Supreme Commander (12 page)

The British found it difficult to believe the Americans were serious about SLEDGEHAMMER. While Eisenhower and Marshall tried to concentrate on the future potential of the Western alliance and the current danger to the Russians if something were not done, the British—whose men would have to carry out the attack—quite naturally concentrated on practical problems. These were nearly insurmountable. Again quoting Jacob, “The Atlantic wall was not to be despised, even in 1942. Moreover, the Allies had had no experience of carrying out large opposed landings under modern conditions. The technique of assault forces, of bombardment, of air support, of off-shore protection and of administrative organisation was unknown and untried. There were no battle-trained troops available, and, except in the Middle East, there had been no opportunity
for commanders to handle large forces in battle. On the other side, the Germans had plenty of troops standing ready in France and the Low Countries to oppose a landing without drawing on the Russian front.… There would have to be no doubt about the power to support the subsequent operations with ample reinforcements of men, equipment and supplies. There was grave doubt, to say the least of it, about this in 1942.”
¹⁵
After a long look at SLEDGEHAMMER, the BCOS refused to participate.

Once the British had turned down SLEDGEHAMMER, they could open other possibilities for action in 1942 that could satisfy Roosevelt’s desire to get troops into combat. Churchill offered three alternatives—JUPITER, an operation in Norway; reinforcement of the British Eighth Army in the Mid-East with American troops; an invasion of French North Africa. Almost every professional soldier in both countries opposed JUPITER, while Marshall was loath to put Americans under a British commander in Egypt, so it came down to North Africa.

As Marshall’s plane flew toward England he determined to make one last effort to convince the British that SLEDGEHAMMER was feasible. Failing that, he could try to convince them—and, more important, Roosevelt—that the proper strategy was to continue progress on BOLERO, increase bombing raids against Germany, and wait until 1943 before doing anything on the ground. The worst possibility was North Africa, since the drain that would impose on Allied resources would kill off ROUNDUP.

Eisenhower and the ETO staff were all Marshall could count on for help. His traveling companions, except for a couple of officers from OPD, did not share his views. The British were well aware of this and were prepared to exploit the divided American councils. Brooke noted in his diary on July 15, “It will be a queer party, as Harry Hopkins is for operating in Africa, Marshall wants to operate in Europe, and King is determined to stick to the Pacific.”
¹⁶
Brooke knew how strongly Marshall felt, for Dill had warned Churchill that there was no possibility of changing Marshall’s mind. “Marshall feels, I believe, that if a great businessman were faced with pulling off a
coup
or going bankrupt he would strain every nerve to pull off the
coup
and would probably succeed.”
¹⁷

Churchill was not overly worried because he knew that the key man, Roosevelt, was on his side. In a series of telegrams to the President, Churchill made SLEDGEHAMMER seem ridiculous, argued that an operation in North Africa would help the Russians, said that North
Africa “is the true 2nd front of 1942,” and urged the President to mount the operation while going “full steam ahead on ROUNDUP.”
¹⁸

On July 16, while Marshall and his party proceeded to their first stop, the airport at Prestwick, Scotland, Eisenhower and his staff worked on a position paper. Eisenhower began by reviewing the history of SLEDGEHAMMER. He pointed out that it was designed to keep Russia fighting and added that ROUNDUP, which the British claimed to support, would be a feasible operation only if the Russians were still fighting in 1943. “The only real test of SLEDGEHAMMER’S practicability,” Eisenhower emphasized, “is whether or not it will appreciably increase the ability of the Russian Army to remain a dangerous threat to the Germans next spring.” The trouble was no one really knew the situation in Russia and there was a sharp difference of opinion on the ability of the Red Army to hold out. Speaking for himself and his staff, Eisenhower thought “the Russian situation is at least sufficiently critical to justify any action on our part that would clearly be of definite assistance.” A successful SLEDGEHAMMER would give the Russians a morale lift and, eventually, material help. “Unsuccessful attack may depress and discourage the Russians—but even this should convince them that we are trying to assist.”

