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Articles
Great Contemporaries: Fleet Admiral William Leahy
- By LARRY KRYSKE
- | January 12, 2023
- Category: Books
Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff. New York: Dutton, 2019, 544 pages, $30, Amazon $7, Paperback $12.89, Kindle $13.99.
Who were the key strategic players during the Second World War? Andrew Roberts, in Masters and Commanders, asserted that the “Four Titans” were Churchill, Roosevelt, George Marshall, and Alan Brooke. Lewis Lehrman in Churchill, Roosevelt, and Company might add Harry Hopkins. Conventional wisdom may include Americans MacArthur, Eisenhower, Ernest King and Chester Nimitz. But what about the most senior member of the U.S. military organization, Fleet Admiral William Daniel Leahy? Going by the hundreds of works on the Second World War, some may wonder if he even was there.
Phillips Payson O’Brien brings new, in-depth perspective to Leahy, who helped shape the fighting of the Second World War. While Walter Borneman in The Admirals acknowledged Leahy’s impact, he offered a paucity of detail. He did observe that Leahy influenced the war as “much as [he] witnessed it” and might be considered, the “Unseen Wielder of Power.”
Some historians have overlooked Leahy’s influence on grand strategy. At best he was considered only an observer to the actions of others: See Henry Adams’ Witness to Power, the only other full-length biography of Leahy. Adams referred to Leahy’s papers and journals, yet failed to discern the extent of his authority. Several biographers, like David Roll’s works on Harry Hopkins and Marshall, offer minimal references. Likewise Robert Sherwood in Roosevelt and Hopkins, FDR’s principal secretary Grace Tully in FDR: My Boss, and Doris Kearns Goodwin in No Ordinary Time. Leahy’s presence and influence barely register in these large and important works.
Why is Leahy almost invisible?
The quandary about Leahy stems from his autobiography, I Was There (1950). He wrote this at the request of President Truman, not because he sought the limelight. Truman had such respect for Leahy that he asked him to stay on when Roosevelt died. Despite being FDR’s and Truman’s chief of staff and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he gave almost no interviews to the press. When he lobbied Congress, he conducted himself outside public view.
Leahy’s autobiography minimized his participation in events, giving the impression that he was more of a witness to history than an architect of grand strategy. He adopted a serious, matter-of-fact tone, producing a work devoid of colorful anecdotes. This is the book most contemporary historians used to flesh out Leahy’s role during the war. But his downplaying of his own involvement caused historians to underestimate his contributions.
Fortunately, Admiral Leahy kept a manuscript journal, which he began after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1897 and continued until 1956. Copies of this diary are in the libraries of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, the Naval Historical Center, the Naval Academy Library, and the Library of Congress. His Chiefs of Staff papers are in the National Archives. As Leahy’s career advanced, he kept more a more detailed journal. Unfortunately, aside from his autobiography and Borneman’s book, historians have mainly ignored this rich vein of detail.
Leahy and Roosevelt
Lieutenant-Commander William Leahy met then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt in 1913. From then on, they enjoyed both a professional and social relationship. Roosevelt was instrumental in selecting Leahy as his Chief of Naval Operations in 1937. Realizing that war was approaching, the President wanted Leahy by his side once it commenced. Thus, when Leahy completed his tour as CNO in 1939, FDR stashed him as Governor of Puerto Rico, and later as American ambassador to Vichy France.
In mid-1942 Roosevelt brought Leahy back from France and appointed him as his Chief of Staff. The crippled President claimed Leahy was his “leg man,” but really used him to help understand complex military issues associated with waging a world war against two technologically advanced and aggressive nations. Leahy was also to serve as the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, above General Marshall, Admiral King, and General Arnold of the Army Air Corps. Leahy rarely took a contentious point of view during JCS deliberations. Instead he preferred to persuade FDR in private.
Leahy and Hopkins
Working in parallel with Leahy was Harry Hopkins, a former social worker, New Dealer, and since the 1930s a Roosevelt confidant. Hopkins’ domains were primarily political affairs and war production. FDR used him to establish relations with Churchill and then with Stalin. Hopkins helped the President to learn how America could assist its allies against Nazi Germany.
Hopkins successfully earned the trust and confidence of both allied leaders. He was a doer not a talker, an implementer not a planner. Churchill called him, “Lord Root of the Matter” because of his incisive way of identifying key issues and ways to solve them. Many Washington insiders considered Hopkins a kind of Rasputin. He certainly was Roosevelt’s Rasputin.
Leahy and Hopkins tolerated each other but never became close friends. Surprisingly, both were born in Iowa only 180 miles apart (Leahy in 1875, Hopkins in 1890). Both were buried following Episcopal services, Leahy in 1959, Hopkins in 1946. In Life magazine’s Leahy cover story on 28 September 1942, Noel Busch wrote that he and Hopkins were “not intimate enough to call each other by their first names,” but Roosevelt relied on both “for checking purposes…consulting each on his own specialty, and [mediating] collisions of opinion among his immediate counselors.” FDR liked to think aloud and have listeners who were congenial, trustworthy, and knowledgeable. In Leahy and Hopkins, the President found what he was seeking.
Grand strategy, mortal terror
Phillips O’Brien’s comprehensive biography reveals Leahy’s positions on scores of critical issues. Two are particularly noteworthy. Leahy was firmly against the development and use of the atomic bomb. He regarded it as “a terrible instrument of uncivilized warfare representing a modern type of barbarism.” But Leahy, however, was also a realist. He knew if the world were to be spared nuclear terror, “the United States must have more and better atom bombs than any potential enemy.”
Leahy also opposed any invasion of Japan. Marshall, Nimitz and MacArthur (who was to lead the onslaught) all favored planned invasions of the Japanese home islands of Kyushu (planned for November 1945) and Honshu (in March 1946). He thought Marshall minimized the number of potential casualties. Their invasion was unnecessary, he argued, since American naval and air superiority could starve Japan into submission. President Truman concurred with Marshall, but his use of atomic weapons in August 1945 resolved the invasion dilemma.
Until O’Brien’s book, Fleet Admiral Leahy’s role during the Second World War has been largely obscured. This was owed to his own desire to maintain a low profile and historians’ unfamiliarity with his many significant fruitful discussions with Roosevelt and Truman. To Leahy, loyalty meant keeping one’s actions private, so the presidents he served might act on his counsel.
Both the Navy and the nation have done little to honor Admiral Leahy’s selfless and devoted service. He is indeed a forgotten man. But as Phillips O’Brien wistfully observes, “Leahy would have preferred it that way.”
The author
Commander Lawrence M. Kryske, U.S. Navy (Ret.) was a career surface warfare naval officer, a private school administrator and instructor, and a professional speaker on leadership topics. Among his five books are, Churchill Without Blood, Sweat, or Tears: Applying His Methods for Today’s Leaders (2017) and Churchill’s Cat: A Feline Remembrance (2021). He can be reached at [email protected].
Further reading
Christopher Harmon, “Great Contemporaries: Harry Hopkins, ‘Lord Root of the Matter’” (2021)
Patrick J. Garrity, “‘Marshall: The Man of the Age,’ edited by Mark Stoler & Daniel Holt” (2016)