Churchill 1940-1945: Under Friendly Fire

by Walter Reid

  There were idées fixes, of which the appeal of northern Norway is probably the best example. There was a determination, after America’s entry into the war, that Britain should do as much as her more powerful ally, not solely so that she had the right to an equal share in the direction of the war, but partly because it was demeaning to do less. As late as April 1945 he complained to Clementine, ‘The only times I ever quarrel with the Americans are when they fail to give us a fair share of opportunities to win glory. Undoubtedly I feel much pain when I see our armies so much smaller than theirs. It has always been my wish to keep equal, but how can you do that against so mighty a nation and a population nearly three times your own?’2 Similarly, strategy was sometimes evolved with an eye to the history books. At Casablanca ambitious, perhaps unrealistic, plans were promoted simply because it was unworthy of two great powers to do less.3

  Brooke made the complaint, especially in the early stages of the war, about a lack of a joined-up vision. But Churchill’s preference for feints and probes was not entirely born of a lack of alternative. Throughout the war he favoured seeking opportunities that could be exploited, rather than allowing logistics to dictate the prosecution and persistence of an unprofitable campaign. This was to be at the centre of the difference between him and America in relation to OVERLORD in June 1944.

  In the early stages of the war, in any case, what else could he do? The linchpin of British planning had disappeared with France. There had been a steady process of disillusionment with America as an ally since 1919. When she turned her back on the League of Nations, she appeared to turn her back also on Europe and a strengthening anti-British feeling led to the conviction in the United Kingdom that America would not be a reliable ally: a conviction that to an extent lay behind the argument for appeasement.

  Having been expelled from the mainland of Europe, Britain had to conduct her offensive operations elsewhere. Despite Churchill’s continuing fondness for Norway, the fact that there was a British presence in Egypt dictated that it would be in North Africa that Britain, and later America too, would concentrate her military activities in the first half of the war.

  Despite the fact that a Mobile Force (Egypt), subsequently Armoured Division (Egypt), had been established in 1938, the British presence in Egypt was not substantial and was intended principally to protect the Suez Canal. But Churchill’s ambitions for the Middle East were central to his strategic views at this stage. The crucial change of strategy of July 1940, the determination to hold the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean for as long as possible, reversed the established policy of giving precedence to the Far East.

  Mussolini played a part in events, planning to seize the Canal and extend his North African possessions. With the Italian declaration of war on Britain on 10 July 1940, Britain’s Middle Eastern interests were at risk, and Mussolini can be added to the list of those responsible for the Mediterranean Strategy. In response to this threat Churchill bravely took 154 tanks away from defence of the homeland in August and sent them to Wavell in North Africa. On 13 September Graziani attacked from Cyrenaica in Libya, but after initial successes ran out of steam.

  Wavell had not always been Churchill’s favourite general, and he did not remain in favour for long. He had come to London to ask for increased resources in August 1940, but at a series of meetings between 8 and 15 August the relationship between the two men deteriorated badly. Neither really understood the other. Churchill became convinced that the general was pessimistic and excessively cautious. The Prime Minister constantly complained that not enough men were in the field: the tail was too long, the discrepancy between the ration strength and the fighting strength too great. Thus, early in the following year, after successes in the desert, he wrote to Wavell apologising for spoiling ‘the hour of your victory by awkward matters of housekeeping … I beg you to convince me that you will continually comb, scrub and purge all rearward services in a hard unrelenting manner, as Kitchener did.’4 Critics claimed that the PM did not understand the changes since Kitchener’s day, but he did understand the caution that generals frequently and sometimes commendably display.

  Wavell for his part certainly did not understand Churchill’s confrontational, dialectic, debating-chamber approach. The process was bewildering for those who were not used to it. Ismay recalled a young brigadier from Middle East Headquarters who asked the Prime Minister if he might be quite frank. ‘Of course’, was the reply, ‘We are not here to pay each other compliments.’

