FDR - Jean Edward Smith [363]
Badoglio prolonged negotiations until an Allied ultimatum at the end of August forced his hand. Italy surrendered on September 3, 1943, switched sides, and declared war against Germany. Hitler responded by rushing sixteen battle-tested divisions down the boot of Italy. Rome was occupied, the Italian Army disarmed, and Mussolini restored to office.* When American and British forces landed near Salerno in early September, they were met by well-positioned German forces determined to contest every kilometer of Italian soil. So much for Europe’s “soft underbelly.”
Roosevelt and Churchill met for their fourth wartime conference (QUADRANT) at Quebec City on August 17, 1943. Once again Churchill traveled on the Queen Mary, this time bringing Clementine and their daughter Mary. The British party arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a week early, and Churchill took advantage of the interval to spend time privately with FDR at Hyde Park. “You know,” he told Eleanor, “one works better when one has a chance to enjoy a little leisure now and then. The old proverb all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy holds good for all of us.”23 Churchill wore a ten-gallon Stetson to protect his head from the sun, sipped Scotch chilled in a wine cooler, and downed the obligatory hot dogs at a picnic hosted by ER at Val-Kill. Cousin Daisy Suckley, a guest for the weekend, believed Churchill “adored the president, loves him, looks up to him, defers to him, leans on him.” In Churchill’s presence FDR was “relaxed and cheerful in the midst of the deepest problems.”24
During the weekend Churchill proposed that the command of OVERLORD, the cross-Channel invasion, be entrusted to an American. Churchill and FDR had previously agreed that whichever country furnished the preponderance of forces should command the operation, and it was becoming increasingly clear that the United States would do so. Both Churchill and Roosevelt assumed General Marshall would be tapped for the assignment.25
The Quebec conference focused on the projected Normandy landing, particularly the logistics of crossing the Channel—landing craft, temporary harbors, fuel pipelines, and the mountains of equipment that would have to be off-loaded. Roosevelt and Churchill were absorbed in the details. “I’m nearly dead,” the president confided to Frances Perkins. “I have to talk to the P.M. all night, and he gets bright ideas in the middle of the night and comes pattering down to my bedroom. They are probably good ideas, but I have to have my sleep.”26
Roosevelt raised the question of Germany’s surrender. Had the military staffs prepared for Hitler’s sudden collapse? According to General Marshall, the president “recognized the importance of capturing Berlin as both a political and psychological factor. He felt that it was a question of prestige and ability to carry out the reorganization of Europe on an equal status with the Soviet Union.” General Alan Brooke, the British chief of staff, assured FDR that plans were in place for a prompt Allied entry into German-occupied territory should the opportunity arise.27
Churchill and the president also discussed the atomic bomb. Following receipt of a letter from Albert Einstein in October 1939, Roosevelt had authorized preliminary research on a nuclear bomb.* Einstein and FDR shared a long history. When the scientist arrived in the United States in 1933, the president invited him and his wife to spend a night at the White House. They dined with the Roosevelts and conversed at length in German, which Einstein later recalled FDR spoke very well.28 It is likely that no other physicist could have captured the