[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 119 (Tuesday, September 14, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1875-E1876]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page E1875]]
THE CASABLANCA CONFERENCE--AN HISTORIC MEETING OF WORLD WAR II ALLIES
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HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN
of new york
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, September 14, 1999
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, the following article by Ambassador Joseph
Verner Reed, former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, from the March 1999
Newsletter of the American Society of the French Legion of Honor,
documents the war time diplomacy between the United States and Great
Britain. The Casablanca Conference between President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill took place in early
1943, and as this article documents set the stage for the end game of
World War II in the European theater.
[From the ASFLH Newsletter, March 1999]
The Casablanca Conference, January 1943
(By Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed)
In the spring edition of the ASFLH Newsletter (June 1998,
Vol. 5, No. 2), an article on the history of the White House
by our President, Guy Wildenstein, caught my eye. Regarding
the historic 1943 meeting of President Franklin Roosevelt and
Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill in Casablanca, Morocco,
it was noted that Marshall Josef Stalin and General Charles
de Gaulle were also participants at the conference. In point
of clarification, Marshall Stalin did not attend the
Casablanca Conference. General de Gaulle had a ``cameo role''
on the last day of the ten-day event.
Herewith are some details on the Casablanca Conference
which took place in Morocco in early 1943--a summit meeting
which determined the future course of American and British
wartime operations and history.
As a former Ambassador to Morocco, I spent many days at the
elegant Villa Mirador, the official residence of the Consul
General of the US in Casablanca. Villa Mirador served as
Prime Minister Churchill's residence during the Casablanca
Conference. President Roosevelt was hosted nearby in Villa
Dar es Saada (House of Happiness). The master bedroom is
located on the ground floor--a suitable layout for the
handicapped President.
In the closing months of 1942, debate over European
strategy had entered a new stage. On November 25, President
Roosevelt wrote to Prime Minister Churchill that a high level
meeting should be held with the Russians, perhaps in Cairo or
Moscow itself, to discuss the Alliance war effort. The US had
been at war for less than a full year. Roosevelt and
Churchill had yet to meet jointly with Stalin to discuss the
basic strategy of their ``Alliance''--an odd alliance forged
only through the necessity of combating a common enemy--Nazi
Germany and the apocalyptic horrors of World War II.
Roosevelt, believing a meeting of the Alliance would be
held in Cairo, proposed to Churchill in a second letter dated
December 2, 1942, to have a private bilateral Anglo-American
meeting at a site south of Algiers or in Khartoum prior to
meeting with the Russians. The President wanted to keep this
advance meeting secret as he did ``not want to give Stalin
the impression we are settling everything between ourselves
before we meet him.'' In his letter, Roosevelt noted that
``Stalin has already agreed to a purely military conference
to be held in Moscow.''
Two weeks later, on December 17, 1942, Roosevelt reported
to Churchill that Stalin had sent a reply expressing his
regret that he would be unable to attend a meeting of the
Alliance leadership as it was ``impossible for me [Stalin] to
leave the Soviet Union either in the near future or even at
the beginning of March. Front business absolutely prevents
it, demanding may constant presence near our troops.'' (N.B.
During the winter of '42-'43, Marshall Stalin was in day-to-
day command of the defense of Stalingrad.)
In his communique Stalin said nothing about a military
meeting with Roosevelt and Churchill in Moscow--a proposal to
which Roosevelt believed Stalin had already agreed. Roosevelt
sent word back to the Kremlin that he was ``deeply
disappointed'' with Stalin's reply. Marshall Stalin responded
by stating they could discuss questions by correspondence
until they were able to meet in the future. On substantive
issues, Stalin wrote, ``I think we shall not differ.''
In that same message, Marshall Stalin called for the
opening of a Second Front in Europe. ``I feel confident,'' he
went on, ``the promise to open a Second Front in Europe,
which you, Mr. President, and Mr. Churchill gave for 1942, or
the spring of 1943 at the latest, will be kept and that a
Second Front in Europe will be opened jointly by Great
Britain and the USA next spring.'' Thus, without having to
attend, Marshall Stalin left his imprimatur on the proposed
Allied conference by raising the question of a Second Front.
Even without Marshall Stalin, President Roosevelt believed
he should meet face-to-face with Prime Minister Churchill to
discuss the war effort. But where? England was out as a
meeting place ``for political reasons,'' and the President
wanted to depart the highly charged atmosphere of Washington.
With no Josef Stalin, the US and British leaders would have
no need for foreign affairs specialists because their
discussions would be essentially military-related. Foreign
Secretary Eden and Secretary of State Hull did not attend.
Was it possible to meet in a convenient and recently
vanquished territory under Allied control? What about
Morocco?
On December 21, 1942, Roosevelt wrote to Churchill
proposing a meeting in ``a safe place--Casablanca.''
Churchill agreed. The conference was code-named ``Symbol.''
The President departed on January 11 from Miami, Florida,
for his fourth official meeting with Prime Minister
Churchill. The Casablanca Conference turned out to be the
first in a series of great midwar international conferences.
January 11 was further marked as an historic occasion as it
was the first time a US President had flown in an aircraft
while in office. It was also the first time that a sitting
American President had left the US in a time of war.
President Roosevelt's departure and his destination were
carefully guarded secrets. The Navy Department was assigned
responsibility for overseeing all travel operations.
