Casablanca Conference

• 1. Introduction

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  The Casablanca Conference, codenamed SYMBOL, took place in Casablanca, French Morocco, from the 14th to the 24th of January 1943. Two men sat at the center of it: US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, each accompanied by military staffs, each pulling the war's next chapter in a different direction. A third man, Joseph Stalin, was absent. He had cited the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad as requiring his presence in Moscow.

  What came out of those ten days would shape the final two years of the war. A declaration demanding nothing less than total enemy defeat. A decision on where to invade Europe first. An argument about France that neither leader fully resolved. And a private conversation about colonial Africa that Roosevelt would carry home with him. The questions worth sitting with: why did Churchill resist opening a front in France? Why did Roosevelt borrow a phrase from the American Civil War to define Allied policy? And why did a handshake between two French generals have to be photographed twice?

• 2. Unconditional Surrender

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  On the 24th of January 1943, at the concluding press conference of the Casablanca Conference, Roosevelt announced that the Allies were demanding unconditional surrender from the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese. He had borrowed the phrase from US Army General Ulysses S. Grant, known during the Civil War as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant for communicating exactly that stance to the Confederate commander.

  The Casablanca Declaration, issued jointly by Churchill and Roosevelt, announced to the world that the Allies would accept nothing short of total Axis defeat. In a radio address on the 12th of February 1943, Roosevelt explained what he meant: "we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution upon their guilty, barbaric leaders."

  Behind the scenes, the accord was less solid than it appeared. Churchill had cabled the War Cabinet four days before the announcement, and they had not objected. US General George Marshall said he had been consulted and on the 7th of January stated that Allied morale would be "strengthened by the uncompromising demand, and Stalin's suspicions allayed." Yet the New York Times correspondent Drew Middleton, who was in Casablanca, later wrote in his book Retreat From Victory that Churchill had been "startled by the public announcement. I tried to hide my surprise. But I was his Roosevelt's ardent lieutenant."

  Historian Charles Bohlen attributed responsibility for the doctrine almost exclusively to Roosevelt, guessing that the announcement was designed to keep Soviet forces engaged with Germany and to prevent Stalin from negotiating a separate peace with the Nazi regime. Diplomatic insiders pushed back hard: they argued the stance was too inflexible, would close off political maneuvering, and would prove demoralizing to French and German resistance groups.

  Among those quietly working against the policy's spirit was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, the Abwehr. His persistent overtures to the United States for support in eliminating Hitler and negotiating peace were ignored by Roosevelt. Allen Dulles, running OSS intelligence in Bern, Switzerland, maintained that the Casablanca Declaration was "merely a piece of paper to be scrapped without further ado if Germany would sue for peace. Hitler had to go."

• 3. Sicily Before France

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  Roosevelt arrived at Casablanca arguing for a cross-Channel invasion of Europe, advised by General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff. Churchill, guided by General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, pushed back firmly. The time was not right for France, Churchill said. Sicily and then mainland Italy should come first.

  The British argument was grounded in logistics and attrition. Drawing German reserves into Italy would trap them in a theater with poor north-south lines of communication, making it difficult to extract those troops and redeploy them to defend against a later invasion of northwest Europe. Every additional month of delay would also mean the German army on the Eastern Front had been further worn down by fighting the Red Army.

  The compromise that emerged gave Churchill what he wanted in Europe. The Allied invasion of Sicily was agreed upon, with Italy to follow. Roosevelt, for his part, was prominently focused on the Pacific throughout the conference and faulted the British for what he saw as insufficient commitment against Japan. Churchill pledged more troops and resources to the Pacific and Burma to reinforce positions held by Chiang Kai-shek, and the United States agreed to supply escorts and landing craft for British operations there.

  The conference also authorized a US Navy plan to advance on Japan through the central Pacific and the Philippines, approving what became the island-hopping campaign. The source material notes that this decision shortened the war. The invasion of Sicily, which Churchill pushed hardest for, would prove to be the most consequential single decision made at Casablanca.

• 4. The French Generals

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  Charles de Gaulle had to be forced to attend the Casablanca Conference, and when he arrived, he found a chilly reception from both Roosevelt and Churchill. No French representatives were permitted inside the military planning sessions.

  The conference called for a joint leadership of the Free French forces to be shared between de Gaulle and Henri Giraud. The two men limited their interactions to formalities, pledging mutual support without warmth. Roosevelt encouraged them to shake hands for the photographers gathered for a photo opportunity, but the handshake was so quick and reluctant that a second pose was required.

  Roosevelt would later describe the moment as a "shotgun wedding." His private reading of the situation was recorded in his son Elliott Roosevelt's 1946 book, As He Saw It: Franklin Roosevelt wanted both men equally responsible for the French provisional government's composition and welfare because he saw de Gaulle as Churchill's puppet and believed Giraud would be more compliant with US interests.

  Events moved differently. The French Resistance overwhelmingly regarded de Gaulle as its undisputed leader, and Giraud was progressively stripped of his political and military roles. Roosevelt eventually recognized de Gaulle as the head of the Free French in October 1944.

• 5. Africa and Empire

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  The day before the conference opened, Roosevelt became the first US president to visit Africa when he stayed at the city of Bathurst in Gambia. What he saw there sharpened his anti-colonialism. The conditions Gambians lived under within the British Empire led him to press Churchill harder on the need for an international trusteeship system that would move colonies like Gambia toward independence.

  During the conference itself, Roosevelt met privately with Churchill and Sultan Muhammad V of Morocco. The Sultan's 14-year-old son, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan, attended alongside his father. Moulay Hassan would later rule as Hassan II.

  Roosevelt also spoke with the French resident general at Rabat about postwar independence and the situation of Jewish immigrants in North Africa. His proposal was troubling in its framing: he suggested limiting the number of Jews in professional fields such as law and medicine to their proportion of the North African population, drawing an explicit parallel to conditions in Germany. He connected the idea to views he had received earlier from William Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, who had written to Roosevelt that Jews held more positions in Germany than their numbers or talents entitled them to.

  On his return to the United States, Roosevelt stopped at the Potenji River in Natal on the 28th and the 29th of January 1943, meeting aboard ship with Brazilian President Getulio Vargas. Their discussions covered Brazil's participation in the war effort and produced the agreements that led to the creation of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.