The Mantle of Command

by Nigel Hamilton

  Goebbels thus gloried in Britain’s shame. The British did not possess a “single general who has shown himself a real commander, on any current field of battle. After Wavell, Auchinleck; after Auchinleck, Ritchie”—the Eighth Army commander, appointed by Auchinleck after he’d had to fire General Alan Cunningham, his first commander. “And every one a failure,” Goebbels sneered.19 The latest German 88mm antitank guns and their armor-piercing shells had made a killing of British armored vehicles in the desert—even decimating the American M-3 “Grant tanks” the British had been given.20 Rommel, who had invented a new tactic—luring the British armor onto his concealed 88mm gun positions, to be “shot like hares”—was “the hero of the hour”21 and was instantly promoted by the Fuhrer to the rank of field marshal, on the field of battle.

  In such circumstances “talk in the U.S. of a Second Front can only be considered a joke,” Goebbels sniffed.22 “Churchill is no longer the leader of the most powerful empire on earth,” the propaganda minister dictated in his office diary. “On the contrary, he has had to go to Washington like a pilgrim, seeking help, and Roosevelt has now taken over many of the functions that were once the Prime Minister’s. Doubtless the President intends to inherit Britain’s empire one day. But that is of no significance to us. We aren’t interested in that. We’ll be quite content to be allowed a free hand in Europe”—a free hand that would exterminate all Jews and reduce all non-Germans to accomplices, servants, slaves—or ashes. “That,” he concluded, “is what we have to achieve in this war.”23

  How much Hitler’s mind was focused on the territories to the east of Germany, rather than to the west, had again been made clear to Goebbels the previous month, as Hitler gave the orders for his legions to recommence their armored drive deeper into Russia. The Führer had already gotten a formal resolution from the Reichstag granting him absolute judicial powers as dictator, “without being bound by existing legal precepts.” Thus empowered, Hitler had briefly returned from his East Prussian headquarters to Berlin again in May, certain he would overwhelm Russian forces by the end of the summer; if not, his armies would be better prepared for winter, he promised the country’s assembled Nazi Party Gauleiters in a two-hour peroration.24 To Goebbels’s surprise, the Führer then confided to the assembled administrators just how critical the previous winter had been—admitting that by the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the Third Reich had been facing retreat and possible defeat on the field of battle. The Japanese had saved the Third Reich.25 Now, thankfully, the situation was reversed—with the Soviet armies facing collapse before German might. Nothing could now stand in his way.26

  The Führer had respect neither for Roosevelt nor untested American troops.27 He had blindly forecast—thirteen days before Midway—that the Japanese Navy would destroy the U.S.-British fleet if it came to a major sea battle.28 American preparations for a Second Front in the West were not worth taking seriously, either, he had mocked, given the current success of Germany’s U-boat war. He’d positioned enough German troops in Norway to repel any invasion attempt, as was rumored to be planned by the British; moreover, with some twenty-five German divisions on call in the West, and no less than four first-class German panzer divisions and even a parachute division ready to meet an Allied landing,29 he predicted a drubbing if the Americans and British attempted to create a Second Front anywhere on the French coast.

  “Of course the Führer doesn’t believe for a moment that, were there to be a British invasion even lasting ten or fourteen days, it would end with anything but an absolute catastrophe for the British. That might alter the whole course of the war, perhaps even end it,” Goebbels recorded the Führer’s words.30 The Allies would hardly be so stupid, surely. In the meantime, German’s destiny lay in the East, the Führer had emphasized. It was there that Germany needed room to expand—Hitler’s perennial mantra since the 1920s—establishing as it did a sort of Chinese wall that would separate the West from Asia.31

