Supreme Commander (17 page)

Actually there was a third alternative, but the Americans rejected it from the start. In 1940 General Charles de Gaulle had formed in England the Free French, an organization that refused to accept the Franco-German armistice, denounced the Vichy government for treason, and asked all true Frenchmen to rally to it. Few colonies joined the Free French and the total number of Frenchmen who had thrown in with De Gaulle was small. He was entirely dependent upon the British. Still, he did represent an alternative to Vichy, and an effort could have been made to get the North African colonies and Algeria to rally to him. The British were willing to try, but the Americans were adamant about avoiding De Gaulle. The reasons were diverse and complex, but they revolved around Roosevelt’s personal feelings toward De Gaulle.
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It would have been difficult in any case to get the French Army in the colonies to follow De Gaulle, because from the point of view of French officers, if De Gaulle was right in rejecting Vichy’s orders and carrying on the struggle, then they had been wrong to obey the surrender notice. If De Gaulle was the true patriot, they were traitors; if he was the hero, they were cowards.

Finding either a Frenchman within the Vichy hierarchy or one who could assume leadership in North Africa was difficult, but a State Department employee named Robert Murphy was sure he could do it. Murphy had been serving in North Africa since the Franco-German armistice, knew everyone of importance in the colonies, had arranged an economic accord between the United States and Algeria, and had long
advocated that the United States launch an offensive there. A conservative Catholic, Murphy was basically pleased with the Vichy government’s domestic policies. He of course condemned collaboration with the Nazis, but that part of Pétain’s program that emphasized work, family, and country appealed to him. He blamed France’s troubles on the Popular Front and liked Pétain’s stability. His French friends were aristocrats, Roman Catholics, and authoritarian in politics. He was impressed by the skill with which French administrators kept the native populations of North Africa under control and was sure that if the Allies came into the region they would have to use the existing administrative structure to keep order. He detested De Gaulle and thought Free France was dangerously radical. Murphy, in short, felt the Allies would have to make a deal with the Vichy French. Because he was the senior State Department representative in the area and because he became Eisenhower’s chief civil affairs adviser, his views were decisive.
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Murphy was sure of himself, even cocky. He exuded confidence. His manners and dress were perfect, his smile disarming, his head full of plots and intrigues. Even though he made promises he could not keep and predictions that were hopelessly mistaken, even though he got the United States to back the wrong forces in North Africa, he always bounced back and ended up on top.

For nearly two years he had been telling the State Department that the North African French were anxious to join the Allied cause. His reports played a role in Roosevelt’s thinking, adding to the President’s desire to mount the North African expedition. When TORCH was decided upon, Roosevelt had Murphy fly from Africa to Washington, where the President briefed him on the operation. Murphy also saw Marshall, who asked him to fly on to London to explain the political situation in North Africa to Eisenhower.

