Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith

By D.K.R. Crosswell

This biography recounts one of the most significant yet unsung military careers of the twentieth century: “a major contribution to the history of World War II” (Foreign Affairs).
 
General Walter Bedell Smith began his public service career of more than forty years at age sixteen, when he joined the Indiana National Guard. His bulldog tenacity earned him an opportunity to work with General George C. Marshall in 1941, playing an essential role in formation of the Combined and Joint Chiefs of Staff.
 
After his appointment as chief of staff to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1942, Smith took a central part in planning the major Allied operations of World War II in Europe. Among his many duties, Smith negotiated the surrenders of the Italian and German armed forces in 1945. Smith’s postwar career included service as the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and undersecretary of state.
 
In Beetle, D. K. R. Crosswell offers the first full-length biography of the general, including insights into his close relationships with Marshall and Eisenhower. Meticulously researched and long overdue, Beetle sheds new light on Eisenhower as supreme commander, as well as the WWII campaigns in North Africa, Italy, and Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780813140025

Book preview

Abbreviations

Introduction

One pitfall in writing a biography is the risk of becoming too immersed in the topic. You spend so much time with the historic figure you begin to feel like you know the person and those in his or her circle. This project has consumed me—with varying degrees of intensity—since 1982. I first encountered Beetle Smith when acting as Merle Miller’s researcher for his biography of Dwight Eisenhower, Ike the Soldier: As They Knew Him. Smith’s career as Eisenhower’s chief of staff became the subject of my dissertation; then I worked the dissertation into a book, published by Greenwood in 1991. As a first book, it was not without some merit—it received some solid reviews and commendation by Choice—but its publication left me with no sense of closure. Blame it on a callow academic too eager to publish his first book, but I fell victim to the temptation of uncritically accepting received wisdom—in this case, the good cop (Eisenhower)-bad cop (Smith) school. Basically, I took the easy way out and followed a well-worn path, merely inserting Smith into the story. During my first month as a PhD student at Kansas State, my mentor, Professor Robin Higham, invited D. Clayton James, then a scholar in residence at the Command and General Staff College, to present a talk on his experiences writing the biography of Douglas MacArthur. Some days I wake up and think MacArthur was the greatest general who ever lived, he recounted. Others, I concluded he was the biggest SOB who ever lived. With Smith, it proved all too easy to accept his reputation as a one-dimensional SOB, because that was precisely the persona he labored so hard to project. But his friend Hastings Ismay knew better, noting that Smith was never the terrible Beetle in [Harry C.] Butcher’s book My Three Years with Eisenhower, based on the household and headquarters diaries of Eisenhower’s naval aide and confidant. The truth is I did not know Smith very well in 1991, and my first book did him an injustice—albeit completely unintended. As it turned out, there were several facets to Beetle Smith. He was much more than advertised, and his boss, Eisenhower, considerably less.

This book’s structure is unorthodox. Instead of following a chronological format, I begin with a section on Smith’s postwar career serving two presidents: as ambassador to the Soviet Union and director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Truman, and as undersecretary of state and government adviser in the Eisenhower administration. Smith’s contributions as ambassador in Moscow when American-Soviet relations entered the deep freeze, as founding father of the CIA, and as number two to John Foster Dulles, especially the parts he played in the Iranian and Guatemalan coups and the Indochina portion of the Geneva conference of 1954, are themselves worthy of serious interest. Essentially, this work is a military biography, and for that reason, I resorted to the device of front-loading Smith’s postwar career. Whether this works must be left to the reader’s judgment.

Aside from providing an account of Smith’s remarkable career and his contributions to the Allied victory in Europe as Eisenhower’s chief of staff, this volume has two other objectives. American military biographers tend to shy away from controversial topics; reflecting public tastes, they prefer to cast their subjects in bronze. Political scientists and political historians have engaged in a healthy discourse on Eisenhower and his leadership style virtually since his inaugural, but nothing similar exists in the military history literature. Biographies of Eisenhower still constitute something of a cottage industry. The title of the latest, Michael Korda’s Ike: An American Hero, perfectly sums up the popular view: Eisenhower as American Everyman, the poor boy who grew up to be president after first liberating Europe from the scourge of fascism. Even the best of them, Carlo D’Este’s Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, portrays Eisenhower warts and all, but it still leaves the reader with the image of Ike as Frank Merriwell, the all-American boy. There is a good reason for this: Eisenhower personified a whole array of cherished American ideals. Another reason is that Eisenhower remains an elusive subject.

Eisenhower’s detractors—both during the war and after—portray him as a mere chairman of the Allied corporate board, who, though binding the alliance together and achieving victory in Europe, never wielded decisive leadership. He was prone to maddening bouts of indecision and preferred compromise to affirmative control, and this leadership style left him prey to his fractious and willful senior subordinates. Closing his mind to more ambitious schemes for ending the war, his decisions instead lengthened it. His defenders paint an entirely different canvas. As an American supreme commander of an international coalition, Eisenhower skillfully plotted his course, balancing the need to preserve the support of his political chiefs with the need to buttress Allied public opinion, while selectively employing the formal powers conferred on him to fulfill his mission. Attacks on his reputation as a strategist and organizer—and the impression that he reigned more than he ruled—constitute only one of the personal sacrifices Eisenhower made in preserving Allied unity. The truth is Eisenhower fits both portrayals.

Any treatment of Smith as a chief of staff must center on Eisenhower—his character, his approach to problem solving and people, and his strengths and weaknesses as a supreme commander. Two aspects of Eisenhower’s personality lay at the center of his leadership style: his predilection to disassociate himself from his actions, and his lifelong refusal to engage in personal conflict. Eisenhower proved decisive only when the decision was not to do something. A product of the interwar U.S. Army, Eisenhower’s hierarchical and conservative bent explains not only the thinking behind his command decisions but also why he failed to confront the perpetual problems historically faced by the U.S. Army in war: manpower, supply of forces in the field, and civil affairs. Ego, ambition, envy, and suspicion were ubiquitous and occasionally decisive, and Eisenhower’s penchant for personalized command produced his biggest headaches. Part of the reason for Eisenhower’s successful high-wire act of managing personalities was, of course, the character of the supreme commander, but also vital was the role played by Beetle Smith.

