December 1941 marked one of the turning points in the war. A week into December, Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war; four days later, the Axis joined Japan against the Western democracies; eleven days later, Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff opened talks with their American opposite numbers in Washington. The month closed with the basic agreements on Allied grand strategy and the organizational structures in place for the conduct of global war.
The attack on Pearl Harbor produced a firestorm of popular and congressional cries for vengeance against Japan. Marshall worried that Roosevelt might succumb to these pressures and redirect the focus of the approved American strategy from Europe to the Pacific; such a demarche threatened to drive a wedge between the army and the navy. Marshall not only wrestled with a deteriorating situation in the Philippines and MacArthur’s pressing requests for aid, but he also faced the impending onslaught of Churchill and his staff—the most threatening British assault on Washington since 1814. Marshall prepared to mount a determined defense. As Stimson recorded, Marshall had his staff hard at work drafting a cohesive strategic proposal.1
Although confined on a battleship in the mid-Atlantic, Churchill was far from idle. His initial proposal for the Washington conference centered on forging a cooperative response to Japanese aggression in the Far East and settling ratios of increased American production and the associated shipping requirements. However, Churchill shifted the focus toward deciding on a global strategy and fashioning the mechanisms of command and control for executing it. The day after Germany declared war on the United States, Churchill concluded that American participation “made the end [ultimate victory] certain.” The only question revolved around selecting the proper strategic path for accomplishing that end. The British prime minister believed he knew what that was.2
Churchill envisioned himself as heir to his illustrious ancestor Marlborough, and he immediately recognized that circumstances proffered an opportunity for fashioning a grand alliance among Britain, the USSR, and the United States, in imitation of the coalition forged by his forebear that had defeated Louis XIV’s bid for hegemony in the War of the Spanish Succession. Like Marlborough, Churchill reckoned he possessed the alchemist’s admixture of political skill, diplomatic flair, and strategic vision to cement an alliance of mutually suspicious partners with a single aim in common—destruction of the European Axis. He also knew it would require many months before the United States could fully harness its immense war potential. This window of time offered the British leader the prospect of guiding the Western democracies based on his strategic designs.
Throughout the war, the principles of British strategy remained unchanged and predated Churchill’s premiership. British strategy in 1939–1940 hung on two assessments. First, a German economy already overstretched by military spending stood vulnerable to economic pressure in the form of a naval blockade and aerial attack. Second, France, supported by British ground and air forces, would blunt any German attack along the frontiers long enough to allow the British, reinforced by the dominions, to construct sufficient ground forces for the invasion of a Germany diminished by the blockade, air bombardment, and internal political discord. All these suppositions proved wrong, and even though the Germans waged the British strategy in reverse—the U-boats and surface raiders preyed on British shipping, and the Luftwaffe subjected British cities to air attack—Churchill never abandoned the underlying principles of the initial strategic design. Germany and Nazi-controlled Europe would remain isolated, while the British conducted opportunistic operations on the periphery, supported the Soviets and subversive groups in occupied countries, and mounted a strategic bombing campaign against the Reich—all designed to grind down German strength. The British fended off the threatened invasion and weathered the blitz, but they strained under the burden of keeping open the sea-lanes on which survival depended. The British, not the Germans, suffered under financial and strategic overstretch. That state of affairs existed before the British faced the nightmare scenario every planner dreaded since 1919: the weight of fighting simultaneously in three widely separated theaters. Japanese aggression in the Far East unmasked the illusion of British global power.
Undeterred, Churchill sailed to the United States fully counting on winning the day. Danger always acted as a catalyst for action in Churchill. Although forced to take the strategic defensive, Churchill came prepared to sell the Americans on conducting offensive operations in the only theater where that remained possible—North Africa. He reasoned the president would warm to the suggestion of going over to the offensive. An unapologetic monarchist and imperialist, Churchill’s elemental aim always stayed fixed on preserving the “great” in Great Britain. Eventually, that would require a restoration of the British power that was so obviously waning in Asia, but that would have to wait. Churchill faced no choice but to cede Far Eastern policy to the Americans. To achieve his ultimate objective, Churchill had to win Roosevelt over to the idea of an immediate offensive in North Africa, committing the Americans to the British “grind down” strategy in the Mediterranean in 1942 while holding out the longer-term promise of a return to the Continent in 1943.
Between 16 and 20 December, from aboard the Duke of York, Churchill bombarded Washington with a lengthy four-part memorandum detailing his thoughts on the global situation and his robust arguments as to the best course of action to meet the immediate threats and beyond. Churchill got right to the point. In the opening pages of the first dispatch, he reiterated that, despite the crisis in the Far East, Europe remained the decisive theater: “Hitler’s failure and losses in Russia are the prime fact in the war at this time,” and “an impending victory” by the British in Cyrenaica should result in the total destruction of Italo-German forces in Libya. Such a British success offered glittering strategic advantages in the Mediterranean. The British maintained in readiness a force of 55,000 for dispatch to French Northwest Africa (code-named Gymnast) within twenty-six days of receiving the go-ahead. Should the Gymnast force be committed, Churchill urged that the Americans deploy 25,000 troops to Morocco “at the earliest possible moment,” with 150,000 to follow over a six-month period. “The North-west African theater,” he concluded, “is [the] one most favorable for Anglo-American operations.”3
Confronted with Churchill’s memorandum, the War Department hastily revised its strategic assessment for review and concurrence by Stimson and the Joint Board. On 21 December, the eve of the conference, Marshall; Arnold; ADM Harold Stark, the chief of naval operations (CNO); and ADM Ernest King, commander in chief of the fleet, conferred with the service secretaries and the president. Stimson thought it “one of the best conferences we have had” and expressed satisfaction at the “great harmony [that existed] on practically all of the problems.”4 The War Department’s paper found plenty of common ground with the British positions. The United States agreed on the “Germany First” grand strategy. Initially the Western powers must maintain the strategic defensive but stand prepared to conduct local offensives in appropriate theaters while building strength for “an all-out offensive against Germany and her European Allies.” The Joint Board concurred that essential sea and air communication must remain open and acknowledged the need to adjust Victory Program production priorities and schedules, expand the American armed forces, and increase support to Britain and the Commonwealth, Russia, and China. The American chiefs stood prepared to devise new agencies to superintend the allocation of materiel and shipping and, most important, to create a Supreme War Council complete with Allied committees for planning and supply.5
The War Department study, which served as the foundation for the Joint Board’s recommendations to the president, evaded the issue of North Africa. A day earlier, Stimson wrote an assessment of the strategic situation after talking it over with Marshall. Marshall stood adamantly opposed to any diversion of ground troops to the Middle East. Stimson remarked that while the Egyptian-Libyan theater remained of “immense importance psychologically to the British Empire,” it represented an “unfavorable front for an attack on Hitler in Europe.” Stimson listed the Mediterranean as the least vital theater after Europe, the southwest Pacific, West Africa and the approaches to South America, and Syria and Iran. Neither Stimson’s memo of 20 December nor the War Department’s memorandum mentioned French Northwest Africa.6
Although only implied at this juncture, the main fault line between American and British strategic concepts in Europe had already appeared. Marshall liked to keep things simple; for him, “Germany First” meant just that. He envisioned a multistep process. The first priority was to expand production guided by the Victory Program, then to equip and train American forces. In the meantime, the Allies must secure control of the vital sea and air routes that would permit the movement and buildup of overwhelming Allied strength in the United Kingdom. The fastest road to victory was the most direct: a cross-Channel invasion and a decisive defeat of the main German forces in the west. The British, already critically short of resources, could never think in those terms. To them, the path to victory lay in eroding and dispersing German strength before seeking a direct confrontation in western Europe or avoiding it altogether, if executed properly. These differences, soon to erupt into heated exchanges during the talks in Washington, bedeviled Anglo-American planning for the next two years and created friction in every theater and at every command level until the end of the war.
