Loose Lips Sink Ships_ , the British and French admirals' agreement to the invasion's date was "a classic act of war," which had been passed along by the Germans in the hope that it might prove useful in thwarting Allied intelligence efforts.
A young French army officer at the head of the OSS effort was Major Jacques Beau, a French-speaking American who was married to the daughter of a Parisian jeweler and lived in Paris, where he and his father-in-law had been among the survivors of the _Champlain_. After the Occupation, he joined Free French intelligence, worked in the OSS as a radio operator, then became head of the Free French's espionage apparatus. To aid in Operation Squatter he offered for use from his stock a collection of documents—code books, radio frequencies, and instructions—that had been collected over more than a decade of warfare in Europe.
OSS officers were briefed on June 7 at their field office in London. The operation, which was already code-named "Anvil," was given new code names: "Brécy" for the center of the target area; "Tessel" for the center of the assault; "Vire" for the western anchor on the north flank of the attack; and "Aubers" for the eastern anchor. The planning staff also began collecting weather data, and a number of sub-units trained at the War Office in London. In London, the planning team reviewed two possible courses of action:
**1**. An invasion would probably be needed in 1942 and possibly even earlier than that. But if there were some favorable news from the Eastern Front, this might be delayed to 1943.
**2**. Or, if it became clear there was no prospect of a speedy Soviet victory, an invasion might be launched in 1942.
The "Anvil" code name was chosen because it was known that a large number of British, U.S., and Canadian troops were in the area, but that none of the divisions had a base.
No decision had yet been reached on when, where, and with what ships the men would be landed. What the Americans did want was to be part of the build-up in order to take the war to Germany in 1944.
On June 10, the OSS chief, Allen Dulles, held a meeting in Washington of his commanders, where he discussed plans for a raid, with its landings in the southwest of France at night, at the beaches below Bénouville and Pourville, just west of the mouth of the River Somme. The men planning the operation were sure that this would cause the Germans maximum confusion and disrupt German plans for the defense of the Normandy beachhead.
They wanted, then, to find a place on the coast they could make safe from bombing raids as soon as possible after D-Day. The nearest big town to this spot was Bayeux.
Two days later, SHAEF sent word that if the Anvil operation were to go ahead, it must go ahead soon. The commander of the Allied expeditionary force, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, agreed with the American argument: an early invasion of France was essential to disrupt German communications and reinforcements, stop their resupply of the German armies in northern France, and divert German resources to the defense of the Normandy beachhead.
And Eisenhower was also under pressure from Roosevelt. In early June, British prime minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt discussed their concerns in a three-way meeting in Washington, D.C. The two Allied leaders agreed that the United States would make a second heavy bomber raid on Berlin on June 13 and that Churchill would tell the House of Commons on June 12 that the Americans had made such a decision. But the only result was to make public what had been made known in Washington and London for a while already.
During the summer of 1942, as the preparations for Anvil went ahead, the OSS made new efforts to make contact with the French Resistance. This had long been a goal of American intelligence. The idea of a "secret army" that would rise up against the Germans had its origins in the last days of June 1940, when as the German armies were sweeping into Paris, a young American businessman in Lyon, a city on the frontier between France and Germany, sent a letter to the governor of the state of Vichy denouncing the repression of hostilities and war and urging "that the American government take action to save France from a Nazi occupation." A few weeks later he visited a number of cities in the north of France and spoke in support of the war against Nazi Germany and against what he called "a Fascist clique" in Paris that was planning surrender. His remarks were published in local newspapers.
As the war against Hitler intensified in France, a number of other reports and letters were sent to Washington from France, denouncing the regime and asking for help. The reports were not taken seriously, but two men in London, in a study group of American military intelligence officers, managed to get them forwarded to Roosevelt. And at a luncheon for General Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, it was suggested that in view of German atrocities, the Allies should begin to train "pioneer forces" in the resistance. The suggestion was that these men could be used after the invasion. A proposal for such a plan was put to Roosevelt.
General George Strong, on behalf of the chief of U.S. Army Air Forces, proposed in mid-1941 that a number of secret groups be set up with the goal of developing plans for an operation in France, which should avoid large-scale military action and be carried out in a way that could be portrayed as a "peaceful liberation movement." One proposal was to have a dozen or so commandos parachute from aircraft into France and organize the French underground. But such a plan, which would become known as the "Phoenix Plan," did not receive White House approval.
In March 1942, Harold D. Martin, a vice president of Standard Oil of Indiana, and his colleague, George J. Davies, a former associate counsel of the American Legion, wrote to the secretary of the treasury to complain that they had learned that the State Department was thinking of turning over more than $6 billion of American gold, gold bullion, and securities in the Bank for Reconstruction and Development to Nazi Germany at the end of the war. The two men made a strong appeal in favor of the Allied cause. They suggested that the decision could only be justified if it were made clear that the German government would use the money for military purposes. They also mentioned that Nazi Germany was still holding American assets, including some oil that had been loaned to it by Standard Oil of New York. Both were American citizens, and they offered to donate all the money from the sales of Standard Oil shares to the British cause, though they did not believe this would be accepted.
Martin's proposal to use profits from the sale of Standard Oil shares for the Allies was later accepted. But the question of repatriating American gold, which had been transferred to Germany as war reparations, was complicated. The United States and Germany had agreed in January 1930 that after the war Germany would return the American gold in Germany. It was a matter of international law. In June 1942, when American consular officials reported that the gold was still in Germany, the U.S. president himself responded by asking German foreign minister von Ribbentrop what happened to the gold, and receiving a somewhat unsatisfactory reply.
When the United States passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, allowing it to supply Britain and other allies with arms and munitions, it was stipulated that the Allies would be repaid. But on November 21, 1941, while the Nazis were still in occupation of Paris and fighting the British army in North Africa, Roosevelt sent a letter to his friend, retired ambassador William C. Bullitt, in which he requested that Bullitt not release the Lend-Lease funds to Britain so long as the Nazis were still in control of France. It was a measure of how seriously Roosevelt took the threat of the Nazis in France that he was prepared to veto his own act. By that time, however, Lend-Lease aid was already under way in Britain. And despite this change of heart on the Lend-Lease funds, Roosevelt declared that the United States government "will not allow any act or word of its representatives in France to be interpreted as recognition of any political authority but that of General de Gaulle."
In early July 1942, after French president Charles de Gaulle became more and more outspoken in his criticisms of the French military government, Roosevelt sent the American military attaché in Paris, General Patrick J. Hurley, on a mission to London to determine if the United States could provide arms to France. Hurley was briefed by members of the British cabinet and told that the British government could not approve the shipment of arms to the French government in exile.
While in London, Hurley received a number of letters from British officials, which made it clear that Britain was unwilling to supply Lend-Lease aid to France. The British foreign office had decided to turn down French requests for American weapons. So had Roosevelt's government. He was asked to explain to Vichy France that the United States did not support "French nationals resident in the United States in the prosecution of acts contrary to international law which threaten the Allied cause in France." He was also told that if the United States had to repatriate the money it held, it would not do so until the war was
