Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [95]
Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed to name an American to the Supreme Command in the Mediterranean theater, and the nod went to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a fast-rising regular soldier who had no battle experience, but who proved to be a wonderworker at resolving problems among what George Bernard Shaw called “two countries separated by the bond of a common language.” They further decided on the invasion of Sicily, as a continuation of operations in the Mediterranean. Finally, in a subsequently hotly debated political move, Roosevelt broached the idea of “unconditional surrender”—the enemy powers were not to be allowed to surrender on terms, but must, to end the war, throw themselves completely on the mercy of the Allies. There had been discussion of this among the Americans, and Roosevelt had mentioned it to Churchill, though the two had not agreed upon it formally. Roosevelt therefore sprung it on a press conference, and the somewhat surprised Churchill quickly backed it.
The idea has aroused considerable argument, because some writers maintain it lengthened the war. Cutting the ground from under domestic opposition to Hitler, Mussolini, and their regimes, it is possible that unconditional surrender encouraged the Axis to fight on to the bitter end. In part, the announcement was a response to particular pressures of the moment. Churchill and Roosevelt had been accused of making back-room deals with some of the Vichy French leaders, and in the immediate political sense, their enunciation of unconditional surrender policies was designed to show the western peoples that their leaders were super-clean. In a larger sense, however, the idea was inherent in the Rooseveltian and Churchillian view of the war. If it was indeed a struggle between good and evil, then evil must be completely expunged, and good could not taint itself by treating with evil. It could not even deal with those fellow-travelers of evil who had themselves become partially infected by association. From that viewpoint unconditional surrender was but the logically inescapable conclusion to the Allies’ idealized war aims. Clausewitz said war is an extension of politics. The Allied leaders took war beyond politics and made it a crusade.
From the heights of Casablanca the planners returned to the more mundane levels of strategic discussion. In May of 1943, there was a Trident Conference in Washington. The British and Americans agreed to go from Sicily to Italy, a British desire, and set a firm date for the cross-Channel invasion, May 1, 1944, an American desire. As the price for Italy, the British agreed that the forces buildup would henceforth be concentrated not in the Mediterranean but in England. This put the British in a dilemma; with one hand they gained a decision to continue in the Mediterranean; with the other they gave away the resources that would have given point to that decision. The whole Mediterranean adventure was henceforth to be dogged by this unresolved conflict.
In August, the Allies met at Quebec City in the Quadrant Conference. They reaffirmed their intention to invade across the Channel, in spite of a Churchillian rear-guard action in support of the Mediterranean. At the insistence of the Americans, the British also conceded an upgrading of the Pacific offensives against Japan and a greater allocation of resources to that area.
Roosevelt and Churchill finally met with Stalin for the first time at Tehran in November. There was a wide-ranging discussion of military matters, in which Stalin laid great emphasis on what Russia was accomplishing, and asked repeatedly about the invasion of France. Roosevelt responded by stressing how much the Americans were committing both to the Pacific and to the cross-Channel scheme. Churchill was the widest-ranging