Gymnast

  

 Global strategy is too important to be left to generals.

Planning for military conflict is just one factor among

many that need to be considered by leaders to win

the war.

President Roosevelt's top military commanders were

strenuously promoting an Allied assault on France 

before the end of 1942, within a year of the bombing

of Pearl Harbor.  The proposed invasion would be

of a size and complexity that occurred on D-Day,

three years later.

Churchill argued the plan was ambitious beyond its means.

We hadn't the ships, tanks and airplanes needed for this

undertaking.  No one had any firm ideas, let alone 

experience, at how to conduct an amphibious assault.

Britain and Canada would have to lead the way because

most of the Yanks were in basic training.  The US Army

would grow a thousand percent by the end of the year.

Nearly everyone was busy learning their job.

Hitler would welcome this half-baked military effort,

pulverizing Allied formations as they land.

The resulting disaster would set back the opening 

of a second front in France a couple of years

and possibly leave Stalin wondering whether it

would be better to settle with the Nazis than to put

his faith in an incompetent ally.

 Roosevelt was in agreement with Churchill.

Gymnast was Roosevelt's plan for a second front

in North Africa as opposed to taking Germany

head on in Europe.  By attacking the French in

Vichy Morocco and Algeria, the Americans would

learn from dealing with a less formidable enemy.

In fact, the French might choose not to fight at all.

US troops were untested and definitely not ready 

for prime time.  While German generals spent years

brooding over how to slice and dice their opposition,

the US Army was busy chasing Poncho Villa around

the southern border with Mexico.

US troops would get their baptism of fire at a mountain

pass named Kasserine.  Rommel pretty well torched

the American effort to hold him back.  The loss was a 

bitter humiliation for Eisenhower's men.  But it wasn't 

the catastrophe that would have occurred on the shores

of Normandy.  It was a valuable teaching lesson.

Adjustments were made in personnel.

General George S. Patton was given a division of tanks

to command.

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©  Tom Taylor

OVER   EASY

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