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“A COMMON BOND OF DANGER”

Just weeks after the American entry into World War II, British and American political and military leaders met for the first time as coalition partners, in Washington, D.C. The meetings set out in broad terms how the British, who wrote most of the meeting documents, thought the war should be fought. At this meeting, code-named ARCADIA (22 December 1941 to 14 January 1942), a memorandum of understanding was agreed to that became, to a large degree, one of the sources of ongoing debate and mistrust between the Allies. This was because circumstances overtook many of the assumptions on which the understanding was based and because there was as yet only the embryo of a U.S. strategic planning structure and no American strategic plan.¹

The memo, titled “W.W.-1,” affirmed the agreements reached the year before at the so-called ABC (American-British conversations) meetings that Germany was “the prime enemy and her defeat is the key to our victory…. In our considered opinion, therefore, it should be a cardinal principle of American-British strategy that only the minimum of force necessary for the safeguarding of vital interests in other theatres should be diverted from operations against Germany.”²

“W.W.-1” went on to list the essential strategic concepts, including “closing and tightening the ring around Germany” and “wearing down and undermining German resistance by air bombardment, blockade, subversive activities and propaganda.”³ This ring would be strengthened by “sustaining the Russian front, by arming and supporting Turkey, by increasing our strength in the Middle East, and by gaining possession of the whole North African coast.”⁴

The evaluation of the opportunities for offensive actions was straightforward: “It does not seem likely that in 1942 any large-scale land offensive against Germany except on the Russian front will be possible…. In 1943 the way may be clear for a return to the Continent, via the Scandinavian Peninsula, across the Mediterranean, from Turkey into the Balkans, or by simultaneous landings in several of the occupied countries of Northwestern Europe.”⁵ The only option not mentioned was one massive cross-Channel assault.

The memorandum was, by necessity, sweepingly general and vague. How, when, and by what path the fight was to be taken to Germany had yet to be determined. In short, while the concept of offensive action existed at ARCADIA, the ways and means and any particular strategy did not. Identifying Germany as the “prime enemy” was simply the lowest common denominator.

While there was no disagreement that Allied resources needed to be concentrated against Germany, just what constituted “the minimum of force necessary” for the Pacific and the strategic value of increasing Allied strength in the Mediterranean quickly became the subjects of serious debate that remained unresolved until the end of 1943. Indeed, for the American military and the American public, the crisis of early 1942 was in the Pacific.

Two long-lasting agreements did come out of the ARCADIA conference; first, agreement with the proposal by the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George Marshall, to unify command at the strategic level—each theater of operations would have one supreme commander, either British or American, who would direct all forces of all nations in that theater. While occasionally honored in the breach, notably for OVERLORD, this was at least a concept that was embraced; and, second, agreement to create the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), bringing together the military and naval service heads from both countries. Formed to direct the theater commanders, the chiefs, reporting directly to the president and prime minister, were responsible for reaching agreement on the general strategic direction of the war and on the actions necessary to achieve the agreed strategic goals. The nine high-level interallied conferences held between 1943 and 1945 were attempts to achieve those agreements.⁶ Beyond that, Americans and British were in constant contact with each other, often through the offices of the British Joint Service Mission in Washington, D.C., where the American Joint Chiefs could talk to their counterparts “in real time.” The Joint Staff Mission represented the British Chiefs of Staff (COS) and was headed by Field Marshal John Dill, former chief of the Imperial General Staff. He quickly gained the trust and respect of the Americans. His great ability to find common ground between the Americans and British at times of profound disagreement has been overlooked by some historians. Of equal importance were the various joint and combined staffs that would be formed to support and inform the decisions reached by the CCS.

Just over six weeks after the end of the ARCADIA conference, at the end of February 1942, the new director of the War Plans Division of the U.S. Army, Brig. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, submitted a memo to General Marshall that outlined what would become a fundamentally different central idea in the American approach to strategy. Rejecting the British peripheral approach spelled out at ARCADIA, Eisenhower agreed that keeping Russia in the war was one of three key objectives for the Allies, but the best way to do that was for the United States to develop, “in conjunction with the British, a definite plan for operations in Northwest Europe. It should be sufficiently extensive in scale as to engage from the middle of May [1942] onward, an increasing portion of the German Air Force, and by late summer an increasing amount of his ground forces.”⁷

By the end of March 1942, Eisenhower and what was now the Operations Division of the Army’s Chief of Staff office had prepared an outline of “Operations in Western Europe” that Marshall would present to the British chiefs in April. There were three components: BOLERO, the concentration of troops and supplies in Britain in preparation for an invasion; ROUNDUP, the invasion, anticipated for the spring of 1943; and SLEDGEHAMMER, conceived as an emergency operation for 1942, to be conducted if the situation in Russia became desperate, with the hope that it would temporarily divert some German forces from the East, even at the sacrifice of the Allied troops involved.