  “Never,” Goebbels had recorded the Führer’s strategic imperative in May, “must Germany allow itself to be sandwiched between two military powers, for then the Reich would always be threatened.” Thankfully, the Führer had claimed, Germany had “succeeded in destroying the military power on its western front. Over the summer it would now proceed to destroy the military power on its eastern front. Then we’ll be able to begin the process of reconstruction,” he noted the gist of the Führer’s address. “In the East we want, above all, to use our soldiers as frontier settlers. In that way German resettlement will proceed as it had in the greatest days of Germany’s first empire. The German diaspora should be brought back from foreign countries, even from America, its men applied to the Reich’s skills in colonization. We won’t need to be cultural fertilizers for foreign countries any more, we’ll be able to develop our own territories culturally, intellectually, and spiritually. . . . This was the point of the war,” he sketched the Führer’s tour d’horizon, “for the spilling of so much blood will only be justified by future generations on the basis of swaying cornfields. Of course it would be nice to inherit a few colonies, where we could plant coffee or rubber trees. But our colonial future lies in the East. That is where rich black earth and iron lie, the foundation of our national wealth. By smart demographic measures, above all using Germans returning from abroad, it would be easy to increase the German population to 250 million . . .”32

  The future—“the next stages straightforward. Our punitive air raids on English cities [“Baedeker” raids on Exeter, Bath, Norwich, and York, following massive RAF bomber raids on Lübeck and Rostock] have already taught them a lesson. Once we have established our eastern frontiers, the British will reflect on whether to pursue such air attacks on German territory, because our Luftwaffe will once again be free for action . . . Once matters are settled in the East—and we all hope that will be done this summer—then Europe can, as the Führer says, get stuffed. For the war will be won for us. We’ll be able to indulge in piracy on the high seas against the Anglo-Saxon powers, who won’t be able to withstand it. The United States will lose all enthusiasm for the war, once they see the British empire plundered and disemboweled . . .”33

  On and on in this vein the Führer had shared his apocalyptic vision with his Nazi functionaries—none of whom dissented. “He doesn’t take American declarations of intent too seriously. Against their boast of their 120 million people at war with us, we can counter with about 600 million on our side. For now that Japan has entered the war, we are not talking just of a few continental powers, but we shall soon be able to turn it into a global struggle, spreading it across all continents. The United States are still thinking in terms of world war; but world war terms don’t begin to describe this war.”34 All that was required to fulfill his demonic dream, Hitler repeated, were Nazis with nerves of steel; also Hitler’s own personal survival “to the end of the war,” in order that all actually happened as he willed, despite the inevitable trials and setbacks that would occur.

  Spring had come, thankfully; the Führer seemed to be in the “best of spirits,” Goebbels had noted. “In glänzendster Form.”35

  Four weeks later, as spring had turned to summer and the German armies had driven deeper into southern Russia, and in Libya Rommel turned the tables on General Ritchie’s British Eighth Army, Hitler’s dream had seemed eminently achievable to Goebbels. In late June 1942, it was simply marvelous, he felt, to be alive.

  Gloom had meanwhile descended on Washington in the aftermath of the British surrender of Tobruk.

  In the sticky heat, sixteen of the most senior British and American military staff officers met on June 21, 1942. They had intended to discuss offensive strategy, but they now switched to defense: addressing the ramifications of the collapse of the British in North Africa, and the possible fall of Churchill as prime minister.

  The President’s response, however, was different—indeed, would go down in world history. At the British Empire’s nadir of shame, with British Empire soldiers refu
sing to fight—the number of those surrendering at Tobruk increasing to thirty-three thousand in subsequent hours—the President turned to Churchill and said: “What can we do to help?”36

  General Marshall was consulted, and to the consternation of Secretary Stimson—who was not summoned—the President offered, with Marshall’s approval, to take the Second U.S. Armored Division, currently being equipped with the latest M-4 Sherman tanks with swiveling turrets, and dispatch it immediately to Egypt, with its men and artillery, to defend Alexandria, Cairo, and the Suez Canal.

  Churchill, shocked, chastened, and grateful, accepted. Americans and Britons would thus fight side by side.

