TWENTY-FOUR

COMMANDER IN CHIEF

When the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.

—HENRY L. STIMSON, DECEMBER 7, 1941

THE ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION, like most of America, seriously underestimated Japan’s military capacity. Cartoon caricaturizations of the Japanese as little yellow men with buckteeth and horn-rimmed glasses who were no good at piloting airplanes because of their slanty eyes led to woeful miscalculations up and down the line. Japanese stereotypes of the United States were equally off base, particularly at high levels of government and in the Army. Not only did the Japanese leadership fail to recognize the enormous industrial potential and spiritual strength of the country, they grossly misinterpreted the nature of American society. Because women played no public role in Japan, decision makers had no way of measuring their impact on national policy. As Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue observed, many Japanese leaders had “a childish notion” that because women had a powerful say in America “it wouldn’t be long before they started objecting to the war and demanding a settlement.”¹

Pearl Harbor united Americans as nothing else could. If the Japanese had attacked Singapore, Borneo, or even the Philippines, the nation would have been divided over how to respond. But the attack on Pearl Harbor was so unexpected and so devastating that the nation rallied instantly behind the president. Isolationists were stilled, domestic squabbles receded, and debate adjourned. “We are now in this war,” FDR told the country in a fireside chat Tuesday evening, December 9. “We are all in it—all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking in American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war.”²

Initially the news was bad. On December 10 Japanese aircraft sank the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales off Malaya. (Prince of Wales had been the site of FDR’s Atlantic Charter meeting with Churchill.) Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, New Britain, the Gilbert Islands, and the Solomons all fell within weeks of Pearl Harbor. In the Philippines, American and Filipino troops retreated to the Bataan peninsula and the island redoubt of Corregidor. In Burma, Japanese forces advanced almost without opposition. In Malaya, British and Indian forces, despite a two-to-one, sometimes three-to-one, numerical advantage, proved no match for the better-trained, better-led divisions of General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Singapore, with a garrison of 85,000 troops—the “Gibraltar of the Pacific”—fell on February 15, 1942, the most ignominious defeat of British arms on record. If Pearl Harbor represented the nadir of the U.S. Navy, the defeat at Singapore was as much a disaster for the British Army. Twelve days later, in the Battle of the Java Sea, a Japanese naval force of five cruisers and nine destroyers took on an equivalent American-British-Dutch-Australian formation, sinking all five Allied cruisers (including the USS Houston) and five of nine destroyers. Fighting ended in the Dutch East Indies on March 12, and another 93,000 troops entered Japanese captivity. Allied propaganda notwithstanding, many in Burma, Malaya, and the East Indies initially welcomed the Japanese as liberators who were freeing Asian peoples from European imperialism.³

Roosevelt had not asked Congress to declare war against Germany and Italy. On December 11 Hitler remedied the omission by appearing before the Reichstag to announce that a state of war existed between the United States and the Third Reich. Italy followed two hours later. Neither Hitler (who was at the eastern front) nor Mussolini had been apprised of the attack on Pearl Harbor beforehand. And the strict black-letter text of the Tripartite Pact did not oblige them to follow Japan’s lead. But they were overjoyed to do so. Mussolini welcomed the clarification of America’s status, and Hitler saw the Japanese attack as a harbinger of victory. “Now it is impossible for us to lose the war,” the führer told his generals. “We have an ally who has never been vanquished in three thousand years.”⁴

So confident were Hitler and Mussolini of ultimate victory that they did not press Japan for a parallel declaration of war against Russia. Hitler wished to finish off the Soviet Union himself and was content to see the Japanese free the Pacific of American and British influence. Germany’s declaration of war against the United States intensified the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic. Hitler removed the restraints under which the German submarine fleet had been operating, and American coastal shipping became a prime target. By late January 1942 more than twenty U-boats were operating in American waters. On January 28, a single submarine standing off New York harbor sank eight ships, including three tankers, in just twelve hours.^5*

Roosevelt chose not to respond to Hitler by going before Congress. Late on the afternoon of December 11 he sent a written message requesting both houses to acknowledge that the United States and Germany were at war.⁶ The House acted instantly by voice vote, the Senate shortly afterward. Both votes were unanimous.

As soon as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Churchill decided it was essential for him to meet Roosevelt. “I have formed the conviction that it is my duty to visit Washington without delay,” he wrote the King on December 8. “The whole plan of Anglo-American defence and attack has to be concerted in light of reality. We have also to be careful that our share of munitions and other aid which we are receiving from the United States does not suffer more than is inevitable.”⁷

FDR was initially reluctant. He wished to meet Churchill, but not until the dust from Pearl Harbor had settled. “I would like to suggest delay … until early stages of mobilization complete here and situation in Pacific more clarified,” the president wrote on December 10. “My first impression is that full discussion would be more useful a few weeks hence than immediately.”⁸ Evidently Roosevelt spoke directly with Churchill later that day and expressed concern for the prime minister’s safety on the long ocean voyage, especially the return trip after his presence in the United States had become known.

Churchill refused to be deterred. “We do not think there is any serious danger about return journey,” he replied. “There is however, great danger in our not having a full discussion on the highest level about the extreme gravity of the naval position as well as upon all the production and allocation issues involved.… I never felt so sure about the final victory, but only concerted action will achieve it.”⁹

Roosevelt conceded. “Delighted to have you here at White House,” he cabled the evening of December 10. “The news is bad but it will be better.”¹⁰

Three days later Churchill sailed from Scotland on the shakedown cruise of the new battleship Duke of York (a sister ship to Prince of Wales), accompanied by his military chiefs and Lord Beaverbrook, Britain’s Canadian-born minister of supply. It was a stormy crossing with gale force winds and forty-foot waves, and the second day out the great battleship shed its destroyer escort, relying on its 28-knot speed to elude German U-boats. Once again Britain’s entire war leadership was making the perilous passage across the Atlantic on a single ship in a hostile sea. Churchill had originally planned to sail up the Chesapeake to the Potomac and then motor to Washington, but the rough weather delayed his arrival. When Duke of York reached Hampton Roads on December 22, the prime minister disembarked and boarded a U.S. Navy Lockheed Lodestar, which landed in Washington forty-five minutes later. “On no account come out to meet me,” he advised FDR, but when the plane landed Roosevelt stood waiting, his back propped against a White House limousine.

