by Walter Reid
Of course, on many occasions Churchill stated that the ‘dehousing’ of the German civilian population, with its expected effect on morale, was official policy. It was the only offensive operation on which Britain could embark at the time: Churchill’s insistence on an offensive policy was not some sort of character defect. In a letter to Beaverbrook, then Minister of Aircraft Production, in July 1940, Churchill reviewed all that Hitler could do and all that Britain could not do: ‘But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country on the Nazi homeland’.4 He had to demonstrate that Britain was fighting an offensive war – partly to convince America that her prospective ally was not moribund and defeated. But much more importantly, Stalin had to be shown that Britain was contributing significantly to a war which otherwise Russia would have been fighting alone. It is highly significant that after his 1942 meeting with Stalin Churchill reported to FDR: ‘We then passed to the ruthless bombing of Germany, which gave general satisfaction … I made it clear that this was one of our leading military objectives.’5
There were battles between Churchill and the Chiefs over the bombing issue in July and August 1942. Attlee was opposed to the strategy of strategic bombing, and Wavell, Auchinleck and others also criticised the emphasis on using bombers in Germany as opposed to other theatres. They could certainly point to weaknesses in bombing tactics: a committee of inquiry in May 1942 found that less than a quarter of bombs fell within five miles of their targets, and only 30 per cent even managed to find built-up areas.6 Indeed, in 1941 Bomber Command casualties exceeded German casualties in bombing raids.7 The Americans’ strategic bombing was much more precise, making use of the Norden bombsight which they refused to pass on to the United Kingdom. The concept of area bombing of German towns originated with Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, and Sir Arthur Harris, Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command from February 1942. They were supported by Cherwell, whose paper of March 1942 suggested that bombing could make a third of the German population homeless, thus destroying her will to fight. But Churchill was a reluctant bomber, and not a doctrinaire one. He was not as convinced as Cherwell of the merits of bombing. He did it because there was not yet any other obvious way to strike at Germany.
Furthermore Churchill was readier than others to change his views. On 31 July 1941 the Chiefs of Staff accorded top priority to production of explosives for offensive bombing action, but just two months later Churchill was telling Portal that experience during the war had showed that strategic bombing was no more than ‘a heavy and I trust seriously increasing annoyance’. It would not win the war.8
The RAF was not subjected to much interference. Indeed Churchill was rather in awe of the gallantry and dash of what he called the cavalry of the twentieth century. Harris, who chose not to pay much attention to the Chiefs of Staff (or indeed the Air Ministry), enjoyed Prime Ministerial respect for his unshakeable determination. Dowding was also particularly admired.
When James McGregor Burns says that Churchill ‘lacked the steadiness of direction, the comprehensiveness of outlook, the sense of proportion and relevance that mark the grand strategist’,9 he may be technically right – if there has ever been a grand strategist who had the luxury of operating in a conflict in which he had unlimited resources, entirely compliant allies and a population that did not require to be inspired and urged forward. That was not Churchill’s position and the argument, from a purely naval standpoint, that if aircraft had supported shipping instead of bombing Germany the Battle of the Atlantic could have been shortened by at least six months10 is theoretical and irrelevant.
The navy’s truest grievance is perhaps that it did not have a strong advocate for its interests in its First Lord, Alexander, who did not fight his corner as other departmental chiefs sometimes did. But he was unlucky to have a Chief who had himself been First Lord – and not once, but twice.