In the hectic buildup to the conference, Smith labored in the background. As SGS, his desk acted as clearinghouse for vital communications between the War Department and MacArthur’s command. He helped prepare the War Department’s strategic appreciation, working in harness with Gerow, the head of War Plans, and his new assistant, Brigadier General Eisenhower. Smith’s primary function remained rooted in his liaison duties. In addition to briefing Stimson, the assistant secretaries of war, and the White House, Smith acted as Marshall’s link with the navy. Marshall attached great significance to bridging the traditional interservice gap between the army and navy. Since he already enjoyed an excellent personal relationship with Stark, Marshall detailed Smith as the go-between with King’s headquarters. Smith’s opposite number was RADM Richard Turner, newly appointed as King’s assistant chief of staff. Even more irascible than Smith, Turner deserved his nickname “Terrible.” Since both acted in the names of their willful bosses, and neither possessed any affection for their sister service, the relationship was not a happy one. The Smith-Turner clash, indicative of the depth of animosity between the two services, presaged future difficulties.7
In Greek mythology, Arcadia represented utopia and harmony; the conference with that code name did not quite live up to its billing. The British and American staffs held the first of twelve meetings on 22 December. Opposite Marshall, Stark, King, and Arnold sat FM John Dill, until recently chief of the imperial general staff (CIGS); ADM Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord; and ACM Charles Portal, chief of the air staff. Although the strategic picture looked grim and would soon get grimmer, Churchill enjoyed two advantages. The first was Churchill himself. With his cherubic body and English bulldog face, the cigar clenched in his jaw, and the “V for victory” salute, Churchill was the very emblem of resistance to the scourge of antidemocratic fascism and militarism. His oratory inspired freedom-loving people everywhere. Now he turned the full force of his considerable persuasive powers on the Americans. Behind Churchill stood the well-oiled machinery of the Chiefs of Staff Committee—the principal interservice body that advised the War Cabinet in the formulation of policy and issued directives to the commanders in the field who executed that policy—and its various joint subcommittees, planning and intelligence being most important. The British Chiefs of Staff (BCOS) offered guidance, constrained their mercurial boss, and generally offered well-reasoned analysis to buttress British policies. First formed in 1923, and with better than two years of war experience, the BCOS organization always gave the appearance of unanimity and efficiency because the chiefs never presented any argument without having already reached a well-calculated consensus.8
Right from the opening bell, the Americans found themselves out of their league. Appalled by the lack of organization and procedure demonstrated by the American staffs, the British chiefs found it difficult to do business with a staff structure dating from “the days of George Washington.” Dill told his successor, GEN Alan Brooke, that the United States possessed “not the slightest conception of what the war means” and that the American armed forces appeared “more unready than it is possible to imagine.” No strangers to interservice rivalry themselves, the British found the enmity between the American services hard to believe. The Americans had no intelligence agency, nothing like the Ministry of War Transport for coordinating shipping requirements, and the toothless Office of Production Management dealt with a jumble of competing bureaus with overlapping responsibilities. In their estimate, the president possessed no adequate links between his will and executive action, and as a result, he made decisions while only haphazardly consulting his service chiefs and the heads of civilian agencies.9
Churchill took full advantage of the situation. In an evening meeting at the White House that first night, the prime minister worked on selling Roosevelt on Gymnast. Churchill left the talks convinced that the president was “anxious that American land forces should give their support as quickly as possible … and favored the idea of a plan to move into North Africa” with or without Vichy sanction.10 The American chiefs came to the same conclusion. They worried about the prime minister’s influence on Roosevelt, and with good reason. Churchill was staying in the White House and set up his mobile war room down the hall from the president’s bedroom. Churchill and Roosevelt were not averse to taking a dram or two before retiring—in Churchill’s case, several. These nocturnal chats gave Churchill a gauge on the president’s thoughts. Since the prime minister met daily with the BCOS, the British delegation possessed a clearer understanding of the trend of Roosevelt’s thinking than did the Americans.
The United States possessed nothing remotely comparable to the British command and staff structure. The Joint Board, created in 1903 as part of the Root reforms, remained the only vehicle for interservice cooperation. The board never achieved “the common understanding and mutual assistance between the two services” called for in the initial legislation. During World War I the Joint Board ceased functioning, only to resurface in 1919. It met intermittently and made recommendations but possessed no legal authority to enforce its pronouncements. Since the Joint Board had no secretariat, the British made the secretarial arrangements for the conference. Captain McCrea, Roosevelt’s naval aide; LTC Paul Robinett, intelligence chief of the General Headquarters; and MAJ William Sexton, one of Smith’s assistants, served as American representatives in the makeshift secretariat. By monopolizing the secretariat, Brigadier Leslie Hollis drove the agenda and edited the language of the minutes and findings.11
Marshall decided Smith was too valuable for the minutes-keeping role. Smith already had too much on his plate: performing his multiple liaison functions and furnishing Marshall with whatever he called for in the way of staff appreciations and supporting evidence in his uphill struggle against the BCOS. Hollis routed all minutes, memos, requests for action, and summaries of decisions to Smith for dissemination and inclusion in the files. Effectively, Smith acted as Marshall’s executive officer.12
On 24 December the BCOS offered a written strategic overview. Europe remained the decisive theater. “Once Germany is defeated, the collapse of Italy and the defeat of Japan must follow.” Like Marshall, the British listed “the realization of the victory program of armaments” and the maintenance of essential sea and air communications as strategic prerequisites. For 1942, as part of “closing and tightening the ring around Germany,” the British argued that Russia should receive assistance by all available means, Turkey should be brought into the coalition, and Anglo-American forces should conduct continuous offensive actions against the Axis, including blockade, an “ever-increasing air bombardment,” the nurturing of “the spirit of revolt in the occupied countries, and the organization of subversive movements…. It does not seem likely,” it continued, “that in 1942 any large scale land offensives against Germany, except on the Russian front, will be possible.” As for a return to the Continent in 1943, the British paper circuitously avoided any reference to engaging the main strength of the German armed forces in western Europe, offering instead the possibility of offensives into Norway, across the Mediterranean, from Turkey into the Balkans, or even “simultaneous landings in several of the occupied countries of Northwestern Europe.” For the Far East, the coalition forces would “safeguard vital interests and deny to Japan access to raw materials vital to her continuous war effort” but otherwise remain on the defensive. In the end, everything hinged on “the scope of the victory programme.”13
The Joint Board lacked the muscle to dissent very strongly, but behind the scenes they bristled. Their outline strategic forecast appeared very modest, tempered by an awareness of the limitations they faced. In contrast, the British—Churchill in tandem with the BCOS—laid out an expansive vision for the conduct of the war. If the war played out according to the British timetable, the United States would remain on the defensive in the southwest Pacific until 1944. While King agreed in principle to “Germany First,” the combative admiral, who had just been designated Stark’s replacement as CNO, took a dim view of the Pacific war being sidelined.
