Supreme Commander
By JOHN TERRAINE FROM the first moment that British and American forces went into battle together on the same front during the Second World War, it was accepted that they should operate under a united command. This principle, which achieved its fullest expression in SHAEF under General Eisenhower, flourishing in the special circumstances of the Grand Alliance, has been handed down intact as a legacy to NATO, was applied without hesitation in Korea and has been elevated into a sacred doctrine. It is hard to realise now how severe were the birth-pangs of the concept and by what profane practices it was first arrived at forty years ago. Yet this was natural.
The very function of command itself is alien to the spirit of democracy, because it severely qualifies the notion of consent. And the function of united command is largely alien to national sovereignty. For democracies in particular there is, therefore, a double contradiction inherent in the office of a supreme commander, a contradic- tion sufficiently powerful to have set up resistances in the minds of both soldiers and politicians which could only be broken down by the pressure of extreme crisis. The smoothly working machinery of the Second World War, the hierarchy, the in- tegrated staffs, the cut-and-dried plans were the direct outcome of the catastrophe of 1918 and of the improvisations and opportunism that over- came it. Nevertheless, in spite of the differences, from the moment the post of generalissimo was created it established its own definition, which has remained valid ever since.
In both wars the British experience has had a decisive effect on the shaping of the institution. As in all human affairs, personalities were of pro- found importance—the personalities of two soldiers, Sir Douglas Haig and Sir Henry Wilson, and two politicians, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. For the crux of the matter was the profound misunderstanding, indeed, hostility, be- tween the British Prime Minister Lloyd George and the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, Sir Douglas Haig. Sir Henry Wilson was the `opposition' soldier, the professional at odds with his own establishment to whom Lloyd George turned as a lever against Haig, and who, in the end, turned against Lloyd George, but in the process nudged and jolted the Allied war machine into a more favourable posture. Winston Churchill was the man who learnt from all their actions how to make a better job of it another time. In the event, it was the double. crisis, of desperate battle between the Allies and Germany and of opposition between the military and civil powers that made the solution. Lloyd George's hostility to Haig was partly personal : they were clearly antipathetic types, having almost nothing in common in their back- grounds—birth, breeding, profession, experience of life. Both were inflexibly determined to win the war, but nothing divided them so much as their views on how to do this. The fact was that the Prime Minister had lost faith in the High Command. After the Somme, in 1916, this dis- trust became contempt, both for Haig and for the CIGS who backed him in Whitehall, Sir William Robertson. 'Inexhaustible vanity,' stub- born and narrow-minded egotism' are phrases that Lloyd George has used to describe the two soldiers who were conducting the main war effort of the British Commonwealth. But in the uneasy situation of his Coalition Government, over which he presided without the support of a par- liamentary majority party, and with a public opinion constantly misled and made hysterical by the press, Lloyd George did not dare to take the obvious step of removing men in whom he had no confidence. Nor was he prepared to resign.
In February, 1917, he determined to resolve this impasse by sleight of hand. The occasion was the Calais Conference—probably the lowest ebb ever reached in the relationships of Britisk governments and soldiers. The conference was arranged by Lloyd George on the pretext of dis- cussing Anglo-French transportation problems, but in reality for the purpose of 'taking the British generals for a ride.' This, incidentally, also involved taking the War Cabinet and the Dominion governments for a ride, since none of them was a party to what Lloyd George intended. After the briefest possible discussion of transport, to the astonishment of Haig and Robertson, Lloyd George called on the new French Com- mander-in-Chief, General Nivelle, to outline his `plans' and to put forward detailed proposals. The French, forewarned, responded with alacrity and produced a paper in which the role of the British Commander-in-Chief was whittled down to scarcely more than that of a glorified Adjutant- General. To this Lloyd George proposed to accede. Haig and Robertson naturally objected and, in the end, after acrimonious discussion, the total subordination of Haig to Nivelle which Lloyd George desired was diluted to a temporary and lesser subordination for a specific period.
This lamentable episode, which struck a final blow at any possibility of rapprochement between the military and civil leaders, of Britain, was nevertheless the first step towards the formal unity achieved a year later. And since that unity took the form of subordinating Haig to another French general, Foch, it is important to see where the difference lies. It is this: a generalissimo, directing the several efforts of a number of allied armies, is one thing; to reduce one's own army to a mere contingent in another is something quite different, something incompatible with Great Power status.
The year 1917 was a disastrous one for the Allies. The Nivelle offensive failed; the French Army mutinied; the Russian Revolution began; the submarine' campaign reached its peak; `Passchendaele' became a synonym of horror; Cambrai was a straight defeat; Caporetto nearly destroyed Italy. For Lloyd George, the object which he had sought at Calais became even more urgent, his revulsion from the set policies of Haig and Robertson even more violent. In despair he turned to yet new expedients. To begin with, he proposed to use Lord French, the original com- mander of the BEF who was removed in 1915, and Sir Henry Wilson, the currently unemployed Francophile Irish soldier who, more than anyone, deserves to be called the architect of the military entente, and who was loudly critical of the con- duct of the war, as specialist ex officio advisers 'to whom the plans, of the C1GS and the C-in-C (i.e. the responsible advisers) would be submitted. , again, since it is well known that Sir nston Churchill, during the Second World War, widely used the services of personal counsellors, it is important to see where the difference lies. Lloyd George was attempting a de facto sub- stitution of a (technically) irresponsible body for a responsible one. Churchill never overruled,. his responsible advisers, although he hounded them and taxed them with his own ideas and those thrown up by his private entourage. The differ- ence was fundamental.
