Supreme Commander (50 page)

The Anzio operation, in short, was still uncertain. Alexander meanwhile took Eisenhower’s advice and decided to start the first two thrusts in his over-all plan. On November 20 Eighth Army opened its offensive. Montgomery quickly established some small bridgeheads on the north bank of the Sangro River, but then torrential rains held him up for a week. Not until December 2 was his whole army across the Sangro. Then both the rains and German resistance increased. Ammunition resupply in the mountains became difficult, casualties mounted, tanks and artillery bogged down in the mud. Montgomery had few reserves, so when his men did win small local victories he could not exploit them. The weather prevented the air forces from helping. In mid-December Montgomery called off the offensive. The Pescara, which Alexander had hoped to reach in late November, was not crossed until June of 1944.
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Clark’s offensive, which began on December 1, ran into similar difficulties. Eisenhower made a series of trips to the front, inspected the positions, talked to officers and men, brought in what supplies he could, but was unable to get the offensive rolling. Von Kesselring had imposed a stalemate.

The relative inactivity on the Italian front allowed Eisenhower to catch up on other matters, including his personal correspondence. He
even managed to take a full day off and go partridge hunting with Smith. He had to do a great deal of entertaining, as VIPs poured into Algiers. In October alone Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Donald Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board, James Landis, director of the Office of Civilian Defense, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Secretary Hull, W. Averell Harriman, ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Mountbatten, Field Marshal Smuts, and others passed through Algiers. Eisenhower grumbled about it, but managed to have at least one meal with each of them. He did feign illness in order to avoid having to dine with a group of touring senators.
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He decided that one way to escape the VIPs was to move his headquarters closer to the front lines. He wanted to keep AFHQ on the march anyway, because he did not want the staff digging in at one location, particularly in a large, comfortable city like Algiers. The staff did not get its required work done when the officers had comfortable billets and social obligations, and the troops resented it when they saw staff officers living in splendor. Eisenhower told Smith to set up an advanced headquarters at Naples and to be prepared to move the AFHQ headquarters there when it was captured. It took more than a month to arrange the move, and when it did come it accomplished none of Eisenhower’s purposes. Smith had picked a sumptuous villa for himself, Butcher had found another for Eisenhower (Prince Umberto’s hunting lodge), and other officers had equally palatial billets. Headquarters itself was the Caserta Palace north of Naples. Eisenhower’s office was a room large enough to serve as a railway station. He protested, in vain. A conqueror’s complex had settled on the staff, and the members insisted on living in accordance with their rights.
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One officer who could not enjoy the fruits of victory in this manner was Admiral Cunningham. Churchill had selected him to replace Pound, who was ill, as First Sea Lord. The admiral was due to leave Algiers on October 17; Eisenhower arranged a ceremony for him, complete with a band playing “Rule Britannia.” As Cunningham’s plane took off, Eisenhower had a member of the crew hand a letter to the admiral. “It is a sad day for the North African Theater that sees you leave us,” Eisenhower wrote. Every man in AFHQ had come to look on Cunningham “as one of the solid foundation rocks upon which has been built such success as we have achieved.” The real purpose of the letter, however, was to give Eisenhower an opportunity to express his personal “profound sense of loss” at Cunningham’s departure. He thanked the admiral for his unfailing
support, his wise counsel, and his brilliant leadership, and wished him “good luck and Godspeed.”
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After the ceremony Eisenhower returned to the St. Georges Hotel. There he found a letter for him from Cunningham, thanking him for all he had done. Two weeks later Cunningham wrote again. He told Eisenhower it had been a great experience for him to see the forces of two nations, made up of men with different upbringings, conflicting ideas on staff work and basic “apparently irreconcilable ideas,” brought together and knitted into a team.