Churchill hit the White House like a cyclone. Eleanor had arranged for his personal staff to be housed there and had cleared the Monroe Room on the second floor for the prime minister’s “map room,” modeled on his London command post. Churchill would sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. Or so Eleanor thought. “Won’t do,” said Winston. “Bed’s not right.” The prime minister thereupon undertook his own tour of the second floor, trying the beds and examining the storage space in each room, and finally settled on the Rose Bedroom—the same room Sara had occupied on her visits to Washington and in which Queen Elizabeth had stayed in 1939.¹¹

Churchill confronted FDR’s butler, Alonzo Fields. “Now Fields, we want to leave here as friends, right? So I need you to listen. One, I don’t like talking outside my quarters. Two, I hate whistling in the corridors. And three, I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch and soda before lunch, and French champagne and well-aged brandy before I go to sleep at night.”¹² No one in the White House had ever seen anything like Winston before, said Secret Service chief Mike Reilly. “He ate, and thoroughly enjoyed, more food than any two men or three diplomats; and he consumed brandy and scotch with a grace and enthusiasm that left us all openmouthed in awe. It was not the amount that impressed us, although that was quite impressive, but the complete sobriety that went hand and hand with his drinking.”¹³ When Eleanor said she feared Churchill was a bad influence on her husband because of his drinking, FDR cut her short with a reminder that it was not his side of the family that had a problem with alcohol.¹⁴

For his part Churchill felt completely at home: up at eleven, two hot baths a day, a long nap in the late afternoon, bedtime at two-thirty or three. “We live here as a big family,” he cabled Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, “in the greatest intimacy and informality,^* and I have formed the very highest regard and admiration for the President. His breadth of view, resolution and his loyalty to the common cause are beyond all praise.”¹⁵

The day after his arrival, Churchill joined FDR at one of his twice-weekly press conferences in the Oval Office. The setting and informality were new, but after forty years’ experience with question period in the House of Commons, Churchill was in his element. Sitting to Roosevelt’s right behind the president’s crowded desk, the prime minister parried inquiries with deft aplomb.

Q: Mr. Prime Minister, isn’t Singapore [which had not yet fallen] the key to the whole situation out there?

WSC: The key to the whole situation is the resolute manner in which the British and American Democracies are going to throw themselves into the conflict.

Q: Mr. Minister, can you tell us when you think we may lick these boys?

WSC: If we manage it well it will take only half as long as if we manage it badly. [Loud laughter.]¹⁶

Roosevelt beamed as Churchill cast his spell. “The smiling President looked like an old trouper who, on turning impresario, had produced a smash hit,” wrote Newsweek. “It was terribly exciting,” confirmed Alistair Cooke, who covered the White House for the London Times.¹⁷

On December 26 Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress, the first foreigner accorded the privilege since Lafayette’s triumphal visit in 1824. For Churchill it was a signal honor, and a mighty roar greeted the prime minister as he was escorted down the aisle to the House rostrum. Roosevelt remained at the White House and listened to the proceedings over the radio.

Churchill understood the audience and crafted his speech to perfection. “I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have gotten here on my own.” The legislators clapped and cheered. Churchill continued confidently:

In that case this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice. In that case I should not have needed any invitation, but if I had, it is hardly likely it would have been unanimous. [Cheers and laughter.] So perhaps things are better as they are. I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken.¹⁸

More laughter and thunderous applause. Churchill spoke thirty-five minutes. It was magnificent drama, reported The Washington Post. As the prime minister left the floor he flashed his “V for victory” sign. The effect was electric. Throughout the chamber hundreds of arms were raised, fingers spread in a return salute: a stunning climax to a speech that the Post ranked with Edmund Burke’s defense of the American colonies.¹⁹

Churchill had intended to stay only about a week. But as in The Man Who Came to Dinner,^* the visit lengthened to three and a half weeks, including brief side trips to Ottawa and Pompano Beach, Florida.²⁰ Christened the ARCADIA conference by Churchill, the meeting produced agreement on the “Germany first” strategy deemed essential by the British. It also (with perceptible American misgiving) accepted a British-inspired plan for an Anglo-American invasion of North Africa (GYMNAST) later in the year. At General Marshall’s insistence the conference agreed that the war would be waged in each theater under a single supreme commander, who would control all of the forces in his area from all countries and from all branches of the service. The first supreme commander appointed was British General Sir Archibald Wavell for the Southwest Pacific.

To direct the actions of each supreme commander and to coordinate British and American military policy, ARCADIA established the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), a joint British-American undertaking composed of the three British chiefs—General Sir Alan Brooke (CIGS); Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the first sea lord; and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal—and their American counterparts, Marshall, King, and Arnold. At Roosevelt’s insistence the Combined Chiefs was headquartered in Washington, where its work was directed by Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who became the ranking British chief and Churchill’s personal representative. Dill was joined in July 1942 by Admiral William D. Leahy, whom Roosevelt brought back from Vichy to become chief of staff to the commander in chief and, in effect, chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff.^*

In retrospect, the establishment of the command structure to fight the war was an unprecedented achievement that reflected the extraordinary ability of Churchill and Roosevelt to saw off minor differences and find common ground. Roosevelt, unlike Lincoln, was also well served by his long familiarity with the Army and Navy and his ability to pick effective military subordinates. Leahy, Marshall, King, and Arnold were exactly the right men for the job, and they served in their posts throughout the war. In their own way they were ruthless taskmasters, loyal to the president, and, when pushed by FDR, worked effectively with their British counterparts.^†

An equal achievement was the creation of the Combined Munitions Assignment Board for the allocation of supplies among the allies. At General Marshall’s insistence the Board was made subordinate to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. As Marshall told FDR, he could not plan military operations and carry them through if some other body controlled the allocation of the materiel required for such operations. Roosevelt backed Marshall, the Board was located in Washington, and Harry Hopkins, who had long played go-between for Churchill and FDR, became its chairman.²¹Like the CCS, the Munitions Assignment Board worked with remarkable efficiency. When disputes arose Hopkins resolved them before they festered.²²

The ARCADIA conference marked the first reference to the United Nations. On New Year’s Day 1942 twenty-six nations, led by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, affixed their signatures to a document drafted initially by FDR pledging cooperation in the defeat of the Axis powers.²³ The term “United Nations” was Roosevelt’s choice (rather than “Associated Nations”),^* but this was purely a declaration of wartime purpose, not the organization for postwar security that was established at San Francisco three and a half years later.

On January 6, 1942, Roosevelt went to Capitol Hill to deliver his tenth State of the Union message. Within a span of little more than a week the Congress heard both Churchill and FDR. Both were captivating speakers, but their styles were distinctly different. Churchill, like Charles de Gaulle—and Hitler and Mussolini, for that matter—spoke to his audience collectively with rhetorical flourishes and stirring cadences that rallied the nation’s soul. Roosevelt addressed his remarks to each listener individually, with homey references and simple words that struck a personal note. For Churchill it was an oration; for FDR, a conversation.²⁴

Roosevelt was at his best that Tuesday. “The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war. But the massed, angered forces of humanity will finish it.” He galvanized the nation with a breathtaking set of production goals for 1942: 60,000 airplanes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, 6 million tons of merchant shipping. “These figures,” the president told a wildly cheering Congress, “will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished at Pearl Harbor.”²⁵

Roosevelt’s production targets provided inspiration for the nation in the dark days after Pearl Harbor. It was, said Stimson, “the best speech I ever heard him make.”²⁶ But FDR had drawn his figures more or less out of a hat. “Oh, the production people can do it if they really try,” he told an incredulous Hopkins the night before the speech.^27*

For the military, Roosevelt’s figures proved a mixed blessing. “Everyone set out to build sixty thousand planes and forty-five thousand tanks,” said General Lucius D. Clay, who had been placed in charge of all military procurement. “But we needed balanced forces. We needed ammunition, we needed machine guns, field artillery, anti-tank weapons—the whole range of equipment to fit out the troop formations which were being raised. And we could not afford to expend all our resources meeting the president’s goals. It was a hell of a fight. Finally I prepared a chart showing what the Army would have if the President’s goals were achieved, and what it would lack, especially artillery and anti-tank guns. I gave it to Mr. Hopkins, who quickly saw the point we were making. Mr. Hopkins got the President’s personal O.K. (although he never gave it a public O.K.), and Mr. Roosevelt’s goals were quietly revised downward.”²⁸

