by Walter Reid
Churchill’s reaction to what Keynes called the ‘lunatic proposals’ of Article 4 was that America was ‘trying to do away with the British Empire’. He handled the matter well. He pointed out that the agreement could not be disposed of without the concurrence of all the separate Dominions and added to the draft proffered by Welles the bland formula ‘with due regard for their existing obligations’, which effectively made the Article meaningless. But just eight days after signing the Charter, Churchill was having misgivings. He wrote to Amery, the India Secretary, saying that Article 3 was presumably only intended to apply when there was a transfer of power: it could not be intended ‘that the natives of Nigeria or of East Africa could by a majority vote choose the form of Government under which they live, or the Arabs by such a vote expel the Jews from Palestine.’9
Churchill had not wished to commit himself to something akin to a statement of war aims at this stage in the war. He told Eden in 1941, ‘I am very doubtful about the utility of attempts to plan the peace before we have won the war.’10 He had already been pressed by British Cabinet members for a statement of war aims, but had managed to resist until the meeting with the President. This tying of hands ran contrary to his philosophy of opportunism.
America undertook to give very substantial aid to Russia in coordination with Britain, to provide more merchant ships to take war materials to Britain, to augment the British Atlantic convoys with five American destroyers, and to carry out patrol duties as far east as Iceland. This was important; but there were disappointments too. Japan was asked to stop further expansion in the south-west Pacific; but while Roosevelt undertook, at Churchill’s urging, to threaten war if Japan did not comply with this request, he withdrew from that undertaking on his return to Washington. Secondly, the supply of heavy bombers to Britain was to be reduced because of shortages in America. Finally, Jacob recorded that not one American army officer showed any wish to be involved in the war on Britain’s side; the American navy may have been a little more enthusiastic.11 The British Chiefs of Staff reported to Churchill that the results of their conversations were not startling: ‘The American Chiefs of Staff … have so far not formulated any joint strategy for the defeat of Germany in the event of their entry into the war’.12
The differences that emerged at Placentia Bay were perfectly evident to the British. There had been divergent views about freedom of trade. Over dinner in the Officers’ Ward Room in the Prince of Wales, where the menu, which was headed with Churchill’s personal crest (hardly a touch to appeal to the progressive President), showed little evidence of the privations of wartime Britain – smoked salmon and caviar, roasted grouse, champagne, fine wines and brandy – Roosevelt told the Prime Minister that trade was not to be encumbered by artificial barriers. The reference was to the Ottawa Agreements and the favoured status for intra-imperial trade. Churchill, only half-jokingly, told the Americans that Britain had adhered to free trade for eighty years in the face of ever-increasing American tariffs.
Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles negotiated with Cadogan on the Agreements. He was under instructions from the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, to ensure that Lend-Lease would be conditional on revocation of the Agreements. This issue had already been discussed between Hopkins and Churchill in London, when the Prime Minister had been resistant to any move that would undermine Britain’s imperial role. Cordell Hull was adamant that at the end of the war America should not be left waiting for an insolvent Britain to repay its debts. For no more generous a reason than this, the Treasury Secretary, Morgenthau, was instructed to say at Placentia Bay that if Britain returned undamaged material at the end of the war, the balance due by her would be written off – but only provided the Ottawa agreements were brought to an end. For himself Churchill was an out-and-out free trader, but he knew that the Conservative Party would never back down on Imperial Preference. The negotiations at Placentia Bay resulted in a meaningless agreement in which ‘free markets’ replaced ‘free trade’, and ‘due respect for existing obligations’ qualified its terms.
