f reedom of a ction 169British, as fi xated on the Pacifi c, King understood the need to balance
the demands of what were eff ectively two simultaneous wars. General
Henry “Hap” Arnold, brought into the JCS structure at Marshall’s
behest, oversaw the air campaigns against both adversaries. Strategic
bombing was a particular concern of a president who regarded air
power fi rst as a key deterrent and then as an essential instrument of
victory.
Beneath this senior troika, the leadership team included a striking
array of military and political talent. Th e war brought to the fore a
number of excellent commanders, particularly General Dwight Eisen-
hower and Admiral Chester Nimitz. Eisenhower held the most sensitive
commands in the European theater, for which political and diplomatic
skills mattered at least as much as military talent. Nimitz assumed
control of the Pacifi c Fleet after the Pearl Harbor disaster, guided it
through the crucial fi rst year when the Japanese enjoyed naval superi-
ority, and then directed the counteroff ensive across the Central Pacifi c
toward Japan. Other key advisors included Admiral William D. Leahy,
who headed the JCS and served as the president’s go-between with the
three service chiefs. On the civilian side, no man was of greater value to
Roosevelt than the versatile Harry Hopkins, who functioned as an
intermediary between Marshall and the president and acted as the pres-
ident’s personal emissary with key Allied leaders such as Churchill and
Stalin.
Among the senior American commanders, the president found
General Douglas MacArthur to be the most problematic, at once polit-
ically valuable and politically diffi cult. MacArthur started the war badly,
overestimating the capacity of air power in the Philippines to deter the
Japanese and then seeing his bombers caught on the ground hours after
receiving word of the Pearl Harbor attack. Compounding his initial
mistakes, he then ignored the established plan for an early, prepared
retreat into Bataan in the event of a Japanese invasion in favor of a futile
attempt to throw back the attackers on the beaches. Still, when American
and Philippine soldiers quickly fell back to Bataan anyway, they waged
a valiant defense, which endured until Corregidor was overwhelmed at
the beginning of May 1942. The president by then had ordered
MacArthur to leave for Australia, from which he famously pledged to
return.