The White House meeting, co-chaired by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was tasked with discussing the agenda of one of the most important operational planning meetings of the Great War. Churchill chose "Arcadia" as the apt code name for the meeting, hoping that the idyllic silence of ancient Greece, which the word metaphorically attributed, would become a symbol of their joint command and coordination. But it backfired, and while the president and prime minister were very much in line with the interests of the allies, their military commanders were not. Unlike Stark, the architect of the "Europe First" strategy, the Rainbow 5 plan, Admiral King was not a pro-British faction. He harbored a prejudice against the arrogant and overly clever diplomatic skills of the new allies, which had been formed during the First World War, when he was chief of staff to the commander of the Atlantic Fleet, Mayo, and had the opportunity to observe firsthand how Britain exercised his diplomatic skills, and Mayo himself was extremely disliked and distrustful of the British. Now that King was taking action to tighten control over the U.S. Navy, he was determined not to let Britain call the shots, lest he degrade the position of the Pacific theater of operations. The admiral believed that the main dependence of the navy in winning the war was naval warfare. The Army, equally biased, felt that defeating Hitler would ultimately require a ground campaign, and naturally favored the importance of the Atlantic theater. While both the Army and Navy sensed that their new allies wanted the United States to prop up the crumbling British Empire, the Navy was far more averse to deploying forces to support the British Empire's threatened overseas colonies than the Army. General Marshall later admitted that "the anti-British sentiment on our part was too strong and a little excessive." Our people are always on the lookout for the perfidy of the British. ”

When Churchill hung up a travel map on the second floor of the White House, opened a communications room, and established the Provisional Command of the British Empire, the initial hostility of the American chiefs of staff did not ease.

Churchill lived in a room in the northeast corner, next door to the home of President Roosevelt and his close friend Hopkins. When discussing important issues to formulate the strategy of the Allies, the British Prime Minister can be close to the President of the United States. Churchill enjoyed a unique advantage in that he was sociable and united his wartime cabinet like a family, while King and Marshall, whose surnames were frosty and did not like the White House, were of course at odds with Roosevelt.

Such an arrangement suited the British perfectly. When Churchill came to Washington, he brought with him a well-prepared briefing in which he supported the continuation of the "Europe First" strategy and called for the resumption of U.S. arms assistance under the Lend-Lease Act, which had been interrupted after Pearl Harbor. The British Prime Minister believed that his face-to-face talks with the US President would enable him to lay "the main strategic foundation for the conduct of the war" and allow the Chiefs of Staff of the two sides to meet separately to resolve specific issues. The first item on the agenda of the British agenda was Churchill's determination to persuade Roosevelt to agree to a major war waged by the Allies to drive the German forces out of North Africa and remove the British threat from the flank.

At the opening of the Arcadia Conference, Churchill tried to win over the American military chiefs to support his views, just as he had eloquently presented Britain's grand strategy at a banquet the night before, in order to persuade the American president to agree with him, and they could not hide their displeasure as they listened. In a festive late-night discussion, the British Prime Minister and the President of the United States agreed that the defeat of Germany should be more important than the war against Ben. Now Churchill has reviewed the so-called "Sportsman Plan" for a massive offensive against Rommel in North Africa, which could have been realized as long as the American [***] team was stationed in Northern Ireland and the British troops were freed up there. American bombers were to take part in the assault on the German industrial hinterland, and the remaining manpower and material resources of the Allies would be available to defend the Far East, which was "on the defensive." He explained that this meant that Singapore would hold out for six months in order to control the Malay barrier and deny the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies to the Dutch East Indies, so as to buy time for reinforcements to reach Malaya and Burma to defend China's maritime supply lines to the Philippines.

The US president had apparently accepted the British strategic scheme, much to the dismay of his military advisers. The American chiefs of staff were not as united as the British wartime cabinet, and they were not prepared to refute the prime minister's forceful statements, but his "imperialist" approach to the Mediterranean forced General Marshall to make reservations. Immediately after this meeting, he asked Major General Stilwell to prepare "sixty-five reasons why we should not carry out the 'Sportsman Plan,'" which, like General Weidemeyer, considered the Englishman to have too much influence on their commander-in-chief. "The Brit has a head, we only have a little tail." Stilwell froze, fearing that "events are forcing us to carry out poorly advised and ill-conceived plans."

