Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (137 page)

Having framed the discussions this way, Roosevelt wasn’t surprised that they resulted in the abandonment of the early western front. “Marshall and King pushed very hard for Sledgehammer,” Hopkins reported after a week in London. But the British stood firmly against it, and Marshall and King reluctantly concluded what Roosevelt already had: that without British support, Sledgehammer simply couldn’t go forward.

This left North Africa, as Roosevelt knew it would. And the decision having been arrived at, even if apparently by default, the president was eager to press forward. Roosevelt replied to Hopkins that he wanted to move “full speed ahead” on the North Africa campaign.

48.

“I
SHOULD GREATLY LIKE TO HAVE YOUR AID AND COUNTENANCE IN
my talks with Joe,” Churchill wrote Roosevelt on August 4. “Would you be able to let Averell come with me? I feel that things would be easier if we all seemed to be together. I have a somewhat raw job.”

Joe was Stalin, Averell was Harriman, who had been with Roosevelt at the Atlantic Conference and would become ambassador to Moscow, and the raw job was explaining that there wouldn’t be a second front in Europe in 1942. Eight months after the signing of the Declaration of the United Nations, the leaders of the principal members of the alliance had yet to meet. Churchill was traveling to the Middle East, to buck up the troops in Egypt, and he decided to fly on to Moscow. Roosevelt declined to join him. The president considered the United States the first among equals in the Grand Alliance—the armorer of Britain and Russia, the exemplar of democracy—but until American troops got into the fight he would be at a diplomatic disadvantage to Churchill and Stalin, and American interests would suffer accordingly. Yet he wanted a representative at the Churchill-Stalin meetings. So he sent Harriman.

Stalin received the unwelcome news much as Churchill expected. “Stalin took issue at every point with bluntness almost to the point of insult, with such remarks as you can’t win wars if you aren’t willing to take risks and you mustn’t be so afraid of the Germans,” Harriman cabled Roosevelt after the initial session. Churchill attempted to mollify Stalin by explaining the rationale for the North African operation. “The Prime Minister drew a picture of a crocodile,” Harriman wrote, “and pointed out that it was as well to strike the belly as the snout.” Stalin inquired of the details of the proposed operation, displaying what Harriman characterized as a “masterful grasp of its implications.” He displayed genuine interest when Churchill described the bombing campaign against Germany already begun by Britain, which the Americans would soon join. “Homes as well as factories should be destroyed,” Stalin said. He and the prime minister discussed targets. “Between the two of them they soon destroyed most of the important industrial cities of Germany,” Harriman informed Roosevelt.

But Stalin returned to the failure of his allies to fulfill their promise. In a long session that ran far past midnight, he declared that the Anglo-American reversal left Russia in the lurch. “The Soviet Command built their plan of summer and autumn operations calculating on the creation of a second front in Europe in 1942,” he said. “It is easy to grasp that the refusal of the government of Great Britain”—Stalin singled out Britain, since Churchill was there, but he spoke to Roosevelt as well—“to create a second front in 1942 in Europe inflicts a moral blow to the whole of the Soviet public opinion.” Stalin rejected the Anglo-American argument that 1943 would be better than 1942 for opening a front in France. On the contrary, the Germans had sent all their best troops to Russia, leaving France unguarded. “We are of the opinion, therefore, that it is particularly in 1942 that the creation of a second front in Europe is possible and should be effected.”

Roosevelt rejoined from afar. “I am sorry that I could not have joined with you and the Prime Minister,” he cabled Stalin. “I am well aware of the urgent necessities of the military situation, particularly as it relates to the situation on the Russian front.” The president noted that American forces were engaging the Japanese at Guadalcanal—which, he conceded, didn’t do Russia any direct good, in that Russia and Japan were not at war. “I know very well that our real enemy is Germany and that our force and power must be brought against Hitler at the earliest possible moment. You can be sure that this will be done just as soon as it is humanly possible to put together the transportation.” Meanwhile, Roosevelt said, the United States would increase its supplies to the Soviet Union, sending a thousand tanks and various other arms, including aircraft, within the month. All the same, he knew that troops were the critical issue. “Believe me when I tell you that we are coming as strongly and as quickly as we possibly can.”

“E
VERYTHING FOR US
now turns on hastening Torch,” Churchill wrote Roosevelt upon leaving Moscow. Torch was the new name for Gymnast, and it connoted the hopes of the British and Americans to set North Africa on fire, or at least to let it light the way to Europe and eventual victory. The prime minister reiterated the “really grievous disappointment” the Russians felt upon learning that there would be no second front soon, and he judged the North Africa operation, essential on its own terms, to be indispensable in restoring the credibility of Britain and the United States as Russia’s allies.

The operation required a commander. Churchill had already broached the subject with Roosevelt, in the context of the broader issue of European command. “It would be agreeable to us if General Marshall were designated for supreme command of Round-up and that in the meantime General Eisenhower should act as his deputy here,” the prime minister wrote the president. Round-up was the heir to Sledgehammer, and it designated a second front in 1943 or after. Marshall, as the most forceful advocate of the second front, seemed the obvious choice. Churchill went on to say that Eisenhower could oversee preparations for Torch, which would test American troops and prepare them for Round-up. “As soon as Torch has taken shape, he would command it.”

