CASABLANCA

 -STRENGTHENING OF THE ALLIANCE AND THE BALANCE OF POWER

After a year of America's participation in the war, the extent of the political manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre between the Allied leaders seemed to be increasing rather than decreasing as 1943 began. The previous year had seen endless discussion between Roosevelt and Churchill and their respective political advisers and generals on the strategic objectives that the Allies should adopt. "Bolero", the building and training of a potential invasion force for the opening of a second front on continental Europe, had been agreed as a policy early in 1942, and put into effect. "Sledgehammer", the creation of a limited bridgehead in Europe, was still in the discussion stage. "Roundup", the full scale invasion of Europe from the United Kingdom, for which General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been campaigning, had been abandoned as a short term objective in July/August 1942, much to the displeasure of Josef Stalin, who raged at Churchill and accused Britain of cowardice when Britain's Prime Minister went to Moscow to discuss strategy in August. Instead of "Roundup", which Churchill knew was far beyond the Allies' state of preparedness in 1942, Operation Torch had been mounted against French North Africa, and had been successful.

The second Battle of Alamein had changed the character of the war in North Africa, and it was clear that the days of domination of the Western Desert by the Axis were past. In the Pacific, the year that had begun so catastrophically with Japan's sweep through the islands; with Corregidor; with Singapore; had suddenly become the year of Midway and Guadalcanal and the dawning of the realisation that the Japanese could be and would be defeated. The year had ended with the Germans encircled at Stalingrad, and faltering on their drive to the Caucasus. There were undoubtedly more successes to the Allies' credit than they might have dared to hope just a few months earlier. As Winston Churchill said in a speech at the Mansion House in the City of London; "This must not be taken as the end; it may possibly be the beginning of the end; but it is certainly the end of the beginning".

The political discussions at the end of 1942 had extended even to lengthy arguments about who should be allowed to take part in the discussions. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that a conference was necessary to determine future policy, but Churchill, who showed a frank dislike and mistrust of Stalin, wanted to meet Roosevelt and agree a common strategic policy for the future conduct of the war with which jointly to confront Stalin. Roosevelt disagreed, believing that to be seen to conspire against Stalin would be intensely damaging to the future of the alliance with Russia. In the event, Stalin resolved that particular conundrum by pointedly declining to attend the Casablanca conference on the grounds that his army was busy defeating Germany at Stalingrad, and he had better things to do.

Thus the conference that assembled in two luxurious rented villas high in the hills behind Casablanca between January 14th and 23rd 1943 consisted only of Roosevelt and Churchill and their chiefs of staff, with their entourages and aides housed in a nearby hotel. Essentially, the conference was faced with deciding two major, fundamental and interdependent issues. The first was the balance of war resources to be allotted to the European war on the one hand, and to the Pacific war on the other. The second was the question of whether the Allied invasion of Europe should be from the Mediterranean during 1943, or across the Channel from Britain, probably rather later.

The British team, often subsequently accused of railroading the US delegation to accepting their viewpoint, certainly came better equipped with a closely argued case than did their US counterparts. The fact that Churchill was now Britain's Minister of Defence as well as her Prime Minister, and his effective role as Commander in Chief and pivot of all policy, ensured that the facts and figures presented in support of the British contention that Europe should be invaded from the Mediterranean were almost incontrovertible. Churchill had in fact argued strongly before the conference for the original "Roundup" plan for a cross-channel invasion during 1943 following the success of Operation Torch, but had eventually been dissuaded by his service chiefs on the basis of the sheer weight of evidence that showed such a plan not to be practical. That the Allies agreed that the defeat of Germany must be given a higher priority than the humbling of Japan was already settled - the only question was one of degree.

General George C. Marshall and the US military staff argued strongly that the resources allocated to the Pacific should be sufficient to permit offensive action against the Japanese and to prevent them being able to choose their times and places for battle. The US planners proposed Pacific offensives from the Solomons and New Guinea to New Britain and Rabaul, through the Gilbert, the Marshall and the Caroline Islands to the Japanese naval base at Truk, and against Japanese positions in the Aleutians to regain the islands of Kiska and Agattu. In Burma, the Americans postulated, the time had come for a land based offensive to reopen the Burma Road, and for a seaborne invasion of Burma, both with the objective of making Chiang Kai-shek's forces better supplied and more available as an effective ally - an asset of whose value the British were by now somewhat doubtful. The American viewpoint on the European invasion remained, as it had been a year earlier, strongly in favour of a head-on cross-channel confrontation with the German Army. The US military staff believed that the war would and could be shortened by a cross-channel invasion in 1943.

