Churchill 1940-1945: Under Friendly Fire

by Walter Reid

  To the end, Churchill’s attitude to Dill was both unfair and ungenerous. The Joint Chiefs in Washington sent their commiserations to Churchill when Dill died. Churchill’s response was inadequate and prompted this reaction from Marshall: ‘To be very frank and personal, I doubt if you or your Cabinet associates fully realise the loss you have suffered’.5 Three months after Dill’s death Marshall told Major Reginald Winn, Dill’s Personal Assistant, that he still felt completely lost without him; he had never met another man of such character, integrity, breadth of vision and selflessness. He thought Brooke was good, but Dill was irreplaceable.6 Anglo-American relations deteriorated steadily after his death.

  Brooke was a pretty inevitable successor to Dill. Churchill had not been excited about the prospect, hence his preposterous toying with reappointing Gort. Beaverbrook had urged the appointment of General Nye, on the presentational grounds that he had risen from the ranks, but Nye himself said that Brooke would be the better man. It was then that Churchill famously responded by forecasting the nature of their relationship: ‘When I thump the table and push my face towards him, what does he do? Thumps the table harder and glares back at me – I know these Brookes – stiff-necked Ulstermen and there’s no-one worse to deal with than that!’7

  Brooke was to prove, however, not only a very great CIGS, ‘the greatest … ever produced by the British Army’ according to his biographer, Sir David Fraser, but also, in wonderful coincidence, the only soldier of his generation who could work productively with the greatest War Prime Minister that Britain has ever produced.

  In his history of the war, Churchill makes scant reference to Brooke when he first appears on the scene. What was almost worse was the warmth of the very lengthy footnote in which he wrote with admiration and fondness of Brooke’s two older brothers with whom had soldiered in his youth. Subsequently he continued to minimise the contribution of the Chiefs of Staff in general and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in particular. Part of the reason was simply thoughtlessness. Although he could rise to the very zenith of magnanimity and be moved by a profound sense of humanity towards individuals as well as towards countless masses, Churchill could also be appallingly self-centred.

  Part of the reason for downplaying Brooke’s role was to elevate Churchill’s. There was no room in his account for a second energising brain. The great man view of history required that one man inspired the direction of the war, with minimal assistance and without opposition. The reality would be too prosaic. The Chiefs are intended to appear to have played a minor part in the war compared to, say, Alex and Monty. Brooke himself is credited with ‘services of the highest order’ in his role as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, but not a lot else.

  In August 1942 Brooke selflessly declined command of the Middle East in succession to Auchinleck, because he felt it his duty to stay on as CIGS and support Churchill. But on several occasions he had been promised command of OVERLORD. Supreme Command of the Allied forces in the conclusion of the strategic policies which he had nurtured would have been a wonderful finish to Brooke’s professional career. The promise, first made on 15 June 1943, gave Brooke ‘one of my greatest thrills during the war … I felt it would be the perfect climax to all my struggles to guide the strategy of the war … to find myself ultimately in command of the Allied Forces.’ The promise was confirmed on 7 July: ‘I was too excited to sleep when I returned home’. Until now Brooke had been sworn to secrecy, but a week later Churchill confirmed the promise in the presence of Brooke’s wife, asking her how she felt about her husband’s being the Supreme Commander on the return to France.

  Then, almost on an impulse as it seemed, he decided in Quebec in August 1943 that the OVERLORD commander was to be American. Brooke said, ‘Not for one moment did he realise what this meant to me. He offered no sympathy, no regrets at having to change his mind, and dealt with the matter as if it were one of minor importance.’ The acknowledgement that Brooke ‘bore the great disappointment with soldierly dignity’ was only stuck in to the Memoirs as an afterthought, at the instigation of Churchill’s advisers.8

