Roosevelt (53 page)

In the fog of politics French officers groped for instructions and order. By midafternoon of the eighth, with Algiers almost surrounded, its coastal batteries overrun, its forts under siege, Darlan agreed to the capitulation of the city. It was different elsewhere. Two cutters with a mixed commando force had stormed Oran harbor before dawn; both had been destroyed, with the loss of all but a handful of the force. Troops made rapid progress ashore at Oran, but the French were resisting and by evening were preparing counterattacks for the next day. The heaviest fighting erupted on the Atlantic beachheads. Noguès, in Casablanca, assumed from first reports that the attack was merely a commando raid; he ordered resistance. After some amateurish landings that produced endless delay and muddle, American troops ran into heavy French gunfire as they pressed into the main cities.

The most dramatic action was a sea battle off Casablanca—“an
old-fashioned fire-away Flannagan” between surface vessels, it was called by Samuel Morison, the combat historian present. French warships sortied from the harbor against the big American fleet;
Jean Bart,
the uncompleted French battleship lying immobile in the harbor, spoke with her fifteen-inch guns; American battleships, cruisers, and destroyers poured fire on the hapless French flotilla, sinking or disabling the
Jean Bart
at her berth and a dozen other warships. Among the numerous American sailors winning commendation that day was Lieutenant Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., a gunnery officer on a destroyer.

During the following days young Roosevelt’s father, who had returned from Shangri-La to the White House, would doubtless have swapped his place for his son’s in a simple fire-away Flannagan. Reports from Algiers and Gibraltar were indicating a political situation of mounting complexity and danger. On November 9 Eisenhower’s deputy, General Mark Clark, arrived in Algiers, amid a Nazi bombing raid, with the hope of ending hostilities. Giraud arrived, too, with a long-time “promise” from Roosevelt that he would be top man in North Africa. Clark met with Darlan the next day. The American General, like his chief in Gibraltar, abhorred the political aspects of the war. He divided the French leaders into good guys and those he code-named, in reports to Eisenhower, YBSOBS—“yellow-bellied sons-of-bitches.” Clark’s overwhelming way had its immediate impact; Darlan wanted to wait for more definite orders from Vichy as to a cease-fire, but under Clark’s pressure he sent directives in the Marshal’s name to Oran and to Morocco, where Noguès ordered a cease-fire just in time to avert a heavy American attack.

It was one thing for Clark, with his bigger battalions, to obtain an armistice, something else to gain Roosevelt’s real objective-active French assistance in attacking Germans and Italians to the east. In his continuing negotiations with Clark, Darlan had some high cards: his seeming embodiment of the will and confidence of the Marshal; his influence over the officers, bureaucrats, and
colons
who ran France’s African domain; his ability to draw things out in contrast to Eisenhower’s desperate need to get Northwest Africa pacified and the French mobilized for the push into Tunisia before the Germans gained a foothold there. The French fleet at Toulon was the big pot in the game. One thing was rapidly becoming clear: American Intelligence had been grievously wrong in thinking that Giraud had strong support, existing or potential, among the French. He was simply dismissed as a
dissident.
Happily Giraud himself came to realize his political impotence and was willing to take military command in Africa under Darlan’s headship.

While Clark and Darlan negotiated, Hitler acted with his usual dispatch. Meeting with Laval in Munich, the Führer demanded that Vichy at once make Tunisian ports and air bases available to the Axis. Laval proclaimed his fanatic hostility to Bolshevism—but only the Marshal could grant Hitler’s request. The Führer gave immediate orders. At midnight that evening—November 11—motorized German units stabbed across the armistice frontier and swept through southern France without resistance. Italian divisions moved into southeastern France and Corsica. The Axis took steps to fortify Tunisia, even at the expense of Rommel’s army retreating west under harrying attacks from Montgomery’s desert troops.

Hitler’s gulp of the rest of France broke the impasse in Algiers. While Pétain publicly ordered Darlan to continue fighting, the Admiral could claim that the Marshal was acting under duress and in any event was sending out secret orders countermanding his public ones. Negotiations were soon concluded. Eisenhower, who made a brief trip to Algiers, Clark, and Murphy agreed with Darlan, Giraud, and other local French leaders that Darlan would be the political chief and would retain his command of naval forces; the French would actively help liberate Tunisia, and other matters would be left to further negotiations. To the Americans on the scene it seemed to be a safe and sensible arrangement—certainly nothing that could produce an explosion back home.