After presenting the background, Eisenhower considered the alternatives. JUPITER was impossible, since it required three to four hundred carrier-based fighter airplanes and they were not available. GYMNAST was “strategically unsound” as an operation either to support ROUNDUP or to aid the Russians. If undertaken, “
it should be done on the theory that the Russian Army is certain to be defeated
” and designed to improve the Anglo-American defensive position in the European Theater. As far as Eisenhower was concerned, in other words, the only real alternatives were SLEDGEHAMMER or nothing (“nothing” meaning BOLERO merging into ROUNDUP), and Roosevelt’s orders to Marshall eliminated nothing as a possibility.

For Eisenhower, then, the task was to convince the British that SLEDGEHAMMER could work. He examined various possible landing sites and recommended Le Havre, with a later operation against Cherbourg. He said that the operation should be under British command, with participating U.S. troops attached to appropriate British formations. If the attack went on September 15, the U.S. could contribute two infantry divisions (the 1st and 34th), four tank battalions, and some scattered units.

Estimating the probability of success, Eisenhower warned, was difficult.
Landing craft shortages limited the initial landing to one division, aircraft cover would be minimal, and even if the assault force got ashore the Germans might be able to drive it back into the sea. “I personally estimate that, favored by surprise, the chances of a fairly successful landing by the leading division are about 1 in 2,” Eisenhower said, while the chances of establishing a force of six divisions in the area were about 1 in 5.

Following the gloomy prediction, Eisenhower declared and then underscored, “
But we should not forget that the prize we seek is to keep 8,000,000 Russians in the war.
”

Before a conclusion could be reached, Eisenhower said, two questions had to be answered. Was the Russian situation so desperate as to justify an operation whose costs would reduce readiness for ROUNDUP? And would a partially successful SLEDGEHAMMER help the Russians? Eisenhower felt that if the answer to both questions was yes, then SLEDGEHAMMER was “a practical operation and should be launched at the earliest possible date,” while if the answer to both questions was no, then the Allies should forget SLEDGEHAMMER. If they dropped the 1942 invasion, then the Allies should redouble the BOLERO program. If Russia was defeated that fall the Western Allies should “go immediately on the strategic defensive in the Atlantic” and prepare to assume the offensive against Japan.
¹⁹

On Saturday, July 18, and the following morning, Marshall, Eisenhower, King, Clark, Admiral Harold Stark, the commander of the U.S. naval forces in the British Isles, and various staff officers from Washington and London talked over Eisenhower’s recommendation. Marshall adopted them with only one important change: the site of the attack should be Cherbourg, not Le Havre. The Chief of Staff then asked Eisenhower to prepare a formal memorandum that he could present to the BCOS the next day.

Eisenhower had a memorandum ready that night. Much of his paper repeated what he had already said in the notes he had handed Marshall. He did attempt to make the British see what was at stake by declaring that, if the Western Allies allowed the Germans to “eliminate an Allied army of 8,000,000 men, when some stroke of ours might have saved the situation,” then they “would be guilty of one of the grossest military blunders of all history.” He therefore recommended that preparations for SLEDGEHAMMER go forward and that in early September an evaluation of the Russian situation be made. At that time a final decision on SLEDGEHAMMER could be reached. This
proposal had the great advantage of stalling Churchill while holding out to Roosevelt the promise of some action in 1942. If in September the decision was not to go on with SLEDGEHAMMER, it would be too late to mount a North African expedition.
²⁰

On Sunday night, July 19, Marshall, King, Eisenhower, and Clark worked on the memorandum. The final version, which Marshall presented to the BCOS and Churchill on Monday morning, was much shorter than the one Eisenhower had written. Marshall dropped most of the strategic arguments and simply concentrated on proposing that an attack be made on Cherbourg. He argued that the assault force, once ashore, could remain and would draw Germans from the Russian front.
²¹

All day Monday and again on Tuesday the British argued with Marshall. Eisenhower noted that “the decisions to be made are not only highly secret but momentous. There is an atmosphere of tension that will disappear once the decisions are completed and we actually know what we are to do.”
^22
*
Marshall held out for SLEDGEHAMMER, carefully and fully answering all British objections. Eisenhower and Clark stayed up until after midnight each night providing their Chief with information on American landing craft production, delivery schedules, intelligence estimates of German strength, and so on. But time and again the British rejected Marshall’s arguments and made it clear that they were absolutely against the attack. As Eisenhower summed it up, the British believed SLEDGEHAMMER “would have no beneficial effect on the Russian situation” and in addition felt “the chances of tactical disaster are very great.”

