I thought I'd try and initiate a discussion on how the friction between American and British leaders may have influenced WW2. The most notable example may have been Adm. Ernie King's refusal to start convoys early in the war because the British wanted the USA to do so. This led to horrible shipping losses from Donitz's Operation Drumbeat". King's antipathy towards all things English stems from how he was treated by RN officers in WWI. Certainly, this friction, while not universal, did exist and Monty seems to have been a lightning rod for it, but throughout my readings I've gotten this undercurrent that many of the leaders (down through the ranks of generals/admirals) of each country had a very poor opinion of the other country. Even Churchill and this wife, in their letters to each other, vented some real disagreeable notions about Americans. I've even come across some evidence that there were strains between British and Canadian troops. Question: Did this hamper cooperation in the war effort?
Seeing as how you couldn't have found a Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe who would have bent over backwards to accomodate allies any more than Eisenhower did, I'm more disposed to the idea that excessive cooperation could have had a more negative influence than lack of cooperation did.... i.e. approval of plans and operations just for the sake of mollifying allies rather than for the sake of winning the war most expeditiously. However, I don't see that any of this had a huge impact... perhaps the war could have been ended a couple of months sooner if this or that had been done differently, but I don't see anything that could have been changed to end the war, say, a year sooner, at least not without untold masses of additional casualties. But when it's a question of whether you want to spend time or lives, it is often better to spend time (and from the Western Allies' perspective this was an easier choice to make when it was primarily Soviet lives being spent, but that's getting off into another subject).
I've seen this questioned though. It has been stated that there simply weren't enough escorts to run convoys at that point. Not having things in place for instance to blackout the Eastern seaboard cities or have adequate arial patrols of the east coast also made serious contributions to Drumbeat. King's antipathy toward the English certainly didn't help things but I'm not sure how much of the impact of Drumbeat can be layed at the feet of that antipathy and in particular to the lack of convoy ops.
Squidly: My reading of your post is that you're answering the question as a qualified "yes". Am I right? lwd: Gannonl's "Operation Drumbeat" says that destroyers were available. Even lightly escorted convoys would have reduced sinkings. Once the convoy system was put into place several months down the line, sinkings dropped off dramatically. There wasn't appreciably more destroyers and escorts available then than were there several months earlier.
It looks rather debatable to me. (althouhg looking at the wiki article the lack of a blackout is also sometimes blamed on King's phobia). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic#Operation_Drumbeat_.28January_.E2.80.93_June_1942.29 http://www.uboataces.com/boa-america.shtml presents some interesting info as well. One wonders who else besides King was involved and just how much preconceptions were the problem: Certainly the British were willing to help as well. When compared to some of the internal issues experianced by the axis how serioius do the allied disagreements look? Indeed the IJA and IJN seem to have been at much greater odds and then there are the various German competeing organizations.
I agree that inter-service cooperation (which the U.S. armed forces made into a high art form) could be equally, if not more, problematic. According to Gannon, the refusal to go to black-out on the coast was a political decision brought on by local politicians who thought dimming the lights would hurt the tourist trade. (!) Again according to Gannon, several destroyers (13 IIRC) were made available to Atlantic Coastal Command. They ran all over the place and didn't find any U-Boats of course and were re-assigned. King was CNO and thus was responsible for everything the U.S. Navy did or didn't do.
The relationship between the USA and Britain in WW2 has been subject of many books and theses. On balance the relationship worked exceptionally well. It can be very difficult to successfully wage coalition war. It is hard enough for the members of one government to co-operate harmoniously. Of course the navy, army, air forces and civilian institutions have different objectives. They are in competition for resources and glory and have different priorities. Expecting the leaders of six armed forces to get along is really rather ambitious. here were lots of disagreements about strategy, not just between the Brits and the Ameircans but between the airmen and the soldiers. The remarkable feature of the allied leadership of WW2 is how much agreement the governments of two democracies had and how thjey resolved differences fo opinion amicably. In passing the bequeathed the world the political institutions which they invented to support their alliance - the UN, and all its institutions. Admiral King did not share the same priorities as Marshal - or the British. He was not alone in being late to accept the necessity of a convoy system. In WW1 the Royal Navy put off the decision until disaster stared them in the face in 1917. Instituting a convoy system was a massive commitment for the navy and sucked in a lot of escort ships on apparently passive activity.