Many years ago Toby Graham offered sage advice. He said nobody would read logistics history unless it was related to operations. Acting on this caveat, the other goal of this book is to make the connection between command decisions and the limitations imposed by logistics broadly defined. Military historians generally ignore logistics—the economics of warfare—in part because it is difficult to research and write about, but mostly because nobody cares about such arcane topics as organizational theories, manpower policies, and the functioning of incredibly complex supply organizations. There are long, densely written discourses on these admittedly not very interesting subjects, but in my view, Materialschlacht—the war for materiel but also for manpower—rests at the core of any explanation of why American forces eventually triumphed in North Africa and northwestern Europe, as well as why opportunities for ending the war sooner and at less cost miscarried. The first Allied invasion—Operation Torch in northwestern Africa—was nearly postponed or even canceled owing to the near breakdown of American logistics in the United Kingdom during the buildup and mounting phase. Allied efforts in Tunisia initially failed in large part because of the chaos in American supply. A succession of crises in 1944—first fuel and then ammunition and winter clothing, climaxing in the debilitating manpower crunch— left enervated American forces stalemated and vulnerable astride the French-Belgian-German frontiers, giving rise to serious concerns about the war’s outcome. Other than Roland Ruppenthal’s two-volume official history, Logistical Support of the Armies, and the odd book or article dealing with a particular campaign, there is no major treatment of this crucial aspect of war making covering the span of American participation in Europe during World War II. Much of the blame for this operations-supply disconnect rested in Eisenhower’s obstinate refusal to alter the headquarters structure. Smith fought and lost numerous battles with Eisenhower over this issue. By examining command decisions through the prism of logistics, a different picture emerges of both Eisenhower as commander and the conduct of operations in North Africa, Italy, and Europe.

Several bromides exist about the roles played by chiefs of staff. Behind every great commander stands his chief of staff. Other than commander, no position in a large, modern bureaucratic military organization is as vital as chief of staff. Chiefs of staff, the linchpins of all military staffs, toil in the shadows, performing the meticulous and anonymous work that wins campaigns. Chiefs of staff translate the will of the commander into practical plans; they harmonize and integrate the actions of headquarters, issuing succinct guidance to their principal staff subordinates while coordinating actions with higher, lateral, and lower staffs. Chiefs of staff must possess not only intelligence and a thorough grasp of detail but also tact and diplomatic skills. Despite the instrumental role played by chiefs of staff, military historians write surprisingly little about them.

Smith discharged all these functions as chief of staff and more. A study of Smith reveals the evolution of the institutional machinery for the higher direction of combined and joint war. If Smith had never served under Eisenhower, he would still command attention for his pivotal role in forging the Combined and Joint Chiefs of Staff apparatuses in Washington in 1942. Enjoying a wide grant of authority from Eisenhower, Smith fashioned and ran Allied headquarters in the Mediterranean and northwestern Europe. Through Smith we observe the inner workings of the complex and rarely smooth relationships among these headquarters and the political heads (Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle), the uniformed chiefs who stood above (the Combined Chiefs of Staff; the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, principally Marshall; and the British Chiefs of Staff, principally Brooke), and the operational commanders below them (chiefly Alexander and Montgomery for the British and Bradley, Devers, Patton, and Hodges for the Americans). Smith always backstopped Eisenhower in his military decisions and in his dealings with senior American and British politicians and officers. Except when he could not avoid it, Eisenhower delegated to Smith responsibilities for handling Allied and associated entities, most importantly the French. In the absence of direction from above, and exceeding the authority normally vested in a chief of staff, Smith frequently made key policy decisions in areas Eisenhower would not deign to touch, mostly related to military government and civil affairs programs. In effect, Smith acted as the headquarters general manager and as Eisenhower’s foreign minister; in the latter role he conducted negotiations and signed the surrenders of Italy and Germany.

Higher command in war is a team activity. The commander-chief of staff relationship works best when the two personalities are complementary but not wholly congruent. Although little separated Eisenhower and Smith in terms of their respective professional outlooks and prewar experiences, the two possessed widely divergent personalities. Smith’s primary value lay in compensating for Eisenhower’s deficiencies. Smith could not play the faceless staff officer because Eisenhower’s command style required a proactive chief of staff. If Eisenhower hoped to dodge unpopular decisions and the personal culpability that came with them, if he hoped to evade personal altercations, then as Allied supreme commander, he was in a very strange business. What he needed was a junior partner who was not afraid to go out on a limb, who never avoided a fight, and who at least gave the appearance of having a thick skin. Eisenhower may have stretched the truth when he described Smith as the best chief of staff ever, but in Beetle he possessed the perfect foil.

Part One

Epilogue as Prologue—Soldier, Diplomat, Spymaster

* 1 *

Soldier Turned Diplomat

The featured stories in the Washington newspapers on 14 August 1961 dealt with the East Germans sealing the border in Berlin and the latest exploits of Mickey Mantle in his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record. Other than the obligatory obituaries—unimaginative pieces mostly gleaned from Current Biography— the death and funeral of yet another senior U.S. Army officer from World War II received little attention. Five days before, GEN Walter Bedell Smith had died in an ambulance en route to Walter Reed Hospital. His heart, always too big for his body in the estimate of one of his British friends, finally gave out. For years Smith had existed on bourbon and Dexedrine, his frail body devoured by an assortment of maladies related to a chronic ulcer condition.¹

Whatever wartime celebrity Smith enjoyed derived largely from two events. In September 1943, fittingly enough under an olive tree, a frozen-faced Beetle Smith accepted the capitulation of Italy. Twenty months later, in a French schoolhouse, Smith, still without any exterior sign of emotion, affixed his name to the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. In the postwar period he continued to serve his country as diplomat and chief of intelligence. Only President Eisenhower and the late General of the Army George C. Marshall, noted the New York Times, were said to have matched the range and duration of ‘Beetle’ Smith’s more than four decades of service in the military and civilian branches of the government.² The comparison to Eisenhower and Marshall proved particularly apt.

