No Ordinary Time, Page 62

  But the price of the Russian victory at Stalingrad was almost incomprehensible. In this single battle, the Russians had lost more than one million men, more than the United States would lose in the entire war. To be sure, American munitions and supplies had played a critical role in the victory. During the last quarter of 1942, the U. S. had sent Stalin 60,000 trucks, 11,000 jeeps, 2 million pairs of boots, 50,000 tons of explosives, 450,000 tons of steel, and 250,000 tons of aviation gas. American vehicles substantially increased the mobility of the Red Army, while American machinery and raw materials helped the Soviet Union maintain its war production despite the losses of great industrial areas to the enemy.

  Still, Stalin insisted angrily, the Soviets were enduring a disproportionate loss of life. The time had come for the Allies to bear a larger burden of the fighting. “I feel confident,” Stalin wrote Roosevelt on the eve of the Casablanca Conference, “that no time is being wasted, that the promise to open a second front in Europe which you, Mr. President, and Mr. Churchill gave for 1942 or the spring of 1943 at the latest, will be kept.”

  It was not to be that simple. Again the British chiefs were united in their opposition to a major cross-Channel attack. Instead, they argued in favor of invading Sicily, convinced that victory there would come quickly and easily, hopeful that it might knock Italy out of the war. Once more, General Marshall carried the banner against what he saw as a diversionary campaign in favor of a direct assault before the end of the year on Nazi-occupied Western Europe. But the American chiefs were divided among themselves. Admiral King wanted American forces to keep positive pressure on the Japanese in the Far East, where, after five months of fighting, Japanese resistance at Guadalcanal was finally coming to an end; General Arnold argued for weakening Germany first by heavy bombing from the air.

  After four days of intense discussion, Roosevelt opted to go along with the British plan to invade Sicily instead of France in 1943. Though he remained sympathetic to Stalin’s request for a major operation to divert German troops from Russia, he concluded that Allied deficiencies in shipping—of cargo boats, tankers, destroyers, and escort vessels—were still too great to allow the cross-Channel attack to proceed. In early 1943, sinkings of merchant ships still exceeded new construction; the United Nations had less tonnage at the end of 1942 than they had at the beginning. The most troublesome shortages were escort vessels and landing craft. Without escort vessels to protect convoys, it was impossible to send American troops to Europe for a second front. “One of the most poignant arguments in favor of invading Sicily,” envoy Averell Harriman recalled, “was that the troops to be used were for the most part already in the Mediterranean,” obviating the need for ocean transport.

  Until the American home front could be geared to peak production in 1943, Roosevelt reasoned, the goals of the war front had to be reduced to intermediate levels. Hopkins was not happy about the decision, preferring to get on with the invasion of France, but both he and Marshall understood that shipping was the major consideration. Beyond Sicily, the two leaders agreed to two offensive operations in the Far East, the seizure of Rabaul, on the island of New Britain, and the invasion of Burma in conjunction with the Chinese.

  Now that the major decisions were behind him, Roosevelt left the grounds of his villa for the first time. With General George Patton as his guide, he embarked on a daylong journey to Rabat, some eighty-five miles to the northwest, to visit the troops. Along the way, joined by Averell Harriman, Harry Hopkins, and Hopkins’ son Robert, the president enjoyed a picnic lunch with twenty thousand soldiers of General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army. After lunch, settled comfortably in an open jeep, he inspected the troops of the Ninth Infantry Division. Robert Hopkins later recalled with pleasure “the faces of the men standing rigidly at attention as they broke into wide grins when they saw who it was inspecting them.” One soldier was so excited that he jumped up and down, “like an animated jack-in-the-box, unable to say a word.”

  To Roosevelt, who roared with laughter when he heard one soldier say, “Gosh—it’s the old man himself!” the sight of so many young Americans in good health and high spirits was a tonic for the soul. “Those troops,” he told his son Elliott, “they really look as if they’re rarin’ to go. Tough, and brown and grinning, and . . . ready.” Later, he visited Port Lyautey, scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the landings, and placed wreaths on the graves of American and French soldiers.