  His shabby treatment in the War Memoirs prompted Viscount Alanbrooke, as he had become, to reverse what had been his very firm decision not to publish the diary he had kept since 28 September 1939, and which had been marked in capitals ‘ON NO ACCOUNT MUST THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK BE PUBLISHED’. In impoverished circumstances, and living in his former gardener’s cottage, Alanbrooke handed his papers to the historian, Sir Arthur Bryant. Quite how Bryant was able, very easily, to persuade Alanbrooke that the diaries should be published is not clear. He had been commissioned by the Royal Regiment of Artillery to write a posthumous official biography of the field marshal, but when he saw the diary and Alanbrooke’s annotations he knew at once the immediate appeal that even an edited version would have. Alanbrooke’s earlier reticence disappeared. He certainly felt that the role of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, as well as his own, throughout the war had been ignored by Churchill, and he may well have been motivated in part by financial necessity. He was a poor man, and his gratuity was £311; Haig got £100,000.

  In any event, he strangely did not appear to realise how offensive some of the diary entries would be to Churchill. ‘If Winston should take offence in anything you have written,’ he wrote to Bryant, ‘he would certainly fall in my estimation, but I feel such a contingency is most unlikely’.9 That was a widely unrealistic apprehension, but Brooke was not good at human relations. Although he could be kind and considerate to younger people, he was grudging and prickly to his coevals. In the War Office his nickname was ‘Colonel Shrapnel’. In argument he was bleak and uncompromising; his response to unwelcome proposals was negative and frequent: ‘I flatly disagree’. He was tactless, distant and unclubbable, and avoided social contact with the other Chiefs. As the war went on his resilience grew less and the enormous strain of his huge responsibilities took their toll. He felt close to breaking at one point.

  It is important to remember that Churchill was not alone in irritating him. He had a pretty poor opinion of many of the actors in the drama, and he could be excessive in his criticism of them. He could be very rude about Alexander, Marshall and Eisenhower, for example. Marshall’s ‘strategic ability was of the poorest. A great man, a great gentleman and a great organizer, but definitely not a strategist … [H]is stunted strategic outlook made it very difficult to discuss strategic plans with him …’10 Eisenhower was dismissed as having ‘absolutely no strategical outlook’. His regard for Monty was uniquely positive.

  He had a high opinion of his own strategic abilities, and he was arrogant and always ready to write off others. His diaries contain innumerable dismissals of his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, and very little admiration or respect for those he worked with. He was negative in outlook and cautious to a fault. Like so many of his contemporaries, he would not accept the need to subordinate the military to the political, as Clausewitz said must always be the rule. Wars are fought for political ends, and it is no use looking for the military ideal, a set-piece battle which cannot be lost. When he was in command of the south coast Brooke had feared invasion and argued that it was inevitable. He could not see the need for diversion of resources to the Middle East if the war were to be won.11 ‘Always’, said Hollis, who was present at most meetings of the Chiefs of Staff, ‘it was Churchill who pushed; it was Brooke who admonished and urged caution’.12 Caution is all very well, but it would not win the war these men were fighting. In his evaluation of the relative merits of Brooke and Churchill, Hollis concluded that ‘[t]he true defence of Churchill is that he always knew when to attack. He was not only the architect of victory, he was also its accountant; he knew which attack would bring the best dividend with the least risk of catastrophe’.13

  Churchill was very often infuriating in argument with Brooke, but Brooke did not trouble to exercise any skills of advocacy. His ‘I flatly disagree’ was not calculated to win his opponent over, and he spoke far
too fast, ‘like a Gatling gun’, according to Hollis, whose editor describes the exchanges beautifully:

  Mr Churchill, who had heard his reply perfectly well, would then turn to General Ismay and cup a hand to his ear.

  ‘I cannot hear what he says’, he would observe, as though General Brooke were not even present. Ismay would then repeat Brooke’s comments more slowly and in a louder voice. Churchill would nod, as if the words were just reaching him for the first time. Then, if he did not wish to enter into an immediate argument, he would suddenly change the subject completely and discuss other matters. Otherwise, he would still affect not to hear the opposing point of view, and it had to be repeated in an even louder voice for a second time.