On February 19, 1942, in one of the shabbiest displays of presidential prerogative in American history, Roosevelt approved Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forcible evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coast. The order applied to forty thousand older, first-generation Japanese immigrants (Issei) who were debarred from citizenship by the Immigration Act of 1924, as well as to their children (Nisei), some eighty thousand persons born in the United States and therefore American citizens by birth.^* There was no military necessity for the order. J. Edgar Hoover, then in his seventeenth year as director of the FBI, called the evacuation “utterly unwarranted”; Major General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, commanding the southern sector of the Western Defense Zone, labeled reports of Japanese sabotage “wild, farcical, and fantastic stuff”; the Los Angeles Times initially editorialized against removal; and Attorney General Francis Biddle thought the program “ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel, taking Japanese who were not suspect, and Japanese-Americans whose rights were disregarded, from their homes and from their businesses to sit idly in the lonely misery of barracks while the war was being fought in the world beyond.”²⁹

For the first month after Pearl Harbor, little concern was given to the Japanese on the West Coast. But as the magnitude of the Navy’s defeat became clear, and as Japan advanced unstopped across the South Pacific, public opinion turned sharply antagonistic. Many Americans could not comprehend or explain the humiliating defeats suffered by Allied forces unless they were betrayed by legions of saboteurs undermining resistance from within. Lieutenant General John De Witt, the overall Army commander on the West Coast (whom FDR had passed over when he named George Marshall chief of staff in 1939), argued in a tortured twist of logic that “the very fact that no sabotage has taken place [in California] is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action willbe taken.”³⁰

Racism fed fears of sabotage. For fifty years anti-Japanese sentiment had pervaded the social structure of the Pacific Coast. “California was given by God to a white people,” said the president of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, “and with God’s strength we want to keep it as he gave it to us.”³¹ Greed and economic rivalry contributed. Though Japanese farms occupied only 1 percent of the cultivated land in California, they produced nearly 40 percent of the state’s crop.³² As the manager of the Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association told The Saturday Evening Post: “We’re charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We might as well be honest. We do.”³³

The tipping point for public opinion came on January 24, 1942, when the Roberts Commission, which had been appointed by FDR to investigate the Pearl Harbor attack,^* reported that Nagumo’s strike force had been aided by Hawaii-based espionage agents, including American citizens of Japanese ancestry.³⁴ The commission provided no evidence to substantiate the charge, but the remark was sufficient to unleash a torrent of anti-Japanese reaction. The Los Angeles Times, which as recently as January 23 had advised moderation, called on January 28 for the relocation of all Japanese living in the State whether they were citizens or not. Politicians jumped on the bandwagon. By the end of January the entire California congressional delegation, as well as Democratic governor Culbert L. Olsen and Republican attorney general Earl Warren, was clamoring for removal of the Japanese.^†

The national press took up the cry. On February 12, 1942, following a long interview with General De Witt, Walter Lippmann, the dean of the liberal establishment, bannered his influential column in the Herald Tribune “Fifth Column on the West Coast.” After declaring the entire Pacific coast a combat zone, Lippmann pronounced judgment: “Nobody’s constitutional rights include the right to reside and do business on a battlefield.”³⁵ Lippmann’s widely read conservative colleague Westbrook Pegler came to the same conclusion. “The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now. And to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.”³⁶

In Washington, Attorney General Biddle found himself and the Justice Department fighting a rearguard action.^* Stimson, who was keenly aware of the constitutional difficulties, believed a Japanese invasion of the West Coast to be a distinct possibility.³⁷ Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy, the War Department’s point man for domestic security, shared that concern: “If it is a question of safety of the country or the Constitution of the United States, why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”³⁸ In mid-February, when General De Witt asked the War Department for permission to evacuate all Japanese from the West Coast, the Army registered its opposition.³⁹ General Mark Clark, the deputy chief of staff, told Stimson and McCloy that California was not endangered and that the Army was unwilling to allot De Witt any additional troops for evacuation purposes. “I cannot agree with the wisdom of such a mass exodus,” wrote Clark. “We must not permit our entire offensive effort to be sabotaged in an effort to protect all establishments from ground sabotage.”^40† At that point Stimson could have turned De Witt down summarily. Instead, he referred the question to FDR.

Stimson called Roosevelt the afternoon of February 11. Singapore was under siege (it would fall four days later), and the president was preoccupied with military matters. “I took up with him the West Coast matter first,” Stimson recorded in his diary. “[I] told him the situation and fortunately found that he was very vigorous about it and told me to go ahead on the line that I thought the best.”⁴¹ FDR expressed no opinion on the evacuation and tossed the matter back to Stimson and the War Department. That was sufficient for McCloy. “We have carte blanche to do what we want to as far as the President is concerned,” he informed Fourth Army headquarters in San Francisco. “He states there will probably be some repercussions, and it has got to be dictated by military necessity, but as he puts it, ‘Be as reasonable as you can.’ ”⁴²

The chain of events is clear: Roosevelt delegated the decision to Stimson, Stimson turned it over to McCloy, and McCloy made the call. “This does not exonerate Roosevelt,” wrote McCloy’s principal biographer, “but at the very least it was McCloy’s job to determine if military necessity justified such draconian measures.”⁴³

One week later Roosevelt signed the executive order that had been prepared by the civilian leadership in the War Department. It authorized the department to “prescribe military areas … from which any and all persons may be excluded.” No explicit reference to the Japanese was necessary. When Attorney General Biddle registered a mild objection, FDR said it was a matter of military judgment. Having been blindsided at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt was unwilling to skimp on what constituted military necessity. “I did not think I should oppose it any further,” wrote Biddle.⁴⁴

Japanese evacuees were forced to liquidate their property at fire-sale prices. White scavengers went through Japanese-American neighborhoods buying refrigerators for one dollar and washing machines for a quarter.⁴⁵ The U.S. government made no effort to secure fair prices, guarantee land values, or ensure the safety of goods placed in storage. “I am not concerned about that,” FDR told Morgenthau on March 5, 1942.⁴⁶ Estimates of Japanese property losses exceeded $400 million in 1942 dollars—the current equivalent of almost $5 billion. After the war Congress provided a meager $37 million in reparations. Forty years later another Congress awarded each surviving detainee an additional $20,000.

Though Roosevelt said he later regretted “the burdens of evacuation and detention which military necessity imposed on these people,” he showed no concern when he signed the measure on February 19.⁴⁷ “I do not think he was much concerned with the gravity or implications of this step,” wrote Biddle. “He was never theoretical about things. What must be done to defend the country must be done. The military might be wrong. But they were fighting the war. Nor do I think that the constitutional difficulty plagued him—the Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.”^48*

The news from the Pacific was all bad and getting worse, and Roosevelt recognized American morale needed a pickup. Could the Army bomb Tokyo? he asked General Hap Arnold shortly after Pearl Harbor. Air planners in the War Department went to work but found no Allied airfield within range. The president turned to Admiral King: Could medium-range bombers, B-25s, take off from a Navy carrier? It sounded like a harebrained stunt, but King and Arnold put their staffs to work and by mid-January concluded that it might be possible. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was selected to lead the mission with a force of sixteen B-25s and an all-volunteer crew of airmen.^† The B-25s were converted to carry extra fuel, and the pilots were trained to take off at short distances with heavy loads. But it was a gamble—so risky that neither the Army Air Corps nor the Navy dared attempt a practice carrier takeoff beforehand.

