The World at War by Richard Holmes

Author:Richard Holmes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0091917514
Publisher: Ebury Press
Published: 2007-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

CASABLANCA AND TEHRAN

One of the least explored of the major themes of the Second World War is the degree to which the Americans, deliberately or accidentally, pursued policies that ensured Britain would be completely exhausted by the end of hostilities. President Roosevelt's formidable wife, Eleanor, once said that he did not think, he decided, and he announced one such unilateral decision at the closing press briefing of the Allied conference at Casablanca in January 1943. The conference had been dominated by the better-prepared British, and from it emerged a joint plan for the allocation of mainly US resources within the framework of a 'Germany First' policy. Without discussing his announcement with Winston Churchill or even his own Chiefs of Staff Roosevelt announced that the war must end with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers and their allies. No policy could have been better designed to ensure that Germany and Japan would fight to the bitter end and that, consequently, American hegemony would be near absolute in a shattered post-war world. Later, at the meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at Tehran at the end of November 1943, Roosevelt sought to ingratiate himself with the Soviet dictator by snubbing Churchill. Ironically, Stalin respected Churchill as a brave man and an honest opponent, and despised Roosevelt for his disloyalty. Roosevelt's outlook and that of several high-ranking Soviet sympathisers in his administration was born of their naïve belief that Communism was simply a more drastic version of their own Progressivism. This aspect of American policy, decidedly awkward in the light of the ensuing Cold War, was airbrushed out of post-war history. It is evident that the Americans were, quite understandably, not interested in fighting to preserve the British Umpire, and attitude surveys of US troops fighting in north-west Europe testify to a wider cultural gap between them and the British than we sometimes like to imagine. In this context we should perhaps let the great Lord Palmerston speak for Roosevelt: 'We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.'

REAR ADMIRAL LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN

British Chief of Combined Operations

At Casablanca the British and American Chiefs of Staff arrived first; we had three or four days entirely alone before Churchill and Roosevelt turned up. It didn't go very well, we took up positions, the British with Alanbrooke as our spokesman were pressing for a continued Mediterranean strategy; we were there, it was the obvious thing to do. The Americans wanted to land immediately in France, and engage the Germans on the mainland of Europe and also to give more pressure to the Pacific. All the arguments that Admiral King developed for the Pacific we developed for the Mediterranean, and it was about the third day we agreed a paper on facts, and alternatives and possibilities. Admiral Cook, who was the Director of Naval Plans for the Americans, had absolutely nobody on his staff who knew anything about

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.