Marshall could appreciate the smooth working of the British organization, even if he rejected its committee structure. In contrast to Roosevelt’s personal administration, the British system shared authority along formal lines of responsibility. Although Churchill possessed no formal military function as prime minister (he did as defense minister, however), he exercised more effective control through the War Cabinet and the BCOS than did Roosevelt, commander in chief of the American armed forces. To facilitate cooperation among him, the service chiefs, and the respective agencies responsible for production and logistics, Churchill appointed GEN Hastings “Pug” Ismay as his personal chief of staff. After observing the BCOS in action during the Placentia Bay conference in August 1941 and now in Washington, and fearing the prime minister’s influence over the president, Marshall recognized the inadequacies of the Joint Board and the pressing need to create an alternative body to influence Roosevelt on grand strategic questions.
During the Christmas Day session, Marshall took the initiative. While discussing the situation in Southeast Asia and the southwestern Pacific, Marshall shocked the conferees by raising the untabled question of a unified coalition command. He never consulted his staff and did not talk to King or Arnold beforehand. “I feel very strongly that the most important consideration,” he said, “is the question of unity of command,” and he stood prepared “to go the limit to accomplish this.” Citing World War I experience, Marshall pointed to the delay in forming a Supreme War Council until 1918, after “much valuable time, blood, and treasures had been needlessly sacrificed.” He observed, “We cannot manage by cooperation” and stated, “If we make a plan for unified command now, it will solve nine-tenths of our troubles.” Marshall tailored his argument for an Allied joint command in reference to the emergency in the Far East, but his vision involved far more.14
Marshall assumed that he would command any U.S. expeditionary force sent to Europe. In 1940 he had reactivated the General Headquarters with a view of its acting as the theater general staff, fleshed out by handpicked officers mostly from his inner staff. If the British won the strategic debate for delaying a return to the Continent until 1943—by which time the United States would provide the lion’s share of manpower and materiel—then Marshall would occupy a far stronger position for exercising overall command. Any species of combined or joint command structure must necessarily operate as a committee—generals must run ground operations, airmen the air, and admirals the fleets. Marshall resisted the eventual subordination of any future American headquarters to British higher authority; he desired a single supreme commander over all ground, air, and naval forces as executor of Allied policy. In effect, he sought to centralize policy making in the hands of a Supreme War Council while delegating authority to a supreme Allied theater commander based on the hallowed American doctrine of unity of command.
The next morning he arrived with a draft set of instructions, defining the authority and mission of a theater commander while preserving national control over questions of sovereignty. Marshall proposed that it serve as a model for a Far East command, and as a sweetener, he later recommended a British officer, GEN Archibald Wavell, as supreme commander. The following day produced some heated discussions. Stimson took Marshall and Arnold over to see the president, who approved the scheme for a unified theater command; then the president “spanked” the navy into submission.15
The next morning, 27 December, Hopkins engineered a private meeting between Marshall and Churchill. Unbeknownst even to himself, Churchill had suffered a mild heart attack the night before. When Marshall arrived he found the prime minister propped up in bed. Pacing back and forth, an uneasy Marshall stated his rationale for a unified command. The prime minister had been pushing for the formation of a permanent combined supreme command and saw great merit in the idea of a unified command of ground and air forces, but Churchill (who signed his correspondence with Roosevelt “Former Naval Person”) had serious reservations about including the navies. He offered an alternative: each service should operate under its own commander, with the designated supreme commander acting as coordinating agent and responsible to the Supreme War Council.16 As in the case of Anglo-American differences over strategy, the clash between the American doctrine of unity of command and the British principle of command by committee, first raised in Arcadia, remained a stumbling block that dogged Anglo-American theater-level cooperation for the duration of the war.
Marshall expected another stormy session in the morning conference, but to his amazement, the BCOS not only accepted the single command but also argued for a more expansive grant of authority to the commander. The next day Roosevelt won over the prime minister. The ill-fated American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) command, activated on 15 January 1942, became the template for all future Allied combined theaters. Marshall later considered the creation of unified theater commands one of the three great decisions of the war.
Although an attack of angina pectoris normally called for six weeks of bed rest, Churchill continued with his usual hectic schedule. However, he did concede that he needed some rest and decided to take an abbreviated trip to Florida. He convinced the president that Marshall should accompany him. One of Churchill’s favorite devices involved isolating an individual he wanted to win over to his point of view. He could then bring the full force of his personality and considerable intellect to bear on an essentially captive audience. A trip with the frenetic prime minister would be anything but relaxing. Marshall knew full well what awaited him and insisted that Smith come along to play his accustomed role as buffer for the chief. They left by plane on 5 January.
Marshall got the full Churchill treatment. Churchill wanted to get the measure of the “quiet unprovocative” man that both he and Roosevelt agreed they could not go forward without. Churchill correctly assessed Marshall as the key to hammering out a lasting collaborative partnership.17 The prime minister also took the opportunity to press Marshall on Gymnast and the type of organizational structure he envisioned for the Supreme War Council.
Knowing the alliance would prosper only if national suspicions gave way to trust, Churchill determined that no secrets should exist between London and Washington. During the vacation, Churchill took Smith aside and told him he had something to show him. Smith told an official historian in 1947 that Churchill produced several cables containing pre–Pearl Harbor British intelligence assessments. “You won’t like this,” the prime minister told him, “but I want no secrets.” Churchill was right; Smith did not like what he read. According to Smith’s cryptic remarks, British intelligence knew more about Japanese intentions than they had shared with Washington. Churchill “went out to get us into the war and he succeeded.” Presumably, British intelligence filtered out much of the “noise” and did a better job of connecting the dots from Japanese intercepts and other intelligence sources than did the Americans. At best, the British produced a smoking gun—the Japanese navy’s silence in the immediate period before the offensives offered a “case of the dog that did not bark”—but beyond that, as the debacle in Malaya amplified, whatever prior intelligence the British possessed mattered little in the larger scheme of things.18
The prime minister took the measure of Smith, correctly deciding that Marshall’s de facto chief of staff would play a leading role in forging any new combined apparatus that grew out of Arcadia. He also knew that anything he told Smith would immediately reach Marshall. With the decision on forming a combined headquarters settled, Churchill wanted the joint and combined staffs constructed and run in accordance with British practice. For parallel Anglo-American staff structures to work, the Americans must construct joint organizations over the rubble of the outmoded interservice structures that had produced the pre–Pearl Harbor intelligence fiasco. Smith required no convincing on this point, given his involvement in the intelligence short-circuit. Churchill’s confession reinforced the doctrine of “no secrets” but also buttressed the argument for the need to compose truly integrated staffs. Churchill succeeded in one regard. Not easily seduced, Smith was flattered by the prime minister’s frankness and the confidence he showed in a junior colonel. Unlike other American officers, who were predisposed to see Churchillian machinations in every British action, Smith, accustomed to the evasiveness of the White House, never doubted the prime minister’s integrity or his commitment to victory.
