Chapter 16 Summary

Beginning January 9, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt spent about a month in Casablanca with Winston Churchill. Their talks and meeting were top secret.

During that winter, the battle of Stalingrad was raging in Russia. Over a million Russians lost their lives during this period, but the Russians managed not only to hang on, but to cut the German Army in two. They trapped nearly 300,000 German soldiers without food or supplies. Josef Stalin was reminding Roosevelt and Churchill that the Russians were enduring greater casualties than Britain and the United States. He wanted them to open a second front in Europe.

The British wanted to invade Sicily instead of France in 1943. Roosevelt was sympathetic to Stalin's request that the allies needed to divert the Germans from Russia, but he believed a cross-channel attack was still too risky. He agreed on Churchill's plan to invade Sicily. They also...