Editorial Note
No official record of the substance of the discussion at this meeting has been found. The information set forth above is derived from [Page 437] the President’s appointment calendar (Roosevelt Papers) as well as from the following extract from the Stimson Diary entry for June 22, 1942:
“… When I got to the White House, Harry Hopkins was there too, and we three [Stimson, Knox, and Hopkins] with the President and Churchill constituted the meeting. I was very sorry for Churchill. He was evidently staggered by the blow of Tobruk and showed it in his speech and manner, although he bore up bravely. He did not attempt to excuse it because of overwhelming numbers or anything of that sort but he said it was just plain bad leadership; that Rommel had out-generaled them and out-fought them and had supplied his troops with better weapons.
“The first point we discussed was what we could do in aid of that situation and I found that the proposals which had been discussed before our meeting had kept within what had been already agreed to by the Staff, i.e. we could send them some groups of airplanes which could be flown there (except the pursuit planes which would have to be ferried by a carrier across the Atlantic and flown the rest of the way) and a single armored division. When they asked me my opinion, I confined my suggestions to the trying to reinforce this armored division with some better artillery on self-propelled mounts. I pointed out that when the original suggestion of sending over an armored division was made, it was expected that the division would be merely a small part of an army of veteran British going to Africa for the purpose of getting their first education much as we did it in the last war when we sent half-trained divisions to go into the trenches between veteran allied troops. Now, however, the situation had entirely changed and this division was regarded as a key point of the defense, and I pointed out to the President that it behooved us to make sure that they were armed in the best possible way.
“After that subject had been discussed, the talk turned to Bolero and the various diversions from Bolero which had been suggested. Evidently my attitude was well known by Churchill and I was rather the focus of suggestive attacks. The President referred rather caustically to the paper submitted by the General Staff on the subject of Gymnast a couple of days ago saying that they had gone into politics to defend their position, basing their views upon the flimsiest kind of report from a Vice Consul. I told him he knew my own views and they were not based on any political reasons; they were based on reasons all of them west of the three mile territorial limit of Africa and Europe, namely our shortage of shipping, our shortage in carriers, and the impossibility of getting a proper air covering over Casablanca for a movement of such magnitude.
“Churchill took up the question of Bolero in 1942 and said that he hadn’t found a responsible soldier of his Staff who thought it could be done at that time. The Germans had spent all their time in digging defenses on the northern coast and it was well-nigh impregnable, and he said he shrank from sending troops to another Dunkerque, as it would be he thought to land six divisions under such conditions. I replied that we no more wished to send troops to their death than he did, but we believed that the thing was to go ahead and prepare for the thing as for 1943 as everybody had planned, and to do it now with might and main; then if an emergency came which suggested the [Page 438] necessity of attack earlier, we could judge it on the merits at the time, When he said something, not directly but rather indirectly, suggesting that the troops planned to go to Bolero might be used more profitably somewhere else, I reminded him that he had been skinning the defenses of Great Britain of troops which he had been sending to the Mid-East and that it was not at all impossible for the Germans tc suddenly make a surprise invasion of Great Britain, in which case the presence of the American troops in Great Britain would be very welcome. He admitted that they had taken five divisions out of Great Britain and turned off from the subject.
“In the course of the talk the President, whose mind was evidently tenaciously fixed to some kind of a diversion from Bolero , suddenly said that he had suggested to Churchill that we might send a big force over to protect the Mid-eastern frontier which was now denuded, running from Alexandria to Iran. Churchill at once said that that would of course be very nice but he had no idea of asking that, taking the same generous position of not picking up the President’s faux pas that Marshall said that Churchill had taken the evening before when the President made the same remark. That relieved me of the necessity of any direct reply although I went on to make my position in support of Bolero as clear as I could. I said that it had been planned for ’43, not ’42, because we realized as well as anybody else that it would take that long to fully prepare it; we could only be ready next spring by making every effort now to go ahead but that if we were delayed by diversions I foresaw that Bolero would not be made in ‘43 and that the whole war effort might be endangered.” (Stimson Papers)
Regarding the General Staff paper on Gymnast referred to by Stimson, see the editorial note, ante, p. 421.