William D. Leahy on Franklin D. Roosevelt

“On Monday, July 6, 1942, the President telephoned to my little office in the State Department Building and asked that I come over at noon for a conference. We talked for a half hour. He had made up his mind. He wanted me to serve on his staff as a military and naval adviser to the Commander-in-Chief. He did most of the talking- he always did.”

“I did not see the President again until July 18. That morning he informed me that he had directed the Secretary of the Navy to recall me to active duty as "Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." That same day I submitted my resignation as Ambassador to France. The President announced my new appointment on July 21. I was not present. There was a barrage of questions from the newsmen as to the scope of my authority and activities. The President was cagey, as he always was in dealing with the newsmen, and did not tell them very much. He said that I would be a sort of "leg man" who would help him digest, analyze, and summarize a mass of material with which he had been trying to cope singlehandedly. There was considerable pressure at that time for the naming of a supreme commander of all the American forces. Asked if I was to be that commander, the President replied that he still was the Commander-in-Chief. And he was. Asked what kind of staff his military adviser would assemble, he replied that he did not have "the foggiest idea." Actually, at no time did my staff number more than two aides and two or three civilian secretaries. Someone suggested I should have a public relations man. To me such an officer could only have been a nuisance! Since I was representing the President at all times, I felt that any talking should be done by Mr. Roosevelt. He was much better at that than I was, anyway.”