Harold Macmillan as Minister Resident at Allied Headquarters in North-West Africa met Hull on 13 October 1943 and his diary contains a good description of the Secretary of State, both of his physical appearance and of his character: ‘I don’t know why American Statesmen are always so old. Secretary Stimson (Secretary for War) who came through here is over 80. Hull is 74. He is exactly like the portraits of all Americans of the Civil War period – a fine southern gentleman. His views on internal politics are reactionary and on foreign politics based on the sort of vague Liberalism of the ‘eighties’ tinctured with personal prejudice’.13
Superficially at least a warm and convivial relationship was established at Placentia Bay between President and Prime Minister. The meeting on the final day had been the most productive from that point of view. There had been no business to transact and Roosevelt entertained Churchill, Beaverbrook and Hopkins to lunch. Beaver-brook was not only one of Churchill’s oldest friends but also an old friend of the President, and Hopkins deliberately worked as a catalyst or marriage broker to try to demonstrate to the two leaders that they could be at ease with each other.14 The relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt is a difficult one to analyse. There was a large degree of conviviality and joshing at their early meetings, and each man had a real respect for the other. Although in public they addressed each other with formality, using the title of their offices rather than Christian names, in private informality tended to rule. But the friendship did not go deep. Each man knew what his job was, and, despite protestations to the contrary, always put the interests of his own country first. When they were apart, Churchill, the romantic, very rarely spoke critically of the President; Roosevelt, the colder, more Machiavellian politician, was much more detached and could refer to Churchill with dry amusement or, at times, with irritation.
As Churchill sailed back from Placentia Bay, watching on the way the Laurel and Hardy comedy, Saps at Sea,15 he took with him the clear sense that America would be coming to Britain’s assistance, that the President was his friend, and that the Atlantic Charter would produce practical results before long.
But at Placentia Bay the President’s utterances had been typically Rooseveltian: genial and sympathetic, but finally no more than vague adumbrations, nebulous and without commitment. Post-Placentia Bay, Roosevelt responded to challenges from the isolationists by saying repeatedly that the Atlantic Charter had brought the United States ‘no closer to war’, that there were no ‘secret commitments’ and that the conference had amounted to no more than ‘an exchange of views’. The British Cabinet and public opinion were equally disappointed to find that the expectations aroused by the conference had proved to be false. Churchill made the best of things, reporting to the Cabinet that he had ‘established warm and deep personal relations with our great friend’. But he exaggerated the warmth of these relations – or he may simply have been attempting to put heart into the War Cabinet. As early as 28 August 1941 he reported a ‘wave of depression’ within that Cabinet in a telegram to the White House and asked Roosevelt, via Hopkins, whether ‘you could give me any sort of hope’. He spelled out what was happening to British shipping: ‘I don’t know what will happen if England is fighting alone when 1942 comes.’ Could there be any hope for the future? Hopkins did not reply.16
23
Pearl Harbor
Until the end of 1941 the outlook for Britain was as perilous as it had ever been. Churchill was in a small minority in being reasonably confident that Russia would remain in the war for any appreciable time. Within the War Cabinet there was a very real fear that Moscow would not survive for another year. And despite a few friendly noises from Roosevelt at Placentia Bay, America seemed as far away as ever from coming in. If Russia were out and America stood on the sidelines, Britain would be back to the darkest days of 1940, and almost bankrupt.
Two things happened to transform the picture. The first was receipt of Enigma decrypts in the
course of September indicating that imminent Russian collapse was not to be expected. The second was the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The story of how the news came to Churchill is well known. He was at Chequers that evening, where his guests were Averell Harriman and Gil Winant, the American ambassador. The butler brought in a portable radio on which they heard the evening news on the BBC Home Service. Churchill leapt to his feet, saying that he must declare war on Japan. His guests prevailed upon him not to do so on the basis of a radio broadcast. Churchill phoned Roosevelt: ‘Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?’ ‘It’s quite true. They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We’re all in the same boat now.’
Churchill’s reaction to Pearl Harbor was straightforward and understandable: ‘No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. We had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live.’
