Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Dependence to World Leadership (80 page)
Authors: Conrad Black
BOOK: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Dependence to World Leadership
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Stalin supported the American view, as he had told Roosevelt he would. He said that the Russian general Alexander Suvorov in 1799 had established that it was impossible to invade Germany from Italy. He said the Italian campaign was of secondary importance to Russia and there could be no decisive outcome there, that he doubted Turkey would enter the war, and that the Balkans were of more interest but a long way from the heart of Germany, and rugged country. “We Russians believe that the best result would be a blow at the enemy in northern France. Germany’s weakest spot is France. The Germans will fight like devils to prevent such an attack.”
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Churchill’s ambivalence could not now continue. He expressed his support for Overlord, but said Britain could contribute only 16 divisions, not an impressive figure to the Russians or even the Americans, and an inexplicable conference gambit. Churchill expected Rome to fall in two months (it would take over six months) and saw a domino theory involving Turkey and the Balkan countries, and asked Stalin’s detailed views. Stalin questioned him closely but courteously and after some minutes back and forth said that after the capture of Rome, the Italian effort should be continued in southern France and the invasion there should join forces with the Overlord armies and proceed into Germany. “Overlord should be the basic operation for 1944.” (He here volunteered that he had had peace overtures from Germany and preliminary discussions in Stockholm.)
Brooke claimed in his diary that Stalin only supported Overlord because he assumed the Germans would throw the Western Allies into the sea, as they had done a number of times to the British, and that this would be the best of all worlds for him: Germany heavily distracted in the west, but the British and Americansdefeated, enabling Stalin to continue indefinitely into Europe.
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It was assumed that Stalin was also angling for Communist Party takeovers in France and Italy. (Roosevelt peremptorily rejected Stalin’s request for a place on the Italian Control Commission, though he did allow the Italian Communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti, into the provisional government as a minister without portfolio, with philosopher Benedetto Croce.) Brooke wrote in his diary for November 28 that “The conference is over when it has only just begun. Stalin has got the President in his pocket.” This was the beginning of the myth, largely propagated by the British, though not by Churchill himself, that Stalin had duped Roosevelt. Brooke may have been correct that Stalin expected Overlord to fail, but it was Roosevelt who had triumphed, in causing Stalin to advocate precisely the course that assured the West the bulk of the geopolitical assets of Europe, and denied them to Russia. Churchill’s Adriatic option would have facilitated Stalin’s designs. Stalin and Churchill had inadvertently championed courses of action that were detrimental to the interests of both. Roosevelt had performed a remarkable diplomatic feat.
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It was assumed that Stalin was also angling for Communist Party takeovers in France and Italy. (Roosevelt peremptorily rejected Stalin’s request for a place on the Italian Control Commission, though he did allow the Italian Communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti, into the provisional government as a minister without portfolio, with philosopher Benedetto Croce.) Brooke wrote in his diary for November 28 that “The conference is over when it has only just begun. Stalin has got the President in his pocket.” This was the beginning of the myth, largely propagated by the British, though not by Churchill himself, that Stalin had duped Roosevelt. Brooke may have been correct that Stalin expected Overlord to fail, but it was Roosevelt who had triumphed, in causing Stalin to advocate precisely the course that assured the West the bulk of the geopolitical assets of Europe, and denied them to Russia. Churchill’s Adriatic option would have facilitated Stalin’s designs. Stalin and Churchill had inadvertently championed courses of action that were detrimental to the interests of both. Roosevelt had performed a remarkable diplomatic feat.
Correctly judging Overlord’s likely success and recruiting his country’s postwar rival to secure the reluctant adherence of his great but, on this issue, mistaken ally was an astoundingly successful maneuver. The next day, Roosevelt again met privately with Stalin and outlined the international organization he had in mind. Stalin wasn’t much interested, but he was clearly prepared to go along with such a fig leaf for the Great Powers (among whom he did not number China or France), but was very concerned about the permanent demilitarization of Germany. That appeared to be the subject of Stalin’s only fear and desire, apart from seizing as much of Europe as he could. Stalin’s next line of attack in the plenary sessions was to impugn the credibility of Overlord if no commander had been designated. Churchill and Roosevelt promised that the commander would be named within two weeks. Stalin questioned Churchill’s commitment to Overlord and Churchill growled back that he was committed to it as long as certain conditions were met. The British leader had boxed himself into a corner by playing games with the Americans until Roosevelt had to dragoon Stalin into settling the issue.