In early April the B-25s were lashed to the flight deck of the carrier Hornet, which rendezvoused with Vice Admiral William Halsey’s Task Force 16 a dozen miles north of Midway Island, some 1,100 miles from Honolulu. The task force, which included the carrier Enterprise, four cruisers, eight destroyers, and two tankers, steamed westward through heavy seas to a point 800 miles east of Tokyo, where the Enterprise’s radar picked up a Japanese patrol vessel much further from shore than anticipated. Doolittle had set 650 miles as the outside limit for the launch, but rather than risk discovery by continuing on, he ordered the takeoff immediately. With a forty-knot gale splashing water over the bow of Hornet and only 467 feet of deck in front of him, Doolittle led his planes into the air without mishap. The squadron arrived over Tokyo shortly after noon, dropped its bombs, and flew on toward prearranged landing fields in China. Because of the premature takeoff, none of the planes made it to its scheduled destination. Pilots flew until they were out of fuel and parachuted into Chinese territory. Some were captured by the Japanese. One died in prison, and three were executed after a show trial in which they were charged with attacking civilian targets. But of the eighty men who had volunteered for the mission, seventy-one survived.⁴⁹

The damage in Tokyo was minimal. But the psychological impact was enormous. FDR was at Hyde Park working on his next fireside chat on April 18 when he received an urgent phone call from Washington. An intercepted Japanese radio broadcast had just reported in a tone of near hysteria that American planes were bombing Tokyo. A grin crossed Roosevelt’s face as he put in a call to White House press secretary Steve Early. Anticipating the questions that would be asked and savoring the moment of mystery, the president told Early “the bombers came from a secret base in Shangri-la”—a mythical land in the trackless wastes of Tibet depicted in James Hilton’s bestselling novel Lost Horizon.⁵⁰

It was the first good news from the Pacific theater. Telegrams of support flooded the White House. Secretary Stimson, who had privately been critical of the president’s “pet project,” thought the raid had “a very good psychological effect both here and abroad.”⁵¹ Colonel Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor.

In Tokyo the attack came in the midst of a sharp disagreement between Yamamoto and the Japanese high command over future strategy. The high command wanted to consolidate Japan’s success, establish a ribbon of bases from the Bismarck Archipelago to American Samoa, and block the convoy routes from California and the Panama Canal to Australia and New Zealand. Yamamoto and the admirals of the Combined Fleet, intoxicated with victory, insisted it was time to finish the job begun at Pearl Harbor. They wished to seek out the remnants of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and defeat it in a decisive battle. The doctrine of “decisive battle” was a basic tenet of naval theology, and the Japanese admirals believed their opportunity was at hand.

For Yamamoto, Midway Island was the key. Whoever controlled Midway controlled the Pacific. If the island were in Japanese hands, Hawaii would be threatened with invasion. That would provide an important bargaining chip to force the United States to accept a negotiated settlement. If the Americans held Midway, the Japanese home islands would never be secure. Doolittle’s raid provided stunning confirmation of that. Yamamoto believed that if the Combined Fleet moved against Midway, the U.S. Navy would be forced to give battle. Final victory appeared one step away.

Rather than choose between the two alternatives, the Japanese government elected to move south and simultaneously attack Midway. That stretched the resources of the Imperial Navy to the limit. At the beginning of May, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue led a South Seas invasion task force against Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea—a vital step if Australia was to be isolated. To ensure success, the high command added two carriers from the Pearl Harbor attack force. Fortunately, American intelligence had by this time broken the Japanese naval code and knew Inoue’s destination. Admiral Nimitz dispatched a two-carrier task force (Lexington and Yorktown) to intercept the invaders, and on May 4, 1942, battle was joined.

For the next four days the American and Japanese carrier groups engaged in one of the most complex naval actions ever fought. The Battle of the Coral Sea was unique in that the two forces were separated by 175 miles of open water. The warships never came into contact, there was no surface gunnery, and the fight was waged by carrier-based aircraft. Tactically the result was a standoff. The Japanese sank the Lexington and destroyed Yorktown’s flight deck; the Americans sank a light carrier and severely damaged one of the large Pearl Harbor carriers. More significantly, the United States lost thirty-three aircraft; the Japanese twice that number. Having lost air superiority, Inoue canceled the invasion and returned to his base at Rabaul. In the strategic sense, with the invasion thwarted, the Battle of the Coral Sea was an undisputed Allied victory.

A more serious setback awaited the Imperial Navy. On May 27, 1942, the anniversary of the Battle of Tsushima Strait, the Combined Fleet sailed triumphantly from the Inland Sea against Midway. With Nagumo’s four large carriers in the van, Yamamoto brought eleven battleships, sixteen cruisers, and fifty-three destroyers to attack what was left of the American Pacific Fleet. Yamamoto assumed personal command and sailed aboard his flagship, the 67,000-ton Yamato, the largest battleship afloat.^* His battle plan was simple enough: Nagumo’s carrier vanguard would assault Midway, the American fleet would challenge, and then Yamamoto’s battlewagons, lurking in the rear, would move in for the kill.

Once again, as at Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto and Nagumo counted on surprise. But this time the tables were turned. Thanks to code intercepts, it was the American Navy that had advance warning, not the Japanese. With foreknowledge of Yamamoto’s intent, and fully aware of the enormous firepower he could bring to bear, Nimitz instructed his task force commanders to seek out Nagumo’s carriers but dodge his big guns.

The Japanese invasion force commenced its assault on Midway on June 4. At dawn Nagumo launched his first air strike, unaware that three American carriers—Enterprise, Hornet, and a quickly refitted Yorktown—stood off to the northeast. Believing his position secure, Nagumo ordered a time-consuming change of armament for his second attack wave just as his first wave returned to refuel. At that point, with his flight decks cluttered, American bombers and torpedo planes attacked. But Japanese antiaircraft fire and Zeros kept the attackers at bay, and by 10:24 Nagumo felt he had weathered the storm. None of his ships had been hit.

The next five minutes would change the course of history. Arriving at the precise moment when Nagumo’s protective screen of Zeros had been drawn down to refuel, two squadrons of American dive-bombers, one from Enterprise, the other from Yorktown,poured through the open sky to unload their bombs on the exposed Japanese carriers. Three were sunk and the fourth so heavily damaged the Japanese scuttled it. Deprived of air cover, Yamamoto reversed course and sailed the Combined Fleet back to Japan.