The men Smith served recognized his value, even if the public never did. Marshall spoke of his admiration for the manner in which you have discharged your vast responsibilities as Eisenhower’s chief of staff in Europe, assuring Smith that he had carved out his place in the history of a great and terrible epoch. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed to Smith’s comradeship, tested in war and always found to be of the finest steel. President Harry Truman considered Smith’s contribution in reforming the Central Intelligence Agency of immeasurable value, calling him a real patriot, and a public administrator of the highest caliber. Most telling of all, Dwight Eisenhower posited in July 1945 that no single man in Europe contributed more to Allied victory than Smith.³

Sixteen years before his death, Smith had crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge in happier circumstances. On 18 June 1945 Eisenhower made his triumphant return to Washington. As the procession left National Airport, Eisenhower and Marshall sat in the first car, with Smith positioned in the second. After a brief ceremony at the Pentagon, Marshall excused himself. Eisenhower would give a speech at the Capitol after a parade up Independence Avenue, and true to form, Marshall did not want to steal any of the limelight. Smith assumed Marshall’s place in the lead vehicle. No doubt Smith hoped this switch was a portent of the future. Although Smith’s name remained forever linked with Eisenhower’s—and he always maintained his fealty to Ike—in his heart, Smith was first and foremost a Marshall man. I wish that I could be like you, he confided to Marshall in a rare show of sentiment. I never can, of course … but I have tried very hard to be, and will continue to do so as long as I live.⁴ Eisenhower succeeded Marshall as army chief of staff in November 1945, and Smith harbored hope that he might eventually follow his wartime bosses into the same chair. Although he had no way of knowing it at the time, the round of victory celebrations that started in Paris with GEN Charles de Gaulle awarding him the Grand-Croix de la Légion de Mérite at the Arc de Triomphe and ended, fittingly, in Indianapolis, the city Smith had left twenty-eight years before as a young lieutenant, marked the climax of Smith’s military career.

Passed Over

Smith’s postwar career produced nothing but frustration. The long train of setbacks started in April 1945, when he discovered he would not become Eisenhower’s deputy theater commander and proconsul in occupied Germany. He considered the appointment his due—a view shared by Marshall but not by President Franklin Roosevelt or his secretary of war, Henry Stimson. The job went to LTG Lucius Clay. In early September Eisenhower recommended that Smith succeed him as theater commander and discussed the matter with Marshall during his visit to the States. After returning to Europe, Eisenhower put his request in writing. He offered a roster of possible successors that included Carl Spaatz, George Patton, and Jacob Devers, with Smith at the top of the list. The officer selected must be a many-sided character because the job required an ability to work with the Allied Control Council and the Russians, British, and French in occupied Germany. Smith would be completely acceptable to everyone, Eisenhower argued, and because of his splendid background, would be in better position than anyone else to carry on without interruption. Eisenhower knew that his suggestion was probably an impossible one because it would require Smith’s fasttrack promotion to four stars and elevation over Patton. This would not be particularly serious in my opinion, he concluded.⁵

Marshall did not share Eisenhower’s optimism. Instead, Marshall appointed his former deputy, GEN Joseph McNarney, in the dual capacity of theater commander and military governor of Germany. A four-star general since March 1945, McNarney had assumed command of U.S. forces in the Mediterranean theater as deputy supreme commander in November 1944. Although he had been a classmate, Eisenhower did not think much of McNarney’s appointment and resented Marshall’s ignoring his recommendation and bringing in an outsider. As Eisenhower told Marshall, his misgivings centered on McNarney’s character, certain details [of which] I think I had better forget.⁶ With McNarney’s appointment fixed, Eisenhower advanced Smith as successor to GEN Brehon Somervell, head of the Army Service Forces, who would leave his post in tandem with Marshall in November.⁷ Eisenhower’s proposal met with no enthusiasm in the War Department, and Marshall quietly let the matter die.

Although not the decisive consideration, the precarious state of Smith’s health may have influenced Marshall’s thinking. Before D-day, Smith wondered if he could tough out the strain of another campaign, and he limped across the finish line in May 1945. Despite his relative youth—he would not turn fifty until October—Smith was a physical wreck by war’s end. Reassuring Marshall, he spoke of plans to spend a week fishing—he had commandeered a Bavarian estate as a lodge—and reported that he looked forward to it like a small boy to summer vacation. He figured that after a spell on a trout stream, I should be good for another year or so if necessary.⁸ The time off no doubt did him good, but it could not cure what ailed him. Despite his reunion with wife Nory, whom he had not seen since October 1943, the victory tour in the States produced another serious recurrence of his stomach disorder. Beetle is much improved in health, Eisenhower reported in early August to their mutual friend, industrialist Louis Marx, but he did give me a bad scare for a week or two. Eisenhower thought that if Smith took care of himself, he would be all right. I don’t know what I would do without him.⁹ That Eisenhower relied so heavily on his chief of staff in no small measure accounted for Smith’s health issues, as did his overweening sense of duty and refusal to abdicate authority. The mounting disillusionment over his future prospects added to Smith’s complaints.

With Eisenhower slatted for army chief of staff, many things weighed on his mind in late summer 1945—chiefly, reorganizing the War Department and finding suitable billets for his friends—but orchestrating the American occupation of Germany was not among them. Eisenhower typically avoided anything smacking of politics—a lesson driven home by the Darlan affair in North Africa—and nothing appeared more fraught with political dangers than managing the occupation. He delegated those responsibilities, and all the complex details, to Smith and Clay.

Eisenhower was right to steer clear of any close identification with the occupation. Unlike during the war, the theater command could not blanket its activities behind a wall of censorship. It soon became evident to journalists that the Americans lacked affirmative programs for administering Germany, in sharp contrast to the Soviets, who experienced no problems integrating their military and political policies. By attitude, training, or experience, senior American officers proved inapt as military governors, and none more so than Patton.