Overshadowed by subsequent conferences—Casablanca, Tehran, Malta, Yalta—that produced more discord, Arcadia deserves greater attention. The first Washington conference produced both the blueprint for Allied grand strategy and the instruments—the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) and the formation of theaters of operation under a unified single command—for orchestrating it. Arcadia continued until 14 January, yielding agreements on a united nations declaration to define Allied war aims based on the democratic principles contained in the Atlantic Charter, the dispatch of U.S. troops to Northern Ireland and Iceland, and, most vital of all, dramatically higher U.S. rates of production as part of a “common pool” of coalition resources. Churchill came away very pleased with the results. The British achieved their essential objectives of securing the basic organizational and strategic frameworks for coalition warfare. Churchill, the amateur stonemason, believed he had succeeded in laying a secure foundation for the alliance. He cemented his personal relationship with Roosevelt, and in his famed address to Congress, he evangelized on his favorite theme of the “natural Anglo-American special relationship,” helping to galvanize American opinion in favor of the combined effort.19 All this rang true, but his euphoria was misplaced. The British did not secure all they wanted. American acceptance of the “wear-down” strategy amounted to a contingency; over time, the gap between British strategy and the American insistence on strategic concentration could only widen. The Americans parried Churchill on Gymnast and never bought “the closing and tightening of the ring” theory, which left open the timing and location of a return to the Continent; nor did they accept the delay of any genuine offensives in the Pacific until 1944.
The British offered to leave a permanent Joint Mission in Washington as representative of the War Cabinet and the BCOS, headed by Dill with ministerial status. The British argued for a parallel combined setup in London, together with bifurcated Pacific War Councils and Munitions Assignment Boards in the respective capitals. Here too they compromised. Marshall insisted on a single CCS in Washington. During the 13 January meetings, the American chiefs opposed having Dill act for the War Office with direct access to the president.20 Discussions over the munitions boards sparked the most heated debates. At a White House meeting with Roosevelt and Hopkins on the final afternoon of the conference, Marshall offered his resignation rather than have any agency beyond the control of the American chiefs dictate the allocation of materiel.21 He strongly opposed the formation of coequal munitions boards independent of the CCS structure. With Hopkins in support, Marshall won the point. The political heads accepted the single Washington-based CCS command and control framework. Dill would speak for the BCOS and the Defense Ministry, but not the War Cabinet. The political chiefs agreed to the dual munitions board solution, but under CCS control. Just as vital, the personal alliance between the two political chieftains solidified. After seeing the prime minister off, the president confided in Hopkins that he had grown “genuinely to like Churchill.” Hopkins felt sure the sentiment was reciprocated.22 Since both parties left the conference with something, Arcadia built the groundwork for future Anglo-American collaboration.
Things did not proceed very well in the initial CCS meeting on 23 January, in large part because of the inexperience of the American section of the secretariat. Circular letters never completed the circuit, causing frustration and friction. Hollis considered the combined secretariat “a sickly plant.” “I am afraid,” he wired the War Office, “[Brigadier Vivian] Dykes [the secretary of the British Mission] has a number of fractious babies to nurse. Apart from ABDA, GYMNAST, and several joint surveys, our main task has been to try to establish [a] firm US-British machinery.”23 Following a particularly stressful CCS meeting on 27 January, Dykes lamented in his diary, “I wish they [the Americans] would get their secretariat set up.”24
Marshall knew that the weakness of the American section of the secretariat hampered the labors of both sides during Arcadia, and on 23 January he empowered Smith to organize a Joint Board secretariat and a U.S. Joint Planning Committee (JPC). Embarrassed by the performance of the American secretariat during the first CCS meeting, Marshall decided that parallel secretariats would never work and insisted that Smith move over from the Joint Board and act as first secretary of a combined secretariat. One problem remained: “Dumbie” Dykes was senior to Smith, and as former director of planning in the War Office, he had powerful patrons in Dill and Ismay. Not wishing for another clash, the British consented to Smith’s appointment over their man. The job came with a promotion. On 2 February, sporting his first star, Smith took over as chief secretary.
Dykes visited with Gerow and Eisenhower and prodded them into suggesting to Smith (and making it appear to be their idea) that he move all the joint planners and intelligence officers—including the navy and the entire British Joint Mission—into the public health building, where Beetle had set up the combined secretariat. Later Dykes and Smith conferred, and from the beginning, the two men clicked; Smith wholeheartedly agreed to amalgamate the combined staffs.25
Smith wore two hats as secretary to both the Joint Board (soon rechristened the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and the CCS. Anxious that there be no hard feelings, Smith treated Dykes as an equal. Both agreed that the combined secretariat must serve as the hub of Anglo-American decision making. To Smith and Dykes fell the vital job for organizing and running the machinery of the CCS committees, but before that could happen, Smith needed to weld together the U.S. JPC and create joint and combined intelligence and transportation committees.
The U.S. Navy provided a formidable obstacle to integration. Stimson pointed to “the peculiar psychology of the Navy Department, which frequently seemed to retire from the realm of logic into a dim religious world in which Neptune was God, Mahan his prophet, and the United States Navy the one true church.” Smith needed no reminder that the U.S. Navy was the “problem child.”26 Before Smith’s arrival, Turner had bullied the American secretariat, virtually running it. Smith did not wait long to assert his position. He and Turner had a major blowout during the second meeting after Smith assumed the chairmanship. Smith’s calculated eruption sent a clear message to all camps. Marshall wanted unified, centrally directed staffs, and Smith labored to produce that result. Taking his lead from King, Turner then blocked “any kind of joint show.” First he insisted on keeping the U.S. joint planners in the Navy Department, where Turner “runs them like a circus of his own.” Then he refused to place the navy’s planners in the public health building alongside their army brethren and the British delegation. As Dykes recorded, “I fear we are in for a lot of troubles before the show starts to run smoothly,” but he applauded Smith’s determination in forcing a showdown with Turner. Smith knew if the navy did not come on board, the whole structure would collapse.27
The inability to hammer out genuine joint staff thinking necessarily grew out of American service chauvinism. When one service enjoys ascendancy, it invariably behaves badly and then blames the other of obstructionism. This was certainly the case here. Early in March, totally flummoxed by what he saw as the navy’s intransigence, Smith advocated bypassing the CCS structure by forming a triumvirate of Marshall, King, and Dill. The weekly CCS meeting would function for formal purposes, merely rubber-stamping decisions arrived at by the inner council and providing window dressing for Commonwealth, Dutch, Chinese, and Soviet consumption. Nothing came from his initiative.
