After seizing the small islands of Attu and Kiska, in the western group of the Aleutians, the Japanese withdrew as silently as they had come.
Reflection on Japanese leadership at this time is instructive. Twice within a month their sea and air forces had been deployed in battle with aggressive skill and determination. Each time when their Air Force had been roughly handled they had abandoned their goal, even though on each occasion it seemed to be within their grasp. The men of Midway, Admirals Yamamoto, Nagumo, and Kondo, were those who planned and carried out the bold and tremendous operations which in four months destroyed the Allied Fleets in the Far East and drove the British Eastern Fleet out of the Indian Ocean. Yamamoto withdrew at Midway because, as the entire course of the war had shown, a fleet without air cover and several thousand miles from its base could not risk remaining within range of a force accompanied by carriers with air groups largely intact. He ordered the transport force to retire because it would have been tantamount to suicide to assault, without air support, an island defended by air forces and physically so small that surprise was impossible.
The rigidity of the Japanese planning and the tendency to abandon the object when their plans did not go according to schedule is thought to have been largely due to the cumbersome and imprecise nature of their language, which rendered it extremely difficult to improvise by means of signalled communications.
One other lesson stands out. The American Intelligence system succeeded in penetrating the enemy’s most closely guarded secrets well in advance of events. Thus Admiral Nimitz, albeit the weaker, was twice able to concentrate all the forces he had in sufficient strength at the right time and place. When the hour struck this proved decisive. The importance of secrecy and the consequences of leakage of information in war are here proclaimed.
This memorable American victory was of cardinal importance, not only to the United States, but to the whole Allied cause. The moral effect was tremendous and instantaneous. At one stroke the dominant position of Japan in the Pacific was reversed. The glaring ascendancy of the enemy, which had frustrated our combined endeavours throughout the Far East for six months, was gone for ever. From this moment all our thoughts turned with sober confidence to the offensive. No longer did we think in terms of where the Japanese might strike the next blow, but where we could best strike at him to win back the vast territories that he had overrun in his headlong rush. The road would be long and hard, and massive preparations were still needed to win victory in the East, but the issue was not in doubt; nor need the demands from the Pacific bear too heavily on the great effort the United States was preparing to exert in Europe.
The annals of war at sea present no more intense, heart-shaking shock than these two battles, in which the qualities of the United States Navy and Air Force and of the American race shone forth in splendour. The novel and hitherto utterly unmeasured conditions which air warfare had created made the speed of action and the twists of fortune more intense than has ever been witnessed before. But the bravery and self-devotion of the American airmen and sailors and the nerve and skill of their leaders was the foundation of all. As the Japanese Fleet withdrew to their far-off home ports their commanders knew not only that their aircraft-carrier strength was irretrievably broken, but that they were confronted with a will-power and passion in the foe they had challenged equal to the highest traditions of their Samurai ancestors, and backed with a development of power, numbers, and science to which no limit could be set.
CHAPTER X
“SECOND FRONT NOW!”
ON April 8 Hopkins and General Marshall arrived in London. They brought with them a comprehensive memorandum prepared by the United States Joint Staff and approved by the President. Its importance justifies the publication of its text in full.
OPERATIONS IN WESTERN EUROPE
April 1942
Western Europe is favoured as the theatre in which to stage the first major offensive by the United States and Great Britain. Only there could their combined land and air resources be fully developed and the maximum support given to Russia.
The decision to launch this offensive must be made at once, because of the immense preparations necessary in many directions. Until it can be launched the enemy in the West must be pinned down and kept in uncertainty by ruses and raids; which latter would also gain useful information and provide valuable training.
The combined invasion forces should consist of forty-eight divisions (including nine armoured), of which the British share is eighteen divisions (including three armoured). The supporting air forces required amount to 5,800 combat aircraft, 2,550 of them British.
Speed is the essence of the problem. The principal limiting factors are shortages of landing-craft for the assault and of shipping to transport the necessary forces from America to the U.K. Without affecting essential commitments in other theatres, these forces can be brought over by April 1, 1943, but only if 60 per cent. of the lift is carried by non-U.S. ships.* If the movement is dependent only on U.S. shipping the date of the assault must be postponed to the late summer of 1943.
About 7,000 landing-craft will be needed, and current construction programmes must be greatly accelerated to achieve this figure. Concurrently, preparatory work to receive and operate the large U.S. land and air contingents must be speeded up.
The assault should take place on selected beaches between Havre and Boulogne, and be carried out by a first wave of at least six divisions, supplemented by airborne troops. It would have to be nourished at the rate of at least 100,000 men a week. As soon as the beach-heads are secure armoured forces would move rapidly to seize the line of the Oise-St. Quentin. Thereafter the next objective would be Antwerp.