Murphy arrived in England on September 16. Bedell Smith met him at the airport and drove him to Telegraph Cottage, where he spent a day and a night in a series of conferences with Eisenhower and high-ranking military officers and diplomats. Eisenhower listened with “horrified intentness” as Murphy described the various French factions and the possible political complications. Murphy tried to cheer him up by practically promising that he could arrange things so that the French would not resist. Aside from his contacts with local commanders, Murphy had gotten in touch with General Henri Giraud, who he said could rally the French Army in North Africa to the Allied banner.
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Giraud had lost a leg to the Germans in the First World War, had
escaped from an enemy prison camp in 1917, and had escaped again in May 1942. He was living in the unoccupied section of France. He had let Murphy know that he was ready to come to North Africa and cooperate with the United States in an invasion.
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The potential gain from collaboration was great, for although the French Army in Africa lacked modern equipment, it did have 120,000 men (55,000 in Morocco, 50,000 in Algeria, and 15,000 in Tunisia).
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Giraud had Pétainist sympathies, had no place in the hierarchy of the French Army, no popular following, no organization, no social imagination, no interest in politics, no program, and no administrative abilities.
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None of this was known to Eisenhower, and none of it bothered Murphy. Major General Charles E. Mast, of the North African Army, told his friend Murphy that the Army would obey Giraud, and that was enough.
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The Murphy-Eisenhower discussions at Telegraph Cottage covered a number of points—proclamations to the French, the need to impress upon them the size and power of the Allied force so that they would feel resistance was hopeless, and so on. Murphy raised one potentially dangerous point when he explained that Giraud would want to be the Supreme Commander. Eisenhower, taken aback, said the question of command would have to wait. In due time he would see to it that the French got modern arms and equipment, and he would insist that the French take charge of their own army, but only under his supreme command. After all, he explained to Murphy, the Allies would eventually be sending half a million men into North Africa—surely Giraud could not expect to command them all?
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The next morning, September 17, Murphy flew back to Washington, where he had more conferences, and then on to Algiers. Eisenhower, usually a shrewd judge of military men, was not so good outside his field. He had formed an excellent impression of Murphy. “I have the utmost confidence in his judgment and discretion,” Eisenhower told Marshall, “and I know that I will be able to work with him in perfect harmony.” Still, he was unhappy with Murphy’s directive, which was vague on Murphy’s relationship to the commander in chief. The President had written the directive, so Eisenhower was hesitant to raise the issue, but he felt it was “essential that final authority in all matters in that theater rest in me.” Unless Murphy was clearly under him, Eisenhower said, there was a possibility that the French might think there was a division of authority between the American civil and military officials.
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Marshall talked to Roosevelt about Murphy’s status and three days later
the President issued a new directive, telling Murphy that he would operate under Eisenhower.
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Murphy had wanted to tell the French when the attack was coming; Eisenhower had refused. One reason was that he did not know himself. The complexities involved in an operation that called for three separate landings, with one of the forces starting its journey from the United States and other two from Great Britain, were enormous. The target date was October 31; as one example of Eisenhower’s problems, if he were to meet that date he had to begin combat loading in the United Kingdom by September 26. The beginning of combat loading would mean an end to training, because of the lack of equipment. Nothing that left the United States after September 12 would arrive in the U.K. soon enough to be loaded, but as of mid-September AFHQ planners had no master list in hand that told them what had arrived, what was on the way, and what was scheduled. Eisenhower toyed with the idea of substituting British equipment for the American assault units, but that was impractical because there was not time to give the men training with the weapons. All he could do was ask Somervell for a master list “as soon as possible.”
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The date of D-Day was worrying everyone. President Roosevelt was especially concerned because congressional elections were coming up and a successful TORCH would give a great, and needed, boost to the Democratic Party. Under the circumstances, he preferred to have the operation go before the elections. Later, the idea that Roosevelt insisted upon TORCH in preference to SLEDGEHAMMER-ROUNDUP in order to influence the elections gained wide currency, but there is no evidence to support this charge. Roosevelt never tried to get Eisenhower to push the date forward, although the President did tell the general in late 1943 that it had been a “disappointment” for him that the African invasion came just after, instead of just before, the November 3 elections (in which the Democrats took a bad beating).
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But if Roosevelt did not interfere with Eisenhower’s choice of a date, he was interested, like everyone else. On September 8 Marshall asked Eisenhower to let Washington know what date he had selected. Eisenhower replied that the best he could do was November 4 and that a more realistic date was November 8. Churchill, Eisenhower added, had reluctantly accepted the fact that TORCH would not go before November 4.
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Since Churchill’s return from Moscow, Eisenhower had been having dinner with him at 10 Downing Street every Tuesday evening.
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Eisenhower was also spending his weekends at Chequers, and one Friday
evening the Prime Minister, along with Brooke and Pound, questioned Eisenhower about the date. They knew that November 4 was the earliest TORCH could go, but they were concerned about the latest possible date. The Allies had stopped a lend-lease convoy for Russia (PQ-19, due to leave October 4) in order to provide ships and supplies for TORCH, but Churchill felt that if TORCH was not going to begin before November 15, then PQ-19 ought to go ahead. Eisenhower repeated that his best guess was November 8.
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Churchill wanted a guarantee. Eisenhower explained that it was impossible to prepare complete loading schedules until the equipment had actually arrived and been properly sorted, and until this was done no exact date could be given.
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A little more than a week later Eisenhower had a Monday morning staff conference with Churchill and the BCOS. Churchill again raised the question of running PQ-19. Two days earlier PQ-18 had reached Archangel, but it had suffered heavy losses. The Prime Minister was worried about the Russian situation. The Allies had already taken, to use in TORCH, some lend-lease P-39 fighters that had been scheduled for the Russians, and Stalin was displeased generally because TORCH made a second front in 1942 impossible. Churchill was so concerned that he told Eisenhower he might recommend a two-week delay in mounting TORCH in order to run PQ-19.