The formation of the American Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) gave Smith fits. He again jousted with Turner over the navy’s refusal to join the JIC. Turner did not play well with others, even those on his own side. As head of the navy’s planning division, he fought with the navy’s offices of communications and intelligence, contributing to the Pearl Harbor intelligence failure. He made no secret of the fact that a joint intelligence structure would be set up “over his dead body.” Marshall replied that “he was sorry to see so young a man must die but that there would be a Joint Intelligence Committee.” In mid-March Marshall, at Smith’s behest, insisted on Turner’s removal. But even after Turner left for a command in the Pacific, interservice cooperation on intelligence sharing did not much improve. King and Marshall interceded, but as Marshall remembered, they “never got the ‘peculiar’ intelligence people to function peaceably and properly.”28
The creation of a combined munitions board awaited the final decision of the governments on the placement of the Munitions Assignment Boards. In January Roosevelt finally established the War Production Board (WPB). Its head, Donald Nelson, was no production czar, and he had to navigate his way through a dizzying array of officials and agencies, but the WPB possessed significantly more authority than its predecessor the Office of Production Management. After negotiations in London, the two governments decided to establish munitions boards in London and Washington. In March Smith and Dykes helped set up the Combined Munitions Assignment Board, the agency charged with harmonizing the flow of American materiel to the British.
By April—with Turner out of the picture—the combined organizations began to mesh. On Tuesdays the joint chiefs met over lunch in the public health building. Fridays saw regular meetings of the joint chiefs and the British Mission committees. These conferences covered all manner of strategic and logistical matters and determined the overall “joint” and “combined” requirements.
The first half of 1942 constituted perhaps the most trying period of the war. Japan racked up a series of stunning successes in Asia and the Pacific that secured control of the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, the Netherlands East Indies, and portions of New Guinea and the Solomon and Gilbert Islands. German forces launched renewed offensives against the Soviets and the British in Libya. A Soviet collapse and Japanese thrusts into the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean threatened the loss of India and the oil-rich Middle East and the isolation of Australia and New Zealand. As dual secretary, Smith became intimately involved in discussions at the highest level on the collapse of ABDA, the situation in the Philippines, munitions and aircraft shipments to the British and Russians, and planning for the buildup of American forces in Britain and Northern Ireland. No longer merely a liaison officer, Smith frequently briefed Roosevelt, coming to know the president’s views on sensitive military questions. Smith won plaudits from men in high places as an officer of discretion and discernment.
The various joint and combined committees struggled to remain relevant and current. The secretary provided the drive and bore the responsibility for keeping ongoing projects on track. Smith’s duties resembled those he had discharged as SGS: as head of the offices of record, he closely monitored the flow of information through the system; he established the agenda for CCS and JCS meetings; and, most vital, he labored to break down the barriers not only between the British and Americans but also across committee lines. He demanded efficiency. He broke out his watch and enforced the two-minute rule. Those who did not produce or proved intractable got the ax. A ruthless expediter, adept at integrating masses of recommendations into effective plans of action, Smith mastered high-level staff procedures and gained familiarity with the personalities of key members of the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff. In the early stages, Smith made numerous adjustments in structure and personnel. By summer 1942, with most of the bugs removed, the joint and combined committees began to operate more smoothly. Much of the credit went to Beetle Smith.
Smith had two other vital chores: promote the American point of view to the British, and defuse divisive quarrels before they rent the combined organizations. The excellent relationship that flowered between Marshall and Dill provided the solid bedrock for Anglo-American cooperation. Smith’s friendship with Dykes paralleled and buttressed that of their bosses, providing the other cornerstone relationship during the first pivotal months of the unsettled alliance’s existence. Plenty of grounds existed for potential discord. Both powers were suspicious of the other. The Americans charged the British with the unpardonable sin of having their thinking habitually clouded by political calculations connected with preserving the empire. The British suspected the Americans of having designs to supplant the British Empire with one of their own.29 American impatience for immediate results conflicted with the methodical British way of problem solving. In dealing with the British, Smith displayed a sophistication and affability that few in the War Department thought him capable of. The British saw in Smith a man who exuded an unruffled sense of confidence and decisiveness. Smith proved himself a willing collaborator, skilled at harmonizing his point of view with those of the British representatives. Although Smith often seemed disinclined to work within fixed lines of authority and always remained intensely partisan in his American and army points of view, he knew that cooperating with the British served the highest national interest.
In many respects, Smith encountered fewer problems with the British than he did with his own people. “A large segment of the Regular Army officers,” reported the New York Times, “has no use for [Smith] and will hear no good about him—except in his professional capacity. Friend and foe alike describe him as a hard man.”30 Few in the British camp saw it that way. Whereas his relations with American officers remained guarded, Smith’s contacts with the British were genial and informal, free from the jealousies that strained associations within the War Department and between the services. ADM Andrew Cunningham, briefly a member of the Joint Mission, remembered Smith’s “great flair for getting on with people … [his] profound sense of humour,” and his ready “wise-crack for each and every occasion.”31 Few American officers ever saw this side of Smith. Beetle’s acerbic and often self-deprecating humor chafed on some Americans but appealed to the British. Smith marveled at the smooth efficiency of the Joint Mission. In the War Department, Marshall’s intimidating personality stifled the atmosphere. In contrast, the collegial atmosphere of the Joint Mission allowed a free exchange of views. Since no officer possessed a more complete picture of War Department and JCS activities, Smith’s views carried substantial weight among the British. As 1942 advanced and new British representatives rotated into the Washington organization, Smith, owing to his pivotal role as chief CCS secretary and his unique relationship with Marshall, exercised increased influence in the councils of the British Joint Mission. In the opinion of Dykes’s assistant, COL Ian Jacob, Smith, though only a freshly minted brigadier general, emerged as “a power in the land.”32
From their first encounter, Smith struck the opinionated Dykes as “absolutely sound.” Their personalities—blunt-spoken, incisively intelligent, and with similar mordant senses of humor—melded from the beginning. “I am fortunate in having a first-class American opposite number,” Dykes informed his sister a month into the Smith-Dykes partnership, “who laughs at the same things I do.”33 Famed for his mimicry, Dykes specialized in a bird caricature of his boss, Brooke. Brooke resembled a bird facially, and his lispy, rapid-fire diction and high-pitched voice sounded birdlike; appropriately, his great passions in life were bird watching and bird shooting. Dykes’s routine always provoked storms of laughter.
To cement the team, Marshall secured quarters for Dykes next to the Smiths at Fort Myer. Far from home and family, Dykes became less a neighbor than a member of the Smith household. He often ate dinner with the Smiths. Nory usually cooked—fried chicken and strawberry shortcake were frequent features on the bill of fare, along with occasional game dishes such as squirrel—but sometimes Beetle played chef. Whenever a weekend offered a chance to get out of Washington, the Smiths invited Dykes along on their outings. Once they picnicked on the battlefields at Manassas with some of Smith’s acquaintances made through Baruch, including toy magnate Louis Marx. Accustomed to British rationing, Dykes came away very impressed. “Drink and food and cigars in profusion,” he recorded. “All very thrilled at seeing Smith’s ‘bird dogs’ make a point.” Another time they drove into the South Mountains in Maryland for some fishing. The personable Dykes found himself in demand in the Washington social circle. He even encouraged the Smiths to break out of their cocoon and join him. Earlier, Jean Monnet, the French deputy head of the British Purchasing Mission and confidant to both political chiefs, had advised Dykes, “The Yanks won’t work to organization—they deal only in personalities.”34 No doubt Dykes initially cultivated a relationship with Smith motivated by self-interest, but the friendship blossomed into something genuine and deep.
