The questions of the structure of command and the announcement of the name
of the top commander were thus to be held in abeyance-along with the
resolution of basic related strategic issues in the war against Germany-pending further discussion with the British at the next conference. British
pressure for changes in the Mediterranean command setup in the absence of an
agreement on over-all command in the war against Germany confirmed the fears
of the U.S. Army planners that the strategic pattern accepted at QUADRANT
might be upset. Seriously disturbed, they prepared in conjunction with the
rest of the American staff, in the late fall of 1943, to argue once again
the whole case on European strategy with the British. What made Army concern
over British pressure toward the Mediterranean all the more acute was the
pressing realization that the time had at last come to correlate
British-American strategy with the plans and expectations of the other major
ally in the war against Germany, the Soviet Union.
[279]
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