It was to replace the plan to open a second theater of war in Europe, and General Marshall was determined not to give the United States the obligation to carry out Britain's strategic plan for the Mediterranean. The British feared that the American leaders would succumb to the intense pressure of public opinion to concentrate on the Pacific War, but this fear was soon swept away. On the same day, at the first meeting of a series of meetings of the Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Federal Reserve Building, the British listened with satisfaction to Admiral Stark's reiteration of the American position: "Our point of view remains the same: Germany and the Soviet Union remain the main enemies, and defeating them is the key to victory. Once Germany and the Soviet Union were defeated, Italy would fall with it, and it would have been defeated. ”

Since the meeting, General Marshall and John ? Sir Deere has always maintained a close relationship with each other. Churchill dismissed Deere as Chief of the Imperial General Staff and sent him to Washington to lead a delegation of the British Chiefs of Staff to the Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting. The friendship and mutual understanding between Deere and Marshall became the main reliance on the military cooperation between the two sides, although there were often fierce differences of opinion.

In fact, it was the British Prime Minister himself who caused the biggest storm of opinions after a private meeting with the President of the United States in the middle of the night. He believed that he had persuaded Roosevelt to agree to the defense of Malaya with reinforcements originally sent to the Philippines and now redirected to Australia. U.S. generals angrily protested that MacArthur had gone shirtless to defend the British Empire, and the furious Secretary of War threatened to resign, and Hopkins was sent to calm the generals' anger, which he tactfully denied that Churchill had such thoughts. This incident convinced the British[***] leaders, accustomed to working under the strict leadership of Churchill's wartime cabinet, that the American chain of command was in tatters. "The whole system is the same as it was in the Washington era, when Washington was elected commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, and he assumed it." In a telegram to Sir Brooke, Deere criticised that "this country does not have even the bare minimum idea of what war is all about, and the state of combat readiness of their armed forces is unimaginably bad." ”

At the ensuing meeting, Marshall announced plans to create a unified operational command, and the British chiefs of staff were taken aback. Marshall said that "ten of our troubles" were caused by "human weakness," and he strongly demanded that "the entire theater of operations — air, ground, and ships be commanded by one man." We can't cope with cooperation alone. The British Chiefs of Staff did not take a stand on the suggestion that the Supreme Commanders of the Allied Forces, who could not only overcome the obstacles between the nations, but also that the generals of the army should command the fleet, and that the admirals be ultimately responsible for the officers and men of the army.

That evening, a banquet was held at the White House, and Churchill was uncharacteristically silent, and he took his leave early. Not only did the unfavorable news on the battlefield weigh on his heart, but he was also uneasy by the speech he was going to deliver to a special joint session of the United States Congress the next morning. Many "isolationist" politicians would have unceremoniously opposed him if they heard him preach that fighting against Germany was more important than retaliating against Ben in the Pacific.

The next day, near noon, he paced in the antechamber of the House of Representatives, waiting for him to be called in to give a speech, and his nervousness was palpable. The nerves that had visibly intensified before he strode into the House of Representatives to deliver the most important speech of his life were unsettling.

"I can't help but think about it," the British prime minister said after a few joking opening remarks, "if my father had been American and my mother had been British, and not the other way around, I might have come here automatically." A burst of hearty laughter and cheers won the hearts of the politicians in the room. He then began to give speeches to rally the support of Congress, which one observer said was a "foreshadowing" of the Anglo-American marriage, and when Churchill looked at the global war situation, when he no longer stressed the need to defeat Germany, but fiercely condemned the attack on Pearl Harbor, the audience reacted most enthusiastically. “…… It is difficult to reconcile prudence and steadiness, what do they think of us? He roared. When he prophesied that the time "is coming" when "the people of Great Britain and the people of the United States will march hand in hand for their safety and for the benefit of all mankind, for dignity, justice and peace", the hall once again erupted in applause. Before he stepped off the podium, the audience applauded enthusiastically for the last time, and with tears in his eyes, he held out two fingers and exchanged a gesture of victory with Supreme Court Justice Stone.

Originally, it would not have taken a few days to read out the "marriage notice". But the terms of the marriage contract between Britain and the United States took weeks of often heated debate between the leaders of the two [***] countries to work out. Their meetings at the Federal Reserve House often dragged on late into the night. At the Mayflower Hotel across the city, Lord Beaverbrook, along with his officers in the Department of Supply, was in discussions with Nelson, director of Roosevelt's "King of Production," the director of the Bureau of Priority Distribution, to strive for the United States to double its industrial and arms production.

But the British and American chiefs of staff were deeply divided over how to conduct the war and where to concentrate their limited forces. At the seminar, the British, like "kicking bulls," attacked General Marshall's plan to appoint the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. Hopkins, who opened the way for an agreement, pulled Churchill aside, assuring him that a British general would command the Far Eastern theater of operations. General Marshall had already won the support of Admiral King, who ensured victory in this organizational arrangement. After a fierce exchange of views on the issue of whether tankmen can drive warships, Churchill came out of the lounge with a smile on his face, in favor of the United States-Britain-Holland-Australia Quad Supreme Command headed by British General Wavell.