The Battle of Midway proved to be the decisive battle in the Pacific. With the loss of four large carriers, their aircraft and their pilots, Japan never regained naval superiority. In the two years following Midway the Japanese were able to launch only six battlefleet carriers. The United States added seventeen, as well as ten medium carriers and eighty-six smaller escort carriers. As Princeton professor Marius B. Jansen observed, “Technology and materiel may have sealed the ultimate verdict, but the months ahead required grinding determination and immense hardship in battles that produced some of the highest casualty rates in United States history.”⁵²

Meanwhile, the situation on the Russian front remained grim. Hitler resumed his offensive in the spring of 1942, pressing southeast toward the oil fields of the Caucasus. Von Manstein overran the Crimea, a Soviet counterattack in the Ukraine failed dismally, and two German Army Groups crashed forward to the Don. Russian losses were staggering. By the end of May the Germans had killed or captured an additional 700,000 Red Army troops and destroyed more than 2,000 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces.⁵³

Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Washington May 29 to plead for assistance. Like Churchill, Molotov stayed as FDR’s guest in the White House. Unlike Churchill’s, the visit remained secret (Molotov bore the code name “Mr. Brown”) and the White House press corps scrupulously adhered to Steve Early’s request that nothing be published. Unaware of what he might find in Washington, Molotov traveled with basic necessities: black bread, sausage, and a loaded pistol tucked into his luggage, plus a secretarial pool that evidently did more than take dictation.⁵⁴

“I am terribly busy with a visiting fireman from across the water,” FDR told his cousin Daisy Suckley. “He comes from Shangri-La and speaks nothing but Mongolian. We speak through interpreters: one, a Russian who speaks perfect English [Vladimir N. Pavlov]; the other, an American who has lived for years in Russia [Harvard professor of Slavic Languages Samuel H. Cross]! Two and two equals four.”⁵⁵

Molotov wasted little time on social niceties. As soon as he met FDR in the Oval Office, he put the case for a second front. The balance of forces in Russia was slightly in Hitler’s favor, said Molotov. If the United States and Great Britain could mount a cross-Channel attack, it would drain away forty German divisions. These might not be first-line troops, but it would diminish Hitler’s margin of superiority. Molotov stressed that a landing in 1942, with the Russian front still intact, would be far easier than in 1943, by which time it might have collapsed. “If you postpone your decision, you will have eventually to bear the brunt of the war, and if Hitler becomes master of the continent, next year will unquestionably be tougher than this one.” Molotov requested a straight answer: Was the United States prepared to establish a second front in 1942?⁵⁶

Roosevelt was sympathetic. Before Molotov arrived, the president had sent a memo to Marshall and King noting that “Our principal objective is to help Russia.… Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis materiel than all 25 United Nations put together.”⁵⁷ He turned Molotov’s question over to General Marshall. “Are developments clear enough so that we could say to Mr. Stalin that we are preparing a second front?” asked the president.

When Marshall said “Yes,” Roosevelt authorized Molotov to tell Stalin that “we expect the formation of a second front this year.”⁵⁸ Roosevelt repeated the promise the following day. But at the urging of Marshall and King, who were uneasy about being tied to a precise time, he added that in order to build up materiel for opening a second front, the United States would have to cut back Lend-Lease supplies to Russia. Molotov bristled. What would happen if the Soviet Union agreed to cut its Lend-Lease requirements and no second front developed?

“You cannot have your cake and eat it too,” FDR replied. “Ships cannot be in two places at once. Every ship we shift to the English run means that the second front is so much closer to being realized.” Roosevelt then repeated his pledge for a second front in 1942, and Molotov agreed to advise Moscow of the reduction in aid shipments.^*

On June 11, 1942, with FDR in Hyde Park and Molotov back in the Soviet Union, Washington and Moscow released a joint statement acknowledging the discussions. “In the course of the conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.” General Marshall had objected to any specific reference to 1942, but Roosevelt overruled him. The president was concerned about public reaction to Molotov’s visit and wanted to strike a positive note. As with the ambitious production targets he had announced earlier, Roosevelt recognized the need to set goals that would keep the nation moving. He also hoped to solidify the coalition. “I am especially anxious that he [Molotov] carry back some real results of his Mission, and that he will give a favorable account to Stalin,” Roosevelt wrote Churchill. “I was greatly pleased with the visit. He warmed up far more than I expected and I am sure he has a far better understanding of the situation than when he arrived.”⁵⁹

Washington’s announcement of a second front in 1942 energized Churchill. The last thing the British government wanted was a premature cross-Channel attack. The enormous battlefield losses of World War I, Churchill’s own unfortunate experience with the amphibious landing at Gallipoli in 1915, and an awareness of how ill prepared and unready the Western Allies, particularly the United States, were to take on the Wehrmacht made London doubly cautious about launching an invasion of the Continent.

Scarcely before the ink had dried on the Washington-Moscow communiqué, Churchill was in Hyde Park, determined to dissuade Roosevelt. The bumpy plane ride from Washington and the even bumpier landing at tiny New Hackensack airport disconcerted Churchill, but not nearly so much as careening around the Roosevelt estate in the president’s made-over Ford convertible with FDR behind the steering wheel. “I confess that when on several occasions the car poised and backed on the grass verges of the precipices over the Hudson I hoped the mechanical devices [by which Roosevelt drove] and brakes would show no defects,” he wrote.⁶⁰ As at the White House, Churchill made himself at home, walking barefoot, going wherever he chose, whenever he chose. FDR enjoyed the informality. “There was something intimate in their friendship,” said Lord Ismay years later. “They used to stroll in and out of each other’s rooms as two subalterns occupying adjacent quarters might have done. Both of them had the spirit of eternal youth.”⁶¹

Churchill was alone with Roosevelt at Hyde Park for a day and a half. Except for Hopkins, no aides or advisers were privy to their discussions. Official Washington waited nervously. “I can’t help feeling a little bit uneasy about the influence of the Prime Minister,” wrote Stimson. “The trouble is WC and FDR are too much alike in their strong points and in their weak points. They are both penetrating in their thoughts but they lack the steadiness of balance that has got to go along with warfare.”⁶²

Stimson’s apprehension was well founded. Churchill presented a masterly case for why a second front in Europe should not be mounted in 1942. Aside from the severe shortage of landing craft—a problem that would plague the Allies for the next two years—America’s troops were unready and Britain’s too thinly spread. And the time to prepare was too short. “No responsible British military authority has so far been able to make a plan [for a cross-Channel attack in 1942] which has any chance of success unless the Germans become utterly demoralized, of which there is no likelihood,” said Churchill. “Have the American Staffs a plan? At what points would they strike? Who is the officer prepared to command such an enterprise? What British forces and assistance are required?”⁶³

Churchill recognized that the Allies could not remain idle throughout 1942 and once again proposed an invasion of French North Africa (GYMNAST). “This has all along been in harmony with your ideas,” he told FDR. “In fact it is your commanding idea. Here is the true second front of 1942. I have consulted cabinet and defense committees and we all agree. Here is the safest and most fruitful stroke that can be delivered this autumn.”⁶⁴

Roosevelt needed little convincing. The risk of a premature landing in Europe was one he did not wish to run, particularly with congressional elections looming in November.^* As early as June 17, two days before Churchill’s arrival, he had indicated to the War Department his concern about a cross-Channel attack.⁶⁵ Armed with Churchill’s reservations, the president cut short his sojourn at Hyde Park and summoned General Marshall and Admiral King to a meeting in the Oval Office on Monday, June 21.

