Masters and Commanders

by Andrew Roberts

  It was not long before the failure of the break-out at Anzio became apparent, along with the failure of the Allied forces in the south to link up with the beachhead. On sending Roosevelt birthday greetings on 27 January, Marshall said: ‘I anticipate some very hard knocks, but I think these will not be fatal to our hopes, rather the inevitable stumbles on a most difficult course.’16 The next day Eden, after he had attended a Staff Conference, noted that ‘Our offensive seems to have lost its momentum.’ When Churchill suspected that he was going to get into a row with the Chiefs of Staff, he used to invite Eden along to give moral support. Even when the Foreign Secretary was recuperating from a cold, sore throat or insomnia at Binderton, he always turned up. Since Churchill had been ill at Marrakesh for as long as a fortnight over the New Year, and Eden was prime-minister-in-waiting, it was a sensible precaution.

  On Monday 31 January 1944 Churchill told the War Cabinet of:

  Serious disaffection about the Anzio landings. First phase has not yielded brilliant results…German offensive started. Great disappointment so far…Remarkable limitations of air, unable to prevent enemy from flinging his troops from one Front to another…A great opportunity has been lost, but may be regained…We have got a lot to learn in the way of seizing opportunities before we can beat these people.17

  Meanwhile in Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expanded the plans for the naval and air support of the Overlord invasion (Operation Neptune). In order to obtain the necessary landing craft for the new plan, and also to help Anvil, the Americans wanted to halt all Italian offensives northwards once Rome had fallen. The British instead wanted Anvil ditched and to press on up the Italian peninsula. Roosevelt supported Marshall against the combined, determined but ultimately doomed attempts of Brooke and Churchill to get the plan changed. The British were as one in believing that terrain, distance and the Germans’ defensive tactics meant that Anvil could be safely disengaged from Overlord, with Italy providing fine opportunities for the Allies instead. Churchill and Brooke were never convinced, for the rest of their lives, that Anvil had been worth while.

  It did not help that Churchill, even in the early spring of 1944, would sometimes speak, ‘as if he were addressing a multitude’, of his fears regarding Overlord. ‘When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flower of American and British youth,’ Eisenhower recalled him saying, ‘and when, in my mind’s eye, I see the tides running red with their blood, I have my doubts.’18 Although reminiscences at sixteen years’ distance are necessarily suspect, in 1960 Ike reminded Ismay of these remarks without being corrected, and Churchill’s faithful Pug was always assiduous in defence of his former boss’s reputation, even against a president of the United States.

  On 6 February 1944–two days after Allied troops reached Monte Cassino–Eisenhower asked Marshall from London for his views on retaining Anvil in the face of Churchill’s and Brooke’s united opposition. Of Overlord he wrote: ‘I honestly believe that a five division assault is the minimum that gives us a really favourable chance for success. I have earnestly hoped that this could be achieved by 31 May without sacrificing a strong Anvil.’ Eisenhower thought that ‘Some compensation would arise from the fact that as long as the enemy fights in Italy as earnestly and bitterly as he is now doing, the action there will in some degree compensate for the absence of an Anvil.’19 He was thus coming round to the possibility of cancelling Anvil, whereas Marshall certainly was not.

  On the first of twenty days of strong German attacks on the Anzio beachhead, Marshall wrote ‘For Eisenhower’s eyes only’ from Washington: ‘Count up all the divisions that will be in the Mediterranean, including two newly arrived US divisions, consider the requirements in Italy in view of the mountain masses north of Rome, and then consider what influence on your problem a sizeable number of divisions heavily engaged or advancing rapidly in southern France will have on Overlord.’ The fact that there were also the mountains of the Massif Central north of Provence was not mentioned. Instead Marshall concluded: ‘I will use my influence here to agree with your desires. I merely wish to be certain that localitis is not developing and that the pressures on you have not warped your judgment.’ Localitis was cod-Latin for ‘going native’, and since Marshall’s ‘influence’ in Washington was of course enormous, he was effectively advising Eisenhower to stick to his pro-Anvil, anti-Italy position and promising that, if he did, all would be well against Churchill and Brooke.

