Roosevelt (57 page)

The odds were heavily against Marshall. The British Chiefs were united and formidable. They had brought a command ship with ample staffs and communications and had docked her in the harbor as a back-up facility. They had met long and often to unify their position. They had Dill in to brief them on the American outlook. On the eve of the first Combined Chiefs conference they had met with the Prime Minister, who had set out the line he wanted them to follow with the Americans. Roosevelt’s corporal’s guard of military chiefs and aides, on the other hand, was divided. Whatever their general support for beating Germany before Japan, King could not help being drawn to the Pacific, with its great naval potential, and Arnold to the prospect of building up a huge bomber offensive in the United Kingdom while the cross-channel attack was delayed. All the planners worked amid a quiet, intense competition for scarce war supply. It seemed to one of the British present that the United States Army and Navy had divided the world, with the latter taking the Pacific, and that allocation of resources was a game of grab between the two sides.

Only one man could turn the odds in Marshall’s favor—his Commander in Chief. Roosevelt seemed to hold a position midway between Marshall and Churchill, midway between wanting to thrust at the underbelly and thrust across the Channel. While he consistently viewed
ROUNDUP
as the main effort, his fancy was taken by immediate, opportunistic ventures, especially when Churchill was there to suggest them. In drilling his staff on dealing with the Americans, the Prime Minister had advised them to take plenty of time, to allow full discussions and not to be impatient—“like dripping of water on a stone”—and he would pursue the same tactics with the President. He did, but Roosevelt was hardly adamantine. The British approach had long appealed to him, because it kept major options open, allowed for quick and even cheap victories, might knock Italy out of the war, kept American troops active and moving, and provided the Russians with at least the semblance of a second front. By the fourth day of the conference Churchill could report to his War Cabinet that Roosevelt strongly favored the Mediterranean as the next step. The President did not indicate any less support of
ROUNDUP.
By taking his middle position he was able to go along with the British, placate Marshall, and assure Eisenhower that he firmly adhered to the basic concept of cross-channel and that he looked on the Mediterranean operation only as support for the main thrust.

After ten days of sometimes heated discussions the Combined
Chiefs presented their agreed-on plan in a full-dress meeting to Roosevelt and Churchill. The plan was an order of priorities. Ironically, at the top of the list was neither the underbelly nor cross-channel, but maintaining security of sea communications in the Atlantic; the ghost of Atlantic First still hovered over the strategists. Second priority was aiding Russia. Third was operations in the Mediterranean—specifically the capture of Sicily. Next came cross-channel, and then the Pacific. The British were elated. They felt they had won almost every point of contention. Brooke was disappointed that the plan made no mention of Italy, but he could console himself with the thought that events would dictate this as the next move, just as the pouring of troops into Africa had made Sicily the next logical step.

The question of command was more easily resolved. Even though his troops were now bogged down in the Tunisian mud, Eisenhower had so impressed both his military associates and his political masters with his capacity to lead and unify an inter-Allied headquarters that there was little question of his retaining top command. Some of the British—especially Brooke—were concerned about his lack of combat experience, but these worries were assuaged when General Sir Harold Alexander was made Eisenhower’s deputy, with direct command of combat forces, and Arthur W. Tedder and Sir Andrew Cunningham were given executive command of the air and naval forces respectively. Marshall wanted Eisenhower to be a full general, to rank with the British leaders, but Roosevelt said that he would not promote Eisenhower until he had done some real fighting and knocked the Germans out of Tunisia. However, he soon relented, and Eisenhower got his fourth star.

Roosevelt had hoped that he could avoid political issues at Casablanca and focus on military. But throughout the conference he was entangled with the toughest kind of political problem—French factionalism—and at the end he initiated a doctrine that would have immense political implications.