There was no disagreement about BOLERO. From the British perspective, having a buildup of American forces in Great Britain would be beneficial in any conceivable set of circumstances, either offensively or defensively.

SLEDGEHAMMER was rejected by the British in relatively short order. The Americans would have been able to provide and support perhaps two and a half divisions and some air assets. The rest of this sacrificial force would be British and Canadian, and they had by this time little interest in intentional operations of this type. Indeed, SLEDGEHAMMER resembled many proposed cross-Channel operations that suffered from the same flaws, most notably Operation IMPERATOR.

In response to a paper submitted by the British Joint Planning Staff in March 1942 that pointed out that the Russian situation was critical and a major diversion in the West might be required, the British COS proposed IMPERATOR as a response to an anticipated Russian cri de coeur. They suggested sending a reinforced infantry division across the Channel as a raid-in-force, to stay for about a week, hoping to draw German air force units into battle under favorable conditions.

This prompted a scathing reply from Churchill:

1….Certainly it would not help Russia if we launched such an enterprise, no doubt with world publicity, and came out a few days later with heavy losses. We should have thrown away valuable lives and material, and made ourselves and our capacity for making war ridiculous throughout the world. The Russians would not be grateful for this worsening of the general position. The French patriots who would rise to our aid and their families would be subjected to pitiless Hun revenge…. It would be cited as another example of sentimental politics dominating the calm determination and common sense of professional advisors.

2. In order to achieve this result, we have to do the two most difficult operations of war—first landing from the sea on a small front against a highly prepared enemy, and second, evacuating by sea two or three days later the residue of the force landed.

… When our remnants returned to Britain a la Dunkirk, [the result] would be that everyone, friend and foe, would dilate on the difficulties of landing on a hostile shore. A whole set of inhibitions would grow up on our side prejudicial to effective action in 1943.

I would ask the Chiefs of Staff to consider the following two principles:

(a) No substantial landing in France unless we are going to stay, and

(b) No substantial landing in France unless the Germans are demoralized by another failure against Russia.⁸

SLEDGEHAMMER, while championed by the Americans who wanted to go on the offensive in Europe in 1942, was never realistic in terms of tactics, troops, supplies, or shipping. It did, however, constitute a beginning of sorts that had some practical effects. Vital logistic preparations, needed before any such undertaking could be attempted, were begun. “The first of these was to reactivate some of the south and southeasterly commercial ports [the Falmouth, Plymouth, Southampton group, and some of the London docks].”⁹ These facilities had been closed as part of British anti-invasion preparations in 1940. There was also planning, particularly the start of logistic planning regarding the troops that were expected to arrive.

ROUNDUP had a longer life but ultimately suffered the same fate, albeit for different reasons. When General Marshall presented the three concepts to the British COS, there was agreement in principle that planning should go ahead for a major cross-Channel operation in 1943 as well as the short-lived possible emergency operation in 1942. Agreements in principle do not, as a rule, include specific, detailed plans for their execution, and so it was in this case.

As plans began to be made, and without any agreed-on offensive operation planned against Germany for 1942 that involved U.S. troops, a series of debates began in Washington and London. The Russians needed support. The Western Allies were anxious to demonstrate that support. FDR was anxious, for domestic political reasons, to have the United States take the offensive against Germany in 1942. Britain needed to secure the Mediterranean, while gaining the whole of North Africa was part of Britain’s plan from the beginning. The U.S. Army needed to have Europe be an active theater of operations to counter the U.S. Navy’s demands for resources in the Pacific, especially after the victory at Midway.

This and more led to a decision by FDR and Churchill in July 1942, against the strong advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and counter to an earlier agreement between the CCS, to launch Operation TORCH, the invasion of Morocco and Algeria, in November of 1942. Churchill proclaimed that the operation would be cheap, that it was the “true second front of 1942 … the safest and most fruitful stroke that can be delivered this autumn.”¹⁰ A consequence of the decision, known at the time but not accepted by all participants, was that troops and material needed for a cross-Channel attack would now not be available before the spring of 1944. As U.S. chief of naval operations Adm. Ernest King and Marshall wrote into the Combined Chiefs of Staff document, “Options in 1942–43” dated 24 July 1942, “A commitment to this operation [TORCH] renders ROUND-UP in all probability impractical of successful execution in 1943.”¹¹ Eisenhower held a briefing for Churchill in September of 1942. There Churchill “and certain of his close personal advisors” became “acutely conscious of the inescapable costs of TORCH.”¹²

