A World at Arms (87 page)

The campaign for Tunisia thus came to have a role that was in many ways unexpected. Before that campaign is recounted briefly, those ways must be summarized. First, by drawing massive Axis forces into a new theater at a time of crisis on the Eastern Front, it provided important relief to the Soviet Union. The diversion of effort would make it impossible for the Germans to send a substantial army to the relief of Stalingrad–divisions could not be used in Tunisia and the south of Russia at the same time. Simultaneously, German air transport could not be used both to fly troops and supplies to North Africa and to fly supplies
into the Stalingrad pocket; the two Allied campaigns greatly assisted each other in this regard.
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Second, the American army would receive its real baptism of fire in the war against Germany under circumstances in which set-backs, though unwelcome, were not disastrous. The lessons about training, equipment, and tactics learned in Tunisia would be of great value thereafter, while the testing of the higher commanders would show who could be expected to play a key role in the steadily enlarging American military effort.

Third, the obvious lengthening of the North African campaign required a new look at the strategy the Western Allies might follow. It was accordingly not a coincidence that the next meeting of the Allied leaders took place in North Africa at Casablanca. Stalin at this time did not wish to leave his headquarters even for a few days, so Churchill and Roosevelt met with their respective military leaders but without Soviet participation. Both probably came to feel that they had all the aggravation they needed–and more-in trying to cope with the interminable problems of the French leaders who feuded with each other as enthusiastically as with the British and Americans.

The Casablanca Conference held on January 14–23, 1943, reviewed the situation in all theaters and led to a series of agreements on strategy and priorities. The necessity for giving the highest priority to victory at sea over the U-Boats has been discussed in the preceding chapter. This was one issue on which there was no difference of opinion. It was not so easy to reach agreement on some other questions, but considerable discussions produced it all the same. An invasion of Sicily, near the end of July at the latest, earlier if possible, should follow on the final victory in North Africa as a part of the plan to knock Italy out of the war. An invasion across the Channel in 1943 was, in effect, ruled out in favor of one in 1944; there was as yet no prospect of an adequate number of American divisions in England and the shipping and landing craft for a major landing in France. The preparations for such an operation, however, were to go forward; and at the vehement insistence of the Americans, especially General Marshall, a staff to initiate serious planning for the invasion was set up under Lt. General Frederick E. Morgan soon after.
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A major bombing offensive was to go forward with the Americans free to try to carry it out in daylight as they insisted was feasible and the British were certain it was not. Limited United States offensive action to keep the Japanese from consolidating their empire was agreed to as was a small British attack in Burma (code-named “Anakim”). Once it was clear that there would be no major northwest France landing in
1943, the Americans were insistent on offensives in the Pacific. Every effort was to be made to increase the delivery of supplies to the Soviet Union, including a resumption of the convoys to Murmansk, and similarly to increase aid to Chiang Kai-shek, including a buildup of the air supply route to Nationalist China.
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Even though the professional evaluations the British and American military leaders made of each other were not always flattering-Brooke in particular formed and thereafter maintained uniformly negative opinions of Marshall, Eisenhower and Patton
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-the actual personal relationships between strong and very different personalities were in fact uncommonly good. It is simply not possible for anyone to spend a great deal of time studying World War II without being impressed by the constant and sincere efforts made by the highest British and American military leaders to work cooperatively with each other even in the face of the most serious differences of opinion on issues of great importance to all.
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There was, in addition, agreement on one other point of major significance. In the period preceding the conference, both in London and in Washington the belief had been developing that the war would have to end with the surrender of the enemy powers. In Great Britain, the results of the peace soundings of the winter of 1939–40 had left a residue of very strong doubts about any and all Germans who claimed to be moderates and wanted assurances of some sort as to the future of Germany as a preliminary to overthrowing the Nazi regime. When finally given at least some such assurances, they had proceeded to lead the invasions of a series of neutral countries. By the time of the Casablanca Conference they were also, as the London government knew all too well, involved in the most horrendous persecutions and atrocities. From the perspective of London, the unconditional surrender of Germany was an essential pre-condition for peace.
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As for Italy, Churchill thought of exempting it in the hope of splitting it away from Germany, but the British Cabinet would not hear of such a policy.
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As for Japan, the way it had begun and waged war made the same policy an obvious one for her, and the British had every reason to insist on that if only to reassure the Americans that they would stick with them in full force once the war in Europe had been won.