The American officers, Eisenhower noted, “sat up nights … and have tried to open our eyes clearly to see all the difficulties and not to be blinded by a mere passion for doing something.” The last factor, he added, could not be ignored, for the British and American people “need to have the feeling that they are attempting something positive.” An added irritation to the Americans was their feeling that only Churchill, not the British professional soldiers, stood in their way. “I have held earnestly to the opinion that any fight this year should be within the general scope of the ROUNDUP objectives, and designed to forward and facilitate ROUNDUP when it can occur,” Eisenhower reported
to a friend in the War Department. “In spite of the fact that a great many of the British Air and Army officers agree to this view in private, the government itself was dead against it.”
²³

On Wednesday, July 22, the climax came. Eisenhower sat in his office and chatted with an aide, admitting that it had been a tough grind and that he was worried about his recommendation to mount SLEDGEHAMMER. If it was adopted, he said, “I sincerely hope that it works out with reasonable success.”
²⁴
Marshall and King met with Churchill and the BCOS. After a heated debate, the Americans “admitted defeat” and abandoned SLEDGEHAMMER. The British were unalterably opposed, and that was that.
²⁵

Marshall cabled Roosevelt to admit that he and the British were deadlocked. Roosevelt sent back orders for Marshall to develop plans to bring American ground troops into action against the Germans in 1942. He said Marshall could choose from an offensive against French North Africa in combination with the British, or one carried out by Americans alone, or JUPITER, or sending American troops into Egypt to fight under the British Eighth Army, or an operation through Iran into the Caucasus.
²⁶

Before deciding, Marshall turned to Eisenhower, asking him to prepare yet another paper. By this time Eisenhower may have wondered what was the point of his leaving OPD. He was, in addition, depressed. At breakfast on Thursday morning, July 23, he and Clark talked about the end of SLEDGEHAMMER. “Well, I hardly know where to start the day,” Eisenhower said. “I’m right back to December fifteenth.” He thought that Wednesday, July 22, 1942, could well go down as the “blackest day in history.” Despite his mood he gathered together his staff and “they settled down to assemble pieces of the wreckage of their plans.”
²⁷
By evening Eisenhower had an eleven-page “Survey of Strategic Situation” ready for Marshall.

It began with a list of assumptions—no cross-Channel attack in 1942, no offensive in the Pacific, and so on. After a long review of the German, British, and American military situations, Eisenhower considered three possible operations: reinforcement of the Middle East, an attack in northwestern Africa (GYMNAST), or the seizure of the Azores and the Cape Verdes. He listed the advantages inherent in a reinforcement of the Middle East but pointed out that the operation “is purely negative in purpose” and involved much costly shipping. The idea of operating against Atlantic islands was also negative and defensive, so was not worth serious consideration.

This brought Eisenhower to GYMNAST, another defensive operation “designed to limit German exploitation in Africa” and to relieve the situation in the Mediterranean. If successful, it could deny North Africa to the Axis, protect sea communications in the South Atlantic, provide air bases, ease the shipping crisis by opening the Mediterranean, and provide direct support to the Middle East. The disadvantages were obvious, especially the most important one—if Marshal Henri Pétain ordered Vichy’s troops to resist, he could delay or jeopardize the operation and Vichy would become actively allied with the Germans. GYMNAST would pull American naval forces from the Pacific, open a new theater, and possibly bring Spain into the war on the German side. Most of all, like the option of reinforcing the Middle East, mounting GYMNAST would mean postponing ROUNDUP.

In the end, therefore, the only major operation Eisenhower liked was ROUNDUP. What he and Marshall really wanted was to get by in 1942 doing as little as possible. One way to do that and still satisfy the President might be to send what would amount to a token force to the Eighth Army, which would alleviate the “On to Richmond” type of pressure while causing minimum interference with ROUNDUP. Eisenhower’s final recommendations, therefore, were to make no cutback on BOLERO, to send one U.S. armored division to Egypt, and to undertake no major operation which would interfere with ROUNDUP.
²⁸