Eric Larrabee - 22 Oct

COMMANDER IN CHIEF

Commander in Chief

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, HIS LIEUTENANTS, AND THEIR WAR

ERIC LARRABEE

Naval Institute Press
Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

1987 by Eric Larrabee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition, 2004

ISBN 13: 978-1-59114-455-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68247-174-6 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Larrabee, Eric.

Commander in chief : Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his lieutenants, and their war / Eric Larra bee.1st Naval Institute Press pbk. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Originally published: New York: Harper & Row, c 1987.

ISBN 1-59114-455-8 (alk. paper)

1. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 18821945Military leadership. 2. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 18821945Friends and associates. 3. PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. 4. GeneralsUnited States-Biography. 5. AdmiralsUnited StatesBiography. 6. World War, 19391945United States. 7. World War, 19391945Campaigns. 8. United StatesPolitics and government19331945. I. Title.

E807.L26 2004

940.540092273dc22

2003044281

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

1716151498765

CONTENTS

MAPS

COMMANDER IN CHIEF

PROLOGUE

THIS BOOK IS CONCERNED WITH FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT as war leader and with the subordinates through whom he exercised command. It assumes that the dominant part the President played in World War II has been neglected, if only because his prominence was so visible as to be taken for granted, comfortable and familiar. He had been around for so long that he was almost a part of the landscape; we have a sense even when unwarranted of knowing who he was and what he did. Moreover, he loomed so large on the domestic and political scene as to dim his outline on any other. Support can thus be found for the misapprehension that he left the conduct of the war largely to the military, and accordingly the centennial of his birth tended to emphasize his accomplishments as architect of the New Deal rather than as architect of victory. The wartime Roosevelt is a stilted and less substantial figure by comparison.

Yet this would not have been his perception of himself. Roosevelt took his position as head of the armed services more seriously than did any other President but Lincoln, and in practice he intervened more often and to better effect in military affairs than did even his battle-worn contemporaries like Churchill or Stalin. It must be borne in mind, wrote Mark S. Watson in the official U.S. Army history of the prewar period, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the real and not merely a nominal Commander in Chief. Every President has possessed the Constitutional authority which that title indicates, but few Presidents have shared Mr. Roosevelts readiness to exercise it in fact and in detail and with such determination. Roosevelt as war lord has been there all along, needing only to be recognized.

On the face of it, any effort to have a closer look at him in his war-making capacities would seem to be hampered by the fact that he left no memoirs and was accustomed to keep his own counsel. Sometimes, for his own reasons, he would give the impression that he thought military matters belonged in military hands. His style of administration required him on more than one occasion to haze over his purposes, and in peacetime he invigorated men and events as notably by shrewd manipulation as by the overt employment of his powers. Responsibilities were vague and overlapping, and channels of authority repeatedly ignored; he was able to manage circumstance merely by his own presence. In the Roosevelt administrations his control of a situation was now and then evidenced only by the inability of anyone else to control it.

He could exasperate equally by a refusal to disclose all his actions and by insouciance in covering his tracks, nor was he always candid; an element of the devious could be found in his methods even when it was unnecessary. He enjoyed the atmosphere of intrigue and frequently relied on personal agents, accountable only to him. All of which seems calculated to frustrate examination of what he was about as war loomed and then came, and therefore of what stature he should be accorded in the history of that now-distant conflict.

But this is not the whole story. In matters pertaining to the military, Roosevelt behaved rather differently than he did as a civilian leader. Since he was dealing here with men who operated under the constraints of duty and military security, his relationships with them could be less roundabout and less conspicuous. He gave an attention to the war more concentrated and full of intent than he had any reason to make known except to the commanders who carried out his directives. He found the men who suited his needs and he kept them in his service. His wartime choices for military posts were rarelywith one disastrous exceptionsupplanted or neutralized, as so often his civilian appointees had been and continued to be. His military instructions, issued at numerous and critical points, were in the main concise and final, contrary to his practice when the ebb and flow of politics was the determining factor.

He arranged matters so that the Grand Alliance was directed from Washington and its center of information was in the White House; his own records contained the only complete and up-to-date accounting of the wars conduct at its highest level. He kept in close contact with the progress of events, receiving daily and often hour-by-hour reports about the course of the campaigns, and hence was in position to premeditate the questions of strategy on which future campaigns would hinge. A large part of this was necessarily documented. Despite the Presidents innate preference for doing business orally and informally, much of his military thought and action was expressed in writing or is reflected clearly in the written record. Roosevelt as war leader is much more observable than he has been given credit for being.

By principle and conscious choice he was an activist commander. While willing to leave the bulk of detail to the armed service chiefs, he had been taught by experience as the political administrator of a military department that generals and admirals, left to their own devices, do not always manifest the initiative and drive that civilian leadership can and should demand of them. He was often far ahead of the conventional wisdom and never unwilling to set goals far beyond what competent professionals believed to be achievable. He sought and respected their advice, but he would never permit them to shape strategies contrary to his own, which were framed in a political format on a grand and world-girdling scale. If he seems a confident Commander in Chief, it must be conceded that he had always intended to be President, in the full meaning of the franchise. Virtually alone among occupants of that office, as Richard Neustadt remarks, he had no preconceptions of it to live up to, since his image of the presidency was quite simply that of himself occupying it.