Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (141 page)

T
HE WEEK PLAYED
out much as Roosevelt anticipated. Churchill professed to be urging de Gaulle to come to Casablanca, but the general, he said, was obdurate. Roosevelt meanwhile met with Giraud, who was delighted at the American attention. Giraud spoke no English, and though Roosevelt had an interpreter, Robert Murphy, he made do, for the most part, in Giraud’s language. The general emphasized his determination to fight. “No distractions should be permitted to interfere with the conduct of the war,” he said. He declared that all he required was American arms. “Only give us the arms. Give us the guns and the tanks and the planes. It is all we need.”

Roosevelt asked where the troops to employ the arms would come from.

“We can recruit colonial troops by the tens of thousands!”

Who would train them?

“There are plenty of officers under my command. It constitutes no problem. Only give us the arms!”

Roosevelt tried to get Giraud to address the political problems of the war. The president was thinking ahead to how France would be reconstituted as a great power, and he didn’t want to have to rely on de Gaulle. But he got nowhere. “Giraud swept these questions aside,” Elliott Roosevelt, present at the meeting, recalled. “He was single-minded.” Arms were the general’s idée fixe. After Giraud left, Roosevelt shook his head. “I’m afraid we’re leaning on a very slender reed,” he told Elliott.

Roosevelt’s disappointment with Giraud made him want to see de Gaulle all the more. Giraud’s focus on fighting and certain other of his comments suggested that he could work with the more political de Gaulle. Roosevelt needled Churchill about de Gaulle over cocktails and meals. Hopkins worked on Churchill as well. The prime minister said he was doing what he could, but de Gaulle was stubborn.

Roosevelt began to wonder whether de Gaulle would ever come. “We delivered our bridegroom, General Giraud, who was most cooperative on the impending marriage and, I am sure, was ready to go through with it on our terms,” the president wrote Cordell Hull. “However, our friends could not produce the bride, the temperamental lady de Gaulle. She has got quite snooty about the whole idea and does not want to see either of us, and is showing no intention of getting into bed with Giraud.”

But Roosevelt had traveled a long way, and he wasn’t going to leave without making every effort to bring de Gaulle to the altar. Henry Stimson, who got the story from Roosevelt upon the president’s return to America, related Roosevelt’s final effort. Roosevelt and Churchill were talking, and the prime minister registered, or perhaps feigned, exasperation at de Gaulle’s refusal to budge from London. “Roosevelt asked whether de Gaulle got any salary and who paid him,” Stimson wrote. “Churchill replied that he, Churchill, paid it. Then said the President, ‘I should suggest to him that salaries are paid for devoted and obedient service and, if he doesn’t come, his salary would be cut off.’ De Gaulle came the next day.”

Yet he didn’t come happily, and his unhappiness showed. He met only briefly with Roosevelt, and in private. No interpreter or note taker was present, although Roosevelt stationed an assistant outside the door, which was kept slightly ajar. De Gaulle, noticing the door and guessing the presence of the note taker, spoke so softly as to be inaudible to Roosevelt’s aide. The aide did hear what Roosevelt said. The president defended the Darlan deal, which he knew de Gaulle despised. And he predicted that winning the war would necessitate other compromises. But he said that Giraud had made clear that his sole ambition was to get on with the fighting, until French soil was freed of the enemy. Roosevelt related a bit of American history, explaining how the Civil War had divided the nation for a time but how after the war “the people realized that personal pride and personal prejudices must often be subordinated for the good of the country as a whole.” Roosevelt expressed hope that the people and leaders of France would adopt a similar view. “The only course of action that will save France is for all of her loyal sons to unite to defeat the enemy.”

The meeting lasted twenty minutes. De Gaulle agreed to nothing—except the one thing Roosevelt wanted most, for now. On the final day of the conference the president managed to get de Gaulle and Giraud to his villa at the same time. Churchill was there, too. “De Gaulle was a little bewildered,” Hopkins observed.

Churchill grunted. But the president went to work on them…. De Gaulle finally agreed to a joint statement, and before he could catch his breath, the President suggested a photograph. By this time the garden was full of camera men and war correspondents who had been flown down the day before. I don’t know who was the most surprised, the photographers or de Gaulle, when the four of them walked out—or rather the three of them, because the President was carried to his chair…. The President suggested de Gaulle and Giraud shake hands. They stood up and obliged. Some of the camera men missed it, and they did it again.

R
OOSEVELT HAD ONE
more trick to play. News of the conference had been blacked out until this final day, and the president wished to give the press corps a story. He arranged a news conference for himself and Churchill, and he commenced with a summary of what had been discussed and decided on. Much was innocuous and predictable, but the news-hungry correspondents scribbled furiously. They thought he had covered all the major topics and was wrapping up when he suddenly added:

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 the determination that peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power.

