Advocating Overlord by Philip Padgett

Author:Philip Padgett [Padgett, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027100 History / Military / World War Ii
ISBN: 978-1-64012-048-8
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2018-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Bundy submitted the memorandum to Marshall that day to check that it accomplished the general’s intended purpose. Marshall replied, “I think it is o.k.” At some later date, Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, the military lead for the Manhattan Project (S-1), added a note to his copy: “Their views were in complete accordance with the opinions of the Military Policy Committee” of which Groves was a member. What would constitute “a reasonable basis of quid pro quo” to win the war might be seen differently, however, from the perspective of President Roosevelt and from that of his science adviser.26

Anderson and Bush now had closure if only so far as Bush would allow their negotiation to go. Writing to Bush from the British embassy on August 6, Anderson proposed that he submit their amended draft to Churchill and that Bush do the same with FDR.27 This would take some time, as the president was out of the city fishing and Churchill was at sea headed for Canada.

The following day, Saturday, Bush prepared a package for transmittal to FDR on his negotiation with Anderson on atomic information exchange. In his cover letter Bush noted for the president that he had withheld comment from Anderson on the first four points of policy, deferring these to FDR and Churchill. Bush wrote, “I have encountered some strong opinions concerning them, but you will undoubtedly wish to consult on this broad aspect of the matter directly rather than through me.”28 Those “strong opinions” certainly included the clear statement by Churchill’s science adviser, Lord Cherwell, to Bush in Harry Hopkins’s presence on the last day of the Trident Conference, May 25, that Britain wanted to produce and possess an atomic bomb after the present war.29 They also included Conant’s equally clear intent—shared by Bush and Groves—that the enormous U.S. effort in the Manhattan Project should serve the U.S. objective to win the current war, not British postwar interests.30

*

All the while Bush and Anderson were negotiating on atomic research sharing in Washington, across the river at the Pentagon, General Marshal and his allies were restoring cohesion to the U.S. military position for the Quadrant Conference. Of immense help to them was the timely hand-delivery from London of COSSAC’s Overlord Outline Plan.

As Stimson completed his trip report to FDR on August 4, Maj. Gen. Ray Barker, COSSAC’s American deputy freshly arrived from London, was meeting with the U.S. Joint Planning Staff to brief and defend COSSAC’s Overlord Outline Plan. This was the first of several meetings at the Pentagon in which the substance of the Allied plan would be revealed to U.S. military leaders and their staff. In the second meeting of the JPS that day, Maj. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer and Brig. Gen. Laurence Kuter attacked the original and revised Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC) plans that favored the Mediterranean strategy. These two proponents of cross-Channel assault wanted to return to “sound strategic plans which envisage decisive military operations at times and places of our choosing, not the enemy’s.” In their view, Overlord must be the primary Allied strategy in fact as well as name.

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