  Eisenhower could not leave the localitis accusation hanging, and replied the next day to say that, although the British were opposed to Anvil, he had to compromise occasionally as part of a coalition. Nonetheless, ‘So far as I am aware, no one here has tried to urge me to present any particular view, nor do I believe that I am particularly affected by localitis.’ That Marshall was indeed worried about pressure being put on Eisenhower by Brooke, and more particularly by Churchill, was spectacularly demonstrated the following month at Malta.

  On the same day that Marshall wrote to Eisenhower, Sir John Dill told Brooke that he had been ‘in and out of Marshall’s room lately trying to get him to see your point of view regarding Anvil–Overlord and trying to get his point of view’. He reported that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had delegated their power to Eisenhower on this issue and were ‘engaged in a great battle regarding Pacific strategy’, which boiled down to ‘King in particular v. the Rest’. Dill believed that Marshall was ‘somewhat afraid that some of their higher commanders had failed in Italy’, doubtless meaning Lucas, who was replaced shortly afterwards, but possibly also Clark, whose progress was painfully slow. Over the post-war occupation zones for Germany, Dill told Brooke that it was, ‘of course, the President who won’t play. The better I get to know that man the more superficial and selfish I think him. That is for your eye alone as of course it is my job to make the most and best of him.’ As for Admiral King, Dill believed ‘his war with the US Army is as bitter as his war with us’.20

  On Thursday 10 February, Brooke lunched at the Fleet Street offices of the Daily Telegraph with its proprietor Lord Camrose, as well as the National Labour MP and BBC Governor Harold Nicolson and Lord Ashfield, chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board. Teased about the Anzio reversals by Camrose as he entered–‘Well, what about the bridgehead?’–an irritated Brooke poured himself ‘a sulky glass of sherry’ and said, ‘It’s difficult to judge such matters at this distance.’ Nicolson recorded that after they had taken some claret in the dining room, ‘things brighten up, and a slow flush spreads over the handsome face of the CIGS.’ Brooke said that he had first noticed that ‘Winston was on the verge of a great illness’ at Cairo, when he seemed more interested in swatting flies than in listening to him, and ‘then they had great difficulty in preventing him leaving for Italy and were almost relieved when he developed fever.’21

  Brooke added that, when he visited Italy that December, ‘The terrain defies description. It’s like the North-West Frontier; a single destroyed culvert can hold up an army for a day.’ He then went on to talk about the Germans, saying they were fighting magnificently: ‘Marvellous it is, perfectly marvellous.’ Hitler’s strategy was all wrong, however, in trying to establish a front in Italy so far south while simultaneously holding Nikopol on the lower Dnieper, for ‘While one is on the wave of victory one can successfully violate all the established rules of war. But when one starts to decline, one cannot violate them without disaster.’

  The fact that Hitler was reinforcing Italy from southern France and the Balkans indicated to Brooke that he was running low on reserves in Germany itself, and was probably hoping for the ‘wet period’ in Russia from mid-April to early June to move troops from Russia to the west using the ‘good transport facilities for a shuttle in the east–west direction’. The Germans did not seem to be running out of oil, and ‘the morale of their troops is still admirable and only a slight change can be noticed in the quality of prisoners captured.’ From these remarks it is understandable if Brooke was still deeply apprehensive
about Overlord. In the days before lunches at newspapers offices were assumed to be on the record, the Chief of the British Army could make remarks about the ‘perfectly marvellous’ Wehrmacht that would have gravely embarrassed him were they ever to appear in print.