Sheldrake, et al: I agree that the coalition worked reasonably well. This is despite the fact that many of the principals loathed/despised one another along national lines and often worked contrary to the common good. Enough senior officers were able to put down their parochial attitudes or at least cover them up with a professional attitude, in order to get the job done. However, I can't go so far as to say that it didn't have an effect on the war effort. Just how much was the question I asked.
Not really..... I see inter-allied friction as more of a snafu issue, just part of the daily grind on the way to victory. The Western Allies lost some battles subsequent to spring 1942, but they lost no campaigns after that time, so it's hard to point at this issue as something that really held up the war effort. The only major holdup to the Allied war effort was waiting for the USA to get up to strength, as she had allowed her military preparedness to wane so woefully in the years prior.
Australia knows all of you mob...and Britain the best...the biggest problems stemmed simply from differing objectives and concerns. Obviously if two leaders (political or military) have different objectives, they arent going to agree on much unless the plan satisfies both objectives, which of course it rarely does. There were/are good and bad politicians and Generals in every country. Britian has treated the US and Australia badly in the past, it was bleating for help and we both responded in our own ways based on our own needs and concerns... When it was Australia's turn to yell for help, Britain was MIA... Thats enough in itself to turn opinion against them...Lucky for us and the world...The US Navy turned up and got rowdy...
If you want to prove your point you need to demonstrate that 1) More "people at the top loathed/despised one another along national lines." than despised each other for purely internally domestic reasons such as professional jealously, career competition or political conflict etc) and 2) That this materially affected the conduct of the War. Re 1. I challenge your assumption. King's attitude towards the British may be attributed to some ancient slight. However, 1) As I pointed out re Drumbeat can be explained by institutional tendency not to learn from other peoples' mistakes. 2) He wasn't any more co-operative with the US Army. 3) Within the US perspective he had a profound interest in the PTO where the Navy would take the lead, compared to the ETO which would be dominated by the Army. The Air Force leaders on both sides of the pond were united in their desire to pursue strategic bombing and avoid being sucked into close air support. Marshall had an easier time dealing with the USAAF which was part of the Army than Brooke did with the RAF. Personal chemistry played little part in this. It is hard to see how Brooke could have despised anyone more than he despised his compatriot Lord Louis Mountbatten. In any close working relationship people did become aware of the weaknesses as well as the strengths of their opposite numbers. Alanbrooke was very frank in his diary entries regarding both Churchill and Marshall, but he was also personally attached to both of these men and had a warm appreciation of their strengths. if you want to prove this you need to put up a matrix of interpersonal relationships and demonstrate that on net more of of the men at the top loathed/despised more foreigners than their own colleagues. This is interesting speculation, but unprovable. If you want to prove that personal Anglophobia - Anti-americanism/ Yankophobia(?) resulted in activities contrary to the common good and had a significant effect on the war effort, you need to be able to:- 1) demonstrate that differences of opinion and decisions were taken based on personal prejudice rather than the conflicts arising from different perceptions of the Common Good. World War was was not a game. There were no common definitions of what constituted success or failure. There were different national, and even personal objectives. Try reading some of the modern writers about strategic decision making. Alliosn's Decision in Crisis(?) about the Cuban missile crisis is a classic. Try Minzberg too. 2) Demonstrate that such decisions led to a worse outcome for the war. This would rely on trying to prove a counter-factual history. I am not suggesting that national prejudices did not play a part in the Anglo American alliance, nor in shaping the decisions. However, it was never significant. if you want to look at a dysfunctional alliance, cvonsider the axis. Failures in the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini may have cost the Axis the Warin Europe by exposing the Germans to an utterly unnecessary theatre of war. The Japanese decision to strike South against the US and European empires rather than co-operate with the Germans in dismembering the USSR cost them their country and the Germans the Eastern front. .
The allies did seem to focus on what they had in common and what they needed to do to win the war. The west even cooperated well with the Soviets and certainly there was little love lost between circles in both blocks.
