The Steel Wave - Jeff Shaara [64]
He stopped, looked down into his empty glass, sniffed. He sat heavily and stared across the table at Eisenhower.
“In 1940, people died from a Nazi air raid in Coventry, people we could have warned. Because of Ultra, we knew the planes were coming and which city they were going to bomb. But the secret was more valuable to us than people’s lives. And so we let the bombers come. We didn’t warn anyone.”
“Yes, I know about that.”
“I suppose you do. So now we send pilots over Nuremberg, after we tell the enemy they’re coming. We sacrifice our own, our good trained men, just so we can hold on to our secrets.”
Eisenhower didn’t want this conversation. He knew the answers already, knew Churchill did as well.
“Your General Patton. Caused a big damned row, all over the place. His crime? He said we were destined to rule the world, you, me, and the Russians. Bloody gigantic mistake. But not because he was wrong. His crime was, he told the truth. Stupid bastard.”
* * *
11. EISENHOWER
* * *
As the Overlord plan evolved, the Americans had pushed one more plan as well, George Marshall in particular championing a strategy that called for a large-scale invasion of southern France, codenamed Anvil, to coincide with the Allied invasion of the French coast at Normandy. As adamant as Marshall had been, the British had been just as adamant that the plan be shelved. Churchill had long been an advocate for an invasion of the Balkans, pressing hard that such a strategy would threaten Hitler’s hold on all of southern Europe. Churchill also believed that such a plan would offer a serious threat to those German forces still engaging the Russians, by jamming a spear up toward Austria that would threaten the Eastern Front from behind. But the Americans had never accepted Churchill’s logic, preferring to aim their thrusts into France.
Joseph Stalin had been warm to both strategies, long insisting that the British and Americans should launch a vigorous attack in the west, rather than consuming so many months talking about their various options. Both Churchill and Marshall understood clearly that Stalin was in favor of any plan that would relieve pressure on his army, and possibly draw German strength away from the horrifying slaughter that had consumed both German and Russian troops for three years.
Eisenhower had appreciated the value of Marshall’s strategy. Operation Anvil could produce either one of two extremely positive results. If the Germans chose to confront the invasion on the Mediterranean coast, it could seriously reduce their ability to reinforce Rommel’s forces in Normandy. Or if German strength in the south was weak, it would allow the Allies to punch a strong advance northward, which might threaten Rommel from behind or, possibly, allow the Allies to drive into southern Germany.
There were two primary arguments against Anvil, arguments Churchill and the other British chiefs made at every opportunity. The Allied troops that would participate would most likely come from Italy, where the Allies were already suffering a grinding war of attrition, caused by a lack of superiority in numbers. To draw off entire divisions from the Italian front would almost certainly guarantee that momentum would be handed back to Kesselring’s Germans. The second problem was the availability of landing craft for both troops and equipment, a struggle Eisenhower had dealt with since North Africa. The craft, both large and small, were a hotly contested commodity that had never been available in sufficient numbers. Most were produced at plants in the United States, and for reasons Eisenhower could not fathom the production lines had been painfully slow. With ongoing pressure from the British, and faced with the realities of the lack of adequate numbers of landing craft, Marshall and Eisenhower had been forced to concede to the British