Editorial Note
This meeting was called at the request of the President and was not considered a formal meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The meeting was apparently brief and no official minutes were prepared. The information given above regarding the time and place of the meeting and the participants is taken from the Log, ante, p. 658. Leahy (p. 213) and King (p. 525) give the date of the meeting as December 6, but the Log entry appears to be accurate. Matloff (p. 372) supports the view that the meeting took place on December 5.
From the accounts in Leahy and King it appears that the President called in the Joint Chiefs of Staff in order to inform them of his decision to stop further argumentation in favor of Operation Buccaneer as scheduled for the spring of 1944. Churchill (pp. 411–412) states that on the afternoon of December 5 “the President, in consultation with his advisers, decided to abandon the Andaman Islands plan” and that the President sent him a laconic private message reading, “‘Buccaneer’ is off.” No copy of this message has been found in United States files.
According to Leahy and King, President Roosevelt expressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff his reluctance in making this decision and indicated his intent to offer a substitute to Chiang Kai-shek. The alternative offer to Chiang was drafted by Roosevelt and Hopkins, presumably at the conclusion of Roosevelt’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was submitted to Churchill in the form of a memorandum (post, p. 803).
In explaining his decision to Stilwell and Davies on the following day Roosevelt is reported by Stilwell to have said: “I’ve been stubborn as a mule for four days but we can’t get anywhere, and it won’t do [Page 726] for a conference to end that way. The British just won’t do the operation, and I can’t get them to agree to it.” (The Stilwell Papers, p. 251.) The Davies notes on this conversation indicate that Roosevelt also emphasized in this connection that he had fought at Tehran, with Stalin’s support, and that Churchill had finally given in. This was presumably a reference to the argument about fixing the date of Overlord; see ante, pp. 521, 538, 547, 551, 561–564.