Roosevelt Papers

The Secretary of War ( Stimson ) to the Presidents Special Assistant ( Hopkins )1

secret

Dear Harry: As a preliminary to my talk with him, it may help the President to read the enclosed memorandum which I have drawn up as a summary of my observations on Italy and Overlord . I shall be very grateful if you would read over this memorandum and, if you think it would help as a guide to our conversations, ask the President to read it.

The Prime Minister also asked me to speak to the President on two other subjects of lesser complexity but major importance, as to one of which he has given me a memorandum for the President which I can bring up.2 I really think the President should have all of this information before the coming Quebec conference.

Faithfully yours,

Henry L Stimson
[Enclosure]

Memorandum by the Secretary of War (Stimson)

secret

Brief Report on Certain Features of Overseas Trip

i. england

1. My principal objective had been to visit troops. But when I reached London the P.M. virtually took possession of my movements for the first week and I found myself launched in the discussion of subjects and with people which I had not expected. These unexpected subjects were so important that I devoted the bulk of my time to their consideration and altered my trip accordingly.

Although I have known the P.M. for many years and had talked freely with him, I have never had such a series of important and confidential discussions as this time. He was extremely kind and, although we discussed subjects on which we differed with extreme [Page 445] frankness, I think the result was to achieve a relation between us of greater mutual respect and friendship than ever before. I know that was the case on my side. Although I differed with him with the utmost freedom and outspokenness, he never took offense and seemed to respect my position. At the end I felt that I had achieved a better understanding with him than ever before.

2. On the day of my arrival I dined with him at a family dinner at which were present only Winant and Eden besides Mrs. Churchill and Mrs. Winant. He plunged at once into a discussion of the various theatres of the war which of course revived discussion of subjects on which we had had previous differences, including his penchant for various Mediterranean operations and my penchant for the Channel. He opened the door for me to bring up an argument which was new to him. He criticized our American system of fixed presidential terms and deplored the fact that we face an election in 1944 with all its distractions and disadvantages, including the possibility of the disaster of a change of administration in a critical period of the war. He commented that in this way we might be deprived of the immense asset of Mr. Roosevelt’s leadership. I at once rejoined that I agreed with him as to the danger involved in such a contingency and pointed out to him in detail how that danger might be accentuated by getting the United States involved in a theatre like the eastern Mediterranean in which our people were less intelligently interested and would be undoubtedly subjected to campaign arguments to the effect that we were being made to fight for interests which were really those of the British Empire; in other words, that the war leadership in that respect was not good.

I told him that the American people did not hate the Italians but took them rather as a joke as fighters; that only by an intellectual effort had they been convinced that Germany was their most dangerous enemy and should be disposed of before Japan; that the enemy whom the American people really hated, if they hated anyone, was Japan which had dealt them a foul blow. After setting out all the details upon which my conclusion was predicated, I asserted that it was my considered opinion that, if we allow ourselves to become so entangled with matters of the Balkans, Greece, and the Middle East that we could not fulfill our purpose of Roundhammer in 1944, that situation would be a serious blow to the prestige of the President’s war policy and therefore to the interests of the United States.

The P.M. apparently had not had that matter presented to him in that light before. He had no answer to it except that any such blow could be cured by victories. I answered that that would not be so if the victories were such that the people were not interested in and could [Page 446] not see any really strategic importance for them. Towards the end he confined his position to favoring a march on Rome with its prestige and the possibility of knocking Italy out of the war. Eden on the other hand continued to contend for carrying the war into the Balkans and Greece. At the end the P.M. reaffirmed his fidelity to the pledge of Roundhammer “unless his military advisers could present him with some better opportunity” not yet disclosed.

