Eisenhower Read online

  Still, Marshall’s choice seems unlikely. He, like Fox Conner, had divined in Eisenhower qualities, present and prospective, that were not in his military assessments and were not apparent to most of those with whom and for whom Ike had worked.41 That insight persuaded both Conner and Marshall to take risks in pushing Eisenhower ahead, into a new test of his capabilities as a leader. Many lives would depend upon his ability to pass this newest and most important test in what Ike knew could be “the biggest American job of the war.”42 He would now be personally responsible for the unity and ultimately for the success in combat that the Allies badly needed in 1942.

  In London, Eisenhower became deeply involved with Churchill and his plots to shape the strategy and, indeed, sometimes the tactics of their joint forces.43 Ike’s experience in dealing with President Quezon in the Philippines now served him well in adapting to the intricate, idiosyncratic British prime minister. Although they were as different as two men could be, they got along easily. That was important as the Americans and British worked out the sticky details of their military plans. To Eisenhower’s and Marshall’s chagrin, Churchill ran their flank and persuaded President Roosevelt to make a final decision in favor of the first phase of Britain’s Mediterranean strategy.44 Ike and Marshall bemoaned the British strategy and the tight deadline FDR gave them. But the president and Churchill ruled, and the Allies would soon start their assault on the Axis powers with an attack through North Africa.45

  Grumpy but compliant, Eisenhower was of course pleased to learn in August 1942 that FDR had appointed him the top commander of the joint ground, naval, and air forces for the North African campaign.46 He would now at last lead an American army into combat. He had the core American leadership team he needed: Mark Clark, Alfred Gruenther,47 John Lee,48 George Patton, and Walter Bedell Smith.49 Later he would add Omar Bradley.50 Under tremendous pressure from his commander in chief to plan and execute a complex invasion before the end of 1942, Eisenhower pounded out a command structure that stressed unity of the services and nationalities.51 Differences between the British and American military leaders sprouted up quickly, often over scarce resources.52 There was not enough shipping, enough aircraft carriers, enough planes and pilots, or enough time to mount a perfectly planned attack against North Africa.

  There were also never enough high-energy, well-organized officers—men like Mark Clark and George Patton—to drive the effort ahead.53 So Ike began the unpleasant process of sifting out the incompetents, a process that he had begun when he first landed in Britain.54 Eisenhower was uneasy with this essential part of his role as a leader. His background in a small town, his conciliatory, team-oriented approach to leadership, and his experience in the peacetime army pushed him toward compromise rather than abrupt dismissals. He knew he had to get rid of some officers. But he was always happier handing out praise and promotions.

  Even with good leadership, the expedition Ike was planning seemed more dependent than he would like upon imponderables, the weather in particular.55 At every turn there were also threats to the unity he sought and knew that he needed. There was a major fissure between the British style of command by committee and the American style of centralized command by a single superior officer. There were other crucial differences that kept disturbing the new commander’s digestion. The air, naval, and land forces had different traditions and different concepts of what Eisenhower’s role should actually involve on a day-to-day basis. Accustomed to controlling their own operations and resources, the services of both nations had much to learn about cooperation.56 While Ike struggled to hold the services and the two nations together, he tried as well to bring a new and disreputable partner into the alliance.57

  The French Puzzle

  As Eisenhower’s first D-Day loomed, his time and attention increasingly involved efforts to prevent the French military in North Africa from resisting the invasion. He also wanted to get French support in controlling their provinces, and he hoped that the Allies could then enlist the French in the fight against the Axis armies. When France had surrendered to Germany in 1940, General Philippe Pétain was left in control of southern France and the colonies in North Africa. His Vichy military forces—properly labeled collaborationists by the Allies and many French citizens—included a substantial naval contingent and the army units in French North Africa. With American and British forces set to land in Morocco and Algeria on November 8, the position that would be taken by the French military was of deadly import. The Allies hoped that the French would quickly recognize that US generals George Patton (at the Casablanca landing), Lloyd Fredendall (at Oran), and Charles Ryder (at Algiers) were coming to rescue them from their German oppressors. But that prognosis took too little heed of the extent to which Vichy’s collaboration had deep roots in respect for German military prowess, in anti-Semitism, and in hatred of their former allies, the British, who had launched a deadly attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940.

  Ike’s first problem was to find a leader with whom he and his generals could do business. Eisenhower sent General Clark on a daring mission to Africa to negotiate with some French officers who thought they might be able to arrange a peaceful landing for the invasion force.58 When that effort failed, Eisenhower and Clark turned to General Henri Honoré Giraud as their go-between. They struck out again when it became obvious that Giraud wanted too much for his assistance and probably would be unable to carry the day with the other French commanders.59 Giraud remained on the scene, but he could not provide Eisenhower with the leadership the Allies badly needed.60 As the effort at rapprochement dwindled, Patton attacked at Casablanca and met fierce resistance from Vichy land, sea, and air forces. Patton pushed ahead, but the French did not surrender until November 10. The other two landings encountered less resistance, but that still left Eisenhower concerned that he would not be able to use French manpower in governing the colonies.

