Supreme Commander (55 page)

Eisenhower’s beliefs, and his expression of them, were those of Main Street. His personality was that of the outgoing, affable American writ large. It was, therefore, easy to dismiss him as a man of no depth, a general who had the common touch because he was common. But there was more to Eisenhower than that. His qualities may have been like those of the average American, but he had them in abundance.

Given his role, Eisenhower’s lack of ruthlessness, at least in personal relations, was a source of strength. Although none of his immediate superiors or subordinates seemed to realize it, Eisenhower could not afford to be a table-thumper. With Montgomery’s prestige, power, and personality, for example, had Eisenhower stormed into his headquarters, banged his fist on the table, and shouted out a series of demands, his actions could have been disastrous.

Precisely because of Eisenhower’s personality, he was by all odds the best of the British or American officers available to deal with the French. De Gaulle liked, respected and counted on him heavily. Three days before Eisenhower left North Africa for the last time, De Gaulle paid him a great tribute: “I want to tell you that the French Committee of National Liberation has full confidence in you in the employment of the French forces that it is placing under your command for the next allied operations.”
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Eisenhower had come to have a certain grudging admiration for the tall, cranky, sensitive Frenchman who had given him so many problems. On December 30 he called on De Gaulle to say farewell; the meeting, according to Butcher, was “a love fest.”
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De Gaulle recognized that Eisenhower was his best friend in the Anglo-American camp, while Eisenhower realized that De Gaulle could be of great help in resolving the complex problems that would arise when France was liberated. The two generals looked forward to working together.
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All these relationships, and the many others involved in the position Eisenhower was assuming, had innumerable ramifications and complex interactions. Doing something to satisfy Montgomery might make Patton angry; a decision that pleased Marshall would leave Brooke unhappy; bowing to the President’s wishes could mean opposing the Prime Minister. The Supreme Commander would have to be able to maintain a balance and still defeat the Germans.

Eisenhower was aware of the complexities. He had already been charged with bending over backward to please the British; Wedemeyer had said as much in September 1943. Eisenhower saw the report in which Wedemeyer made the charge and said it gave him a laugh. He
told Wedemeyer that things were not quite so simple as they may have appeared from OPD. An allied command could work, he explained, “only if the Chief is truly self-effacing.” He must have a fund of patience and good humor so that “when he necessarily drags out the big stick it is most effective.” Eisenhower was well aware of the importance of personal relations. He thought that no man should be an allied commander in chief “unless he is rather well acquainted with the individuals comprising the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and unless he has the direct or indirect confidence of the two Heads of State.” No man could achieve these results by pursuing a purely national policy.
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Good relations with those above him, and with the line officers in the field, were absolutely necessary to the Supreme Commander’s success. Equally important was the way his staff operated. The manner in which Eisenhower put SHAEF together and into operation would be the cement that would hold the alliance together. For Eisenhower the ideal to be approached was AFHQ. He tried at SHAEF to gather a team of British and American staff officers who would match the performance of the AFHQ team. The most obvious first step was to rob AFHQ, and Eisenhower did so with skill. Most of his key staff personnel came out of Algiers. They worked well together. They knew each other’s habits and those of their commander, shared a basic pattern of thought in dealing with alliance problems, and were imbued with the Allied approach. Eisenhower could count on them to continue and expand the teamwork concept of AFHQ.

The presence of men like Smith, Tedder, and the others gave Eisenhower confidence as he approached his new job.

The Germans summed up some of Eisenhower’s qualities in an analysis the Luftwaffe made of him in February 1944. Eisenhower “is noted for his great energy, and his hatred of routine office work,” the analysis said. “He … manages to inspire [his subordinates] to supreme efforts through kind understanding and easy discipline. His strongest point is said to be an ability for adjusting personalities to one another and smoothing over opposite viewpoints. Eisenhower enjoys the greatest popularity with Roosevelt and Churchill.”
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As Eisenhower prepared to assume his duties at OVERLORD he had much to draw upon—his knowledge, based on his three decades of professional service and especially what he had learned in the Mediterranean; his personality; his skill in handling complex problems and relationships; his hand-picked and molded staff. Over and above
these and the other factors that led to his success, however, one stood out. When associates described Eisenhower, be they superiors or subordinates, there was one word that almost all of them used. It was trust. From Churchill to the lowest Tommy, from Roosevelt to the buck private at a replacement depot, from De Gaulle to the Resistance fighter in southern France, people trusted Eisenhower.

