Joseph E. Persico (42 page)

When news of the alleged assassination plot hit the newspapers, the Iranians were outraged. The foreign minister cabled his ambassador in Washington, in a message stamped “Secret,” but broken by Arlington Hall cryptanalysts: “Do you realize what a bad impression this statement will make in the circumstances in Iran and the whole world? Also the truth is that there was no plot against these three persons in Iran.” But as for publicly repudiating the charge, the Iranians felt stymied. As the ambassador put it, “The author of the statement was the American President and the originator of the report the Russian Premier.” He feared that “denying of statements made by the heads of the two states” could prove rash for a small country squeezed between American power and the Soviet border. The closest to an apology that Iran could eke out was Cordell Hull's private assurance to the Iranian envoy that “whatever was said was concerning each of the three persons, and was not at all intended to reflect upon the Iranians.”

The six surviving Skorzeny parachutists managed to elude capture for three months by hiding among mountain Bedouins. Eventually, they were tracked down by Russian troops and executed.

*

One of the war's most speculated-upon secrets was sealed inside a single mind, that of the President. As Henry Wallace had said, the only certainty in dealing with Roosevelt was uncertainty. At Tehran, Churchill had presented Stalin with a magnificent sword forged by English craftsmen to honor “the steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad.” Stalin had appeared deeply touched, tears clouding his eyes upon gripping the splendid weapon. But sentimentality in the Soviet dictator was short-lived. At a subsequent meeting, Stalin had asked bluntly, “Who will command Overlord?” Roosevelt answered, “It has not been decided.” “Then nothing will come out of these operations,” Stalin replied.

His impatience over the Allied failure yet to launch a second front was understandable. As far back as 1942, FDR had pressed General Marshall and Admiral Ernest King to prepare Sledgehammer, the code name for a limited landing in northwestern Europe. “I do not believe we can wait until 1943 to strike at Germany,” FDR told the two chiefs. In an aide-mémoire shared with Roosevelt, Churchill seemed to agree, saying, “We are making preparations for a landing on the Continent in August or September 1942.” Then Churchill had backed off. “No responsible British general, admiral or air marshal,” he subsequently wrote FDR, “is prepared to recommend Sledgehammer.”

In August 1942, Churchill had gone to Moscow for his first encounter with Stalin, a mission he described as “like carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole.” His chilling message for the Soviet leader was: no second front that year. Churchill later described this visit in a secret cable to FDR. Stalin, the Prime Minister reported, had been insulting, “especially about our being too much afraid of fighting the Germans, and if we tried it like the Russians, we would find it not so bad. . . .” Stalin had also reminded Churchill “that we had broken our promise about Sledgehammer.” It was true, and thereafter, Roosevelt had insisted at least on the invasion of North Africa, which served Britain well in keeping its Mediterranean lifeline open, but hardly satisfied the Soviet Union.

Though Churchill had finally agreed at Quebec to the cross-Channel invasion, after extracting from FDR a full partnership on Tube Alloys, the PM still remained unenthusiastic. Two factors explained his continuing resistance. Still fresh in his mind were the World War I slaughterhouses, Passchendaele and the Somme. He feared a frontal attack on Europe would turn the English Channel into a “river of blood.” At one point, he stood in the House of Commons and looked about “at the faces that are not there,” the generation that perished between 1914 and 1918. In the summer of 1943, FDR had sent Henry Stimson to England to press the argument for a second front. Stimson reported back that Churchill and his military advisors believed “Germany can be beaten by a series of attritions in northern Italy, in the eastern Mediterranean, in Greece, in the Balkans, in Rumania and other satellite countries and that the only fighting that needs to be done will be done by Russia.” Stimson saw clearly the flaw in the British argument. “None of these methods of pinprick warfare,” he counseled the President, “can be counted by us to fool Stalin into the belief that we have kept [our] pledge.”

