Supreme Commander (63 page)

Portal began the questioning. He forced Spaatz to admit that, since the Germans had plenty of stocks in France, the Oil Plan would produce
no noticeable effect until four or five months after it began. Harris then said he wanted no part of the oil program; rather he wished to continue attacking cities at night.

For the first time, Eisenhower entered the discussion. He cut right to the heart of the matter by reiterating that it was essential to take every possible step to ensure that the troops got ashore and stayed ashore. “The greatest contribution that he could imagine the air forces making to this aim was that they should hinder enemy movement.” Even Spaatz admitted that the Transportation Plan would make a small contribution to that end. A British intelligence officer agreed with Eisenhower’s diagnosis of the problem but said his prescription was wrong. Interdiction just before and during the battle would do as much as the Transportation Plan in hampering German movements. Eisenhower “weighed in to the effect that all he had read had convinced him that apart from the attack on the German Air Force, only the Transportation Plan offered the air forces a reasonable chance of making an important contribution to the land battle in the first vital weeks after the landing.” He added that it was his view that it was only necessary “to show that there would be some reduction, however small, in military movement to justify adopting the plan, provided that there were no alternatives available.”
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Eisenhower decided in favor of the Transportation Plan, and that ended the discussion. Spaatz could not complain, since he had received a fair hearing. There were others, however, who could. As the meeting broke up, Portal warned that political difficulties lay ahead. Eisenhower decided to meet them when they came; meanwhile he sent a directive to Tedder on “Preparation and Execution of OVERLORD Air Plan.” The Supreme Commander made Tedder responsible for preparing an over-all outline plan “for the employment of Air Forces in OVERLORD.” Tedder could call on Leigh-Mallory, Spaatz, Harris, and their staffs for help. Eisenhower enjoined him to keep in mind “the tremendous advantages accruing to OVERLORD through current POINTBLANK operations” and to try to integrate POINTBLANK and the Transportation Plan. This meant, in effect, that Spaatz and Harris should be allowed to continue bombing in Germany, although on a reduced scale. It was a necessary concession; without it the airmen might have grown sullen and done everything by half measures.
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Tedder prepared a list of more than seventy railway targets in France and Belgium. On April 3 it went before the War Cabinet for approval. The ministers were not convinced that the military advantages would outweigh the obvious political drawbacks. “The argument for concentration
on these particular targets,” Churchill wrote Eisenhower, “is very nicely balanced on military grounds.” He added that the Cabinet took “rather a grave and on the whole an adverse view of the proposal.”
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Foreign Secretary Eden was especially adamant. He pointed out that after the war Britain would have to live in a Europe which was already looking to Russia “more than he would wish.” He did not want the French people to regard the British and Americans with hatred. He was also concerned with the propaganda value of the raids to the Germans.
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In theory, it was not necessary for Eisenhower to clear targets with the War Cabinet before undertaking the bombing of the transportation network in France. Under the terms of his directive from the CCS, he could have Tedder issue orders to Spaatz and Harris. As Tedder reported, however, “in practice, it was not easy to do so” in the face of War Cabinet opposition.
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Eisenhower consulted with Tedder in making his reply. He admitted to Churchill that the weight of the argument that had been brought against the Transportation Plan was “heavy indeed,” but stated that he was convinced that it would increase the chances for success, “and unless this could be proved to be an erroneous conclusion, I do not see how we can fail to proceed with the program.” The French people, Eisenhower reminded Churchill, were “slaves.” They were the ones who would benefit most from success. “We must never forget,” Eisenhower added in his strongest argument, “that one of the fundamental factors leading to the decision for undertaking OVERLORD was the conviction that our overpowering air force would make feasible an operation which might otherwise be considered extremely hazardous, if not foolhardy.” He thought it would be “sheer folly” to refuse approval to the Transportation Plan.
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Churchill then met with Tedder and Portal. Tedder continued to support the plan while Portal, who had once been opposed to it, said that Tedder and Zuckerman had convinced him that it was a military necessity. Churchill said there was no need to make a firm decision as yet; the debate, therefore, continued over the next few weeks.