They did so for the most obvious reason—he was trustworthy. His grin, his mannerisms, his approach to life all exuded sincerity. He wore his heart on his sleeve. There was nothing devious about him. It is, perhaps, a paradox that it was for this reason that he was such an outstanding diplomat, a profession in which the guarded phrase and the half-truth are supposed to count for much. Darlan and De Gaulle and Badoglio felt they could trust Eisenhower because they knew where he stood and that he said exactly what he meant. Montgomery never thought much of Eisenhower as a soldier (“I would not class Ike as a great soldier in the true sense of the word”) but he did appreciate other qualities. While he thought Eisenhower intelligent, “his real strength lies in his human qualities.… He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as a magnet attracts the bits of metal. He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once. He is the very incarnation of sincerity.”
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Eisenhower once explained to Ismay the basis for his dealings with French politicians. “I immediately started a personal campaign to establish for myself a reputation for the most straightforward, brutal talk that could be imagined,” he said. “I refused to put anything in diplomatic or suave terminology, and carefully cultivated the manner and reputation of complete bluntness and honesty—just a man too simple-minded to indulge in circumlocution.”
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Eisenhower did all he could to make his word his bond. “I know only one method of operation,” he once said. “To be as honest with others as I am with myself.” In December 1942 he made some promises to Boisson about using his influence with Churchill to do some favors for French West Africa. For political reasons Churchill delayed. Eisenhower told the Prime Minister that Boisson had said to him, time and again, “As long as
you
tell me that, I believe it!” If it turned out that his word meant nothing, Eisenhower warned Churchill, his effectiveness in dealing with the French would come to an end. The Prime Minister did what the general wanted him to. Later, when Roosevelt tried to back out of American commitments to rearm the French, Eisenhower took the same line with the same results. With his staff and with his troops, with his superiors and
with foreign governments, Eisenhower did what he said he was going to do. His reward was the trust they placed in him.

He had been successful at AFHQ because the people with whom he worked trusted him. If he could keep that trust, he would also be a success as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force.

Part I
THE PREPARATION
[
January 1944–June 1944
]

T
HE Western plan to insure German defeat centered on OVERLORD. The British and Americans were putting everything they had into the operation. Because they were holding nothing back, they were engaging in a tremendous gamble. If OVERLORD failed, it would take months to mount another assault, and by then weather on the Continent and on the coast would have deteriorated to the point that an expedition would have been impossible. But neither Eisenhower nor anyone else made any contingency plans about what to do in case the armies did not get ashore on D-Day, in part because they wanted to think positively, in part because if OVERLORD failed there was little else they could do in any case.

What the Eastern Ally would have done in the event of a disaster befalling the Western Allies is pure conjecture. There was a great fear in the West that the Russians, once they reached their historic borders, would stop their offensive and, possibly, negotiate a peace with the Germans. Stalin might have decided, had OVERLORD failed, that the West was less than serious about the war and made immediately the best peace with Hitler that he could. On the other hand, the Russians might have continued to drive forward into Europe, thus becoming the liberators—and therefore the occupiers—of Denmark, western Germany, the Low Countries, and France.

The point that stood out in January 1944 was that the Western Allies dared not fail, since the consequences were staggering. They therefore approached the task of making OVERLORD succeed with the gravest seriousness. A successful OVERLORD meant, in practice, getting ashore and staying. There was a good deal of talk at Allied headquarters about getting well inland on D-Day, and an over-all scheme for the campaign in Europe to follow, but in fact all recognized that if a bridgehead could be
won Anglo-American superiority would sooner or later exploit it, and so planners and commanders concentrated on getting ashore. As Eisenhower put it, at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), there was “a very deep conviction, in all circles, that we are approaching a tremendous crisis with stakes incalculable,”
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and everyone on the staff and in the field now prepared to use all his talents to meet and overcome that crisis.

The allied invasion of France in 1944 was one of the most complex operations in human history. The requirements and detailed plans involved were enormous. Although the number of men landing in the initial assault at Sicily was higher than the number that would hit the beaches at Normandy on D-Day, OVERLORD’S over-all force of ships, planes, and divisions for the follow-up was vastly greater than at Sicily. OVERLORD was
the
military effort of the war for the British and Americans. A high percentage of everything done in the two countries for the preceding two years, from the refining of oil for airplane fuel to the training of infantry soldiers, had been aimed toward the operation. This was especially true of technological development.

As mentioned above, the main thrust of OVERLORD was to get ashore and stay. This goal affected every decision. In selecting the site of the landings, for example, the criterion was not proximity to the heart of German power in France, or to Berlin, or to the major Atlantic port of Antwerp for later build-up and exploitation purposes. The first question in site selection was, rather, Where are we most likely to succeed?

The requirements were complex. The site had to be within range of fighter planes based in Britain, and within an overnight sailing distance for ships in the southern ports of England. It was necessary to embark from the southern ports because the western ports were needed to unload men and goods coming from the U.S., and the eastern ports were too vulnerable to German observation and attack. The embarkation ports would be clogged for weeks before the invasion and would be a choice target for the Germans, whose much touted secret weapon, the rocket bomb, was about to become operational. The beach had to be firm enough to hold tanks rumbling inland with the invading troops. A high
surf would be risky and had to be avoided. The ground inland had to be suitable for the construction of airfield landing strips. What was known about German defenses needed to be considered. The Allies had to be able to build up their invading force faster than the Germans could reinforce their defenders.

Calais seemed the obvious target. It was closest to Antwerp, Europe’s best port, and to Germany. From it Allied forces might drive straight east and cut off the German divisions in France, thereby avoiding the political risk of making France a battlefield. It was within easy range of British-based fighters and was the closest port to England. But these and other factors were as obvious to the Germans as to the Allies, and German defenses were therefore strongest in the Calais area. As far as the Allies were concerned, that fact eliminated Calais as a landing site. To a lesser degree the same advantages and disadvantages were present at all the sites between Calais and Le Havre. North of Calais the potential sites were too close to Germany, and thus could be too easily reinforced by the enemy. These coast sites were also too inundated, too soft and liable to flood, had too many sand dunes, and were already too well defended. South of Normandy, the Brittany Peninsula was at the extreme edge of fighter range and was in any case too exposed to the extremes of Atlantic Ocean storms.