Meanwhile reverses in the Pacific continued to occur. On 3 May Rangoon was abandoned and Churchill wrote to Roosevelt that Britain’s position was now worse than at the time of Pearl Harbor. He strengthened the direction of the war by appointing Brooke as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee in place of Pound, who remained on the Committee as First Sea Lord. Mountbatten succeeded Sir Roger Keyes as Chief of Combined Operations – both examples of men of vigour and charm appointed above their abilities. Churchill had made attempts before to move Pound from the chair of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. He had started to fall asleep during Chiefs of Staff meetings. Brooke described him in his diary of 3 February 1942 as looking ‘like an old parrot asleep on his perch!’ Another officer described Pound in the Chair at a meeting in June 1940; ‘After a not very long time, I noticed that Pound was drooling down the stem of his pipe – not just a drop, for I was at least five yards away. He may not have been asleep, but he was quite “out for the count”. It was noticeable that Power [the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Home) who was sitting on Pound’s right] was aware of this, for he continued the meeting as if his Chief was no longer present.’11
To be fair to poor old Pound, his frequent naps were the involuntary consequence of severe osteoarthritis, which kept him awake through long nights when he should have been asleep. He also started work every day before dawn, rather earlier than the Prime Minister. He may already have been suffering from the brain tumour which was to kill him in 1943.
While Pound was happy enough to give up the Chairmanship, he was very much opposed to Churchill’s promotion of Mountbatten to be a full member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee now that he was in charge of Combined Operations. Churchill intended that Mountbatten should have commensurate rank in each of the three Services. Pound referred to ‘a very widespread belief, not only in the Services but also in the country, that you do override the opinion of your professional advisers’. He denied that his advice had been overridden in any material respect – even in regard to the despatch of the Prince of Wales, but he was prepared to resign if the Mountbatten plan were executed. He said that Mountbatten’s promotion by three steps in rank from that of ‘a junior Captain in a shore appointment’ would be attributed simply to his royal blood. Churchill went ahead and Pound did not resign, but the choice of Mountbatten was a strange one.
28
The Alliance’s Teething Problems
From the start there was an essential difference between the allies about what Germany First really meant in terms of strategy. The Americans always thought in terms of a body blow against the Germans on mainland Europe: the Civil War way of fighting. The British were more inclined to peripheral strategy, which the Americans disparaged as ‘scatterization’.
It was a feature of the early conferences that they ended with some questions unanswered. Other questions were answered, but no one was quite sure what the answer had been. It was usually Marshall and Hopkins who were sent to work out what had been agreed. They were sent to London in April 1942 to attempt to crystallise the inconclusive discussions of ARCADIA in a form acceptable to the American military. Roosevelt was worried about an imminent Soviet collapse (a fear that continued to concern the western leaders, though Churchill was always the more sanguine), and favoured SLEDGEHAMMER, a desperate scheme for a limited Continental landing as early as the autumn of that very year, as a way of keeping Russia in the war. Marshall in fact was even more in favour of ROUNDUP, a huge single invasion in the spring of 1943, preceded by an American logistical build-up in Britain: BOLERO.
There was an important and unrecognised lack of consensus in the discussions: Ismay later recorded that ‘Our American friends went happily homewards under the mistaken impression that we had committed ourselves to both ROUNDUP and SLEDGEHAMMER’, whereas the British were in fact quite clear that SLEDGEHAMMER was out of the question. Was this just one of those misunderstandings and differences of emphasis that occur in the course of wide-ranging discussions, or was it something more sinister? The Americans certainly
thought the British had deliberately broken their word,1 and some still do.2
Ismay explained pretty convincingly how the misunderstanding arose. The British Defence Committee listened to Marshall and Hopkins carefully and accepted their proposals, in principle only. The British assumed that it was understood that the proposals still had to be assessed in detail, and that their reservations about ROUNDUP and even greater doubts about SLEDGEHAMMER were equally taken for granted. But on the surface ‘in fact everyone appeared to agree with the American proposals in their entirety. No doubts were expressed; no discordant note struck. It is easy to be wise after the event, but perhaps it would have obviated future misunderstandings if the British had expressed their views more frankly.’3 There is no evidence that the British were doing anything other than moving the proposals through the stages of consideration, but later it appeared to the Americans that there had been a breach of faith. The episode had lasting effects on relations between the allies, and contributed to a sense of frustration. In the short term the atmosphere at the upcoming Second Washington Conference was poisoned.