On April 29 Churchill, following a meeting with the War Cabinet, sent another protest to Eisenhower, repeating the familiar arguments and suggesting that the Transportation Plan be revised to include attacks only on railway centers where the casualties would not exceed 100 to 150 Frenchmen. Eisenhower asked Tedder to draft the reply, which also contained the familiar rejoinders.
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On the evening of May 2 Churchill showed the document to the War Cabinet. The Prime Minister spoke eloquently of Eisenhower’s onerous responsibilities. Care should be taken, he said, not to add unnecessarily to his burdens. Still, he said he had never
realized that air power would assume so cruel and remorseless a form. The Transportation Plan, he feared, “will smear the good name of the Royal Air Forces across the world.”
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Neither Eisenhower nor Tedder would give in. As Eisenhower reported to Marshall, the British were trying to make him change his mind, but “I have stuck to my guns because there is no other way in which this tremendous air force can help us.”
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Churchill thought the French themselves should be consulted, so Smith talked to Major General Pierre Joseph Koenig, head of the French forces in the United Kingdom. “To my surprise,” Smith reported, “Koenig takes a much more cold-blooded view than we do. His remark was, ‘This is War, and it must be expected that people will be killed. We would take the anticipated loss to be rid of the Germans.’ ”
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Eisenhower continued to press Churchill for approval of all targets. The Prime Minister, almost but not quite beaten down, decided to take the issue to the President and thus force the Americans to take their share of the responsibility for approval of the plan. He told Roosevelt of the War Cabinet anxiety about “these French slaughters” and of the British doubts “as to whether almost as good military results could not be produced by other methods.” He then, in effect, left the matter up to the President. Roosevelt replied that military considerations must dominate, and his statement was decisive.
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The Transportation Plan had won. It could not have done so had it not been for Tedder, and for Portal standing behind him. If the two RAF leaders had joined with Spaatz and Harris to present a solid phalanx against the program, Churchill never would have accepted it. Tedder’s contribution went beyond simple support. His charm and reasonableness, along with his indefatigable labors, were essential to the plan’s acceptance. But Eisenhower had played the key role in his original choice of Tedder for his staff. He had wanted Tedder at SHAEF precisely because he knew that Tedder’s views on the proper use of air power agreed with his, and he backed Tedder in every confrontation with the strategic bombing advocates and political opponents.

The bombings which began in April were extended in May. By D-Day the Allies had dropped 76,000 tons of bombs on rail centers, bridges, and open lines. The Seine bridges north of Paris were virtually destroyed and remained out of commission until late in June. Based on an index of 100 for January and February 1944, railway traffic dropped from 69 in mid-May to 38 by June 9. The French people accepted the necessity of the program and there were no serious political repercussions. Casualties
were light, much less than the pessimists in the War Cabinet had feared. Partly to make it difficult for the Germans to repair damaged facilities, partly to force what remained of the German Air Force to fight, mainly to keep Harris and Spaatz happy, about one quarter of the total strategic air effort continued to concentrate on targets inside Germany.
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Estimates of the effectiveness of the Transportation Plan vary. The official U. S. Army Air Force historians declare, “Long after D-Day, there remained the sobering question as to whether the results of the plan were commensurate with the cost in air effort and the ruin inflicted on French and Belgian cities.”
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The SHAEF historian wrote, “As to the general effectiveness of the bombings, both tactical and strategic, there can be no doubt.” He emphasized that the German generals were “strong in their belief that the various air attacks were ruinous to their counter-offensive plans” against the beachhead.
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Gordon Harrison, the closest student of the cross-Channel attack, concluded that by D-Day the “transportation system was on the point of total collapse,” and this was “to prove critical in the battle for Normandy.”
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Eisenhower had made the Transporation Plan his own and had seen it through. It was a resounding success. The bombers sealed off Normandy and made it almost impossible for the Germans to move reinforcements to the beachhead. Strategic bombing was no panacea offering a short cut to victory but, used properly in close co-ordination with other arms, it proved to be invaluable. Eisenhower thought the Transportation Plan was the decisive factor in his victory at OVERLORD, and he was right.