In the course of four White House conferences, the last of which continued well past midnight, Churchill held forth on the advantages of invading North Africa. Marshall and King just as vigorously defended the cross-Channel attack. Marshall argued that GYMNAST was at best an unnecessary diversion that would indefinitely postpone the invasion of Europe. King doubted if the British would ever agree to invade the Continent. Both at one point suggested that if Britain persisted in its opposition to a cross-Channel attack, the United States should abandon the “Germany first” strategy agreed to at ARCADIA, “turn to the Pacific and strike decisively against Japan.”⁶⁶ Roosevelt came down hard. The chiefs’ suggestion, he said, was “a little like taking up your dishes and going away.”⁶⁷ Later he told Marshall and King, the “defeat of Japan does not defeat Germany. On the other hand … defeat of Germany means the defeat of Japan, probably without firing a shot or losing a life.”⁶⁸

Over the robust objections of the American joint chiefs, Roosevelt ordered the North African attack. Aside from Britain’s reluctance, FDR now recognized that a cross-Channel invasion could not be launched in 1942 and it was imperative that U.S. ground forces be brought into action against Germany as soon as possible. American public opinion was howling for vengeance against the Japanese. To keep the nation’s strategic priorities straight, Roosevelt wanted to come to grips somewhere with Hitler. “We failed to see,” said Marshall many years later, “that the leader in a democracy has to keep the people entertained. That may sound like the wrong word, but it conveys the thought. The people demand action. We couldn’t wait to be completely ready.”^69*

Once Roosevelt unequivocally ordered the invasion of North Africa [now code-named TORCH], Marshall and King gave it their complete support. Marshall organized the Army’s part of the operation with his usual tenacity, and King set aside his customary Anglophobia. “We are embarked on a risky undertaking,” Stimson confided to his diary on September 17, 1942, “but it is not at all hopeless and, the Commander in Chief having made the decision, we must do our best to make it a success.”⁷⁰ To lead the invasion Churchill diplomatically suggested an American be named, and General Marshall chose Dwight D. Eisenhower, Marshall’s former deputy for war plans, who was in England planning the cross-Channel attack.⁷¹

Roosevelt’s biggest problem was breaking the news to Stalin. The Russians had already invited Churchill to Moscow, and FDR chose to let the prime minister explain the change of plans. “It is essential for us to bear in mind our Ally’s personality and the very difficult and dangerous situation he confronts,” Roosevelt cabled Churchill. “I think we should attempt to put ourselves in his place, for no one whose country has been invaded can be expected to approach the war from a global point of view.”⁷²

Churchill met with Stalin in the Kremlin for five lengthy sessions between the thirteenth of August and the early morning hours of the sixteenth. The Soviets followed their customary negotiating strategy: rigid intransigence sandwiched between an exceptionally cordial welcome and an uproariously celebratory good-bye.^* Stalin said he regretted the Allies’ decision but acknowledged that it was not his to make. To Churchill’s surprise he instantly saw the advantages of a North African attack. “It would hit Rommel in the back. It would over awe Spain. It would produce fighting between Germans and Frenchmen … and it would expose Italy to the whole brunt of the war.”⁷³ Churchill told Roosevelt the meetings had gone well. “I am sure that the disappointing news I brought could not have been imparted except by me personally without leading to really serious drifting apart. Now they know the worst, and having made their protest are entirely friendly. Moreover, Monsieur Stalin is entirely convinced of the great advantages of TORCH.”⁷⁴

Planning for TORCH led to considerable toing and froing between the American and British chiefs of staff that Churchill and Roosevelt ultimately had to resolve. The British wanted to land on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, as far east as possible. That would provide instant support for Montgomery’s beleaguered Eighth Army in Egypt. General Marshall, on the other hand, insisted on landing on the Atlantic (west) coast of Morocco. Marshall worried that a landing inside the Mediterranean would require passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. “A single line of communication through the Straits is far too hazardous,” he told FDR.⁷⁵ Churchill thought Marshall’s caution misplaced. Spain was not going to war because of TORCH, he told Roosevelt, and it would take at least two months for Germany to work its way through Spain to Gibraltar. It was essential, said Churchill, to land on the Mediterranean coast. “If TORCH collapses or is cut down as is now proposed, I should feel my position painfully affected.”⁷⁶

Roosevelt was sympathetic. Churchill had convinced Stalin of the importance of TORCH, and the president did not wish to leave him in the lurch. He rejected a harsh reply drafted by General Marshall and suggested instead that simultaneous landings be considered.⁷⁷ The president and Churchill exchanged several more cables—“we are getting very close together,” said FDR on September 4—and eventually a compromise was reached. The United States offered to reduce the size of its landing at Casablanca and provide additional support for the British to land near Algiers. “I am directing all preparation to proceed,” Roosevelt told Churchill. “We should settle this thing with finality at once.”⁷⁸

“We agree with the military layout as you propose it,” Churchill replied. “It is imperative now to drive straight ahead and save every hour.”⁷⁹ What General Eisenhower referred to as a “transatlantic essay contest” ended with a boisterous exchange of cables.⁸⁰

“Hurray!” said FDR on September 5.

“Okay full blast,” Churchill rejoined.⁸¹

U.S. and British troops went ashore near Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers in the early-morning hours of Sunday, November 8. Resistance was slight. French units offered token resistance but negotiations with local commanders quickly brought the fighting to a close. Many in the United States and Great Britain criticized Allied military authorities for collaborating with Vichy’s representatives, but the consequences of not doing so would have been catastrophic. Not only would the casualties have been heavy (there were nearly 120,000 French troops in North Africa), but the specter of American and British forces in pitched battle against the French would have poisoned public opinion in France. By November 12 all of Morocco and Algeria were under Allied control.^*

Roosevelt provided direct support. He prerecorded a message to the people of France and North Africa that was broadcast as the troops came ashore. In his accented but elegant French FDR noted his personal familiarity with France (“I know your farms, your villages, your cities”), his admiration for the Republic (“I salute again and reiterate my faith in Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”), and the historic bonds between France and the United States (“No two nations are more united by friendly ties”). He pledged immediate withdrawal once the Germans were defeated, and evoked the image of French grandeur. “Vive la France éternelle!”⁸²

To ensure regional support and head off possible intervention by neighboring powers Roosevelt dispatched personal letters to the Sultan of Morocco, the Bey of Tunis, the President of Portugal, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco. FDR had kept the United States neutral during the Spanish Civil War, much to the chagrin and discomfiture of many Americans, and now he collected his IOU. “The presence of American military forces in North Africa presages in no manner whatsoever a move against the people or Government of Spain,” he told Franco.⁸³

Franco’s response relieved whatever fears American military planners may have had of Spanish intervention. “I accept with pleasure and I thank you for the assurances which Your Excellency offers the Government and the people of Spain,” said Franco. “I can assure you that Spain knows the value of peace and sincerely desires peace for itself and all other peoples.”⁸⁴

Hitler responded to the Allied invasion by seizing what remained of unoccupied France. German mechanized forces quickly overran the southern part of the country, six Italian divisions marched in from the east, and the Luftwaffe set up shop in Tunisia, quickly joined by two panzer divisions. When the Germans attempted to capture the French fleet at Toulon (they had mined the harbor exit to prevent its escape), the Navy scuttled it. The Allies regretted that the French admirals had not sailed to North Africa earlier but could rejoice that the fleet had not fallen into German hands.⁸⁵

In January 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill met again, this time at Casablanca. The tide had turned ever so slightly. Heavy fighting was under way in Tunisia, but Montgomery had broken Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein and was driving westward across Libya; Zhukov, now a Marshal of the Soviet Union, had mounted a massive counterattack at Stalingrad, isolating the German Sixth Army Group and subtracting 350,000 soldiers from the Wehrmacht; in the Pacific the Allies’ laborious island-hopping campaign had begun with the capture of Guadalcanal.

