FDR's Thanksgiving Dinner in Cairo, 1943: The First Cairo Conference, Part IV

This will be the last of my posts on the First Cairo Conference 70 years ago; next week we'll talk about the Tehran Conference and the Second Cairo Conference.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was aware that he would be away for Thanksgiving, which in 1943 fell on November 25. He had brought two turkeys from the United States: one was a gift of Under Secretary of State Edward L. Stettinius, and one donated by Joe Carter of Burnt Corn, Alabama.

Because the primary subject of the Cairo Conference was the war against Japan, I've primarily focused on the Middle Eastern sidelights, but there had been days of hard negotiations, particularly among the Combined Chiefs of Staff but also between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek, especially over the war in the Burma theater. After much hard bargaining, all concerned were apparently ready for a party. Roosevelt threw a Thanksgiving dinner for Churchill (whose mother was American). It was a purely British and American affair; earlier, at 5 pm, the President had entertained .Generalissimo  and Madame Chiang Kai-shek for tea. Relations between Chiang and the others had been difficult. He made extravagant demands for Western aid an his lack of understanding of the outside world (unlike his Americanized wife and translator) was commented upon by other participants. But the Thanksgiving day tea seems to have been cordial and friction-free. Col. Elliott Roosevelt, the President's son, appears to have been the only other person present.

After the tea, Roosevelt conferred at 6:30 with Maj. Gen. Donald H. Connolly, Commander of the US Persian Gulf Service Command about the plans for the imminent visit to Tehran. At 8 pm the President's Thanksgiving guests were welcomed to the President's villa (which as I have previously noted was that of the US Ambassador to Egypt). This is the guest list from Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, p.350:

The invitees' identifications: the Americans: Presidential aide/friend/adviser Harry Hopkins; Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the President; US Ambassador to Great Britain John Gordon Winant; US Ambassador to Turkey Laurence Steinhardt; US Ambassador to the USSR W Averell Harriman; US Ambassador (Minister) to Egypt Alexander C. Kirk (in whose villa Roosevelt was staying); Maj. Gen. Edwin "Pa" Watson, friend, crony, and Appointments Secretary to FDR; Rear Admiral Wilson Btrown, FDR's Naval Aide; Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, personal physician to FDR; Col. Elliott Roosevelt, the President's son; Major John Boettiger, husband of Anna Roosevelt and the President's son-in-law; Harry Hopkins' son Robert Hopkins.

The Churchill party: Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden; Churchill's personal physician Lord Moran; John Martin, Churchill's personal secretary; Commander Charles R. "Tommy" Thompson, Churchill's aide-de-camp; "Mrs. Oliver" is Churchill's daughter Sarah, the only woman along, who was serving in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).

For the dinner, there are several reminiscences, including this one from FDR's personal diary in his own hand, from the FDR Library:

Fri Nov 26
Yesterday was a real Thanksgiving Day. The Chiangs to tea -- had the [next word unclear?] British to dinner - WSC - Sara - Etc. with 2 Turkeys I brought from home. It is an enormous satisfaction to have my mess crew from the Potomac and Shangri-La. Music by an Army band and later WSC cakewalked with Pa Watson.
Today I have wound up all that we accomplished

The Potomac was FDR's Presidential yacht. Shangri-La was the retreat now known as Camp David.

Here is Churchill's version from The Second World War, Volume V, Closing the Ring, pp. 340-341 of the American edition:

Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November, is a feature in American life. Every soldier in in th American Army is supposed to eat turkey on that day, and most of them did in1943. Ample supplies of turkeys for all the United States Staffs at Cairo had been brought out in the President's ship. Roosevelt invited me to join him at dinner in his villa. "Let us make it a family affair," he said. So Sarah was asked too, and also "Tommy" (Commander Thompson), to whom he had taken a great liking. The President's guests included his personal circle, his son Elliott, his son-in-law Mr. Boettinger, and Harry Hopkins and his son Robert. We had a pleasant and peaceful feast. Two enormous turkeys were brought in with all ceremony. The president, propped up high in his chair, carved for all with masterly, indefatigable skill. As we were above twenty, this took a long time, and those who were helped first had finished before the President had cut anything for himelf. As I watched the  huge platefuls he distributed to the company I feared that he might be left with nothing at all. But he had calculated to a nicety, and I was relieved, when at last the two skeletons were removed, to see him set about his om share. Harry, who had noted my anxiety, said, "We have ample reserves.'' Speeches were made of warm and intimate friendship. For a couple of hours we cast care aside, I had never seen the President more gay. After the meal was over we returned to the big room in which we had held so many conferences. Dance music — from gramophone records —  began ta play. Sarah was the only woman present, and she had her work cut out, so I danced with "Pa" Watson (Roosevelt's trusted old friend and aide), to the delight of his chief, who watched us from the sofa. This jolly evening and the spectacle of the President carving up the turkeys stand out in my mind among the most agreeable features of the halt at Cairo.