On the evening of November 29, there was a disagreeable incident over Stalin’s suggestion that 50,000 German officers be shot out of hand. Churchill strenuously objected and stormed out of the dinner, but Stalin, in conciliatory mode, fetched him amiably back. The two leaders embraced. In private conversation, Roosevelt, in complete friendliness, advised Churchill to remember that he was now (for the first time) a party leader and would have to fight an election as soon as the war was over, which they believed would be within two years. He told Churchill that if he didn’t produce a social and political vision for his war-weary people, he could lose. Churchill would have done well to listen to Roosevelt, the all-time heavyweight champion of democratic politics.
On November 30, Winston Churchill’s 69th birthday, it was agreed by the British and American chiefs that Overlord would take place by June 1, provided the Russians launched a major offensive in the east to coincide with it and prevent Hitler from transferring units from east to west. Churchill had a private meeting with Stalin and tried to recoup lost ground by pledging to Overlord 500,000 of Britain’s best troops, 4,000 aircraft, and the Royal Navy’s entire Home Fleet, the most powerful naval force in the Atlantic. The United States, the Battle of the Atlantic having been won, would be sending 150,000 soldiers a month to Britain. Churchill’s birthday dinner at the British embassy that evening was a very jolly affair that continued through endless flattering toasts, including Stalin’s deep admiration for American aircraft production of 10,000 a month. It ended at 2 a.m.
It is alleged by Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s labor secretary, that Roosevelt claimed to have disparaged Churchill the next day to ingratiate himself with Stalin, having apologized in advance to Churchill for doing so. No one else who was present—and almost all the British and Americans who wrote memoirs of the conference—recalled any such episode, so it probably didn’t happen. But what possessed Roosevelt to tell Miss Perkins such a story (she was a generally reliable source) is disconcerting.
The generals and admirals departed to sightsee in Jerusalem, leaving the leaders to discuss political matters. Roosevelt largely absented himself from a discussion of Poland, though he said that he approved moving Poland’s eastern and western borders 250 miles to the west and giving East Prussia (Konigsberg) to the Russians. He was unwise to tell Stalin he wanted no reference to these arrangements until after the next U.S. election, 11 months away, because of Polish American voters. But it didn’t matter, as Stalin did not believe a word of Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s comments on what they could do in their domestic political environments. He assumed that such formidable leaders could do what they wanted and regarded these democratic niceties as nonsense, like the schoolboy claiming the cat ate his homework.
A communiqué was agreed that pledged to enlist the world to the elimination of “tyranny, slavery, oppression, and intolerance,” and claimed that the three leaders departed Tehran “friends in fact, in spirit, and in purpose,” a serious liberty, which conformed to Churchill’s assertion, in the most famous line of the conference and in another context, that “The truth deserves a bodyguard of lies.” Stalin later told the Yugoslavian communist politician Milovan Djilas that “Churchill would pick my pocket for a kopek; Roosevelt only dips in his hand for larger coins.”
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Roosevelt and Churchill went to Cairo and met with Turkish president Ismet Inonu. He was extremely resistant to the idea of entering the war. Churchill and Eden accompanied him to the airport and Inonu embraced and kissed Churchill. Eden remarked that that was all they got from him. Roosevelt departed for Tunis. He had asked Marshall what he would prefer, between continuing where he was or commanding Overlord. Marshall, with his usual selflessness, declined to express a preference, because he did not think his wishes should be thought relevant. Roosevelt said he would be uneasy without Marshall at his side, and in Tunis appointed Eisenhower the Overlord commander, Churchill having agreed that it was Roosevelt’s decision and that either Marshall or Eisenhower would be entirely acceptable to the British.
If Stalin had sided with Churchill on a Balkan campaign, he would have ended up with most of Germany and would have had a crack at a communist France. Tehran was one of the greatest triumphs in the history of Western diplomacy; Roosevelt’s was on a par with Franklin’s in Paris in 1778 (Chapter 3). Having a man of Stalin’s cunning and cynicism advocate something detrimental to his territorial ambitions in Central and Western Europe because he underestimated Western military capabilities was a colossal achievement. Roosevelt flew to Palermo to review troops and encourage General George S. Patton (whom he considered “a joy”), as Patton had had to apologize to his army for slapping a demoralized but otherwise uninjured soldier in a field hospital. He flew on to Dakar, where the
Iowa
awaited him, and returned from there to the United States, arriving back at the White House on December 17. The war would now be a countdown to the invasion of Western Europe, followed, if that were successful, by a race to Berlin.
8. THE RETURN OF THE ALLIES: D-DAYIowa
awaited him, and returned from there to the United States, arriving back at the White House on December 17. The war would now be a countdown to the invasion of Western Europe, followed, if that were successful, by a race to Berlin.