  That night, while the president shared a quiet dinner in his villa with Churchill, FDR, Jr., and Elliott went into town to explore the night life of Casablanca, with its spicy smells and exotic music, its open-air cafés and narrow winding streets, its colorful mixture of fortune-tellers and snake charmers. FDR, Jr., “certainly was in rollicking form,” Elliott reported in a letter to his mother, hinting that perhaps too much liquor had been consumed. “I do hope that after this war he can settle down to some kind of work, because if he doesn’t I fear that he may waste a brilliant mind like Hall did.”

  When the boys returned to the villa, the president was still up, anxious to hear all about their evening on the town. “As always,” Elliott recorded, “he was envious of our relative freedom, and listened to my story with the greatest gusto.”

  The president’s good mood continued through dinner with the sultan of Morocco the following night. Magnificently dressed in white silk robes, the sultan and his entourage arrived bearing gifts—a gold-painted dagger in a gorgeous teakwood case for the president, and a high golden tiara for the first lady. “One glimpse of the tiara,” Elliott laughingly recalled, “and Father gave me a straight-faced sidelong look, and then a solemn wink. The same thought was in both our minds: a picture of Mother presiding over a formal function at the White House with that imposing object perched atop her hairdo.”

  Seated on the sultan’s left, Churchill did not share in the president’s good humor. Since Muslim etiquette prevented the drinking of liquor in public, there was no wine served either before or during the meal. This did not set well with the prime minister, who had announced earlier that day, when Hopkins found him drinking a bottle of wine for breakfast, that “he had no intention of giving up alcoholic drink, mild or strong, now or later.” Explaining further, he said that “he had a profound distaste on the one hand for skimmed milk, and no deep rooted prejudice about wine,” so he had reconciled the conflict in favor of the latter. “He had lived to be 68 years old and was in the best of health, and had found that the advice of doctors, throughout his life, was usually wrong.”

  Churchill’s mood darkened still further as the president led his dinner companions into a discussion of the postwar scene, cheerfully predicting that colonialism would soon be a thing of the past. While the sultan delighted in the prospect of his country’s independence, Churchill shifted uneasily in his chair, coughing persistently until the conversation changed. But the mood the president had set had a rhythm of its own, and the conversation soon returned to the forbidden subject of postcolonialism.

  In the days that followed, the conferees were preoccupied with the thorny problem of French politics. From the start of the conference, Roosevelt was determined to bring together the warring factions represented by General Henri Giraud, the compromise leader of the French forces in North Africa, and General de Gaulle, the valiant symbol of the French resistance. The president told Churchill that he would produce the bride (Giraud) if Churchill produced the groom (de Gaulle). Giraud’s presence was easily arranged, but de Gaulle flatly refused to deal with anyone connected to the Vichy regime. Only when Churchill threatened to stop paying his salary in London did the proud Frenchman agree to come to North Africa.

  Yet, once he reached Casablanca, de Gaulle refused to call upon Giraud. Churchill was furious. “Well, just look at him!” Churchill remarked, as de Gaulle stalked down the garden path after a stormy session with British leaders. “His country has given up fighting, he himself is a refugee, and if we have to turn him down he’s finished. Look at him! He might be S
talin, with 200 divisions behind his words!”

  Finally, Roosevelt decided to intervene, asking de Gaulle to meet him in his villa. “The General was sullen,” Mike Reilly noted, “never smiled, and he had that unmistakable attitude of a man toting a large chip on each shoulder. He and the President shook hands, and then everybody left them alone together.” Or so it seemed. Behind the drapes, Reilly remained half hidden, his pistol removed from his holster. “I saw before me the President of the United States in a hot argument,” the Secret Service chief explained. “The man was six foot three, the President a cripple.”

