It is estimated that in the calendar year 1944 the German Army ‘on a man-for-man basis inflicted more than 300% more casualties than they incurred from the opposing Russians’.32 Brooke’s remarks at the Daily Telegraph luncheon were therefore fully supported by the statistics. Yet the mechanical balance of the war had changed just as much as the strategic. During 1944, when Germany and the USSR each produced forty thousand aircraft, and Britain twenty-eight thousand, the USA made no fewer than ninety-six thousand, more than the Germans and Soviets combined. Throughout the war, the United Kingdom produced 123,819 aircraft but the United States more than double that, at 284,318, even though she was not a belligerent until December 1941.33 During the month of April 1944 alone, the Allies dropped 81,400 tons of bombs on Germany and Occupied Europe. As well as a strategic coup de main, Overlord would require a huge logistical effort: on 27 April the Chiefs of Staff heard from the Quartermaster-General that 1,600 tons per division would have to be landed every single day for the first forty-two days of Overlord.
The American emphasis on the war in the west was also finally becoming pronounced. By the end of 1943, the United States had 1.41 million men and 8,237 aircraft in Europe against 0.91m men and 4,254 aircraft in the Pacific, despite having two major allies in Europe and no strong one in the Pacific.34 In the first nine months of 1944, a further 1.8 million men were shipped overseas, of whom over three-quarters went to Europe, and by 1 October 1944 the United States had forty divisions in Europe and the Mediterranean, with four more en route, whereas it had only twenty-seven fighting the Japanese. With 2.75 million troops in Europe and the Mediterranean versus 1.31 million in the Far East, the emphasis of the American war effort was plainly for Germany First. These figures represent 67.7 per cent for Europe against 32.3 per cent for the Pacific, confirming that Brooke should have seized upon King’s 75/25 offer. As well as producing armaments for herself, the United States also produced 27 per cent of all munitions used by Commonwealth forces in 1943 and 1944. Overall, Lend–Lease aid to the UK reached a total value of $27 billion, plus an added $6 billion of purchases made in the US before the Act was passed. It was another factor giving ever increasing weight to Roosevelt’s and Marshall’s views in the councils of the Western Allies over those of Churchill and Brooke.
The lowest point in relations between Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff during the Second World War was reached in late March 1944. The issue was a vital one: long-term strategy in the war against Japan. Whereas Brooke and his colleagues–but especially the CIGS himself–wanted to approach Japan from the south-west Pacific and Australia in close conjunction with the Americans, Churchill wanted a much more British-led attack from the Indian Ocean, recapturing former British colonies as it moved eastwards. Operation Buccaneer against the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, which the Chiefs of Staff wanted postponed as its landing craft were needed in the Mediterranean, meant much to the Prime Minister, as did the Culverin operation against northern Sumatra. He felt that in getting Buccaneer effectively cancelled for the rest of 1944 the Chiefs of Staff had gone behind his back while he had been convalescing in Marrakesh, and he therefore wrote a highly abrasive five-page memorandum that he copied to each of them.
‘I very much regret that the Chiefs of Staff should have proceeded so far in this matter and reached such settled conclusions upon it without in any way endeavouring to ascertain the views of the civil power under which they are serving,’ he began. ‘They certainly have the duty of informing me as Minister of Defence, and making sure I understand the importance they attach to the issue.’35 To lecture on their constitutional duties Chiefs who, in Portal’s case, had been four years in the job, and in Brooke’s three, was as otiose as it was, frankly, pompous. The reference to ‘under which they are serving’ was nonetheless a reminder of who held the ultimate sanction over their appointments.
‘Considering the intimacy and friendship with which we have worked for a long time in so many difficult situations,’ Churchill wrote, changing tack on to the personal, ‘I never imagined that the Chiefs of Staff would get into a great matter like this of long-term strategy into which so many political and other non-military considerations enter without trying to carry me along with them, so that we could have formed our opinions together.’ Here, all in one sentence, was an appeal to comradeship, an accusation that they were trespassing into areas over which they had no authority, a lament that Churchill was effectively being cut out of the decision-making process, a hint that he could have been persuaded anyhow, and lastly a warning that they needed to speak with one voice to the Dominions and the Americans.
