The Last Lion

by William Manchester

  In late June, an RAF reconnaissance flight over Peenemünde, on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, had photographed a rocket that the Germans had failed to camouflage. With that, Duncan Sandys and Churchill finally knew what manner of vehicle Hitler was building on the Baltic coast, though they lacked any knowledge of weight, speed, propellant, and explosive capacity. On the night of August 17, more than five hundred British heavy bombers hit Peenemünde. The RAF sought to destroy not only the laboratories and test facilities but also the housing where engineers and technicians and thousands of slave laborers lived. Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer, had approved the transfer of slave laborers, mostly Poles and Russians, to work at the site after the director of the rocket program, a boyish-looking thirty-one-year-old aeronautics engineer and rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun, argued that if the supply of workers could not be maintained, neither could the rocket program (code-named A-4). The RAF raid killed one scientist and several hundred slave laborers. Speer and von Braun soon scattered A-4 research and production facilities throughout Germany, including far under the Hartz mountains. Engineering tests on the A-4 continued at Peenemünde, and on a simpler flying bomb, essentially a small pilotless jet aircraft. This weapon was code-named Flakzielgert 76 (Anti-Aircraft Target Device 76) to throw British intelligence off the scent. Once the engineering bugs were worked out, they were to be produced at the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben, near Hamburg. Hitler was so enthused about his new weapons, and so impressed with young von Braun, that he ordered Speer to find a way to make the young scientist a full professor. Meanwhile, at Peenemünde, the Germans did not clear away the rubble from the RAF raid, presuming that RAF reconnaissance flights would conclude from the damage that Peenemünde had been abandoned. The British did exactly that, and did not return for nine months. By then von Braun’s rockets were almost ready for deployment.243

  As Quadrant wound down, Brooke took delight in recording Mountbatten’s most inglorious moment, after Dickie finally persuaded the CIGS to allow a demonstration of Habakkuk, the ice aircraft carriers, for the Combined Chiefs. To illustrate the efficacy of the idea, Mountbatten had two large blocks of ice delivered to a conference room, where an emotional discussion had just taken place between the American and British chiefs. Mountbatten explained to the conferees that one block was ordinary ice and the other was called Pykrete, fabricated by strengthening the ice with a specially treated wood pulp mixture. Then Dickie unholstered his revolver and shot the first block, which, as expected, shattered, as did the composure of the men seated at the table. Then Mountbatten proclaimed, “I shall fire at the [other] block to show you the difference.” The difference was that the second block was bulletproof. Mountbatten’s shot ricocheted off and around the room, barely missing Portal and Ernest King. Outside, a group of junior officers heard the shots. “Good god,” one exclaimed, “they’ve started shooting now.” No ice fleet ever sailed.244

  As the Combined Chiefs scraped their way through the agenda—it was really mostly about Overlord, with a detour to Burma—Churchill and Roosevelt followed Eisenhower’s progress on the Italian surrender. This was the first conference attended by the senior diplomatic players—Eden, Cadogan, and Hull arrived on August 18—and the first one that assumed a duality of purpose, military and political. On the diplomatic front, Roosevelt insisted that Eisenhower conduct all negotiations with the Italians, while Churchill argued that politicians handle political matters. There was a further complication: Roosevelt loathed King Victor Emmanuel and Marshal Badoglio for their long and loyal support of Mussolini. Churchill, however, had told Roosevelt two weeks earlier that he’d do business with “anybody who could deliver the goods.” Roosevelt had no love for European constitutional monarchies and preferred, as had Woodrow Wilson, to remake Europe in a republican image. Churchill believed that had the victors in the Great War fished a Hohenzollern or Hapsburg heir out of oblivion and put him back on the German or Austrian throne to lead a constitutional monarchy, there would have been no Hitler. Churchill believed in kings, and Victor Emmanuel was a king. He was also the only player in the game; there simply were no republicans in authority in Rome for Roosevelt to deal with. Along with his antipathy toward royalty, Roosevelt harbored a justified distrust of Badoglio. Churchill, too, distrusted the Italian general and expected a double cross, but a double cross of Hitler, he told Roosevelt, not of the Allies.245