The discussion about Russian reactions to TORCH brought up the subject of a second front in 1943. Eisenhower casually remarked that because of TORCH it would be impossible to mount ROUNDUP. Churchill was thunderstruck. All of Marshall’s arguments against TORCH had revolved around its cost to ROUNDUP, but they evidently had made no impression on the Prime Minister. He told Eisenhower he was “very much astonished” to learn that TORCH eliminated ROUNDUP.

Throughout the morning Churchill kept coming back to the subject. Jutting out his chin, he glowered at Eisenhower and said it simply could not be so. After all, the Allies had been planning to employ fifty divisions in ROUNDUP, and at the most TORCH would take only thirteen. He found it amazing that this small force could have such a profound effect on ROUNDUP. Eisenhower later reported, “I again went over with him all the additional costs involved in the opening of a new theater, in establishing a second line of communications, in building up new port and base facilities and in the longer turn-around for ships,” but it made no impression.

Churchill was terribly put out. He said the Allies “must resume at
the earliest possible moment a concentration of force” for ROUNDUP. The whole thing was intolerable. The United States and United Kingdom could not possibly confess that the best they could do in an entire year was one thirteen-division attack. Turning to his own chiefs, he told them to get started on plans for an operation in Norway (JUPITER) and added that he was asking Stalin to co-operate.

The conference lasted for more than two hours and left Eisenhower shaken. He reported to Marshall, “The serious implication is that either the original TORCH decision was made without a clear realization of all its possible adverse consequences or that these considerations were ignored in the anxiety to influence the TORCH decision. It is also very apparent that the Former Naval Person has no conception of the terrific influence the situation in the Southwest Pacific exerts on our own strategy.”
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The questions that the conference left in Eisenhower’s mind were long-range ones about the nature of British leadership; the immediate problem of the date was soon settled. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to cancel PQ-19 and use the “trickle method” of sending supplies to Archangel—unescorted merchantmen would move out from Iceland singly or in pairs. Regular convoying began again in mid-December.
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On September 26 the CCS gave Eisenhower formal responsibility for the final choice of a D-Day date, and he settled on November 8.

Eisenhower planned to go to Gibraltar before the attack began and he would need a deputy theater commander for ETO. The man he wanted was his old boss in WPD, Gerow, currently commanding the 29th Division in England. Eisenhower told Marshall that he was “quite well aware that you do not fully share my very high opinion of General Gerow’s abilities,” but he felt that Gerow’s “loyalty, sense of duty, and readiness to devote himself unreservedly to a task, are all outstanding.” Clark and Smith agreed with his estimate of Gerow, and he hoped Marshall would give his concurrence.

Marshall said he would accept Gerow; he also gave Eisenhower a little lecture. He wanted to be dealt with on the “frankest possible basis,” the Chief said, indicating that he felt Eisenhower had tried too hard to please him in the past and had not stood up for his own ideas. “When you disagree with my point of view, say so, without an apologetic approach; when you want something that you aren’t getting, tell me and I will try to get it for you. I have complete confidence in your
management of the affair, and want to support you in every way practicable.” Before Eisenhower could appoint Gerow, however, Clark made a trip to Washington. When he returned he reported that Marshall had privately expressed his doubts about Gerow. Eisenhower, unhappy, decided he would ignore Marshall’s invitation to be frank and make someone else his deputy. He noted that Gerow had never clicked with Marshall, and once an officer was on the bad side of the Chief he could never get right again.
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