Churchill’s reaction to the news of Pearl Harbor is sometimes contrasted with the laconic response in Brooke’s diary. Brooke wrote: ‘After dinner listened to wireless to discover that Japan had attacked America!! All of our work of last 48 hours wasted! The Japs themselves have now ensured that the USA are in the war.’ He made a telephone call to see if there was to be another Chiefs of Staff meeting that night. ‘Luckily not! So off to bed for some sleep before another hard day’s work.’1
That was all. In an exchange with the author, which in some ways was the seed of this book, the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead used the contrast between the two reactions to distinguish the respective contributions of the two men to the military winning of the war. To be fair to Brooke, his response is that of the staff officer that he was. To be fair to Churchill, Brooke’s response was no more than that of a staff officer.
It is interesting that at the very time that, unknown to him, the Japanese fleet had been preparing for its attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill was writing to Roosevelt, imploring him to declare what would be the consequences of Japanese aggression. ‘I beg you to consider whether, at the moment which you judge right, which may be very near, you should not say that “any further Japanese aggression would compel you to place the gravest issues before Congress”, or words to that effect.’2 Britain would make a parallel commitment. Roosevelt made no such declaration.
Well before Pearl Harbor, in February 1941, Churchill reviewed an apprehensive Royal Naval appreciation of risks from the Japanese in the Pacific. He dissented strongly from the views he read. Less than accurately he asserted that ‘We think it unlikely that Japan will enter the war against Great Britain and the USA. It is still more unlikely that they would attempt any serious land operations in Malaya entailing movements of a large army and the maintenance of its communications while a US fleet of adequate strength remains at Hawaii.’3 Part of the reason for this disastrously flawed stance arose from a desire to do nothing that might dismay the Americans. The United States was wedded to a Pacific view, and it would have been a mistake to interfere in that theatre. Britain should ‘loyally accept the US Navy’s dispositions for the Pacific’.
Later in the year his views changed, and by October 1941, American naval activity in the Atlantic had allowed Britain to send ships for the defence of Singapore. Churchill was behind this initiative as much as anyone else. In August 1941 he had minuted the Admiralty requiring ‘a deterrent squadron in the Indian Ocean’. Pound was against releasing modern battleships of the King George V class, preferring to retain them in home waters in case the Tirpitz broke out. Churchill thought, wrongly, that a show of force could deter Japanese expansionism and insisted on the despatch of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, plus four destroyers and the aircraft carrier Indomitable. He must take a large degree of blame for the loss of the ships. The concept of a deterrent force was very much his, and it was also very much his idea that Japan was not to be taken too seriously as a naval power. From the example of the Tirpitz, hidden in the fjords, and interdicting British shipping operations, he concluded that the Prince of Wales could do something similar in the East. It was he who persuaded the Defence Committee, in the face of arguments from Pound and Admiral Phillips, that the ships should go. The Admiralty recorded its dissent.
The Indomitable, which was to provide the essential air cover for this vulnerable fleet, was temporarily out of action, and the two capital ships went ahead – but only after many battles between Churchill on the one hand, supported by Eden and Atlee, and Pound on the other, and ultimately only on condition that the matter was to be reviewed when the Prince of Wales reached Cape Town.
By the time the Prince of Wales, commanded by Admiral Tom Phillips (who had been a favourite of Churchill’s until he quarrelled with him over the diversion of troops and ships to Greece in 1941), had reached Cape Town, it was clear that the Indomitable could not join her and for some unexplained reason the promised review of the position never took place. Later Churchill tended to blame Phillips for the disaster. Phillips always underestimated the threat to ships from the air. ‘Bomber’ Harris said to him once, ‘Tom, there is no reasoning with you. One day you will be on the bridge of your ship and you will be hit by bombs and torpedoes dropped from the air. And as you sink you will swear it was a mine.’ The news of the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse caused Churchill great pain. ‘I put the telephone down. I was thankful to be alone. In all the war I never received a more direct shock!’ The responsibility was his more than anyone else’s.
After meeting Phillips in Cape Town, Smuts had sent a telegram to Churchill, warning him about the vulnerability of the British ships: ‘If Japanese are really nippy, there is here opening for a first-class disaster’. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Churchill had given some thought to having the ships lose themselves at sea or join the remnants of the American navy, but as he worked in bed on 10 December and received the terrible news no decision had been taken. Indeed the previous evening it had been decided to ‘sleep on the problem’. Sleeping on problems is not always a good policy in wartime.