Eisenhower wrote to Marshall after the meeting:

The arguments and considerations that you advanced time and again between last January and July 24th apparently made little impression upon the Former Naval Person at the time, since he expresses himself now as very much astonished to find out that TORCH practically eliminates any opportunity for a 1943 ROUNDUP.¹³

The planning for ROUNDUP to take place in 1943 became an academic exercise, and the code name with variations (ROUNDHAMMER, Super ROUNDUP) became a generic title for plans relating to crossing the Channel at some point. There was, of course, no agreed-upon plan for a cross-Channel assault, and the British particularly continued to hope that such an invasion would prove unnecessary or would occur only when Germany had been fatally weakened by air bombardment and defeats on the Russian Front. In part this was because the forces available in Great Britain were, in 1942, neither fully equipped nor particularly well trained.

In June 1942 now Major General Eisenhower was sent to London by Marshall to evaluate and report on the Special Observers Group, whose work was of some concern now that BOLERO had been approved and needed to be implemented. He returned with serious concerns about the leadership there and declared, “It is necessary to get a punch behind the job or we’ll never be ready by spring [1943] to attack [that is, launch a cross-Channel invasion].”¹⁴

While there was not going to be a 1943 cross-Channel assault, Marshall took Eisenhower’s advice to heart and sent him back to London to take command of the newly created European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army. By late July, with TORCH now the operation that was to be executed, the question of who was to command was raised. On the advice of Admiral King, newly promoted Lieutenant General Eisenhower was ironically designated the commander, and yet another new command was formed, Allied Force Headquarters, housed at Norfolk House, on St. James’s Square, just off Pall Mall, in the center of London.

TORCH’s shambolic but successful landings on 8 November 1942, fortunately opposed by Vichy French and not veteran Germans, got the United States into the war against Germany and allowed for the next meeting on the strategic direction of the war, code-named SYMBOL, to be held at Casablanca, in what was then French Morocco from 14 to 24 January 1943.

Much has been written about the strategic debates at Casablanca and the commitments reached to continue operations in the Mediterranean for 1943, setting aside potential opportunities in Northwest Europe.¹⁵ The disagreements reflected those deeply held beliefs that showed themselves early in the coalition and were never fully resolved until the middle of 1944. The essential basis for the serious disagreements that continued to exist between allies stemmed from different approaches to the issues at hand.

Churchill, as demonstrated at a meeting at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, prior to the Casablanca conference, deliberately disdained all attempts to establish any overall strategic concept. He wrote, “In settling what to do in a vast war situation like this, it may sometimes be found better to take a particular major operation to which one is committed and follow that through vigorously to the end, making other things subordinate to it, rather than assemble all the data from the world scene in a baffling array. After the needs of the major operation have been satisfied … other aspects of the war will fall into their proper places.”¹⁶ As General Alan Brooke, chairman of the COS, noted in his diary in January of 1943, Churchill “often wished to carry out … sudden changes in strategy! I had the greatest difficulty in making him realize that strategy was a long-term process in which you could not frequently change your mind. He did not like being reminded of this fact and frequently shook his fist in my face and said, ‘I do not want any of your long-term projects, all they do is cripple initiative.’ ”¹⁷ Brooke, whose colleagues in Whitehall nicknamed him “Colonel Shrapnel,” was described by Churchill as a “stiff-necked Ulsterman and there’s no one worse to deal with than that.” The historian Alex Danchev, in writing about the two, noted, “Where Churchill had an iron whim, Brooke had an iron will.”¹⁸

It seemed to the Americans, as Admiral King explained to FDR during the Casablanca conference in January 1943, that “the British have definite ideas as to what the next operation should be but do not seem to have any over-all plan for the conduct of the war.”¹⁹ The same day King declared to the British chiefs, “It is important to determine how the war is to be conducted. Is Russia to carry the burden as far as ground forces are concerned? [Is] a planned step-by-step policy going to be pursued or are we relying on seizing opportunities … Germany’s defeat can only be effected by direct military action and not by a collapse of morale.” Marshall added the question, “Was the [proposed] operation in Sicily part of an integrated plan to win the war or was it simply taking advantage of an opportunity?” Hap Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, added, “We … have to decide not only what we are going to do in 1943 but also in 1944 since otherwise … our priorities in production might be wrongly decided.”²⁰

The British chiefs responded by saying that because there were too many variables, it was impossible to map out “a detailed plan for winning the war.” The forces being built up in Great Britain should continue to be used as the “final action of the war as soon as Germany gives definite signs of weakness,” and there would come a point (sometime in the future) “at which the whole [German] structure … would collapse.” In the meantime, Allied policy should be to force Italy out of the war and to bring Turkey in.²¹