Since invasion on this scale cannot be mounted before April 1, 1943, at earliest, a plan must be prepared, and kept up to date, for immediate action by such forces as may be available from time to time. This may have to be put into effect as an emergency measure either (a) to take advantage of a sudden German disintegration, or (b) “as a sacrifice” to avert an imminent collapse of Russian resistance. In any such event local air superiority is essential. On the other hand, during the autumn of 1942 probably not more than five divisions could be dispatched and maintained. In this period the chief burden would fall on the U.K. For example, on September 15 the U.S. could find two and a half divisions of the five needed, but only 700 combat aircraft; so that the contribution required from the U.K. might amount to 5,000 aircraft.
Hopkins, much exhausted by his journey, fell ill for two or three days, but Marshall started talks with our Chiefs of Staff at once. It was not possible to arrange the formal conference with the Defence Committee till Tuesday the 14th. Meanwhile I talked the whole position over with the Chiefs of Staff as well as with my colleagues. We were all relieved by the evident strong American intention to intervene in Europe, and to give the main priority to the defeat of Hitler. This had always been the foundation of our strategic thought. On the other hand, neither we nor our professional advisers could devise any practical plan for crossing the Channel with a large Anglo-American army and landing in France before the late summer of 1943. This, as is recorded earlier, had always been my aim and time-table. There was also before us the new American idea of a preliminary emergency landing on a much smaller but still substantial scale in the autumn of 1942. We were most willing to study this, and also any other plan of diversion, for the sake of Russia and also for the general waging of the war.
On the night of the 14th the Defence Committee met our American friends at 10 Downing Street. The discussion was crucial and the conclusion was unanimous. We all agreed that there should be a cross-Channel operation in 1943. It was now named, though not by me, “Round-up”.
But in planning this gigantic enterprise it was not possible for us to lay aside all other duties. Our first Imperial obligation was to defend India from the Japanese invasion, by which it seemed it was already menaced. Moreover, this task bore a decisive relation to the whole war. To leave four h
undred millions of His Majesty’s Indian subjects, to whom we were bound in honour, to be ravaged and overrun, as China had been, by the Japanese would have been a deed of shame. But also to allow the Germans and Japanese to join hands in India or the Middle East involved a measureless disaster to the Allied cause. It ranked in my mind almost as the equal of the retirement of Soviet Russia behind the Urals, or even of their making a separate peace with Germany. At this date I did not deem either of these contingencies likely. I had faith in the power of the Russian armies and nation fighting in defence of their native soil. Our Indian Empire however, with all its glories, might fall an easy prey. I had to place this point of view before the American envoys. Without active British aid India might be conquered in a few months. Hitler’s subjugation of Soviet Russia would be a much longer, and to him more costly, task. Before it was accomplished the Anglo-American command of the air would have been established beyond challenge. Even if all else failed this would be finally decisive.
I was in complete accord with what Hopkins had called “a frontal assault upon the enemy in Northern France in 1943”. But what was to be done in the interval? The main armies could not simply be preparing all that time. Here there was a wide diversity of opinion. General Marshall had advanced the proposal that we should attempt to seize Brest or Cherbourg, preferably the latter, or even both, during the early autumn of 1942. The operation would have to be almost entirely British. The Navy, the air, two-thirds of the troops, and such landing-craft as were available must be provided by us. Only two or three American divisions could be found. These, it must be remembered, were very newly raised. It takes at least two years and a very strong professional cadre to form first-class troops. The enterprise was therefore one on which British Staff opinion would naturally prevail. Clearly there must be an intensive technical study of the problem.
Nevertheless I by no means rejected the idea at the outset; but there were other alternatives which lay in my mind. The first was the descent on French North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia), which for the present was known as “Gymnast”, and which ultimately emerged in the great operation “Torch”. I had a second alternative plan for which I always hankered and which I thought could be undertaken as well as the invasion of French North Africa. This was “Jupiter”—namely, the liberation of Northern Norway. Here was direct aid to Russia. Here was the only method of direct combined military action with Russian troops, ships, and air. Here was the means, by securing the northern tip of Europe, of opening the broadest flood of supplies to Russia. Here was an enterprise which, as it had to be fought in Arctic regions, involved neither large numbers of men nor heavy expenditure of supplies and munitions. The Germans had got those vital strategic points by the North Cape very cheaply. They might also be regained at a small cost compared with the scale which the war had now attained. My own choice was for “Torch”, and if I could have had my full way I should have tried “Jupiter” also in 1942.
