in his movements up through the Southwest Pacific. Admiral King, who kept quite a tight leash on navy allocations, often starved MacArthur of naval airpower and usually made him get by with a mixed force of smaller naval vessels such as cruisers and destroyers.
In March and April 1943 the Joint Chiefs had to devise a workable command arrangement for the Pacific. The catalyst was a growing dispute over command between MacArthur and one of the most colorful, if not the most diplomatic, naval officers of the war, Adm. William “Bull” Halsey. In a sign that Leahy was far from being a navy partisan, he supported MacArthur being allowed to exercise control over all the naval forces in his area.6 In exchange, Leahy made sure that Nimitz had a free hand in the Central Pacific to head out and destroy the Japanese Navy.7 In early 1944 there was another bitter fight, which Leahy thought particularly silly, over whether MacArthur or Nimitz would control the recently captured naval base at Manus Island, north of Papua, New Guinea.8 In the end a reasonable compromise was reached, with MacArthur being given command of the base on the condition that all navy vessels, including those not under his command, could use the facility when needed.
When it came to the specifics of Pacific strategy in early 1944, the debate was between an American Army–supported offensive directed toward the Philippines, which would then open an access of advance along the Chinese coast, or a navy-supported drive through the Central Pacific aimed at the great Japanese naval base at Truk Atoll or the Mariana Islands, even closer to Japan. For the Joint Chiefs this debate came to a head during a special meeting on March 11.9 It marked one of the first times that Leahy started throwing his weight around on the specifics of the Pacific war. Nimitz spoke for the Central Pacific command, while Gen. Richard Sutherland represented MacArthur. Sutherland argued against any Mariana operation, stating that putting too much emphasis on the Central Pacific would tie down American resources for all of 1944.10 Nimitz spoke mostly about the need to neutralize Truk. Leahy was relatively quiet in this meeting, but it was clear from one of his few interventions what he believed the United States should do. After hearing a discussion about how the Japanese could reinforce Truk from the Marianas, he retorted that the Marianas were the key, not Truk. The Marianas had to be taken as they were on “a direct line with Japan” and could best be supplied by American air- and sea power.11
Leahy’s prioritizing of the Marianas makes perfect sense considering his growing confidence in the air-sea war. He knew the Marianas well, having first visited them in 1899. These islands, most famously Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, provided the Japanese with crucial bases from which to protect the movement of raw materials from the Dutch East Indies to Japan. If the United States could seize them, they could go a long way to breaking the Japanese economy by starving it of resources. When the Joint Chiefs meeting broke up, Leahy headed to the White House with King and Nimitz for a discussion with Roosevelt on Pacific strategy.12 The four men analyzed the subject for hours.13 The following day, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an updated directive for operations in the Pacific in 1944.14 It called for exactly what Leahy wanted: the seizure of the Marianas as soon as possible.
When the subsequent attack, known by its code name, Operation Forager, was launched in June 1944, the navy brought a massive force to the Marianas at precisely the same time that Normandy was being invaded in Europe. It helps show how hollow Germany-first was as a policy. By almost any measure, the navy deployed at least ten times as many combat vessels to take the Marianas as they did during the D-Day landings, and they brought along an entire air force as well.15* Leahy followed the attack on the Marianas with great interest. An early report about a Japanese attack on US warships supporting the landings on Saipan illustrated the importance of America’s naval airpower. In a clash known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Japan lost approximately 500 aircraft in combat with US naval planes. Leahy wrote that it provided a “full justification” of the navy’s construction of a separate air arm before the war.16 He also wrote confidently that with the destruction of Japanese naval airpower, the fate of the Marianas was sealed.
Though the Japanese Army would resist bitterly, Leahy was right. Saipan, Tinian, and Guam all inevitably fell to American forces over the coming few weeks. The capture of the Marianas was the decisive blow to Japan’s ability to resist and marked the moment when the war went into an unstoppable tailspin for the Japanese. Now there were two major options on the table for the United States: head to the Philippines as MacArthur desperately wanted, or attack Formosa as King counseled. Both operations promised to be difficult and bloody—attacking large landmasses in which entire Japanese armies could be based. It was when faced with the prospect of taking either that Leahy first started arguing that the United States rely on an air-sea power blockade to compel Japanese surrender and avoid operations such as the invasion of Japan, which would cost too many American lives.