One meeting at the Casablanca conference clearly demonstrates the essential differences in approach. The Americans needed a strategic plan with what today would be called “milestones” and a “critical path” that would lead to direct action against Germany. The United States was still getting itself organized for war. Logistics and industrial production were at the top of the United States’ planning list. The British position was that Allied ground forces were still too weak for a direct confrontation, and if Italy could be taken out of the war, if the ring around Germany could be tightened, if the bombing of German cities could be increased, and if the Russians could inflict defeats on German ground forces, then Germany would collapse. Once Germany’s will to resist had been broken, invasion would either be unnecessary or weakly opposed, if resisted at all.

Concerning Turkey, the British chiefs were well aware that the primary benefit was geographic. According to Brooke, “The real value would have been the use of Turkey for aerodromes and as a jumping off place for future action.”²² In August of 1943, on the way to the Quebec conference, the War Cabinet’s Joint Staff noted that “bomber forces based in Turkey would be in the best position to bomb Ploesti [the site of key Romanian oil fields], but other worth-while targets are few…. The moment … for Turkey to enter the war on our side is not yet ripe.”²³ In truth, it would have been a net drain on Allied manpower and resources, yet the argument for Turkey continued to be made. It is also true that no one seemed to ponder the question of why Turkey would want to enter the war when their current situation as a neutral was so favorable for them. Geography was going to ensure that they would be the victor’s friend regardless. In the end Turkey declared war on Germany when it was convenient, in February 1945.

For the Americans, the Pacific and European theaters were connected; strategy and domestic politics demanded offensive action in both at the same time. The British, with their home islands just twenty-one miles from the German-occupied Continent, thought more in sequential terms regarding strategy and focus: first Germany, then Japan. While the maintenance of India was strategically critical, the rest of Asia and the Pacific was of secondary value to the British, notwithstanding the political damage they suffered by their inability to defend Australia and New Zealand as well as the loss of prestige that came with the fall of Singapore. To them, most Asian issues could be negotiated and agreed on at the postwar conference table.

By the end of the Casablanca conference nine major decisions were made:

Winning the U-boat war

Increasing the strategic bombing offensive

Invading Sicily

Continuing support of Russia

Conducting limited offensives in the Pacific

Reopening the Burma Road

Increasing U.S. air presence in China

Concentrating forces in the United Kingdom for an eventual return to the Continent

Pursuing a policy of unconditional surrender²⁴

The decisions to continue operations in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific had the anticipated effect of moving BOLERO to the bottom of the priority list, and there was no great buildup of U.S. troops in Britain for the first half of 1943. By the end of February 1943, “the European Theater of Operations had become a stand-by theater manned by a skeleton crew.”²⁵

Near the end of the Casablanca conference, on 22 January 1943, the Combined Chiefs discussed a paper presented by the Combined Planners called Proposed Organization of Command, Control, Planning and Training for Operations for a Re-entry to the Continent across the Channel beginning in 1943. The idea of some sort of staff had been discussed by the British chiefs at least since August of 1942. As they noted then, “The organization, planning and training for eventual entry into the Continent should continue so that this operation can be staged should a marked deterioration in German military strength become apparent, and the resources of the United Nations available after meeting other commitments, so permit.”²⁶ An aide-mémoire written by the secretary of the COS committee before a meeting with the ROUNDUP planners during the same month noted that a joint and combined staff could be formed, headed by a “Brigadier or equivalent rank. This syndicate would have at their disposal the considerable quantity of information … which has already been collected for ROUNDUP.”²⁷

The Combined Chiefs agreed with the proposal to form a U.S./British staff to bring cohesion to the planning process for an eventual cross-Channel operation. Where, when, or with what forces was not specified. They intentionally did not appoint a commander or deputy commander to lead the operation, in part because no operation had been authorized. It was also likely that neither General Brooke nor General Marshall could identify a competent commander who, along with his staff, could be spared from more urgent assignments. FDR had proposed a British supreme commander while Churchill suggested that it was only necessary for someone to look to the planning at this stage. At a later meeting the Combined Chiefs proposed that a British officer be assigned as chief of staff for the time being.²⁸

In examining this proposal FDR questioned whether “sufficient drive would be applied if only a Chief of Staff were appointed.” General Brooke thought that “a man with the right qualities … could do what was necessary in the early stages.” It was left at that.²⁹

“A Common Bond of Danger” is a phrase used by Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944, in U.S. Army and World War II (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1959), 18.