“Keep the Main Thing”: The Post-Normandy Debate (August 1944)
Part of the “A Time for Leadership” series
Written by: Elizabeth Shannon
“We determined to go through with the big thing…We wanted to keep the main thing.”
For the United States and Great Britain, Germany was always the main thing. In January 1942, they agreed to prioritize the war against German forces in Europe over all other efforts, including the war on Japan. But for the next two years, American and British strategists would engage in lengthy and divisive debates over how exactly to execute that policy.
General George Marshall visits General Mark Clark, commander of the US 5th Army, at his Command Post near Tuscania, Italy where the two generals discussed “Operation Anvil.” June 1944
General Marshall and his staff advocated a concentration-of-force approach: apply sufficient military force in the right place, at the right time and in a way that maximizes the chances of achieving decisive results. Prime Minister Churchill and his staff preferred a peripheral approach: barrage the outskirts of enemy-controlled territory with hard-hitting campaigns of speed and maneuver to exhaust enemy resources before mounting a conclusive attack on the enemy itself.
These divergent approaches (and the strong, often stubborn personalities of their adherents) set many allied discussions of grand strategy on a collision course. In the summer of 1944, one hotly contested topic was how best to ensure the success of Operation Overlord and the liberation of Western Europe following the Normandy invasion. For months, Marshall and his staff repeatedly pushed for operation Anvil, a supporting invasion in southern France that would clamp down on the German army in a pincer movement and facilitate a broad breakout of Allied forces from the Normandy beachhead.
Churchill and his staff delayed and demurred these operational decisions in the hopes of persuading the Allies to continue the Italian campaign and swing eastward to Vienna through the Ljubljana Gap in the Balkans. The idea was to stretch out and exhaust the German war machine by forcing it to fight on multiple fronts.
To this day, military historians debate the merits of these approaches, and there are surely many lessons for students of military strategy to learn from this debate. But what lessons can we learn from Marshall, Churchill and their different approaches to planning a course of action, assessing risk and reaching a firm decision?
In Churchill’s view, the Italian campaign would not only support the Normandy invasion, but also open the door to much more. He made forceful appeals to the allies for operations along the eastern Mediterranean, urging them to exploit immediate advantages and pick up the ‘great prizes’ along the way to the decisive defeat of German forces. Many of these prizes would be political as well as military.
The Italian strategy would still assist Eisenhower’s campaign in northern France, Churchill argued, while delivering a swifter and less bloody military victory over Germany. But it would also gain other important advantages in the postwar balance of power, including ensuring British influence over the Mediterranean and pre-empting Soviet dominance of the region. Even years later, after the sweeping victory over Germany, Churchill would continue to deplore how the ‘rigidity of American military plans’ had left ‘the whole of these subsidiary but gleaming opportunities…cast aside unused.’
In Marshall’s view, the Italian campaign was an unrealistic, speculative diversion that would scatter allied efforts and keep them from the main thing. Geographically, it was untenable. The so-called ‘soft underbelly’ of Europe had ‘chrome steel baseboards.’ Materially, it was unfeasible. There were simply not enough units and resources to support two major areas of action in Europe. In Marshall’s (and Eisenhower’s) view, the landings in southern France promised more clear and certain advantages to build on the Normandy invasion than Churchill’s risky wager on Italy.
After months of debate, the American strategy so unremittingly advocated by Marshall prevailed. Operation Anvil, renamed Dragoon for security reasons, was launched on August 15, 1944. It was a resounding success. Eisenhower stated in retrospect: “There was no development of that period which added more decisively to our advantages or aided us more in accomplishing the final and complete defeat of the German forces than did this secondary attack…”
Does this mean Marshall was right and Churchill was wrong?
Churchill’s private physician once asked a prominent British field marshal whether he thought the prime minister would make a good general. The field marshal remained silent so long that the physician added: “Winston is a gambler. Marshall would make a big decision, but only after he had carefully removed every possible source of error.”
Perhaps this observation has some validity as far as operation Anvil/Dragoon goes. Churchill was willing to make a bold gamble based on potential political and strategic advantages with significant postwar dividends. Churchill was trying to shape post-war Europe.
Ever the military man, Marshall made his big decision based on what would most clearly and directly achieve the primary allied objective at hand. He would worry about the post-war situation after the war was won.
Eighty years later, it is impossible to definitively establish the merits of one approach over the other. There are simply too many variables and unknowns. What we do know for sure is that Dragoon was a resounding success that hastened in the liberation of France and the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany.
It was up to the decision-makers at the table to determine whether to wager or to keep the main thing. It was a time for leadership. By winning over an intractable Churchill and keeping the allies on course in France, George C. Marshall demonstrated that he was the right leader at the right time.