  In desperation, he turned to Admiral François Darlan, whose standing in the French military was secure enough to suggest he could bring off a formal armistice. While mindful that his task was as odious as it was perilous, Eisenhower pressed on with his effort to persuade this Nazi collaborator to switch sides again. He had support throughout from Robert Murphy, an experienced diplomat who was helping with the negotiations in Africa. With some anguish, Ike told his friend Walter Bedell Smith, “I’ve promised Giraud to make him the big shot, while I’ve got to use every kind of cajolery, bribe, threat and all else to get Darlan’s active cooperation. All of these Frogs have a single thought—‘ME.’ ”61

  This time chance favored Ike in his first venture into high-level diplomacy. Darlan was captured in Algeria, and Eisenhower and Clark persuaded him to call a cease-fire for all French forces. The price, however, was Darlan’s appointment as military governor in North Africa. That ensured French support in governing the colonies, but it was painful to Ike to buy the allegiance of an officer who had just crawled out of bed with the Nazis.62 Recognizing that his primary goal was to get started in the drive toward Tunisia, and needing the major French ports to support that campaign, Eisenhower grimaced and signed on. He was, he said, “making the best of a rather bad bargain.”63

  As Eisenhower knew, he had put his head on the block by appointing Darlan.64 The “Darlan Deal” evoked a storm of press criticism in Britain and the United States. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces in Britain, was furious that a Vichy collaborator would be allowed to remain in power in North Africa—or, for that matter, anyplace in the world. De Gaulle was not alone in attacking an agreement that seemed to have brought too little return for selling out the high moral ground the Allies held in fighting German and Italian fascism. The crusade was compromised.

  Ike went into the deal with open eyes and a sure sense of the opposition it would engender. He had two objectives that he knew were more important than his position as Allied commander: he was attempting to save as many American and British lives as possible while achieving the Allies’ immediate
strategic objective of seizing North Africa. The well-armed tribes that populated the area needed to be controlled. He had neither the manpower nor the time required to perform that task. He wanted to move as fast as possible toward Tunisia, and Darlan appeared to him to be a reasonable price to pay if he could get his Allied force quickly into Bezerte.65

  He of course reflected on what would happen if the Darlan business backfired. Roosevelt and Marshall could easily replace him as commander in chief of the joint forces moving into North Africa and send him back to yet another training mission. That would hang a disappointing ending on his military career. After twenty-seven years as an officer, he at last had his ideal command, but he had now gambled his position on an agreement with a French military officer for whom he had neither friendship nor respect. He knew he could be betrayed by Darlan. Or he might be undercut by FDR, who had every reason to be deeply concerned about the political and ideological fallout from the agreement.66

  Eisenhower never wavered during the ensuing political eruption. But as he blew off steam with his staff, he revealed how little he understood French political and military life.67 Although he had spent time in France in the 1920s, he had mastered neither the language nor the psychology of the nation. Darlan, Giraud, and de Gaulle were all as mysterious to Ike as MacArthur had been. Eisenhower instinctively understood the British even if he frequently disagreed with them. His sympathy with their society and culture was reciprocated by the British public. But the French would always be an enigma for Ike, who barely weathered the messy collaboration with Darlan.

  Confrontation at Casablanca

  By the time his forces had completed their landings, consolidated their positions, and begun the long march east toward Bizerte, Eisenhower had more to worry about than the French.68 He had for the first time to confront Germany’s experienced, well-equipped, well-led army. The Allies had hoped to close off the Tunisian ports before German reinforcements could move from Sicily and Italy to block the advance. But initial French resistance, difficult terrain, bad weather, and poor transportation all slowed the advance. As German troops, planes, and heavy equipment poured into Tunisia, they made it impossible for Ike to press forward against General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Instead of a quick thrust east, the Allied troops were bogged down, looking constantly to the sky as they awaited the next Luftwaffe bombing and strafing attack.69 This was Ike’s first major disappointment in combat. It was all the more discouraging because it fed the contempt many of the British officers felt toward the inexperienced American soldiers and their officers—including their commander.

  In support of Allied unity, Eisenhower had given the British lieutenant general Kenneth Anderson command of the combined British, French, and American forces pushing east toward Bizerte. Anderson and the American major general Lloyd Fredendall had trouble working together, but for both of them most of the difficulty came from the well-coordinated German air and ground forces defending Tunisia.70 With the rainy season setting in, the deep African mud became an Axis ally, and Eisenhower’s Tunisian campaign floundered to a near halt by Christmas of 1942.