“Prostitutes are used; they are seldom loved. Even less frequently are they honored.” The Darlan deal was only the latest and worst of a long series of concessions and bargains that had weakened and were still weakening democratic resistance. “The United States has only one claim on the allegiance of the peoples of the world: an honest and courageous democratic policy.” Africa had produced a “historic clash between two theories of political behavior—the ‘quarterback’ or opportunist theory, long indorsed by the President, and the theory which insists upon the importance of a thought-out, consistent political line.” But what doubtless appeared a reasonable military expedient was proving a costly political blunder. Darlan was America’s first Quisling. Appeasement was winning out. These were the words of Freda Kirchwey, editor and publisher of the
Nation,
but also the sentiments of a host of liberals, idealists, and independents when they got news of the Darlan deal. Walter Lippmann and Dorothy Thompson raised sharp and influential voices. Feeling was even stronger in liberal and left-wing circles in Britain. In both countries opposition developed in high councils of state. Concerned about the effect of the deal on de Gaulle’s status and morale, Eden wrangled with Churchill to the point where the Prime Minister shouted, “Well, Darlan is not as bad as de
Gaulle anyway!” In Washington, Stimson was so alarmed at the reaction that he invited his best liberal friends—Morgenthau, Frankfurter, MacLeish—to his home and argued for the military value of the deal. Morgenthau was not placated. He passionately denounced Darlan as a man who had sold thousands of people into slavery, as a violent British-hater; no, the price was too high. The Secretary of the Treasury seemed to Stimson so “sunk” that he was almost for giving up the war. If Frankfurter had any misgivings about the deal, there is no record of his having communicated them to the President.

Stimson performed a bigger service for the President that evening. He heard from Elmer Davis that Willkie was about to address the New York Herald Tribune Forum and to denounce American leaders for promising freedom to the French people and then putting their enslaver in control of them. “Shall we be quiet when we see our government’s long appeasement of Vichy find its logical conclusion in our collaboration with Darlan, Hitler’s tool?” Reaching his fellow Republican by telephone less than an hour before he was to speak, Stimson implored him to delete the critical passage or otherwise jeopardize the lives of 60,000 soldiers. Willkie lost his temper, denounced Stimson for trying to control his freedom—but after exhausting his reservoir of profanity he agreed to tone down his speech. As delivered, it merely pummeled that battered old punching bag, the State Department. The President listened to Willkie’s broadcast and later telephoned Stimson to congratulate him.

By the iron laws of mutual hostility, the more the Americans embraced Darlan in Algiers, the more they alienated de Gaulle in London. The Free French leader, at first exhilarated by the landings in Africa, turned cold toward the invaders as they parleyed with the men of Vichy. He felt that the Darlan deal was politically shortsighted, tactically ineffective, and an American ploy for postwar supremacy. “What remains of the honor of France,” he proclaimed, “will stay intact in my hands.” He called on Admiral Stark and tendered a one-sentence note: “The United States can pay traitors but not with the honor of France.” Stark refused to accept it. Churchill was caught between his desire to sustain the soldiers in the field, his policy of recognizing de Gaulle and working with him, and the revulsion against Darlan among the people and even within his own government. Somehow he managed to back Eisenhower while making clear that the Darlan deal was essentially an American undertaking.

At first Roosevelt seemed unmoved by the furore. He received from Eisenhower a strong cable explaining that if Darlan was repudiated, French armed forces would resist passively and perhaps actively—and the possibility of getting the French Navy out of
Toulon intact and of winning French military assistance in France would be gone. Impressed by this cable, Roosevelt read it to Hopkins with such superb emphasis that it seemed to Sherwood, sitting by, as if he were making a plea for his European commander before the bar of history. But as the tumult over Darlan mounted, Roosevelt was compelled to issue a public justification. “I have accepted General Eisenhower’s political arrangements made for the time being in Northern and Western Africa.” He understood and approved the widespread feeling that in view of the history of the last two years no permanent arrangement should be made with Darlan. “We are opposed to Frenchmen who support Hitler and the Axis. No one in our Army has any authority to discuss the future Government of France and the French Empire.