  ‘Oh’, Churchill would say disconcertingly, Oh! So that’s what he says. Oh! I see’.

  Finally, at the end of the meeting, General Hollis recalls, ‘As the other members of the War Cabinet or Staff began to gather up their papers to leave, Mr Churchill would unexpectedly return to the point with which General Brooke had disagreed, presenting his view from a different angle, and by surprise and determination would often carry the day’.14

  Bryant had been an appeaser, and although he edited out some criticism of Churchill in the edition of the Alanbrooke diaries which appeared in 1957, the ‘unexpurgated’ version which appeared in 200115 showed that the eliminations were minimal. It also showed that Bryant’s work was fairly sloppy: he worked not from the original diaries, but from typescript notes which Brooke had prepared. He copied and added to discrepancies contained in the originals.16

  The diaries were the repository for the stress and anxiety borne by the CIGS, this lonely and introverted figure, during the years in which he bore burdens that were almost intolerable. They were not history. At the outset they contained the declaration, ‘The thoughts I express may contradict themselves as I wish to give full scope to free expression and do not care if I am found to change my mind by events’. Along with most tender remarks to his wife, to whom he was devoted, are references to military matters, statesmen and his beloved ornithology. Coming from accounts of meetings with Molotov and Stalin to the fact that he has spent a day photographing a ‘Marsh Tit’, one assumes that his subject was Marshal Tito.

  Brooke’s style was bleak and one does not warm to the man. But he had some human qualities. As well as a love of birds and fishing (he once caught 100 salmon in a season) and wildlife, he was immensely devoted to his family. He also had an endearing fondness for the science fiction comic strip, Flash Gordon. It appeared in the Daily Mirror, and when Brooke was a guest at Sandringham, where that paper was not viewed with approval, it was smuggled in to him with his early-morning tea.

  He faced up daily to Churchill’s confrontational attacks. These attacks were not simply the technique of the debating-chamber: Churchill was frequently boorish, offensive and unreasoning. The generals and the chiefs were often accused of cowardice. Brooke had to deal with this without the breaks and relief afforded by Churchill’s routine of afternoon rests and baths and evening dinners and film shows. He did not have Churchill’s capacity for convivial relaxation.

  Indeed, Brooke’s recurrent complaint is to do with the hours that Churchill kept, and that he had to share. But in fact he adapted very early to the afternoon rest that Churchill had adopted in his subaltern days in India, and while his master was asleep the CIGS would disappear for three hours, browsing in bookshops for books on birds, or in camera shops for gadgets to help him film them.17 If he too had spent some of the time in bed he might not have found the Midnight Follies so wearing.

  But he did find them wearing and the evening outpouring in his diary must be understood as having a therapeutic rather than historical function. Ismay was certainly thinking of Brooke’s diaries when he wrote, ‘Perhaps if I had kept a diary the entries on these unproductive nights [when Churchill was too exhausted to work effectively] would have been querulous and critical. And how sorry I would have felt when I read them the next day!’18 Brooke’s entries were never intended as history, and the account they contain is a distorted one. Churchill’s own story should be read against the diaries. Both have elements of the truth, but Churchill’s picture is the more complete.

  Brooke could say, as he did of Churchill at a meeting on 6 July 1944 (which started at 10 p.m. and ended at 2 a.m.), that the Prime Minister (who had just made a major speech in the Commons on the flying bomb threat) had ‘tried to recuperate himself with drink. As a result he was in a maudlin, bad tempered, drunken mood, ready to take offence at anything, suspicious of everybody, and in a highly vindictive mood against the Americans. In fact, so vindictive that his whole outlook on strategy was warped. I began by having a bad row with him. He began to abuse Monty because operations were not going faster, and apparently Eisenhower had said that he was over vigilant. I flared up and asked him if he could not trust his generals for 5 minutes instead of continually abusing them and belittling them.’19 And so on.