Roosevelt told the story of Thanksgiving to the British and he and Churchill exchanged toasts. At 9:30 Gen. Joseph Stilwell (US Commander in the China theater) arrived for a meeting with FDR. He was greeted by Harry Hopkins. Stilwell found the party still going strong and many of the guests already drunk, including Hopkins, so Stilwell talked with Churchill (who had an enormous capacity) until the guests left at 10:30, when Stilwell met with FDR.

There was another party that night, held by the American and British Combined Chiefs of Staff. General H.H. "Hap" Arnold, head of the US Army Air Forces describes it as a "merry party, tells an anecdote or two, on p. 463 of his memoir Global Mission, and notes that the chiefs then attended a special service put on by the British for the Americans at the Anglican Cathedral in Cairo. FRUS nites that there are no details on where or at what time the dinner was held. The Chiefs were mstly stayinbg at Mena House and it may may be been there; the cathedral then was on the corniche in Cairo, where it stood until torn donn in1978 for the new October 6 bridge,  so this would seem to suggest the dinner was in late afternoon or early evening.

First Cairo Conference Part III: Newreels of the Cairo and Tehran Conferences

Continuing my series on the three summits in Cairo and Tehran and Cairo again in November-December 1943, 70 years ago: I'll be discussing FDR's Thanksgiving dinner for Churchill later today. Meanwhile here are some period newsreels of the First Cairo and Tehran Conferences. (More on Tehran is coming up tomorrow.)

The two-part video below starts with a newsreel about the two conferences, then goes on to include Roosevelt's own report in his Christmas address to the Armed Forces, which is continued in the second video.



This one from the FDR Presidential Library has no narration but lots of scenes of Cairo and Tehran as well as the leaders:

Why King Farouq Missed the Conference: The First Cairo Conference, 1943, Part II

King Farouq Earlier in 1942

This is my second post on the 70th anniversary of the First Cairo Conference of 1943, the first of three continuous World War II summits held in the Middle East (First Cairo, Tehran, and Second Cairo). But this one is not about the conference itself, but about the absence of King Farouq. Although the local rulers were not participants in the Allied Conference, at the Casablanca Conference earlier in 1943, FDR had hosted a dinner for Sultan Muhammad V of Morocco, where he openly seemed to support Moroccan independence, in the presence of the local French authorities (most of whom were Vichy holdovers). But FDR did not meet Farouq on this trip to Egypt. (He did later though, on his way home after the Yalta Conference in 1945, when he met with Farouq and King "Ibn Saud" of Saudi Arabia aboard a ship in the Red Sea.)

Ahmad Hassanein Pasha

Instead, on November 24, Roosevelt received the Chief of Farouq's Royal Cabinet and Royal Chamberlain, Ahmad Hassanein Pasha (a powerful figure in his own right who may be the subject of a future blogpost) and with the Wafdist Prime Minister, Mustafa Nahhas Pasha. It is unclear if they also called on Winston Churchill; he doesn't seem to mention it in his memoirs.

So where was the King? Improbably enough, he was in an ordinary Army hospital bed in an obscure British Army field hospital at a British camp in the small town of Qassasin on the eastern edge of the Delta, midway between Cairo and Ismailia, and had been there nearly 10 days.

Needless to say, therein lies a good story, and needless to say, I'm going to tell it.

But first let me set the political context of the time. In 1936, Egypt and Britain signed a treaty which was supposed to end Britain's military occupation of Egypt, except for the Suez Canal Zone, and make Egypt (nominally independent since 1922) recognizing Egypt as fully sovereign with a right to join the League of Nations. The treaty was also a treaty of alliance, allowing Britain to reoccupy the rest of Egypt in order to protect its Ally Egypt and the Canal in time of war. And in 1939, Britain found itself at war. With first the Italians and then Rommel threatening Egypt from Libya, the British built up their forces in the country, and became concerned by what they perceived as a pro-Axis tilt in the Palace itself.

Sir Miles Lampson's title was Ambassador to Egypt and High Commissioner of the Sudan, but once the British had reoccupied Egypt he, with the backing of the British Army, began acting much more like a colonial viceroy. The King had surrounded himself with a number of Italian cronies who were, in British eyes, enemy aliens and perhaps Mussolini's spies; Lampson demanded the King get rid of them. (He never did. Lampson's own wife was the daughter of an Italian aristocrat, and the King supposedly quipped, not to Lampson's face, that "I'll get rid of my Italians when he gets rid of his.")

