The Origins of the Grand Alliance

Anglo-American Military Collaboration from the Panay Incident to Pearl Harbor

William T. Johnsen

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780813168333
• eBook ISBN: 9780813168364
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

On December 12, 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the American gunboat Panay, which was anchored in the Yangtze River outside Nanjing, China. Although the Japanese apologized, the attack turned American public opinion against Japan, and President Roosevelt dispatched Captain Royal Ingersoll to London to begin conversations with the British admiralty about Japanese aggression in the Far East. While few Americans remember the Panay Incident, it established the first links in the chain of Anglo-American military collaboration that eventually triumphed in World War II.

In The Origins of the Grand Alliance, William T. Johnsen provides the first comprehensive analysis of military collaboration between the United States and Great Britain before the Second World War. He sets the stage by examining Anglo-French and Anglo-American coalition military planning from 1900 through World War I and the interwar years. Johnsen also considers the formulation of policy and grand strategy, operational planning, and the creation of the command structure and channels of communication. He addresses vitally important logistical and materiel issues, particularly the difficulties of war production.

Military conflicts in the early twenty-first century continue to underscore the increasing importance of coalition warfare for historian and soldier alike. Drawn from extensive sources and private papers held in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, Johnsen's exhaustively researched study refutes the idea that America was the naive junior partner in the coalition and casts new light on the US-UK "special relationship."

1

Lessons Lived, Learned, Lost

Episodic Progress in U.S. and British Experiences in Coalition Warfare, 1900–1918

We have learned a lot from the last war in these [coalition] matters—it is good we should so rapidly apply that knowledge and plunk for the right thing from the very beginning.

—Sir Henry Pownall, Chief of General Staff, British Expeditionary Force (1939), Chief of Staff

Dealing with the enemy is a simple and straightforward matter when contrasted with securing close cooperation with an ally.

—Major General Fox Conner, Chief of Operations, American Expeditionary Force (1918), “The Allied High Command and Allied Unity of Direction,” speech to the Army War College, 1940

Before examining Anglo-American military cooperation during the period 1937–1941, some understanding of the previous experiences in coalition warfare, the so-called intellectual baggage that each power brought to the discussions, is essential. In this instance, the respective British and U.S. experiences leading up to and during World War I offer a suitable starting point.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States adhered to George Washington’s admonition to avoid foreign entanglements because exploration and consolidation of the continental hinterland absorbed American energies. After defeating Spain in 1898, however, the United States acquired substantial overseas territories for the first time and emerged on the international scene as a nascent global power. Many Americans, even if not totally isolationist, nonetheless remained suspicious of overseas involvement. However, with an increased military presence in the Pacific and the Caribbean as well as the special attitude of the United States toward China, elements of the American public began advocating a more active foreign policy, particularly in the Pacific.¹ President Theodore Roosevelt’s brokering an end to the Russo-Japanese War, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize of 1906, creation of a modern “blue water” navy, and the circumnavigation of the globe by the Great White Fleet in 1907–1909 manifested the emergence of the United States as a major power.²

At the same time, impediments to extensive collaboration abroad remained. The U.S. military establishment was not prepared for large-scale collaborative efforts. The army constituted little more than a constabulary force, and weaknesses in its organization and structure discovered during the Spanish-American War would take more than a decade to resolve. The U.S. Navy—preeminent U.S. naval theorist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet notwithstanding—was not yet a modern navy equal to European standards. As a result, the armed services remained preoccupied with the demands of the defense of the Western Hemisphere.³ Moreover, U.S. political leaders after Roosevelt sought to preserve U.S. neutrality in world affairs. For example, in his biography of Newton D. Baker, U.S. secretary of war during World War I, Frederick Palmer notes that in 1915 President Woodrow Wilson saw an article in the Baltimore Sun indicating that the army’s General Staff was preparing contingency plans for a possible war against Germany. The president ordered Henry S. Breckinridge, the acting secretary of war, to investigate the claim “and, if it proved true, to relieve at once every officer of the General Staff and order him out of Washington.”⁴ Wilson’s temper cooled after Secretary Baker informed him that it was the General Staff’s duty to prepare such plans, “but, Mr. Breckinridge directed me to caution the War College to ‘camouflage’ its work. It [the order] resulted in practically no further additional studies.”⁵

