Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (145 page)

Yet Eisenhower had reason to think Roosevelt was
not
to be believed. Two days after Roosevelt addressed the nation, the president consulted Churchill on the prospects for Italy. “It seems highly probable that the fall of Mussolini will involve the overthrow of the Fascist regime and that the new government of the King and Badoglio will seek to negotiate a separate arrangement with the Allies for an armistice,” Roosevelt wrote. “Should this prove to be the case, it will be necessary for us to make up our minds first of all upon what we want, and secondly upon the measures and conditions required to gain it for us.” The overriding goal, as always, was “the destruction of Hitler and Hitlerism.” Every advantage that could be wrung out of Italy toward this goal should be exploited. A first such advantage would be control of Italian territory and transportation facilities, for use against the Germans. A second would be control, ideally by surrender, of the Italian fleet. “The surrender of the fleet will liberate powerful British naval forces for service in the Indian Ocean against Japan and will be most agreeable to the United States,” Roosevelt said. A third advantage would be the cooperation of the Italian army in fighting the Nazis. How best to attain these advantages was the question. “In our struggle with Hitler and the German army we cannot afford to deny ourselves any assistance that will kill Germans,” Roosevelt told Churchill. “The fury of the Italian population may now be turned against the German intruders who have, as they will feel, brought these miseries upon Italy and then come so scantily and grudgingly to her aid…. We should stimulate this process.”

Churchill worried that Roosevelt was going soft. The prime minister liked the policy of unconditional surrender and thought he and the president ought to stick to it. Eisenhower should sit tight and wait for the Italians to come to him. “It is for their responsible government to ask formally for an armistice on the basis of our principle of unconditional surrender,” Churchill said. Eisenhower should not try to make the Italians’ fate appear any less harsh than it truly was. “There are great dangers in trying to dish this sort of dose up with jam for the patient.” Yet Churchill did accept one Roosevelt recommendation: that Eisenhower refrain from broadcasting any surrender demands. “They would certainly shock the Italian people and would give the Germans full information on which to act.”

Roosevelt responded with a poke where he knew Churchill was sensitive. “I told the press today that we have to treat with any person or persons in Italy who can give us, first, disarmament and, second, assurance against chaos,” he wrote the prime minister. “I think also that you and I after an armistice comes could say something about self-determination in Italy at the proper time.”

The reference to self-determination got Churchill’s attention, as Roosevelt knew it would. The prime minister replied that he didn’t want the president to get the wrong impression regarding an Italian surrender. “My position is that once Mussolini and the Fascists are gone, I will deal with any Italian authority which can deliver the goods,” Churchill wrote. “We have no right to lay undue burdens on our troops.” Perhaps some concessions could be offered; quite possibly they would never have to be fulfilled. “It may well be that after the armistice terms have been accepted, both the King and Badoglio will sink under the odium of surrender and that the Crown Prince and a new Prime Minister may be chosen.” But as for self-determination: “I should deprecate any pronouncement about self-determination at the present time, beyond what is implicit in the Atlantic Charter.” The wrong people might get ideas. “We must be careful not to throw everything into the melting pot.”

While Roosevelt and Churchill debated the terms of surrender, their military and diplomatic advisers did the same. The whole process took weeks—which Eisenhower couldn’t easily spare. The Allied commander gnashed his teeth and tore what little hair he had left. “Poor Eisenhower is getting pretty harassed,” Harold Macmillan, Churchill’s political liaison to Eisenhower, remarked. Eisenhower himself longed for the era of sailing ships, when a general in the field had no choice but to act on his own judgment. “In my youthful days I used to read about commanders of armies and envied them what I supposed to be a great freedom in action and decision,” he wrote his wife, Mamie. “What a notion!! The demands upon me that must be met make me a slave rather than a master.”

Eisenhower grew even more upset when the dithering among the politicians allowed the Germans to get almost to Rome. Badoglio surrendered unconditionally in public, but with private assurances from Eisenhower—tacitly authorized by Roosevelt and Churchill—that leniency would be granted in proportion to Italy’s help against the Germans. Eisenhower thereupon broadcast a radio message urging Italy’s soldiers to redirect their fire against the Germans.

Roosevelt and Churchill offered similar encouragement from afar. “Now is the time for every Italian to strike his blow,” the president and prime minister declared jointly on September 10.

The liberating armies of the Western world are coming to your rescue. We have very strong forces and are entering at many points. The German terror in Italy will not last long…. Strike hard and strike home. Have faith in your future. All will come well.

But all did not come well. The delay allowed the Germans to beat the Americans to Rome. The Germans seized the city, compelling Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio to flee. The prime minister ordered Italy’s troops to turn against the Germans, but by the time most of the soldiers got the word, they had been disarmed by the Germans or had disarmed themselves—dropping their guns and packs, shedding their uniforms, and going home.

Eisenhower was angry and disappointed. “We are in for some very tough fighting,” he warned the Combined Chiefs.

51.

N
OTHING REVOLUTIONIZES THE ART OF WAR LIKE WAR ITSELF.
M
ILITARY
technology changes slowly during peacetime, as arms makers improve on old designs and experiment with new ones. But until the shells start flying, no one really knows which of the improvements and experiments will stick. Weapons that seemed marginal take center stage; old standbys become obsolete overnight.

The U.S.S.
Iowa
wasn’t exactly obsolete in the autumn of 1943, but it contributed far less to America’s force projection than its designers had thought it would. When the
Iowa
’s keel was laid in June 1940, battleships were still the state of the naval art, and the
Iowa
was built to be the class of America’s battleships. It was nearly nine hundred feet long, with a beam of more than a hundred feet. It boasted nine acres of deck and platform space, and 157 guns, including a main battery of nine 16-inchers. It had two catapults for launching planes, engines that developed over 200,000 horsepower, and a maximum speed of thirty-three knots.