  As Churchill and Roosevelt mulled over the terms of Italian surrender, neither thought to bring either Stalin or the Free French into the discussions. The two leaders kept Stalin informed of developments but assumed he sought no role in furthering them. The French were simply ignored, not surprisingly given Roosevelt’s and Hull’s disdain for de Gaulle, but ironic given that Roosevelt’s most listened-to broadcast of 1940 had been his “dagger in the back” condemnation of the Italian invasion of France. France had vital territorial issues to settle with Italy. Yet Hull—Alec Cadogan called him an “old lady”—refused to even recognize the French Committee of National Liberation. That week the British chose to recognize the FCNL as a legitimate organization in North Africa but not as the presumed provisional government once France was liberated. It was a start. The Americans chose only to “acknowledge” the Gaullists.246

  The assumption that Stalin sought only updates on events unfolding in Italy was proven wrong in a telegram that arrived on August 22 in which Stalin protested (with his usual bluntness) Soviet exclusion from the Italian surrender: “To date it has been like this,” Stalin wrote, “the U.S.A. and Britain reach agreement between themselves, while the U.S.S.R. is informed of the agreement…. I must say that this situation cannot be tolerated any longer.” Churchill thought the message “rude,” and fired off a cable to Stalin that, to Eden’s horror, included the line “I am entirely unmoved by your statement.” The Old Man and Roosevelt, who was “alarmed” at Stalin’s tone, summoned Alec Cadogan, who, after reading the telegram, concluded that Stalin had made a fair point, albeit with his usual rudeness. Anthony Eden solved the problem when he advised that bringing Stalin into the picture now might pay dividends down the road when Stalin wielded the same leverage in Eastern Europe that the Anglo-Americans now wielded in Italy. Welcome Stalin into the Italian negotiations, Eden argued, and a precedent would be set that might prove useful when the Red Army struck out beyond Russian borders and into the Baltics, Romania, and Poland. Churchill agreed with Eden’s logic but doubted Stalin would abide by any understanding. He predicted “bloody consequences in the future…. Stalin is an unnatural man. There will be grave trouble.”247

  To Harriman, Churchill meant “bloody” in the literal sense. A few weeks later, with such Soviet mischief in mind, Churchill asked the British Chiefs of Staff to draw up a plan to counter a Moscow-backed Communist coup d’état in Greece in the event of a German withdrawal, which Churchill sought to hasten by invading Rhodes and some of the Dodecanese Islands (occupied by Italy since 1912) as soon as Italy surrendered. Churchill saw an impending vacuum in Greece, and he intended to fill it before Moscow nosed onto the scene. His concern stemmed from reports that the two Greek partisan groups—the large and Communist People’s National Liberation Army (ELAS), and the small and democratic National Democratic Greek Army (EDES)—were fighting each other with weapons supplied by the Special Operations Executive. Both sides despised King George II of the Hellenes, whom Churchill sought to restore to his throne. Churchill instructed the chiefs to arrange for at least five thousand “troops with armoured cars and Bren guns” to be held ready for a drive into Athens in order to support “the restoration of lawful Greek government.” His timing was off by more than a year, but his instinct regarding Stalin’s ambitions was prescient. The Soviet leader’s bearishness grew with every mile the Red Army gained.248

  Stalin’s inadvertent exclusion from the Italian negotiations drove home the need for the Big Three to meet, not necessarily in Roosevelt’s estimation to parse strictly military matters, but to address questi
ons that pertained to the postwar world. Roosevelt, confident that victory against Hitler was not only inevitable but would come within a year (although he thought the Japanese might hold out until 1946 or 1947), had delegated military decisions to his military and turned his attention to winning the peace. Hopkins that month wrote Winant that the Russian offensive, “together with our increased bombing of Germany, is going to make it tough on Hitler and I do not see how he can stand it for more than another eight months.” That was the exact amount of time General Carl Spaatz believed it would take for his strategic air forces to put Hitler on the ropes, followed by surrender a few months later. This belief was shared by Bomber Harris. Were Hopkins and Spaatz to be proven correct, the collapse of Germany would take place sometime around May 1944, thereby rendering Overlord unnecessary. An American senator, Sheridan Downey of California, was even more optimistic, predicting that ten big bombing raids per month would finish off Germany by February. Roosevelt and Hopkins hedged their bets in public, but it was time, Roosevelt believed, to find the diplomatic means by which the military alliance known as the United Nations emerged from the war as an international body with muscle, its backbone formed by the Four Powers—America, Britain, China, and Russia. It was time to initiate a dialogue with Stalin on the postwar world, a world that might be only a year distant.249