I did a post last year on the ‘Abdin Incident of February 4, 1942. After the fall of Prime Minister Hussein Hussein Sirri Pasha's pro-British government, the British decided to insist on a Wafdist Prime Minister. It's conventional to analyze Egypt in this period as a three-way power struggle between the King, the British, and the nationalist Wafd Party; usually the British were anti-Wafd, but this time they insisted on the King naming Wafd leader Nahhas Pasha as Prime Minister. When the King resisted, Lampson and his military counterpart showed up at the gates of ‘Abdin Palace accompanied by tanks and carrying an instrument of abdication drawn up by Sir Walter Monckton. who had done the same for King Edward VIII and was now at the Embassy in Cairo. He offered the King a choice: abdicate or appoint Nahhas.

Lampson and Nahhas in 1936 

The ‘Abdin incident is notorious among Egyptians to this day; at least in folklore, Lampson asked, "Where's the boy?" (Farouq was 22) and "I know the way" when someone tried to lead him to the King. Any British hope that forcing the King to name Nahhas would strengthen their own popularity was misguided; instead, Egyptians considered that the once nationalist Nahhas had been installed in power by British arms. And the King despised both Lampson and Nahhas.

In the 21 months between the ‘Abdin Incident and the First Cairo Conference, the once svelte young King of the late 1930s had begun to put on weight and indulge his appetites, both gastronomic and sexual, and had reached nearly 250 pounds. He had continued to feud with Nahhas, seeking to replace him, but unable to do so. Though Rommel had been stopped at El ‘Alamein, the British still suspected the King's real sympathies.

Meanwhile, Sir Miles Lampson's popularity in Egypt might be nil, Britain felt otherwise and had elevated him to the peerage as Lord Killearn. (One of those perhaps apocryphal stories that has to be told, even if untrue, claims that Noel Coward supposedly told Lord Killearn that "I understand that you are much more popular than your predecessor, Lampson.")

That brings us to November 1943. Now the King loved cars. Like some other royalty he loved fast cars. (King Ghazi of Iraq had died in a car accident in 1939 at age 29.) And Farouq loved red cars, so much so that he's reported to have banned importers from importing and selling red cars in Egypt except for the King. He had hundreds of cars at various times. All seem to have been red, though a Mercedes given to him for his 1938 wedding by Adolf Hitler seems to have started out black and been repainted a dark shade of red. (Even in his post-1952nEuropean exile, Farouq's cars would be red.)

Now back to our story. On November 15, 1943, the King decided to get out of Cairo and head to one of his other palaces, gathered some of his aides and cronies, and got one of his red Cadillacs ready, and headed out on the Cairo to Ismailia road. In open country the King was said to drive normally at least 80 mph, and along the way apparently became frustrated by finding himself stuck behind a British Army lorry (truck). apparently, the King decided to pass the truck on the two-lane road and, once in the other lane, saw oncoming traffic, and veered into the truck. (Or, if you prefer conspiracy theories, the whole thing was of course a British plot.) The car swerved off the road and hit a tree.

The King suffered two cracked ribs and a cracked pelvic bone. (There are stories the stretcher-bearers dropped the overweight King, which wouldn't have helped.) There was no concussion. Nothing life-threatening, but the pelvic injury would keep him off his feet.

An Egyptian Magazine Visits the Hospital

The nearest hospital was Military Hospital Number 6 at a British Army camp at nearby Qassasin. The King was treated by both British and Egyptian doctors; his weight seems to have been one obstacle to his being moved immediately to Cairo, but as the days went on, he seems to have been recovering well. For whatever reasons, however, the King decided he was going to enjoy a leisurely recovery in a military hospital rather than a Palace in Cairo. He was still there at the time of the First Cairo Conference; he was still there during the Second Cairo Conference; he only returned home December 7, three weeks after the accident. Why? He claimed, supposedly, he wanted to be sure he was in good shape. Some have suspected he wanted to stay well away from the Court (and perhaps his mother, Queen Nazli.) Perhaps he was even avoiding the Cairo Conferences?

This being the Middle East, the long delay fueled conspiracy theories. After the accident, the King's descent into obesity and libertinism continued, and though there was evidence of these before the accident, a theory emerged that either the pelvic accident or the British treatment had altered the King's hormonal balance and perhaps his mind in some way. The doctors said that wasn't possible, but conspiracy theories never need evidence, do they?