Without children of her own, Nory mothered Dykes. She officiated in the setting up of his housekeeping and made sure he was well fed and content. She even exhibited some of Beetle’s traits. Dykes could not work the furnace and called the Smiths for help. With Beetle away, Nory went over, assessed the situation, and “got on the Utilities officer and roared him up—the fire was lit up inside of a few minutes.” The British officer grew much attached to her, attracted by her unaffected personality.35
The Eisenhowers also lived next door. Smith had put the call through to Fort Sam Houston ordering Eisenhower to Washington a couple of days after Pearl Harbor. Although the two officers worked closely together and were neighbors, and although they called each other “Ike” and “Beetle” from the start, their relationship remained reserved. Certainly Nory and Mamie never became friends.36
Smith’s partnership with Dykes inevitably led to accusations that he was too “British minded,” an intrinsic by-product of any sincere Anglo-American collaboration. Long accustomed to rubbing people the wrong way, Smith ignored the backbiting. He understood that his personal ties with Dykes and other British officers produced results. Through Dykes, Smith emerged as practically another member of Dill’s staff. Smith used Dykes as a conduit to London, and in Smith, the British possessed a confidential contact to Marshall. Whether through official channels or private contacts, the first seismic waves of any possible trouble registered in the combined secretariat, and together they defused potentially disruptive clashes. Without entangling their chiefs, Smith and Dykes used their own oblique methods of overcoming obstructions. One means involved “putting the heat” on offenders through their orchestration of the agenda for the weekly CCS meetings. Another lever at their disposal grew out of their minute-taking responsibilities. After each CCS conference they “fixed up” the final version of the minutes and “cooked” the conclusions. BG Thomas Handy remembered observing the two in action. First Dykes wrote his draft and then handed it to Smith, who agreed with the summary except for one point. “Hell, that isn’t what he said,” Smith exclaimed. Dykes nonchalantly replied, “But it’s what he should have said.” Manipulating the program of the weekly meetings and massaging the minutes helped avert delays and expedited decisions.37
In his capacity as dual secretary, Smith had three essential duties: correlate the work of the U.S. joint planners, the War Plans Division, and the intelligence committee; interpret the joint chiefs’ views to the British Mission; and maintain constant contact with the British to keep apprised of shifts in their thinking. Each brought its own special problems. Dealing with the capricious political chiefs resulted in the biggest headaches. Roosevelt received frequent private communications from Churchill—as did Hopkins—that never went through channels. Hopkins often conveyed the contents of these cables to Dill but not always to Marshall, and as a result, the British often possessed better information than the JCS did. The Byzantine nature of Roosevelt’s leadership created its own set of difficulties. “The White House entourage [proved] extremely cagey,” jealously retaining important communications in their own hands. Because the White House short-circuited civilian agencies, the American position could change overnight. Decisions took far longer in Whitehall, and owing to the time delay, the Joint Mission was always a day behind, even in the best of circumstances. To add to Smith’s problems, the WDGS’s system for circulating memoranda still lacked responsiveness. Often staff sections drafted replies to signals they had never received. Similarly, Dykes complained of having to “play the idiot boy” because the Joint Mission remained in the dark about developments in the War Office.38
To remedy the situation, Smith and Dykes devised their own system. Each confided in the other in an effort to remain on top of rapidly shifting circumstances. When Marshall found himself out of the information loop, he asked Smith to work through Dykes. When Marshall wanted to lay the groundwork for a change in American policy, he had Smith leak top-secret in-house memoranda to Dykes. Long accustomed to acting as Marshall’s mole in the White House and with Stimson and Morgenthau, Smith knew the rules of the game. He sometimes gilded the lily—usually exaggerating the internal drift toward the Pacific in JCS thinking—nudging the British side into accommodating the American viewpoint. Through Dykes, Smith was virtually placed on the Joint Mission’s distribution list. Because they acted with the concurrence of their bosses, Smith and Dykes disseminated confidences on their own. This surreptitious practice had its liabilities. Once Dykes found “poor old Beetle in a hell of a stew” because he had accidentally burned the only copy of a BCOS paper Dykes had loaned him while destroying other secret waste in his office.39
The dual secretariats provided Smith with positions of informal power within the official apparatus that far exceeded his rank. As many in the War Department recognized, Smith carved out a special nook for himself in the CCS. Because he enjoyed the respect and confidence of Dill, the other senior British representatives, and the British officers attached to his staff, Smith took certain liberties. With Dykes’s assistance, he turned the combined secretariat to his personal advantage. Smith’s detractors resented his rapport with Marshall and the British. They accused him of empire building and exceeding his authority. What they never understood was that Smith’s actions stemmed entirely from his unreserved loyalty to Marshall. His mission always remained Marshall’s mission.
In January 1942 the Joint Board morphed into the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Although it would not enjoy statutory legitimacy until 1947, the JCS emerged as the chief advisory body to the president, charged with formulating American policy within the CCS framework and having executive responsibility for implementing joint action. The JCS initially consisted of Marshall and Arnold for the army and Stark and King for the navy; then Stark left for England and command of U.S. naval forces in Europe, and King absorbed the CNO’s functions. The JCS roster remained unchanged for the rest of the war: Marshall, Arnold, and King.
The creation of the JCS settled two of Marshall’s greatest concerns. It gave Marshall a high-level body that could counter the influence of Churchill and the British on Roosevelt and help rein in the maverick president. Arnold’s inclusion in the JCS, rationalized as necessary because of Portal and the Royal Air Force’s representation at the CCS level, permitted Marshall to grant the Army Air Force an autonomy it already enjoyed without seeking the requisite legislation and its attendant interservice infighting and congressional bickering. Marshall neatly sidestepped the whole question of an independent air force. By mid-January Marshall embarked on the long-delayed restructuring of the War Department—the last piece of the organizational puzzle.
