The Last Lion

by William Manchester

  Mikołajczyk never returned to Moscow in search of an agreement. Instead, unwilling to agree to any settlement before the peace conference (the same stance Churchill had taken early in the war), he resigned from the Polish government in late November, handing over the reins to the moderate voice of Polish socialism, Tomasz Arciszewski. Arciszewski then reconstituted the London Poles, Churchill told the House, “in a form that in some respects I certainly am not able to applaud.” Had Mikołajczyk reached a settlement with Stalin, Churchill added, “he would be at this moment at the head of a Polish Government, on Polish soil, recognized by all the United Nations, and awaiting the advance of the Russian Armies moving farther into Poland as the country was delivered from the Germans.” He pressed the point—and the rebuke—further: “If the Polish Government had agreed, in the early part of this year, upon the frontier there never would have been any Lublin Committee to which Soviet Russia had committed herself, so I now say that if Mr. Mikolajczyk could swiftly have returned to Moscow early in November… to conclude an agreement on the frontier line, Poland might now have taken her full place in the ranks of the nations contending against Germany, and would have had the full support and friendship of Marshal Stalin and the Soviet Government.” Churchill’s message was clear: the London Poles had done nothing, and now all of Poland would face the consequences.69

  Stalin had told Churchill during their meetings that he personally favored recognition of de Gaulle and the FCNL but had not stated so publicly for fear of introducing division into the ranks of the Big Three. Churchill sent a telegram to Roosevelt on October 14 in which he proposed the recognition of de Gaulle’s provisional government. France was cleared of Germans, he told the president, and de Gaulle was firmly in charge of civil matters. It had been Eden who brought Churchill along slowly to this day. The foreign secretary later wrote: “No one was wiser than Mr. Churchill in giving weight to arguments which he had resisted at the time if, on later reflection, he judged them sound.” Hull had likewise advised Roosevelt that a failure to recognize de Gaulle would reflect badly on the United States if Russia and Britain did so. Roosevelt’s turnaround came so fast that when Churchill arrived back in London on October 22, he learned that the Americans had announced their recognition of the FCNL the day before, even before official notification from Roosevelt arrived in London.70

  This meant that Duff Cooper served now as ambassador to the government of France, not simply as representative to the FCNL. When Churchill visited de Gaulle in Paris on November 10, his host was no longer simply le général, but l’état. The next day, the twenty-sixth anniversary of the armistice, Churchill and de Gaulle laid a wreath to the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe and then, swept along by a crowd of hundreds of thousands of ecstatic Frenchmen, marched side by side down the Champs-Élysées. The crowd, Cadogan recorded in his diary, chanted “Chur-chill, Chur-chill” the entire time, the P.M. grinning and waving wildly all the while. When Churchill laid a bouquet at the foot of Clemenceau’s statue, the military band struck up, on de Gaulle’s orders, “Le Père la Victoire” (“Father Victory”). De Gaulle leaned into Churchill, and said, in English, “For you.” “And it was only justice,” de Gaulle wrote in his memoirs.71

  Over dinner at the Hôtel de Ville—the Paris city hall—de Gaulle asked Churchill what had struck him the most during the day’s events. Churchill responded, “Your unanimity.” Still, despite the amity attached to the occasion, de Gaulle made absolutely clear to Churchill that France sought—and deserved—a role in the occupation of Germany and that although he appreciated an Anglo-American-Soviet invitation to sit on the European Advisory Commission, which would plan Germany’s postwar fate, it was only a first step. De Gaulle demanded that France become a “full associate” in managing the peace. Churchill agreed, and told Roosevelt so in a telegram on November 16. Roosevelt’s reply was lukewarm at best—Eden called it “snarky to the French, and generally arrogant and aloof.” The president proposed putting off any talk of French involvement until the next meeting of the Big Three. He added a familiar refrain that could only disturb Churchill, and did: “You know, of course, that after Germany collapses I must bring American troops home as rapidly as transportation problems permit.”72

  Roosevelt intended to bring the troops home in order to speed them by rail across the country so that they could make ready to embark from the American West Coast for the invasion of Japan, where all within the U.S. military expected American casualties to exceed one million. The president’s vision extended to the distant Pacific, to the enemy that drove America into this war. Churchill and Eden gazed across the Channel, as Englishmen had for centuries. They saw that Roosevelt’s decision would leave in Europe an undermanned and ill-equipped French army of barely eight divisions, an exhausted British army, and the Red Army.