Next came the direct accusation that ‘The serious nature of the present position has been brought home to me by the reluctance of the Chiefs of Staff to meet with their American counterparts for fear of revealing to the United States their differences from me and my Cabinet colleagues.’ Churchill added that the Defence Committee ‘are convinced, and I am sure that the War Cabinet would agree if the matter were brought before them, that it is in the interests of Britain to pursue what may be called the “Bay of Bengal Strategy” at any rate for the next twelve months’.36 His threat to turn the issue into a political one–‘frock coats’ versus ‘brass hats’–was explicit, and he was right to assume that his Cabinet colleagues would have supported him, spelling defeat for the service Chiefs.
Pressing home his point, but taking it from the general to the particular, Churchill then gave five direct orders, again cloaked in constitutional terms. ‘I therefore feel it my duty’, he wrote, as ‘Prime Minister and Minister of Defence’, to give the following rulings:
(a) Unless unforeseen events occur, the Bay of Bengal will remain, until the summer of 1945, the centre of gravity for the British and Imperial war against Japan
(b) All preparations will be made for amphibious action across the Bay of Bengal against the Malay Peninsula and the various island outposts by which it is defended, the ultimate objective being the re-conquest of Singapore
(c) A powerful British Fleet will be built up based in Ceylon
(d) The plans of the South-East Asia Command for amphibious action across the Bay of Bengal shall be examined, corrected and improved with the desire of engaging the enemy as closely and as soon as possible
(e) The reconnaissance mission to Australia shall be sent as soon as I have approved the personnel.
Churchill then stated that he was willing to discuss these ‘rulings’ only in order that ‘we may be clear in our minds as to the line we are going to take in discussions with our American friends’. His final sentence was similarly unbending, yet contained a typically Churchillian call: ‘Meanwhile, with this difference on long term plans settled, we may bend ourselves to the tremendous and urgent tasks which are now so near, and in which we shall have need of all our comradeship and mutual confidence.’37
Brooke certainly did not consider these ‘rulings’ as ‘settled’. He knew he had to tread very carefully if he was not to be forced to resign, ultimately over a landing-craft issue that the public–and history–would struggle to understand. Churchill would undoubtedly have prepared the ground politically, indeed as Portal said of this incident four years later: ‘If it had come to the point of him wanting to sack me he wouldn’t have said “I dismiss you.” He would have said “I must tell Parliament about this.”’38 Faced with a choice between finding another prime minister or three more chiefs of staff, the Commons would undoubtedly have kept the former.
In an early draft of his Closing the Ring, whose title emphasized the correctness of the Mediterranean strategy, with its implication of Nazi Germany being encircled with an ever tightening ligature, Churchill ended the relevant chapter by saying that his ‘rulings were accepted and the subject dropped’, but as that was quite untrue alternative endings were proposed by those devilling on his manuscript. Churchill refused them, but changed the draft at the last moment. The paragraph accusing the Chiefs of Staff of reaching ‘settled conclusions’ wi
thout trying ‘to carry the views of the civil power’ was (rightly) considered libellous, so it was excised at the very last moment before publication, leaving an empty space on page 579 of the first edition.39
‘What the hell of a time you must be having,’ Dill wrote sympathetically to Brooke from Washington. ‘It is a thousand pities that Winston should be so confident that his knowledge of the military art is profound when it is so lacking in strategical and logistical understanding and judgment.’ He reported a great struggle going on over Pacific policy between the American Army and Navy, and commented: ‘I hope the US Chiefs of Staff will take the abandonment of Anvil quietly.’ He estimated that Marshall’s ‘greatest fear’ was that the Germans would ‘within the next month or so, give up Italy to all intents and purposes’.40
Dill was doing his best to persuade Marshall that the Germans could take very few divisions out of Italy to oppose Overlord without the Italian front collapsing altogether. He thought that the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that by the end of May 1944 Germany would be on the verge of collapse, ‘and that we should therefore hit her everywhere’. The Americans’ view that Hitler wished to withdraw from Italy failed to take into account the Führer’s own psychology and the philosophy of Nazism, while their belief that Germany would collapse before Overlord was even launched underrated the extraordinary capacity of the Reich to fight on against what must by then have seemed like an overwhelming, avenging Fate.