The specter of de Gaulle had hung over the conference from the start. To much of the French underground, and to partisans of the Free French everywhere, he remained the proud if touchy leader and symbol of French resistance. He was free to enunciate the noble ideals of French patriotism and grandeur while Giraud and other French chiefs in Africa had to make compromises with their Anglo-American conquerors, Vichyites, and military necessity. Eisenhower, handicapped by his political inexperience and by conflicting orders from the State Department, had just given an office to Marcel Peyrouton, an anti-Laval Vichyite. Once again roars of disapproval had sounded in America and Britain. Roosevelt had called Darlan
a temporary expedient, and he had now been delivered of Darlan by an assassin; why were he and Churchill, liberal organs protested, still playing with fascist collaborators in the war against fascism?

Sensitive to these outbursts even while pooh-poohing them, Roosevelt felt that the solution was obvious—get de Gaulle and Giraud together at Casablanca and let them hammer out an agreement on the provisional leadership of the fighting French pending the liberation of France, the re-establishment of the French Republic, and a fresh determination of leadership by the French people. It was easy for Eisenhower to produce the “groom,” Giraud, but the “bride” in London seemed frigid and unprocurable. De Gaulle had his reasons. He had contempt for the Peyroutons and the whole crew of Vichyites and defeatists. Above all, he wanted to maintain the symbol of French authority and glory, unbroken by the armistice and the Vichy regime, that could protect French interests against both enemies and allies until the time of liberation. He was willing—indeed, had asked—to parley with Giraud separately, but the notion of making a forced visit to an Anglo-American camp to conduct business with another Frenchman deeply offended him.

Roosevelt and Churchill were equally determined that de Gaulle should come to Casablanca. Churchill asked Eden in London to tell the General in effect that if he did not, the President and the Prime Minister would proceed without him and would bypass his movement. Grumbling, de Gaulle came, but he proved as stubborn as ever. In his talks with Churchill and Giraud he was unyielding; he would not deal with Giraud as long as Algiers harbored Vichyite officials, and he wanted top political control, while Giraud as number two could command the reborn French Army. Suspicion of de Gaulle was so strong among the Americans that Mike Reilly and other agents stood outside Roosevelt’s room, guns in hand, while de Gaulle poured out his bitterness. Still no agreement.

By now Roosevelt and Churchill were indignant with the tall man. The President told friends that de Gaulle compared himself with Joan of Arc at one moment and Clemenceau the next; this was an exaggeration, but de Gaulle by his very bearing produced caricatures of himself in other leaders’ eyes, just as he did in cartoonists’ sketches. Yet Roosevelt and Churchill had to admire the Frenchman. The President was taken by a spiritual look in his eyes. Churchill could not help reflecting that this arrogant man, a refugee, an exile from his country under sentence of death, completely dependent on British and American good will, with neither funds nor foothold, still defied all.

During this stalemate there occurred a curious incident. Murphy and his British counterpart, Harold Macmillan, had been hurrying from villa to villa trying to patch up a compromise, to no avail.
Giraud had been willing to sign almost any agreement so that he could concentrate on military matters, but de Gaulle was still adamant. The conference was nearing its end, and Roosevelt and Churchill were worried about returning home with the French still divided and Darlanism still an issue. On the last day of the conference Giraud stopped in to see Roosevelt. He brought two documents that dealt in part with military and economic matters, the product of much earlier discussion, but contained political provisions that promised every facility to Giraud to reunite “all” Frenchmen fighting against Germany and gave Giraud “the right and duty of preserving all French interests in the military, economic, financial and moral plane” until the French people could ultimately set up a constitutional government of their own. The President rapidly looked through these documents and signed them. Thereby he upset the elaborate matrimonial negotiations that he and Churchill had been conducting between Giraud and de Gaulle and he committed Churchill to Giraud without the Prime Minister’s approval or even knowledge. Consternation resulted when London and Washington learned of Roosevelt’s action later; Churchill had to alter the agreement quietly to restore the balance between the two Frenchmen.

