An Army at Dawn

According to Atkinson's depiction, the Casablanca conference holds enormous thematic and historical relevance for the United States and the Allies at large. Up until now, America's inferiorities have primarily centered around military matters. In Casablanca, US diplomatic weaknesses are also exposed. According to American diplomat Robert Murphy, "We were a reluctant tail to the British kite" (298). Atkinson argues that by failing in their efforts to extract key concessions from the British at Casablanca, the Americans receive a clear-eyed view of their own diplomatic weaknesses—weaknesses they will address and correct at future summits with Great Britain and other world powers: “Casablanca, like the African campaign as a whole, was part of the American coming of age, a hinge on which world history would swing for the next half century" (299).

A second key development at Casablanca, according to Atkinson, is Roosevelt's declaration that Axis forces' unconditional surrender to the Allies would be "the only circumstance under which the war could end" (260). In other words, there would be no peace treaty in which the men who ran the Nazi Party would be allowed to remain in power and potentially impose their military might anew. While such a declaration may not seem at all out-of-bounds, at the time Roosevelt's declaration is very controversial. In fact, historians and scholars disagree about the extent to which Roosevelt and Churchill are in agreement about demanding unconditional surrender. In Atkinson's telling, Roosevelt and Churchill come to a behind-the-scenes agreement in Casablanca over internal expectations of unconditional surrender, despite worries from both American and British commanders that "'unconditional surrender would unquestionably compel the Germans to fight to the very last' and would 'weld all of the Germans together'" (294). What Churchill doesn't expect, Atkinson argues, is that Roosevelt plans to make this demand public.

To this day, Roosevelt's declaration remains a point of controversy. Given the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin both during and after the war, some argue that a peace treaty with Nazi Germany could have been used to counter Stalin's influence in Eastern Europe. Others argue that the declaration dissuaded highly-placed anti-Hitler officials in the Nazi Party from acting on plans to launch a coup out of fear of retaliation from the Allies. Atkinson is careful not to come down on one side of the debate or the other. He does however point out that Roosevelt's primary objective in demanding unconditional surrender is to avoid a repeat of the end of World War I, which paved the way for the rise of Hitler and another bloody global conflict: "The ambiguous armistice signed then had later allowed the Nazis to claim that political betrayal rather than battlefield reverses caused Germany's defeat in World War I" (294). Atkinson also draws another parallel to the ancient battles between Carthage and the Roman Republic: "Perhaps a closer parallel lay in the Third Punic War, when Rome demanded that Carthage unconditionally surrender […] The Carthaginians refused, and the war ultimately ended with the city's obliteration in 146 B.C." (295).

As Roosevelt demands unconditional surrender, the reality on the battlefield does not bode well for an Allied victory, in part due to the actions of General Fredendall. Like General Anderson but to a significantly greater extent, Fredendall does not enjoy the legacy of greatness shared by other Allied commanders during World War II and not without reason. As ever, Atkinson's portrayal is fair yet brutally honest. He points out that despite the persistence of structural and logistical problems outside his control, Fredendall commits several tactical errors during the Allies' disastrous February in 1943, reserving particular scorn for the commander's "mincing sequence of half-measures destined to make a bad predicament truly dire" (308).

Even worse, the underground bunker Fredendall orders to be built for himself is not only costly but also considered an act of cowardice and a thus a drain on morale. According to the American historian Stephen E. Ambrose, Bradley considers the bunker "an embarrassment to every American soldier." (Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1994.) In the same book, Ambrose quotes Eisenhower as responding to the bunker by saying, "Generals are expendable just as is any other item in an army." (Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1994.)

At the same time, Atkinson argues that to lay failures like the Kasserine fiasco solely at Fredendall's feet is to ignore a host of logistical and structural problems plaguing the Allies in North Africa—problems that go all the way to the top of the command chain:

Allied failings were painfully evident, again. Portions of five American divisions had fought around Kasserine, but almost never intact. Leaders came and leaders went, sometimes changing twice a day as if washing in and out with the tide. Strangers commanded strangers. For years, Fredendall would be castigated for the poor American showing; like several of his subordinate commanders, he was overmatched, unable to make the leap from World War I’s static operations to modern mobile warfare. But (Colonel Paul McD.) Robinett made a fair point after the war: that it was 'dead wrong' to blame Fredendall exclusively. 'Possibly,' he wrote, 'one would have to search all history to find a more jumbled command structure than that of the Allies in this operation.' That error could be laid at Eisenhower's door (390).

While Atkinson tolerates Eisenhower's mistakes, he is less forgiving of the commander's refusal to take responsibility for Fredendall's most costly tactical mistakes: "In trying to serve as both supreme commander and field general, he had mastered neither job" (335). This is among Atkinson's harsher assessments of Eisenhower's performance. Rather than take responsibility for Allied losses stemming from the Axis' Valentine's Day offensive, Eisenhower suggests that it isn't appropriate for a supreme commander to question the tactical decisions of his generals. It is, however, the supreme commander's job to put generals in place who won't make the kinds of tactical mistakes Fredendall does. Given the heavy casualties caused by those mistakes, Eisenhower's defense of himself rings hollow and speaks poorly of his abilities as a leader.

That said, Atkinson frames Eisenhower's failings in the same context as the North African campaign in general: that failure in Tunisia would teach the Allies how to succeed once the stakes are much greater in Europe. Doing so, Atkinson suggests, requires not only acknowledging one's mistakes but painfully studying them: "[Eisenhower] studied his mistakes—this practice was always one of Eisenhower's virtues—and absorbed the lessons for future battles in Italy and Western Europe" (391).

Given Atkinson's persistent view that the greater the failure the more the Allies have to benefit from learning from it, it really isn't all that surprising that he tries to put a positive spin on the Battle of Kasserine Pass, which one writer at The National Interest magazine calls "America's most humiliating defeat of World War II." (Peck, Michael. "Kasserine Pass: America's most humiliating defeat of World War II. The National Interest. 2017 Feb. 25.) Most important among Atkinson's takeaways from the Kasserine Pass is "the broad realization that even an adversary as formidable as Rommel was neither invincible nor infallible. He and his host could be beaten. This epiphany was not to be undervalued: they could be beaten" (392). Beyond reflecting Atkinson's attitude toward failure, the quote explores the nuanced calculus of military morale. Until now, the Allied armies in Tunisia exhibit either too much confidence or not enough. Coming out of Operation TORCH, the Allies grossly underestimate the effectiveness and the ferocity of the German army and believe they will march on Tunis within a matter of weeks. After being humbled repeatedly at the hands of Rommel and Arnim, morale swings wildly in the opposite direction. It is only after notching a legitimate win against Rommel that the Allies truly begin to earn the right to high morale.