The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur (27 page)

Roosevelt did his best to prepare the country for what lay ahead. Like MacArthur, he was captivated by maps, and impressed by Churchill’s informal war room (which was filled with maps), he directed his staff to set one up in the White House. He could often be found there, at the end of the day, tracing out with his finger German offensives and Japanese conquests. The maps reflected the harrowing reality of the war: All of Europe was under German control, with a thin line separating the eastern German armies from Leningrad and Moscow, while another army was poised to move south and east into the Crimea. Scandinavia was
either neutral (Sweden) or conquered (Norway and Denmark), as was most of North Africa. Japan’s conquests were even more impressive. Its armies were camped out deep in China. Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Java, Sumatra, and the Philippines had been conquered, as well as nearly all of the Central and South Pacific islands, including Rabaul. Japanese ships had sortied into the Indian Ocean and reached as far east as Hawaii, while the Imperial Japanese Army was moving west and south. If the Japanese military conquered New Guinea, Australia would be next.

Roosevelt didn’t worry about America’s capacity to wage war, but he wasn’t so sure about Russia’s. It had taken the Russians seven months (from the German invasion in June 1941, until December) to mobilize enough men to match the Wehrmacht’s blitz, but by the spring of 1942, they had only succeeded in blunting it. German forces had stalled on the outskirts of Moscow, and a planned Russian counteroffensive in early 1942 had ground to a dismal halt. The Russians were poorly armed and relied on a shoddy and outmoded transport system; their vaunted wall of steel, as Roosevelt knew, was actually a wall of bodies. The Germans were regrouping for a summer offensive aimed at Russia’s southern oil fields, and entire Russian divisions were being destroyed in a whirlwind that liquidated hundreds of thousands, and then millions, of lives. Stalin was barely holding on.

On March 25 (on the verge of MacArthur’s Pacific-first cable offensive), Roosevelt had sat through a detailed briefing in which George Marshall set out the American military strategy. The presentation proposed an early Allied landing in France (Operation Sledgehammer) to take the pressure off Russia, whose collapse would be fatal for the Anglo-American cause. Marshall was blunt: If the British opposed the plan, he said, he thought the United States should turn its attention to the Pacific. Or, as Eisenhower had put it in a note to Marshall the week before, if the British refused to cooperate on Sledgehammer, the “United States should turn its back on the Atlantic and go full out against Japan.”

Roosevelt agreed, and in a “Dear Winston” message on April 3, he promoted the Marshall-Eisenhower plan. While Allied bombers were then hitting German cities, this wasn’t enough. The Wehrmacht would need to be defeated on the ground, in France. So the object, he told Churchill, was to get ashore in France as soon as possible. The president
then added that he was sending Marshall and Harry Hopkins, his most trusted political advisor, to London to argue the position in person. “What Harry and Geo. Marshall will tell you about has my heart and
mind
in it,” he said. “Your people and mine demand the establishment of a second front to draw off pressure from the Russians [who] are today killing more Germans and destroying more equipment than you and I put together. Even if full success is not attained, the big objective [helping the Russians]
will
  be.”

Hopkins, in particular, was skeptical that Churchill would accept the American plan; or rather, he suspected that the prime minister would accept it but then undermine it. Even so, the first meeting between Marshall, Hopkins, and Churchill in London on April 9 went well, with Churchill saying he had no objection to the American strategy. On April 15, Marshall confirmed to Alan Brooke, the chief of the Imperial General Staff (later, Field Marshal The Rt. Hon. 1st Viscount Alanbrooke), that Roosevelt’s haste in calling for an invasion of Europe was spurred, in part, by Ernie King’s call for more ships in Hawaii and Douglas MacArthur’s push for more troops in Australia. The message was unmistakable: The Americans and the British would go ashore in France, or the United States would shift its attention to the Pacific. Alanbrooke, an adept political thinker, committed to his diary his reflections on Marshall’s presentation: “Marshall has stated the European offensive plan and is going all out for it. It is a clever move.” Churchill accepted the American plan on April 14, and four days later, Marshall and Hopkins told Roosevelt that the president had gotten what he wanted. The British were committed to an early invasion of France.