In a final tribute, Cunningham declared: “I do not believe any other man than yourself could have done it.”
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By September 1943 it was clear that Operation OVERLORD was to be one of the largest military undertakings in man’s history. For eight months nearly all human and material resources of two great nations would be directed toward the one objective of mounting an amphibious assault on a small bit of the coast of western France. OVERLORD’s needs came before all else, as Eisenhower and the other commanders in the Mediterranean, as well as the Allied leaders in the Pacific and elsewhere, were discovering. From July 1943 onward, Eisenhower geared his operations to the question, Will this help or hinder OVERLORD?

Command of OVERLORD was the most coveted in the war, perhaps in all history. The commander would have tremendous forces at his disposal. His fighting men would be highly trained and magnificently equipped. He could call on all the mighty air and sea power the Allies had. The field commanders would be the best the U.S. and the U.K. had to offer. To serve him on his staff, the Supreme Commander could pick the most talented men available. If the operation was a success he could take much of the credit for the defeat of Nazi Germany and would go down in history as one of the great captains. No reward would be too great for the commander of OVERLORD.

Fittingly, the story of the selection of the commander is one of high purpose, resolve, and thoughtful consideration. It involved little intrigue or back-door Army politics. In theory, the choice of the commander rested with the CCS, but in fact, since members of the CCS were candidates, the Chiefs deferred to the heads of government. Churchill in turn bowed to Roosevelt, since the Americans would ultimately be making twice the commitment in men and material as the British. So it came down to Roosevelt, a man who had the reputation of often being haphazard in his
administrative arrangements and remarkably casual in picking his top officials.

One favorite Roosevelt technique of decision-making was to leak a story to the press and then gauge the reaction. The obvious choice for the position was Marshall. He had been the force behind OVERLORD, the one responsible for its birth, the one who insisted upon its importance all along. In early September 1943 stories began to appear in American newspapers stating that his appointment as OVERLORD commander had been decided upon. Many commentators took this as a matter of course, but two important objections did appear. First, political opponents of the President charged that he was trying to replace Marshall as Chief of Staff with a political general who would manipulate the awarding of war contracts in such a way as to insure Roosevelt’s re-election. The criticism was so widespread that Stimson and Marshall felt it necessary to issue a public denial. Second, professional armed forces journals, along with Marshall’s colleagues on the JCS, objected to Marshall’s going to OVERLORD because they wanted him to retain his position in the Army and on the CCS. Roosevelt listened to the criticisms and kept his own counsel.
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Rumors of Marshall’s prospective appointment arrived in North Africa during the critical week at Salerno. On September 16, after the crisis was passed, Eisenhower chatted with Butcher and Smith at breakfast about it. According to the American press, Eisenhower would replace Marshall as the Army Chief of Staff. The prospect made him unhappy. If it happened, he said, he would be forced to tell the President that it was a “tremendous mistake,” for he was “not temperamentally fitted for the job.” He feared it would destroy him. Eisenhower pointed out that he had no patience with politicians because he could not bear to continue an argument “after logic had made the opposition’s position untenable, yet politicians persist against all logic.”

Eisenhower’s personal preference was to remain in the Mediterranean. If he had to leave, he said, there would immediately arise a problem of command in the Mediterranean. He thought his British deputies would insist on working under an American, since none of them would be willing to serve under a colleague. Each felt that because his service was represented by a ministry in the War Cabinet he should not be in an inferior position, yet each worked “superbly” under Eisenhower. The commander in chief thought the only American who could pick up the reins was Smith, but this would require promoting Smith to full general. Such a rapid advance “would throw out of joint the noses of other and more senior American generals,” particularly Bradley and Patton. Smith said he did
not want the job anyway, since his own desire was to serve out the war under Eisenhower.

Eisenhower offered a solution for the problem. Marshall could become the global field commander for all American forces and set up a staff in London to run his European Theater, with a field commander under him who would be responsible for the attack. When he had the European Theater properly organized, he could go to Hawaii to do the same thing in the Pacific. Back in Washington he could leave a deputy chief of staff, probably Somervell, to handle supply and administration problems. The proposal had little to recommend it beyond simplicity, since it involved no basic change in the existing structure. It did, however, open the way for Eisenhower to go to London and stay out of Washington. He could be the field commander of OVERLORD while Marshall would have the title of Supreme Commander. But with his continuing world-wide responsibilities, clearly Marshall would leave the conduct of operations to Eisenhower.

