and the code name with variations (ROUNDHAMMER, Super ROUNDUP) became a generic title for plans relating to crossing the Channel at some point. There was, of course, no agreed-upon plan for a cross-Channel assault, and the British particularly continued to hope that such an invasion would prove unnecessary or would occur only when Germany had been fatally weakened by air bombardment and defeats on the Russian Front. In part this was because the forces available in Great Britain were, in 1942, neither fully equipped nor particularly well trained.
In June 1942 now Major General Eisenhower was sent to London by Marshall to evaluate and report on the Special Observers Group, whose work was of some concern now that BOLERO had been approved and needed to be implemented. He returned with serious concerns about the leadership there and declared, “It is necessary to get a punch behind the job or we’ll never be ready by spring [1943] to attack [that is, launch a cross-Channel invasion].”14
While there was not going to be a 1943 cross-Channel assault, Marshall took Eisenhower’s advice to heart and sent him back to London to take command of the newly created European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army. By late July, with TORCH now the operation that was to be executed, the question of who was to command was raised. On the advice of Admiral King, newly promoted Lieutenant General Eisenhower was ironically designated the commander, and yet another new command was formed, Allied Force Headquarters, housed at Norfolk House, on St. James’s Square, just off Pall Mall, in the center of London.
TORCH’s shambolic but successful landings on 8 November 1942, fortunately opposed by Vichy French and not veteran Germans, got the United States into the war against Germany and allowed for the next meeting on the strategic direction of the war, code-named SYMBOL, to be held at Casablanca, in what was then French Morocco from 14 to 24 January 1943.
Much has been written about the strategic debates at Casablanca and the commitments reached to continue operations in the Mediterranean for 1943, setting aside potential opportunities in Northwest Europe.15 The disagreements reflected those deeply held beliefs that showed themselves early in the coalition and were never fully resolved until the middle of 1944. The essential basis for the serious disagreements that continued to exist between allies stemmed from different approaches to the issues at hand.
Churchill, as demonstrated at a meeting at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, prior to the Casablanca conference, deliberately disdained all attempts to establish any overall strategic concept. He wrote, “In settling what to do in a vast war situation like this, it may sometimes be found better to take a particular major operation to which one is committed and follow that through vigorously to the end, making other things subordinate to it, rather than assemble all the data from the world scene in a baffling array. After the needs of the major operation have been satisfied … other aspects of the war will fall into their proper places.”16 As General Alan Brooke, chairman of the COS, noted in his diary in January of 1943, Churchill “often wished to carry out … sudden changes in strategy! I had the greatest difficulty in making him realize that strategy was a long-term process in which you could not frequently change your mind. He did not like being reminded of this fact and frequently shook his fist in my face and said, ‘I do not want any of your long-term projects, all they do is cripple initiative.’ ”17 Brooke, whose colleagues in Whitehall nicknamed him “Colonel Shrapnel,” was described by Churchill as a “stiff-necked Ulsterman and there’s no one worse to deal with than that.” The historian Alex Danchev, in writing about the two, noted, “Where Churchill had an iron whim, Brooke had an iron will.”18
It seemed to the Americans, as Admiral King explained to FDR during the Casablanca conference in January 1943, that “the British have definite ideas as to what the next operation should be but do not seem to have any over-all plan for the conduct of the war.”19 The same day King declared to the British chiefs, “It is important to determine how the war is to be conducted. Is Russia to carry the burden as far as ground forces are concerned? [Is] a planned step-by-step policy going to be pursued or are we relying on seizing opportunities … Germany’s defeat can only be effected by direct military action and not by a collapse of morale.” Marshall added the question, “Was the [proposed] operation in Sicily part of an integrated plan to win the war or was it simply taking advantage of an opportunity?” Hap Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, added, “We … have to decide not only what we are going to do in 1943 but also in 1944 since otherwise … our priorities in production might be wrongly decided.”20
The British chiefs responded by saying that because there were too many variables, it was impossible to map out “a detailed plan for winning the war.” The forces being built up in Great Britain should continue to be used as the “final action of the war as soon as Germany gives definite signs of weakness,” and there would come a point (sometime in the future) “at which the whole [German] structure … would collapse.” In the meantime, Allied policy should be to force Italy out of the war and to bring Turkey in.21
One meeting at the Casablanca conference clearly demonstrates the essential differences in approach. The Americans needed a strategic plan with what today would be called “milestones” and a “critical path” that would lead to direct action against Germany. The United States was still getting itself organized for war. Logistics and industrial production were at the top of the United States’ planning list. The British position was that Allied ground forces were still too weak for a direct confrontation, and if Italy could be taken out of the war, if the ring around Germany could be tightened, if the bombing of German cities could be increased, and if the Russians could inflict defeats on German ground forces, then Germany would collapse. Once Germany’s will to resist had been broken, invasion would either be unnecessary or weakly opposed, if resisted at all.
Concerning Turkey, the British chiefs were well aware that the primary benefit was geographic. According to Brooke, “The real value would have been the use of Turkey for aerodromes and as a jumping off place for future action.”22 In August of 1943, on the way to the Quebec conference, the War Cabinet’s Joint Staff noted that “bomber forces based in Turkey would be in the best position to bomb Ploesti [the site of key Romanian oil fields], but other worth-while targets are few…. The moment … for Turkey to enter the war on our side is not yet ripe.”23 In truth, it would have been a net drain on Allied manpower and resources, yet the argument for Turkey continued to be made. It is also true that no one seemed to ponder the question of why Turkey would want to enter the war when their current situation as a neutral was so favorable for them. Geography was going to ensure that they would be the victor’s friend regardless. In the end Turkey declared war on Germany when it was convenient, in February 1945.
For the Americans, the Pacific and European theaters were connected; strategy and domestic politics demanded offensive action in both at the same time. The British, with their home islands just twenty-one miles from the German-occupied Continent, thought more in sequential terms regarding strategy and focus: first Germany, then Japan. While the maintenance of India was strategically critical, the rest of Asia and the Pacific was of secondary value to the British, notwithstanding the political damage they suffered by their inability to defend Australia and New Zealand as well as the loss of prestige that came with the fall of Singapore. To them, most Asian issues could be negotiated and agreed on at the postwar conference table.
By the end of the Casablanca conference nine major decisions were made:
Winning the U-boat war
Increasing the strategic bombing offensive
Invading Sicily
Continuing support of Russia
Conducting limited offensives in the Pacific
Reopening the Burma Road
Increasing U.S. air presence in China
Concentrating
