The Casablanca Conference

Casablanca 1943: Surrounded by British and American military strategists, Churchill and Roosevelt sit at the head of the conference table, posing for photographers.

(Library of Congress/ LC-USZ62-104901 )

On January 24, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill announced they had met in secret at Casablanca in Morocco for a week-long conference, code-named SYMBOL. Stalin had been on the original invitation list, but the Soviet armies were bearing the bulk of the fight against Hitler, and Stalin declined to attend. He was, nonetheless, very clear about what he wanted from his allies: an immediate Second Front against Hitler, which most Soviet and American strategists thought entailed a cross-Channel invasion of Europe.

Although by January 1943, the Allies had secured North Africa, Great Britain and the United States had not been able to seriously divert Hitler’s attention from the Eastern Front, and some strategists feared that if Stalin was left to fight alone for too long, he might seek a separate peace. Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought the urgency of relieving the pressure on the Soviets meant an invasion of France in 1943, just as they had contemplated a desperate invasion in 1942. Churchill and his advisers thought the contrary: any cross-Channel invasion in 1943 would prove disastrous; and to the disgust and, at times fury, of the American military, British strategy prevailed at Casablanca.

The conference addressed a number of other topics, all of them urgent. Churchill and Roosevelt decided against a 1943 invasion of Northwestern Europe and in favor of offensives in the Mediterranean, in the first instance the invasion of Sicily, the success of which in turn became the rationale and springboard for the subsequent invasion of Italy. Churchill and Roosevelt also conferred on the pressing matter of the Tunisian campaign and on the Battle of the Atlantic, which at the end of 1942 appeared to be going badly. They agreed to focus more strategic bombing on U-Boat bays and other related targets and to increase production of escort forces to protect the convoys threatened by Karl Dönitz’s wolfpacks.

Churchill and Roosevelt also agreed on what became known as “round-the-clock” raids: The American strategic bomber force building up in Great Britain would remain committed to unescorted daylight precision strikes, while the RAF heavy bombers would continue to attack at night. American bombers were not all that precise and would not remain unescorted, but round-the-clock bombing contributed invaluably to Allied victory. That, at least, is the conclusion shared by modern specialist historians who have studied the matter, although it is indignantly denied by those who have not.

Churchill and Roosevelt agreed at Casablanca to demand unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, in which instance Roosevelt insisted and Churchill, possibly reluctantly, went along; later complaining that Roosevelt had very hastily proclaimed a momentous decision. Roosevelt, however, felt that the absence of an Allied military presence in Germany following the First World War had lulled some Germans into believing that in 1918 they were not truly defeated and in fact had been on the verge of a victory denied them only through the betrayal of domestic traitors.

On this theory, Hitler had risen to power as a result of mistaken clemency, and Roosevelt was determined not to repeat the mistake. Some American analysts also thought the pledge to fight on until absolute victory would keep Russia in the war, especially since Stalin was not getting more concrete commitments at Casablanca.

Churchill was subsequently uneasy about this absolute formula, especially in the case of Italy, and on one popular theory his uneasiness reflected the traditional British policy of closely maintaining the balance of power, which might mean preserving Germany as an ally against rising Russia.

It was at one time fashionable to attack Roosevelt’s demand as the error that gave Central and Eastern Europe to the Soviets, a criticism that has ebbed with Soviet international power. It furthermore is sometimes also blamed for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At this point, the successes of the policy—stable and war-shunning democracies in Germany and Japan—seem clearer than do the contours of the hypothetically superior outcomes that an allegedly more “realist” policy might have obtained.

Similarly, it is by no means clear that shunning the invasion of Sicily, or even the subsequent invasion of Italy, would have freed up a cross-Channel invasion in 1943. The German position in France was weaker in 1943 than it would be a year later, but so was the American buildup in Britain. A 1943 invasion just might have brought victory in Europe a year earlier, but possibly it might have seen the horrors of the exploratory Dieppe Raid on a hideously tremendous scale.

Casablanca was above all one of the theaters in which what became known as “the special relationship”—the uniquely close alliance between the United States and Great Britain—took what has so far proved durable form. Sentimentalists overlook how contentious the quarrels have been that roiled the Anglo-American alliance, even in the hours of its founding. The quarrels that made themselves felt at Casablanca, and the private thoughts of many American and British officers and officials when pondering their allies were often less than kind. But fools fail to note just how close that alliance was when compared to almost any other: also by that standard how close it remains, and how prodigious have been its achievements.

—Fred Smoler is a frequent contributor.