  The Prime Minister would seize on the point he wished to make, overstate it and surround it with distorted half-truths and exaggerations.5 He expected his interlocutor to respond in a similar style, and that out of the fury of the exchanges a consensus would emerge. That did not always happen. His antagonist often knew not whether to concentrate on the main point or try to correct the encircling errors. Brooke would doggedly fight the issue out, but others did not, and Wavell certainly could not cope with the browbeating violence. At their meetings in August he sat in almost complete silence. The CIGS, Sir John Dill, understood Churchill, though he was not impressive at managing him and called their meetings a ‘daily circus’. He pleaded with Wavell, ‘Talk to him, Archie’, but Wavell did not do so, and as early as 15 August 1940 Churchill and Eden were discussing the question of a successor for the Middle East Command.

  The appointment with which Churchill toyed was a remarkable one: Major-General Bernard Freyberg, VC, a very junior officer, although a very brave one, and one without any of the political diplomatic and administrative skills needed for a command such as the Middle East.6 In addition to his VC, Freyberg held no less than three DSOs and had been wounded on innumerable occasions. There is dispute about just how many wounds he had suffered: there may have been too many to count. Churchill, who had always courted danger in his military career, was fascinated by physical courage and admired gallantry. He himself had willingly sacrificed part of his pelt to patch up a wounded fellow-officer. When he met Freyberg between the wars he asked him to strip so that he could admire his wounds.

  Dill wrote of the relationship between the PM and the Commander, Middle East, ‘They are poles apart. Wavell is very reserved – “withdrawn” is perhaps a better word – whereas Winston even thinks aloud’. After the first of the difficult series of meetings, Churchill invited Wavell to Chequers for the weekend. Wavell told Dill that he had no intention of going to ‘risk further treatment of the kind to which he had just been subjected’. Dill went to the heart of things: ‘Archie, no one would deny that you have had unbearable provocation. But he is our Prime Minister. He carries an almost incredible burden. It is true you can be replaced. He cannot. You must go to Chequers’.7

  Wavell retained the command for the moment and got his tanks, but there were disputes about whether they should be convoyed straight through the Mediterranean, as Churchill wanted, or round the Cape, as Wavell wished. Churchill got his way, and at the end of the war, ‘Gil’ Winant, the American ambassador in London, referred to it as ‘the bravest thing’ the Prime Minister had done in the war.

  When British Somaliland was evacuated on 17 August, despite the fact that British casualties were far fewer than Italian casualties, Churchill wanted the local commander, Major-General Godwin-Austen, removed at once. Wavell stood up to the demand with the reply that ‘a heavy butcher’s bill is not necessarily evidence of good tactics’, a remarkably injudicious thing to say to Churchill. He was greatly infuriated. Dill said he had never seen him so angry. He flushed and glowered. Wavell had not made a judicious career move.

  Wavell had planned his first offensive, COMPASS, against a background of very strict security, with only Generals Wilson and O’Connor and essential staff officers aware of what was to happen. With notorious espionage circles in Cairo, that was wise. It was not so wise to tell the Prime Minister himself as little as possible of his plans. It was more unfortunate still that a message from Wavell to Dill, ‘Please do not encourage optimism’, found its way to Ch
urchill. It is difficult to imagine a less Churchillian sentiment. Churchill’s own prodding messages could be infuriating. Admiral A.B. Cunningham said that they were often ‘ungracious and hasty … Such messages to those who were doing their utmost with straitened resources were not an encouragement, merely an annoyance.’8 Wavell had already formulated a foolish policy of ignoring a large part of Churchill’s stream of instructions and enquiries; he should not have been surprised if as a result Churchill concluded that what he liked to call his Army of the Nile was doing nothing. It was only when Eden, as Secretary of State for War, arrived in Cairo that Wavell’s plan for COMPASS became known.

  Churchill reacted with delight when Wavell at last sent him his plan for offensive action in the Western Desert in November 1940. ‘At long last’, he told Ismay, ‘we are going to throw off the intolerable shackle of the defensive.’9 While the Italian forces awaited re-supply a much smaller British force under O’Connor counter-attacked in Operation COMPASS on 9 December.

