for reaching agreement on the general strategic direction of the war and on the actions necessary to achieve the agreed strategic goals. The nine high-level interallied conferences held between 1943 and 1945 were attempts to achieve those agreements.6 Beyond that, Americans and British were in constant contact with each other, often through the offices of the British Joint Service Mission in Washington, D.C., where the American Joint Chiefs could talk to their counterparts “in real time.” The Joint Staff Mission represented the British Chiefs of Staff (COS) and was headed by Field Marshal John Dill, former chief of the Imperial General Staff. He quickly gained the trust and respect of the Americans. His great ability to find common ground between the Americans and British at times of profound disagreement has been overlooked by some historians. Of equal importance were the various joint and combined staffs that would be formed to support and inform the decisions reached by the CCS.
Just over six weeks after the end of the ARCADIA conference, at the end of February 1942, the new director of the War Plans Division of the U.S. Army, Brig. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, submitted a memo to General Marshall that outlined what would become a fundamentally different central idea in the American approach to strategy. Rejecting the British peripheral approach spelled out at ARCADIA, Eisenhower agreed that keeping Russia in the war was one of three key objectives for the Allies, but the best way to do that was for the United States to develop, “in conjunction with the British, a definite plan for operations in Northwest Europe. It should be sufficiently extensive in scale as to engage from the middle of May [1942] onward, an increasing portion of the German Air Force, and by late summer an increasing amount of his ground forces.”7
By the end of March 1942, Eisenhower and what was now the Operations Division of the Army’s Chief of Staff office had prepared an outline of “Operations in Western Europe” that Marshall would present to the British chiefs in April. There were three components: BOLERO, the concentration of troops and supplies in Britain in preparation for an invasion; ROUNDUP, the invasion, anticipated for the spring of 1943; and SLEDGEHAMMER, conceived as an emergency operation for 1942, to be conducted if the situation in Russia became desperate, with the hope that it would temporarily divert some German forces from the East, even at the sacrifice of the Allied troops involved.
There was no disagreement about BOLERO. From the British perspective, having a buildup of American forces in Great Britain would be beneficial in any conceivable set of circumstances, either offensively or defensively.
SLEDGEHAMMER was rejected by the British in relatively short order. The Americans would have been able to provide and support perhaps two and a half divisions and some air assets. The rest of this sacrificial force would be British and Canadian, and they had by this time little interest in intentional operations of this type. Indeed, SLEDGEHAMMER resembled many proposed cross-Channel operations that suffered from the same flaws, most notably Operation IMPERATOR.
In response to a paper submitted by the British Joint Planning Staff in March 1942 that pointed out that the Russian situation was critical and a major diversion in the West might be required, the British COS proposed IMPERATOR as a response to an anticipated Russian cri de coeur. They suggested sending a reinforced infantry division across the Channel as a raid-in-force, to stay for about a week, hoping to draw German air force units into battle under favorable conditions.
This prompted a scathing reply from Churchill:
1….Certainly it would not help Russia if we launched such an enterprise, no doubt with world publicity, and came out a few days later with heavy losses. We should have thrown away valuable lives and material, and made ourselves and our capacity for making war ridiculous throughout the world. The Russians would not be grateful for this worsening of the general position. The French patriots who would rise to our aid and their families would be subjected to pitiless Hun revenge…. It would be cited as another example of sentimental politics dominating the calm determination and common sense of professional advisors.
2. In order to achieve this result, we have to do the two most difficult operations of war—first landing from the sea on a small front against a highly prepared enemy, and second, evacuating by sea two or three days later the residue of the force landed.
… When our remnants returned to Britain a la Dunkirk, [the result] would be that everyone, friend and foe, would dilate on the difficulties of landing on a hostile shore. A whole set of inhibitions would grow up on our side prejudicial to effective action in 1943.
I would ask the Chiefs of Staff to consider the following two principles:
(a) No substantial landing in France unless we are going to stay, and
(b) No substantial landing in France unless the Germans are demoralized by another failure against Russia.8
SLEDGEHAMMER, while championed by the Americans who wanted to go on the offensive in Europe in 1942, was never realistic in terms of tactics, troops, supplies, or shipping. It did, however, constitute a beginning of sorts that had some practical effects. Vital logistic preparations, needed before any such undertaking could be attempted, were begun. “The first of these was to reactivate some of the south and southeasterly commercial ports [the Falmouth, Plymouth, Southampton group, and some of the London docks].”9 These facilities had been closed as part of British anti-invasion preparations in 1940. There was also planning, particularly the start of logistic planning regarding the troops that were expected to arrive.
ROUNDUP had a longer life but ultimately suffered the same fate, albeit for different reasons. When General Marshall presented the three concepts to the British COS, there was agreement in principle that planning should go ahead for a major cross-Channel operation in 1943 as well as the short-lived possible emergency operation in 1942. Agreements in principle do not, as a rule, include specific, detailed plans for their execution, and so it was in this case.
As plans began to be made, and without any agreed-on offensive operation planned against Germany for 1942 that involved U.S. troops, a series of debates began in Washington and London. The Russians needed support. The Western Allies were anxious to demonstrate that support. FDR was anxious, for domestic political reasons, to have the United States take the offensive against Germany in 1942. Britain needed to secure the Mediterranean, while gaining the whole of North Africa was part of Britain’s plan from the beginning. The U.S. Army needed to have Europe be an active theater of operations to counter the U.S. Navy’s demands for resources in the Pacific, especially after the victory at Midway.
This and more led to a decision by FDR and Churchill in July 1942, against the strong advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and counter to an earlier agreement between the CCS, to launch Operation TORCH, the invasion of Morocco and Algeria, in November of 1942. Churchill proclaimed that the operation would be cheap, that it was the “true second front of 1942 … the safest and most fruitful stroke that can be delivered this autumn.”10 A consequence of the decision, known at the time but not accepted by all participants, was that troops and material needed for a cross-Channel attack would now not be available before the spring of 1944. As U.S. chief of naval operations Adm. Ernest King and Marshall wrote into the Combined Chiefs of Staff document, “Options in 1942–43” dated 24 July 1942, “A commitment to this operation [TORCH] renders ROUND-UP in all probability impractical of successful execution in 1943.”11 Eisenhower held a briefing for Churchill in September of 1942. There Churchill “and certain of his close personal advisors” became “acutely conscious of the inescapable costs of TORCH.”12
Eisenhower wrote to Marshall after the meeting:
The arguments and considerations that you advanced time and again between last January and July 24th apparently made little impression upon the Former Naval Person at the time, since he expresses himself now as very much astonished to find out that TORCH practically eliminates any opportunity for a 1943 ROUNDUP.13
The
