Churchill 1940-1945: Under Friendly Fire

by Walter Reid

  At the second plenary session that day, Churchill pressed Stalin about Poland. Stalin told him that the Provisional government had not refused to hold free elections. Truman brought the proceedings to an end when Churchill felt there were still points to discuss. After the war he told Colville that to please the new President Eisenhower he had excised from his history the fact that ‘the United States, to please Russia, gave away vast tracts of Europe – the British General Election had occupied too much of his attention which should have been directed to stemming this fatal tide … [Truman was] bewildered by responsibilities which he had never expected.’10 That evening he dined with Stalin, and the Russian leader reassured him that the central European nations, like Poland, would have free elections.

  On 23 July Churchill heard the news of the successful test of the atomic bomb. As at the news of Pearl Harbor, he was jubilant: this time because the Russians need not be involved in the Japanese War. As at the news of Pearl Harbor, Brooke failed to share his vision: ‘I tried to crush his over-optimism based on the result of one experiment, and was asked with contempt what reason I had for minimizing the results of these discoveries’.

  There was little to celebrate about Potsdam. The British Chiefs of Staff were angered when they found that they were to be excluded from devising the strategy for the war in the Pacific: all Marshall was prepared to do was to let them know what was to happen. Finally he gave way only to the extent that the United States Chiefs would consult with the British, while retaining the right to make the final decisions. The days of the Combined Chiefs were at an end.

  Churchill did secure some modest gains in negotiations with Stalin: Britain and America were allowed to share with Russia in occupying Vienna, and satisfactory territorial arrangements were made in relation to Persia and Turkey. But that was all. He tried yet again, but unsuccessfully, to argue for a democratic future for Poland. By now he had to resist claims from a communist Poland for aggrandisement in the west, where earlier the London Poles had sought to extend their frontiers to the east.

  In subsequent discussions Churchill continued to press Stalin and the Polish Communist Leader, Bierut, for the return of Silesia to Germany. They refused, but Bierut told him that Poland would follow ‘the English model’ of democracy and would be ‘one of the most democratic countries in Europe’. Neither Churchill nor Truman attached any value to such assurances and when the ninth plenary session ended at 12.15 p.m. on 25 July no agreement had been reached and the matter was deferred ‘until a later agreement’.

  There was now a break of forty-eight hours while Attlee and Churchill left to hear the outcome of the vote in London. Stalin had told Churchill that there would be a Conservative majority of eighty. Eden reported that the Conservative Party predicted a majority of about seventy. But when Churchill and Attlee went in separate jeeps to a British victory parade in Berlin on 21 July, Churchill’s secretary, John Peck, noticed that the Prime Minister was getting markedly less cheers than the Labour leader. Mountbatten had dined with Churchill at Potsdam on 24 July and was told that the Prime Minister had great plans in store for him. Mountbatten had been in India when the British troops were voting and he wrote later, ‘It was a mournful and eerie feeling to sit there talking plans with the man who seemed so confident that they would come off, and I felt equally confident that he would be out of office within twenty-four hours’.

  On his first night back in London, Churchill woke up before dawn with ‘a sharp stab of almost physical pain’, a premonition of defeat. Before noon that morning it was evident that there was to be a Labour landslide. On 27 July, Attlee returned to Potsdam as Prime Minister. Churchill remained in London. He had feared when he woke at dawn on the previous day that ‘The knowledge and experience I had gathered, the authority and goodwill I had gained in so many countries would vanish’.

  Epilogue

  On 26 October 1951, at the age of seventy-six, Churchill returned to power. He finally resigned from office, with great reluctance, on 5 April 1955. The last piece of political advice he gave, as he said goodbye to those Ministers who were not in the Cabinet, was, ‘Never be separated from the Americans’.

  His second Ministry is now regarded as having been a productive and valuable one. His main ambition in these years, and the desire which was part of the cause of his reluctance to leave the scene, was to attempt to secure world peace, to reduce the tension which had brought Britain and America to the brink of war with their Russian wartime ally. He had hoped that his personal links with Stalin might allow him to act as a peacemaker, and proposed to President-Elect Eisenhower in February 1952 that they both go to Moscow. Eisenhower declined. When Stalin died on 9 March of that year, he felt that it might be possible to establish an understanding at a meeting with his successors. That meeting never took place, and his last great plan of reducing world tension and exorcising the spectre of atomic war was thwarted, largely by his former colleague, Eisenhower, with the assistance, at home, of his long-time deputy, Anthony Eden.

