f reedom of a ction 173but yielding. Still, fi ghting in the Mediterranean did hold the prospect
of driving Italy out of the war and would force Hitler to defend not just
Italy but other points where Allied forces might land. At the same time,
the Red Army would engage the main mass of the Wehrmacht on the
Eastern Front, infl icting heavy losses though at the price of enormous
Soviet casualties. (Th e British were willing to fi ght to the last Russian,
but Stalin would have done the reverse without remorse.) British
caution refl ected another legitimate fear as well: the cross-Channel
invasion would be a colossal gamble, because if it failed it could never
be repeated.
Upon the two political principals, Roosevelt and Churchill, fell the
unenviable task of adjudicating between the competing approaches.
Each man shared the outlook of his military subordinates. Churchill
worked relentlessly to postpone the cross-Channel invasion virtually to
the moment it was launched in June 1944. However, to mollify the
Americans—and prevent them from shifting their main war eff ort to
the Pacifi c—he reaffi rmed the British commitment to a campaign in
northwest Europe at a date unspecifi ed. He never did fi x the date.
Roosevelt thus became the pivotal fi gure in determining whether and
when the invasion would proceed. Over the objections of his own mil-
itary advisors, he recognized compelling reasons in 1942 to delay the
attack at least until 1943, and then did so again early the following year
when he agreed to postpone it until 1944. But when he concluded in
late summer 1943 that the necessary conditions for a successful assault
were present, he insisted the invasion be scheduled for spring 1944 and
never wavered in his commitment, notwithstanding repeated pleas by
Churchill and Brooke.
Several considerations entered into Roosevelt’s initial decision to take
sides against Marshall and the American military in 1942 and order the
invasion of Vichy-controlled North Africa. Th e Victory Program did
not anticipate the availability of major American ground forces before
mid-1943, so any early invasion would be a largely British aff air. Delayed
American mobilization thus had an obvious consequence: lacking
troops to put into battle, the United States was in no position to insist
on a campaign in which American troops would not bear the brunt of
the fight. Vital equipment needed for an invasion—especially, for
reasons I examined, landing craft—was in short supply and would