Roosevelt demurred regarding a commander for the invasion of Europe. He didn’t think he could spare Marshall, and he didn’t have another obvious candidate. In any event, he understood that the decision for North Africa pushed France even farther into the future. Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Churchill’s representative on the Combined Chiefs staff in Washington, knew the American military mind as well as anyone. He wrote Churchill on August 1 describing American thinking. “The President has gone to Hyde Park for a rest, but before going he issued orders for full steam ahead on Torch at the earliest possible moment,” Dill said. “In the American mind, Round-up in 1943 is excluded by acceptance of Torch.” Roosevelt wasn’t sharing this view with Stalin, preferring his formula of “we are coming as quickly and powerfully as we possibly can.” But it meant that he could wait on choosing a commander for Europe.

For now he was happy to accept Churchill’s suggestion of Eisenhower for Torch. Roosevelt didn’t know Eisenhower well, but he had implicit faith in the judgment of Marshall, and Marshall liked Eisenhower.

“T
HE ATTACK
should be launched at the earliest practicable date,” Roosevelt told Churchill of the North African operation. “The date should be consistent with the preparation necessary for an operation with a fair chance of success, and accordingly it should be determined by the Commander-in-Chief”—Eisenhower—“but in no event later than October 30th.”

The timing was important for Russian morale—the sooner the better. It was also important to Roosevelt politically. By the end of October the United States would have been at war for eleven months, with little to show for the effort and sacrifice Roosevelt had asked of the American people. And elections would be at hand. The president didn’t worry about his own popularity, if only because he wasn’t on the ballot. But the Democratic majority in Congress had declined dramatically since 1936, and anything that contributed to voter dissatisfaction might undermine what remained of that majority.

The Republicans treated the war issue with some delicacy, yet not all that much. Wendell Willkie had become Roosevelt’s favorite Republican—except for Henry Stimson and Frank Knox—by his support of measures Roosevelt deemed essential to national security. On one occasion Harry Hopkins made a slighting remark about Willkie and provoked “as sharp a reproof” as Robert Sherwood heard Roosevelt utter in the decade they worked together. “Don’t ever say anything like that around here again,” the president told Hopkins. “Don’t even
think
it. You of all people ought to know that we might not have had Lend-Lease or Selective Service or a lot of other things if it hadn’t been for Wendell Willkie. He was a godsend to this country when we needed him most.” Roosevelt revised his feelings somewhat in September 1942 when Willkie showed up in Moscow and gave a press conference in which he sympathized with the Russian demands for a second front. “They are almost prayerfully anxious for more aid,” Willkie said. “They appreciate the help they are getting from us, but do not consider it adequate. The morale value of a second front would be enormous.”

Roosevelt affected not to notice. When a reporter sought a reaction to Willkie’s comments, the president feigned ignorance.

“You did not know that was going on?” the reporter pressed.

“Oh, I had read some headlines, but I didn’t think it was worth reading the stories,” Roosevelt said.

The president hadn’t planned an extensive political campaign, intending to let his work on the war speak for itself and for the Democrats. But he decided to help with the phrasing. In a Fireside Chat in mid-September he reminded Americans that there were “four main areas of combat” in the war: the Russian front, the Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe. “Various people urge that we concentrate our forces on one or another of these four areas,” he said. But most of those people didn’t have sufficient information to render valid judgments regarding priorities. “Certain vital military decisions have been made. In due time you will know what these decisions are—and so will our enemies. I can say now that all of these decisions are directed toward taking the offensive.” The president explained that in nine months of war the United States had sent three times as many men overseas as it had during the comparable period of the First World War. “We have done this in spite of greater danger and fewer ships. And every week sees a gain in the actual number of American men and weapons in the fighting areas.” The deployments would continue to go forward until America and its allies achieved victory—a victory that would render irrelevant the current talk of one front or another. “This war will finally be won by the coordination of all the armies, navies, and air forces of all of the United Nations operating in unison against our enemies.”

Roosevelt complemented this speech and his few others of the campaign with a tour of defense plants. He visited a converted Chrysler factory in Detroit that built tanks, a Ford facility in Willow Run, Michigan, that produced B-24 bombers, an Allis-Chalmers plant in Milwaukee that made ammunition, a Boeing plant in Seattle that assembled B-17s, a Kaiser yard in Portland, Oregon, that constructed cargo ships, an Alcoa smelter in Vancouver, Washington, that turned bauxite into aluminum, and a Higgins yard in New Orleans that churned out landing craft.

Roosevelt’s security detail enforced secrecy regarding his movements, which annoyed the press even as it created opportunities for workers at the plants he visited—and at some he didn’t visit. It became a fairly common practice for workers arriving home late to claim that the president had dropped by their plant that day. If a spouse expressed surprise, remarking that the local papers had said nothing about a presidential visit, the tardy worker would explain that it was a state secret. On his stop at the Portland Kaiser yard, Roosevelt made a joke of the security that surrounded him. His daughter, Anna, accompanied him and launched a ship, which skidded down the ways into the water. The president rolled forward in his open car, in plain view of newsreel cameras and many thousands of the workers. “You know,” he said over the loudspeaker, “I am not supposed to be here today.” The crowd laughed appreciatively. But Merriman Smith, a reporter with the United Press syndicate who was detailed to follow the president without knowing where the next stop would be or what he would be able to tell of what he observed, wasn’t amused. “Damned if I saw anything to laugh about,” Smith said.