On 21 March the British Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed on ‘how best to deal with Winston’s last impossible document’. Brooke thought it ‘full of false statements, false deductions and defective strategy’ and concluded: ‘We cannot accept it as it stands, and it would be better if we all three resigned rather than accept his solution.’ Resignation in wartime was a very serious matter indeed; as Churchill often used to tell Beaverbrook early in 1942, ‘People don’t resign in war; you either die or are sacked!’41
‘It was no courageous thing to resign,’ Ismay told Pogue. ‘When men were dying they had to have better reasons than pique to cut it.’42 Did Brooke and his colleagues–who knew it was dangerous to try to bluff Winston Churchill–have a better reason than mere pique? For Churchill to lose another CIGS might be interpreted as a personality clash that any prime minister must win, yet to lose all three Chiefs of Staff simultaneously would have indicated that there had been a profound disagreement over grand strategy, with Churchill pitted against the top three, highly esteemed experts in their field. The effect on national morale three months before Overlord would have been devastating, as Churchill knew. It was probably because the Chiefs agreed to hang together that none was to hang separately.
On 27 March Churchill complained to Portal in the War Cabinet that, for all his nightly bombing of German cities, the RAF was ‘not able to knock out Monte Cassino’, which had been bombed for nearly a fortnight, yet German units were still holding out there in the rubble. During Brooke’s contribution, the Prime Minister announced that he had written to Alexander privately the previous week to say he found it ‘puzzling why no attacks on the flanks. Why was Cassino the only point of attack? Please explain why no flank movements can be made. We’ve broken the teeth of six divisions.’ Alexander had answered that Monte Cassino ‘blocked and dominated’ the main valley leading to Rome, which anyone who has been there will immediately recognize. The conversation then turned to the question of what would happen if Church House, where the House of Commons had sat since the Blitz, were hit by a bomb, prompting Churchill to joke: ‘The world would go on. I seldom go there myself.’43
Brooke asked Archibald Nye to draft a reply to Churchill’s Bay of Bengal memorandum, pointing out five ‘fallacies’ and concluding that the Chiefs of Staff should ‘discuss the subject with the PM and to suggest to him that his action is precipitate, is taken without full knowledge of all the factors and is, in any case, quite unnecessary at this stage’.44 This formed the basis of the Chiefs’ considered response. It was an important moment for Brooke, which he fully recognized could possibly cost him his job were it mishandled. Ismay was allowed to see the reply before it was sent, so Churchill was doubtless forewarned of what it contained, a sensible step for all concerned.
After a seemingly conciliatory opening paragraph–‘We feel sure that there is still some misunderstanding as to our views and proposals, and we welcome the opportunity of a further discussion with you on the whole subject’–the ‘Private and Top Secret’ reply of 28 March categorically rejected each of the accusations Churchill had made. Its wording has the unmistakable imprint of Brooke upon it, not least in its readiness to trade accusation for accusation. ‘We cannot accept the charge that you make,’ it stated. ‘We did our best to explain our views on long-term strategy for the war against Japan to you before Sextant, but your other preoccupations, both before and after the Conference, precluded this. We were therefore at pains to ensure that the conclusions of the Combined Chiefs of Staff were couched in the most non-committal terms.’45
All that had been agreed with the Americans, the Chiefs pointed out, was that joint strategy in the Pacific was to be ‘approved in principle as a basis for further investigation and preparation, subject to final approval’, wording that was about as nebulous as it was possible to have. They denied that they had yet reached any ‘settled conclusions’ about the Bay of Bengal strategy because there were still three factors at play, namely Australia’s and India’s capacities as bases and the shipping situation. They then went on to argue that the south-west Pacific was superior to the Bay of Bengal approach because it ‘should, in our view, lead to a substantial shortening of the war against Japan’; it would ‘enable us to use the forces and resources of the Empire in a more closely related and concentrated effort than would the Bay of Bengal strategy; and it should not delay the recapture by our own forces of our own territories in Malaya and the Far East.’
