Organization and role Waging a two-ocean war as part of a coalition revealed serious deficiencies in the organization of the American high command when it came to formulating
grand strategy: meetings of the senior officers of the Army and Navy with each other and with the President were irregular and infrequent, and there was no joint planning staff or secretariat to record decisions taken. Under the
Constitution of the United States, the President was the
Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. At a meeting with Roosevelt on 24 February 1942, the
Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General
George C. Marshall, urged Roosevelt to appoint a chief of staff of the armed forces to provide
unity of command, and he suggested Leahy for the role. Leahy had lunch with Roosevelt on 7 July, during which this was discussed. On 21 July, Leahy was recalled to active duty. He resigned as Ambassador to France and was appointed Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. In announcing the appointment, Roosevelt described Leahy's role as an advisory one rather than that of a supreme commander. , Chief of
U.S. Army Air Forces; Leahy; Admiral
Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations and Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet; and General
George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army|alt=A the lunch table Leahy attended his first meeting of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on 28 July 1942. The other members were Marshall; King, who was now both CNO and Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (now abbreviated as COMINCH); and
Lieutenant General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of
U.S. Army Air Forces. Henceforth, the JCS held regular meetings at noon on Wednesdays, which usually commenced with a light lunch. Leahy served as the de facto chairman. He drew up the agenda for the JCS meetings, presided over them, and signed off on all the major papers and decisions. He considered that this was due to his seniority and not by virtue of his position. He had a small personal staff of two military
aides-de-camp and two or three secretaries. JCS meetings were held in the
Public Health Service Building, where Leahy had an office. After some renovations were made, he was also given an office in the
East Wing of the White House on 7 September 1942; the other two main offices there were occupied by Harry Hopkins and James F. Byrnes. Roosevelt had the
Map Room constructed in the White House where large maps showed the progress of the war. Only Leahy and Hopkins had unrestricted access to the Map Room; everyone else had to be accompanied by Leahy or Hopkins or given special permission to enter. Two days after his first JCS meeting, there was a meeting of the
Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), which Leahy also chaired. In these meetings the JCS met with the leaders of the
British Joint Staff Mission:
Field Marshal Sir
John Dill, Admiral Sir
Andrew Cunningham,
Air Marshal Douglas Evill and Lieutenant General
Gordon Macready. CCS meetings were held every Friday. The main agendum item at his first JCS and CCS meetings was
Operation Gymnast, a proposed invasion of French North Africa. Marshall and King were opposed to it on the grounds that it would divert resources necessary for
Operation Roundup, a landing in northern France, but after listening to their arguments, Leahy informed them Roosevelt was adamant that it was vital American forces take the field against Germany in 1942, and that Gymnast was to proceed. Roosevelt gave his formal assent on 25 July. Marshall and King considered this to be tentative, but Leahy informed them that the decision was final. Leahy usually arrived at his White House office sometime between 08:30 and 08:45 and went over copies of dispatches and reports. For convenience, the documents were color coded: pink for incoming dispatches from the theater; yellow for outgoing ones; green for JCS papers; white for CCS ones; and blue for papers from the Joint Staff Planners. Leahy would select the papers to be brought to the President's attention, and would meet with him each morning in the
Oval Office or the Map Room. This included high-grade
Ultra intelligence. Control of the flow of information gave Leahy a further source of power and influence beyond his personal relationship with the President.
Grand strategy When Roosevelt travelled overseas, Leahy went with him. Leahy missed the
Casablanca Conference in January 1943; after setting out with Roosevelt, Hopkins and Rear Admiral
Ross McIntire, Leahy developed
bronchitis and had to remain in
Trinidad. But he was present at all the other inter-Allied conferences that the President attended. Leahy's support of Roosevelt's decision to invade French North Africa did not mean that he bought into the British Mediterranean strategy. He joined Marshall and King in their advocacy of a cross-Channel operation in 1944. At the first conference he attended, the
Third Washington Conference, in May 1943 he clashed with the British chiefs of staff over their reluctance to undertake operations to reopen the overland route to China, which Leahy considered vital to both the war against Japan and the postwar era. Leahy eventually extracted a promise from the British to undertake
Operation Anakim, an offensive to recapture
Burma, in 1943. Leahy sided with Hopkins and Major General
Claire Chennault in supporting a bombing offensive against Japan from bases in China despite Marshall's prescient warnings that this could not be sustained without adequate ground troops to protect the air bases. Marshall was proven correct when a
Japanese offensive overran Chennault's bases. meet in the
U.S. Public Health Service Building in Washington, D.C., in October 1943; British officers, on the left side of the table, are (front to back):
Wilfrid Patterson,
John Dill,
Vivian Dykes,
Gordon Macready and
