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Supreme Commander Eisenhower's close professional relationship with the Chief of Staff continued after he moved to London. The new theater commander continued to look at problems as he believed Marshall would see them, and he solved them in accordance with his understanding of the Chief of Staffs policies. That was fortunate, because the grand alliance against the Axis was in large part Marshall's conception; the Supreme Allied Command in Europe was the direct result of his drive and determination; and the essential Allied strategy was the product of his imagination. Where policy was concerned, Marshall's was the guiding hand. Eisenhower was perfectly attuned to his chiefs ideas, and was the ideal officer to translate Marshall's grand strategy into practice. Eisenhower, however, was more than just Marshall's agent. The Supreme Allied Command in Europe would never have worked without Eisenhower, for he virtually invented the concept of Allied unity of command and persuaded the British to accept it in lieu of the committee system to which they were accustomed. His personal qualities played a large part in gaining acceptance of a much more centralized and powerful Allied command than had existed in World War 1. Men instinctively trusted him, and his measured approach to command reinforced a conviction that he was an honest broker whose central purpose was the defeat of the enemy, rather than the pursuit of any national agenda. Eisenhower, in short, was the essential man in the coalition against Hitler. The job of Supreme Commander lay in the future when he arrived in England. At first, he was only the commander of American troops in the European Theater, and had the immediate task of assembling the means with which to pursue the war. Few combat-ready American soldiers were in the United Kingdom at the time, and there was a shortage of ships, landing craft, weapons, ammunition, air power, and solid intelligence about the enemy. Eisenhower devoted himself to energizing his staff, building a solid relationship with the British ally, and managing Operation BOLERO, as the buildup of resources for the ultimate invasion of Europe was dubbed. In November of 1942, incident to the decision to land British and American troops in North Africa (Operation TORCH), the Combined Chiefs of Staff appointed Eisenhower Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, for that invasion. Both Marshall and Eisenhower had resisted the decision for TORCH because it was a diversion of resources from the invasion of Europe, an operation they insisted was far more important. Nonetheless, a confluence of political and military considerations on both sides of the Atlantic argued in favor of TORCH, and their combined weight overwhelmed War Department objections. American military plans had never envisioned an invasion of Europe before 1943, except in the most exceptional circumstances, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt had concluded that he simply could not wait that long for American soldiers to begin fighting the nation's chief enemy. He accordingly directed Marshall to find some way to come to grips with the Germans in 1942. At the same time, American commanders in the Pacific were casting covetous eyes on the men and equipment BOLERO was concentrating in Europe. Unless Eisenhower made some use of that military power soon, Marshall knew, MacArthur and the Navy would submit persuasive arguments to transfer it to their commands. Reflecting longstanding British concern for the Mediterranean, Prime Minister Churchill strongly supported a North African campaign as one component of a peripheral strategy to tighten the ring around Germany. Bowing to the inevitable, Marshall at last selected TORCH as the best of a poor lot of options. It was up to Eisenhower to carry the plan through. Eisenhower later said that the command decisions relating to TORCH were among the most worrisome that he had to make in the entire war. The unprecedented scope and complexity of the operation depended upon amphibious landings, which were inherently risky and with which his forces had little worthwhile experience. Added to this concern was a nagging uncertainty as to how the Vichy French would react when the United States launched an invasion of the territory of a neutral nation without a declaration of war. Moreover, TORCH was America's first campaign in the crucial European Theater, and it was Eisenhower's debut in the ticklish business of commanding Allied officers who were not only senior in rank, but also more experienced. At the time of TORCH, Lieutenant General Eisenhower's permanent grade was still lieutenant colonel. Mediterranean operations inevitably delayed the final invasion of Europe, but it turned out that TORCH had important benefits outside the realm of strategy. Battle was the only sure measure of equipment, some of which proved inadequate, and of training and leadership. North Africa accordingly became the laboratory in which he tested both men and concepts in Allied cooperation. At the tactical level, American soldiers absorbed the lessons of their first battles, and American commanders adjusted their training to acknowledge the defects war had revealed. Allied commanders learned something of the difficulties of fighting alongside each other, and the entire Allied force gained invaluable experience in planning and conducting amphibious landings. Eisenhower discovered that handling coalition warfare involving the three armed services of two nations in a campaign launched on hostile soil by amphibious landings, where logistical and administrative support did not previously exist, was even more complex than he had imagined.

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