As Robert Murphy, the political adviser for the occupation, observed, there was no love lost between Smith and Patton. In fact, the two men shared an odd love-hate relationship. In mid-September 1945 Smith telephoned Patton and inexplicably told him, You’re my best friend, George. Probably that is the reason why you always give me my worst headaches. Smith’s current headache grew out of Patton’s apparent nonenforcement of the denazification program. Patton did not buy Smith’s avowal of friendship; he saw Smith as the primary architect in a conspiracy to remove Patton from command of his beloved Third Army. After he put down the receiver, Patton turned to a member of his staff and pronounced Smith a goddamn snake.¹⁰

Reports streamed into the Frankfurt headquarters concerning Patton’s increasingly bizarre behavior. As Smith remarked, There is no rational explanation for what General Patton is doing. I don’t doubt that old George has lost his marbles. Patton lapsed into a downward spiral of depression. Another war has ended, he lamented, and with it my usefulness to the world.¹¹ He indulged in wild talk about the horrors of peace, pacaficism [sic], and unions and how much real fun [it would be] killing Mongols.¹² Patton’s rants against Jews, displaced persons, the Soviets, and his superiors; his flouting of the rules against fraternization; and his disavowal of denazification all indicated that Smith was probably right. Alarmed, Smith suggested that Eisenhower cut short his vacation on the Riviera and return to headquarters. If the problem spun out of control, it might bear on Eisenhower’s forthcoming appointment.¹³

The New York Times quoted Patton as saying at a news conference on 22 September that far too much fuss has been made regarding denazification of Germany; that this Nazi thing is just like a Democratic and Republican election fight, and that the best hope for the future lies in showing the German people what grand fellows we are.¹⁴ Although buried on page eighteen, the story possessed explosive potential. The Times suggested, and Marshall concurred, that Patton’s remarks should [not] go unchallenged either by his commanding officer General Eisenhower, or by his superiors in Washington. Something did detonate: Eisenhower erupted in the granddaddy of all tempers.¹⁵ A curious aspect of Eisenhower’s leadership style grew out of his lifetime struggle to control his anger; as a result, he avoided personal confrontations. His effectiveness remained rooted in his affability; everybody had to like Ike. This meant somebody had to wield the stick, and that somebody was Smith. To Smith fell the dirty jobs. Eisenhower returned to Frankfurt to deal with the latest Patton episode but insisted, as he always did, that Smith act as front man.

Patton claimed he had been misquoted, and Smith suggested he hold a press conference to set the record straight. An unapologetic Patton followed Smith’s advice, but his words merely fanned the flames. On 26 September Smith held his own meeting with the press in an attempt to contain the conflagration. Growling that General Eisenhower would tolerate no insubordination, Time reported, General Smith then spoke as one professional soldier practically never speaks of another: ‘[Patton’s] mouth does not always carry out the functions of his brain. George acts on the theory that it is better to be damned than say nothing—that some publicity is better than none.’¹⁶ Asked whether you think that [Eisenhower’s denazification] program can be carried out by people who are temperamentally and emotionally in disagreement with it, Smith replied he did not think that categorization applied to Patton. After fielding a series of hostile questions, Smith finally admitted, I am not prepared to state that it [denazification] has been carried out effectively in every case. He assured within a week they could expect a marked improvement and finished by saying, General Patton is a soldier and will carry out his orders.¹⁷

Two days later Patton traveled to Canossa, in this case theater headquarters in Frankfurt. Eisenhower put on his trademark grin, but it was forced. Smith sat in on the meeting. When Patton proved impenitent, the grin disappeared. Patton stood among Eisenhower’s oldest friends, a man he greatly admired and owed much, but this time Old Blood and Guts went too far. Eisenhower’s secretary, Kay Summersby, recorded that Eisenhower aged ten years in reaching the decision, which was inevitable in the light of Patton’s past mistakes and the universal furor over this one. She depicted the conversation among the three men as long and acid, as one of the stormiest sessions ever staged in our headquarters. It was the first time I ever heard General Eisenhower raise his voice.¹⁸

On 29 September the telephone rang at Patton’s headquarters at Bad Tölz. On the other end was Smith. This time Smith wielded his hatchet. He began by reading a letter prepared by Eisenhower. Patton pointed to an extension phone and told Murphy, who just happened to be there, Listen to what the lying SOB will say. What Murphy heard was Smith performing his duty as tactfully as possible. Patton vigorously pantomimed for my benefit his scornful reactions to Smith’s placatory remarks.¹⁹ Patton lost his army, and effective 8 October, he would assume command of the Fifteenth Army, literally a paper army dedicated to writing up the lessons of the war. As he confided in his diary, Patton accepted the job with the Fifteenth Army because I was reluctant, in fact unwilling, to be a party to the destruction of Germany under the pretense of de-Nazification…. I believe Germany should not be destroyed, but rather rebuilt as a buffer against the real danger which is Bolshevism from Russia.²⁰

Patton’s and McNarney’s respective appointments called for a reshuffling of senior personnel. Marshall had designated LTG Lucian Truscott as McNarney’s eventual replacement in the Mediterranean, but Truscott instead assumed command of the Third Army. Washington wanted to curtail commitments in the Mediterranean and insisted on a British supreme commander; McNarney was currently serving as interim supreme commander. Marshall informed Eisenhower that Allied Force Headquarters will break up before the end of the year. From the American military viewpoint it is purely a question of rolling up the theater and getting out. We have no qualified senior American officers there to relieve McNarney, and he asked if Smith wanted the job.²¹

The Mediterranean theater staff had just separated from Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ), so the job of deputy supreme commander amounted to a titular holdover and a real comedown from Smith’s present position. Eisenhower quickly replied in the negative. He could not manage without Smith because of his involvement in the staff reorganization necessitated by the changing administrative situation and the building up of the Control Council staff. As he explained to Marshall, when Eisenhower took over in Washington, he envisioned slotting Smith as assistant chief of staff for operations.²² So another appointment for Smith went by the wayside, this time to his great relief. The assignment went to LTG J. C. H. Lee, who headed the Communications Zone in northwestern Europe.

One by one, all the senior American officers left the theater. GEN Omar Bradley went to Washington to head the new Veterans Administration, LTG Courtney Hodges redeployed his First Army to the Pacific, LTG William Simpson assumed command of the Second Army in the United States, LTG Alexander Patch headed the review board undertaking a study for the reorganization of the War Department, and LTG Leonard Gerow took the job Patton wanted as head of the Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. The departures climaxed with Eisenhower’s in November. After Patton left in December, Smith was the only member of the Old Guard who remained.