  Churchill and Eden believed it premature to bring such an agenda to any meeting with Stalin, but they told Roosevelt that they would bring up the matter of a postwar league with the War Cabinet (including Chinese participation if, Churchill offered over dinner, “they become a nation”). Stalin had only two items on his agenda, Eden argued: “the second front and [Russia’s] western frontiers.” The question of borders, by implication, also went to the question of Germany’s postwar borders, that is, the question of how thoroughly to dismember Germany. Since there would be no second front that year, and since boundaries were not to be addressed until victory was won, a meeting of foreign ministers now, Eden argued, “would almost certainly do more harm than good.” Still, the need for the three Big Boys (as anointed by Cadogan) to meet was self-evident, especially as there would be no second front that year. An invitation was dispatched to Moscow. Anchorage, London, and Scapa Flow were suggested as venues for the foreign ministers and, soon thereafter, the Big Three. As Quadrant played out, Stalin agreed to a meeting late in the year, insisting that the foreign ministers meet first in order to set an agenda for the three leaders to follow at their meeting. He suggested the preliminary meeting take place in Moscow, with the Big Three meeting either there or in Tehran. Churchill lobbied for London; he after all had made one trip to Moscow and was now nearing the end of his fourth journey to Washington. The discussion of possible sites dragged on for almost three weeks, until Roosevelt finally agreed to Stalin’s proposal of Moscow for the foreign ministers. Churchill, his proposal of London snubbed, could only acquiesce. The diminishment of British influence within the alliance now troubled Eden, who thought Roosevelt was bowling them a fast one: “I am most anxious for good relations with the U.S. but I don’t like subservience to them…. We are giving the impression, which they are only too ready by nature to endorse, that militarily all the achievements are theirs.”250

  Eden made that diary entry on September 10, and added, “W., by prolonging his stay in Washington, strengthens [the] assumption” of British subservience. Quadrant had ended on August 24. Most of the staff departed for London and Washington the next day, by train, plane, and ship. The chiefs, Ismay, Eden, Cadogan, Churchill, his secretaries, and his family stayed on for a six-day fishing vacation in the Quebec wilderness. Churchill took his rest on the shores of Lac des Neiges, Eden and his people at Lac Jacques-Cartier, about an hour’s drive from Churchill’s lodge and three thousand feet up in the Laurentian Mountains. When Eden stopped by Churchill’s camp on August 27 to say his good-byes before departing for London, Moran told him the P.M. was tired and unable to shake off troubles known only to himself. Eden found Churchill in his bath, not looking “at all well and was of a bad colour.” When Churchill expressed a desire to extend his holiday in the mountains, Eden advised him to do so. Then, splashing about in his bath, Churchill said, “I don’t know what I should do if I lost you all. I’d have to cut my throat. It isn’t just love, though there is much of that in it, but you are my war machine. Brookie, Portal, you and Dickie, I simply couldn’t replace you.”251

  The respite by the lake was just what the doctor ordered, or would have ordered had anyone, including Moran, been able to give orders to Churchill. Log fires burned in the great stone fireplace. Bears and wolves were said to lurk nearby. By day Churchill fished for trout from a canoe, all the while “laying down the law about the fisherman’s art” to Moran, who hooked nary a fish. Loons—“divers” to the British—drifted and dunked and cried far out on the lake. Late in the evenings Churchill strolled out to the end of a pier to take in the northern lights. Grilled trout was served up for lunches and dinners; the party accounted for a depletion of the local trout population in excess of three hundred. Clementine, “too overtired for enjoyment,” took herself back to Quebec after one day. Her “nervous state,” Mary later wrote, resulted in “perplexity and worry” out of all proportion to events. Not so Churchill. The rest worked wonders. By August 29 he was back “in terrific form,” Cadogan wrote, “singing Don Leno songs and other favorites of the halls of forty years ago, together with the latest Noel Coward.” All the brass but Cadogan, Ismay, and Dudley Pound, who had been troubled by excruciating headaches and was too ill to fly, left by August 29.252

  Pound, who Brooke for months had criticized in his diary for falling asleep during meetings, in fact was host to an undetected brain tumor and had suffered a minor stroke. His wife of more than three decades had died a month earlier, but he still took himself off to Quebec. When he complained to Churchill of headaches and numbness in his legs, the Old Man insisted he join him aboard Renown for the trip to England. On September 1, Churchill, and his now much reduced party, returned to Quebec City. There, joined by Clementine and Mary, he entrained for Washington. His holiday had only just begun. “This quiet life is doing him good,” Moran wrote, “but he feels like he is playing truant.”253

