by Walter Reid
But at this time, in the early summer of 1944, after nearly five years of war, he was showing unmistakable symptoms of exhaustion. One of the symptoms, strangely, was to talk more and not less at Cabinet meetings. He became discursive, monopolised the meeting and prevented discussion of much of the agenda.
Part of the reason was simply that what had been his overwhelming preoccupation – fighting for victory – had now essentially been achieved. As he said, it was now a straight run in – ‘even the Cabinet could do it on their own’. After the Quebec Conference he said to Charles Wilson, ‘I have a very strong feeling that my work is done. I have no message. I had a message’. Now Lyttelton told Eden that ‘the Cabinet was on the verge of mutiny about late hours and length of sittings’. Eden remonstrated unavailingly. At a Defence Committee meeting on 6 July 1944, Brooke exploded insubordinately: ‘If you would keep your confidence in your generals for even a few days, I think we should do better … I have listened to you for two days on end undermining the Cabinet’s confidence in Alex until I felt I could stand no more. You ask me questions, I gave you answers. You didn’t accept them and telegraphed Alex who gave the same answers.’ It was not the Prime Minister’s best evening. Eden described it as deplorable, and A.B. Cunningham, always ready to be critical of Churchill, described him as ‘very tired and too much alcohol.’1
Generals could be difficult, even hurtful. Monty refused to let the Prime Minister address his troops ahead of D-Day. The accounts of the incident originate from Montgomery himself and may not be accurate as far as their details are concerned. In one account, ‘Monty runs through the battles he’s won in the past two years, Alamein, Tripoli, Mareth, Wadi Akarit, the assault upon Sicily, the invasion of the Italian main-land … Did the Prime Minister wish to … come between a general and his men, his own staff in fact? “I could never allow it – never”, Monty pronounced. “If you think that is wrong, that can only mean you have lost confidence in me” ’.2 In another account, Churchill gave in to Monty, in tears. Even if neither account is wholly accurate, the Prime Minister was not allowed to address the troops. It was, as he well knew, a historic occasion, a Henry V opportunity. He would have loved it, and would have done something wonderful, inspiring the men and adding to his country’s literary heritage. It is doubtful that he could have done any damage beyond upstaging Monty.
The scale of Anglo-American bombing ahead of D-Day worried Churchill. The high numbers of French and Belgian civilian casualties seemed unacceptable. Eisenhower did not agree and the matter went to Roosevelt. Churchill asked that if the estimate of collateral casualties were above a certain level, raids should not take place. Roosevelt declined to intervene. Churchill told Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Tedder, the British Air Commander in Chief and Eisenhower’s Deputy, ‘You’re piling up an awful load of hatred’.3
The finality of Roosevelt’s word on such matters is surprising, given that as late as D-Day British troops were still more numerous than Americans. By the end of the war, American deployment was 80 per cent, but at D-Day 57 per cent of the troops were British. All the same, America did not spare Churchill the knowledge that they were the masters now.
The final battle between Britain and America over ANVIL, scheduled for 15 August, took place in the middle of June. Britain had very persuasive evidence from Enigma decrypts that Germany would not defend herself against an attack in the south of France as strongly as she would defend herself against attacks from Italy. This was supported by a further decrypt received on 28 June, which revealed that Hitler had ordered the defence of the Apennines, whatever the cost. The British Chiefs of Staff and Churchill were at one in seeing huge attractions in an amphibious landing near Trieste, coupled with renewal of the Italian advance. The result would be to pull away more German divisions from Normandy, assisting the breakout far more than a successful landing on the French Mediterranean coast. Churchill and the Chiefs were supported by an enthusiastic General Wilson, in command of British forces in the Middle East, who wanted to carry out an amphibious assault at the top of the Adriatic, pushing on east to Zagreb and then Austria and the Danube. Even Brooke was positive: ‘Now we have the most marvellous information, indicating clearly the importance Hitler attaches to Northern Italy.’
The Enigma decrypts, referred to always as ‘Boniface’, a code for a code, were downplayed by America, and indeed Marshall dismissed the value of Boniface with a mistaken reference to what this intelligence had said ahead of D-Day.