In the interregnum before McNarney assumed command, Patton acted as theater commander. It is very evident that Beadle [sic] really runs the show, Patton told his wife, in so far as it can be said to be run…. The chief interest seems to center on doing nothing positive and never going counter to what the papers say. Some one proposes something and Beadle makes a speech against it and ends up by saying that while he is against it in principle he will go along with it just this once. Since Patton loathed Smith, he found the temporary appointment not very pleasant…. It is not a Headquarters, just a chetequa [sic].²³ Frustrated by all the attendant problems of the occupation, Smith would not have disagreed with Patton’s assessment, and like Patton, he was worried about his future.

Back in Washington, Eisenhower wrote two letters to Smith. The first assured Smith that he would return to the United States in the near future, since McNarney has indicated his willingness to fire you almost immediately. In the second, he apologized because he had been forced to delay [an] exact decision in your case, but he promised Smith, I will have a critical post for you. We will talk it over after you get here.²⁴ Smith replied, in all truthfulness … except for my desire to do any job that you particularly want to give me, Washington has no attractions for me. Smith expressed a lack of concern about keeping his temporary rank of lieutenant general, observing, it might make it easier for some of the others.²⁵

McNarney assumed command on 26 November. A week later, Smith gave a luncheon for his new boss. I have rarely seen assembled, offered Patton in his last diary entry, a greater bunch of sons-of-bitches. He turned his ire on Clay and McNarney, who have never commanded anything, including their own self-respect, or if that, certainly not the respect of anyone else. The whole party reminded him of a Rotary Club meeting where everyone slaps every one else’s back while looking for an appropriate place to thrust the knife.²⁶ Given that Clay and McNarney held the appointments Smith coveted, he had already felt the stab.

Of course, Patton never made it home. On 9 December he suffered fatal injuries in an otherwise innocuous car crash. A number of senior officers rushed to the hospital in Heidelberg where Patton was confined, but they confronted a standing order that the patient would receive no visitors. Smith liked to throw his weight around and got indignant when the attending doctor, a colonel, bluntly informed him that he was not welcome. When the doctor approached Patton about allowing Smith to visit, the general said, He’s never been a particular friend of mine. Colonel, it’s up to you to keep him out. Soon Bea Patton arrived from the States. It may be fatal, Patton told his wife, if I have to see that old sonuvabitch, in reference to Smith. Mrs. Patton told the medical staff that under no circumstances should they allow Smith into Patton’s room.²⁷ Smith had negotiated with some pretty formidable personalities during his tenure as Eisenhower’s foreign minister, but he knew better than to cross swords with the general’s wife. The Patton family’s bitterness carried beyond the grave. Bea Patton insisted on striking Smith’s name from the list of honorary pallbearers, placing the general’s faithful African American orderly in his place.

Smith’s remaining time in Germany became an ordeal. Eisenhower extracted assurances from his successor that Smith would be released within two weeks of McNarney’s taking over. But because Smith labored so hard and generally succeeded in making himself indispensable, McNarney soon realized that he could not run the occupation without Smith pulling the levers. Smith’s disposition—foul at the best of times—can be imagined. He worked under McNarney and Clay, carrying out many of the duties incumbent on them in a thankless job that led nowhere. Although he told Eisenhower he did not care about rank, the truth was that he cared very much. Smith was not as selfless as he postured; like every other ambitious and prideful officer who suffered through the deadening interwar years, Smith sought promotion in recognition of his service in the war. He would return to Washington and a new job—not one he anticipated, and definitely not one he desired, but one that would change the entire trajectory of his life.

Serves Those Bastards Right

Even after the Potsdam conference, Harry Truman remained committed to pursuing Roosevelt’s policy of constructive engagement with the Soviet Union. When W. Averell Harriman signaled his intention to leave Moscow, the administration had to find his successor as ambassador. Truman wanted an experienced and hard-boiled negotiator who would not be bullied by Stalin and his henchmen. In a surprise move, he offered Smith the job.

The chief agent behind Smith’s appointment was Secretary of State James Byrnes. Byrnes, then a senator from South Carolina, had met young Major Smith by chance in 1940. Among his many tasks as assistant secretary to Marshall, Smith handled the influential financier Bernard Baruch, whose hobby was advising presidents. Marshall curried Baruch’s favor because he lent invaluable assistance to the War Department during the fight with Congress over increased defense appropriations. Baruch and Byrnes were close political associates, and when Smith ferried Baruch down to South Carolina to watch army maneuvers, he met and impressed the senator. During the same trip, Smith made his first acquaintance with another individual who would impact his life and career: Eisenhower. The consummate insider, Byrnes went on to sit on the Supreme Court and then in rapid succession headed Roosevelt’s Economic Stabilization Office and the Office of War Mobilization. In July 1945 Truman named him secretary of state. Byrnes served as a justice without attending university, much less law school, and he possessed no experience in foreign relations. He therefore saw no problem with a soldier being named ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Moscow; indeed, he considered it a positive asset. As Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Smith had conducted the negotiations leading to the Italian and German surrenders, and he had routinely dealt with Churchill and the Foreign Office and de Gaulle as head of the Free French and later president of the French provisional government. Pushing for revisions of the unconditional surrender policy and recognition of de Gaulle had placed Smith at odds with Roosevelt and Stimson, but Truman and Byrnes believed Smith’s independent thinking could do little harm, given the deteriorating state of Soviet-American relations. I am hopeful, Truman noted, that General Bedell Smith will succeed in breaking the deadlock.²⁸ Your appointment, Marshall wired Smith from China, is a splendid choice. I am sorry you are to have such a heavy job with no opportunity for rest but I know of no one who could give a better performance. Marshall’s enthusiasm indicates that he had strongly endorsed Smith’s nomination. I would have much preferred a quiet assignment, Smith replied, but you have set the example of devotion to duty and the rest of us must follow you and do the best we can.²⁹ Eisenhower told his longtime friend E. E. Swede Hazlett, I know of no one better qualified for the job. More candidly, he also said of Smith’s appointment, serves those bastards [the Soviets] right.³⁰

The White House announced Smith’s appointment on 14 February 1946, but complications delayed his formal appointment until 22 March. Smith insisted on keeping his military rank, requiring a special act of Congress. On the day of the announcement he made news at a Red Army Day dinner held in Manhattan. Although affirming the enormous debt the Western powers owed to the sacrifices of the Red Army and the Soviet people during the war, and pointing to the mutual desires of the American and Soviet peoples for world peace, he warned the Soviet leadership that they must recognize there were lines beyond which the United States cannot go.³¹

The only glue holding together the uneasy wartime alliance, with all its mutual suspicions, dissolved with the defeat of Germany. At no time during the war did American leadership employ military force for specific political objectives, and Roosevelt’s policy of postponing vital political decisions until after the war left Stalin in the driver’s seat. The Soviet premier never comprehended the moralistic legalism in American thinking. Why the United States placed such importance on the political systems of Poland and other eastern European states—where the United States possessed no vital interests—baffled Stalin. By exposing the divisions in the Western camp—made easier because the Americans decoupled diplomatic ends from military means—Stalin won the Soviet Union’s greatest successes at the beige-covered conference tables of Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam.