  By late fall, Churchill’s attention turned to Greece, where in early December civil war again ignited. Communist ELAS paramilitary forces had taken over half the police stations in Athens and attacked the British embassy; their political arm, the EAM, had walked out of Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou’s royal government. At issue, as Eden saw it, was the necessity of bringing the Greeks around to settling their differences “through the ballot box, and not by the bomb.” Eden pressed King George of the Hellenes to agree to a regency under the Greek Orthodox archbishop Damaskinos, in order to take the wind out of the EAM sails. Churchill, who knew that the Germans had allowed Damaskinos to perform his duties in the See of Athens, where the late dictator Ioannis Metaxas had not, believed the archbishop was “both a quisling and a Communist.” Cadogan quipped that the archbishop was Churchill’s “new de Gaulle.” Churchill refused to press the Greek king on the matter, telling the cabinet, “I won’t install a dictator [Damaskinos]—a dictator of the left.” Under no pressure from Churchill to do otherwise, King George persisted in refusing a regency, claiming the appointment of a regent would signal the Greek people that he had abandoned them. At least two dozen civilians were killed when demonstrations erupted in Athens in early December. There, Lieutenant General Ronald Scobie and five thousand British troops found themselves on the verge of going to war against the Greek Communists.73

  On December 5, Churchill cabled Scobie with orders to open fire if need be to restore order. One sentence in the cable soon brought trouble: “Do not however hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.” “Occupied” would have been a far better word choice, but Churchill was on the warpath, sustained by his belief that the 30,000 British casualties suffered in the defense of Greece in 1941 justified a return to Greece; indeed, he believed that the Greek people had appreciated the British effort then, and desired it now. As well, Churchill had paid a goodly price in Moscow for influence over Greek affairs, and he intended to keep the bargain he had reached with Stalin. He advised Scobie to handle the situation without bloodshed if possible, “but also with bloodshed if necessary.” Churchill told Roosevelt that he knew little of Damaskinos, but that British officials in Athens believed the archbishop “might stop a gap or bridge a gully.” Had Churchill tended to his boxes—three “hopelessly overcrowded” boxes by then, Colville noted—he would have known that the archbishop was the best choice if the goal was to bring the warring parties in Greece to the conference table. The difficulty with taking a hard—military—stance in Greece, as Eden saw it, lay in the possibility that world opinion would hold that British troops were trying not to restore order, but rather to restore the king at the point of a gun.74

  American opinion on the matter soon arrived by way of the new U.S. secretary of state, Edward Stettinius, and the American columnist Drew Pearson. Stettinius had taken over on December 1 from a very tired Cordell Hull, who had served in his office for almost twelve years, the longest term of any American secretary of state. Stettinius, upon assuming his post, issued a statement that strongly implied that British actions in Italy and Greece were nothing more than imperial interference in the
affairs of allied states. This was insult enough, but someone at either the State Department or the White House leaked to Pearson Churchill’s “shoot to kill” cable to Scobie. Pearson ran with it in the Washington Post, thus raising again the question of whether American boys were dying for opportunistic British imperialism. Churchill was “incensed,” Colville wrote, that his private communication should find its way into the American press. It appears that Pearson came into possession of the cable because a very tired Jock Colville, who composed the telegram to Scobie at 4:00 A.M. on December 5, forgot to mark it “Guard,” which would have signified that the cable was not intended for American eyes. Instead, it was routed through American military and diplomatic channels, and finally to Pearson. Colville confessed his omission to the Old Man, who very “kindly” told the young secretary “that it was his [Churchill’s] fault for keeping me up so late.”75