Hitler’s defeat in Africa was a matter of time. The problem for Churchill and Roosevelt was the next step. As in June, Marshall argued for a cross-Channel attack; Admiral King pressed the Navy’s case for the Pacific; and the British insisted on the invasion of Sicily. That would clear the shipping lanes in the Mediterranean, menace Italy, and had the virtue that it could be mounted immediately. The British case was compelling. Even General Marshall recognized that the preconditions for a successful landing on the coast of France did not yet exist. The Battle of the Atlantic had not been won; the Luftwaffe remained formidable; the logistical base to support an invasion was not in place; and the U.S. Army had still to prove its combat effectiveness.^* When Eisenhower, who had firsthand experience landing in North Africa, noted that the forces to invade Europe could not be assembled until 1944, the decision to attack Sicily was settled. Churchill and Roosevelt, who monitored the meetings of the Combined Chiefs but did not attend, formally approved the choice on January 23, 1943.⁸⁶

A second pressing issue at Casablanca was the future of France—or, more precisely, the determination of who was to represent France. The matter was given added urgency by the fall of Algeria and Morocco. These were departments of metropolitan France and could not simply be occupied by the Allies as conquered enemy territory. The problem was exacerbated by the historic division of French society. Neither London nor Washington fully appreciated the extent to which France was at war with itself. Large segments of the French population, much of the officer corps, and central elements of the Church had never accepted the French Revolution or the Republic. Unlike in Great Britain or the United States there was no consensus on the rules of the constitutional game. Since 1789 France had experienced three republics, three monarchies, two Napoleonic empires, two provisional regimes, a Directory, and the Paris Commune. Vichy was not an entirely German import, and Marshal Pétain spoke to and for those who rejected Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.⁸⁷

Roosevelt’s preference was to postpone thinking about postwar France until hostilities were over. In the interim Washington supported General Henri Giraud, a senior but obscure French general whom diplomat Robert Murphy had discovered rusticating in the Loire. Giraud had no following in France or North Africa, no public persona, and little political insight. Simply put, he was an American puppet invented by the State Department to avoid having to deal with the recognized leader of the French resistance, Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle.

The British supported de Gaulle, as did most of antifascist France. Although de Gaulle was under a death sentence from Vichy, his Free French movement had become the rallying point of the liberation. His roster read like a who’s who of France’s future political and military leadership including Jean Monnet, Maurice Schuman, René Pleven, Michel Debré, François Mitterrand, André Malraux, and generals Philippe Leclerc, Alphonse Juin, Pierre Koenig, and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. The Free French movement spanned the political spectrum from left to right and transcended the division between the Republic and its enemies. The symbol de Gaulle chose, the republican tricolor with the cross of Lorraine superimposed, reflected (for one of the few times in French history) the union of Christianity and the Revolution. Obstinate, difficult, impossible in many respects, de Gaulle personified French independence.

Roosevelt wished to create a power-sharing coalition between de Gaulle and Giraud, but de Gaulle was not interested. He posed for a photograph with Giraud but tore up a press release Robert Murphy had written and composed his own asserting the independence of the Free French movement. Later de Gaulle said, “Roosevelt meant the peace to be an American peace, convinced that he must be the one to dictate its structure, and that France in particular should recognize him as its savior and its arbiter.… Like any star performer he was touchy as to the roles that fell to other actors. In short, beneath his patrician mask of courtesy, Roosevelt regarded me without benevolence.”⁸⁸

After the picture taking ceremony with de Gaulle and Giraud, Roosevelt and Churchill met the press on the lawn at Casablanca. Roosevelt captured headlines around the world with what appeared to be an offhand comment. After a casual reference to General Grant, FDR said:

The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan. That means a reasonable assurance of future world peace. It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy, or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other peoples.⁸⁹

Roosevelt was not shooting from the hip. The doctrine of unconditional surrender had been discussed extensively in Washington in early January, Churchill was apprised of it during informal discussions at Casablanca, and the British war cabinet was informed on January 20.⁹⁰ Far from being a spontaneous improvisation on Roosevelt’s part, “unconditional surrender” was deliberately announced at Casablanca to aid Allied morale, assure Stalin that there would be no separate peace with Hitler, and confirm that Germany’s defeat would be complete—that there would be no “stab-in-the-back” mythology that might lead to the re-creation of a new Third Reich. There is also no evidence that “unconditional surrender” prolonged the war. Hitler refused to admit the possibility of any defeat, and anti-Nazi dissidents accepted unconditional surrender at face value.⁹¹

When the conference ended, Churchill went to the airport to see Roosevelt off. He helped the president into the plane and returned to his limousine. “Let’s go,” he told an aide. “I don’t like to see them take off. It makes me far too nervous. If anything happened to that man, I couldn’t stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known.”⁹²

^* In January 1942 German U-boats prowling off the East Coast sank 48 ships of 276,795 tons; in February, 73 ships of 429,891 tons; and in March, 95 ships of 534,064 tons. The Navy did not sink its first German submarine until April 1942. Williamson Murray and Allan B. Millett, A War to Be Won 250 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

^* One morning FDR wheeled himself into Churchill’s bedroom just as the prime minister emerged from his bathroom stark naked and gleaming pink from a hot bath. Roosevelt apologized and turned about, but Churchill protested, “The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.” Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 442 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948).

^* Written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and acted in the title role by Monty Woolley, The Man Who Came to Dinner portrays an eccentric, acid-tongued radio critic and lecturer (based loosely on Alexander Woollcott) who arrives as a houseguest for one night and suffers a fall, which confines him to a wheelchair and renders him unable to depart for several weeks. The play was a smash hit on Broadway and in London and was made into a movie in 1941, also starring Monty Woolley.

^* The statutory basis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and an independent air force) was not established until the passage of the Defense Reorganization Act of 1947. But the American side of the CCS, with Leahy as chairman, plus Marshall, King, and Arnold, provided the model for the act.

^† Admiral Leahy had served with Roosevelt since FDR had been assistant secretary of the Navy and enjoyed the president’s complete confidence. Marshall, Roosevelt’s personal choice for chief of staff, brought a single-minded, take-no-prisoners dedication to his task—combined with a remarkable sensitivity to political nuance at the highest level. Arnold, underneath his affable exterior, had a genius for organization urgently required to create an air force virtually from scratch. King, to some extent, was odd man out: fiercely Anglophobic, incredibly stubborn, not as gifted intellectually as his colleagues, but a powerful command presence that the Navy needed after Pearl Harbor. FDR said King shaved with a blowtorch, and it was that fierceness that propelled the Navy, even when King was wrong (as he was in early 1942, when he refused to convoy ships in American waters). For insightful sketches of FDR’s subordinates, see Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1987).

^* Churchill embraced the term enthusiastically and, to the delight of his White House dinner companions on December 31, recited from memory Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”:

Here, where the sword United Nations drew,

   Our countrymen were warring on that day

And this is much—and all—which will not pass away.

The quotation is from Canto III, Verse xxxv. The Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron 40 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905).

Churchill evidently knew Byron’s lengthy “Childe Harold” by heart and later recited it to his daughter Sarah on the eighty-five-mile drive from Saki airfield to Yalta in February 1945. Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry 78 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1967).

