Supreme Commander Read Online Free Page B

were accorded him did not inflate his ego.” Finally, the only regret: “It was always so difficult to let him know the great depth of my affection for him.”
    At 7:30 P.M . Eisenhower noted simply, “I love my Dad,” closed his office, and went home. “I haven’t the heart to go on tonight.” 16
    On February 16 Gerow assumed a field command and Eisenhower took charge of WPD. At the time Marshall was in the midst of a reorganization of the War Department. For Eisenhower, the result was increased responsibility. After noting in his desk pad that “The Joint and Combined staff work is terrible! Takes an unconscionable amount of time,” he declared. “We are faced with a big reorganization of W.D. We need it! The [General Staff] is all to be cut down, except W.P.D.—which now has all the Joint and Combined work, all plans and all operations so far as active theaters are concerned!” Continuing to pour out his frustrations, he added, “Fox Conner was right about allies. He could well have included the Navy!” 17
    The key feature of the reorganization as a whole (completed on March 23) was the unequivocal grant of broad power over the entire Army to the Chief of Staff. Inevitably in practice this resulted in placing power in the hands of Eisenhower’s division, renamed the Operations Division (OPD), since it was to that agency that Marshall turned for strategic plans and directives and the transmission of orders to theaters. 18
    Although Eisenhower headed OPD, although OPD was Marshall’s command post, and although Marshall had enormous powers, neither Eisenhower nor Marshall nor anyone else was, at any time, solely responsible for the strategic direction of the war. The conflict was too vast, the commitment of men and material too great for anyone to have the situation as a whole complete in his mind. It took dozens of men to work out the details of allocation of resources, industrial priorities, shipping space, and supply problems, to plan and execute operations involving hundreds of thousands of men, ships, and planes. All big offensives needed a lead time of from three to six months to prepare. In the first two years of American participation, shortages of everything compounded the problem. “It’s a back breaking job to get a single battle order out,” Eisenhower noted, “and then it can’t be executed for from 3–4 months!!!” 19
    Even had there been someone in the War Department trying to run the entire show himself, he would have met constant frustration. Marshall, Eisenhower, and OPD were not working in a vacuum; their solutions often did not agree with those of the U. S. Navy or the President and seldom were they in complete accord with the British. Eisenhower put it succinctly: “In a war such as this, where high command invariably involves a Pres., a Prime Minister, 6 Chiefs of Staff and a horde oflesser ‘planners’ there has got to be a lot of patience—no one person can be a Napoleon or a Caesar!” Still, it was frustrating. “My God,” he declared, “how I hate to work by any method that forces me to depend on anyone else.” 20
    All of which does not mean that OPD played a minimal role in the war. Marshall’s authority over the United States Army was complete, and he exercised it mainly through OPD. His voice carried great weight with the President, the Prime Minister, and on the CCS, and he relied upon OPD for background material and detailed planning. Marshall set the goals, while OPD prepared the studies that showed how they could be accomplished.
    In February 1942 what Marshall wanted was a coherent statement that he could present to the President and to the CCS which would outline a general strategy for the war. Eisenhower prepared it for him toward the end of the month. It began with a question. “What are the vital tasks that must be performed by the United Nations in order to avoid defeat [during the period while they prepared for an offensive]?” Eisenhower’s answer was