How the Victory Program Was Undermined

Chapter III

The Victory Program was completed in late September 1941 and the provisions relating to the building of the armed forces and the civilian industrial complex to feed the war were implemented almost immediately. The Victory Program’s recommendations dealing with strategic war aims, and how and where Americans would fight, would require approval of both President Roosevelt and then, collaboration with and approval by America’s chief war ally Great Britain, following America’s entry into the war after December 7, 1941. The critical provision relating to a cross channel invasion in the summer of 1943 was to have a difficult future, especially when it was introduced to the British. This chapter will discuss the Victory Program’s course through the American and British political thicket. The British opposition to the Victory Prograjm was limited to the American proposal to invade France in the summer of 1943, (ROUNDUP) later changed to (OVERLORD) and a subsidiary “emergency” plan (SLEDGEHAMMER) to land a small diversionary force in France in the summer or fall of 1942 under certain conditions.

Approval of the Victory Program by the President was the first step, and this was accomplished early on. The build up of arms, expansion of the military and civilian production was never in doubt; the strategic employment of military forces, in particular the suggested cross channel invasion for the summer of 1943 developed into a bone of contention with the British which caused friction and disagreement. The President’s approval for the 1943 plan was given early, athough in retrospect it later seemed to the American planners, with some misgivings, and later withdrawn. Agreement by the British was an entirely different matter, and the Victory Program had a rocky road in the British counsels. The reasons for the British resistance to the strategic war aims of the Victory Program can be grouped into several categories:

·                     Completely different historical perspectives on strategy;

·                     British belief in their superior knowledge of battle tactics;

·                     Nightmarish memories of enormous casualties in First World War;

·                     Personal opposition of Churchill to the Victory Program.

The British arguments against the Victory Program will be addressed in this chapter, but first we will look at how the plan progressed in America in the early months of 1942. The American planners knew it was important to move quickly.  The spring of 1942 was a chaotic period. The war was not going well in any theatre. Insistent demands were being piled on the President’s desk particularly from the Prime Minister including: demands that American divisions should be sent to the Southwest Pacific; America should supply shipping to transport British reinforcements to the Indian Ocean area as well as opening air offensives against the Japanese from China, Northeast India, and the Aleutians; the transport of military supplies to England should be greatly increased. All these demands came from our new “junior partner” who self-elevated himself to senior partner immediately following Pearl Harbor. Winston Churchill planned on having a strong voice in the allocation of arms, ammunition, planes, tanks, as well as the placement of troops, and in particular implementation of strategic initiatives, and these plans in large measure consisted in a multiple simultaneous minor actions initiated by the Allies on the periphery of the Axis military forces. 

Marshall looked on the British concept of piecemeal scattering of Allied forces, vividly described by Stimson as the stopping up of “urgent rat holes.” as a dangerous dispersion of resources.  General Eisenhower agreed and vigorously expressed the War Department’s thinking in January 1942:

We’ve got to go to Europe and fight---and we’ve got to quit wasting resources all over the world---and still worse---wasting time. If we’re to keep Russia in, save the Middle East, India, and Burma; we’ve got to begin slugging with air at West Europe; to be followed by a land attack as soon as possible.[1]

It was this concept of concentration on an offensive in Europe, an operation that would focus the efforts of the Allies on a decisive effort, the central argument of the Victory Program that Marshall was to present to the President on March 25, 1942. This was an extremely important meeting. Wedemeyer’s key proposal in the Victory Program, endorsed by both General Eisehhower, newly appointed as Chief of the War Plans Division, and General Marshall as well as the American Joint Chiefs of Staff was that America must, as soon as possible take all measures to implement and:

… develop, in conjunction with the British, a definite plan for operations against Northwest Europe. It should be sufficiently extensive in scale as to engage, from the middle of May [1943] onward, an increasing portion of the German Air Force, and by late summer an increasing amount of his ground forces.[2]              

The plan was presented to the President on March 25, 1942 at a luncheon attended by Stimson, Knox, Arnold, King, and Hopkins. The cross channel invasion into France in the spring of 1943 was stressed.  The President listened and raised questions, likely the very ones he had heard from the Prime Minister, and during the discussions,  invited a discussion about other possible alternative plans such as operations  in he Middle East, or the Mediterranean.  Since none of these potential operations had been suggested in the Victory Program, they could only have come from the British. Churchill’s influence on the President was evident, and seemingly, Roosevelt’s full endorsement of the Victory Program had eroded somewhat.  General Marshall reports that it was a difficult task to get the President back on track, but since there were no British Planners in the room, he eventually won the President’s backing for the cross channel attack (ROUNDUP) in the spring of 1943.[3] The astute Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s senior advisor, perceiving  something less than an enthusiastic endorsement, and aware of the numerous communications between the two leaders, sensed that the approval of the cross channel operation might be somewhat tenuous. Therefore he shrewdly recommended that the plan as now approved, be brought directly to London, by passing the British Mission in Washington, where he knew it would be shredded. He knew it had a better chance if it was presented in London by the Americans directly.  Immediate preparations were made to travel to London in April for the purpose of presenting the plan to the British.

Before discussing the April 1942 London trip, it is useful to briefly examine the reasons for the anticipated British objections from a strategic viewpoint. The American strategic view of how to fight the war differed markedly from the British, and as a result each side presents a different strategic and tactical plan. The British argued ceaselessly for an Allied invasion of North Africa over the more direct straight-as-a-rifle shot invasion of Europe as recommended in the Victory Program and favored by George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, approved by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of whom insisted the Germans must be engaged, directly in Europe. Marshall and Eisenhower suspected that the British were haunted by the failure at Gallipoli some 30 years earlier, fears of the dreadful losses at the Somme in the First World War and the catastrophe of Dunkirk in the Second.[4] Add the failure of the Dieppe raid, and it was said by some American planners that the British lacked the stomach for bloodletting that a cross channel attack would entail. They were haunted by the crosses of Flanders Field.

Marshall and Eisenhower knew they had to resist the British obsessions because it violated their most fundamental military belief, namely that they should find the enemy, fight him and defeat him.  To their mind, any diversion such as a North African invasion would simply be a postponement of the final reckoning. Marshall and Eisenhower envisioned a great battle with Patton’s tanks sweeping through France. This was the American tradition dating from Ulysses S. Grant. The Americans believed in concentration of power at the earliest possible moment at a decisive point, and the delivery of a blow to the solar plexus.  The British, on the other hand, believed that the correct strategy was to work vigorously but more cautiously from a ring which sea power and Russia’s resistance would enable the Allies to close around the Axis. Next they felt it was essential to keep the Russians supplied with material and in the fight and tie up the German army in Eastern Europe, and to bomb, blast and burn the German and Italian cities, stir up resistance in occupied countries, jab through the ring whenever an opportunity presented itself while ever “tightening the ring” until the enemy was so strangled and bleeding that the final offensive need only be a coup de grace. These were the essential differences in strategy as viewed from the American and British viewpoints.

The leading British advocate of the difference in strategic vision was Winston Churchill, who was the single most important factor in undermining the key provision of the Victory Program, the invasion of France in June of 1943. Churchill dominated the meetings of the British planners, despite efforts of several key members of his planning

[1] Forest C. Pogue. Ordeal and Hope. New York: The Viking Press. 1965. p. 304.

[2] Op. cit. p. 305.

[3] Someone suggested that the President gave his approval “with his fingers crossed”

[4] Pogue. Ordeal and Hope. p. 401.

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