  The Times, New Statesman, the solidly leftist Manchester Guardian, and the Labour Party joined Pearson in fits of indignation, criticism that Cadogan called “swill” and “dishonest and libelous trash.” Aneurin Bevan and the more rebellious Labour MPs “see a heaven sent opportunity,” Colville wrote. Churchill’s intervention in Greece brought on a vote of confidence on December 8. During the House debate, Churchill slashed away at those who faulted his policy, including the U.S. State Department and Franklin Roosevelt. Proclaiming his resolve to proceed in Greece, he announced: “I say we march along an onerous and painful path. Poor old “England! Perhaps I ought to say ‘Poor old Britain.’ ” This was a direct jab at Roosevelt, who insisted—for fear of offending Scots, Welshmen, and the Northern Irish—that U.S. government communications never refer to “England,” only “Britain.” Churchill pushed on, again with America in mind: “We have to assume the burden of most thankless tasks and in undertaking them to be scoffed at, criticized and opposed from every quarter; but at least we know where we are making for, know the end of the road, know what is our objective.” The objective—in Greece, Italy, every place the Nazis had occupied—was democracy. He told the House that British troops in Athens were there not to impose democracy but to safeguard the right of Greeks to make their choice—be it democracy, socialism, constitutional monarchy, even communism—in secret, without fear, at the ballot box. “Democracy,” he offered, “is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun.”76

  Churchill won the vote of confidence by a margin of 279–30. Two days later, he sent a note to Harry Hopkins in which he wrote, “I hope you can tell our friend” that law and order in Athens is “essential” and a condition for any talks with the warring parties there. Churchill also told Hopkins: “I consider we have a right to the president’s support in the policy we are following.” He did not get that support, at least not in public. Instead, on December 11, Roosevelt sent a telegram in which he told Churchill, “As anxious as I am to be of the greatest help to you in this trying situation, there are limitations imposed… by the mounting adverse reaction of public opinion in this country.”77

  By mid-December, all armies on the Western Front, German and Allied, were refitting in anticipation of an Allied thrust to the Rhine within weeks. Five mostly green American divisions held the heavily wooded and hilly Ardennes sector of the front, where General Omar Bradley considered any German attack “only a remote possibility.” On December 15, Field Marshal Montgomery told reporters that the Germans were incapable of staging “any major offensive operation.” The following day, ten panzer divisions and fourteen infantry divisions appeared as if by sleight of hand in front of the Americans in the Ardennes sector. The surprise was complete, the German buildup having been conducted under strict radio silence. The skies were threatening, perfect cover for the Germans, and inhospitable for Allied fliers. Within days, the German salient—the bulge in the lines—extended almost to the Meuse at Dinant. The vital port of Antwerp was the German objective. All in the West followed the battle, anointed the Battle of the Bulge. The German successes of December 16–24 “were enormous shocks to the public,” Mollie Panter-Downes wrote, adding that most Britons, who had believed this would be the last Christmas of the war, now believed they were in for “at least another year of fighting.” One Englishman did not. Churchill, believing the Germans had made a fatal error by attacking the Ardennes rather than girding their defenses on the Rhine, told the cabinet, “I think this battle is more likely to shorten the war than to prolong it.”78

  By Christmas Eve, secure in the ultimate outcome of the Battle of the Bulge, Churchill turned his attention to Greece. Chequers had been prettified for what should have been a peaceful family Christmas. The great fir was up, sent as a gift by the American public for the second year in a row. Little Winston, now four, anticipated much in the way of sweets and cakes. Mary believed she knew what her papa would bestow on her in the way of a Christmas gift. She loved horses. Each Christmas, she recalled, her father gave her “generous cheques towards my post-war wish for a hunter, usually accompanied by a drawing.” Her father “was quite difficult to give presents to from a family point of view, as there was so much competition!” On his birthdays, Mary always gave her father a carnation for his buttonhole. Clementine liked to give him velvet slippers with his monogram, or perhaps an “evening” siren suit in velvet. And to his children Churchill always gave copies of his books upon publication.

