Roosevelt's Centurions by Joseph E. Persico

Author:Joseph E. Persico [Persico, Joseph E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-64543-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

ON AUGUST 12, 1943, FDR was relaxing at Hyde Park awaiting a now frequent guest, Winston Churchill, who had just made a dash across the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary. On the prime minister’s arrival, FDR treated him to a down-home taste of America, handing him a ten gallon Stetson that Churchill happily donned. They picnicked on hot dogs at Eleanor’s cottage, Val-Kill, where Daisy Suckley observed that Churchill “adored the President, loves him, defers to him, leans on him.” Secretary of War Stimson had managed an earlier meeting with FDR and warned him that the prime minister was still lukewarm about invading France. “The shadows of Passchendaele and Dunkerque hang too heavily over” the British, Stimson observed. “They were giving it [Bolero] only lip service.” As proof, Churchill was now dangling the idea of invading Norway as preferable to a head-on collision in France, which even his own staff dismissed as foolhardy.

On a drizzly August 17, the two leaders boarded the president’s train for a conference in Quebec City designated Quadrant. Their arrival had been preceded by a gathering of their military chiefs at the Citadelle, the star-shaped fortress, described as “The Gibraltar of the Americas,” that overlooked the St. Lawrence River. Here the chiefs resumed a running quarrel. The British, reflecting Churchill’s lack of enthusiasm for a cross-Channel invasion, and having won the two prior arguments over North Africa and Sicily, were continuing to press for the invasion of the Italian mainland. The disgusted U.S. chiefs wondered when, if ever, Western Europe was to be pierced. FDR’s military chief of staff, Admiral Leahy, putting a polite patina on the debate, noted, “A difference of opinion was apparent from the outset as to the value of the Italian campaign toward our common war effort against Germany. General Marshall was very positive in his attitude against a Mediterranean commitment.” An irascible Ernie King showed no such restraint. He accused the British of deliberately undermining Overlord. As Leahy described King’s outburst, the admiral used “very undiplomatic language, to use a mild term.”

While their subordinates wrangled, the president and prime minister entertained themselves, picnicking and fishing in Laurentide Park forty miles from the city, accompanied by Harry Hopkins, the prime minister’s wife, Clemmie, and his daughter Mary. For the moment the principals were unfurrowed by care. So serene was the mood that Hopkins, during one conversation, fell asleep. But when they returned to the Citadelle, the prime minister embarked on a fresh offensive. He had been chafing for months over an added irritation, America’s growing domination of the quest for an atomic bomb. All along, the British had considered themselves the leaders in applied nuclear research, with the Americans serving as junior partners. But by now the major effort was taking place deep within the United States at Los Alamos, and funded by American billions. The security-obsessed General Leslie Groves, along with the physicist James Conant, who had FDR’s trust, wanted the British kept out of the project’s inner sanctum. In their

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