Truman went to Potsdam with the hope of proving to Stalin that the United States was on the level and was interested only in fostering world peace. Stalin could not grasp that the United States entertained no concrete interests and concluded that Truman must be harboring ulterior motives. Told of the Americans’ possession of the atomic bomb, Stalin did not blink; in fact, he knew of its existence before Truman did. But in Truman’s revelation he could see only a threat. For domestic political reasons, and desiring Soviet participation in the war against Japan, Truman refrained from placing any kind of genuine pressure on Stalin to achieve a settlement, and threats were the only thing Stalin truly understood.

The paradox of Potsdam rested in the fact that Stalin’s belligerence masked the Soviet Union’s weakness. After suffering casualties in the tens of millions in the German war—to say nothing of the tens of millions killed in prewar collectivization and purges—and with a third of the European portions of the Soviet Union in ruins, Stalin needed a sustained period of peace. He remained fixed on retaining Soviet conquests and erecting tiers of buffer states on his borders because, despite his bluster, Stalin saw the real possibility of his worst fears being realized: a Western capitalist encirclement with sufficient power, augmented by the atom bomb, to impose its will. He offered no concessions because the Americans demanded none. The American delegation could not disentangle Stalin’s Great Russian chauvinism—itself a cover for a traditional and instinctive Russian xenophobia—from his Marxist-Leninist internationalism. The theory of perpetual revolution applied more inside the Soviet Union than outside it, and without the appearance of a capitalist threat, Stalin could not rationalize his tyranny or ask for continued sacrifice from the Soviet people.

Truman still retained notions of cooperating with the Soviets. At Potsdam, Truman, Stalin, and Churchill, avoiding the peripheral issues that had plagued the Versailles conference, consigned the question of Germany and Austria’s future, including reparations, to a four-power mechanism, and they delegated determination of the status of Germany’s allies and associated states to a future congress. In July 1946 the foreign ministers would convene a peace conference in Paris to hammer out subsidiary treaties. The first attempt in London miscarried. Truman wanted the Paris conference to succeed and rekindle the hope of reversing the downward spiral in American-Soviet relations.

As Smith revealed in Frankfurt on his way to Moscow, the president charged him with finding a modus vivendi for peaceful coexistence with Moscow. He expressed that a great feeling of doubt existed among the American public as to what the Russians want and what the Russian motives are.³² The world atmosphere grew increasingly tense. On 9 February Stalin made a major speech setting out his vision of the incompatibility of the communist and capitalist systems. He claimed that the recent war had been the creation not of Hitler but of the inherent contradictions in capitalism. Our Marxists declare that the capitalist system of world economy conceals elements of crisis and war, he said, that the development of world capitalism does not follow a steady and even course forward, but proceeds through crises and catastrophes.³³ A month later Churchill made his Sinews of Peace speech in Fulton, Missouri. Now head of the loyal opposition, Churchill, with uncanny prescience, adumbrated future American policy. In the interim after Potsdam, the Soviets had consolidated control in their eastern satellites and divided Europe from Stettin to Trieste; the solution rested in containing the Soviet threat through some form of European union and the consolidation of the three Western zones in Germany into a sovereign and rearmed state—all founded on an Anglo-American alliance. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war, Churchill stated. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrine.³⁴ It appeared that the rival systems had received their marching orders.

Churchill’s speech did Truman no favors. American and Soviet officials met regularly; American troop levels in Europe markedly declined. Truman instructed Smith to play hardball, but only after exhausting all avenues for reaching some understanding with the Soviets. Smith met Stalin and Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov on 5 April 1946, exactly a month after Churchill’s speech. Anticipating that the meeting might prove stormy, Smith went alone. He began by handing Stalin a letter from Truman inviting the Soviet premier to visit Washington. Neither the American people nor the American Government, Smith assured Stalin, could take seriously the possibility of aggressive action against the Soviet Union by any nation or group of nations in the world today. We felt certain that no possible combination of powers could threaten the Soviet Union without the active support of the United States, and our entire history precluded the possibility that we would ever lend support to aggressive action. As proof, Smith offered the rapid demobilization of American armed forces. He pointed to Truman’s desire to meet the Soviets halfway and stated, indeed we felt like we had already gone more than half way. Although the United States appreciated Soviet strength, at the same time we are fully conscious of our own strength. Reinforcing the point, he said, it would be misinterpreting the character of the United States to assume that because we are basically peaceful and deeply interested in world security, we are … divided, weak [or] unwilling to face our responsibilities. Smith cautioned that unless the Soviet Union demonstrated a greater willingness to cooperate within the structure of international law and bodies, chiefly the United Nations, and if both nations remain apprehensive and suspicious of each other, we may both find ourselves embarked upon an expensive policy of rearmament and the maintenance of large military establishments which we wish to avoid.

