Editorial Note
President Roosevelt conferred with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House on May 9, 1943. No official record of the substance of this meeting has been found. Regarding the absence from the official files of any records of this meeting, see Matloff, p. 125, footnote 57. According to Leahy, p. 157, and King, p. 435, it was determined at this meeting that a definite commitment from the British would be sought regarding a cross-Channel invasion of Europe at the earliest possible date and the making of preparations for such an operation by the spring of 1944. Leahy also recalls that his own proposal to grant the Chinese request for the use of available air transport for three months to send aviation material from India to China was not supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Stimson, who was not a participant at the meeting, heard about it afterwards, and recorded the following in his Diary for May 10, 1943:
“Marshall told me of the President’s conference yesterday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and told me that he had ‘in principle’ agreed to the outline which our Chiefs of Staff had prepared as the American policy in the coming conference. Marshall, however, expressed his reservation as to how firmly the President would hold to his acquiescence. I fear it will be the same story over again. The man from London will arrive with a program of further expansion in the eastern Mediterranean and will have his way with our Chief, and the careful and deliberate plans of our Staff will be overridden. I feel very troubled about it. So I spent my morning in carefully going over the views of our Staff which accord with my own views very fully.” (Stimson Papers)
The plan presented to Roosevelt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at this meeting appears to be J.C.S. 286/1, May 8, 1943, “Recommended Line of Action at Coming Conference”. This paper is described in detail in Matloff, pp. 123–124, and in Romanus and Sunderland, p. 327. The work of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in planning for the conference with the British is discussed in Matloff, pp. 120–125, and in Cline, pp. 219–220.