Brooke said at a Defence Committee attended by Hopkins and Marshall on 14 April that the British accepted the American ‘proposals for offensive action in Europe in 1942 perhaps and 1943 for certain’ (my emphases). In his later annotations he said that Marshall’s ‘Castles in the Air’ could not be taken too seriously: ‘It must be remembered that at that time we were literally hanging on by our eye-lids!’ Later he spent two hours with Marshall discussing the British position in detail. He was horrified to discover that Marshall had not thought through the implications of a landing, or in particular what you did when you were on the Continent facing experienced troops that were being reinforced at twice the rate of your own.4
Churchill is sometimes said to have admitted in the war memoirs that he had been less than candid with Marshall and Hopkins. In fact all he said was that he had been doubtful about the viability of the plan, but
I was very ready to give SLEDGEHAMMER … a fair run with other suggestions before the Planning Committees. I was almost certain the more it was looked at the less it would be liked. If it had been in my power to give orders I would have settled on TORCH and JUPITER [a Norwegian jaunt], properly synchronised for the autumn, and would have let SLEDGEHAMMER leak out as a feint through rumour and ostentatious preparation. But I had to work by influence and diplomacy in order to secure agreed and harmonious action with our cherished Ally, without whose aid nothing but ruin faced the world. I did not therefore open any of these alternatives at our meeting on the 14th [April, with Hopkins and Marshall].5
It is difficult to see anything dishonourable about that. Roosevelt was certainly less candid with Molotov a month later when the Russian Foreign Minister visited the President in Washington and asked for an Anglo-American landing on a scale that would draw forty divisions away from the Eastern Front. SLEDGEHAMMER, as Roosevelt knew, postulated no more than six to ten divisions, but he equivocated and responded ambiguously. Molotov correctly dismissed his response as insincere; but Roosevelt had ostensibly promised him a Second Front in 1942. Churchill was much franker with Molotov, and told him that a 1942 landing ‘was doomed to failure’ and ‘would do nothing to help the Russians’.
Later it was Churchill above anyone else who sought to delay a Continental landing until the circumstances were evidently propitious, but at this stage it was Brooke who persuaded Churchill that invasion in 1942 and indeed 1943 was premature. Churchill accepted his arguments and Mountbatten was despatched to Washington to expatiate to the President on ‘the difficulties of 1942’ and to pull away from what had been agreed with Marshall and Hopkins.
Churchill’s personal fear had always been that SLEDGEHAMMER in 1942 might prejudice the much more important ROUNDUP in 1943. His position was finally reflected in the Chiefs of Staff Committee decision of 6 July 1942, endorsed by the War Cabinet on 7 July; a 1942 invasion was ‘out of the question’ and might put back ROUNDUP by two or three months. This awkward decision had to be shared with the Americans.
Before the conference proper began, Churchill had joined Roosevelt at his home at Hyde Park to tell him that there could be no mainland landing in September 1942 and that therefore the war zones should be the Atlantic and Africa. Roosevelt had been nobbled in advance, seduced by Mountbatten’s charm. In any event he was aware that that there was a shortage of landing craft. He agreed that SLEDGEHAMMER was off, but he was clear that something had to be done before ROUNDUP eventually took place. He always had a weakness for North Africa. He had been in favour of the idea at ARCADIA, and now he was again ‘very struck’ by Churchill’s plans for a landing there, GYMNAST (later TORCH). He did not appreciate, any more than Churchill, that GYMNAST in 1942 would make ROUNDUP in 1943 impossible. The two men were thus already agreed on North Africa when they moved from Hyde Park to meet their advisers at Washington for the Second Washington Conference (the first had been ARCADIA).
Until the Quebec Conference of 1943 Anglo-American strategy was largely British strategy. At Washington in July 1942 the American planners had little success in getting their own way. Marshall and Stimson were angered to find the President again siding with the British – or at least with Churchill: Brooke and the British Chiefs of Staff, alarmed by events in the Western Desert, were hesitant about any sort of operation in 1942. Relations between the two sets of Chiefs suffered because the Americans could not believe that Churchill’s views were frequently arrived at independently of what his advisers were saying. This contributed to an appearance of deviousness and reinforced the impression that the British Chiefs were not being frank with them.
