Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [94]
These three states essentially decided the shape of the postwar world. The only other claimants for great-power status were China and France, and both were allowed into the councils of the Allies purely on sufferance. Chiang Kai-shek lacked the world view or world status of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin; for most of the latter part of the war China was a poor relation kept alive by Allied help and goodwill. To say that is to underestimate her contribution to the war effort in tying up the bulk of the Japanese Army, but by the accidents of geography and strategy that is the way the war developed.
The other great-power aspirant, France, was kept afloat less by Charles de Gaulle than by Churchill’s backing of him. De Gaulle was the prickliest of allies, Roosevelt thoroughly disliked and distrusted him and did his best to cut him off, and even his champion, Churchill, once grumbled that the heaviest cross he had to bear was the Cross of Lorraine. The French had a contribution to make, both as an occupied people and as a military force working from North Africa, but their whole position was an immensely complicated one, and only after a series of Byzantine convolutions did they reappear as an almost-great power.
Throughout the war the Allied leaders met at a series of conferences and meetings, sometimes all three of them, sometimes only two, occasionally with their foreign ministers and representatives of the top leadership. In the early stages of American participation in the war, these meetings were mostly concerned with organization and strategic planning; as the war proceeded, the leaders turned their attention increasingly to postwar matters.
In late December of 1941, just two weeks after Pearl Harbor, a British-American meeting convened in Washington. This was known as the Arcadia Conference. The Anglo-Americans reaffirmed the decision taken at Placentia Bay to defeat Germany first. They decided on air bombardment of Germany through 1942, and the clearing of the North African coast if at all possible. They set up the Combined Chiefs of Staff, consisting of the British Imperial General Staff, headed by General Sir Alan Brooke, and the American organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed by General George C. Marshall. They also agreed to invade continental Europe in 1943, though even at this first conference, the British preference for peripheral operations came into conflict with the American desire to invade Fortress Europe at the first possible moment.
This American desire for what the British considered a premature invasion led to a second conference in April. General Marshall and President Roosevelt’s personal advisor, Harry Hopkins, went to London; there the Allies agreed to a large buildup of American forces in Britain as a preliminary to the invasion, at that point to be code-named Operation Bolero-Roundup. Even while agreeing to the operation, however, the British stressed their desire to go elsewhere, and this Bolero Conference eventually led to the later decision to invade French North Africa in the fall of 1942.
The next major Allied meeting came at Casablanca in January of 1943. By that time North Africa was all but liberated, but several new problems had arisen. Chief among them was what to do about the French, and much of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering at Casablanca was a jockeying for position between Churchill’s protégé, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt’s candidate, General Giraud. The latter, last seen leading his army into Holland in May of 1940, had been imprisoned by the Germans, had escaped, emerged as a potential alternative to Vichy France, and then been picked up by the Americans. Roosevelt’s dislike of de Gaulle stemmed largely from the Frenchman’s imperiousness. Giraud, who had the attraction of not being well known