  On 14 February Churchill reassured the War Cabinet about the Anzio beachhead, where there were 130,000 men and 20,000 vehicles, as well as local superiority in artillery and tanks. ‘No reason to suppose the situation dangerous,’ he said. ‘Must keep good nerves this year.’ Brooke then informed them further about the heavy fighting at and bombing of the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino. ‘Nothing to regret that the scale of the fighting has magnified,’ added Churchill.22

  On 19 February, as London was subjected to the heaviest air raids since May 1941, Churchill warned the Chiefs of Staff that ‘In the event of Overlord not being successful or Hitler accumulating forces there quite beyond our ability to tackle, it would perhaps be necessary to adopt the flanking movements both in Norway and from Turkey and the Aegean in the winter of 1944–45.’ Of course it was important to look at every scenario, but the resuscitation of both his favourite northern and southern schemes in the event of defeat in France shows how doubtful Churchill still was about the coming invasion.

  Yet the Overlord build-up was continuing apace, with Marshall informing Roosevelt that by 1 June 1944 there would be forty-one American divisions operational in the US, twenty-one in the United Kingdom, eight in the Mediterranean, and nineteen in the Pacific, and ‘there will be a total of 1,514,700 US soldiers in the UK, 2,804 four-engined bombers, 711 medium bombers and 4,346 fighter bombers or fighters.’23 It sounded formidable, but Eisenhower was meanwhile informing the British Chiefs of Staff that although there were just enough resources for Overlord and a two-divisional Anvil, nothing would be left over for further Italian operations. He also crucially held out the possibility of the abandonment of Anvil if it was for any reason reduced below the level of two divisions. The Italian campaigns, Eisenhower told Brooke, ‘have been leading me personally to the conclusion that Anvil will probably not be possible’.24 Leaping upon this admission, Brooke lost no time in informing the Joint Staff Mission that in the opinion of the Chiefs of Staff the prospect of launching Anvil was now ‘exceedingly remote’, and recommending its cancellation.

  Marshall hand-drafted a letter to Eisenhower two days later, saying that as far as the British High Command was concerned, ‘we have no clear cut statement of basis of your agreement or disagreement with them and the situation is therefore seriously complicated. Please seek an immediate conference and reach agreement or carefully stated disagreement, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will support your decision, subject of course to the approval of the President.’25 Eisenhower met the British Chiefs of Staff the next day, when they agreed to maintain the status quo until a review on 20 March, and Ike accepted that Anvil would be contingent on the situation in Italy.

  ‘If vehicles could have won the war we’d have won it long ago,’ Churchill told the War Cabinet on 21 January, adding that they still could ‘Lose this war by running short of unimportant people.’26 (He was joking that people were unimportant compared to vehicles, not in themselves.) The next day Maitland Wilson wrote to the British Chiefs of Staff recommending that Anvil be cancelled, because until the southern front at Monte Cassino had joined up with the Anzio beachhead, ‘the withdrawal of forces cannot be risked from the battle front in Italy.’ Maitland Wilson anticipated that the need for extra divisions for Italy, along with a high rate of expected casualties that spring, would drain the Mediterranean theatre of operational reserves in such a way as to render Anvil unviable.27

  Maitland Wilson’s suggestion was fully accepted by Brooke and Churchill, but not by Marshall and Roosevelt, and so the scene was set for a full-scale standoff, with the Americans having the Eureka conclusions from Teheran to support them. In Marshall’s view it was obvious that a landing in the south of France was likely to help Overlord more than a continuation of the Italian slugging match; he also considered that the Germans might make a sudden withdrawal northwards in Italy, which would wreck Allied hopes for German dispersion. With Toulon and Marseilles in Allied hands–far better ports than a couple of Mulberry harbours off Arromanches in the English Channel–large quantities of supplies from North Africa could be landed in France rapidly.