As 1944 opened, the forces of Stalin, MacArthur, Nimitz, and Alexander were all in inexorable progress toward their objectives, Berlin, Manila, Tokyo, and Rome. The Germans retreated from Leningrad at the end of January, ending a siege of 29 months, in which the Russians lost a million soldiers and a million civilians, and suffered nearly 2.5 million wounded and critically ill from famine or exposure. The Russians recaptured Odessa on April 10 and Sevastopol on May 9. MacArthur’s forces seized most of the Admiralty Islands in March and invaded Dutch New Guinea in April. Nimitz’s marines took Kwajalein in February, and landed at Saipan, nearly 2,000 miles west of Honolulu on June 15 (where the Japanese would lose 30,000 dead out of 31,000 defenders, many incinerated or asphyxiated by flame-throwers in caves where the U.S. Marines had chased them, or suicide victims as they leapt from cliffs rather than suffer the indignity of being captured). The Allies made an amphibious landing at Anzio, 30 miles south of Rome, on January 22, but instead of exploiting their advantage, dug in, and were almost dislodged by the Germans. From March to May, the Allies breached the German Gustav Line, especially at Monte Cassino, and approached Rome, which fell to the Americans on June 4, without significant fighting within the city.
The European Advisory Commission (set up at the Moscow foreign ministers’ meeting in October 1943 to deal with German matters), which Roosevelt tried to discourage from doing anything until the Western Allied armies were well established in France and at least approaching Germany, was galvanized to action by the Russians and British in early 1944. It met in London and was chaired by the third-ranking member of the British Foreign Office (after Eden and Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Cadogan), Sir William Strang, who had assisted Chamberlain at Munich and led the ill-fated mission to try to negotiate arrangements with Russia in 1939. The other members were the U.S. and Soviet ambassadors in London, John G. Winant and Feodor Gousev. Winant was assisted by George F. Kennan, a Russian expert and career diplomat, who would go on to great distinction as the original architect of the West’s postwar strategy to counter the USSR.
Winant was slightly aware of the Tehran agreements that would move the western borders of the Soviet Union and Poland each more than 200 miles to the west, but no one else in the State Department was, including Hull. And Strang and Gousev knew nothing about those agreements, and Winant was under orders from Roosevelt not to breathe a word about them. While the Western nightmare was that Stalin would make a separate peace with Hitler (the Russo-German Stockholm discussions after Stalingrad and Kursk were not revived, but that was mainly because Hitler was not interested), the Soviet nightmare was that Hitler would be disposed of by the Germans, who would make a separate peace with the British and the Americans as the post-Mussolini Italians did. The particular British concern was that, as Churchill had explained at Tehran, the British contribution of manpower on the ground in Germany would be only a quarter of the American total (if the Canadians were lumped in with the British, which Roosevelt knew was not how the Canadians perceived themselves), and about 10 percent of the Russians, and the British would end up with a postage stamp of an occupation zone.
The commission met on January 14, and Strang presented a plan that gave the three powers almost equal zones and left Berlin 110 miles inside the Russian zone. Winant countered with Roosevelt’s hastily executed design on the
National Geographic
map on the USS
Iowa,
which was the only instruction he had, from the Joint Chiefs (to whom Roosevelt had given it on the ship), confining Russia to the east of Berlin, with the eastern and western Allied zones meeting there. The U.S. had 46 percent of prewar Germany, Britain 34 percent, and the Soviet Union only 20 percent. Gousev rejected Winant’s plan as completely unacceptable, and presumptuous, considering that in Europe, the West only had forces in Italy, where they were not overly numerous by Russian standards, nor advancing very quickly.
National Geographic
map on the USS
Iowa,
which was the only instruction he had, from the Joint Chiefs (to whom Roosevelt had given it on the ship), confining Russia to the east of Berlin, with the eastern and western Allied zones meeting there. The U.S. had 46 percent of prewar Germany, Britain 34 percent, and the Soviet Union only 20 percent. Gousev rejected Winant’s plan as completely unacceptable, and presumptuous, considering that in Europe, the West only had forces in Italy, where they were not overly numerous by Russian standards, nor advancing very quickly.
Winant and Kennan requested more information from Washington so they could support the president’s plan, but never received anything useful, as the other powers became impatient. Finally Kennan returned to Washington, naturally received no enlightenment from the State Department, and requested an audience with the president, which was accorded in mid-March. Roosevelt said he would clarify matters. The British and the Russians agreed on a version of their own, similar to Strang’s and giving almost equal zones to the three powers, leaving Berlin inside the Russian zones, but with British and American zones of Berlin and three assured access routes to Berlin from the western zones of Germany. Roosevelt was “irritated”
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but on May 1 sent Winant an instruction to accept the Anglo-Russian fait accompli.
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but on May 1 sent Winant an instruction to accept the Anglo-Russian fait accompli.
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