On July 10, a special meeting of the Joint Chiefs convened to hear new planning staff ideas for bringing the Pacific war to a close. Leahy listened but was unimpressed. “These plans contemplate an invasion of the Japanese Islands with which I am not in full agreement, but which assumption appears necessary to the preparation of alternative plans,” he noted in his diary.17 His opposition to an invasion of Japan was longstanding.18 He still believed that the Pacific war was more about the future of China than anything else and recoiled at the notion of sacrificing large numbers of American soldiers and sailors in what he considered an unnecessary operation. In reaction to this briefing, Leahy admitted that he would not try to block an invasion of Japan right away. Instead, he would continue to emphasize how bloody an invasion would be and propose alternatives. In other words, he would not stop the planning for these attacks; he would just do his damnedest to make sure that the plans were never realized: “It was my opinion, and I urged it strongly on the Joint Chiefs, that no major land invasion of the Japanese mainland was necessary to win the war. The JCS did order the preparation of plans for an invasion, but the invasion itself was never authorized.”19 It was a risky strategy but was the only one open to him as everyone else, except Roosevelt, was operating on the assumption that an invasion would occur.
The summer dispute over whether to attack the Philippines or Formosa was overlaid with domestic politics. Rumors swirled that MacArthur, were he not allowed to retake the Philippines, might permit his name to go forward for the Republican nomination for president in November. With the election looming, Roosevelt, sensing an opportunity to be seen as a forceful commander in chief, took the dramatic and unnecessary step of summoning MacArthur and Nimitz to meet with him in Pearl Harbor. The two officers could have been represented by surrogates, but the trip allowed the president numerous photo opportunities. Roosevelt wanted to keep Marshall and King at arm’s length. They, along with Arnold, were not informed about the upcoming meeting.20 The only officer he wanted and needed at his side was Leahy.
On July 13, Roosevelt and Leahy departed Washington, and for the first time Harry Hopkins was also left behind on an important trip. Considering that the purpose of the voyage was political, his absence was particularly surprising. Instead, the president included Samuel Rosenman, another trusted adviser and speechwriter and a friend of Leahy’s (with whom Leahy would collaborate closely in the next two years). Traveling in the Ferdinand Magellan, the party’s first stop was Hyde Park, where Roosevelt showed Leahy the progress on his library and took him for a drive around the countryside. After a few days the presidential train rolled into Chicago, the site of the Democratic National Convention. Roosevelt met with high-powered Democratic leaders before informing his staff that he had decided on Harry Truman as his choice for the vice presidency. Soon thereafter, Roosevelt formally accepted the Democratic nomination to run again in 1944.
A few days later the presidential party reached California, where the military laid on a large amphibious assault for Roosevelt’s inspection, involving 10,000 men staging a mock invasion just north of San Diego. Leahy found the chaos of the port at war both impressive and overwhelming, describing the scene as a crowded mess with “motor traffic beyond belief.”21
At San Diego the party boarded the heavy cruiser USS Baltimore for the journey to Hawaii. Roosevelt and Leahy stayed in adjacent cabins, and in the evenings the two friends would watch films in the admiral’s quarters. Days were spent on deck as the president discussed the war with his most trusted adviser and prepared to meet with the mercurial MacArthur. On July 26, thirteen days after leaving Washington, Roosevelt and Leahy sailed into Pearl Harbor.
Seeing MacArthur again brought out mixed emotions in Leahy. They had been friendly since meeting on the West Coast as young officers, both embarking on stellar, yet different, careers.22 Though they had not crossed paths for many years, Leahy became familiar with the MacArthur family, mostly through the general’s nephew, Douglas MacArthur II, a foreign service officer who had worked for him in Vichy. General MacArthur was a publicity seeker of the highest order, always in the press either self-glorifying or complaining about being neglected. Leahy, who disliked grandstanding as a rule, heard reports from officers he trusted, such as Nimitz and Halsey, that MacArthur was an egomaniac suffering from delusions of grandeur.23 Leahy, as desperate as anyone for Roosevelt to be reelected, was worried that MacArthur might try for the Oval Office himself, and he monitored his statements on political matters.24
When the general arrived to see Roosevelt, he sported his trademark brown leather jacket, which, along with a corncob pipe and aviator sunglasses, were part of his carefully cultivated public persona. Dashing and distinctive his look may have been, but it was certainly not regulation dress. “Douglas,” intoned Leahy, taking him down a peg, “why don’t you wear the right kind of clothes when you come up here and see us?”25 MacArthur, unaccustomed to being teased or questioned about his obedience to regulations, sheepishly claimed it was cold on the plane. Leahy had made his point: MacArthur was not the most senior man in the room.