As for the Americans, they had especially bad memories on the question of a surrender from World War I. At that time, the United States Commander-in-Chief in Europe, General Pershing, as well as the domestic Republican opposition, had strongly urged that Germany be required to surrender. It was the Wilson administration–which had included most of the key figures in the Roosevelt administration along with the President himself–that had been involved in paving the way
for an armistice instead of a surrender.
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In domestic American politics, this “weakness” had contributed to the administration’s loss of the midterm elections of 1918; in international affairs, it had facilitated the creation of the German stab-in-the-back legend which pretended that Germany had not been defeated in World War I at all. This time there was to be no confusion after the war as to whether or not the German army had been beaten.
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The President had stated to the head of the Polish government-in-exile, General Sikorski, on December 2, 1942, that: “We have no intention of concluding this war with any kind of armistice or treaty. Germany must surrender unconditionally.”
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There is every reason to believe that Roosevelt, who had hoped until the last moment to keep the United States out of a general war entirely, had in his own mind no doubt from December 1941 about the need to fight until the Germans and Japanese surrendered.
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With both the Western Allies determined on a surrender, the only question to be settled was that of timing and method of a public announcement. The decision on timing was, it would appear, greatly influenced by two factors. The uproar in both England and the United States over the deal with Darlan provided a strong motive for reassuring public opinion in both countries that this was no precedent for similar deals with some prominent Nazi who might offer to shorten the war in exchange for being allowed to continue to run Germany, or any analogous arrangements in the case of Italy or Japan. There was also a foreign or coalition policy reason. Since it was now clear to Churchill and Roosevelt that a major invasion of France could not be launched in 1943, it would be well to reassure the Soviet Union that its allies were indeed in the war to the finish and had no intention–as indeed they did not have–of making any arrangement with an undefeated Germany. If these domestic and international factors explain the timing, the reasons for the method chosen, the oral statement by Franklin D. Roosevelt in opening a press conference rather than inclusion in the official press release, must remain speculative. Having decided to make the policy public at this time, Churchill and Roosevelt may have thought that this was the way to get the greatest amount of publicity for the term; it certainly had that effect.
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Whereas on this particular issue the Casablanca formula was to hold for the balance of the war, the strategic plans had to be reviewed once more at the “Trident” Conference in Washington, May 12–25, 1943. If the British were interested in further operations in the Mediterranean,
the Americans were insistent that these be limited so as not to interfere with a cross-Channel invasion in 1944.
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There was real concern in Washington that the British pre-occupation with Mediterranean operations reflected concern about British imperial interests, holding down casualties, and retroactively validating the Gallipoli operation of World War I. Such a procedure was seen as causing pin pricks rather than real trouble for the Germans and was likely to leave the Soviet Union to make a separate peace with Germany. Then the United States would face a Germany in control of practically all of Europe with Japan still to be defeated thereafter. From the United States perspective, there should be no operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. If the British would not aid China by attacking in Burma, the United States would have to make up for that in the Pacific. If they would not commit themselves to an invasion of Western Europe in 1944, then all bets were off and the United States would concentrate on Japan so that at least one major Axis power could be defeated while the British diddled around in the Mediterranean.
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The British approached this conference with great doubts of their own.
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They were worried about what they saw as excessive American allocation of resources to the Pacific, they were eager to get out of the promise to launch any operation in Burma, and they most wanted to follow up on the recent victory in Tunisia, knocking Italy out of the war after the planned Sicily invasion by landings in Italy, and possibly other Western and Eastern Mediterranean objectives. Since these plans threatened–on the basis of recent experience in North Africa–to create a drain from the buildup in England needed for a 1944 invasion, they could count on determined United States opposition.

In a series of very difficult arguments, the issues were hammered out to an agreement. The Americans received the assurance of an invasion of northwest France in 1944 and limits on Mediterranean operations so that this would be possible. The British obtained American agreement to a possible follow–up operation in the Mediterranean after Sicily, the specifics still to be decided, with the assumption that in this way the victory in Tunisia would be utilized for new operations to tie down German forces and divert them from the Russian front by requiring the Germans to defend Italy (or give it up), and to replace the numerous Italian divisions in the Balkans. There was agreement on the continued bombing offensive against Germany. And, with the British leaders siding with the American air commander in China, General Claire Chennault, the priority in the China-Burma-India theater would go to building up the air supply route to China, the opening of a land route for supplies for the development of a real land army by the Chinese Nationalists
being held of lower priority. The American ground commander, General Stilwell, would prove to be correct in his assessment that, without an effective army to defend airfields in China, it made no sense to build up a force of bombers in that country, but the Allies had to learn this lesson the hard way.

Undoubtedly agreement was reached on all these matters in part because some decisions were postponed or left open, and because even as the Allied representatives met in Washington it was becoming evident that they were turning the corner in the North Atlantic. There were signs that the U-Boats were being sunk at a high rate and that American ship–building was finally in high gear. But there was surely another element to ease the tension: the recent great victory in North Africa with its huge bag of Axis prisoners.
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Once the Allied onrush toward Tunis and Bizerta had been checked, new plans had had to be made in that theater, not only for the timing of subsequent future operations but for Tunisia itself. The original idea of seizing Tunisia and driving into Libya to catch Rommel’s army now had to be reversed. The Allies would have to build up their forces in Tunisia during the two months when rain turned the country’s unpaved roads into mud and no offensive was possible. In the interim, the British 8th Army would drive on toward Tunisia, with the Allies now hoping to destroy the new German army in Tunisia as well as that of Rommel. Three possibilities might intervene to prevent a final combined confrontation between the two Allied and the two German-Italian armies within Tunisia.

Montgomery might catch the Africa Corps in its retreat before it reached Tunisia. This did not happen; the 8th Army drove the defeated combined German-Italian force back and kept it from ever again holding a firm front but never caught it. Montgomery proved himself then and later a great professional who would fight and win set frontal battles, when necessary changing his plans and procedures in the midst of battle–and pretending afterwards that he had not done so–but he could not catch opponents. He drove them back enormous or short distances, in North Africa, in Sicily, in Italy, in France, in Belgium, and finally in Germany. He now pushed the German-Italian army out of Libya; Rommel himself in fact preferred to join the other Axis forces in Tunisia and repeatedly advocated such a course when from both Rome and the Fiihrer’s headquarters there were still orders to hold a position in Libya.

A second possibility was for the Allies in Tunisia to push to the Mediterranean on the southern extension of the front they were building up. Such an offensive would divide the two German forces from each
other and enable the Allies to defeat each in turn; in particular, it would greatly complicate even further the already strained supply situation of the Axis. There was a plan for such an operation, code-named “Satin,” to be carried out by the American II Corps; while the British 1st Army and French forces held the Germans in the north. This project had to be cancelled; adequate forces were simply not available for it, and the British 8th Army was following Rommel so slowly that he could readily pull away from it and crush the American spearhead to the sea from the south as von Arnim’s army attacked it from the north.