For a year and a half Eisenhower had been trying to find a properly constituted French authority with whom he could deal on a straightforward, impersonal basis, one which would allow him to avoid as much as possible the political complexities inherent in working with a government without a country, authority, or recognition. By early 1944, having gone through various expedients, he felt that he had found it in the form of De Gaulle’s French Committee of National Liberation. In every way that mattered De Gaulle had established the FCNL as sovereign in North Africa and clearly was going to do the same in France when it was liberated. Since the Supreme Commander was counting heavily on the Resistance for help once the Allies got ashore, he thought the time had come to shelve political delicacies and recognize the FCNL as the provisional government of France.

President Roosevelt took a different view. One could not, he roundly declared in the face of all the evidence, prejudge the political attitudes of the people of France. Still clinging to his tired old metaphor, he said he refused to help De Gaulle or anyone else ride into power on a white horse. As far as possible, he wanted to ignore the FCNL, maintain a military occupation in France until the prisoners of war returned, then hold free elections supervised by the American Army. On the surface it was a policy of idealism and justice, but it ignored many realities, of which De Gaulle’s self-evident popularity was only one. Eisenhower did not want to occupy France because it would waste manpower. From a purely military standpoint, the French had fighting divisions to offer and the Supreme Commander had to have the Resistance with him. To have the Resistance he had to have De Gaulle. There was in addition a contradiction in Roosevelt’s policy; time and again he told Churchill the
United States would not be responsible for France in the postwar world, while at the same time asserting that the American Army could hold the country in trust until the French people could create their own government.

The larger reality, obscured often by smaller considerations, was the question of who would control Europe when the German grip on the Continent ended. The United States had twice in a quarter century gone to war to prevent one-nation dominance of Europe. The unconditional-surrender policy guaranteed that when the war ended there would be a vacuum in central Europe. The Red Army, growing stronger every day, would certainly, it seemed, flow into that vacuum. The smaller European nations, all defeated by the Germans, could not resist. Italy was distraught and occupied. Few doubted at that time that the American people would certainly insist on bringing the boys home, so there seemed little possibility of America playing a leading role. Britain, strained to the limit, was incapable of matching Russian strength, even in western Europe. That left France. Churchill had insisted from the first that he wanted a strong and vigorous France after the war precisely because he wished to maintain some kind of balance of power in Europe and Britain would need help in offsetting the Russians. None of this had much, if anything, to do with ideology; it was simply traditional British diplomacy, a diplomacy to which the United States had in 1917 and again in 1941 lent its name and its great power. For innumerable reasons, the United States agreed with the United Kingdom that one-nation control of the Continent would be bad.

Roosevelt was aware of the many complex factors in the situation. He was not opposed to a strong, revived France, but he doubted that such a recovery was possible and certainly was opposed to a France dominated by De Gaulle. He seems to have genuinely felt that France’s policy under De Gaulle would be anti-American. Churchill may have agreed with this analysis, but he could see no way of promoting the revival of France without De Gaulle. For Churchill, a weak France was a greater danger than a Gaullist France.

Eisenhower was caught in the middle. With all his great responsibilities and many worries, he found that the difficulties that arose between the Western Allies and De Gaulle created one of the “most acutely annoying” problems he had to face before D-Day.
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He had to try to reconcile the conflicting policies and at the same time to emphasize his first concern, the defeat of Germany. France could render invaluable aid in this task, but only through De Gaulle. Eisenhower therefore gave first priority to
convincing Roosevelt and the State Department that the Americans had no choice—they had to co-operate with
le grand Charles
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