  On 25 February, a day of difficult discussions covering seven-and-a-half hours, Churchill and Brooke fell to talking first about their children and then about ‘The President’s unpleasant attitude lately’. The exhaustion of an ill Roosevelt might have been part of the explanation, for late February also saw a visibly tired President leave Washington for a few days’ rest, prompting paragraphs to appear in the press touting Marshall for the top job should he resign. When the respected columnist David Lawrence even suggested that this would be a preferable outcome, ‘friends’ of Marshall told the New York Herald Tribune that the general’s own view was: ‘I’ll be in my grave before I go into politics.’28

  In March and April 1944, discussions in the War Cabinet, Staff Conferences, Chiefs of Staff Committee and Defence Committee centred on how to break through the Gustav Line and link up with the Anzio beachhead in the hope of capturing Rome, preferably before Overlord and instead of Anvil. As Michael Howard states, ‘The possibilities beyond that–a breakthrough into the Po Valley, a landing in the Gulf of Genoa, a landing in Istria, a massive switch in forces to the South of France–still lay in the realm of speculation.’29

  Simply because Brooke and Churchill chatted about their children and agreed over Anvil and the President does not mean they were getting on with each other any better. On 6 March the Prime Minister submitted to the Chiefs of Staff what Brooke called a ‘desperate’–meaning hopeless, rather than fraught–memorandum concerning future operations in the war against Japan, and resuscitating the Culverin plan for attacking the northern tip of Sumatra. Brooke was angry that Churchill wanted to bring Eden, Attlee, Lyttelton and Leathers–whom he considered a chorus of yes-men–along to support him over this. (Although Brooke could not have known it at the time, Attlee would be prime minister for the last part of the war.) ‘It will be a gloomy evening,’ predicted Brooke, ‘and one during which it will be hard to keep one’s temper.’ Sure enough, during the two-and-a-half-hour meeting he ‘went at it hard’, arguing against all four of them, whose points, he recorded, ‘were so puerile that it made me ashamed to think they were Cabinet Ministers!’ He did not get much support from his fellow Chiefs either, as Portal was ‘as usual not too anxious to argue against PM, and dear old Cunningham so wild with rage that he hardly dared let himself speak!!’30 Once again the Prime Minister chose not to overrule the Chiefs over Culverin.

  Returning to Washington from a fact-finding trip to Algiers in mid-March, Major-General John ‘Ed’ Hull reported that, although the situation in Italy had effectively stalemated, Anvil should nonetheless go ahead. He feared that without it the Germans could divert forces from Italy, southern France and the Balkans against Overlord, and recommended that all available forces not required for Italian operations be allocated to Anvil. Marshall agreed and told Handy that they must not ‘permit our effort to be boxed up in Italy where the geographical situation and the character of the terrain would permit the Germans to play us a scurvy trick to the great disadvantage of our principal effort in the war: Overlord’.31 Reinforcing a threatened front from a stationary one is hardly ‘a scurvy trick’, but Marshall was right that attempting to smash through the Gustav Line was a waste of effort by the Allies considering that they had already pinned down as many German divisions as they could, and there was no realistic strategic advantage to being in the Po Valley once Overlord had begun. His alternative–Anvil–was hardly the answer, however, as it turned out to be at best a minor sideshow launched too late to make much difference to Overlord.

  Soon afterwards Marshall sent Eisenhower a radio message, reminding him that the 20 March deadline for decision on Anvil was o
nly four days hence, and that ‘There is nothing to indicate a sufficient break in the German resistance to permit a further advance on Rome during March.’ He feared that German divisions freed up by withdrawal to the Riga Line (also known as the Sigulda Line) might crush Overlord. Even were Alexander’s twenty-one divisions in Italy increased to twenty-eight, against the Germans’ twenty-four, all but five of which were in the south, he could be held up in the Apennine mountain range, Italy’s backbone. Therefore more than ten German divisions might be freed up for France, perhaps up to fifteen, ‘to your great disadvantage’. Marshall ended by saying that he left the Anvil decision entirely up to Eisenhower, but he had made his own views very clear.

  On 15 March the Allies launched further heavy attacks on Monte Cassino, virtually levelling the abbey–a treasure-house of ancient Christendom–which was nonetheless still fiercely defended and which did not fall for another two months. In the east, the Red Army crossed the River Dniester on 19 March, making it less likely that Hitler might be able to withdraw significant forces for the coming Western Front, although the Riga Line was not crossed until 18 October. The Wehrmacht’s capability for inflicting damage was still awe-inspiring, however, even–perhaps especially–in retreat.