Western leaders didn’t think these feelers would amount to much if they attacked the Germans directly and took pressure off the Soviet Union, as Stalin had been demanding for months. But the British and Americans were virtually immobilized by an acrimonious dispute about what they should do.
The Americans, led by George C. Marshall, army chief of staff, wanted a direct advance by a five-division amphibious landing around Cherbourg in Normandy in 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer).
But the British pressed for an indirect or peripheral strategy, a combination of massive air attacks on German cities and smaller, less-dangerous invasions in the Mediterranean.
[…]
Torch at once gained the advantage Roosevelt was hoping for: when Stalin heard about it, he stopped complaining about a second front. But the decision to turn to the Mediterranean aroused dark suspicions among American planners that Churchill was maneuvering the United States into the “soft underbelly” strategy. They feared this would lead to the invasion of Italy, and perhaps Greece, and fatally undermine the plan to collide with the Germans on the beaches of France.
President Roosevelt was less worried, because he hoped “an air war plus the Russians” could defeat Hitler, and a cross-Channel assault might not be necessary.
”Stalin kept complaining that they were leaving the fighting to the Red Army and started putting out peace feelers in Stockholm…”
I’m wondering what kind of peace deal was possible. Usual taught history is that the Nazis had to be thoroughly crushed or else it was Generalplan Ost for the planet.
I suppose the Sovs would of had to give up the Caucasus. Wondering if they would have lived on that way. Maybe would have brought on more war later.
You make me wonder if Stalin making peace with Hitler would have led to the UK and the US doing the same.
Pretty low probability all around I’d say. But of course plenty of decisions are so stupid that you wouldn’t have believed people could make them. Except they did.