  On this Christmas Eve, Churchill gave his family something entirely unexpected; after pondering the Greek crisis all day, he ordered his new C-54 (a gift of General Arnold) readied and, after informing—but by no means consulting with—his War Cabinet, left Chequers after dinner in order to take charge of events in Athens. To accompany him on the journey, the Old Man shanghaied Jock Colville, two female typists, his doctor, Lord Moran, and Anthony Eden. “Hell,” Eden told his diary before departing, “I was looking forward to a quiet family Christmas.” So began Churchill’s strangest odyssey of the war.79

  Brooke committed his thoughts on the matter to his diary: “Winston has done a spectacular rush to Greece, to try and disentangle the mess…. And what are we to get out of it all? As far as I can see, absolutely nothing!” The British would have to withdraw sooner or later, Brooke wrote, and Greece “will become as communistic as her close neighbors consider desirable.” Brooke had weeks earlier predicted that Churchill would ultimately shift 80,000 men to Greece. That week, when the remainder of the 49th Division was ordered to Greece, British forces there numbered close to 80,000. They were fighting Greeks, who months earlier had been fighting Germans. Brooke needed those troops in Italy, where the campaign had stalled at the Gothic Line just north of Pisa and Florence, and sixty miles south of the Po River. The Po was Alexander’s and Clark’s objective. Sixty miles, a distance Hitler’s panzers once advanced in a day early in the war, a distance Montgomery advanced in the first two days following his victory at El Alamein. It had been almost fifteen months since Anglo-American forces landed in Salerno. Those forces had needed nine months to advance 150 miles to Rome, and in the six months since, had crawled only another 150 miles. Fifteen months, 450 days, three hundred miles, an average advance of less than three-quarters of a mile per day. And now the prime minister was off to Greece. “Meanwhile,” the CIGS told his diary, “the campaign in Italy stagnates.”80

  The overnight flight, with a refueling stop in Naples, brought Churchill into Athens early on Christmas afternoon. Machine-gun fire could be heard throughout the city. British Beaufighters circled overhead, in search of ELAS positions to strafe with cannons and rockets. General Alexander had come in from Italy; Harold Macmillan, HMG’s resident minister in the Mediterranean, was also on hand. Churchill and Eden met them on board the aircraft for a two-hour discussion, during which Churchill’s position on King George of the Hellenes began to shift under the guidance of Macmillan and Eden, who suggested convening a conference of all Greek parties, chaired not by Papandreou but by Archbishop Damaskinos. It was likely that the ELAS would boycott any other arrangement. The Britis
h embassy was without heat and often without electricity; the weather had turned bitterly cold, so from the airport the party traveled down to the harbor in armored cars and boarded HMS Ajax, which offered relative safety. Sleep for the weary was not to be had, Colville noted, because gun battles continued on the mainland, and depth charges were detonated at random intervals to discourage any underwater assault on Ajax. Shortly after dusk, Papandreou and the archbishop boarded Ajax to meet—separately—with Churchill. The visitors were greeted by the ship’s company singing a robust version of “The First Noel.” Events almost took an unfortunate turn. It is a tradition in the Royal Navy for tars to dress up in silly costumes on Christmas Day and then to spring silly pranks on their crewmates. When crew members spied a tall, bearded man walking up the gangway, dressed in ecclesiastical robes and carrying a long black staff, they presumed he was one of their own and made ready. Fortunately, Ajax’s commanding officer intervened, and Damaskinos was escorted to a stateroom without incident.81