  For his part, de Gaulle noticed shadows at the rear of the balcony and saw the curtains moving, but he never said a word, carrying on the conversation as if he and Roosevelt were completely alone. By the end of the session, a breakthrough had been achieved: de Gaulle agreed to sign a memorandum of unity with Giraud. “In human affairs the public must be offered a drama,” Roosevelt told de Gaulle. If the news of Casablanca could be accompanied by a joint declaration of the French leaders, even if it concerned only a theoretical agreement stating they both wanted France freed and would consult and collaborate, it would, Roosevelt predicted, “produce the dramatic effect we need.”

  “Let me handle it,” de Gaulle agreed. In his memoirs, the French leader attributes his change of heart to the president’s soothing charm. Despite their differences, de Gaulle was convinced that Roosevelt was governed by “the loftiest of ambitions” and that “his intelligence, his knowledge and his audacity gave him the ability . . . to realize them.”

  The atmosphere chilled the next day, however, when Churchill lost his temper with de Gaulle. “In these days,” Lord Moran observed of his boss, “when he is stretched taut, certain people seem to get on his nerves: de Gaulle is one of them.” The argument arose just as Giraud was being escorted into the room by Hopkins for a historic handshake with de Gaulle. Reacting quickly, Roosevelt paid no attention to Churchill’s diatribe, turning instead to de Gaulle. “Will you at least agree,” he said in his kindest manner, “to be photographed beside me and the British Prime Minister along with General Giraud?”

  “Of course,” de Gaulle replied, knowing full well that serious disputes of substance still remained unresolved. “Will you go so far as to shake General Giraud’s hand before the camera?” “I shall do that for you,” de Gaulle answered. The picture was snapped, the dramatic moment captured for posterity. In the foreground, a stiff-necked de Gaulle offers his hand to Giraud. In the background is the seated president, his face thrown back in wholehearted enjoyment of the delicious scene.

  As the Frenchmen departed, Roosevelt and Churchill remained behind on the lawn to talk with the assembled newsmen. The day was so lovely, with a bright sun and blue skies, and Roosevelt was feeling so gay, that in a spontaneous moment he called for the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Churchill was stunned. Though he and Roosevelt had exchanged views on unconditional surrender on several occasions, no final agreement on a text had been reached. Later that evening, Harriman recalled, Churchill was “in high dudgeon. He was offended that Roosevelt should have made such a momentous announcement without prior consultation . . . . I had seen him unhappy with Roosevelt more than once, but this time he was more deeply offended than before. I also had the impression that he feared it might make the Germans fight all the harder.”

  Roosevelt blithely explained later that getting de Gaulle and Giraud together had been so complicated that it reminded him of Grant and Lee, “and then suddenly the press conference was on, and Winston and I had no time to prepare for it, and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant ‘Old Unconditional Surrender’ and the next thing I knew I had said it.”

  But the deed was done, and Churchill could not remain angry at Roosevelt for long. With the work of the conference completed, he suggested that he and the president travel together to Marrakesh, the jewel of Morocco, a city which combined a perfect climate, a wealth of ancient monuments, and a unique setting of palm trees against snow-capped mountains.

  “Let us spend two days there,” Churchill said. “I must be with you when you see the sunset on the snows of the Atlas Mountains.” Delighted to stretch his trip a little longer, Roosevelt agreed. The journey by automobile took five hours, with time out for a basket lunch along the way. Driving together along the plain, Roosevelt and Churchill fell into easy conversation, heartily enjoying their last moments of freedom before returning to the burdens that awaited them at home. During the last hour of the journey, the shapes of the mountain peaks began to emerge on the horizon, the palm trees to grow more thickly. At 6 p.m., they reached a spectacular villa, surrounded by a fairyland of fountains and waterfalls, where they were to spend the night.

  At the top of the villa stood a sloping tower six stories high with a magnificent view of the snow-capped mountains. It was the view Churchill wanted to share with the president. The steep, winding stairs were too narrow to accommodate Roosevelt’s wheelchair, so Mike Reilly and George Fox made a cradle with their hands to carry him step by step to the top, his legs, Moran noted, “dangling like the limbs of a ventriloquist’s dummy.” At the topmost terrace, the president sat with Churchill for half an hour, gazing at the purple hills, where the light was changing every minute. “It’s the most lovely spot in the whole world,” the prime minister remarked.