Marshall and Hopkins were pleased with what they had accomplished. Churchill concluded their meetings with an effusive show of support, telling the Americans that his decision on a cross-channel invasion was “irreversible” and would be the primary focus of the Anglo-American alliance. They might have been less pleased, however, to learn the views of those who knew Churchill best. Sir Charles Wilson, the prime minister’s personal physician, was puzzled by Churchill’s agreement. The doctor knew that Churchill feared a replay of the Great War, when British divisions were chewed to pieces by the Germans in the trenches of northern France. Churchill, he speculated in his private
journal, “must have decided the time has not come to take the field as an out-and-out opponent of the Second Front in France.” Wilson speculated that Churchill, fearing that Roosevelt “might be driven by public clamor to concentrate on the war with Japan,” decided that “it was no time for argument.” But as Churchill didn’t fool Wilson, neither did he fool Roosevelt. The president assumed that the British were likely to drag their feet when it came to opening a second front.

In this, at least, Franklin Roosevelt proved to be more clear-eyed than either Harry Hopkins or George Marshall. The United States was still many months away from fielding an army sufficiently trained and equipped to take on Hitler’s legions. Moreover, the “40,000 bombers” that Roosevelt had said must be produced (in fact, American workers produced tens of thousands more) were, in May 1942, only just beginning to come off the assembly lines. So whether or not his erstwhile ally signed on to anything the Americans proposed was of little importance, at least not yet. What was important was to
tell
the Russians that the Americans and the British were committed to a second front, no matter when it came, and to keep shipping the Red Army the tanks, trucks, aircraft, and rifles it desperately needed to stay in the fight. Then too, what Roosevelt needed most of all was not an agreement with Churchill, but rather a singular triumph that would lift morale and give hope that the Anglo-American journey to victory had finally begun.

A
lthough 1942 was a bad year for Roosevelt, it was even worse for MacArthur. Morose over his escape from Corregidor, stunned by the lack of resources that greeted him in Australia, and frustrated by his long-distance exchanges with Marshall and Roosevelt, MacArthur remained a Melbourne recluse. After his exchange with Roosevelt, MacArthur cabled Hap Arnold that the Japanese could take New Guinea “at will.” Pessimism seeped from his cables. MacArthur’s spirits were buoyed by news of General Jimmy Doolittle’s surprise aerial attack on Tokyo in April. Carried out by thirteen B-25s launched from the USS
Hornet
(it had been his idea, MacArthur harrumphed to his aides), the strike lifted morale and provided evidence that Japan was vulnerable. But whatever lift MacArthur received from the Doolittle raid was short-lived. At the end of April, even before Wainwright’s surrender
on Corregidor, Army Air Force Brigadier General Harold George (who had headed up Lewis Brereton’s “pursuit command” in the Philippines and preceded him to Australia) died in a freak accident at Batchelor Field, near Darwin, when a P-40 veered off course and killed him. MacArthur’s period of mourning was unusually long; he had admired George and the two were close friends. MacArthur needed good news, and desperately. It came, finally, during the first week of May.