But Lloyd' George's new mistake was to be another halting step towards the proper course. For over two years, in a variety 'of employments, Sir Henry Wilson had •been reflecting on the question of the supreme direction of Allied strategy. Now he had the ear of the Prime Minister and, as the miseries of the autumn of 1917 mounted, he won him over, with one of the most persuasive military voices that has ever been heard, to the idea which, in November, crystallised into the Supreme War Council. As propounded by Lloyd George in the House of Commons, this was to be `a central body charged with the duty of continuously surveying the field of operations as a whole, and of co-ordinating the plans prepared by the different General Staffs, and . . . if necessary, of making proposals of their own for the better conduct of the war.' The Council members were France, Britain, Italy and America. The civil representatives of each Power were duplicated by military representatives. The Supreme War Council at Versailles was the direct predecessor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, which, under the Chief Executives, was to hammer out at historic conferences the great decisions of the Second World War. Let us inspect the differences again. The Supreme War Council was Sir Henry Wilson's brain-child. As Britain's military representative, his object, and his Prime Minister's, was once again to find a substitute, this time a more legitimate one, for the policies of the responsible military advisers of the British Government. The French poli- ticians, too, were not averse to setting up an alternative body, a second chamber, as it were, to watch their own GQG. But the essence of the British position was . that the British military representative should be 'wholly independent of his War Office.' Wilson insisted that the C1GS should submit plans to him. But, as his biographer remarks, his position 'was, in fact, going to be an-exceptional one,' for none of the other Allies adopted this course. Italy and America appointed their Chiefs of Staff as military representatives; France appointed Weygand. The French Chief of Staff was Foch; their relationship is sufficiently well known to require no comment. So once again the fruit of Lloyd George's activity was to place his country in.an invidious position, offer- ing a disunited front to the single voice of each of the Allies. This situation could not last. When Wilson himself became CIGS in February, 1918, he was the first to object to it : . . Milner and I agreed that he should . . . let me have a direct- ing voice in Versailles if I was CIGS. The whole thing is rather muddlesome. .' And so, laboriously, the truth emerged that unity among Allies can only be based on unity at home. This truth was a starting-point in the Second World War.
A joint planning authority had been set up; it remained to give it executive functions. For, to be fully effective, the supreme direction must have force under its hand and, since it cannot actually fight battles, this meant (in both wars) the handling of the strategic reserve. An Execu- tive Board was set up under the Versailles Council to control the central mass of reserve divisions which it was proposed to assemble. But instantly the plan collapsed, and the Executive Board died of anaemia when, in the perilous situation of early 1918, it was found that no national commander would part with anything more than a nominal detachment. Haig, in par- ticular, in view of his manpower shortage, was adamant, although Wilson warned him that he .would have to depend on Pdtain's charity in the event of calamity, `and he would find that very cold charity.' But Wilson also concluded : `. . . if we have to choose between a General Reserve and Haig, we must choose Haig, wrong as I be- lieve him to be.'
When the blow of the German offensive fell on March 21, 1918, and destroyed the British Fifth Army, it was seen that not only was Petain's charity cold, but his strategic ideas were down- right dangerous. As the German wedge drove deeper into the junction of the Allied armies, each naturally manoeuvred to cover its base; for the British, the Channel ports; for the French, Paris. The fatal gap widened. It was Haig who rose to the occasion. As soon as he realised that Main would not stop the gap, he telegraphed to London urging Wilson and a Government representative to meet the French leaders im- mediately and appoint a Supreme Commander; Foch was the man he had in mind. Milner and Wilson came at once and 'Foch was appointed at Doullens on March 26. Even in the course of the swift and urgent discussion that preceded the appointment, Haig had to intervene again to en- , sure that Foch's powers were wide enough. Clemenceau had proposed that his appointment should merely cover the danger-point at the junction of the Allies in front of Amiens. `This proposal seemed to me quite worthless . . . so I at once recommended that Foch should co- ordinate the action of all the Allied Armies an the Western Front.' And this was agreed.
Haig's comment, on the spot, went right to the core of the new Supreme Commander's func- tion : `I can deal with a man, not with a com- mittee.' Because of the special circumstances of his appointment, the course the war took, and his own nature, Foch from then onwards dominated the Allied counsels. The full planning function of a properly constituted committee had yet to be demonstrated under 'Churchill and Roosevelt. But because he was a personal rather than a mechanical leader, an inspirational rather than a technical soldier, Foch penetrated deeply to the nature of his office and established' truths about it that are as valid as ever today. `If it has been my lot . . . to inspire certain decisions and stimulate a number of acts . . . my position did not, depend in any degree on my having the right of command over Allied troops, but rather was the result of the confidence in me . . . and the authority accorded me in their councils.' To inspire,' to stimulate,' through 'confidence' but not to 'command': that is the paradoxical essence of the Supreme Commander's duty. No one knew it better than Foch, who set a standard in the matter that has not since been surpassed, though altered conditions made greater fulfilment pos- sible in the Second World War. 'Supreme Com- mand narrowly exercised divides the efforts of a coalition,' wrote Foch, 'confidence unites and strengthens them.' In other words, united com- mand in an alliance, like command in a democracy, must ultimately be founded on con- sent. And, above all, the large office requires a very large man.
Previous page