Brooke, Portal and Cunningham telegraphed to the American Chiefs on 28 June: It would be a ‘grave strategic error not to take advantage of destroying the German forces at present in Italy and thus drawing further reserves on to this front’. Their approach was reinforced by Churchill, telegraphing to Roosevelt to remind him of approving noises about Istria which the President had made at Teheran. Roosevelt responded speedily but negatively, saying that his political survival would be in doubt if any setback in Normandy could be attributed to the transfer of forces to the Balkans. There had been no mention of the Balkans. Did Roosevelt even understand what was being put to him? His slip may have been a Freudian one: the Americans had by now developed an allergic reaction to the very word ‘Balkans’. When Harold Macmillan was discussing the capture of Rome with American top brass, he sensed that some of them were warming to Alexander’s plans. But there was an interjection from Marshall: ‘ “Say, where is this Ljubljana? If it’s in the Balkans we can’t go there.” I told him it was practically in Austria and he seemed relieved.’4 Macmillan took the trouble to mark the ‘a’ of ‘can’t’ to show how Marshall pronounced it. For some reason it is Butler, rather than Macmillan, who is always described as ‘feline’.
Churchill responded tactfully to the President, making the point that there was no question of doing anything in the Balkans, and returned again to what Roosevelt had said to him at Teheran.
The President remained uninterested, proposing putting the dispute to Stalin. Stalin would obviously have sided with the President, quashing any idea of Allied activity in the areas of Eastern Europe which he was about to seize. Churchill explained this to the President and decided that, as so often, a meeting would be needed to resolve the problem. A flying boat and a bomber were made ready for the journey to the States, but Roosevelt would not even discuss the matter. ‘What can I do, Mr. President, when your Chiefs of Staff insist on casting aside our Italian offensive campaign, with all its dazzling possibilities … ? I am sure that if we could have met, as I so frequently proposed, we should have reached a happy agreement.’ A poignant observation.5
Even in hindsight Churchill thought ANVIL (or DRAGOON as it became, allegedly because Britain had been dragooned into it6) had been a mistake. In September he told Colville that he thought that although an un-distinguished minority would argue that there should have been an invasion in 1943, the grand strategy, the movement through TORCH, HUSKY and so on to OVERLORD, would be highly approved. But ANVIL (as it is convenient to continue to refer to the operation) had been a pure waste: it had not helped Eisenhower at all, and by reducing Alexander’s armies, had allowed the Germans to transfer troops from Italy to the invasion zone.7 Churchill always regarded emasculation of the Italian campaign in favour of ANVIL ‘as the major error of our Allied strategy’, a view which was not contradicted by the Memoirs of Mark Clark, the Senior American Commander in Italy.8
Although Churchill had accepted from Teheran onwards that there was to be a massive cross-Channel landing in May (or June) 1944, he had continued to see it slightly differently from the Americans. As late as February 1944 he advocated a revived study of JUPITER, an attack on Norway to supplement OVERLORD although at the cost of drawing resources away from it. Brooke and the others always dismissed his interest in Norway with a sneer, but Brooke himself had talked of ‘spelling OVERLORD with the letters T-Y-R-A-N-T’.9
If OVERLORD had been supplemented by attacks from Scandinavia and the southern French Atlantic coast, or by ‘rolling up Europe from
the South-East, and joining hands with the Russians’, as Churchill advocated to Dominion Prime Ministers in May 1944, the war would not have concluded with a massive thrust on a single front. What the result would have been will never be known, but what is clear is that the offensive on the western front, as it did take place, was seriously flawed. This book is intended to be a survey of grand strategy, and not tactics, but, briefly, there were huge losses in the hard fighting to escape from the bocage of Normandy, advances at many stages were slow and often stalled, and casualties were so much higher than expected that two British divisions had to be disbanded and American troops moved from the Pacific theatre.