And that is where the King was during the Cairo Conference.

The Great Powers Gather at Mena House: 70 Years Since the First Cairo Conference, Part I

Chiang, FDR, Churchill, Madame Chiang in Cairo

Unless you spent the day in a coma or an alien solar system, you know that today was he 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. But this November 22 (late as this post is) marks another anniversary as well: November 22, 1943, 70 years ago, was the first day of the First Cairo Conference, the first in a string of three World War II summits one after the other, all involving Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill: First Cairo (Churchill, FDR, China's Chiang Kai-shek), Tehran (Churchill, FDR, Stalin), and Second Cairo (Churchill, FDR, and Turkish President İsmet İnönü). Though all were held in Middle Eastern cities, they were, like the Casablanca Conference earlier in the same year, in but largely not of the region or even about it.  Of the three, only the third actually addressed an issue substantively involving the Middle East (attempting to persuade İnönü to bring Turkey into the War on the Allied side).

As I did with the earlier summit in Casablanca, this will be the first of a number of posts about First Cairo, followed by discussions of the two subsequent conferences, over the couple of weeks to come. This first post sets the scene and context of the summit. Subsequent posts will deal with why King Farouq did not meet the foreign leaders (whereas FDR hosted a dinner for Sultan Muhammad V at Casablanca) (hint: Farouq was in the hospital, but that is a tale of its own worth retelling in the next post), followed by details of the proceedings, including FDR's hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for the attendees.

Meanwhile this post will introduce the setting, context, and dramatis personae.

The reasons for having three summits rather than one were diplomatic. With the invasion of Europe looming in 1944, Roosevelt had never yet met with Soviet Premier/General Secretary Stalin. Stalin had missed Casablanca because the Battle of Stalingrad was still under way. Roosevelt Churchill and their military staffs had also not held a full-scale conference on the strategy against Japan.

Meanwhile, after a mostly-forgotten border war in 1939 (known to Japan as Nomonhan and the Russians as Khalkhyn-gol) along the Russian-Manchurian-Mongolian border areas, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Japan at the time of the German invasion in 1941. Accordingly, unlike his British and American allies, Stalin was not at war with Japan. As a result, he chose not to attend the Cairo summit, mostly devoted to the war against Japan and including Chiang Kai-shek (Stalin was of course a supporter of the Chinese Communists, though they were in a truce with the Nationalists to fight the common Japanese enemy.). So it was decided to split the Cairo Conference (codenamed SEXTANT) from the one with Stalin in Tehran (EUREKA). first Cairo Conference ran from November 22-26; Tehran from November 28-December 1, and Second Cairo December 4-6. Roosevelt brought Ambassador Harriman, a trusted friend, down from Moscow to interpret Russian intentions. Russia sent no official delegate for the reasons stated, but its Assistant Foreign Minister Andrei Vishynsky was in town en route to Algiers to join an Allied commission on post-Mussolini Italy, and did take the opportunity to make courtesy calls on the principals.

The inclusion of Chiang was at Roosevelt's insistence. He was seeking to build up Chiang's image as an ally against Japan. Roosevelt was also much more determined to push the British to do more in the China-Burma-India ("CBI) Theater. Churchill was clearly unhappy (even in his memoirs after the war) with the American focus on Chiang. To Churchill, Britain's interests in Asia were the recovery of Hong Kong and Singapore (and Malaya) from Japan, and the protection of India (the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire) against Japanese invasion. To him, the war in Burma was to protect India; to the US, it was a bridge via the Burma Road to supply Chiang.  (Fortunately for both countries, the British had one of their very best generals in the war, William Slim, in Burma, though Churchill underestimated him).

You may note, above, that the photo above includes not only the three leaders but also, seated alongside them, Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling), while Eleanor Roosevelt and Clementine Churchill are not only not in evidence, but were back in Washington and London.

Only one person here speaks no English

Officially, she served as her husband's translator. She was definitely that: she spoke fluent, colloquial and American accented English (having spent some years in Macon, Georgia, it's said she had a pronounced Georgia accent, though she later attended Wellesley), while Chiang, even in his long years in American-protected exile on Taiwan, never bothered to learn any. Note, in the photo at right, that she is chatting up Churchill animatedly while Chiang is staring straight at the camera, perhaps unsure what's going on.

But she was much more. The three Soong sisters married well: one married H.H. Kung, the richest businessman in China; the other became the second wife of Sun Yat-sen, leader of the 1911 Chinese Revolution. The latter remained in China under Mao, rising to senior posts in the Communist Party (mostly for who she was), even while her sister was the First Lady of Taiwan.