  Churchill had been made a Knight of the Garter in 1953, a distinction he had declined in 1944 when the King reported that his Prime Minister ‘became all blubby’. Lascelles said that then ‘they seem to have fallen on each other’s necks, in an ecstasy of fraternal devotion’.1 The honour had been proffered again after the 1945 election, but despite much pressure Churchill would not accept it in view of the decision of the electorate.2

  He was offered a dukedom by the Queen at the time of his resignation in 1955. Dukedoms for commoners were long in abeyance, and without his knowledge his Secretary and the Queen’s had discussed the matter in advance, so that the Queen could be assured that there was no risk that he would accept. In the event he found himself momentarily tempted and hesitated before declining. He reported, ‘And do you know, it’s an odd thing, but she seemed almost relieved’.3 He remained a Member of the House of Commons until 1964, when he was eighty-nine. He died on 24 January 1965. Three hundred thousand people walked past his coffin as he lay in state at Westminster Hall. He received the first State Funeral that a commoner had received since the death of the Duke of Wellington. The Queen broke with precedent and awaited the arrival of her greatest subject.

  Countless historians have felt constrained to describe him as, under God, the saviour of his country, which he was. No Prime Minister of Great Britain, indeed no Minister of any sort, has done more for his country, and it is inconceivable that any ever will. What was said of the younger Pitt can be said even more truly of Churchill: ‘He saved his country by his efforts and the world by his example’. He was a great man. His faults were only the product of an abundance of vigour and enthusiasm. The scale and range of his abilities was matched by a profound sense of humanity and magnanimity. His nobility was the reflection of the belief that mankind was itself noble, endowed with a duty and a destiny.

  Clementine Churchill, a popular figure in her own right as a result of her war work, was created a Baroness in May 1965. Despite the wealth which her husband’s writings, particularly his history of the Second World War, brought to him and to family trusts, she lived latterly in straitened circumstances. She declined offers of assistance. She died on 12 December 1977.

  De Gaulle was a caretaker President of France under the Fourth Republic from September 1944 to 20 January 1946. He returned to the Presidency under the Fifth Republic. The constitution of that Republic was his creation and modern France is substantially shaped by his ideas and his concept of the role that his country should play in the world. On 16 May 1967, when Britain sought to join the community of European powers whose formation Churchill had been one of the first to urge, de Gaulle refused the requests of Harold Macmillan, with whom he had worked in North Africa, complaining that Britain was too close to America to be a true European. On 10 January 1966 de Gaulle was the only world statesman who wrote to Clementine on the first anniversary of her husband’s death in terms which greatly moved her: ‘Voici venir le triste et émouvant anniversaire. Laissez-moi
vous dire, qu’en portent en cette occasion ma pensée sur la grande mémoire de Sir Winston Churchill, je ressens, mieuxque jamais, la dimension de sa pérsonalité… Je voudrais que vous sachiez aussi de quel coeur ma femme et moi-même partageons le chagrin où vous a laissée, ainsi que les vôtres, la disparition de votre si cher et si glorieuxmari’.4* He continued to write every year until January 1970. Ten months later he was dead.

  During the Cold War, America sought to defend herself by establishing her front line on the east, rather than the west, of the Atlantic. She established countless military bases throughout Britain. The special relationship between Britain and America was talked of more than it had been before. There was however little evidence of its actual existence. When Britain, along with France, invaded Suez in 1956, Eisenhower, who had earlier said he would not force a withdrawal, changed his position and told his wartime colleague, Eden, that if the adventure were not ended America would withdraw her support of the pound sterling. As a result of the scale of Britain’s war debts to the United States that support was essential. On 3 November 1956 Eden wrote to Eisenhower, ‘If you cannot approve, I would like you at least to understand the terrible decisions we have had to make. I remember nothing like this since the days when we were comrades together in the war.’5 Eisenhower failed to respond to this plea from his old comrade, and three days later the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan, who had also worked closely with Eisenhower in North Africa, was told by America that they would only save Britain from collapse by supporting a loan application to the International Monetary Fund if Britain were to agree to a ceasefire that same night. To America the Suez venture smacked of imperialism and Britain’s economic weakness meant that it could be stopped. In the first week of November alone, Britain lost $100 million from her currency reserves. In these circumstances Britain had no choice but to withdraw. Anthony Eden resigned from office, his fragile health broken by years of strain.

  In the Vietnam War, Britain’s Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, declined to provide military support to the United States. President Lyndon B. Johnson complained that even a single piper would have been enough. In the Falklands War, America provided valuable intelligence support for Britain, but nothing more, despite the warm personal relationship which existed between President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

  When George W. Bush became President he telephoned Tony Blair. He told him it was his first phone call to a foreign leader and he referred to the special relationship between the English-speaking peoples.6 Soon he was to request Britain’s help in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  It had long been evident that the special relationship only mattered – indeed only existed – when both parties wanted it to. But the phrase still leaps easily to the lips of the petitioner.

  * ‘As this sad anniversary approaches, and my memory turns to Sir Winston, I am more than ever conscious of the scale of his personality. I should like you to know that, and to know also how deeply my wife and I share with you and your family your grief over the loss of a very dear and wonderful husband.’

  APPENDIX I

  Codenames for Principal Military Operations

  ANVIL

  Invasion of South of France Summer 1944 (later DRAGOON)

  BATTLEAXE

  Attempt to clear Cyrenaica, June 1941

  BREVITY

  Unsuccessful attempt to relieve Tobruk, May 1941

  BOLERO

  Build-up of United States forces in Britain, ahead of invasion

  COMPASS

  Successful operation in the Western Desert under O’Connor, December 1940

  CRUSADER

  Eighth Army offensive, North Africa, November 1941–February 1942

  DIADEM

  Allied attack on Rome

  DRAGOON

  Final name for ANVIL

  GYMNAST

  Landings in French North Africa (later known as TORCH)

  HUSKY

  Landings in Sicily

  JUPITER

  Contemplated invasion of Norway

  OVERLORD

  Invasion of North-west Europe, Summer 1944

  ROUNDUP

  Contemplated substantial invasion of Europe for 1943

  RUTTER

  Dieppe Raid, 1942

  SHINGLE

  The Anzio landing

  SLEDGEHAMMER

  Contemplated small-scale landing in Europe for 1942

  TORCH

  Anglo-American landings, French North Africa, formerly GYMNAST

  APPENDIX II

  Principal War Conferences

  Atlantic Conference, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, 9–12 August 1941(WSC, FDR)

  ARCADIA, First Washington Conference, 22 December 1941–14 January 1942 (WSC, FDR)

  Second Washington Conference, 20–25 June 1942 (WSC, FDR)

  Moscow Conference, 12–17 August 1942 (WSC, JS, Harriman)

  Casablanca Conference, 14–24 January 1943 (WSC, FDR with de Gaulle and Giraud in walk-on parts)

  TRIDENT, Third Washington Conference, 12–27 May 1943 (WSC, FDR)

  QUADRANT, First Quebec Conference, 17–24 August 1943 (WSC, FDR, Mackenzie King)

  First Cairo Conference, 22–26 November 1943 (WSC, FDR, Chiang Kaishek)

  Teheran Conference, 28 November–1 December 1943 (WSC, FDR, JS)

  Second Cairo Conference, 4–6 December 1943 (WSC, FDR, Inönü)

  OCTAGON, Second Quebec Conference, 12–16 September 1944 (WSC, FDR)

  Moscow Conference, 9 October 1944 (WSC, JS)

  Yalta Conference, 4–11 February 1945 (WSC, FDR, JS), preceded by preparatory Malta Conference (WSC, FDR)

  Potsdam Conference, 17 July–2 August 1945 (interrupted by declaration of the results of the British general election) (WSC, HST, JS, Attlee)

  APPENDIX III

  Outline Chronology of Churchill’s War

  1939

  3 September

  Britain and France declare war on Germany.

  3 September

  Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty.

  3 October

  Roosevelt announces that USA will remain neutral.

  1940

  28 March

  Britain and France agree not to sign separate peace with Germany.

  9 May

  Norway Debate vote.

  10 May

  Hitler invades France.

  10 May

  Chamberlain resigns. Churchill appointed Prime Minister.

  26–28 May

  Cabinet debates peace overtures.

  27 May

  Evacuation from Dunkirk begins.

  28 May

  Belgium surrenders.

  10 June

  Mussolini declares war on the Allies.

  14 June

  German Army enters Paris.

  15 June

  USA rejects France’s appeal for help against Germany.

  17 June

  Pétain negotiates an armistice with Germany.

  22 June

  France signs armistice with Germany and is divided into two zones.

  28 June

  Churchill recognises de Gaulle as leader of the Free French.

  3 July

  Royal Navy destroys bulk of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir.

  10 July

  Luftwaffe launches Battle of Britain.

  23 August

  The Blitz begins.

  25 August

  Royal Air Force bombs Berlin.

  2 September

  Destroyers for Bases Agreement.

  13 September

  Graziani and Italian Army advance into Egypt.

  15 September

  ‘The culminating date’ in the Battle of Britain.

  25 September

  Dakar.

  12 October

  Hitler postpones Operation Sealion.

  28 October

  Italy invades Greece.

  5 November

  F.D.R.’s third Presidential victory.

 
9 December

  O’Connor opens COMPASS

  1941

  22 January

  Britain captures Tobruk.

  9 February

  O’Connor at El Agheila.

  22 February

  Britain undertakes to support Greece.

  7 March

  British Army invades Italian-controlled Ethiopia.