COSSAC. Stephen C. Kepher
the end, making other things subordinate to it, rather than assemble all the data from the world scene in a baffling array. After the needs of the major operation have been satisfied … other aspects of the war will fall into their proper places.”16 As General Alan Brooke, chairman of the COS, noted in his diary in January of 1943, Churchill “often wished to carry out … sudden changes in strategy! I had the greatest difficulty in making him realize that strategy was a long-term process in which you could not frequently change your mind. He did not like being reminded of this fact and frequently shook his fist in my face and said, ‘I do not want any of your long-term projects, all they do is cripple initiative.’ ”17 Brooke, whose colleagues in Whitehall nicknamed him “Colonel Shrapnel,” was described by Churchill as a “stiff-necked Ulsterman and there’s no one worse to deal with than that.” The historian Alex Danchev, in writing about the two, noted, “Where Churchill had an iron whim, Brooke had an iron will.”18
It seemed to the Americans, as Admiral King explained to FDR during the Casablanca conference in January 1943, that “the British have definite ideas as to what the next operation should be but do not seem to have any over-all plan for the conduct of the war.”19 The same day King declared to the British chiefs, “It is important to determine how the war is to be conducted. Is Russia to carry the burden as far as ground forces are concerned? [Is] a planned step-by-step policy going to be pursued or are we relying on seizing opportunities … Germany’s defeat can only be effected by direct military action and not by a collapse of morale.” Marshall added the question, “Was the [proposed] operation in Sicily part of an integrated plan to win the war or was it simply taking advantage of an opportunity?” Hap Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, added, “We … have to decide not only what we are going to do in 1943 but also in 1944 since otherwise … our priorities in production might be wrongly decided.”20
The British chiefs responded by saying that because there were too many variables, it was impossible to map out “a detailed plan for winning the war.” The forces being built up in Great Britain should continue to be used as the “final action of the war as soon as Germany gives definite signs of weakness,” and there would come a point (sometime in the future) “at which the whole [German] structure … would collapse.” In the meantime, Allied policy should be to force Italy out of the war and to bring Turkey in.21
One meeting at the Casablanca conference clearly demonstrates the essential differences in approach. The Americans needed a strategic plan with what today would be called “milestones” and a “critical path” that would lead to direct action against Germany. The United States was still getting itself organized for war. Logistics and industrial production were at the top of the United States’ planning list. The British position was that Allied ground forces were still too weak for a direct confrontation, and if Italy could be taken out of the war, if the ring around Germany could be tightened, if the bombing of German cities could be increased, and if the Russians could inflict defeats on German ground forces, then Germany would collapse. Once Germany’s will to resist had been broken, invasion would either be unnecessary or weakly opposed, if resisted at all.
Concerning Turkey, the British chiefs were well aware that the primary benefit was geographic. According to Brooke, “The real value would have been the use of Turkey for aerodromes and as a jumping off place for future action.”22 In August of 1943, on the way to the Quebec conference, the War Cabinet’s Joint Staff noted that “bomber forces based in Turkey would be in the best position to bomb Ploesti [the site of key Romanian oil fields], but other worth-while targets are few…. The moment … for Turkey to enter the war on our side is not yet ripe.”23 In truth, it would have been a net drain on Allied manpower and resources, yet the argument for Turkey continued to be made. It is also true that no one seemed to ponder the question of why Turkey would want to enter the war when their current situation as a neutral was so favorable for them. Geography was going to ensure that they would be the victor’s friend regardless. In the end Turkey declared war on Germany when it was convenient, in February 1945.
For the Americans, the Pacific and European theaters were connected; strategy and domestic politics demanded offensive action in both at the same time. The British, with their home islands just twenty-one miles from the German-occupied Continent, thought more in sequential terms regarding strategy and focus: first Germany, then Japan. While the maintenance of India was strategically critical, the rest of Asia and the Pacific was of secondary value to the British, notwithstanding the political damage they suffered by their inability to defend Australia and New Zealand as well as the loss of prestige that came with the fall of Singapore. To them, most Asian issues could be negotiated and agreed on at the postwar conference table.
By the end of the Casablanca conference nine major decisions were made:
Winning the U-boat war
Increasing the strategic bombing offensive
Invading Sicily
Continuing support of Russia
Conducting limited offensives in the Pacific
Reopening the Burma Road
Increasing U.S. air presence in China
Concentrating forces in the United Kingdom for an eventual return to the Continent
Pursuing a policy of unconditional surrender24
The decisions to continue operations in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific had the anticipated effect of moving BOLERO to the bottom of the priority list, and there was no great buildup of U.S. troops in Britain for the first half of 1943. By the end of February 1943, “the European Theater of Operations had become a stand-by theater manned by a skeleton crew.”25
Near the end of the Casablanca conference, on 22 January 1943, the Combined Chiefs discussed a paper presented by the Combined Planners called Proposed Organization of Command, Control, Planning and Training for Operations for a Re-entry to the Continent across the Channel beginning in 1943. The idea of some sort of staff had been discussed by the British chiefs at least since August of 1942. As they noted then, “The organization, planning and training for eventual entry into the Continent should continue so that this operation can be staged should a marked deterioration in German military strength become apparent, and the resources of the United Nations available after meeting other commitments, so permit.”26 An aide-mémoire written by the secretary of the COS committee before a meeting with the ROUNDUP planners during the same month noted that a joint and combined staff could be formed, headed by a “Brigadier or equivalent rank. This syndicate would have at their disposal the considerable quantity of information … which has already been collected for ROUNDUP.”27
The Combined Chiefs agreed with the proposal to form a U.S./British staff to bring cohesion to the planning process for an eventual cross-Channel operation. Where, when, or with what forces was not specified. They intentionally did not appoint a commander or deputy commander to lead the operation, in part because no operation had been authorized. It was also likely that neither General Brooke nor General Marshall could identify a competent commander who, along with his staff, could be spared from more urgent assignments. FDR had proposed a British supreme commander while Churchill suggested that it was only necessary for someone to look to the planning at this stage. At a later meeting the Combined Chiefs proposed that a British officer be assigned as chief of staff for the time being.28
In examining this proposal FDR questioned whether “sufficient drive would be applied if only a Chief of Staff were appointed.” General Brooke thought that “a man with the right qualities … could do what was necessary in the early stages.” It was left at that.29
“A Common Bond of Danger” is a phrase used by Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944, in U.S. Army and World War II (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1959), 18.
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“NO SUBSTANTIAL LANDING IN FRANCE UNLESS WE ARE GOING TO STAY”
Shortly after