The principal shortcoming of the army’s command and staff structure rested in the ambiguity surrounding the role of the chief of staff. The power struggle between Pershing and March colored all army thinking. March’s efforts to establish the chief of staff’s command authority over the operational commands failed. Pershing reordered the War Department in the image of AEFHQ. The WDGS consisted of five divisions: Personnel (G-1), Intelligence (G-2), Operations and Training (G-3), Supply (G-4), and the War Plans Division (WPD). The chief of staff advised the secretary and assistant secretaries of war, coordinated “planning development and the execution of the military program,” and commanded the army in peacetime. The WPD would furnish the general staff personnel for the commander-designate of the field army in the next war. The commander might or might not be the sitting chief of staff, depending on the pleasure of the president. As it evolved, the WPD, charged with planning and coordinating the work of the other general staff divisions, preempted the G divisions. In effect, the WPD became the general staff within the WDGS. Pershing also created a General Headquarters and entrusted it with many of the functions normally preserved for the general staff. The General Headquarters ceased functioning after Pershing stepped down, but by that time, the diminution of the WDGS’s authority had become standard practice. The assistant secretary of war oversaw manpower and industrial mobilization planning, which, in effect, rendered G-1 and G-4 subordinate to the assistant secretary. The Military Intelligence Division never developed much of a presence; it remained the redheaded stepson of the general staff. The WPD usurped the planning function, leaving the Operations Division responsible for the oversight of training. The G divisions’ weakened status allowed the refractory service and technical bureaus to reassert their old autonomy, supplemented by the powerful new combat arms bureaus. By doctrine and tradition, staff officers exercised no command authority, whereas bureau chiefs exercised armywide command.
Reforming the U.S. Army always proved exceedingly difficult. Despite his immense reputation, commanding general William Sherman gave up in disgust and moved his headquarters to St. Louis. The foremost American military thinker, Emory Upton (who may have suffered from a brain tumor), committed suicide out of frustration following the rejection of his schemes. When he served as chief of staff, GEN Charles Summerall attempted and failed to restructure the WDGS along functional lines; he was motivated not by the wish to increase efficiency and end the compartmentalization of functions but by the desire to short-circuit the influence of the “civilian” assistant secretary of war. His successor MacArthur identified the command disconnect when he remarked, “The War Department has never been linked to fighting elements by that network of command and staff necessary to permit the unified functioning of the American Army,” but he made no serious efforts to remedy the problem.40 In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and with the formation of the CCS and JCS apparatus, Marshall suddenly found himself in possession of unchallenged hegemony over the U.S. Army, even if his position violated American traditions and practices. He now moved to refashion the network of interlocking command and staff structures into an agency that would bestow on him unprecedented control over the army and air forces.
Marshall told Smith that “the time was long past when matters could be debated and carried on ad infinitum.”41 He needed a hatchet man to stage his palace coup and called in MG Joseph McNarney. Marshall worked out the details of the new setup during a single week in late January 1942. Marshall wanted a simplified and streamlined command and staff structure that freed him to concentrate on the higher direction of the war while liberating him from the day-to-day decisions involving administration, training, and supply. Commanders and heads of staff divisions and sections should make the decentralized decisions, consistent with policy guidelines and appropriate to their level. He demanded more efficiency from the WDGS, removing all the excessive administrative clutter. He gave McNarney a mandate of sixty days for finalizing the reorganization.42
While McNarney worked out a new table of organization, Marshall plotted his moves. “The difficulty was how to bring it about,” Marshall later remarked, “without so much … dissention and opposition within the Army and on the Hill and in the press.” He knew he would stir up a hornets’ nest. An open internecine turf war would engender “a most unfortunate morale situation at a critical moment and would also be defeating my purpose.” Congress granted Roosevelt sweeping authority to restructure governmental agencies under the terms of the First War Powers Act of 18 December 1941. Like March in World War I, the War Powers Act gave Marshall the green light. He planned to use the president’s executive power without actually involving the president—at least not until he presented his fait accompli to the War Department. Timing was the key. Marshall knew that the names of the adjutant general and two of the four chiefs of arms were on the retirement list; the other two would move on to more important duties. On 5 February Marshall convened a special meeting of the top War Department brass and presented them with the new organizational chart. Executed brilliantly, Marshall’s putsch stunned the entire Washington establishment; even Roosevelt remained in the dark.43
The new structure created three new superagencies roughly along functional lines. Marshall had resurrected the General Headquarters in 1940, relieving him of the burden of overseeing the raising and training of ground forces, and had placed MG Leslie McNair in charge. In the new structure, McNair bore responsibility for preparing the combat ground forces—doctrine, organization, equipment, training, and schooling —for deployment overseas as commander of Army Ground Forces (AGF). Arnold, as commander of Army Air Forces (AAF), held even more sweeping responsibility for all air personnel, aircraft development and procurement, training, doctrine, and air-specific construction and logistics. Alone among the new chiefs, Arnold sat on the JCS and CCS, with command authority reaching beyond the Zone of the Interior. He oversaw theater air commands and operations, except for units assigned to other commands. Anything not assigned to AGF or AAF—general administration, construction, and the procurement, movement, storage, and transport of supplies—fell under the control of LTG Brehon Somervell as head of Services of Supply, later renamed Army Service Forces (ASF). The General Headquarters and the offices of the four chiefs of arms were abolished, their staffs absorbed by AGF. Marshall did not eliminate the service and technical bureaus but instead placed them under Somervell.
By statute and convention, the WDGS acted as both a War Department and a general staff. Marshall severed command from the staff functions. The reorganization greatly expanded the size and functions of the War Plans Division—later renamed the Operations Division (OPD)—as Marshall’s global command post. OPD’s mandate had far-reaching authority. It obtained unprecedented coordinating powers across command and staff lines, orchestrating all phases of the ground, air, and logistical efforts from the formation of units in the Zone of the Interior to their dispatch abroad into the theaters. OPD also absorbed many of the duties of the WDGS and those Smith discharged as SGS: it acted as a clearinghouse for incoming communications from the commands, provided distilled intelligence, and served as a supervising agency to ensure that all orders and directives were distributed, received, and executed. In effect, OPD became the general staff. The reorganization retained but neutered the four G divisions of the WDGS. Most of the Operations Division personnel went to OPD; the Personnel, Intelligence, and Supply Divisions, with combined staffs of 661 officers, were reduced to a total of 41 officers, who were tasked with routine administration and acted as watchdogs over the operations of the newly created commands, chiefly those of the ASF.44
Next, Marshall went to the president for his sanction. On 28 February, by executive order, Roosevelt approved the work of McNarney’s “soviet committee.” Nine days later the reorganized command and staff structure began operations. In two months Marshall had dismantled a command structure “age old in custom” and fashioned what he reckoned to be the appropriate “war office of a great power.”45
A product of haste and compromise, the reorganization achieved a good deal of what Marshall wanted. It provided a more responsive and efficient staff and reduced much of the bureaucratic red tape. In addition, the new structure confirmed air force autonomy while guaranteeing its integration into the command setup. Most vital, the new organization clarified the command authority of the chief of staff. Marshall delegated the detailed responsibility for manpower, training, equipping, and supply to the new commands. Only unresolved issues involving two or more commands went to Marshall; otherwise, McNair, Arnold, and Somervell made the decisions. Liberated from the tyranny of detailed administration, Marshall could focus on questions of policy and grand strategy, operating through his general headquarters, OPD. All this accorded exactly with the ideas he had brought with him to the War Department back in 1938. And therein lay the problem.