Casablanca, the site of the conference, lay across the
hazardous Atlantic; a circuitous route covering some 7,372
air miles was selected, and the presidential party was in the
air and taxiing for 46 hours and 38 minutes (ample time for
talks with the Presidential Advisor Harry Hopkins, cards and
martinis).
The President and his entourage boarded a Pan American
World Airways ``Flying Boat'' Clipper Ship (a Boeing 314) in
Miami, Florida (the Dixie Clipper). They flew to Port of
Spain, Trinadad--on to Belem in Brazil--then on to Bathurst,
a former British colony in The Gambia. West Africa.
An identical back-up Clipper followed the President's plane
as a precautionary measure--setting further precedent for the
tradition of two identical Air Force Ones to be flown in
tandem as the US President travels. Roosevelt and his
entourage then transferred to an Air Transport Command plane
of the Army Air Corps (a C-54) for the last leg of the
journey--the flight to Casablanca.
President Roosevelt arrived in Casablanca on the afternoon
of January 14, 1943. Prime Minister Churchill arrived the day
before. The Hotel Anfa was to serve as the conference
headquarters. The hotel and the villas surrounding it were
renamed ``Anfa Camp'' for the duration of the conference.
Surrounded by palm trees, bougainvillea, orange groves and
with sparkling sunny skies overhead, the conference was still
held amidst a wartime atmosphere. The perimeter of Anfa Camp
was protected by barbed wire entanglements with only two
entrances guarded by sentries; heavily armed infantrymen kept
watch on the Hotel Anfa and all residential villas, and the
skies were filled with patrolling fighter squadrons.
Only two months previously, the Allies had landed in
Morocco on November 8, 1942. A fellow member of our Society,
General Vernon A. Walters, landed as a 2nd Lieutenant in the
coastal port of Safi, south of Casablanca in Operation Torch.
(The other landings were at Port Lyautey [now Kenitra] and
Mohammedia.)
Though the strange alliance of the Western Powers and the
Soviet Union was linked by the common bond of Axis danger,
they had yet to agree on an overall strategy for containing
and confronting the Wehrmacht German Army, and, in January
1943, the issue of opening a Second Front in Western Europe
remained entirely an unresolved issue.
Even between the US and the UK, fundamental war strategy
and joint planning for the immediate future were unsettled.
These were not easy matters, and in addition to plenary
sessions, the participants of the Casablanca Conference
carried on informal discussions over luncheon and dinner. The
dinners sometimes lasted into the early hours of the next
morning!
Even so, the Casablanca Conference progressed and, at its
conclusion, marked many strategic milestones and decisions.
During the ten-day event, the two groups of leaders and
advisors held fifteen separate official joint meetings. The
military objectives derived from the intense deliberqtions in
Casablanca were:
Defeat the German submarine force in the Atlantic.
Increase the number of American troops in Great Britain.
Strengthen the air campaign against Nazi Germany.
Attempt to bring Turkey into the war against the Axis.
Prepare for the ultimate invasion of Western Europe.
Invade Sicily.
At the conference, President Roosevelt first introduced the
principle of ``unconditional surrender'' of the Axis--a
concept that was to have important consequences for the
Allied Coalition for the remainder of the war.
While in Casablanca, President Roosevelt also had a dinner
meeting with the Sultan of Morocco, Mohammed V, on January
22. Among the subjects discussed was ``post-war colonial
liberation.'' Did this ``exchange of views'' between
President Roosevelt and Sultan Mohammed V that evening
portend independence for Morocco?
Toward the end of the conference, General Charles de Gaulle
was ``invited'' from England to meet with Roosevelt and
Churchill. General de Gaulle, the London-based leader of
``the Free French Government in Exile,'' arrived in
Casablanca on January 22. On the last day of the conference,
the U.S. President and the British Prime Minister met
separately with de Gaulle and General Henri Giraud, the High
Commissioner of French Africa, who had replaced Admiral
Darlan after the latter's assassination in Algiers on
December 24, 1942.
Both Giraud and de Gaulle were rivals for leadership of the
Free French. The conference was winding down, and though the
President and the Prime Minister considered the ten-day
effort a ``great success,'' the exception was a failure to
obtain a real conciliation between Generals Giraud and de
Gaulle.
Nonetheless, it was an important public relations objective
to demonstrate ``solidarity,'' and on January 24, Lord Moran,
the personal physician of Prime Minister Churchill, wrote in
his diary, ``The President decided the lawn behind his
bungalow, Villa
[[Page E1876]]
Dar es Saada, should be the site of an interesting ceremony .
. .''
The Allied war effort continued. General George C. Marshall
was immediately dispatched to Moscow to debrief Marshall
Stalin on the results of the conference. When Stalin learned
that Roosevelt and Churchill had decided to forego, for the
immediate future, a Second Front through an invasion of
France, he declined to receive General Marshall. For the
Russians, the ``Great Patriotic War'' would go on for another
year and a half before the opening of a Second Front with the
Normandy invasion in June 1944.
Later that year, President Roosevelt did meet with Marshall
Stalin in Teheran, Iran, for the first time on November 28--
December 1, 1943. Despite Stalin's disappointment over the
timing of the Second Front, at the final dinner Marshall
Stalin made the memorable toast, ``Without America, we
[Russia] would already have lost the war.'' (N.B. Churchill
first met Stalin in Moscow, in July 1942.)
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