Some of you Britishers know the old story—we had a general called U. S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in my, and the Prime Minister’s, early days he was called “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. The elimination of German, Japanese, and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan. That means a reasonable assurance of future world peace. It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy, or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.

Churchill afterward acknowledged “some feeling of surprise” at Roosevelt’s unveiling of the policy of unconditional surrender. The policy itself had been in the works for months. It initially arose in American planning the previous May, and it reflected the unsatisfactory denouement of the First World War, which had ended with the German armistice. Roosevelt raised the issue with Churchill at Casablanca, where the prime minister apparently registered some reservations as to whether it ought to apply to Italy, which he—like some of the American planners—thought might be lured away from the Axis by adept diplomacy joined to military duress. Churchill referred the matter to the war cabinet in London, which replied that the surrender policy should not exclude Italy. As Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden cabled for the cabinet: “Knowledge of all rough stuff coming to them is surely more likely to have desired effect on Italian morale.”

But neither the British cabinet nor the prime minister had said anything about making the policy public—hence Churchill’s surprise at Roosevelt’s doing so without warning. The president’s statement left Churchill no choice. “In my speech which followed the President’s,” Churchill wrote later, “I of course supported him and concurred in what he had said. Any divergence between us, even by omission, would on such an occasion and at such a time have been damaging or even dangerous to our war effort.”

K
EEPING
C
HURCHILL
off balance was a conscious aspect of Roosevelt’s strategy. Keeping Stalin off balance came with the territory of the Grand Alliance. As part of their conclusion of the Casablanca conference, Roosevelt and Churchill composed a letter to Stalin. “We have decided the operations which are to be undertaken by American and British forces in the first nine months of 1943,” they wrote. “We believe these operations, together with your powerful offensive, may well bring Germany to her knees in 1943…. We are in no doubt that our correct strategy is to concentrate on the defeat of Germany, with a view to achieving early and decisive victory in the European theatre.” So far so good, Stalin must have thought. But as he read on he saw nothing about an invasion of France. “Our immediate intention is to clear the Axis out of North Africa…. We have made the decision to launch a large scale amphibious operation in the Mediterranean at the earliest possible moment…. We shall increase the Allied bomber offensive from the U.K. against Germany.” The best the British and Americans could offer by way of a second front was the promise of a buildup of forces in Britain and a professed desire “to re-enter the Continent of Europe as soon as practicable.”

“I thank you for the information,” Stalin replied curtly. Perhaps the Soviet leader felt betrayed; perhaps he thought his allies were reverting to capitalist form. Whatever the case, his displeasure was clear. He reminded the president and prime minister of their earlier promise regarding Germany. “You yourselves set the task of crushing it by opening a second front in Europe in 1943.” The Soviet Union awaited fulfillment of this promise. “I should be very obliged to you for information on the concrete operations planned in this respect and on the scheduled time of their realization.”

Churchill drafted a joint response. The prime minister explained that the British and Americans expected to complete the conquest of North Africa by the end of April. “When this is accomplished, we intend, in July, or earlier if possible, to attack Italy across the Mediterranean.” Roosevelt revised Churchill’s draft, not wishing to commit to an invasion of Italy proper, which in any event would anger Stalin the more, as distracting the Allies further from France. Roosevelt’s version, which was the one sent to Moscow, said the Americans and British would attack Sicily. Churchill’s draft had continued: “We are aiming for August for a heavy operation across the Channel, for which between seventeen and twenty British and U.S. divisions will be available.” Roosevelt again revised, keeping the August date but eliminating the commitment to a particular number of divisions, which seemed to him impossible to guarantee. He added a disclaimer: “The timing of this attack must of course be dependent upon the condition of German defensive possibilities across the Channel at that time.”

Stalin wasn’t mollified in the least. He asked why it would take until April to mop up in North Africa and why until August or later to invade France. The Red Army had closed the ring at Stalingrad and captured some hundred thousand German troops (and nearly two dozen generals). Hitler’s army was reeling. “In order to prevent the enemy from recovering, it is highly important, in my opinion, that the blow from the West should not be postponed until the second half of the year, but dealt in the spring or at the beginning of summer.”

This time Roosevelt answered by himself. The delay in North Africa, he said, had been caused by “unexpected heavy rains that made the roads extremely difficult for both troops and supplies en route from our landing ports to the front lines and made the fields and mountains impassable.” As to the second front: “You may be sure that the American effort will be projected onto the Continent of Europe at as early a date subsequent to success in North Africa as transportation facilities can be provided by our maximum effort.” He closed: “We hope that the success of your heroic army, which is an inspiration to us all, will continue.”