3. On Thursday, July 15th, I called at the office which has been set up to prepare plans for Roundhammer under Lt. Gen. Morgan of the British Army as Chief of Staff and Maj. Gen. Ray W. Barker of the U.S.A. as his deputy. They had just completed their long study of such plans which had been going on for some months ‘and were sending their report to the British Chiefs of Staff.3 General Surles was with me and they carefully explained in detail to us the location and details of the proposed attack. I was much impressed with General Morgan’s directness and sincerity. He gave us his mature opinion on the operation, with carefully stated provisos, to the effect that he believed that with the present allocated forces it could be successfully accomplished. He was very frank, however, in stating his fear of delays which might be caused by getting too deep into commitments in the Mediterranean. In particular he was fearful that divisions to be liberated from the Mediterranean on the first of November might not be actually free to move back on that date which he thought was an ultimate date, taking into account their subsequent training. He was fearful also of other commitments which would interfere with the accumulation of materiel, cantonments and other forces in the U.K. He said that he believed that the chief danger was of commitments made in perfectly good faith and in the belief that the delay proposed might be made up for by subsequent speed, when as a matter of fact the effect of the delay would be to lose the favorable summer and autumn season and throw the work of preparation into the winter season when such accentuated speed could not be attained. Barker who explained the details of the plan to us shared the same fear. In other words, they both felt that the plan was sound and safe but there might be a subsequent yielding to temptation to undertake new activities which would interfere with the long stage of preparation in the false hope that such interference could be atoned for by subsequent speeding up.

During the fortnight that I spent in England I found the same fear pervaded our own officers who were engaged in Roundhammer preparations. General Lee of the SOS told me that our preparations were safe up to date, although the margin had been greatly narrowed [Page 447] by recent commitments, but he went on to say that he did not think we could stand any further interference with the timetable without blocking the whole plan. General Eaker and his air men were working steadily and hard on their portion of the Roundhammer proposition, namely the bombing of Germany. They were all confident that the plan was feasible. On one particular danger which the P.M. had frequently urged upon me, namely the fear of a successful German counterattack after the landing had been made, the air men were confident that they could by their overwhelming superiority in the air block the advances of the German re-enforcements and thus defeat the counterattack. The matter had been carefully studied by them. They told me that their confidence was shared by the officers of the RAF.

I later found in Tunis that Spaatz and Doolittle felt that the German counterattack could be blocked in France just as they had blocked it in Sicily. They even had studied the number of roads necessary to be covered in that operation.

4. I saw the P.M. again at a dinner given by Devers on Wednesday where I sat beside him, and again on Saturday I was with him nearly all day when he took me to Dover with a smaller family party in his special train. Mrs. Churchill and Mr. and Mrs. Winant were present; also the P.M.’s brother, General Devers, Minister Casey of Australia, and one or two others. I sat with him and Winant at breakfast and with him and Mrs. Churchill and Mrs. Winant at lunch. During the trip back he brought me with evident delight a telegram which he had just received from the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington, telling him that General Marshall had proposed that a study be made of the operation known as Avalanche . He took this as an endorsement by Marshall of his whole Italian policy and was greatly delighted. I pointed out to him that it probably meant that Marshall had proposed this as a shortcut intended to hasten the completion of the Italian adventure so that there would be no danger of clashing with the preparations for Roundhammer .

Later in the day he took me aside again and brought up the entirely different subject of S–1 in which matters had arisen which greatly troubled him. I was able to give him some reassurance on this subject as to my own feelings although of course I told him that I could only promise to report the matter to the President for the final decision.

5. On Monday, July 19th, I talked over the new telephone with Marshall and found that my assumption of Marshall’s position was correct and that he had only suggested Avalanche so as to leave more time for Roundhammer and to obviate the danger of a long slow progress “up the leg” which might eliminate Roundhammer altogether. I told him also of my talks with the P.M. and with the other military [Page 448] men, including particularly Morgan, and at the close of my statement he suggested to me that I should go as promptly as possible to Africa to see Eisenhower, where I should be able to round out what I had gotten in London with the views of the people in Africa. He said, “Then you will have all sides and I think it is very important for you to go and to go quickly”. Information which I subsequently received from the P.M. as to his proposed early visit to America caused me to understand why Marshall urged haste.

6. On Thursday, July 22nd, I had a conference at 10 Downing Street with the P.M. and others in respect to the subject he had brought up on the Dover trip in regard to S–1.4 After that conference was over and the others had departed, I told the P.M. of my talk with Marshall and his confirmation of my interpretation of his support of Avalanche , namely that he favored it only for the purpose of expediting the march up the peninsula and that he was still as firmly in favor of Roundhammer as ever. I pointed out to the P.M. that Marshall’s view as to Roundhammer had always been supported by the whole Operation[s] Division of the American General Staff. I also told him of my talk with Generals Morgan and Barker and of their full support of the Roundhammer proposition.

