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By Root 2076 0

and to coordinate British and American military policy, ARCADIA established the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), a joint British-American undertaking composed of the three British chiefs—General Sir Alan Brooke (CIGS); Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the first sea lord; and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal—and their American counterparts, Marshall, King, and Arnold. At Roosevelt’s insistence the Combined Chiefs was headquartered in Washington, where its work was directed by Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who became the ranking British chief and Churchill’s personal representative. Dill was joined in July 1942 by Admiral William D. Leahy, whom Roosevelt brought back from Vichy to become chief of staff to the commander in chief and, in effect, chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff.*

In retrospect, the establishment of the command structure to fight the war was an unprecedented achievement that reflected the extraordinary ability of Churchill and Roosevelt to saw off minor differences and find common ground. Roosevelt, unlike Lincoln, was also well served by his long familiarity with the Army and Navy and his ability to pick effective military subordinates. Leahy, Marshall, King, and Arnold were exactly the right men for the job, and they served in their posts throughout the war. In their own way they were ruthless taskmasters, loyal to the president, and, when pushed by FDR, worked effectively with their British counterparts.†

An equal achievement was the creation of the Combined Munitions Assignment Board for the allocation of supplies among the allies. At General Marshall’s insistence the Board was made subordinate to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. As Marshall told FDR, he could not plan military operations and carry them through if some other body controlled the allocation of the materiel required for such operations. Roosevelt backed Marshall, the Board was located in Washington, and Harry Hopkins, who had long played go-between for Churchill and FDR, became its chairman.21 Like the CCS, the Munitions Assignment Board worked with remarkable efficiency. When disputes arose Hopkins resolved them before they festered.22

The ARCADIA conference marked the first reference to the United Nations. On New Year’s Day 1942 twenty-six nations, led by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, affixed their signatures to a document drafted initially by FDR pledging cooperation in the defeat of the Axis powers.23 The term “United Nations” was Roosevelt’s choice (rather than “Associated Nations”),* but this was purely a declaration of wartime purpose, not the organization for postwar security that was established at San Francisco three and a half years later.

On January 6, 1942, Roosevelt went to Capitol Hill to deliver his tenth State of the Union message. Within a span of little more than a week the Congress heard both Churchill and FDR. Both were captivating speakers, but their styles were distinctly different. Churchill, like Charles de Gaulle—and Hitler and Mussolini, for that matter—spoke to his audience collectively with rhetorical flourishes and stirring cadences that rallied the nation’s soul. Roosevelt addressed his remarks to each listener individually, with homey references and simple words that struck a personal note. For Churchill it was an oration; for FDR, a conversation.24

Roosevelt was at his best that Tuesday. “The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war. But the massed, angered forces of humanity will finish it.” He galvanized the nation with a breathtaking set of production goals for 1942: 60,000 airplanes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, 6 million tons of merchant shipping. “These figures,” the president told a wildly cheering Congress, “will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished at Pearl Harbor.”25

Roosevelt’s production targets provided inspiration for the nation in the dark days after Pearl Harbor. It was, said Stimson, “the best speech I ever heard him make.”26 But FDR had drawn his figures more or less out of a hat. “Oh, the