^* Roosevelt relied on the guesswork of Lord Beaverbrook, who cautioned against underestimating U.S. production capacity. Taking the projected Canadian production for 1942 as a base, Beaverbrook estimated that the excess of American resources over Canadian resources should permit the United States to produce fifteen times as much. According to Beaverbrook’s calculations, this would mean 45,000 tanks and 60,000 planes—figures that FDR relied on in drafting his speech. Memorandum, Lord Beaverbrook to the President, December 29, 1941, FDRL.

^* The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are, citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” (emphasis added). In the leading case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment meant exactly what it said and guaranteed American citizenship to all those born in the country regardless of their ethnic heritage or the status of their parents.

^* The Roberts Commission was created by Executive Order on December 18, 1941. It was composed of Supreme Court justice Owen Roberts as chairman, plus two retired admirals, Joseph M. Reeves and William H. Standley (a former CNO), and two generals, Frank R. McCoy (ret.) and Joseph T. McNarney. The commission took testimony from 127 witnesses, including Admiral Kimmel and General Short. It reported to FDR on January 23, 1942, and the entire report was made public the next day. The principal finding was that Kimmel and Short were guilty of dereliction of duty. For the text of the Roberts Commission Report, see Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Part 39 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946).

^† In his autobiography Warren confessed he had been wrong. “I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings I was conscience-stricken. It was wrong to act so impulsively … even though we had a good motive.” The Memoirs of Earl Warren 149 (New York: Doubleday, 1977).

^* When Biddle asked for an outside opinion from a trio of New Deal stalwarts (Benjamin Cohen, Joseph L. Rauh, and Oscar Cox), which he hoped would buttress the case against removal, he got instead a seven-page brief that affirmed the constitutionality of removing citizens on a racial basis if necessary for national security. “It is a fact and not a legal theory that Japanese who are American citizens cannot readily be identified and distinguished from Japanese who owe no loyalty to the United States.” Cohen, Rauh, and Cox, “The Japanese Situation on the West Coast,” in Greg Robinson, By Order of the President 104 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).

^† In congressional testimony on February 4, 1942, General Clark and Admiral Stark told legislators that the Pacific states were unduly alarmed. Clark said the chances of invasion were “nil.” Admiral Stark said, “it would be impossible for the enemy to engage in a sustained attack on the Pacific Coast at the present time.” 77th Cong., 2d Sess., House Document 1911 2–3.

^* At the request of the War Department, Congress unanimously enacted legislation on March 21, 1942, authorizing the removal of the Japanese from the West Coast (56 Stat. 173). The only objection was raised by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, who said the bill was constitutionally vague. “I think this is probably the sloppiest criminal law I have ever read or seen anywhere.” But Taft did not vote against it. 90 Congressional Record 2722–2726 (1942).

In two test cases, Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), and Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the curfew and relocation. Said Justice Black, speaking for the Court in Korematsu: “We are not unmindful of the hardships imposed upon a large group of American citizens. But hardships are a part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships.” Justice Roberts and two former attorneys general, Frank Murphy and Robert Jackson, dissented vigorously.

In 1984 a federal court, in an unusual coram nobis procedure initiated by the University of California at San Diego professor Peter Irons, voided Fred Korematsu’s original conviction because of official misconduct (584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984)). The West Coast military had exaggerated the danger and falsified the evidence. “Fortunately, there are few instances in our judicial history when courts have been called upon to undo such profound and publicly acknowledged injustice,” said the court (584 F. Supp. at 1413). In 1998 President Clinton bestowed on Korematsu the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.

^† Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was a pioneer in American aviation. In 1922 he made the first transcontinental flight in less than twenty-four hours; in 1929, the first blind instrument-controlled landing; and he won both the Bendix and Thompson trophies for world speed records in 1932. Along the way he picked up a doctorate in aeronautical science from MIT and was an aviation manager for Shell Oil helping to develop aviation fuels when he returned to active duty in 1940.

^* With its massive 18-inch guns capable of firing 3,200-pound shells twenty-seven miles, Yamato dwarfed American battleships of the Iowa class. The length of three football fields with a complement of 2,800 men, it had a cruising range of 7,500 miles and a top speed of twenty-seven knots. With Vickers-hardened steel 16 inches thick in places and triple bottoms, no warship was ever so heavily armored. It was sunk on April 6, 1945, off Okinawa following a massive attack by planes from fourteen American carriers. William E. McMahon, Dreadnaught Battleships and Battle Cruisers 215–217 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978).

^* The Soviet Union had requested 4.1 million tons of assistance in 1942, of which only 1.8 million tons were actual military materiel. Eventually it was agreed to reduce overall shipments to Russia to 2.5 million tons, with no reduction in the volume of military equipment the Red Army could use in actual fighting. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 574 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948).

^* Churchill’s skepticism about landing on the Continent in 1942 was more than borne out by the disastrous commando raid at Dieppe in August. Some 5,000 troops, mostly Canadian, landed under hostile fire and suffered horrendous casualties. Nearly 1,000 were killed and another 2,000 taken prisoner. Little damage was inflicted on the Germans. If nothing else, the Dieppe raid demonstrated to Allied planners how difficult it would be to land on a fortified enemy coast. Robin Neillands, The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

^* In a 1956 interview with Forrest Pogue, Marshall said, “When I went in to see Roosevelt and told him about the planning [for the North African invasion], he held his hands in an attitude of prayer and said, ‘Please make it before Election Day.’ However, when I found we had to have more time and it came afterward, he never said a word. He was very courageous.” Forrest C. Pogue, 2 George C. Marshall 402 (New York: Viking, 1965). (In the 1942 congressional elections the Democrats lost eight seats in the Senate and fifty in the House, reducing their majorities to twenty-one and ten, respectively.)

^* FDR once told the cabinet that the Russians had a habit of sending him “a friendly note on Monday, spitting in his eye on Tuesday, and then being nice again on Wednesday.” The Price of Vision: Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946 245, John Morton Blum, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

^* Roosevelt, who initially had approved, was subsequently embarrassed when the arrangements Eisenhower had made with Vichy’s representatives were heavily criticized in the United States and Great Britain. On November 7 he cabled Ike:

Marshall has shown me your dispatch giving your reasons for placing [Admiral] Darlan in charge of civil administration of North Africa. I want you to know that I appreciate fully the difficulties of your military situation. I am therefore not disposed to in any way question the action you have taken.…

However I think you should know and have in mind the following policies of this government:

1.       That we do not trust Darlan.

2.       That it is impossible to keep a collaborator of Hitler and the one whom we believe to be a fascist in civil power any longer than is absolutely necessary.

3.       His movements should be watched carefully and his communications supervised.

Darlan was assassinated by a young Gaullist on December 24, 1942, relieving the embarrassment for the Allies. Few believe he acted independently. The text of FDR’s message to Eisenhower was first printed in Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 654 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948). For the murky details of Darlan’s assassination, see Anthony Verrier, Assassination in Algiers 193–252 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).

^* In mid-February 1943 Rommel’s panzers clobbered the U.S. II Corps at Kasserine Pass. Eisenhower said afterward that the American commanders lacked battlefield experience. “The divisions involved had not had the benefit of intensive training programs.… They were mainly divisions that had been quickly shipped to the United Kingdom. Training was for them a practical impossibility. Commanders and troops showed the effects of this, although there was no lack of gallantry and fortitude.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe 163 (New York: Doubleday, 1948).