  Ike’s next challenge came from his friends, not his German enemies. For Eisenhower, it was his second Machiavellian moment. In their meeting at Casablanca in January 1943, FDR and Churchill planned the next phase in the Allies’ global strategy. The conference could not have come at a worse time for Ike. The stench from the Darlan agreement had yet to blow away, and the campaign for Tunisia was stalemated. Meanwhile, the well-organized British staff contingent at Casablanca was led by General Alan Brooke, who was determined to convert his contempt for Eisenhower’s military leadership into a new command structure.71 Left unconstrained, Brooke probably would have dumped Ike and split the Allies apart. But Roosevelt and Marshall recognized that they needed to keep the American public in full support of the Allied effort. They insisted that Ike remain as commander, while compromising on two important issues: they accepted the British plans for an extended Mediterranean campaign through Sicily and Italy, and they agreed to appoint General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander as Eisenhower’s deputy in charge of the Allied land forces.72

  In effect, the British had extended Eisenhower’s authority to include Montgomery’s Eighth Army, which was moving west to Tunisia. But at the same time they pushed Ike upstairs, away from the leadership in the field, the position he had sought and now treasured.73 He became the campaign’s political leader, a role more akin to the staff work he had fled than to the combat role he wanted to keep. To exert any influence on the campaign, he would have to work through a solid layer of British air, sea, and land commanders.74 For the second time in his career, he had been politely but forcefully sandbagged, demoted without changing his title.75 The prime advocate of unity in the African campaign had been undone by the disunity of the Allied forces. The façade of cooperation was carefully preserved, but the reality of British control was obvious.

  Kasserine Pass

  Just as Alexander was taking over his new position and four days after Ike had received his fourth star, Rommel’s Afrika Corps drove a threatening wedge between the British and American forces. The wedge this time was physical as well as cultural, military as well as political, and it had personal and social elements for the Axis as well as the Allies.76 The attack came to the south of Anderson’s forces, which were concentrated along the coast.77 Rommel hit the II Corps under Major General Lloyd R. Fredendall, who was defending the right flank of Ike’s army.

  Fredendall, who had strong backing in his career from Generals McNair and Marshall, had performed well in the landings, but even before Rommel struck, Eisenhower had become concerned about Fredendall’s leadership of the II Corps.78 Ike was sufficiently worried to make his own visit to the southern front. His fears were quickly and forcefully confirmed.79 The troops were deployed in vulnerable positions and were not dug in properly, and a reserve force had not been positioned to support the front line if the Germans attacked. This created for Ike the military variant on what a famous businessman called a “strategic inflection point.”80 It was a point where the nature of the combat was about to shift decisively and where Eisenhower, as top commander, badly needed the support of an aggressive leader such as Patton. Instead of touring the front and correcting the problems Eisenhower had seen, Fredendall was far behind the front lines in a command center carved deeply into rock. His post was resistant to all but a direct hit by a German bomb. More important, the command center was far behind the infantry and armor deployments that were causing Ike so much concern. The II Corps gave General Rommel an inviting target, and he did not miss it.81

  Ike had been right about the positioning and preparation of the American infantry and armor, and the German attack came with devastating force precisely where Eisenhower had predicted it would start. In the US Army’s first tank battle, the German battle groups rolled over the II Corps. The defeat at Kasserine Pass was as stunning to Americans at home as it was to Eisenhower, to his Algerian headquarters, and to General Marshall. For a time, Rommel threatened to outflank the entire Allied army in Tunisia and Algeria.

  As the battle unfolded, however, Ike delayed what he knew had to be done. With Fredendall, he was still playing by the army’s peacetime book, supporting an officer for whom Generals Marshall and McNair had great hopes.82 Uneasy in his new role, Eisenhower talked about how tough he had to be. He talked about it a bit too much and did too little. Actually, he had just the officer he needed: eventually he got rid of Fredendall and brought Patton to the front for damage control.83 He also relieved the intelligence officer who had erred in his estimation of where the Germans would attack. But Ike had been slow to move. In Tunisia, he learned that he could no longer let personal considerations override professional performance on the battlefield.84 He could still not exercise direct control of either the British or the French top officers, but on the American side, he knew he had to move faster to improve his command team if he was going to engage successfully with the German army.
In combat, he discovered, the mills of the gods grind fine and fast.85

  The American defeat had severe implications for the unity Eisenhower had been pushing for more than a year.86 Because Rommel did not have the full support of his commanders and the supplies he needed, he was forced to withdraw before he completed his grand plan.87 But that did not erase the impact of the weak resistance the II Corps had provided at Kasserine. It took more than seven thousand American troops to get the Corps back up to strength.88 Patton repaired the damage that Fredendall and the defeat had done to the US forces, but what could not be repaired quickly were the everyday working relations between the British and Americans in North Africa.

  A lopsided coalition slumped even further toward the British in the weeks that followed. It was impossible to ignore the contrast between the panic of the retreating Americans at Kasserine Pass and the victory General Montgomery’s forces achieved at Medenine in early March. In a well-planned, superbly executed battle, the Eighth Army defeated Rommel in the last encounter he would lead against the Allies in Africa. From the British field commanders down through the enlisted men, a culture of cooperation gave way to wisecracks about American incompetence and to cool indifference to the need for unity.89 Lessons had been learned; it was clear to Ike, for instance, that communications and coordination between the Allied air and ground forces would have to be considerably better than they currently were in Africa.90 But in the harsh present, Eisenhower was left struggling to make these kinds of changes while keeping the alliance together.