Eisenhower in London

On 16 January 1944, by General Orders No. 4, General Dwight Eisenhower assumed command of the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA). His new title was Commanding General, United States forces, European Theater of Operations. Popular chronologies link this act with the general’s arrival in London, and that version has support in the American official history, which states that Eisenhower “arrived in England to assume command of the Allied forces on 16 January”. Other volumes of the same series and most biographers date his arrival to 14 January, and some studies to 15 January. The date on which he took command is certain; his arrival came a day or two earlier.

It was Eisenhower’s second stay in London in this role. In June 1942 he had flown in for the first time to take up the same command, then still a modest one. A year and a half later he was returning as the victor of North Africa, Sicily and southern Italy, and as the supreme commander of the invasion of France, appointed in December.

Two posts for one general

Taking over ETOUSA was only half the task. In Britain Eisenhower was to wear two hats at once. As commander of ETOUSA he answered solely to the American Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, for all American ground forces and army air forces in the British Isles: their training, supply, discipline and administration. As Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, on the other hand, he was to command the combined British, American, Canadian and other Allied forces in Operation Overlord and to answer to the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff.

This second post did not yet have a formal basis. SHAEF headquarters was being built on the foundations of the COSSAC staff, which since the spring of 1943 had been planning the invasion without a commander under General Frederick Morgan, based at Norfolk House in St James’s Square. The chiefs of staff issued Eisenhower his formal directive only on 12 February, and his first order as supreme commander, establishing SHAEF, was dated 13 February. In January, therefore, Eisenhower was in practice already working as head of the invasion, but formally he commanded only American troops.

He took over ETOUSA from General Jacob Devers, who had led it since May 1943, after General Frank Andrews was killed in an air crash. Devers had spent many months preparing the rear base for the invasion and had hoped to lead an American army group in it himself. After Eisenhower’s appointment, however, he was transferred to the Mediterranean, where he became deputy to the new supreme commander, General Henry Maitland Wilson, and commander of American forces in North Africa. He left Britain at the beginning of January.

Reorganising the American command

The first change came the day after Eisenhower took command. On 17 January a reorganisation was announced that had been prepared under Devers, but with Eisenhower’s knowledge and consent: the ETOUSA staff was merged with that of the Services of Supply, and its commander, General John C. H. Lee, became deputy theatre commander for supply and administration. In this way Eisenhower relieved himself of day-to-day quartermaster matters so as to concentrate on planning the invasion. The merger had its price: Lee gained very wide powers, and disputes over who really ran the American rear – the theatre staff or the supply services – dragged on until the end of the war.

The forces under Eisenhower’s command grew month by month. Since the autumn of 1943 an average of two American divisions a month had been crossing the Atlantic; by January about half the divisions needed for the invasion were already in Britain. Operational command over them had been exercised since October by General Omar Bradley’s First Army, under which further corps were assembling.

Five divisions instead of three

More important than American affairs, however, was what Eisenhower found in the invasion plan. The COSSAC plan envisaged a landing by three divisions on a narrow stretch of the Normandy coast near Caen, backed by two divisions in the follow-up wave. As early as December Eisenhower felt that it lacked “punch”. General Bernard Law Montgomery, the new commander of 21st Army Group, to whom Winston Churchill had shown the plan in Marrakesh on 1 January, judged it the same way. Montgomery flew to London on 2 January and the next day, after a briefing at COSSAC headquarters, demanded that the landing front be widened. Eisenhower’s chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, was also acting on his behalf in London. Both concluded that additional landing craft could be found only at the expense of Operation Anvil – the planned landing in southern France – and Montgomery proposed reducing it to a feint.

Eisenhower, who took the matter over on his arrival, did not want to give up Anvil: a landing in southern France had been promised to Stalin at Tehran, the core of the rebuilt French army was to take part in it, and it was meant to draw the Germans away from Normandy. He agreed, however, that the Normandy landing had to be stronger. On 21 January, at the first conference with the commanders at Norfolk House, the new shape of the operation was settled: five divisions in the first wave, an additional American landing on the east coast of the Cotentin peninsula to speed up the capture of Cherbourg, and, besides the airborne landing near Caen, an airborne division to seize the beach exits on the Cotentin and a second one to be dropped within twenty-four hours. On 23 January Eisenhower formally presented these changes to the chiefs of staff. The bill was high: according to the American official history, an additional 72 landing ships infantry, 47 landing ships tank and 144 landing craft tank. To obtain them, Eisenhower was ready to postpone the invasion from May to June, even though this meant losing a month of good weather.

Staff and headquarters

In the first weeks Eisenhower also assembled the team with which he was to lead the invasion. His deputy was Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder; Montgomery was to command the land forces during the landing phase, Admiral Bertram Ramsay the naval forces and Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory the tactical air forces. All three service commands went to Britons, which balanced the American supreme command. Bedell Smith, who had reached London before Eisenhower, was meanwhile turning Morgan’s staff into an Allied one; Morgan himself became his deputy. From January American strategic bombers in Europe were commanded by General Carl Spaatz, and the dispute over whether they and RAF Bomber Command should come under Eisenhower was to drag on until the spring.

Eisenhower did not want to work in the middle of the city. At his request a camp of huts was built for SHAEF in Bushy Park near Teddington, on the outskirts of London, in the part of the park occupied by the American Eighth Air Force. Work lasted from 10 January to 1 March 1944; the headquarters, known by the code name “Widewing”, was to house nearly seven hundred officers and more than two thousand enlisted men. In March the staff moved there from Norfolk House.

Significance

Taking command on 16 January was an administrative act, but it opened the decisive period of preparations for the invasion. As the American official historian Gordon Harrison wrote, Eisenhower’s arrival changed the whole character and pace of planning: Overlord ceased to be preparation for a more or less likely contingency and became a commitment, with a commander who was responsible for it. Twenty weeks remained before the troops were to embark.

The January decisions were adopted over the following weeks. On 31 January the American chiefs of staff agreed to put the invasion back to early June, and on 1 February Montgomery, Ramsay and Leigh-Mallory issued the initial joint plan for Operation Neptune, the landing itself. The dispute over Anvil went on until the summer; the landing in southern France finally took place in August 1944 as Operation Dragoon. On the other side of the Channel Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who since December had been inspecting the defences of the Atlantic Wall, was preparing to repel the invasion on the beaches themselves. On 6 June 1944 five divisions landed in Normandy on the front widened in January, including the east coast of the Cotentin, and Eisenhower as supreme commander led the campaign that ended with Germany’s surrender in May 1945.