  But after returning to the War Office, muttering ‘That man, that man …’, he would add ‘but what would we do without him?’20 And just a month before the 6 July incident, and a couple of days after ‘another of Winston’s awful meetings’ Brooke had been charmed at Chequers when the Prime Minister ‘said some very nice things about the excellent opinions that the whole Defence Committee and War Cabinet had of me and that they had said we could not have a better CIGS.’ Later he annotated that entry: ‘He was an astounding mixture, could drive you to complete desperation and the brink of despair for weeks on end, and then would ask you to spend a couple of hours alone with him … and you left him with the feeling that you would do anything within your power to help him carry the stupendous burden he had shouldered.’21

  In his final notes on Churchill, Brooke confessed to surprise that in their differences the Prime Minister had never replaced him. Churchill told Moran that he had never even thought of doing so.22 Brooke concluded by saying that

  On reading these diaries I have repeatedly felt ashamed of the abuse I had poured on [Churchill], especially during the latter years. It must, however, be remembered that my diary was the safety valve and only outlet for my pent up feelings … I shall always look back on the years I worked with him as some of the most difficult and trying ones of my life. For all that I thank God that I was given an opportunity of working alongside of such a man, and of having my eyes opened to the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.23

  When he qualifies his criticisms to this extent – and Kennedy does the same – one has to wonder whether the criticisms remain worth noting.

  There were others who had to bear the brunt of daily exposure to Churchill’s exigent requirements. Most, despite occasional irritation, came to love him for his peculiarities. Ismay, for instance, had to work far more closely than Brooke with his demanding master. After the war he wrote of his appointment as Churchill’s principal staff officer: ‘Many of my friends said at the time, and others have written in their memoirs, that they would not have had my job for all the world. I can only say, in all sincerity, that I would not have changed places with any of them for a king’s ransom.’24 He was on hand day and night, dealing particularly with relationships that were fraught, and sensitivities that were bruised, but he scarcely ever complained, and then only for tactical purposes. Brooke on the other hand complained frequently – and not only about Churchill.

  When the diaries were reviewed by Milton Shulman for the Evening Standard, he spoke of the picture of a ‘dedicated, all-seeing Field-Marshal doing his best to win the war almost single-handed at the conference table while constantly being hampered and harassed by the childish petulance of Winston Churchill and the strategic ignorance of his American colleagues, Marshall and Eisenhower’.25 For G.M. Trevelyan the diaries were the final proof not of Churchill’s failings, but of his greatness, because they showed that he asked for advice and was prepared to take it, even when it was contrary to his own instincts. Whether he was considerat
e in summoning advisers at two in the morning was beside the point. ‘This habit of taking counsel, combined with his own personal qualities, is what won the war.’ Sir Martin Gilbert has said that no other writings have given ‘a more distorted picture of Churchill’s war leadership.’26 So they do, if they are regarded as an historical record.

  The diaries are however accurate in what they purport to be, the reaction of the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee to the way in which the Prime Minister conducted business. They are written by a soldier of outstanding ability who was a great administrator and a great chairman. Brooke was one of the three or four men who contributed most to the outcome of the war, and in the process he drove himself relentlessly and selflessly. His mind was focused and his nervous energy concentrated, even if his reactions to Churchill’s difficult ways were less tolerant than those of others who had to cope with them. He was a strategist of considerable ability, but he lacked the strategic vision of his Chief. It was a great fortune for Britain that Churchill had Brooke, but the war would probably not have been won without Churchill; it could have been won without Brooke.

  Britain’s contribution to the strategy that won the war for the allies was disproportionately large and it was the product of these two men. Churchill used to murmur, ‘Dear Brookie, how I love him’, but not to Brookie. On the other hand, and on another occasion, he told Ismay that ‘Brookie hated him and would have to be sacked’. When Ismay told Brooke, he replied, ‘I don’t hate him, I love him; but when the day comes that I tell him he is right when I believe him to be wrong, it will be time for him to get rid of me’.27 It may seem a pity that the mutual respect and admiration was not more openly avowed: but on that basis the relationship would not have worked.