Eisenhower's Armies: The American-British Alliance during World War II

493 Pages·2015·2.1 MB·English

by  Barr

EISENHOWER’S
ARMIES
THE AMERICAN–BRITISH ALLIANCE
DURING WORLD WAR II
NIALL BARR
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON
Contents
Maps
Introduction
1
Family Legacy
2
The Great War
3
Tanks in Washington
4
Special Observers
5
Combining the Chiefs
6
Cats and Bulldogs
7
Growing Pains
8
Sicilian Feud
9
Stomach Ache
10
Hauling on the Rope
11
Over There, Over Here
12
The Great Crusade
13
SHAEF at War
14
Supreme Commander
15
Born on the Battlefield
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Image Credits
Index
Allied landings in North Africa, November 1942
Italy, 1943–45
The Normandy Campaign June–August 1944
The North West Europe Campaign, 1944–45
EISENHOWER’S ARMIES
Introduction
One of the great pleasures of working at the Joint Services Command and Staff
College in Shrivenham is that almost every day I walk past some outstanding
work of art portraying Britain’s military past. There is a sculptor’s macquette of
an equestrian figure that holds particular resonance for me, and although it is
placed in the forum of the building, where hundreds of students and staff
congregate, few recognise the figure or are aware of its significance. The
mounted figure is Field Marshal Sir John Dill, and the full-size bronze statue
cannot be seen on the Mall or in Whitehall in London, but in Arlington National
Cemetery, Washington,DC. Dill is indeed virtually unknown in Britain today,
yet he played a crucial part in cementing the military relationship between
1
Britain and America in the Second World War. It was this almost daily
reminder of the Anglo-American alliance that ultimately led to the creation of
this book.
It might be questioned why another book on the Anglo-American alliance in
the Second World War is necessary. Celebrated at the time, and commented
upon endlessly since, the experience of the wartime alliance between the two
countries has become almost the foundation myth of what has often been called
‘the special relationship’, one that has waxed and waned over the succeeding
decades. There is little doubt that the shared crisis of that war brought Britain
2
and America ‘closer than ever before, or ever again’. The sheer depth, scale and
scope of the alliance between Britain and the United States during the Second
World War is hard to comprehend even now. General George Marshall, the
Chief of Staff of the US Army, rightly called it ‘the most complete unification of
3
military effort ever achieved by two Allied nations’.
Once the United States became committed to the war in Europe, the two
allies cooperated in an unprecedented way. While the personal relationship
between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt