by Walter Reid
After Quebec, Marshall was indeed told that he would have the command, though retaining the office of Chief of Staff. Eisenhower would come back to Washington as Acting Chief of Staff. Mrs Marshall started to move their furniture out of the Chief of Staff’s residence.
But Marshall’s colleagues in Washington were not as keen to see the removal go ahead. King and Arnold seemed to have been motivated more by admiration than by envy, wanting to keep their colleague working with them in Washington. Admiral Leahy agreed. As King said, ‘We have the winning combination here in Washington. Why break it up?’ But until Teheran Marshall remained the prospective Supreme Commander. It was only on Sunday 5 December that things changed. On that day, Roosevelt made a momentous decision against the advice of his Chiefs of Staff, and of Hopkins and Stimson, and contrary to the preferences of Stalin and Churchill. He told Marshall that if he let him leave Washington ‘I could not sleep at night with you out of the country’. Marshall took the decision with magnificent stoicism, although he was being deprived of the historic culmination of his career. He ‘recalled saying that I would not attempt to estimate my capabilities; the President would have to do that; I merely wished to make clear that whatever the decision, I would go along with it wholeheartedly; that the issue was too great for any personal feeling to be considered’.3 After Teheran and Cairo, Roosevelt flew to Tunis. When he met Eisenhower there he said, ‘Well, Ike, you’d better start packing’. Ike thought he was referring to his move to Washington as Acting Chief of Staff.
The British view was that Ike was an inexperienced man, a political figurehead, and would not be the true military commander. The assumption sounds arrogant and condescending, but it was widely held. As Brooke said, ‘We inserted under him one of our own commanders to deal with the military situations’. This was the ‘stratosphere policy’, which had been applied in the Mediterranean theatre. Rightly or wrongly, British senior officers had retained a fairly low opinion of their American counterparts from a professional point of view. Further, it seemed important for Britain, partly to inspire popular confidence, and partly simply to win the war, that Montgomery was seen to be the commander of the Allied land forces during the assault phase.
On the main issue at Cairo, Italy, Churchill received significant support from Eisenhower. Ike now wanted to make Italy a central part of Allied strategy, even wanting to go beyond Rome to ‘the valley of the Po. In no other area could we so threaten the whole German structure including France, the Balkans and the Reich itself. Here also our airpower will be closer to vital objectives in Germany’. He went so far as to argue for the postponement of OVERLORD, wanting to continue ‘the maximum possible operations in an established theatre.’ Churchill could have written the script; but nothing was agreed before it was time for him and Roosevelt to fly on to Teheran.
When he arrived there, Churchill was too tired to dine with the other two. Roosevelt took advantage of his absence and arranged a meeting with Stalin for the following morning, an hour before the Big Three were due to meet. It was made perfectly clear to Churchill that FDR intended to deal with Stalin as an independent party, and he declined to consult with Churchill before his early morning meeting. Jacob recorded that Churchill was deeply upset by what he regarded as a disavowal of the concept of the English-speaking peoples as a combined force for good.4
The President’s action did indeed conflict with many of his genial assurances. Churchill was to say, ‘I realised for the first time what a very small country this is. On one hand the big Russian bear with its paws outstretched – on the other the great American elephant – & between them the poor little English donkey – who is the only one who knows the right way home’.5 His position was invidious. Roosevelt, said Cadogan, ‘promises everything that Stalin wants in the way of attack in the West, with the result that Winston, who has to be more honest, is becoming an object of suspicion to Stalin’.6
Roosevelt and his advisers came to Teheran determined to be done with British obstructions to OVERLORD once and for all. Relations between the two staffs had been poor enough at the pre-summit meeting in Cairo, but OVERLORD had not been the major topic there, and at Teheran the approach was not to debate but to manoeuvre. Roosevelt insisted that there should be no agenda. He opened the conference by setting out the OVERLORD plan to Stalin. Stalin grabbed at it: ‘Make OVERLORD the basic operation for 1944’. Churchill was presented with a fait accompli and if he appeared unenthusiastic Stalin questioned Britain’s courage. All this was achieved at an opening meeting so casually arranged that Marshall was not even aware of it; he had gone off sightseeing.
Hap Arnold noted how Stalin’s manner towards the British, formerly reasonably cordial, was now ‘half-humorous, half-scathing’.7 At the plenary meeting on the second day, Roosevelt began by ignoring his British ally and talking exclusively to the Soviet delegation. Then he made jokes at the expense of Britain. Stalin smiled more and more at Churchill’s discomfiture, and eventually he and Roosevelt openly burst out laughing.8 It is clear that while Churchill frequently saw Stalin in an idealised light, and believed that he and the Russian got on well, Stalin had no great liking for him.9 It was all very petty and mean-minded and far removed from the heroic aspirations of the early years of the war. No wonder Churchill told Moran that he was ‘appalled by his own impotence’ at Teheran.10
Brooke believed that Averell Harriman, now US ambassador to Russia, was briefing against Britain. Certainly, according to Elliot Roosevelt, his father came to the conference with the intention of indicating to Stalin that he regarded Churchill as something of an amusing irrelevance, and went to the conference dinner on 29 November with the intention of taking Stalin’s side ‘in any joshing dispute’. This culminated in Stalin’s pretending to favour executing 50,000 key German personnel so that Germany could not embark on another war. According to Elliot Roosevelt, Churchill, affected by the number of toasts consumed as this prodigious meal, failed to recognise a joke and leaped to his feet to protest. The President intervened: ‘As usual it seems to be my function to mediate this dispute. Clearly there must be some sort of compromise between your position, Mr Stalin, and that of my good friend the Prime Minister. Perhaps we could say that, instead of summarily executing fifty thousand war criminals, we should settle on a smaller number. Shall we say forty-nine thousand, five hundred?’ Elliot Roosevelt says that he himself suggested it was all academic as between them the Allies would kill the 50,000 criminals and a good deal more in the course of the fighting. He claimed that he was attacked by Churchill for deliberately damaging relations between the allies, and that there were no more invitations to Chequers.11
Eden tried to defuse the situation and explain that it was a joke, but Churchill walked out and had to be pursued by Stalin and Molotov who brought him back to the table. In his history Churchill referred to Elliot Roosevelt’s ‘intrusion’, and said that although he consented to return, he ‘was not then, and am not now, fully convinced that all was chaff and there was no serious intent lurking behind.’12
Roosevelt had no embarrassment about the way he treated Churchill at the conference. ‘The biggest thing achieved at Teheran’, he said according to Elliot Roosevelt, ‘was in making it clear to Stalin that the US and Great Britain were not allied in one common bloc against the Soviet Union. I think we’ve got rid of that idea, once and for all.’13
Privately, Churchill was very upset by Roosevelt’s desertion at Teheran.14 While he did not blame Roosevelt directly for distancing himself, he did speak of a climate of opinion among the American camp ‘which seemed to wish to win Russian confidence even at the expense of coordinating the Anglo-American war effort’. It was very far from the way he thought things should be handled.
By now Roosevelt was thinking increasingly of the mechanics of regulating world affairs after the war. He wanted to make sure that Britain did not create a western European alliance, which would encourage Russia to form a bloc of eastern European nations. Such a series of alliances would
militate against the success of the new, post-war organisation. He wanted to encourage understanding between Britain and Russia. At the same time, he personally wanted to charm Stalin, and convince him that there was no concerted Anglo-American line against Russia. It was for this reason that he had initially refused to meet Churchill at Cairo ahead of the main conference and subsequently capitulated only to the extent of spending one day with him. At Teheran itself he did not see Churchill on his own until the fifth day. He spoke quite frankly to Stalin about his own differences with Britain. He also indicated his acquiescence in Stalin’s territorial ambitions.15 His policy, taken together with his failure to understand those ambitions, created ideal conditions for Stalin to pursue them.
On 28 November FDR, rather surprisingly, talked of an Allied advance to the north of Italy, and thence to the Danube. But in reality so far as America was concerned any attempts to delay or avoid OVERLORD were a waste of time. Whatever arguments Churchill put forward, Roosevelt had bought in to the unshakeable American belief that the deployment of very large numbers of troops in a major confrontation with the enemy was the way to win the war with a minimum loss of American lives. Marshall held strongly to this traditional American theory. He had been on Pershing’s staff on the Western Front in the First World War, and looked on British efforts at the Dardanelles, in Salonika and in Palestine, for example, as wasteful dissipations of force.16 Britain, and in particular Churchill, took a different view, conditioned by a different historical experience. Churchill had fretted throughout the First World War, frustrated and angered by what he saw as an unimaginative, attritional approach, that eschewed any flash of strategic insight in favour of leaving huge armies standing in the mud and ‘chewing barbed wire in Flanders’.
Everything in Churchill’s experience, as well as his nature, combined to urge him away from a strategy he had so deplored. As General Hollis observed, ‘[T]he memory of one million dead from the British Empire in the First World War – largely as a result of stupid frontal attacks and no imagination – hung heavily over every proposal. Their memory was the unseen visitor at every conference I attended.’17
Roosevelt thought moreover, not entirely fancifully, that Churchill’s views were partly based on his concerns about the shape of post-war Europe. The prospect of Russian domination did not particularly interest the President, and certainly did not distress him unduly.18
Stalin of course preferred landings in Normandy to having western troops in competition with him in central Europe: he argued strongly against postponement of OVERLORD. At a full meeting on the afternoon of 30 November, it was agreed that OVERLORD should proceed as planned, in May 1944. With Stalin and Roosevelt in favour, that outcome had never really been in doubt. Stalin asked Churchill whether he really believed in OVERLORD. The reply was, ‘It will be our stern duty to hurl across the Channel against the Germans every sinew of our strength’.
On the following day, 1 December, the talk was about what was to happen to Poland. Churchill was conscious that the invasion of Poland was the cause of the present war, and opinion at home in the United Kingdom took the fate of Poland very seriously indeed. On the other hand, he had much experience of dealing with the Poles in exile in London, and was conscious that ‘we should never get the Poles to say they were satisfied. Nothing would satisfy the Poles’. He proposed to tell the London Poles that they would be wise to accept a deal by which they would receive about 300 square miles of Germany but would lose the city of Lvov to Russia. The minutes recorded that ‘he was not prepared to make a great squawk about Lvov’. Roosevelt said, ‘I don’t care two hoots about Poland. Wake me up when we talk about Germany’.19
Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy, criticised the way Poland had been settled. Roosevelt’s reply was not good enough: ‘I know it, Bill – I know it. But it’s the best I can do for Poland at this time’.20
His lack of interest in Poland was bizarre, given the reason for the outbreak for the war, and indeed its initial moral justification. It also represented a considerable move from his position in January 1942 when Stalin demanded of Eden that the West should recognise the 1941 frontiers of Russia, including the Baltic States and Poland up to the Curzon Line. Roosevelt and Hull responded with a reversion to Wilsonian principles of self-determination: there was to be no repetition of the secret territorial agreements of the First World War settlements at Paris and Versailles. Harry Hopkins conveyed this message to Churchill during his visit to London in April 1942, following up what Hull had already said.21 But by Teheran, Roosevelt had privately told Stalin that the United States did accept Russia’s claim to Poland as far as the Curzon Line. As far as the government of Poland was concerned, he was happy to leave matters on the vague basis that he hoped that Russia, Britain and the Poles themselves could sort something out.
He went further than failing to defend Poland’s frontiers and autonomy: together with King Saud he tried to establish a Jewish state in Poland. Churchill insisted on Palestine. The President’s final caprice was a spur of the moment decision. On the basis of liking the look of the young Shah of Persia, who made a formal, protocol visit with the present of a little rug for Eleanor, Roosevelt had a memorandum for discussion drawn up at top speed, guaranteeing Iran’s independence and her control of her own economic interests – a remarkable intrusion into affairs that affected Britain greatly, and America not at all.22
On 2 December, Churchill flew to Cairo and tried, not for the first time, to persuade the Turkish president, Ïnonü, to join the Allies. Ïnonü declined to do so. By 9 December Churchill was feeling very ill but nonetheless flew on to Tunisia. Brooke recalled that ‘[He] sat on his suitcase in a very cold morning wind, looking like nothing on earth.’ When he reached Eisenhower, near Carthage, intending to fly on to Italy, he gave up. He told Eisenhower, ‘I am afraid I shall have to stay with you longer than I had planned. I am completely at the end of my tether and I cannot go on to the Front until I have recovered my strength.’ By 12 December his temperature was 101 degrees and pneumonia was diagnosed. Against the advice of his doctors, he continued to work. Clementine flew out to be with him. Churchill received the news with emotion, but when Charles Wilson told her how pleased he had been, ‘she smiled whimsically. “Oh, yes,” she said, “he’s very glad I’ve come, but in five minutes he’ll forget I’m here.” ’23
Her husband told their daughter, Sarah, ‘If I die, don’t worry – the war is won’. He could see something appropriate about dying among the ruins of Carthage.
42
Marrakech and de Gaulle
At Carthage Churchill was very ill indeed. He was unable to leave his sickbed till 24 December when he had a conference about the provision of landing craft for Anzio. On the following day, Christmas Day, he had his first meal out of bed and he entertained the five Commanders-in-Chief to lunch. That evening there was a cocktail party, which he attended as if he had never been ill. By the following day he was well enough to dictate the doctors’ medical bulletin for them. Despite their orders, he flew from Carthage to Marrakech on 27 December and remained there until 14 January.
Even at his illest – he had suffered a mild heart attack as well as pneumonia – he continued to work and control events. On New Year’s Eve he gave a party for all ranks. After joining in singing Auld Lang Syne, he was heard to bellow to his wife, ‘There’s a wasp in my punch!’1 And when he eventually was able to return to London and went to see the King, he disdained Sir Thomas (‘Tommy’) Lascelles’ suggestion that he might use the lift. ‘Lift?’ he retorted, and ‘Winston’, Nicolson reported, ‘ran up the stairs two at time. When he reached the top, he turned to Tommy and cocked a snook.’2
De Gaulle was unfortunately close to the sickbed, and did nothing to assist convalescence by declining to work with colleagues tainted by a Vichy past. Churchill refused to see him, and only backed down reluctantly when urged to do so by Harold Macmillan who as Plenipotentiary Minister was with his chief in Marrakech: ‘He really is
a remarkable man. Although he can be so tiresome and pigheaded, there is no one like him. His devotion to work and duty is quite extraordinary’.
In November of the previous year, Churchill and Roosevelt had been very upset by the Free French arrest in Beirut of the Lebanese President, Prime Minister and several Ministers, accompanied by the suspension of the constitution. This seemed to Churchill a foretaste of the kind of leadership that de Gaulle would bring to France. Now, at Carthage, the Prime Minister heard that the FCNL had arrested three of the PM’s protégés, Boisson, Peyrouton and Flandin. It is surprising that in all these circumstances and despite his weakness Churchill was even prepared to contemplate inviting de Gaulle to his villa. Macmillan was a sensitive observer. He recorded in his diary, ‘Churchill feels about de Gaulle like a man who has quarrelled with his son’. To achieve a meeting Macmillan had to effect some delicate manoeuvres and diplomatic finesse. But de Gaulle had all sorts of resentments and slights to rehearse. Churchill had stopped in Algiers without visiting him, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt had told him what had happened at Teheran, and so on, at great length. The invitation that Macmillan negotiated was declined. There was then the usual series of exchanges. They would be tedious to enumerate. They must have irritated and exhausted Churchill in his weakened condition.