Stalin countered Smith’s arguments. He pointed to recent American actions in the United Nations designed to forestall any continuation of the Soviet presence in Iran. Stalin said Churchill’s speech constituted an unfriendly act and an unwarranted attack on himself and the USSR. When Smith pushed Stalin and asked why he saw Western actions as threats, Stalin pointed to Churchill as the problem. Rationalizing British intervention in the Russian civil war in 1919, Churchill famously advocated strangling the Bolshevik baby in its cradle and in Stalin’s view was at it again. Smith asked point-blank if Stalin believed the United States and Great Britain were united in an alliance to thwart Russia. Stalin categorically said he did so believe. Smith replied that although the US had many ties with Britain, including common language and many common interests, we were interested primarily in world security and justice; that this interest and responsibility extended to small nations as well as large. Smith also stated that there was no nation in the world with whom we were more interested in arriving at a basis of understanding than with Russia, as we felt that the future of the world for a long time to come lay in the hands of our two nations. Smith concluded by restating American desires for closer cooperation and mutual understanding with the Soviet Union, which we considered essential for world peace. Prosper your efforts, Marshal Stalin replied. I will help you. I am at your disposal at any time. Referring to Truman’s invitation, Stalin said that although he would like very much to accept, age has taken its toll. My doctors tell me that I must not travel.³⁵

Truman’s offer of a summit conference went nowhere, and Smith did not meet Stalin again for two years. As a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, he spent the summer in the French capital. On 10 February 1947 the victorious powers completed treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, and Finland. The Paris Peace Treaties represented the last instance of East-West cooperation. By spring 1947 American policy edged from seeking accommodation with the Soviet Union to containing the spread of communism. In March Truman went before Congress and proclaimed, It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. In April the newly appointed secretary of state, George Marshall, decided Soviet intransigence rendered diplomacy through negotiations a pointless exercise. The Truman administration moved toward solidifying alignments against the Soviet Union. In June the United States launched the Marshall Plan, the economic and political pillars of the containment policy designed to undermine popular support for the communist parties in western Europe by giving direct economic aid to buttress international capitalism and providing covert support for left-of-center parties to revitalize democracy. American policy on Germany moved away from pursuing an all-Germany solution toward forming a Western-oriented state in the American, British, and French zones of occupation. Smith’s job centered on convincing the Kremlin, chiefly Molotov and Andrei Vishinsky, that the shift in American policy had evolved as a defensive reflex against the USSR’s strategy of playing the Western powers off one another based on the doctrine of the inevitability of conflict among the capitalist states. Smith spent much of his time ameliorating the increasingly severe Soviet policies against internal manifestations of cosmopolitanism—mostly attacks on artists, intellectuals, and scientists, many of them Jewish. He also labored to improve and expand the activities of Voice of America and the magazine Amerika.

Smith went to Moscow armed with a greater sense of optimism than he encountered in the State Department. Based on his experience dealing with senior Soviet officers during the immediate postwar period, he thought he might achieve some successes. His contacts with Molotov and Vishinsky soon left him disillusioned. When he sat at the table with the Soviet leadership, Smith lamented that during the war he had spoken with four million men and 15,000 heavy bombers behind [him].³⁶ As he told an army official historian in 1947, he deeply regretted that Allied forces had stopped at the Elbe. Eisenhower and the staff of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) frankly wanted water between us and the Russians … needed a definitive line of demarcation. We wanted a point where we could you-hoo across at our comrades before embracing them. Churchill bitterly opposed the decision, and Smith often thought as [he] sat around a conference table how it would have been better to follow him…. We leaned over backward to give them a proper deal, and it was a mistake.³⁷

Even in the best of times, the posting in Moscow produced a feeling of insulation and remoteness from the outside world. Life in ugly Spasso House, the U.S. embassy a mile from the Kremlin (which some wag aptly named Spasm House), was grim. As tensions between Moscow and Washington worsened, things became more oppressive, with secret police agents following Smith’s every movement—even tailing him in a rowboat when he went fishing—and discouraging contact with Soviet citizens.³⁸ Nonetheless, Smith traveled a good deal, visiting scientific institutes, collective farms, and industrial complexes and generally monitoring the progress of the latest Five-Year Plan. The situation deteriorated further in February 1948 when the Czech Communist Party overthrew the coalition government in Prague. Smith believed that there never was the slightest intention on the part of Stalin and the Politburo to honor—at any point or in any way—the many agreements … to allow the people of Eastern Europe freely to choose their own form of government.³⁹ Smith made no effort to disguise his frustration and impatience to escape Moscow.

In March 1948 rumors spread in Berlin that Smith appeared to be the definite choice for high commissioner in Germany. The State Department planned to assume control in the American zone in Germany, and Marshall pressed for Smith’s appointment. The press reported that the decision rested in Smith’s hands. Smith told Eisenhower on 1 April that he accepted General Marshall’s suggestion that I go there as High Commissioner, with the understanding it would be for one year.⁴⁰ But for the second time, Smith was passed over as governor of the American occupation of Germany. Given mounting East-West tension in the aftermath of Czechoslovakia, Truman decided to leave Smith in Moscow.

Disheartened over not getting the German appointment—his chief motive being to escape Moscow—Smith took ten days off in the beginning of May for a little soul-searching and fishing in Normandy. Amidst denials by the State Department, a Washington paper reported that Smith had already tendered his resignation.⁴¹ He told the press before heading for France that there was little doin’ in Moscow. That soon changed; the Soviets began escalating pressure on Berlin in an effort to force a German settlement. Smith hurried back to Moscow and on 24 May made a private call on Molotov at the Kremlin and, as reported in the press, talked turkey. He warned the Soviet foreign minister that the American economy remained sound of heart and limb and the American people just as determined as ever to oppose Soviet aggression and the spread of Communist ideas. If Moscow thought otherwise, Smith said, it must be listening too hard to Henry Wallace in an election year and swallowing its own propaganda. As Smith told the journalists, he acted on the express instructions of the State Department, which was worried that the Soviets might make some grievous miscalculations. Smith told Time that Hitler’s error in thinking his opponents were ‘worms’ had plunged him into World War II, and his conversations with Molotov centered on warning the Kremlin not to make the same mistake. Still following instructions, Smith reaffirmed, As far as the U.S. is concerned, the door is always open for full discussion and the composing of our differences. As a follow-up to Smith’s let’s talk it over exchange with Molotov, Marshall indicated the United States would soften its approach to the Soviets, especially on the deadlocked German question.⁴²

Exactly a month after Smith issued his warning, on 24 June 1948, the Soviets made a grievous miscalculation by initiating their blockade of Berlin. A war scare gripped the West. Marshall announced to the Kremlin the cessation of all negotiations at the ministerial level while the crisis lasted, and in Berlin, the four-power arrangement collapsed in discord. For the next two months, Smith stood as the focal point of American talks with the Soviets.