Initial efforts have been made to establish the Allied United Military Front that Churchill had envisioned, but it will take some effort to dispel the fears of a panicked Australian political axe. Australia's political axe had feared the bombing of its northern port city. Canberra telegraphed Churchill fearing that Singapore would fall, and the British prime minister replied that "we are determined to defend" not only this sea fortress, but "the entire front from Yangon to the port of Darwin". Churchill told Australian Prime Minister Curtin that the convoy convoy bound for Egypt had changed course to the Far East; With three of Australia's four most sophisticated divisions fighting in North Africa and a fourth in Malaya, his cabinet rightly feared that Australia would face the threat of invasion if the Philippines and Singapore were lost. Curtin was disturbed that the Australian military leader was not invited to the Acadia Conference, and he was also worried that Britain would not meet its obligations, so he published an article in the Melbourne Herald in which he openly expressed his concerns. In this article, he not only refuted the notion that "the war in the Pacific can only be seen as an ancillary part of an all-out war," but also made a suggestion that greatly annoyed Churchill: Australia would have to ask China for assistance and work with the United States to develop its own Pacific defense policy.

Therefore, the British Prime Minister wanted General Wavell to command the Far Eastern theater of operations with a strong political motive. But his military advisers realized that the task of defending such a large defensive zone could not be accomplished, and they thought that the Americans might have deliberately scapegoated him. Dill argues that it is very dangerous to hold one of their generals accountable for the "impending catastrophe." Wavell himself did not show more enthusiasm for the news of his appointment. Due to Prime Minister Churchill's impatience, Wavell has removed him from his post at the Middle East Command; Now he called Deere: "I know people are meant to hold children, but this is a quadruplet!" ”

Wavell is a military man who is not very excited, and he likes to think calmly. For him, the US-British-Dutch-Australian Command guarding a 2,000-mile line of defense with the scattered forces of four allies was a difficult enough task, and it was too complicated to defend Burma. He argued that it was necessary to cooperate with China, which would be tasked with defending Burma, Siam and Indochina. The general believed that his own army could only defend their fronts. Wavell pressed that Hong Kong be returned to China in exchange for China sending troops to defend Burma and support British forces in Malaya, rather than just the Philippines. He firmly believed that it was imperative to get China into the war as soon as possible so that the British army in Malaya could hold out in the war. Because the allies in the Philippines and Malaya repeatedly asked the United States and Britain to send troops and provide aircraft, Britain and the United States could not meet these demands, so they had to rely on China's informal support.

Churchill was outraged by Wavell's attitude, who protested that Wavell had "relied too much on Chinese support and had given up his contribution to the war effort." Eventually, however, Churchill had to accommodate Wavell, whose American counterparts also supported his views, and in Churchill's view, "China has a special influence on American thinking." "A recent poll confirms this: in the US, 8 out of 10 people consider China to be their natural ally – exactly double the number of people who see Britain as their long-term partner!

Just as the entanglement between the British and American military generals and political leaders was entangled, China was also experiencing an unprecedented storm at this time.

Yanjing, Capitol.

"Now, please General Cai explain to all of us why he secretly participated in a war that did not belong to us without the authorization of the president."

Yang Shuoming looked coldly at the young parliamentarian who was making a generous speech on the podium, and turned his head to look at his daughter Yang Yuhan, Yang Yuhan understood what his father wanted to know, and said softly: "His name is Mei Siping, and he is a member of the Liberal Party. The self-proclaimed 'freedom fighter' is a well-known 'pan-Asianist' and 'isolationist'. ”

"Oh, I remember, the one who burned Zhao's house back then." Yang Shuoming nodded as he spoke, and continued to listen intently to this special questioning meeting.

Because today, he himself is also one of the targets of questioning.

"The army did not participate in any war." Cai replied calmly, "According to the provisions of our Constitution, the power to wage war against foreign countries belongs to the Congress, and without the authorization of the Congress, the political axe and the army cannot and will not take any action in support of the belligerents. ”

"Everybody heard, haha! General Cai flatly denied that the army had participated in the war, so what about those volunteers who had already fought in the Philippines? Mei Siping sneered and raised a newspaper in his hand, "General Cai should have read the report on this newspaper, if he wasn't a professional soldier, I'm afraid he wouldn't be able to do such heroic deeds!" ”

Yang Shuoming looked at the newspaper in Mei Siping's hand from a distance, and he immediately recognized which newspaper it was.

It was a "Yuanwang" newsletter, which reported in large pages the heroic deeds of the Chinese volunteers in the bloody battle with the Chinese army in the Philippines, and the most recent one was a report on the death of the Chinese soldier Luo Huaien with explosives tied to his body and the tanks of the Chinese army.

(To be continued)