  It was in this way that the strategic Second Front “crisis” of June 1942 was temporarily averted—not by argument but by British disaster.

  What earthly hope, after all, could there be of a successful Second Front that fall, at a moment when the British were collapsing in the Middle East? “Nobody seriously believes in the feasibility of a Second Front,” even Goebbels noted in his diary on June 25.37 After all, the majority of the forces for such an invasion would have to be British, given the time it would still take to ship significant numbers of U.S. troops to England. And in the wake of Tobruk’s disgraceful surrender, what possible victory could be won on the fields of Europe, if the British lacked generals who could win offensive battles, or soldiers willing even to fight them?

  19

  No Second Dunquerque

  ON TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1942, three days after the fall of Tobruk—and the day that Major General Eisenhower set off to London to take command of the still-meager U.S. forces rehearsing for the Second Front1—the Canadian prime minister received the long-awaited call from Washington.

  “[T]he President said: Hello Mackenzie. How are you? I expressed the hope that he was well. He said, Yes, very well. He then said: Winston and I are sitting together here. We want you to come down to Washington for a meeting of the Pacific Council on Thursday.”2

  “We drove to the White House through the private entrance to the grounds, at the rear,” Mackenzie King noted in his diary entry for June 25. “We were shown into what I imagine judging from pictures, etc. would be Mrs. Roosevelt’s sitting room”—for there was to be held, prior to the Pacific Council meeting, a conference of representatives of all the British Dominions, addressed in person by Mr. Churchill.

  As he waited, King found a chance to speak with Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the British representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee in Washington.

  Dill—who had been chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) before General Alan Brooke, but had been fired by the Prime Minister for constantly contesting Churchill’s interference in the operations conducted in the field—was gloomy. “He said to me that he regarded the reverse at Tobruk as very serious; from the quiet impressive way he spoke to me, it was clear that he felt this equally. He spoke of the difficulty of a campaign in the desert and of Egypt, and gave me the impression that he felt the whole situation was very grave. While he did not say it, I felt he realized it might be impossible to save the situation so far as the Suez was concerned.”3

  Captain McCrea, Roosevelt’s naval aide, then ushered them into the next-door conference room, where the Dominion representatives of the British Empire took their places. Standing to address them in secret session, Churchill was, if anything, more pessimistic than his listeners, according to King: “When he came to speak on the Middle East, Churchill said that as far as he was concerned, he was prepared to lose the Middle East rather than sacrifice Australia’s position if it had to come to that.”

  This was bleak—strangely contradicted, however, by Churchill’s appearance. The Prime Minister looked “remarkably fresh,” King noted, “almost like a cherub, scarcely a line in his face, and completely rested though up to one or two the night before,” as he gave the assembled representatives a “review of the whole situation.”

  “He started at once with Libya and the fall of Tobruk,” King recounted. “Said that we must not conceal the fact that it was a very serious reverse to him; it had been quite unexpected. The reports he had received from [General] Auchinleck had led him to feel that the British forces would be able to hold situations [positions] successfully and to win out, but there it was, and now the next concern was over Egypt. He said he had no doubt in his own mind about the British being able to hold Egypt. The enemy would find fighting over the desert, many miles [distant] of each other, no water, a very arduous business . . .”

  The Prime Minister’s mixture of brutal frankness and yet confident hope was bewitching to the Canadian prime minister, seated among senior fellow Dominion leaders and representatives—especially when Churchill went on to admit “that the present situation, bad as it appeared, was nothing to what it had been in April last at the time the Japanese fleet were assembled in the Indian Ocean. . . . Pointed out that it looked at one time as though India might readily have fallen to the enemy. There was very little in the way of protection in Ceylon or in India.” The United States, however, had saved England’s imperial bacon. “Happily since then, the Japanese fleet had encountered the attacks it had”—first in the Tokyo raid, then the Coral Sea and Midway—“and he now felt that India was in a better position than she had been in at any time from [point of view of] the number of soldiers there. She was better protected”—especially by Americans—“than she had ever been. As to the internal situation”—where Gandhi was putting together what would become his historic “Quit India” protest movement—Churchill was indifferent: “the British had made the best offer they could,” he declared, claiming that “India was not a country,” as King quoted him. “It was a continent, full of different races, etc. and had to be so regarded.”