“The future French Government will be established, not by any individual in Metropolitan France or overseas, but by the French people themselves after they have been set free by the victory of the United Nations.

“The present temporary arrangement in North and West Africa is only a temporary expedient, justified solely by the stress of battle.” It was designed to save lives and to speed the attack on Tunis. He had asked for the abrogation of all laws inspired by Nazi governments or ideologists.

At the same time Roosevelt assured Eisenhower that he appreciated his difficulties, did not question his actions in any way, and that the General could be sure of Roosevelt’s complete support-but that Eisenhower should keep in mind:

“1. That we do not trust Darlan.

“2. That it is impossible to keep a collaborator of Hitler and…a fascist in civil power any longer than is absolutely necessary.” He asked that Darlan’s movements be watched and his communications supervised.

Brave words—and yet they masked Roosevelt’s sharp disappointment over the political problems in Africa. The operation had been a stirring success militarily, with American casualties amounting to less than 1,500, and a bracing fillip for the people back home, but celebration of this was dimmed by the criticism. When Morgenthau, still depressed after his visit with Stimson, came to the White House to say that North Africa was “something that afflicts my soul,” Roosevelt gave him the usual argument of military expediency and went on to quote an “old Bulgarian proverb of the Orthodox Church: ‘My children, you are permitted in time of great danger to walk with the Devil until you have crossed the bridge.’ ” Roosevelt liked the proverb so much he repeated it both to Churchill and to the press, adding to the reporters, “Mind you, this is okayed by the church.”

The trouble was that Roosevelt had as little desire to walk with
the devil as had the people he led. Rosenman could not remember a time when he was more deeply affected by a political attack, or resented his critics more, especially since so many of them were usually his supporters. At times he refused to discuss the matter at all; other times he read aloud with bitterness some columnist’s criticism. It did not help that Stalin later approved the Darlan deal on the ground that military diplomacy must be able to use not only the Darlans but “Even the Devil himself and his grandma.” That was doing the Bulgarian one better, but Roosevelt preferred to clothe his policies in idealism, because fundamentally he
was
an idealist.

Still, he was also a practical man, and the final irony of the expedient North African policy was that the expediency failed in major respects. The French did resist initially, causing and sustaining casualties. It was hoped that Darlan could bring over the French fleet in Toulon, but when the Germans closed in on the naval base late in November the French scuttled their fine battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. It was hoped that the French would actively help in the Tunisian campaign, but they proved unwilling or unable to lend decisive assistance. Above all, it was hoped that an early cease-fire would enable the Allies to make a quick thrust into Tunisia, but the Germans got there first, the weather turned foul, and soon the Americans and British were stalled on the Tunisian front. If the Darlan policy had been effective as a way of achieving major short-run military goals, it was far less rewarding, and even probably a handicap, in achieving long-run or even middle-run strategic objectives. Darlan’s assassination in Algiers the day before Christmas 1942 relieved Roosevelt of the person but not the problem.

So Roosevelt and his soldiers were left with a gnawing worry about the price that might be paid, impossible to estimate, in disappointment and chagrin among anti-Nazi French inside and outside their country, and among free peoples everywhere who wondered just how far one could walk with the devil, how often, and at what price.

“The President becomes more and more the central figure in the global war, the source of initiative and authority in action, and, of course, of responsibility.” So wrote Hassett in his diary toward the end of November 1942. Hassett, who was as close to his chief as a valet and only a shade less iconoclastic, went on: “A little impatient at delay in offensive against Tunis and Bizerte. ‘Why are they so slow?’ he queried. But still calm and composed, always
at his best, as the first year of the war draws to a close. Still unruffled in temper, buoyant of spirit, and, as always, ready with a wisecrack or a laugh, and can sleep anywhere whenever opportunity affords—priceless assets for one bearing his burdens, which he never mentions. No desire to be a martyr, living or dead.”