But even before the
Iowa
was commissioned in February 1943, naval combat had passed the battlewagons by. Aircraft carriers were the wave of the present and future, capable of standing off much farther than the battleships and of inflicting much greater damage. The
Iowa
was relegated to a supporting role. Its principal mission during the rest of the war would be to shield American carriers in the Pacific from enemy counterattack.

Yet before it reached the Pacific, it had to cruise to North Africa. Roosevelt’s journey to Casablanca in 1942 had cured him of the transatlantic air itch, and when he decided in the autumn of the following year to re-inspect the Mediterranean war zone, he commandeered the
Iowa.
The great ship handled the stormy Atlantic with aplomb. “Heavy following seas were running now, but the
Iowa
rode them comfortably,” the navy lieutenant keeping the log of the president’s journey recorded on the second day out. But even the
Iowa
had to take precautions. “The seas continued to increase throughout the afternoon, and for a while it was necessary to keep all hands off the top side. One man, R. Uriate (Seaman second class, U.S.N.), suffered slight bruises and a big scare when a wave coming over the main deck caught him and knocked him against a heavy object.”

The
Iowa
’s skipper, Captain John McCrea, was pleased to show off his vessel’s capabilities, especially to such an appreciative observer as Roosevelt. An air defense exercise revealed how the navy had adapted to modern tactics of aerial assault. “Live ammunition was fired from a number of units of the ship’s anti-aircraft battery (5-inch, 40 mm. and 20 mm. guns) to demonstrate for the Commander-in-Chief what a veritable curtain of fire a ship of this type can offer as a ‘greeting’ for enemy planes bent on attacking,” the log keeper explained.

Another part of the exercise hadn’t been scripted. “During the lull after one round of the series of firings, a moment of extreme tension was brought on by an unexpected explosion, of an underwater nature, in the vicinity of the ship. This explosion was followed by the terse announcement, ‘This is not a drill.’” All aboard naturally assumed that a torpedo had exploded, especially as the
Iowa
had sharply altered course just moments before. Indeed a torpedo
had
detonated, but it was friendly rather than enemy fire, for whatever small comfort that was worth. One of the destroyers serving as the
Iowa
’s anti-sub-marine screen had accidentally fired a torpedo in the
Iowa
’s direction. The destroyer’s captain subsequently explained the mishap as caused by a short circuit in the firing mechanism, probably the result of moisture from the rough seas. In any event, the torpedo’s wake was spotted by one of the
Iowa
’s lookouts, who warned the bridge, initiating the evasive maneuver that left the torpedo behind. “Had that torpedo hit the
Iowa
in the right spot, with her passenger list of distinguished statesmen, military, naval, and aerial strategists and planners, it could have had untold effect on the outcome of the war and the destiny of our country,” the log keeper mused.

Ernest King thought so, too. The gruff navy chief, who was among the distinguished near casualties, was all for sacking the destroyer’s captain on the spot. But Roosevelt intervened, explaining that the embarrassment of almost killing several layers of his commanders was punishment enough.

Roosevelt found the voyage invigorating. He interspersed presidential business—meeting with his military and naval advisers, discussing politics and diplomacy with Hopkins, tending to the correspondence that followed him via radio from Washington—with the pleasure of watching the navy go about
its
business. Whenever he could he simply sat on deck. “The President spent more than an hour on the flag bridge during the afternoon, seemingly enjoying the squally weather,” the lieutenant recorded.

The closer they got to Africa, the tighter the security drew. An escort aircraft carrier, the
Santee,
provided air cover, with fighter planes scouring the skies around the president’s ship. The
Iowa
stopped transmitting Roosevelt’s radio messages. Written versions were physically transferred to another vessel and broadcast from many miles away, lest the Germans home in on the radio signals. As the task group approached the Strait of Gibraltar, all ships went to general quarters in readiness for attack. They passed the strait under cover of darkness on the night of November 19, and the
Iowa
anchored just west of Oran the next morning. “Total distance, Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Oran, Algeria, via our route, 3806 miles.”

R
OOSEVELT WAS MET
at Oran by Eisenhower and several less senior officers, including Elliott Roosevelt and Franklin Jr. Eisenhower and Franklin Jr. joined Roosevelt for the 650-mile flight to Tunis; Elliott flew in another plane. The president observed the wrecks of the large number of German aircraft that still littered the Tunisian countryside, and he toured the ruins of ancient Carthage. He inspected Elliott’s photo reconnaissance squadron, which comprised six thousand American, British, and French fliers and technicians. The next day he visited the battlefields around Tunis, and Eisenhower supplied details of the fighting there. Burned-out American and German tanks attested to the bitterness of the struggle, as did the one American and several German military cemeteries. A camel caravan sauntered by in the distance, the drivers and animals seemingly oblivious to the most recent intrusion on their ancient lifestyle.

To talk with Eisenhower and observe the battle sites was the smaller part of Roosevelt’s purpose in returning to Africa. The larger part was to meet a man he had been wrestling with for three years but never encountered personally. Chiang Kai-shek had less of a messiah complex than Charles de Gaulle, perhaps because messiahs have never figured so centrally in Chinese culture as in the cultures of the West. But Chiang was fully as convinced as de Gaulle that he embodied his country, and his actual command of a government and an army—as opposed to de Gaulle’s dreams of such command—tended to corroborate his conviction. Yet it was only a tendency, and opinions differed as to the degree and quality of Chiang’s command, not to mention the character and credibility of the Chinese government and the army.