Editorial Note on a Meeting at the White House, December 21, 1941
No official record of the discussion at this meeting has been found. Arnold’s notes on the meeting (which are in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress) are closely reflected in the account published in Arnold, pp. 274–276. Stimson, in his diary for December 21, notes that the meeting lasted from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. and that those present were: President Roosevelt, Mr. Hopkins, Secretary Stimson, Secretary Knox, General Marshall, Admiral Stark, Admiral King, and Lieutenant General Arnold. The account of the meeting in Stimson’s diary reads as follows:
“At the conference today in the White House Marshall presented the Army paper and the President went over that with us all, discussing the various points. Much of it was contained in the paper that I had sent him the day before; but, when he had finished the Army paper, he then went over mine which covered certain points which they had not covered. The conference was very useful and clarifying, one of the best war conferences we have had. There was great harmony on practically all of the problems. We discussed the following topics:
- 1.
- Methods to improve the safety of the British Isles including both the beach defenses and the mobile forces.
- 2.
- The problem of Fire and the use of American forces in North Ireland to release the British divisions now there.
- 3.
- The completion of unity of command of the Iceland garrison.
- 4.
- American air forces in the British Isles.
- 5.
- The requisite size of the American Navy in the North Atlantic.
- 6.
- The establishment of lines of communication across the Pacific.
- 7.
- Problems of the southwestern Pacific theatre and its defense on the part of the various nations involved there whose interests are now being attacked by the Japanese.
- 8.
- The methods of reenforcement of the forces now there.
- 9.
- The problem of protecting our communications across Africa and through the South Atlantic including the problems of Dakar and the various islands lying west of Africa.
- 10.
- The scope of American activities in the Syria and Iran theatre as well as in the Egyptian and Libyan theatres.
- 11.
- The creation of a supreme allied war council to study problems and make recommendations to the associated powers on policies, plans, programs and allocations.
- 12.
- The creation of a military joint planning committee and a joint supply committee to propose plans and actions necessary to implement the approved decisions of the supreme war council.
“I showed the President the cable which had come from MacArthur calling attention to the fact that the Japanese were enjoying apparently complete freedom of naval action in the sea route through the Islands and discussed it with him and with Admiral King. King said that he would take it up with Stark and they would discuss it with Marshall.”