Apart from many individual mistakes, a series of problems flowed from the fact that the concept was of one great frontal advance. The Americans repeatedly threw themselves forward in hugely costly attacks, and tended to try not to lose face by breaking off unprofitable actions. Conversely, the Germans were able to concentrate their resources in defence, notably by deploying new troops in ‘the Miracle of the West’.
That still lay ahead, but in the meantime America found the continued British enthusiasm for Italy tiresome. They were also irritated by what they regarded as unacceptable stratagems. For instance, just forty-eight hours before the American Seventh Army set sail from Italy and Corsica for the South of France, the British Chiefs communicated with the British Theatre Commander in the Mediterranean, telling him to consider abandoning the attack and diverting the troops to Brest. Apart from the practical issues, the constitutional irregularity of the request offended the Americans. The responsible body was not the British Chiefs, but the Combined Chiefs. The British Chiefs did copy their letter – but not to the Combined Chiefs, simply to their opposite numbers in Washington. There was a very sharp reaction. The Americans were technically correct.
47
The Second Quebec Conference
ANVIL opened on 14/15 August, despite all Churchill’s efforts. He had opposed the diversion of resources from Italy not only because that theatre was dominated by Britain, but also because of his awareness of the strategic desirability of limiting the influence of the Russians in the Balkans and Eastern Europe after the war. His vision was never shared by the Americans. It was his defeat over ANVIL that prompted his famous, not entirely facetious, remark that he would leave the matter to history, but that he intended to be one of the historians.
While we shall never know what a full-scale continuation of the Italian campaign might have done, it can certainly be said that ANVIL did not contribute much to victory or even to the success of the Normandy campaign. As late as December 1944, when he was Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, Alexander was still arguing strongly for an advance from Italy into Austria and Yugoslavia. By then the plan was unrealistic and Brooke was angered by Alex’s interference and support of what he was by now describing as ‘Winston’s strategic ravings’.
Churchill received no more support on the issue from his man in the Mediterranean. When Wilson succeeded Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean he pursued a policy of neutrality in the dispute between America and ANVIL on the one hand and Britain and Italy/the Balkans, on the other. While that was constitutionally correct, Churchill was disappointed to be supported neither by his CIGS nor the SAC Mediterranean.
A continuation of the Italian campaign at full strength had really been killed off long before OVERLORD began, but in early August there did remain a slight prospect that ANVIL might be cancelled and its resources transferred to landings in Brittany. This would have supported the flank of the Normandy campaign and would have assisted Montgomery greatly. Churchill planned to consult with Montgomery on 5 August, but had to divert because of fog. He found that Eisenhower, who had been for the plan, had very speedily changed his mind, although his Chief of Staff, General Bedell Smith, had not. The Prime Minister asked Hopkins to support Brittany. He flew back to Montgomery’s headquarters, but cut short his visit rather than distract Monty at the height of the battle, and returned to Britain to receive a message from Hopkins saying that he was sure that the President would not agree. The British Joint Staff Mission in America argued the case with their American counterparts but ‘could not budge them’. Roosevelt confirmed to Churchill that there was to be no change of plan. That was regrettable: Brittany made more sense that the Riviera.
All this flying around had not exhausted the 69-year-old Churchill. He now went on to Algiers and then to Italy to be with Alex. In Algiers he had a brief meeting with Randolph, who was recuperating from the results of a plane crash in Yugoslavia. Randolph pressed him to countermand a recent decision not to meet de Gaulle: de Gaulle was the frustrated leader of a defeated country whereas Churchill ‘as the unchallenged leader of England, the main architect of victory can afford to be magnanimous without fear of being misunderstood’.1 Magnanimity was of course one of Churchill’s most evident qualities, and it was its very absence in de Gaulle that so disappointed him. He told Eden in June 1944, ‘remember there is not a scrap of generosity about this man’. To Roosevelt: ‘I am sure he will make all the mischief he can’. He was not much more enthusiastic about other future European allies: he told the Foreign Office in November 1944, ‘The Belgians are extremely weak, and their behaviour before the war was shocking. The Dutch were entirely selfish and fought only when they were attacked, and then only for a few hours’.2
On 12 August, possibly by way of an amend for many slights, Roosevelt invited Churchill but not Stalin to a meeting in Quebec for the following month. Before he left for this, the Second Quebec Conference, Churchill dashed around the Mediterranean basin, swam in his beloved sea and told the Chiefs of Staff that if Alex could break through into the Po Valley, he still favoured a move into the Adriatic. He continued to have his eye on Vienna, and had told Alex that if the war should end prematurely he was to dash for the city with armoured cars.