  O’Connor, a capable and attractive character who shared the general enthusiasm for casual dress in the Western Desert, favouring corduroy trousers, leather jerkin and tartan scarf, turned what Wavell had planned as a very limited, five-day operation, into a great success. When Sidi Barrani fell on 11 December 1940, Churchill did two things. He sent a splendid message to the King: ‘My humble congratulations to you, Sir, on a great British victory – a great Imperial victory’. And then he sent for the two books that Wavell had written, in a further attempt to try to understand his commander in the Middle East.10

  By 30 January O’Connor had taken more than 20,000 prisoners. He pushed forward to capture Bardia and Tobruk and by February 1941 the Italians had been comprehensively defeated. They were surrounded at Beda Fomm in February where 25,000 men were captured. What was left of the Italian force fell back to El Agheila by 9 February 1941. In three days O’Connor halted Graziani’s advance and took 38,000 prisoners including four generals (the joke of the times was that the more Italian generals he captured, the greater O’Connor’s service to the Italian war effort), at a cost of 624 casualties, and in two months he had advanced 350 miles, taken 130,000 prisoners, almost 400 tanks and 845 guns, at a cost of 500 killed, 1,373 wounded and 55 missing. O’Connor had eventually moved as far as El Agheila, overrunning the whole of Cyrenaica. Pretty well the whole Italian army had been captured.

  Churchill had found an occasion to rise to: ‘The Army of the Nile [a favourite designation with important Napoleonic echoes] has rendered glorious service to the Empire and our cause, and rewards are already being reaped by us in every quarter’. The victory would not have been won if Churchill had not pushed Wavell into COMPASS, and nagged him about the size of his tail.

  Until this point, the North African campaign was an unqualified British success, and Italy was close to being knocked out of the war. But ‘the great British victory’ was soon overshadowed, and the next phase of the Desert War was a series of disastrous setbacks. Two things happened.

  First, what had been a more or less independent adventure by Mussolini had to be supported by Germany if her Italian ally were not to be abandoned. Rommel was sent out with the Afrika Korps.

  Secondly, the Axis attack on Greece was to put an end to O’Connor’s romp through Cyrenaica. Britain moved air cover to Greece and by the beginning of January 1941 it was decided to provide maximum support to the Greeks. The policy was temporarily thwarted when General Metaxas, the Greek Prime Minister, declined British aid; but when he died on 29 January his successor requested assistance. Wavell was told that Greece was to take precedence over North Africa. This decision continues to excite controversy.

  Rommell’s brief initially was a defensive one, but the nature of his mission changed almost immediately when he realised that the British forces, stretched between North Africa and Greece, were extremely light. He won a victory at El Agheila on 24 March and then launched an offensive which put Britain right back to Sollum on 15 April, where Graziani had been on 17 September 1940. The whole of Libya was now in Axis hands except for Tobruk. O’Connor, along with General Neame, got lost, fell into enemy hands and remained in captivity until the Italian surrender – payback for capturing the Italian generals in COMPASS, but a disappointing fate for a good general who might have turned out to be a great desert general. Wavell was conscious of the loss and pressed for an exchange for an Italian general – at one for one a remarkably favourable ratio so far as Italian generals are concerned. Churchill vetoed the swap.

  It was not only the end for O’Connor: Tobruk itself was under siege. Attempts to relieve it, operations BREVITY and BATTLEAXE, were unsuccessful, and for the moment the lines were stabilised. COMPASS was at an end.

  O’Connor believed he could have gone on to take Tripoli. After the war Wavell said that was too ambitious a claim, but Rommel had disagreed. In any event O’Connor was not allowed the opportunity. How far did the decision to support Greece bring an end to early successes in North Africa? How far was Churchill responsible for that decision?