Although rightly called the “organizer of victory” and the quintessential military manager, Marshall’s organizational concepts never strayed too far from 1918–1920 models. Preoccupied with command and operations, Marshall discounted the vital importance of operational logistics. He retained his Chaumont Clique bias against logisticians. Marshall placed great faith in Somervell; in fact, he admitted, “I would have been rather hesitant to undertake the vast reorganizations … had it not been for my confidence in the ability of Somervell to carry the major share of the rearrangement.”46 That did not mean he granted Somervell or his organization any direct input in strategic planning; the logistics section of OPD preempted ASF. The restructuring fell far short of clearly defining the separation of authority along functional lines on questions of manpower and supply. By retaining the truncated G divisions and the old bureaus, the structure contained a set of integral disconnects. OPD’s logistical committees, not ASF, planned supply operations. Similarly undercut by OPD, the G-division chiefs exercised what little remained of their authority, interfering with Somervell’s operations. They and the disenfranchised bureau chiefs, who had lost their right of direct appeal to the chief of staff, loathed Somervell and fiercely rejected any further restructuring along functional lines. These conflicts—in mindset and in structure—over command and control of manpower and supply remained in place for the rest of the war, complicating planning in Washington and confounding theater commands in organizing the American side of their headquarters.47
Smith followed these developments with great interest but confronted his own organizational headaches inside the JCS structure. His obsession with small “Foch” headquarters also revealed Marshall’s 1918 thinking. He disliked the British committee system, in part because it sprouted more and more committees and increasingly tied down scarce officer talent to desk jobs. Smith pulled every book he could find in the War College library on the theory and practice of staff organizations and exhaustively examined the question. Influenced by the restructuring of the War Department and his own observations and experiences, Smith developed ideas not entirely aligned with Marshall’s.48 He concluded that modern military structures required large and diverse staffs. By summer 1942 Smith had organized and staffed five American committees—his secretariat and the office of the deputy JCS, plus agencies for joint planning, intelligence, and psychological warfare—in parallel with those in the CCS structure.49 He heard a great deal of grumbling, but Smith continually expanded the tables of organization to accommodate the many unforeseen demands placed on the joint committees.
The president pushed hard for the creation of an American centralized intelligence agency. On 9 March COL William Donovan presented his recommendations for the JIC, including the proposed placement of his OSS in the new structure. The War Department viewed Donovan with alarm. An Irish Catholic born in Buffalo, New York, and educated there and at Columbia University, Donovan had gone to law school with the president. A football star at Columbia—where he earned the nickname “Wild Bill”—Donovan won the Medal of Honor in France as a member of the famed “Fighting Sixty-ninth.” From there he built a career as a Wall Street lawyer and politician, climaxing in a failed Republican bid for governor of New York. In 1940 and 1941 he undertook thinly veiled secret intelligence missions throughout the Mediterranean and to Britain and Germany, where he met with Churchill, all the top military men and heads of the British intelligence apparatus, and even Hitler. His companion during the Mediterranean tour was none other than Dykes. In June 1941 Roosevelt named Donovan the coordinator of information; in this capacity, Donovan acted as the nominal director of a centralized intelligence program that never functioned because he could not overcome the jurisdictional minefield of coordinating the in-house intelligence activities of the army, navy, State Department, and FBI. In 1942 Donovan reverted to his World War I rank of colonel as head of the OSS. Marshall wanted Smith to handle Donovan.
His rank and war record notwithstanding, the War Department saw Donovan as a “civilian” outsider. Worse, his association with Roosevelt raised red flags in the War Department. The head of the Intelligence Division, MG George Strong, wanted no part of civilian political meddling into military affairs. Although Smith rated the G-2 Division as “a collection of broken down military attachés” and considered Strong pretty weak, he shared the apprehension that Donovan intended to subordinate military intelligence to the OSS. In the lead-up to the 9 March presentation, Smith met with Donovan and prepared recommendations for the president.50
The amity between Dykes and Donovan provided Smith with an additional lever. Before joining Donovan for lunch on 14 March, Smith told Dykes he intended to recommend Donovan’s appointment as chairman of the JIC. Smith finessed the idea, and much to his surprise, Donovan “swallowed it whole.” Dykes thought it “a very satisfactory show.” Smith returned to his office and wrote a memo to Marshall and King, expressing concern over the “dangerous possibilities to security” presented by an independent intelligence agency. He suggested that the “simplest way” to solve the problem was to place Donovan under JCS control. Marshall and King agreed. Typical of the slightly duplicitous way transactions were conducted—a natural outgrowth of the president’s methods—Smith never bothered to arrange a meeting with Roosevelt. Instead, he composed the necessary order for the White House. On 16 March Smith argued the case before the JCS, reporting that he had removed any obstacles to Donovan’s joining the JCS structure. After receiving the joint chiefs’ endorsement, Smith forwarded his order, via Hopkins, to the White House, where Roosevelt signed it.51
The State Department put up a fuss, delaying the execution of the presidential order. In the meantime, Smith worked out the details of the new structure with Donovan. “Wild Bill” proved tough to break. Smith complained about Donovan’s “peculiar position with respect to the President,” his freewheeling style, his seemingly inexhaustible funding (Smith estimated it at $100 million), and particularly his refusal to submit to military channels. As a defensive measure, Smith dispatched one of his assistants as OSS secretary, but the ploy failed. “I am afraid Bill is rapidly cooking his own goose by lobbying,” Dykes recorded on 4 April. “Smith is getting completely fed up with [Donovan].”52 Fed up or not, the OSS received its mandate. Charged with civilian (propaganda and political warfare), military (guerrilla warfare), and quasi-military roles, the OSS defied easy categorization. Smith could never clarify Donovan’s position or define the OSS’s niche within the JCS, nor could anyone else. The OSS succeeded in rebuffing all efforts to bring it under military supervision. His struggles with Donovan deepened Smith’s suspicion of irregular and psychological warfare and unconventional operations in general. Somehow the clash never became personal. Donovan liked Smith and thought highly of him as a soldier. Marshall also credited Smith’s “missionary work” for the OSS’s later successes in the war in combination with the military. “Smith effected a great many adjustments,” Marshall remembered, “which were very effective in the long run.”53
By late spring the hard sledging had mostly ended. Despite dire predictions to the contrary, and despite the many obstructions, the combined and joint committees began to function capably.54 Problems remained, but they derived less from procedural issues than from the inability of the political heads and the service chiefs to settle on an Allied grand strategy. The lion’s share of the credit for the early success of the CCS goes to Marshall and Dill. The American chief of staff and the British field marshal, against long odds, developed a genuine partnership. Monnet was right—personalities proved more important than organizations. Ranking just behind the Marshall-Dill association in importance stood the Smith-Dykes collaboration. Marshall and Dill selected the two best staff officers in their respective services and charged them with designing the staff apparatus and making it work in spite of itself. Strong personalities more often clash than bond. Smith emerged as the quintessential Marshall man, and Dykes enjoyed an analogous relationship with Dill. The choice, though fortuitous, appeared natural enough. No one could have predicted that the charismatic Dykes and the enigmatic Smith would hit it off, but they did. As Alex Danchev, the most authoritative student of the founding of the “special relationship,” points out, Smith’s and Dykes’s great contribution to eventual Allied victory rested in their fashioning the mold for Allied cooperation; their successors never quite replicated their successes, but the mold was never completely broken.55