  At this moment, Churchill was perhaps at the peak of his wartime power. The conference had ended exactly as he had hoped—with a postponement of the cross-Channel attack and the decision to invade Sicily. Never again, with Stalin’s power rising every day, would Churchill enjoy such influence with Roosevelt.

  The president’s plane was scheduled to leave for the United States the following morning at seven-thirty. Churchill had intended to see Roosevelt off, but after a long evening of food, drink, speeches, and songs, he had trouble getting out of bed. At the last minute, still clad in his red-dragon dressing gown and black velvet slippers, he raced outside to catch the president’s car. At the airfield, the photographers begged for a shot. “You simply cannot do this to me,” he laughingly remarked, and they obliged, lowering their cameras.

  As the president’s plane took off, Churchill put his hand on American Vice-Consul Kenneth Pendar’s arm. “If anything happened to that man,” he said, “I couldn’t stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known.”

  • • •

  “Dearest Babs,” Franklin wrote Eleanor as he flew back to the States. “All has gone well though I’m a bit tired—too much plane. It affects my head just as ocean cruising affects yours.”

  Roosevelt hated flying. He vastly preferred the slower pace of ocean travel. “He always used to tell me that clouds were dull,” Eleanor explained. “What he loved was the sea all around him, the motion of the waves.” Franklin had long tried to convince Eleanor that getting there was half the fun, soliciting her companionship on languid trips by boat and train, but to Eleanor’s mind nothing was comparable to flying. Possessed by a deep-rooted horror of wasting time, she always wanted to get where she wanted to go as quickly as possible.

  “What do you know!” Franklin excitedly wrote Eleanor as he crossed the northern coast of South America. “Back in the US. Saturday evening and we should get to Washington by 8 p.m. on Sunday [January 31].” Having been away for nearly a month, he seemed eager to see his wife, to tell her all that had happened, to hear her speak, as if the time apart had created a surge of forgotten emotions. Perhaps, on coming home, he indulged himself in the fancy that Eleanor would be there, just as his mother had always been, to welcome him back with warmth, love, and exuberant delight.

  But the spell was quickly broken when he arrived in the White House and found a handwritten note from Eleanor: “Welcome home! I can’t be here Sunday night as months ago I agreed to open a series of lectures at Cooper Union but I’ll be home for dinner Monday night as I don’t want you to tell all the story and mi
ss it . . . . I have to be gone again for the day Tuesday but will be back Wednesday a.m. I’m terribly sorry not to be home. I think I will now delay going west til late March . . . . Much love and I am so glad you are back.”

  That evening, while Eleanor kept her engagement at Cooper Union, the president relaxed in his study with Anna and John, who had arrived in Washington for a winter vacation while he was in Casablanca. The president’s animated spirits were so contagious, his stories of the conference so vibrant, that both Anna and John were enthralled. “I’d give my eyeteeth to go along on such a trip,” John suddenly announced. “That couldn’t be done,” the president replied. “And why not?” John ardently persisted. “Why couldn’t I?”

  “Well,” the president countered, “you are not in uniform!” Roosevelt’s reply was most likely nothing more than a statement of White House protocol surrounding military conferences, but to young Boettiger, already sensitive about his civilian status, it seemed a personal attack that could not have come at a worst moment.

  For months, John had been suffering from bouts of depression, displayed in a sudden ebbing of interest in his work at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a withdrawal from his wife and family. Anna assumed that she was somehow at fault. “I feared,” she later admitted to John, “you were getting tired of something or other about me or in me.”

  But, unbeknownst to Anna at the time, John’s melancholy had deeper roots. Paralyzing doubts about his abilities had surfaced periodically in the course of his marriage, but now, as John entered his fortieth year, they were assuming more powerful proportions than before. Haunted by the knowledge that his position as publisher of the paper was dependent upon his status as the president’s son-in-law, John had begun to envision military service as an escape from his depression and pain. The choice was not easy, however, for it meant leaving Anna alone in Seattle to cope with running the paper.