The British position was more circumspect in its approach. In the first place, great stress was laid upon the necessity of winning the Battle of the Atlantic and defeating the U-Boat menace. If the convoys did not get through from the USA to Europe and from Britain to the USSR, the war with Germany might well be lost. The British military staff, with memories of the huge and bloody stalemate of the trenches of 1914-18, did not believe in the advisability of a full-scale confrontation with the German Army until the Allied armies were stronger, and the German armies were weaker. Since the scale of the German defeat at Stalingrad, and the probability of further major disasters for Germany in the East, suggested that time would certainly weaken the might of the Third Reich, Britain favoured a waiting game. Nevertheless, to hasten the weakening of Germany's resources, Britain proposed an increased bombing offensive to damage further German armaments production and her ability to supply her armies and air force, and an invasion of Italy from the Mediterranean. In the Pacific, the British position was that no more than the offensives from the Solomons and New Guinea, and limited operations in Burma to open road communication to Chiang Kai-shek and, possibly, to recapture Akyab, were desirable or feasible in 1943 given the available budget.

Not surprisingly, after four days of wearisome conference discussion, the two sides were poles apart in their proposals. General Sir Alan Brooke, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, argued for many hours with General Marshall over the issue of the cross-channel invasion, making the point that Germany could, in 1943, mass 44 divisions in France without withdrawing any from Russia, and that it was strategically sounder to invade Italy and force Italy out of the war. This, he argued, would oblige Germany to find troops to replace the Italian garrisons in the Balkans, would deprive Germany of the Italian troops currently fighting in Russia, and would improve the Allies' position in North Africa if that were still a problem at the time of the Italians' defeat.

Gradually, Marshall's colleagues were forced to recognise the merits of other aspects of the British case. It was agreed that an invasion of Italy would disperse German air power, and make effective bombing of German industry more possible. Admiral King came to support a landing in Sicily. Eventually General Marshall came round to accepting the Mediterranean concept, and a Memorandum on the Conduct of the War in 1943 was drawn up for signature. Essentially this allocated the greater part of Allied resources to the defeat of Germany in 1943, but allocated "adequate forces to the Pacific and Far Eastern theatres". A "full scale offensive against Japan by the United Nations' was promised as soon as Germany is defeated". The Mediterranean was to be the principal area of Allied effort, and Sicily the first target. The "defeat of the U-boats remains first charge on resources" the Memorandum stated, and it went on that "Russia must be sustained by greatest volume of supplies , without prohibitive cost in shipping".

Having reached agreement on policy, the Casablanca conference now tackled the task of planning how to achieve the agreed objectives. The conference agreed that the bombing of the yards where U-boats were built and maintained should be stepped up; that the shortage of escort vessels for Atlantic convoys must be rectified. The strategic bombing offensive against German industry was agreed in detail, including what proved to be the immensely costly and relatively ineffective US precision daylight bombing by unescorted formations. The invasion of Sicily - Operation Husky - was scheduled for the end of August, and it was agreed that the build-up of US forces in Britain for the eventual cross-Channel invasion should be continued.

Perhaps the most significant outcome of the Casablanca conference was the decision to accept nothing less than total surrender from Germany and Japan - the so-called "total surrender policy". Although arguably a propaganda-inspired decision to appease Stalin's scathing view of his (as he saw it) weak-kneed allies, a view that could be expected to become still more disparaging when he learned that there was to be no cross-Channel invasion early in 1943, the "total surrender policy' was also a reflection of the realisation that much of the cause of the Second World War lay in the inconclusive ending of the first. Germany had been left with a feeling of "unfinished business" as well as her sense of betrayal at the terms of Versailles. The Allies did not intend that the Second World War should end with an undefeated Germany or Japan hungering for a chance to start the third.

The Casablanca conference was one of the most significant meetings of the war, and represented the point at which the US and British conflicts of viewpoint were finally reconciled into a cohesive joint policy that was followed by both sides of the alliance. Had the nations of the Axis been as successful in meeting, reconciling their opposing viewpoints and putting common policies into action, the war may have followed a different course. Rarely in history has unity been such a source of strength.