On his return to London ahead of the Quebec trip his exertions took their toll and he succumbed again to pneumonia. As he recovered he tried – in vain – to persuade Roosevelt to join him in appealing to Stalin to support the rising in Warsaw. Stalin was simply standing back and allowing the Nazis to suppress the rising. Churchill wanted to tell him that if he did not at least allow allied aircraft to use Soviet bases to bring in supplies for the insurgents, allied support to Russia would be reduced or withdrawn. Roosevelt was not prepared to do this or indeed anything else: he was secretly asking Stalin for use of airbases to allow America to bomb Japan. Churchill did all he could, but had to confess to Smuts that he had less and less influence.3 The Polish Underground Army in Warsaw was loyal to the London government-in-exile, and Churchill recalled no occasion when the War Cabinet was so angry with its allies.4
On 5 September Churchill set off from Greenock on the Queen Mary, taking with him a nurse and a penicillin expert. When he discovered that American servicemen on board were going to lose a week’s leave because their departure had been delayed on his account, he at once telegraphed Roosevelt asking if the week could be reinstated. ‘It would be a pleasure to me if this could be announced before the end of the voyage and their anxiety relieved.’ This was one request to which Roosevelt felt able to agree.
Difficult discussions about the Far East took place at a staff conference on board the Queen Mary on 8 September 1944. Churchill was realistic about the life left in the German enemy. He was very perturbed about the prospect of moving troops from Italy to the Far East at a very early date, on the assumption that a German collapse was imminent.
He was also occupied on the voyage with another dispute, this one with Attlee and the War Cabinet over increased pay to be given to troops for fighting in the Japanese War. He had already said that he considered the proffered terms to be inadequate, and was accordingly furious that the War Cabinet proposed nonetheless to publish them in his absence. A violent reply to Attlee’s telegram was dictated, but a more temperate one followed. Eden’s ‘aid and friendship’ was invoked. The Prime Minister wa
s entitled to some consideration ‘when I am absent on public duty of highest consequence’.5
At the conference, the American Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, argued for punitive de-industrialisation of Germany post-war: the great factories of the Ruhr would be closed, as would the shipyards. His plan had been discussed at length by the President and the Treasury Secretary. Churchill’s immediate reaction – of humanity and honour – was typical: ‘I’m all for disarming Germany, but we ought not to prevent her living decently. There are bonds between the working classes of all countries and the English people will not stand for the policy you are advocating. I agree with Burke. You cannot indict a whole nation. What is to be done should be done quickly. Kill the criminals, but don’t carry on the business for years.’ What happened next is not clear. He changed his mind, accepted Morgenthau’s plan for what he called the ‘pastoralization’ of Germany, subject to some minor alterations. Moran says Churchill was persuaded by arguments from Cherwell;6 or he may have felt that his first duty was to his own: Britain had been offered a three billion dollar loan from Morgenthau on generous terms.
At this point Eden turned up, and when he arrived at the conference he attacked the plan vigorously. Apart from anything else, he was satisfied that in the long term the destruction of factories and industrial equipment and the flooding of mines could not work to Britain’s economic interest. Churchill did not much like being opposed publicly by his Foreign Secretary. Eden was told that they had to choose between ‘our own people’ and the Germans: he was referring to Britain’s economic distress. In his history of the war Churchill says, ‘We had much to ask from Roosevelt and Morgenthau’. When he dictated a telegram for the War Cabinet two days later, he referred to the benefits which Britain might receive from the pastoralisation of Germany, and an agreement with Roosevelt was initialled that same day.