  12

  Greece

  Churchill is often blamed for sabotaging COMPASS for the sake of a quixotic Greek adventure.1 Wavell’s supporters still think his efforts were undercut by his being forced to divert resources to Greece, but it is wrong to think that COMPASS was brought to a premature end because of a switch to Greece taken against his wishes.

  The decision to enter Greece was not essentially Churchill’s. Additionally, Wavell’s forces were partly depleted for quite another reason. He had detached the 4th Indian Division so that it was available to attack the Italians in East Africa. That was not a bad decision. General Cunningham opened a campaign against Italian Somaliland from Kenya in February 1941, and by May 1941, Mussolini’s East African empire had been effectively destroyed. Moreover, Wavell was not confident that Tripoli could be taken; on the other hand, he thought that operation LUSTRE – forward defence in Greece – was militarily feasible.

  In the event Greece proved a disaster, but there was a political inevitability at the time about coming to the aid of a country which Britain had undertaken to defend in 1939. It was important to show that Britain honoured her obligations. There could not be a repeat of Munich.

  Churchill was indeed initially averse to a diversion of forces, and faced Cabinet criticism on that count. Eden and Dill were sent out to Egypt to assess the situation, and Churchill only came to be supportive of the Greek campaign after they, the men on the spot, strongly pressed the case, supported by Wavell. Eden signalled that ‘assistance to the Greeks, who are fighting and threatened, must have first call on our resources’.2 As the League of Nations man who had resigned as Foreign Secretary in part over sanctions against Italy, he felt strongly that Britain must stand by its pledge to aid Greece. Wavell, for his part, had always been concerned about the threat from the north, rather than the west. He had agreed earlier with Weygand that Greece and Yugoslavia would be the front line. Even ahead of Eden’s arrival at his headquarters he had started moving experienced troops out of Cyrenaica. He greeted Eden with the words, ‘As you were so long I felt I had to get started, and I have begun the concentration for the move of troops to Greece’.3

  Churchill had certainly made vague romantic declarations – ‘Let your first thoughts be of Greece’ – but when it came to a considered judgement it was not he who argued for action. He cabled to Eden: ‘Do not consider yourself obligated to a Greek enterprise if in your hearts you feel it will only be another Norwegian fiasco. If no good plan can be made, please say so. But of course you know how valuable success would be’.4 There is no evidence that Churchill pushed for the Greek campaign in the face of opposition. There was none. Members of the Cabinet were asked for their views one by one and they were unanimously in favour. The politicians on the spot were also in favour. Wavell was for it, so was Pound and so were the Chiefs of Staff.5

  The decision to enter Greece was made by the Cabinet on 7 March 1941. The decision was influenced
and endorsed by the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, who arrived in Britain on 20 February and did not leave until 3 May, participating in War Cabinet meetings during his stay.

  But there were certainly some generals against Greece at the time. A General Staff minute by Kennedy, Director of Military Operations, for example, said that, ‘Nothing we can do can makes the Greek business a sound military proposition … In the Middle East we must not throw away our power of offensive action by adopting an unsound policy in Greece …’6 Brooke said that he always considered Greece to be ‘a definite strategic blunder. Our hands were more than full at the time in the Middle East …’ Subsequently Churchill’s critics have consistently tried to represent Greece as an adventure that sabotaged North Africa. Correlli Barnett argued that the thought of intervention in Greece ‘was to grow until it dominated the Prime Minister’s obstinate mind, was made fact against all initial advice by his formidable will; it led to two immediate military disasters; and prolonged the war in Africa by two years’.7

  This view is simply not supported by the evidence. Indeed Churchill never bought entirely into Greece. His heart was for it, but intellectually he hesitated. He had been enthusiastic about a Greek campaign at a slightly earlier stage, before it became clear that the Greeks did not want British assistance and before he knew about Wavell’s offensive. And later he said that Wavell had ‘spoiled his African show for the sake of a Greek adventure in which he believed and in which he was much pressed by Eden, with the consent of Dill, on general political grounds … His great mistake was allowing the desert flank to be broken in. I would never have gone to Greece if I had not thought the desert flank was secure.’8