Operation Roundup (1942)

Operation Roundup was the codename for a 1942 plan for an invasion of Northern France by Allied forces during World War II.

History

The plan, for an invasion in the spring of 1943, drawn up by Brigadier General Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, reflected American enthusiasm for an early entry into Europe. Senior British commanders and politicians were reluctant to commit themselves to the invasion plan; mindful of the painful losses during the Battle of the Somme (where, on the first day of the battle, the British Army lost almost 60,000 men) and the Battle of Passchendaele in the First World War, they preferred to avoid a direct assault on a powerful enemy. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, preferred a strategy of attacking German forces in the Mediterranean instead (which he referred to as the "soft underbelly"), while other British military leaders hoped to defer an invasion until the Germans had been worn down by fighting on the Eastern Front against the Russian Army. Churchill's plan would allow relatively inexperienced American forces to gain experience in a less risky theatre of war while gradually building up overwhelming force before engaging Germany head on.

Given shortages of merchant shipping, landing craft, and other resources, the Roundup plan was considered to be unrealistic; it called for a force consisting of 48 Allied divisions and 5,800 aircraft, with a landing on broad beachheads between the French ports of Boulogne and Le Havre. By comparison, the eventual Normandy landings, which occurred over a year later in June 1944, featured only 39 Allied divisions.

After Churchill pressed for a landing in French North Africa in 1942, General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, suggested instead to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the United States abandon the Germany-first strategy and take the offensive in the Pacific. Roosevelt "disapproved" the proposal, saying it would do nothing to help the Soviet Union. Instead, with Roosevelt's support and Marshall unable to persuade the British to change their minds, the decision was made at the Second Claridge Conference in late July 1942 to carry out Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. Most of the troops and supplies accumulated for Roundup were used to implement Torch and preparations for Roundup were given lower priority due to the uncertainties of Allied strategy. The British were as reluctant to fully abandon Roundup as they had been to support it but in November 1942 Eisenhower, now a lieutenant general, told Churchill that no major operation on the Continent could be carried out before 1944.

Briefings concerning this plan brought Eisenhower’s organizational and diplomatic skills to the attention of senior civil and military leaders in the United States and Europe, launching his meteoric rise to Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

Operation Roundup included Operation Sledgehammer and the later variant Operation Roundhammer. British Lieutenant General incorporated aspects of the plan into the earliest version of the plan that became Operation Overlord.