Churchill may well have preferred nibbling Hitler to death in southeastern Europe, believing the job could be accomplished with far fewer lives lost, but his fierce anti-communism suggests the real reason. Ernest Cuneo was a member of FDR's outer circle, a stocky, onetime all–Ivy League football star, an aide to New York's Mayor La Guardia, and, during the war, a liaison man for Bill Donovan. On one errand for the OSS director, Cuneo went to London to meet with Sir Desmond Morton, who prepared Churchill's daily intelligence digest. Late of an evening, Cuneo and Sir Desmond were descending the Duke of York steps, discussing where the Allies should strike next. “Why is the Prime Minister so anxious to go up through the Balkans?” Cuneo asked. Sir Desmond stopped abruptly, grabbed Cuneo by the shoulders, and said, “Because the Prime Minister says that if we send ten divisions up the Vardan Valley, we can crush the retreating right flank of German armies and save middle Europe from the Russians!”

As for Stalin's query, “Who will command Overlord?” though Roosevelt had not yet declared himself publicly, his choice was no secret. Everybody knew. Churchill had agreed, as U.S. transports poured GIs, tanks, artillery, and ammunition into England in quantities vastly outweighing British resources, that the leader had to be an American. FDR set forth his preference in a long message to Churchill. “The importance of the command of Overlord cannot be disclosed to the American people without grave, perhaps disastrous violations of security,” he began. Nevertheless, he went on, “I believe General Marshall is the man who can do the job, and should at once assume operational control of our forces in the war against Germany.” The choice of Marshall had appeared confirmed when FDR met with Churchill at Quebec at the same time that the Prime Minister had finally agreed to Overlord. As Henry Stimson remembered the moment, the Prime Minister also wanted Marshall to command Overlord, and the matter appeared settled.

Roosevelt's preference, however, was not universally applauded. Retired General John J. Pershing, who had led the American Expeditionary Force to victory in World War I, learned of the President's leaning, and on September 16 wrote FDR “to transfer [Marshall] to a tactical command in a limited area, no matter how seemingly important, is to deprive ourselves of his outstanding strategical ability and experience. I know of no one at all comparable to replace him as Chief of Staff.” FDR handled the old soldier with customary suavity. “You are absolutely right about George Marshall—and yet I think you are wrong too,” Roosevelt replied. “As you know, the operations for which we are considering him are the biggest that we will conduct in this war. . . . More than that, I think it is only a fair thing to give George a chance in the field. . . . The best way I can express it is to tell you that I want George to be the Pershing of the second World War—and he cannot be that if we keep him here.”

Roosevelt supported his choice even more emphatically to General Eisenhower. In November 1943, during a stopover in North Africa on his way to the Tehran conference, he had asked Eisenhower to give him a tour of the Tunisian battlefield. As they drove past the burnt-out detritus of war vanishing under the desert sands, FDR said casually, “Ike, you and I know who was the Chief of Staff during the last years of the Civil War but practically no one else knows, although the names of the field generals—Grant, of course, and Lee, and Jackson, Sherman, Sheridan and the others—every schoolboy knows them. I hate to think that 50 years from now practically nobody will know who George Marshall was. That is one of the reasons why I want George to have the big command—he is entitled to establish his place in history as a great General.” Roosevelt confided to Eisenhower that he had big plans for him too. Ike would be coming back to Washington to replace Marshall as acting Chief of Staff.

The men whose judgment Roosevelt most prized agreed with his choice. “I believe that Marshall's command of Overlord is imperative for its success,” Henry Stimson said. Harry Hopkins saw an even broader role for the general. “Marshall should have command of all the Allied forces, other than the Russians, attacking the Fortress of Germany,” he urged Roosevelt. What precisely the President told Marshall about the Overlord command is lost in FDR's penchant for committing as little as possible to paper. The diffident Marshall never uttered a word himself suggesting that his appointment was in the bag. But Mrs. Marshall began to move the couple's personal belongings from the Army Chief of Staff's residence at Fort Myer and store them in their home in Leesburg, Virginia, in preparation for a likely move to England.

And then it began to unravel. General Pershing's position that no one else possessed Marshall's global grasp of strategy was seconded by Admirals Leahy and King and the Army Air Corps commander, Hap Arnold. They argued further that the Overlord command amounted to a demotion, since Eisenhower would now be issuing orders to Marshall, his former superior. Even the enemy entered the speculation. A Nazi broadcast out of Paris reported that Marshall had been dismissed and that “President Roosevelt has taken over his command.”