The attempt to form a bridgehead at Cherbourg seemed to me more difficult, less attractive, less immediately helpful or ultimately fruitful. It would be better to lay our right claw on French North Africa, tear with our left at the North Cape, and wait a year without risking our teeth upon the German fortified front across the Channel.
Those were my views then, and I have never repented of them. I was however very ready to give “Sledgehammer”, as the Cherbourg assault was called, a fair run with other suggestions before the Planning Committees. I was almost certain the more it was looked at the less it would be liked. If it had been in my power to give orders I would have settled upon “Torch” and “Jupiter”, properly synchronised for the autumn, and would have let “Sledgehammer” leak out as a feint through rumour and ostentatious preparation. But I had to work by influence and diplomacy in order to secure agreed and harmonious action with our cherished Ally, without whose aid nothing but ruin faced the world. I did not therefore open any of these alternatives at our meeting on the 14th.
On the supreme issue we welcomed with relief and joy the decisive proposal of the United States to carry out a mass invasion of Germany as soon as possible, using England as the springboard. We might so easily, as will be seen, have been confronted with American plans to assign the major priority to helping China and crushing Japan. But from the very start of our alliance after Pearl Harbour the President and General Marshall, rising superior to powerful tides of public opinion, saw in Hitler the prime and major foe. Personally I longed to see British and American armies shoulder to shoulder in Europe. But I had little doubt myself that study of details—landing-craft and all that—and also reflection on the main strategy of the war, would rule out “Sledgehammer”. In the upshot no military authority—Army, Navy, or Air—on either side of the Atlantic was found capable of preparing such a plan, or, so far as I was informed, ready to take the responsibility for executing it. United wishes and goodwill cannot overcome brute facts.
To sum up: I pursued always the theme set forth in my memorandum given to the President in December 1941, namely, (1) that British and American liberating armies should land in Europe in 1943. And how could they land in full strength otherwise than from Southern England? Nothing must be done which would prevent this and anything that would promote it. (2) In the meantime, with the Russians fighting on a gigantic scale from hour to hour against the main striking force of the German Army, we could not stand idle. We must engage the enemy. This resolve also lay at the root of the President’s thought. What then should be done in the year or fifteen months that must elapse before a heavy cross-Channel thrust could be made? Evidently the occupation of French North Africa was in itself possible and sound, and fitted into the general strategic scheme.
I hoped that this could be combined with a descent upon Norway, and I still believe both might have been simultaneously possible. But in these tense discussions of unmeasurable things it is a great danger to lose simplicity and singleness of purpose. Though I hoped for both “Torch” and “Jupiter”, I never had any intention of letting “Jupiter” queer the pitch of “Torch”. The difficulties of focusing and combining in one vehement thrust all the efforts of two mighty countries were such that no ambiguity could be allowed to darken counsel. (3) The only way therefore to fill the gap, before large masses of British and United States troops could be brought in contact with the Germans in Europe in 1943, was by the forcible Anglo-American occupation of French North Africa in conjunction with the British advance westward across the desert towards Tripoli and Tunis.
Eventually, when all other plans and arguments had worn themselves out and perished by the way, this became the united decision of the Western Allies.
In May we had other visitors. Molotov arrived to negotiate an Anglo-Russian Alliance and to learn our views upon the opening of a Second Front. The Alliance was concluded and the Second Front was discussed in detail. Our Russian guests had expressed the wish to be lodged in the country outside London during their stay, and I therefore placed Chequers at their disposal. I remained meanwhile at the Storey’s Gate Annexe. However, I went down for two nights to Chequers. Here I had the advantage of having long private talks with Molotov and Ambassador Maisky, who was the best of interpreters, translating quickly and easily, and possessing a wide knowledge of affairs. With the aid of good maps I tried to explain what we were doing, and the limitations and peculiar characteristics in the war capacity of an island Power. I also went at length into the technique of amphibious operations, and described the perils and difficulties of maintaining our lifeline across the Atlantic in the face of U-boat attack. I think Molotov was impressed with all this, and realised that our problem was utterly different from that of a vast land Power. At any rate, we got closer together than at any other time.
The inveterate suspicion with which the Russians regarded foreigners was shown by some remarkable incidents during Molotov’s stay at Chequers. On arrival they had asked at once for keys to all the bedrooms. These were provided with some difficulty, and ther
eafter our guests always kept their doors locked. When the staff at Chequers succeeded in getting in to make the beds they were disturbed to find pistols under the pillows. The three chief members of the mission were attended not only by their own police officers, but by two women who looked after their clothes and tidied their rooms. When the Soviet envoys were absent in London these women kept constant guard over their masters’ rooms, only coming down one at a time for their meals. We may claim, however, that presently they thawed a little, and even chatted in broken French and signs with the household staff.
The Second World War Page 72