Even in the aftermath of the loss of the ships, Churchill misread the situation and told the Chiefs of Staff that Singapore could withstand attack for a further six months. In the event, it fell just two months later.
On 22 December, immediately after the loss of the ships he made a Statement to the House. There was some criticism of the fact that there was not an opportunity for backbenchers to comment and express disagreement. Churchill affected to miss the point, and said that if the House did not want him to make statements, he would be happy not to; he was only trying to be respectful to the House. The Commons were able to return to the subject later in the month in Secret Session. By then Churchill was in America. The government faced a good deal of criticism in relation not only to sending the ships out, but also to defence of aerodromes, general unpreparedness in the Far East and the vulnerability of India. Lord Winterton attacked Churchill’s role, and A.V. Alexander, the First Lord, was heckled by a group of Conservatives. The government had to abandon a motion to adjourn for a month in the face of a counter-motion from Shinwell, rather than face an embarrassing vote.4
Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Hitler made that strange mistake that guaranteed German defeat: he declared war on the United States and ‘the lout Roosevelt’. A disastrous and unnecessary move. The Treaty obligation between Germany and Japan amounted to no more than that if either country were attacked, the other would consult to see what help could be given. At this stage, Japan had not been attacked, and even if she had been, Germany was under no obligation to come to her aid.
He had ignored Ribbentrop, who had warned Hitler not to do it. If he had not done so, America could have confined her war to the Pacific. It is unlikely that she would have done so, but not impossible. There were many Americans, particularly in the navy, who thought that America’s Pacific interests should come first; and without Hitler’s initiative a declaration of war on Ge
rmany would constitutionally have required the approval of Congress. It was a fatal mistake. Hitler’s unnecessary intervention completed Churchill’s work. America was at Britain’s side. Hitler was doomed.
What would have happened if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor is much more difficult to say. Hindsight suggests that America was inexorably and inevitably coming towards war alongside Britain, but the evidence is far from compelling. Roosevelt was always ready to point to his difficulties with Congress, and indeed since the Supreme Court crisis of 1937 he faced an increasingly hostile legislature, which, from January 1939, was an effective cross-party conservative coalition.5
But as Chamberlain, not usually a literary type, pointed out, Congress was often Roosevelt’s Mr Jorkins, and more often an excuse than a cause of inaction. As Churchill said in a letter to Randolph in August 1941, ‘The President, for all his warm heart and good intentions, is thought by many of his admirers to move with public opinion rather than to lead and inspire it’.6 Roosevelt had displayed little leadership when the Neutrality Act was to be revised. Chamberlain said of Congress over the Neutrality Act, ‘Their behaviour … is enough to make one weep, but I have not been disappointed for I never expected any better behaviour from these pig-headed and self-righteous nobodies’. Even Butler was jolted out of his usual urbanity. He minuted the American Department of the Foreign Office, ‘I cannot tell you what a deplorable impression it makes on my mind. In my political life I have always been convinced that we can no more count on America than on Brazil, but I had led myself to hope that this legislation might at least be passed.’7 Stimson once said that discussing policy with the President was ‘very much like chasing a vagrant beam of sunshine around a vacant room’.8
Roosevelt was aware of the significance of the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan, and one of his reasons for not wanting to declare war on Germany had been that he was convinced that doing so would bring in Japan. He made this point to Mackenzie King as late as November 1941.9 But his reluctance to go to war was more rooted in his nature than that. Even after news was coming in about the attacks on Pearl Harbor he talked about his ‘earnest desire to complete his administration without war’ which had now been frustrated by the Japanese.10 There are many records of his hatred of war, and it is an irony that, like Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon B. Johnson, he should, as a pacific politician without great interest in foreign affairs, be remembered in large part for his involvement in overseas belligerence.