Though Marshall continued to keep his counsel, the command of Overlord would mark the logical capstone to his career. Still, the only certainty in the Roosevelt universe was indeed what went on inside FDR's head, and a major shift had occurred between his departure for and return from Tehran. On December 3, on his way back to Washington, the President flew into Cairo, where he stayed at the luxurious Villa Mena, a hotel on the outskirts of town. On Sunday morning, FDR summoned Marshall to join him for a private lunch. The general later described this pivotal moment in his life as he and the President gazed out the window at the eternal pyramids of Giza. “I was determined that I should not embarrass the President one way or the other,” Marshall recalled. “I was utterly sincere in the desire to avoid what had happened in other wars—the consideration of the feelings of the individual rather than the good of the country. After a good deal of beating around the bush, he asked me just what I wanted to do. Evidently it was left up to me.” The command he longed for was Marshall's for the asking. However, this reserved and selfless paragon was a longtime student of the President and well understood the man's zigzag style in moving toward his ultimate goals. By leaving the decision in Marshall's hands, Roosevelt had signaled the subtlest shift in his past thinking that the general was his choice. FDR, for his part, knew that Marshall would never promote his personal interests. Whatever he yearned for in his heart, Marshall did not ask for Overlord that morning. When he failed to ask, the President's supple mind allowed him to convince himself that the old soldier had chosen to stay put. “The [President] evidently assumed that concluded the affair,” Marshall recalled of the end of the meeting, “and I would not command in Europe.” FDR threw the departing general a well-aimed consolation: “Well, I didn't feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington.”

As word of the President's change of heart spread throughout the staff, so did the shock. “I said frankly that I was staggered when I heard the change,” Henry Stimson noted, “for I thought that the other arrangement was thoroughly settled at Quebec.” FDR later shared with Stimson his version of the conversation with Marshall: “The President said he got the impression that Marshall was not only impartial between the two but perhaps really preferred to remain as Chief of Staff,” a rationalization of the first magnitude, Stimson recognized. The secretary of war tried to arouse a twinge of guilt in the President, telling him, “I knew in the bottom of his heart it was Marshall's secret desire above all things to command this invasion force into Europe; that I had had very hard work to wring out of Marshall that this was so, but I had done so finally beyond the possibility of misunderstanding.”

The President had one more party to bring into his confidence. He invited Churchill, also in Cairo, to join him for a ride past the pyramids. “He then said, almost casually, that he could not spare General Marshall,” Churchill recalled of their conversation. “He therefore proposed to nominate Eisenhower to Overlord and asked me for my opinion. I said it was for him to decide but that we had also the warmest regard for General Eisenhower.” What everyone had known, what was common knowledge, what Churchill, Stimson, Hopkins, Stalin, and even Marshall himself knew, that the general was to command Overlord, had somehow been derailed in the curves of the Roosevelt mind. No confidant, however close, had been consulted by FDR. The secret had been uncontaminated by sharing until the President popped it.

Roosevelt's next stop after Cairo was to return to Tunis, where he communicated ahead to have General Eisenhower standing by to meet him. His first words on his arrival were: “Ike, you'd better start packing.” Eisenhower assumed that Roosevelt was referring to his return to Washington to replace Marshall. Not until they were aboard the President's plane, headed for an inspection tour of Malta and Sicily, did FDR enlighten the general. He cautioned Eisenhower that, once settled in his new job, he would be surrounded by strong, often prickly Britishers, the strongest and prickliest being Winston Churchill. These were people, Roosevelt warned, who believed that a frontal attack across the Channel into France was destined to fail. These were the doubters whom Ike had to convert.

The near-saintly Marshall was given the task of drafting a statement announcing Eisenhower's appointment to the command he had so desperately wanted for himself. At the bottom of the note, Marshall penned, “Dear Eisenhower you might like to have this as a memento. It was written very hurriedly by me as the final meeting broke up yesterday, the President signing it immediately.” Something in Eisenhower's manner, his bearing, his thinking, had resonated with FDR during that earlier visit back in November as Ike guided him through the Tunisian battlefield. Eisenhower later claimed that, at the time, he had had a sense that he was being studied, almost auditioned.