  He was. By September 10, Churchill’s subordinates agreed with Moran’s assessment, including Eden, who told his diary that he found himself depressed and not feeling well, “partly, I think, because of exasperating difficulty of trying to do business with Winston over the Atlantic.” Brooke, too, noted Churchill’s absence. After attending a cabinet meeting chaired by Attlee, the CIGS wrote that although the meeting was conducted with greater efficiency than Churchill brought to the table, it was a “cabinet without a head.” Indeed, Brooke, who was always willing to denigrate Churchill in his diary, took a far softer position during Churchill’s long vacation. After delineating Churchill’s contradictions and failings—“the most marvelous qualities of superhuman genius mixed with an astonishing lack of vision at times”—Brooke (still smarting from losing command of Overlord) wrote that although Churchill “is quite the most difficult man to work with… I should not have missed the chance of working with him for anything on earth.”254

  Much transpired in the Mediterranean during Churchill’s therapeutic truancy. The Italians surrendered (secretly and unconditionally) on September 3, although thirteen conditions were attached to the “unconditional” surrender, including the transfer of the Italian fleet to the Allies. And that day, two divisions of the Eighth Army crossed the Straits of Messina and landed near Reggio, in Calabria, on the toe of the foot of Italy. It was a tentative foray. Montgomery, denied the landing craft he needed to put more forces on the heel of Italy, or to swing around to the Adriatic coast, could only hold his toehold. Eisenhower hoarded the landing craft for use in Avalanche, the planned seizure of Salerno by the Fifth Army, scheduled for September 8 and 9. In support of that operation, Eisenhower planned to drop the 82nd Airborne Division near Rome to secure the airfields.
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  This was not the bold strategy of striking into northern Italy favored by Smuts and expressed in his July letter to Churchill. In fact, Mark Clark, in command of the Salerno forces, had argued for a landing north of Naples, but Air Marshal Tedder and Admiral Cunningham were hesitant to send their airships and warships too far afield in support of ground troops, and Eisenhower was loath to send his ground forces beyond his aerial and naval umbrellas. Thus, by caution and default, Salerno became the target. And thus, the Eighth Army, the most seasoned force in the Allied camp, was relegated to a supporting role some two hundred miles south of the main event at Salerno. Montgomery, in his memoirs, wrote with his usual directness of the entire strategy: “If the planning and conduct of the campaign in Sicily were bad, the preparations for the invasion of Italy and the subsequent conduct of the campaign in that country were worse still.”255

  Churchill arrived at the same conclusion the previous week after one of Alexander’s staff officers reported that the full complement of twelve Allied divisions would not be ashore in Italy until December 1, and worse, ashore only near Naples. The problem as Churchill saw it was that any delay in getting to Rome would only give Kesselring time to throw in more troops of his own. “The lateness of this forecast,” Brooke jotted in his diary, “has sent him [Churchill] quite mad.”256

  The race to Rome was on. But with eight German divisions stationed in northern Italy under Rommel, and eight more to the south under Kesselring, including two near Rome, the Allies stood little chance of grabbing the Eternal City unless they moved with dispatch and landed somewhere near Rome, where five Italian divisions were poised to join the Allies. But Eisenhower’s caution gave Kesselring the time he needed to convert south-central Italy into a fortress. Eisenhower now saw his error in not having landed at Calabria in July as part of Operation Husky, thus cutting off Sicily and capturing the troops trapped there. “History would call it [my] mistake,” he told Commander Butcher. Had he pursued that strategy, his armies might now be moving north through Italy, but as it was, “a quick collapse of Italy has disappeared into uncertainty.” This was due in part, Butcher wrote, to the limitation imposed upon Eisenhower by the insistence of Churchill and Roosevelt on unconditional surrender. Yet, in fairness to the self-critical Eisenhower (who, exhausted, spent three days in the infirmary under his doctor’s care), neither the Allied air forces nor navies had wanted anything to do with heavy operations over or within the Messina Straits. All of this came as a great relief to Kesselring, who later wrote, “A secondary attack on Calabria would have enabled the Sicily landing to be developed into an overwhelming Allied victory.”257