Great Britain, in contrast, began the twentieth century in the midst of the Boer War, 1899–1902, the last of the great wars to consolidate its empire.⁶ Even before that conflict, Britain had begun to reassess its level of global engagement and emerge from self-imposed “splendid isolation” as it attempted to reduce the potential for conflicts. For example, after resolving a confrontation with the United States over Venezuela (1895–1896), British leaders sought rapprochement with the United States that would help secure U.S. interests in Asia as a quid pro quo for U.S. protection of British interests in the Western Hemisphere.⁷ A more pressing issue stemmed from Anglo-German competition after German unification that accelerated into rising tensions after Wilhelm II discarded Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1890 and seized control of German foreign policy. Faced with an increasingly menacing Wilhelmine Germany, Britain once more focused its attentions on the European balance of power and in particular on Britain’s role in maintaining that delicate equilibrium. The threat from Germany subsequently led to the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904, the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907, and British efforts to broker diplomatic solutions to the Balkan wars, all of which culminated in the outbreak of World War I and the commitment of British land forces to the Continent for the first time in almost sixty years.⁸

In the midst of the First Moroccan Crisis of March 1905–May 1906 between France and Germany over Moroccan independence, Britain and France began exploring the possibilities of military cooperation. The relationship started in December 1905 when Major Victor Huguet, the French military attaché in London, approached Major General James Grierson, director of military operations on the Imperial General Staff, and inquired about British intentions on the Continent. Grierson replied that the British had been examining the possible deployment of a 100,000- to 150,000-man force to northwestern Europe in the event of a general European war and that the British preferred to plan for operations in Belgium, but, if necessary, they could shift their focus to supporting the French left flank.⁹ A few days later, Huguet contacted his friend, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Charles à Court Repington, the influential military correspondent of the Times (London), and queried him about British plans. Repington contacted British officials, who agreed to use Repington as an informal conduit and posed several questions that Repington relayed to Huguet. Shortly thereafter, the British government decided to enter into direct staff talks and terminated Repington’s role.¹⁰

Staff talks proceeded at a desultory pace during 1906–1910 as tension over Morocco cooled and Anglo-German relations warmed. Anglo-French planners designated ports of debarkation for what would become the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), specified initial assembly areas, and began plans for the forward rail transport of British forces. The fact that as early as 1908 the French decided to locate the BEF near Cambrai and Arras on the Belgian border but neglected to inform their British partners offers a revealing indication of the level of coalition cooperation.¹¹

Major General Henry Wilson’s accession to the post of director of military operations rejuvenated the staff conversations. Convinced that little practical work had been accomplished, Wilson, a close friend of General Ferdinand Foch and described by historian Roy Prete as “French speaking, ardently Francophile, and a convert to offensive doctrine,” immediately set about altering what he perceived to be a disgraceful state of unpreparedness.¹² By August 1911, Wilson’s energetic efforts resulted in the planned deployment of a BEF of approximately 150,000 men on the French left flank.¹³ From this position, they would fall upon an anticipated open German right flank south of the Meuse River. Only later would Anglo-French commanders find out how badly they had underestimated the scope of the sweeping envelopment of the Schlieffen Plan, the German plan to quickly conquer France. Now that they were already engaged in battle, it would be too late to draw up new plans. The BEF would have to execute the only plan it had—with near disastrous short-term results for the BEF as well as long-lasting strains within the coalition.¹⁴

Throughout 1912–1914, coalition planners concentrated on refining the general terms agreed upon in 1911. From the available evidence, Wilson appears to have been the principal, if not the sole, negotiator between the British and French staffs. It is clear that he was coordinating Anglo-French activities, not planning for combined operations of the two armies.¹⁵ There also are indications that Wilson may have made commitments he had not cleared with his civilian masters in the War Office, an omission that would have significant consequences in August 1914 when His Majesty’s Government did not immediately enter the war. British indecision not only delayed mobilization and movement of the BEF to France but also upset French mobilization and concentration timetables because the French had to wait for the British to move forward on their left flank. The delay also sowed seeds of French suspicions over ultimate British intent.¹⁶ Contemporary French documents and Marshal Joseph Joffre’s memoirs indicate that when Joffre presented Plan XVII in April 1913, he noted, “I was conscious … that since the agreement was problematical and subject to political considerations, it was impossible to base a priori, a strategic offensive upon eventualities which might very well never materialize.”¹⁷ In this statement lies a key issue in coalition planning, especially prewar planning: key decisions about going to war rest ultimately in the hands of politicians, not soldiers.