  This was not a view that the Canadian premier shared. “I felt, however, that Churchill did not really appreciate the position in India.” The Prime Minister spoke about never having changed his views—but claimed he had not allowed them “to interfere with the utmost effort being made at this time to meet the situation through Cripps.”4

  Given Churchill’s “sabotage” of Cripps’s mission, this was untruthful; yet there was something almost hypnotic about Churchill’s oratory even to the Indian representative at the meeting, Sir Girja S. Bajpai. Churchill spoke of Russia, China, Australia. “Explaining the difficult situation generally,” King recounted, “Churchill said it was the wide space that had to be covered with only limited numbers of men and supplies. He said it was like a man in bed trying to cover himself with a blanket which is not large enough. When his right shoulder was cold and he pulled it over to cover it, the left became uncovered and cold. When he pulled it back, the situation was reversed. Similarly when he hauled the blanket up to put around his neck and chest, his feet became cold and exposed and got cold. When he went to cover them up, his chest became exposed and he got pneumonia or something of the kind.”

  The Dominion representatives, spellbound, waited for the British prime minister to tell them how he proposed to deal with this “grave” situation.

  Churchill was, however, aware he had his audience in thrall—and deferred the capstone of his talk. “He then suddenly stopped,” King wrote, “and in a dramatic way, began to go over the situation compared as it was at the beginning of the war.” Russia and now the United States were in the fight, he reminded them, on Britain’s side, “and he referred to the heroism of the Russians and the magnificent work which the Americans were doing on their production etc.”

  Finally, however, the Prime Minister came to the climax of his peroration.

  “He then said: but we have an ally which is greater than Russia, greater than the U.S.”

  The assembled Dominion representatives were agog.

  Churchill was nothing if not an actor, when faced by an attentive audience. The Prime Minister, the Canadian premier recorded, “paused for a moment, and said: it is air power.”5

  Air power?

  The Dominion representatives were at
first disbelieving.

  Troops of the British Empire had in the past two years lost Norway, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma, and only four days before had surrendered Tobruk without a fight. They now looked to be losing Egypt, the gateway to the Levant. Did the Prime Minister really believe Britain’s new “ally,” far from any war front, would magically reverse the tide of war and defeat Germany and Japan any time soon?

  It seemed ludicrous, given the failure of Germany’s vaunted air power, the Luftwaffe, to bring Britain to its knees in 1940 and 1941.

  It was all that Mr. Churchill could produce for his Dominion listeners at that moment, however—the Prime Minister extolling the recent, highly controversial RAF thousand-plane “bombing of Cologne and Essen,” which had produced an uproar in the House of Commons, as the death toll among German civilians threatened to vitiate the moral principles upon which the Allies were defending “human civilization.” “Told of the destruction there,” Mackenzie King noted the Prime Minister’s response: “He said our objective would continue to be military targets, though, some times, the airmen might go a little wide of the target. That the destruction of Cologne”—one of the glories of European medieval architecture—“had given the Germans great trouble in moving populations, taking care of those moved, trying to rebuild roads, etc., and intimated that there would be more of it, and it would be most demoralizing.”6

  Demoralizing? This was debatable—indeed, the deliberate killing of so many civilians might be counterproductive, strengthening rather than diminishing the resolve of ordinary Germans, as the Canadian prime minister—who read the Bible before rising each day—was uncomfortably aware. That morning King had read a passage that had given him guidance “throughout the day”: “Chapter VII of Jeremiah with its words: ‘Obey my voice and I will be your God and He shall be my keeper. Walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you that it may be well unto you.’”7