He at once broke out into a new attack upon Roundhammer . The check received by the British attack at Catania, Sicily, during the past few days had evidently alarmed him. He referred to it and praised the superlative fighting ability of the Germans. He said that if he had fifty thousand men ashore on the French channel coast, he would not have an easy moment because he would feel that the Germans could rush up sufficient forces to drive them back into the sea. He repeated assertions he had made to me in previous conversations as to the disastrous effect of having the Channel full of corpses of defeated allies. This stirred me up and for a few minutes we had [at] it hammer and tongs. I directly charged him that he was not in favor of the Roundhammer operation and that such statements as he made were “like hitting us in the eye” in respect to a project which we had all deliberately adopted and in which we were comrades. I told him we could never win any battle by talking about corpses. On this he said that, while he admitted that if he was C–in–C he would not set up the Roundhammer operation, yet having made his pledge he would go through with it loyally. I then told him that, while I did not at all question the sincerity of his promise to go with us, I was afraid he did not make sufficient allowance for the necessary long distance planning and I feared that fatal curtailments might be made impulsively in the vain hope that those curtailments could be later repaid. I stressed [Page 449] the dangers of too great entanglement in an Italian expedition and the loss of time to Roundhammer which it would involve. He then told me that he was not insisting on going further than Rome unless we should by good luck obtain a complete Italian capitulation throwing open the whole of Italy as far as the north boundary. He asserted that he was not in favor of entering the Balkans with troops but merely wished to supply them with munitions and supplies. He told me that they were now doing magnificiently when only being supplied ten tons a month. (Note: In these limitations he thus took a more conservative position than Eden had taken at the dinner on July 12th.)

When I parted with him I felt that, if pressed by us, he would sincerely go ahead with the Roundhammer commitment but that he was looking so constantly and vigorously for an easy way of ending the war without a trans-Channel assault that, if we expected to be ready for a Roundhammer which would be early enough in 1944 to avoid the dangers of bad weather, we must be constantly on the lookout against Mediterranean diversions. I think it was at this meeting that he told me of his intention of coming to America and that he expected to come in the first half of August. I then understood what Marshall had meant in his telephone message as to promptness on my part and I thereafter aimed my movements so as to be able to return to America in time to report to the President before such meeting.

ii. north africa

I spent three nights with General Eisenhower at his quarters in Algiers. During that time he discussed with Surles and myself the proposed post- Husky operations in all their aspects and bearings. On the evening before I left I got him to sum up his views, jotting down a memorandum of them to be sure that there was no misunderstanding.

1. He pointed out that the first decision to be made was one of the highest policy for the chiefs of the two governments—whether such a collapse of the entire Italian forces will occur as to offer an opportunity to occupy the whole peninsula with the subsequent purpose of moving troops from northern Italy into France or the Balkans with sufficient facility to make it worthwhile to give up Roundhammer .

He indicated that even at that time the chance of a prompt entire collapse of resistance throughout the boundaries of Italy looked slim to him. Subsequent events would seem to have added confirmation to his view. The Badoglio government has not surrendered. The Germans are rapidly pouring troops into northern Italy with the evident intention of making a stand there which would be comparable to what they would offer in northern France. They have already seized Fiume, the northern gate to the Balkans.

[Page 450]

2. Until otherwise ordered from above Eisenhower would adhere to the Roundhammer program.

3. He gave me his estimated timetable (a) for the final attack on Catania; (b) for the full occupation of Sicily; (c) for the launching of Avalanche (if decided upon); (d) the units which would be used in each of these projects.

4. He said that if we were to be obliged to “merely crawl up the leg”, it would be so slow that he thought [we] had better jump at once to Roundhammer .

5. He therefore very fully discussed the possibilties of Avalanche as a means of speeding up.

a.
He would under no circumstances launch Avalanche until he was across the Messina Strait. He explained that such a crossing of troops and the seizure of the toe of Italy must be made to contain German forces from being free to rush back up the leg and meet us at Naples or Rome. He then and subsequently in cables has discussed such a transit as a most important first step and the various means of taking it.
b.
He discussed with us the problem of air coverage for Avalanche . He was not so confident as to the solution of this problem as were Spaatz and Doolittle with whom we discussed it at Tunis. The air men believed that from bases in Sicily they could furnish the air coverage required provided they were given sufficient P–38’s and Spitfires with belly tanks. Eisenhower was still carefully canvassing this problem.
c.
Eisenhower had already earmarked the troops which he could use in Avalanche .