British and French naval authorities also carried out staff discussions during this period, albeit less extensive than those of their army colleagues. In the first meeting in January 1906, Admiral Sir John “Jacky” Fisher, the first sea lord, apparently lectured Captain Mercier de Lostende, the French naval attaché, about current British strategy and expressed the opinion that the Royal Navy could take care of itself.¹⁸ By November 1908, when the French resurrected naval conversations, the German Imperial Navy had evolved into a major threat. Fisher proposed that the Royal Navy would take responsibility for the North Sea, while the French Navy would defend the Mediterranean. Naval conversations lapsed shortly thereafter when de Lostende informed Fisher that although the French government agreed in principle, the French did not have sufficient strength to control the entire Mediterranean.¹⁹ The French reopened discussions in July 1911 during the second Franco-German crisis over Morocco.²⁰ Over the next year, Anglo-French naval authorities negotiated an agreed division of labor: the British would patrol the North Sea, the Dover–Calais straits, and the Mediterranean Sea east of Malta, while the French would defend the lower English Channel and the Mediterranean west of Malta.²¹ These provisions stood when war broke out and remained in effect throughout the course of the war.

According to historian Samuel R. Williamson, despite the staff talks, “the new Anglo-French intimacy did not mean there was genuine joint strategic planning. There was joint consultation and some joint discussion,” but there were no plans for closely interlocking Allied operations.²² Moreover, absent significant political changes, there could be no wartime unity of strategic direction or command of their two armies. The BEF would fight alongside the French army as an independent force, and the two fleets would loosely coordinate their individual actions.²³ At the outset of war in 1914, the British and French clearly relied instead upon the traditional concept of cooperation between national forces rather than on true unity of strategic direction or command. One should not judge them too harshly, however. Each nation had differing strategic interests that occasionally led them to diverging paths, and neither power had engaged with allies since the Crimean War sixty years earlier. Moreover, as a close student of coalition warfare has observed, “the opening of the First World War occurred while strategists … were emphasizing the national aspects of war to the exclusion of alliance considerations.”²⁴

The failure to achieve unity of strategic direction and command would plague coalition efforts throughout the ensuing war. As planned, British and French forces initially operated independently within their delineated zones of operations.²⁵ The German envelopment through Belgium during the initial Battle of the Frontier (20–24 August 1914) quickly unhinged the Anglo-French plan. As British and French forces reeled under heavy German pressure, the failure of General Sir John French, BEF commander, to coordinate with the French Fifth Army under General Charles Lanrezac led to a significant gap that risked the entire French defense in Belgium and northern France. Only a direct order to Sir J...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Dramatis Personae
• List of Abbreviations
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1. Lessons Lived, Learned, Lost: Episodic Progress in U.S. and British Experiences in Coalition Warfare, 1900–1918
• 2. Neither Friend nor Foe: U.S.-British Relations in the Interwar Years
• 3. Groping in the Dark: U.S.-British Coalition Encounters, 1936–1939
• 4. Ties That Bind: The Effects of Supply Negotiations on Anglo-American Cooperation, 1938–1940
• 5. The Americans Come to Listen, August–September 1940
• 6. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Inching toward Collaboration, Autumn 1940
• 7. Full-Dress Talks: The American-British Conversations-1 Conference, January–March 1941
• 8. Easier Said Than Done: Implementing the American-British Conversations-1 Report, April–July 1941
• Photographs
• 9. Muddy Waters: Reexamining the Coalition’s Grand Strategy, June–October 1941
• 10. Racing an Unseen Clock: More Problems Than Solutions
• Conclusion
• Chronology
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index