This was about as bald a statement as the Chiefs of Staff could deliver, and Churchill was under no illusions that the severest consequences would result in overruling their collective decision, which Brooke, Portal and Cunningham each signed at the foot of the document complete with their titles of CIGS, CAS and CNS. To the document was attached the conclusions of the Staff Conference of 8 March, which stated that there were ‘insufficient data upon which to base a decision as to whether the centre of gravity of the main British effort against Japan should or should not be shifted from the Indian Ocean to the South-west Pacific’.46 Brooke and his colleagues were calling Churchill’s bluff, never a safe option with a statesman so headstrong and unpredictable.
Two days later Brooke wrote to Dill in a blatant attempt to get Marshall, and possibly also Roosevelt, to support him in his struggle against Churchill. ‘I have just about reached the end of my tether and can see no way of clearing up the frightful tangle that our Pacific strategy has got into,’ he wrote. ‘In fact we feel that the Indian Ocean policy will result in our walking round with the basket picking up the apples whilst the Americans climb up into the tree and shake the apples off by cutting [Japanese] lines of communication. The PM, on the other hand, remains as determined as ever to do Culverin, and has got very little else as a plan beyond the capture of Culverin!’
Since the US Chiefs had not approved the Sumatran attack, ‘We might be able to fight this situation out as we have others before now,’ Brooke told Dill, ‘if it was not for all the other complications that I am coming to.’ The first was Mountbatten, ‘who is determined to do something to justify his Supremo existence’, just as much as Churchill was keen to justify ‘creating Dickie and his command’. The second was John Curtin’s government in Australia, which under MacArthur’s influence did not want a British or Commonwealth force operating from Australia as a self-contained whole, even under American overall command.
Washington presented Brooke with ‘further difficulties’, because he could not detect ‘any great urge’ from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for co-operation with Britain in the Pac
ific. ‘In fact we have grave doubts as to whether King is not opposed to such a strategy.’47 Admiral King was indeed opposed, as they were about to discover very soon. Despite their pressure to recapture northern Burma, the American Chiefs disapproved of Culverin, and Brooke declared himself ‘quite clear in my own mind that strategically it is right for us to use all our forces in close cooperation from Australia across the Pacific in the general direction of Formosa’ (modern-day Taiwan), but admitted that ‘Unless we get 100% support and drive from the American Chiefs of Staff I rather doubt where we may finish up!’ He was thus effectively asking Dill to get Marshall to intervene with Churchill over Culverin.
It was at around this time that, as Joan Bright later related:
Brooke in the company of other ministers was far more rude to the PM than he had any right to be–and Churchill was shocked. He broke up the meeting and said to Ismay: ‘I have decided to get rid of Brooke. He hates me. You can see the hate in his eyes.’ Ismay said: ‘I think that he behaved very badly at the meeting but he is under terrific strain. He is bone honest and whatever else his views may be, he doesn’t hate you.’ Ismay left then to see Brooke and said: ‘The PM is frightfully upset and says you hate him.’ Whereupon Brooke said ‘I don’t hate: I adore him tremendously; I do love him, but the day that I say that I agree with him when I don’t, is the day he must get rid of me because I am no use to him any more.’ Asked if these words could be repeated to the PM he said ‘Yes’. Ismay went back and told Churchill what had been said and his eyes filled with tears. ‘Dear Brookie.’ That was the last row they ever had.
Barring the last sentence–there were plenty more rows over the next sixteen months–this is an accurate summing up of an incident that is also recorded in Ismay’s memoirs in much the same emotional and personal terms. ‘When I thump the table and push my face towards him,’ Churchill said of Brooke, ‘what does he do? Thumps the table harder and glares back. I know those Brookes–stiff-necked Ulstermen and there is no one worse to deal with than that!’48
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