A World at Arms by Gerhard L. Weinberg

Author:Gerhard L. Weinberg [Weinberg, Gerhard L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2005-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

ALLIED INVASION PLANS

Stalin’s interest in exploring the possibility of a separate peace with Germany governed either by Hitler or by an alternative regime more sympathetic to and perhaps dependent upon the Soviet Union, was probably stimulated in the summer of 1943 by the information that a large-scale invasion of Western Europe by Britain and the United States would not take place until 1944. And as Soviet intelligence may well have informed him, even that date was not really certain because of continued British interest in pushing Mediterranean operations. At the Trident Conference in May 1943, the Americans, after long and heated debate, finally obtained Britain’s agreement on two critical points: a May 1944 target date for the cross-Channel invasion and a commitment that in November 1943 the Allies would begin the transfer of seven battle experienced divisions, four American and three British, from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom to take part in the great invasion. In the course of the summer, it became clear to the Americans that the British were not holding to this agreement; the latter now called for a halt to the troop transfers and this in turn raised fundamental questions about Britain’s willingness to go forward with the cross-Channel invasion in practice, not only in theory.

The constant British emphasis on operations in the central and eastern Mediterranean, repeatedly voiced by Churchill and Brooke, made the American military leaders, Secretary of War Stimson, and President Roosevelt increasingly doubtful about the firmness of Britain’s commitment to what was then referred to as “Roundhammer” and came to be known as “Overlord.” Stimson himself went to London and in arguments with Churchill and others advocated the United States army’s strategy of pushing from the best base with the greatest force at a place where it would have the greatest effect, as against a constantly revived British preference for a peripheral strategy. This in American eyes, would produce a stalemated war in Europe, leave the overwhelming burden of the war against Germany with the Soviet Union, and thus result either in the latter making a separate peace with Germany or, alternately, eventually winning the European war on land by itself and controlling practically all of the continent.70

Churchill constantly went back and forth between a firm endorsement in principle of the cross-Channel operation and a concern that the opportunities in the Mediterranean theater be exploited. The forboding sense that a renewed battle in Northwest Europe would involve staggering casualties if the landing failed or if the troops, once ashore, became involved in a lengthy campaign reminiscent of World War I fighting, came back to him time and again. Simultaneously, Field Marshal Brooke, who on other occasions restrained the Prime Minister’s impulsive advocacy of all sorts of expeditions and projects, was most reluctant to hold down Mediterranean operations in favor of a future project which he was himself at that time scheduled to command but for which he evidently did not see the prerequisites in place.

It is not, in my judgement, correct

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