Stimson’s comment on the dispute over North Africa as against a major Continental landing was that they had ‘a fatigued and defeatist government blocking the help of a young and vigorous nation’. Part of the problem was that Roosevelt tended to intervene and frequently supported what Churchill and the British Chiefs wanted. In fact Brooke as much as the American Chiefs worried about what their bosses might agree at Hyde Park before the conference proper began. Roosevelt personally was more favourably disposed to the ‘peripheral’ approach than the US professional preference, a direct single thrust of enormous power.
Churchill had arrived in Washington on 20 June and on the following day was told of the fall of Tobruk with the loss of 25,000 British soldiers as prisoners. In fact the loss turned out to be higher: 33,000. Churchill telegraphed to Auchinleck: ‘Whatever views I may have had about how the battle was fought, or whether it should have been fought a good deal earlier, you have my entire confidence, and I share your responsibilities … You are in the same kind of situation as we should be in England if we were invaded, and the same intense drastic spirit should reign’. If Auchinleck had been capable of responding at the same level and in a genuine spirit of openness his relationship with the Prime Minister would have been a productive one.
But the fact was that the Allied strategy was not going well. At the earlier Washington Conference at Christmas 1941 a coordination of a British drive westward from El Alamein and an Anglo-American drive eastward from French North Africa had been agreed. For the moment, the British component in this joint operation was going in the wrong direction.
It was embarrassing that the Tobruk news broke in Washington. The gravity of the situation in North Africa is reflected in a telegram Roosevelt sent to Marshall on 30 June. He asked Marshall if there was anything that could be done to improve the situation in the Middle East and he put detailed and specific questions on what would happen ‘on the assumption that [Nile] Delta will be evacuated within ten days and the Canal blocked’. Marshall replied saying that there was nothing the United States could do to affect matters and that different army estimates said that Rommel could be in Cairo within one to two weeks. He did note that Rommel was greatly extended and could be checked by destruction of his supply bases and lines. Shortly afterwards Marshall sent a message to Hopkins, stressing the disaster which the fall
of Cairo would represent, and recommending that the President emphasise the unity of the Allies ahead of such a possible eventuality.6
At this Washington Conference Churchill agreed with Roosevelt, although not in writing, that there would be a free exchange of information between Britain and America in regard to research on the atomic bomb, which had begun in Britain in August 1941, the project code-named ‘Tube Alloys’. In the event the Americans very soon failed to honour the agreement and the matter had to be addressed again at the meeting in Quebec in August 1943. There is plaintive correspondence from Churchill to Hopkins on the subject. In the secret Quebec Agreement it was formally accepted that there was to be a free exchange of information between the two powers, although no information was to be passed to any other country. In reality the prospect of an independent British bomb disappeared when the United States secured the entire Canadian output of uranium and heavy water for a period of nine years from May 1943. For what it was worth, neither Britain or America would use an atomic bomb without the consent of the other; Churchill’s consent was indeed obtained to the use of the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although in the event they were dropped after he had left office. But in the following year Congress unilaterally cancelled the Quebec agreement and passed the McMahon Act. The position was confirmed in agreements of 1948 and 1955. Britain had almost no entitlement to share America’s nuclear secrets.
The atmosphere at Washington was strained by divergent views over empires in general and the Indian Empire in particular. America’s preoccupation with imperialism is difficult to understand, and not free from ambivalence, even hypocrisy. Cordell Hull said that the United States’ relationship with the Philippines was ‘a perfect example of how a nation should treat a colony or dependency’. America had experience of more direct overseas rule during the Spanish American War, and although American expansion, which went ahead apace during the war, was generally achieved in an informal way, there was not a great difference in practice between America and Britain. The Atlantic Charter, with its references to self-determination, both expressed and reinforced America’s anti-colonial position, and Roosevelt went so far as to talk about placing all colonies under international trustee-ship. His mission to see the end of colonies, particularly if they were British or French, is all the stranger in view of his admiration for the colonial exploits of his kinsman, Theodore Roosevelt.