The meeting that followed was one of the oddest affairs of World War II. Sitting before a large map of the Pacific, Roosevelt and Leahy awkwardly posed for photographs with Nimitz and MacArthur. When matters turned to the war, Nimitz discussed a possible assault on Formosa, Admiral King’s preferred target, but also spoke in favor of an attack on Mindanao, the southernmost major island in the Philippines. MacArthur, hearing the name of the island nation he loved, spoke up on behalf of liberating all the Filipino people who had been abandoned to the Japanese and who had suffered grievously under their rule, infusing his emphatic performance with political sophistication. The general implied that any attack on the Philippines would be victorious in a relatively short time, and with considerably fewer casualties than the United States would suffer on Formosa. MacArthur claimed all he needed were some extra landing craft; he already had enough in the way of troops and airpower to retake the entire archipelago.
For Leahy, MacArthur’s confidence was the final piece of the puzzle. The admiral knew that the Philippines’ size and location were ideal for the United States to coordinate its air, sea, and land forces most easily to defeat Japan.26 Yet he had worried that the United States could get bogged down slogging its way through the archipelago’s many islands.27 Now MacArthur’s assurance of success convinced Leahy that there was a way forward that would not require an invasion of Japan—or of Formosa, for that matter.28 Seizing the Philippines would allow American air- and sea power to blockade Japan fully, preempting any further attacks closer to the home islands, and hastening an end to the fighting.
Leahy therefore strongly encouraged action on the matter and was pleased when Roosevelt decided that MacArthur would be allowed to invade the Philippines, at least the island of Leyte, in the coming months. In his diary, the admiral admitted that the operation would assist him in “preventing an unnecessary invasion of Japan which the planning staffs of the Joint Staff and the War Department advocate regardless of the loss of life that would result.”29 Leahy was willing to use his authority to thwart any invasion of Japan—and he was willing to take on the entire US government to do so.
With the Pacific war’s next grand act decided on, Roosevelt and Leahy boarded the Baltimore for the return journey to the continental United States. To give the ailing president more time to rest, the ship cruised north toward the dramatic coastline of Alaska. Along the way, Leahy took up his fishing rod again, partly to amuse Roosevelt.30 Once in Alaskan waters, heavy fog set in. The president’s party was transferred to a destroyer for the inland route back to the naval base at Bremerton, Washington. The limited visibility forced the destroyer to cruise slowly. The presidential party finally reached port on August 12, two weeks after departing Pearl Harbor.
A cross-country train returned the president to the White House on August 17. Leahy had spent thirty-four consecutive days with Roosevelt, morning, noon, and night. Despite Roosevelt’s long rest, the president seemed unengaged and listless. It was left to Leahy to brief Marshall, King, and Arnold on the decisions over Pacific strategy.31 Indeed, Roosevelt had hardly any time for the other Joint Chiefs; between his return to Washington and the end of the year he had one private meeting with Marshall, and none with King or Arnold.32
One man who now recognized that Leahy was far more important than the other chiefs, and adjusted accordingly, was Douglas MacArthur. After witnessing Leahy’s rapport with Roosevelt up close, the general began to approach the admiral directly with crucial requests rather than going through Marshall. For instance, not long after the decision had been made to attack the Philippines, MacArthur worried that, after capturing Leyte, he would be forbidden to proceed to Luzon. Bypassing Marshall, he made his case directly to Leahy.33 Liberating Luzon, he claimed, was the only way to prevent the civilian disaster that was sure to happen if the island were left in Japanese hands. Afterward, MacArthur told James Forrestal, who was visiting the Pacific theater, that he felt he had Leahy’s support for the Luzon operation, which meant that the attack would go forward.34
It was a sign that MacArthur had grasped the real power structure in Washington, and he was right to do so. Leahy was working so closely with Roosevelt that his personal identity seemed almost joined to the president’s. For instance, in his diary his final summation of the trip to Pearl Harbor was written as if the trip had been for his benefit and not just Roosevelt’s: “The journey, long in miles and full of interest, gave to the President and to me personal contact with the controlling commanders of our war effort in the Pacific, and provided us with information upon which to base decisions on future strategy and action in that area.”35 His words seemed to place him at the same level as the commander in chief. As uncharacteristic as it was, it was the truth. He was the United States’ most important grand strategist, and America was now fighting Bill Leahy’s war.