Why had Roosevelt signed the documents? One theory was that he was simply piqued by de Gaulle, but the President had dealt with more exasperating men than the Frenchman without losing his
sang-froid.
Another explanation is more plausible—that the documents were a pressure ploy against de Gaulle, that they constituted the shotgun for the proposed forced marriage—but it is not clear that the bride, the reluctant partner in this match, ever knew of the shotgun. Several at Casablanca had other explanations. They felt that Roosevelt was remarkably gay and lighthearted at the meetings. He seemed to Macmillan in a happy holiday mood; “he laughed and joked continually.” Macmillan’s feelings might reflect British reserve, but Eisenhower and Murphy also noted independently that the President was lighthearted, even frivolous.

Certainly the President was in a happy holiday mood when after a week of conference duty he was able to get away to visit American troops in the field. He had hoped to be allowed to visit the front, but his military chiefs resisted this notion. The President settled for a 110-mile automobile excursion to Rabat, where he lunched in the open on ham and sweet potatoes with 20,000 soldiers of General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army, while a band played “Alexander’s Rag-Time Band” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas” against a stiff wind. Afterward he inspected the 9th Infantry Division, where he “felt closer to having tears in my eyes than any other time,” he told reporters, because these men were headed toward the front.
Later he motored on to Port Lyautey, inspected the old Moorish fort where French defenders had held out under intense bombardment by the American Navy, and laid wreaths at both the American and the French cemeteries. The President was amused on the trip back by the antics of Reilly and his crew, in the lead jeep, pretending to see planes in the sky or to fall out of their vehicle in order to divert the attention of bystanders from the armed sedan that followed.

Roosevelt seemed in an equally lighthearted mood the following night when he entertained the Sultan of Morocco and the Sultan’s son. Dressed in flowing white silk robes, the royal visitors presented their host with a high tiara for his wife—and Elliott was sure that his father winked at him as they both thought of Eleanor presiding over a White House function with this golden object perched atop her hairdo. Churchill was glum at the start, what with the Moslem ban on drinking, and his gloom deepened as the President used the occasion to talk to the Sultan about colonial aspirations toward independence and the end of imperialism after the war. Macmillan felt that the President’s performance was provocative, and Murphy worried that de Gaulle might hear of this attempt to woo the royalty of French Morocco.

The Casablanca Conference came to both a climax and a conclusion on the same day, January 24, 1943. During much of the previous night Roosevelt, Churchill, Macmillan, Murphy, and Hopkins had still been trying to frame a compromise formula that both de Gaulle and Giraud would support. In the morning Roosevelt had signed Giraud’s documents. Churchill at this point was working on de Gaulle, to no avail. Roosevelt then saw the Frenchman and talked with him in urgent terms, equally to no avail. For a time it was a game of Cox and Box in Roosevelt’s villa as the contestants and aides shuttled in and out. By noon Roosevelt had had enough—and reporters and photographers were gathering outside in high hopes of major announcements. After their aides managed to get the two Frenchmen into Roosevelt’s villa at the same time, Roosevelt and Churchill put the heaviest kind of pressure on de Gaulle. Finally he agreed to sign a memorandum of unity with Giraud.

At this point Roosevelt acted with his usual nimbleness. What about a picture? The whole party moved out onto the terrace, and the principals sat down in four chairs. Would de Gaulle and Giraud shake hands? The Generals stood up and gingerly held hands while the cameras clicked and whirred and Roosevelt and Churchill looked on with ill-concealed satisfaction. Then the Frenchmen left to compose their communiqué.

It was a typically Rooseveltian performance. Now at Casablanca, as so often in Washington, he had symbolically “locked up” the
disputants in a room and forced an agreement. But here, as so often before, the image of unity was more impressive than the substance. That afternoon de Gaulle and Giraud duly put out an eloquent but vague declaration of unity, but the final irony was that after all Roosevelt’s talk of the shotgun marriage, no baby was born or even conceived. The Generals parted still in dispute over substance.

With the Frenchmen gone from the courtyard, Roosevelt and Churchill proceeded with the press conference. Roosevelt spoke first. He described the close unity of the Americans and British at the meetings, the determination of the military staffs to give all possible aid to the “heroic struggles of China.” Then he paused.

“Another point. I think we have all had it in our hearts and our heads before, but I don’t think that it has ever been put down on paper by the Prime Minister and myself, and that is our determination that peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power.