There was an even simpler solution. Butcher told Eisenhower that in his opinion “You are the logical and inevitable choice for the European command.” Eisenhower liked the idea but thought it impossible. He felt the obvious choice for OVERLORD was either Brooke or Marshall, since they had been dealing on the highest level with the heads of government and would be less subject to harassment from officials in London. He thought the best he could realistically hope for was a solution which would allow him to remain in the Mediterranean, where he was relatively free from interference.
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In the first week of October, AFHQ began to fill with rumors on what was being decided and with stories about what had been done. Mountbatten paid a visit to Algiers and told Eisenhower that Brooke had been scheduled to take OVERLORD but Harry Hopkins had insisted on Marshall. Brooke had been working on the assault plans for three months, but since the Americans were going to make the larger contribution to the operation he had agreed to step aside. Churchill and the BCOS had also gone along, although Mountbatten reported that they felt “badly hurt.” Cunningham confirmed Mountbatten’s version. He also said that because Brooke had been “on the job it was impossible for anyone on a lesser level to be considered. This automatically threw out Ike.”
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Eisenhower meanwhile had no official word on his future, except that he had recognized that if Marshall took command of OVERLORD it was politically necessary to give the Mediterranean to a British officer in order to retain balance. A suitable post would then have to be found for Eisenhower. On October
1 a visiting VIP, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, covered that problem during lunch with Eisenhower at Amilcar. The Secretary reported that Marshall had been named to OVERLORD and it was “probable” that Eisenhower would be recalled to Washington to be Chief of Staff.
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Eisenhower was anxious to avoid such a fate. If he had to leave the Mediterranean, the job he wanted was command of an American group of armies under Marshall in OVERLORD. He had already decided to send Smith to Washington to confer with Marshall on AFHQ plans and future operations, and now he gave Smith the additional responsibility of finding out about his future. Under no circumstances, Eisenhower told Smith, was he to raise the subject, but if Marshall brought it up he wanted Smith to make clear to the Chief that his personal desire was to command in the field. Even if Marshall did not bring up Eisenhower’s future, he “naturally hoped that Beetle would find the lay of the land.”
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Before Smith left on October 5, Eisenhower gave him a detailed memorandum on points to take up with Marshall. Most of them concerned AFHQ problems, but Eisenhower did cover one that involved OVERLORD. He told Smith to discuss, “most secretly,” the need Marshall would have in his new job for a top airman “who is thoroughly schooled in all the phases of strategic bombing and more particularly in the
job of supporting ground armies in the field
.” Eisenhower had experience in the field in World War II, and Marshall had not—thus Eisenhower felt qualified to give some advice, especially since, from that experience, he had “earnest convictions” on the matter. The great danger was getting an air commander who was totally wedded to the concept of strategic bombing or one without experience in the problem of air-ground co-ordination. Before and during the assault Marshall would need every plane he could get, but without the proper man at the top he would find that the airmen were scattering their effort on strategic raids inside Germany, making no direct contribution to the battle for the beachhead.

Eisenhower told Smith, “I seriously recommend he [Marshall] insist upon getting Air Chief Marshal Tedder” for his air commander. Eisenhower would hate to lose Tedder in the Mediterranean, but he thought the AFHQ team had developed to the point where he could afford to let Tedder go. Tedder was ideal for the OVERLORD job for two reasons. First, he was an expert in air-ground co-ordination. Second, he had the complete confidence of Chief of Air Staff Portal, which meant that “during critical junctures of the land campaign” Tedder could call on Portal for “every last airplane in England” for support. Tedder was a warm personal friend as well as an outstanding officer, Eisenhower
said, “but I am ready to make this sacrifice in favor of a solution that I believe will be of the utmost advantage to the General.”
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