On May 4, the Japanese Imperial Navy entered the Coral Sea looking for U.S. aircraft carriers. The Japanese task force, led by ascetic Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue (with two aircraft carriers—
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
), shielded an invasion force of eleven troop transports carrying four thousand soldiers of the South Seas Detachment bound for Port Moresby. In Hawaii, Chester Nimitz was warned of the Japanese offensive by cable intercepts and dispatched Admiral Frank “Jack” Fletcher and two aircraft carriers,
Yorktown
and
Lexington
, to intercept them. Alerted to the Japanese move by Nimitz, MacArthur directed his skeletal Allied Air Force to scout north of New Guinea for Japanese naval movements, then sent three cruisers to reinforce Fletcher. Beginning on May 7, Fletcher and Inoue exchanged the first blows of the two-day battle, the first in history where two navies fought each other solely with aircraft. The first day’s encounter was indecisive, though American planes found and sank the light carrier
Shoho
and the Japanese sank two American tankers. But on the second day, Fletcher was able to find and damage
Shokaku
. He paid a heavy price:
Lexington
, hit by two torpedoes and three bombs, was set afire and sunk. Fletcher, with
Yorktown
also damaged, broke off contact and limped south. The Battle of the Coral Sea is considered a draw by most naval historians, but it was viewed as a setback by the Japanese. Japan’s planned conquest of Port Moresby was postponed, and the South Seas Detachment was ordered back to Rabaul.

There was better news to come. Stymied by Fletcher in the Southwest Pacific, Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s premier naval commander, decided to finish the job begun by Admiral Chuichi Nagumo at Pearl Harbor by luring U.S. aircraft carriers into a much-anticipated “decisive battle.” He dispatched Nagumo and four carriers (
Kaga
,
Akagi
,
Hiryu
, and
Soryu
) and a supporting naval group to the Central Pacific to capture Midway and to destroy the American fleet. But the movement didn’t result in the victory
the Japanese hoped for. Warned again of the threat by his code breakers, Nimitz sortied three aircraft carriers from Pearl Harbor (
Enterprise
,
Hornet
, and
Yorktown
, the latter hastily repaired after its drubbing in the Coral Sea) to meet the Japanese. On June 4, some 1,100 miles northwest of Hawaii,
Akagi
,
Kaga
, and
Soryu
were hit by dive-bomber squadrons from
Enterprise
and
Yorktown
. The Japanese carriers were set ablaze and sunk. The carrier
Hiryu
responded with two dive-bomber attacks on
Yorktown
, which, listing and set burning, was sent to the bottom by a Japanese submarine. A final American attack, ordered by U.S. task force commander Raymond Spruance, targeted
Hiryu
, which was so badly damaged that it was scuttled by its crew. The battle ended with the surviving Japanese ships limping west, to safety.

The Battle of Midway was a turning point. The loss of four aircraft carriers, along with the heavy cruiser
Mikuma
(and over three thousand of its sailors), was a devastating blow to Japan. When its wounded returned home, they were sequestered from the public. In senior navy circles, discussion of the defeat was forbidden.

The Midway victory provided the Americans with a respite from the cascading defeats they had suffered since December 7. Although he had lost
Yorktown
, Nimitz had bought time until new ships, and most especially new carriers, were produced by U.S. shipyards. And the navy had found a new hero: Raymond Spruance emerged from this battle as one of the navy’s most celebrated fighters. For Franklin Roosevelt, the Midway victory provided not only a reason to celebrate, but also a unique opportunity to press Churchill to implement plans for Sledgehammer, the early invasion of France. As luck would have it, Louis Mountbatten, one of Britain’s most celebrated naval officers (and a member of the royal family), was then in Washington to discuss the topic—he had been sent by Churchill to assess just how serious the president was in opening a second front. For Churchill, Mountbatten was the perfect emissary; a handsome and romantic figure, articulate and brainy, he was viewed as a friend of America. More importantly, like Churchill, Mountbatten was not persuaded that Sledgehammer was a good idea. An invasion of Europe in 1942, he believed, was simply not feasible. In his first meeting with Roosevelt, Mountbatten argued that the Allies were not prepared for an invasion. His message reflected what Stimson and Marshall most
feared, and what Stimson had predicted—that Churchill would not only find a way to climb down from his earlier support for an invasion, but also propose an alternative that would pick away at Hitler’s “Festung Europe.” Stimson and Marshall also worried that Roosevelt, seduced by Mountbatten during a private White House dinner (to which they were not invited), would concede Churchill’s point, but without a compensating promise that would pressure Germany.