6. When I asked him as to the possibility of any feasible alternative to Avalanche which would speed up the advance to Rome, he suggested, but did not endorse, a possible landing at the instep and going straight up the leg. He evidently had not fully studied such a move but believed it would be faster than moving up from the toe at Messina. On this last proposition he had decided views that it was too difficult, slow, and costly. He described it as just a series of inching up operations in a very difficult terrain which would take much time and very considerable losses.

7. He estimated that the Germans already had at least three divisions of troops in the leg at or below Naples.

8. Eisenhower said that he had plenty of landing boats for the Avalanche operation and was not concerned about getting any more.

9. Eisenhower impressed me favorably in having preserved his balance in the consideration of the various post- Husky plans. He was anxious to find a quick, bold stroke which would permit us to conquer the leg of Italy as far as Rome. He was still considering Avalanche [Page 451] as the most promising suggestion yet made to that end. He was evidently impressed by the character of the German resistance in the rough terrain of Sicily and did not like the prospect of facing such resistance in the similar terrain on the toe and leg if Ave attempted to go all the way by land.

iii. my own resulting views from the foregoing talks in England and in africa

1. Some sort of post- Husky operation seems strongly advisable if it can be made to assist and supplement and not destroy the mounting of the powerful threat of invasion across the Channel.

2. This is the view of our American military leaders in Washington, in London, and in Africa. Their purpose is to secure additional air bases for an attack on southern Germany and possibly other satellite or occupied territory.

3. The need of such bases is becoming constantly more apparent. The number of bombing sorties from the U.K. is limited (a) by the location, (b) by the adverse weather conditions, and (c) by the constantly increasing strength of German air defenses in the north.

Eaker’s losses are approaching the margin of safety and his continuity of operations is greatly interfered with by the weather. On the other hand, our air forces in the south are able to operate almost every day and their percentage of losses has been a mere fraction of those incurred by Eaker’s forces in the north.

4. If we could establish air bases in Italy as far north as Rome, our air men told me that they could institute regular attacks upon Germany from the south with the above favorable results.

5. Such a project if feasible would not only not impair Roundhammer but it would greatly aid and facilitate it and would have the maximum advantage in effect upon Germany both psychologically and materially.

6. This conception of the American staff of an Italian operation is entirely different from the conception put forward at times to me by the P.M. and Eden and also made by certain others, notably General Smuts in a letter to the P.M. This last, which for brevity I will call the British conception, is not put forward as an aid to Roundhammer but as a substitute to supplant it. It contemplates an invasion from the south—in the direction of the Balkans and Greece or possibly towards southern France though this last suggestion has not been pressed. Such a southern invasion and the Roundhammer invasion cannot be both maintained. On the contrary, if they are both held in contemplation, they will be in constant interference and will tend to neutralize each other. For example, under the American conception it is absolutely essential to have a speedy daring operation which will not draw upon [Page 452] or interfere with, the mounting of Roundhammer . A slow progressive infiltration of the Italian boot from the bottom, time consuming and costly, would be sure to make Roundhammer impossible.

7. The main thing therefore to keep constantly in mind is that the Italian effort must be strictly confined to the objective of securing bases for an air attack and there must be no further diversions of forces or matériel which will interfere with the coincident mounting of the Roundhammer project.

  1. This letter and the enclosed memorandum were delivered to Hopkins in Washington shortly before his departure to join Roosevelt, who was vacationing at Birch Island, Ontario. Hopkins passed the memorandum on to Roosevelt, who sent word to Stimson on August 5 that he had read it. After Roosevelt and Hopkins had returned to Washington, Stimson discussed the memorandum with Hopkins at lunch on August 9 and with Roosevelt at lunch on August 10. See Stimson and Bundy, pp. 434435.
  2. The two subjects referred to were Anglo-American cooperation with respect to atomic energy (see post, p. 637) and the organization of anti-submarine warfare within the United States armed forces.
  3. See post, p. 486.
  4. See post, p. 634.