Douglas Evill; U.S. officers, at the right side and head of the table, are (front to back):
Ernest J. King, Leahy,
John R. Deane,
George C. Marshall,
Joseph T. McNarney and an unidentified colonel. |alt=At a large conference table On 12 November 1943, Roosevelt, Hopkins, Leahy, King and Marshall set off together from Hampton Roads on the battleship . Roosevelt occupied the captain's cabin, and Leahy the one for an embarked admiral. They reached
Mers-el-Kebir on 20 November, from whence they flew to
Tunis and then
Cairo. Roosevelt stayed at the American Ambassador's compound in Cairo. Space was limited, so he took only Leahy and Hopkins with him. Discussions with the British were mainly concerned with Burma and China, about which they had much less interest than the Americans. They then flew on to
Tehran, Iran, for talks with
Stalin. Roosevelt was slated to stay at the American legation there, but Stalin offered to put him up at the Soviet compound. He was allowed to bring two people with him, so he chose Leahy and Hopkins. The conference reached agreement with the Soviets on the cross-Channel operation (
Operation Overlord) and an invasion of Southern France (
Operation Anvil). When General Sir
Alan Brooke began to back away from the commitment, Leahy lost his patience and demanded to know under what circumstances Brooke would be willing to undertake Overlord. The British, as Leahy put it, "fell into line". Although the conservative Leahy regarded Hopkins as a "pinko", the two men worked well together, and Leahy became quite fond of Hopkins. Both were completely devoted to the President, and Leahy saw something of himself in the idealistic Hopkins. Over time, Leahy emerged as one of Roosevelt's most trusted advisors thereby becoming, in the words of historian
Phillips O'Brien, "the second most powerful man in the world". The main reason for this was Hopkins' precarious health, as he had
stomach cancer. Hopkins married Louise Gill Macy in the
Yellow Oval Room on 30 July 1942, they moved out of the White House in December 1943. He was therefore no longer at Roosevelt's beck and call. Leahy spent
D-Day, 6 June 1944, in his home town of Hampton, Iowa. This well-publicized "sentimental journey" was part of the deception efforts surrounding the Allied invasion of Europe. The idea was to lull any German agents in the United States into believing that the operation would not take place while such an important officer was out of the capital. The following month, he accompanied Roosevelt to the Pacific Strategy Conference in
Hawaii at which they met with Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz, the commander in chief of the
Pacific Ocean Areas, and General
Douglas MacArthur, the commander in chief of the
Southwest Pacific Area. ,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Joseph Stalin meet at the
Yalta conference in February 1945. Behind them are (left to right):
Anthony Eden,
Vyacheslav Molotov, unidentified,
Alan Brooke,
Andrew Cunningham,
Charles Portal,
Ernest King, Leahy,
George Marshall,
Laurence Kuter,
Aleksei Antonov and
Nikolay Kuznetsov. |alt=refer to caption Roosevelt, Leahy and presidential speech writer
Samuel Rosenman (instead of Hopkins) set out from Washington in Roosevelt's personal railcar, the
Ferdinand Magellan, on 13 July. They went to Hyde Park, where Roosevelt showed Leahy around his
Presidential Library, then to Chicago, where Roosevelt conferred with leaders of the
Democratic Party over the choice of
Harry S. Truman as his vice presidential running mate in the
1944 election. In
San Diego they boarded the cruiser , which took them to Hawaii, where Nimitz briefed them on a proposed invasion of the island of
Formosa, King's preferred target, but also spoke favorably of MacArthur's alternative of liberating the Philippines. Leahy hoped that this would facilitate a naval and air blockade that would make an invasion of Japan unnecessary. No decision was taken at this time, and the JCS continued debating the issue for months before authorizing the liberation of Luzon on 3 October. Hopkins was not present at the
Second Quebec Conference in September 1944 either, continuing Leahy's transformation into a White House advisor. Leahy did not attend the political sessions at Quebec, but at this level political and military issues were indistinguishable. For example, the JCS examined a proposal for a British fleet to participate in the
Pacific War, a military proposal with a political objective. King was unenthusiastic about the idea; the U.S. Navy was performing well against the Japanese, and the addition of British forces would complicate command and logistics arrangements. Leahy and Marshall pressed for the British offer to be accepted, and in the end it was, with the proviso that the
British Pacific Fleet would be self-supporting. Another debate concerned the
American occupation zone in Germany. The United States was allocated the southern part of Germany, which meant that its
lines of communications would run through France, where Leahy was concerned about the prospect of a postwar Communist takeover. Roosevelt and Churchill reached a compromise, whereby the ports of
Bremen and
Bremerhaven would be given to the Americans, along with the right of transit through the
British Zone. Leahy was advanced to the newly created rank of
Fleet Admiral on 15 December 1944, making him the most senior of the seven men who received
five-star rank that month. He accompanied President Roosevelt to the
Yalta Conference in February 1945. The cruiser took them to Malta, where Leahy chaired a CCS meeting to discuss the war against Germany, and then the President's
personal aircraft, the
Sacred Cow, flew them to Yalta. At Yalta, Roosevelt met Churchill and Stalin to decide how Europe was to be reorganized after the impending surrender of Germany. On 12 April 1945, Roosevelt died. Leahy attended the ceremonies and the memorial service for his friend, which was held in the
East Room of the White House.