While Chiang spoke no English, Madame Chiang was thoroughly Americanized. Raised a Christian in American Methodist missionary schools in China, she studied in the US from 1907 through her graduation from Wellesley in 1917. She was not just the interpreter of Chiang's words but of his ideas, and probably more. Many believed that Chiang, the military officer trained in military schools, speaking only Chinese and largely ignorant of the outside world, was protected by Mei-ling, who filtered out his more naive and ignorant notions from his conversations, Many Westerners were convinced she was the brains of the outfit. Madame Chiang lived until 2003, dying at the age of 105, outliving, well, most everybody (105!). The Soong sisters were formidable, and forgive this long aside, but that's why Madame Chiang is in the photo.

The Venue

Mena House Hotel

The primary venue of the Cairo Conference was the Mena House Hotel at the foot of and just across the road from the pyramids of Giza. It's one of the grand old colonial hotels, a longtime favorite of Churchill's, though he stayed in a private villa and only attended several sessions at the hotel on this trip. The Mena House is a grand old hotel in the British colonial manner, and still operating, though the Indian-owned  Oberoi chain which had run it for several decades ended its ownership in 2012. Currently undergoing renovation and run by Egypt, it is nevertheless still open, according to its website. Though they bill their Churchill Suite online as where he stayed during the Cairo Conference, he was sleeping in a private villa; perhaps he kept this suite for his own use during his private visits, or stayed there on his many other trips.

The View from Mena House

By the testimony of Churchill's own war memoirs, he stayed at a villa. Churchill had sailed from Plymouth in HMS Renown on November 12, not to return to Britain for nearly three months. He stopped in Algiers to meet with Eisenhower and British General Alexander, then sailed on to Malta, where he learned Roosevelt had proposed Khartoum instead of Cairo as less susceptible to air attack. Churchill was having none of that and considered Malta instead (overlooking that it was much more susceptible to air attack than Cairo?) He sailed from Malta on the 19th arrived in Alexandria November 21. From there he flew to "the desert landing ground near the pyramids," (presumably the Cairo West airfield, still a major Egyptian Air Base, and where FDR would land the next morning). He took up residence for the duration at a villa near the pyramids occupied by Richard Gardiner Casey, the British Minister of State Resident in the Middle East (not to be confused with the British Ambassador, Lord Killearn, until recently Sir Miles Lampson).

Chiang Kai-shek was already there. He had left his wartime capital at Chungking on November 18 and was already in  Cairo by the 21st, staying at a villa a half mile from Churchill's, though I'm unclear about his air route from Chungking to Cairo (obviously not nonstop) or in whose villa he stayed.

Roosevelt for his part sailed on November 13 from Hampton Roads (Norfolk), Virginia, on the new  USS Iowa, lead ship on a new US battleship class and only just commissioned earlier in 1943. (She was only finally decommissioned in 1990. She was the only battleship to have both a bathtub and an elevator aboard, both added specifically for FDR.  On the second day out there was a tricky moment during a submarine drill when an American destroyer, USS William D. Porter, mistakenly launched a torpedo towards the Iowa, which thankfully was able to outmaneuver the torpedo. Almost accidentally sinking the Navy's newest battleship would be bad enough; at least at the time the escort ships did not yet know that the President was aboard. That didn't last long: for the first time (Note in US Navy history, the entire officers and crew of the  Porter were placed under arrest).

Having survived what may be the ultimate "oops" moment, the Iowa sailed on while the Porter crew were hauled off to Bermuda. On November 20, Iowa arrived at Mers el-Kebir, the naval base at Oran in Algeria. Roosevelt then flew on in his favorite C-54 (military version of the DC-3), dubbed the "Sacred Cow," to Tunis, where he met with his sons Elliot and FDR Jr., serving in the theater, and toured the Tunisian battlefields.

Then the President flew on to Cairo. The second plane in the President's party arrived at Cairo West some two and a half hours before the President's plane (which the official log shows as landing at 9:35 AM). Two groups of fighter escorts scheduled to accompany the plane never saw it, and there was obviously conceen about the President's safety. In fact the :President's plane had dropped southward to around 28 degeees of latitude, intercepting the Nile well south of Cairo, and finally following the Nile Valley northward, bringing the President in right over the pyramids and Sphinx.

Roosevelt's villa belonged to the then US Ambassador to Cairo, Alexander C. Kirk, known for his elegance of style, rich taste in interior decorating, but not apparently for his diplomatic skills. Egypt was not a major US interest.

We now have the dramatis personae assembled.  Enjoy your weekend and we'll tell more stories on Monday.