Smith flew to Berlin on 25 July for consultations with Clay and his political adviser Murphy, together with the State Department’s specialist on Soviet affairs, Charles Chip Bohlen.⁴³ From Berlin he went to Paris and London. On 1 August Smith returned to Moscow, and the next day he, French ambassador Yves Chataigneau, and a representative of the British Foreign Office, Frank Roberts, met separately with Stalin. The routine never varied; senior Soviet officials always met them separately, with Smith always in the lead. Smith opened the discussion by telling Stalin, the gravity and dangers of [the] present situation in Berlin demanded a mutually acceptable solution … aware that failure in these talks would render existing dangers even more acute.⁴⁴ Stalin offered a compromise: in exchange for the concurrent withdrawal of Western currency and introduction of the ostmark in the Western sectors of Berlin, the Soviets would remove traffic controls in and out of the city. Stalin revealed the real motive behind the engineering of the crisis when he pointed to his insistent wish that the formation of a provisional West German government be suspended. Smith described Stalin as courageous but cautious; suspicious, revengeful and quick to anger, but coldly ruthless and pitilessly realistic; decisive and swift in the execution of his plans when the objective is clear, but patient, deceptive and Fabian in his tactics when the situation is obscure.⁴⁵

On 3 August Marshall conditionally accepted Stalin’s currency proposal but ignored his insistent wish. Smith returned to Berlin and then held further discussions in London. A pale and tired Smith returned to Moscow on 9 August. His only remark to the cluster of Western journalists was, Fine weather you’re having here. Smith insisted on seeing Molotov, but the foreign minister was out of town on vacation. When he asked to see Vishinsky, he received the same story. One by one, Smith and his colleagues met Molotov’s deputy, Valerian Zorin, each handing him an aide-mémoire and asking for meetings with Molotov. At first, it appeared that the Soviets were engaged in another of their delaying actions, but Molotov really was on vacation. He hurried back, and once again the same routine was followed. Smith presented a proposal for convening a four-power conference on Berlin on the condition that the Soviets lift the blockade. Through Molotov, Stalin showed interest in a conference but refused all prior conditions. Smith’s diplomacy produced no immediate results, but Molotov’s hurried return helped to dispel, or at least palliate, a war scare.⁴⁶

Smith, Roberts, and Chataigneau met with Molotov on three other occasions. All four governments signaled their willingness to lift the blockade, accept the ostmark as the sole currency in Berlin, and convene a four-power conference for discussions on all outstanding questions concerning Berlin and even Germany. The only roadblock remained the original obstacle: the conditions under which the ostmark would circulate. As Smith made clear, the Western governments could accept no arrangement resulting in any undermining of their unquestionable right to be in Berlin or in making it impossible for them to exercise that right, or to discharge fully their obligations as occupying authorities.⁴⁷ All four parties labored over the language of a joint communiqué and directives to the commanders of the occupation forces in the hope of narrowing the differences.

All this time, Smith was enforcing a blackout on news releases. With the attention of the world centered on the talks in Moscow, the press hounded him for information. In five meetings, Time reported, the press got about 120 noncommittal words out of Smith, less than that out of Roberts, nothing but vague smiles out of Chataigneau, not even a smile out of Molotov. In truth, there was little to say and less to smile about. Smith cryptically summed up his last meeting with Molotov by saying, Molotov, three hours. No Stalin. No comment.⁴⁸ Finally, Stalin consented to see the Western diplomats.

The three Western heads of mission carefully rehearsed and coordinated their sales pitches. Journalists noted Smith fidgeting, juggling his attaché case like it was a hot potato, as he made his way into the Kremlin on 23 August. The briefcase contained his new draft. In a carefully prepared opening statement, Smith emphasized that Berlin symbolized to the American government and people the common allied victory. He continued, The possibility of peaceful co-existence and collaboration of our respective systems … will be largely judged by what happens there. If we are able to get along together in Berlin, we can hope to get along in other spheres too. If we break down over Berlin, then a lot of ordinary folk will give up hope altogether.⁴⁹

Stalin greeted the diplomats genially, but before Smith could open his briefcase, Stalin said, Gentlemen, I have a new draft. Producing it, he said, I believe you will find it acceptable to your governments. Smith acknowledged Stalin as an accomplished strategist but stated that the Western envoys also had a new draft, and he suggested that both sides examine the proposed communiqués. To Smith’s astonishment, the Soviet scheme was virtually identical to his. The Soviets promised to end all barriers on transportation and communication between the Western zones and Berlin, effective on 25 August, in exchange for the Western powers accepting the ostmark, with arrangements for the mechanisms of exchange, credit, and the settling of occupation costs being left to the four-power representatives in Berlin. Stalin also proposed a conference in the near future for negotiations on any questions which may be outstanding as regards Berlin or affecting Germany as a whole.

Smith thought they had achieved an agreement in principle. As he told Marshall, things went so smoothly that I was a little worried, and remembered Stalin’s proverb, ‘an amiable bear is more dangerous than a hostile one.’ Stalin departed after two hours, leaving Molotov to work out the details. For the next three hours, Molotov acted like the most amiable of bears. As you will note, Smith informed Marshall, practically every safeguard on which we have insisted has been included in the final draft, including the reaffirmation in the strongest possible way [of] our right to be in Berlin. Smith strongly recommended that Washington accept the deal.⁵⁰ He gave the press no indication of any agreement in principle. A grim-faced Smith emerged at nearly two in the morning. We’re always optimistic, he said. We expect the best and prepare for the worst. Pressed for more details, Smith replied, Stalin gave us tea and cakes.⁵¹

Smith’s optimism proved misplaced. The next day Marshall rejected the agreement: "As long as the Soviet representatives continue to maintain their thesis that we have no rights in Berlin

Reviews for Beetle

[slipdigit · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was laboring through Beetle, The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith. by D.K.R. Crosswell, 2010. Five hundred pages into it and finally had enough and put it down. It is not that it was a bad book; I just didn't need to continue to wade through the excruciating details of every meeting, gathering, discussion, briefing, or planning session Smith was involved in, either as a member or that he might have heard about. The specter of hacking my way through another 500 pages was just more than I could bear. It would probably serve well as a source or research collection for a dissertation or similar work.4/10 Will probably never finish it and will try to pawn it off onto some other rube.