Atomic bomb On 13 April 1945, Leahy gave the regular morning briefing on the progress of the war to Truman, who had become president on Roosevelt's death. This was followed by a short meeting with the Joint Chiefs, the
Secretary of War,
Henry Stimson, and the Secretary of the Navy,
James Forrestal. Afterwards, Leahy offered to resign, but Truman decided to retain him as chief of staff. On 18 June, the Joint Chiefs, along with Stimson and Forrestal, met with Truman at the White House to discuss
Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of
Kyushu. Truman chaired the meeting. Marshall and King strongly favored the operation, and all the others voiced their support except Leahy, who feared that it would result in high casualties. He questioned Marshall's casualty estimates, which were based on the
Luzon campaign, which took place on a large land mass where there was ample room for maneuver, rather than the
Okinawa campaign, which took place on an island where lack of maneuver room resulted in frontal assaults and high casualties. According to Truman's
Memoirs: Year of Decisions, Leahy was skeptical about the
atomic bomb, saying: "That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives." After the
bomb was tested and did explode, Truman consulted with Byrnes, Stimson, Leahy, Marshall, Arnold and
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of
United States Forces, European Theater. The consensus was that the atomic bomb should be used. Although Leahy later wrote in his memoirs that his "own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the
barbarians of the
Dark Ages", historian
Barton J. Bernstein noted that Leahy did not oppose its use at the time:
Truman administration In July 1945, Leahy accompanied Truman to the
Potsdam Conference where Truman met with Stalin and the new British Prime Minister
Clement Attlee to make decisions about the governance of
occupied Germany. Hopkins was too ill to make the journey. Leahy was disappointed in the outcome of these conferences. He considered that both Truman and Stalin had suffered defeats, with proposals that would have ensured a lasting peace in Europe being watered down or turned down. He recognized that the Soviet Union was a dominant power in Europe, and that the
British Empire was in terminal decline, underscored by the mid-conference replacement of Churchill by Attlee. ,
Harry S. Truman and
Joseph Stalin meet at the
Potsdam Conference in July 1945; behind them are (left to right) Leahy,
Ernest Bevin,
James F. Byrnes and
Vyacheslav Molotov. |alt=refer to caption On 24 January 1946, Leahy was appointed to the interim
National Intelligence Authority (NIA), which oversaw activities of the nascent
Central Intelligence Group. The following year the
National Security Act of 1947 replaced these organizations with the
National Security Council and the
Central Intelligence Agency respectively, ending Leahy's involvement. He continued to chair meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he rejected
war plans that he felt placed too much emphasis on the
first use of nuclear weapons. Like many naval officers, he was opposed to the unification of the War and Navy departments into the
Department of Defense, fearing that the Navy would lose its
naval aviation and the
Marine Corps. Nor did he agree with formalizing the role of
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which he felt would place too much power in the hands of one individual. The position was created by amendments to the National Security Act that Truman signed into law on 10 August 1949, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was not the single chief of staff the Army and
Air Force wanted. Leahy was involved in the preparation of two speeches that marked the onset of the
Cold War: Truman's Navy Day address on 27 October 1945, and Churchill's "
Iron Curtain" speech on 5 March 1946. The former was written by Leahy and Rosenman, and reflected Leahy's ideas about the fundamental goals of U.S. foreign policy; the latter was written by Churchill, but in consultation with Leahy, who was the only one of the "American military men" referred to in the speech with whom Churchill discussed the speech. But Leahy's
non-interventionist stance on U.S. involvement in the
Greek Civil War and the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict were increasingly out of step with the policies of the Truman administration. On 20 September 1948, columnist Constantine Brown published allegations that White House advisors
Clark Clifford and
David K. Niles were urging Truman to get rid of Leahy, whom they regarded, Brown said, as an "old-fashioned reactionary". On the day after Truman won the
presidential election on 2 November 1948, Leahy asked to be retired in January. In December, doctors diagnosed Leahy with a partial blockage of the kidneys. On 28 December, he met with Truman as chief of staff for the last time. Truman officially accepted his resignation as his chief of staff on 2 March 1949, although as an officer with five-star rank, Leahy technically remained on active service as an advisor to the Secretary of the Navy. The following year, Leahy published his war memoirs,
I Was There. His unemotional, unexciting and unenlightening style did his publisher no favors.
Orville Prescott the
book reviewer for
The New York Times wrote: "As the personal confidant of President Roosevelt and President Truman, Admiral Leahy ought to have a good story to tell. Unfortunately, he hasn't... its stiff official manner, its elaborate discretion, its desperate need of editing and its lack of any exciting new information make it dull and dusty fare... writes in a prose style as rigid as a naval cadet standing at attention in his review." The book sold poorly, and when Leahy subsequently proposed a book about his time in Puerto Rico, the publisher turned it down. ==Death and legacy==