The British Empire in Asia and the Far East was gravely threatened by the Japanese. Nevertheless, Churchill’s uncompromising focus on the Western theatres was absolutely correct. Simply stated, the security of the eastern empire was less important than that of the British Isles themselves, the Atlantic bridge, and the Mediterranean and Middle East. But this verdict would have brought little cheer to those marooned in Burma, stunned by the failure to hold Singapore, or those watching anxiously from Australia as Japan spread its martial wings. Though the chiefs of staff believed the defense of Singapore was more important than the defense of the Suez Canal, Churchill disagreed. Being forced to choose between them was an awful position to be in but represented the reality of fighting worldwide war and defending a worldwide empire from a position of unpreparedness. It was, in Churchill’s words, like having to decide whether your son or your daughter should be killed. Churchill’s position, however, was one that many others would have supported. Though the chief of the Imperial General Staff wanted to send reinforcements to the Far East in spring 1941, Churchill did not share the sense of alarm. On the one hand, Singapore was thought to be an impregnable fortress, which could hold out indefinitely until relieved; Churchill was absolutely shocked when it fell and it became apparent how fragile it was. On the other hand, he had a very low opinion of the fighting prowess of the Japanese. Along with the Foreign Office and many other informed observers on both sides of the Atlantic, he believed the Japanese were unlikely to enter the war until Russia had been knocked out by the Germans.
Things were about to change dramatically, as the “Day of Infamy” altered the course of the war. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Churchill was at Chequers, in the company of the American ambassador to Britain, John Winant, and Averell Harriman, the American Lend-Lease administrator. Just before nine at night, the butler announced that there had been something in the news about a Japanese attack upon the American fleet. He was asked to bring a wireless into the room. Thus they listened, on a portable radio that Harry Hopkins had given Churchill, to news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, America’s naval stronghold in the Pacific. Afterward, Churchill left the room to telephone Roosevelt. That evening, digesting the news of this momentous event, the prime minister radiated confidence at the prospect of the full mobilization of America’s martial power. He was instantly aware of what Pearl Harbor meant, whatever tribulations might lie ahead. “We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end . . . we had won the war. England would live.”
Simultaneous Japanese attacks had also been launched elsewhere across the Far East–Pacific region, including against Britain’s possessions on the Malay Peninsula, and three days after Pearl Harbor, British naval power east of Suez suffered a severe blow when HMS Prince of Wales (aboard which Churchill had so recently visited Roosevelt at Placentia Bay) and HMS Repulse were sunk in the Gulf of Siam, the first capital ships to fall victim to aircraft. Churchill was appalled; he had expected the two vessels to disappear into the vastness of the Pacific “like rogue elephants,” representing a thorn in Japan’s side thereafter. The war having now become genuinely global, and with Japanese aggression in the Far East, dating from the early 1930s and now conjoined with the European struggle, Churchill saw a unique role for himself as the linchpin of a nascent “Grand Alliance.” It would be his task to forge a global coalition in order to oversee the strategic prosecution of the war in disparate locations with disparate forces drawn from nations with divergent interests, histories, and postwar visions. In particular, channeling American energy into the European war, rather than simply focusing America’s rage against the Japanese, was a priority. For this reason, Churchill was prepared to travel vast distances, extending his shuttle diplomacy in order to do everything possible to please, coax, and influence America. Roosevelt, understandably wanting to remain at the center of the momentous events unfolding in America, felt unable to travel to meet Churchill, who had proposed a meeting in either the British colony of Bermuda or Washington.
Days after Pearl Harbor, therefore, Churchill was at sea aboard the battleship HMS Duke of York, bound for the American capital. During the war, the two leaders were to meet nine times and to spend a total of four months in each other’s company. The seas were rough as Churchill crossed to America. On December 21, no one was allowed on deck, and Churchill was confined to a “lovely cabin” in the bridge structure. “Being in a ship in such weather is like being in a prison,” he wrote to Clementine, “with the extra chance of being drowned.” He traveled with his staff, including twenty-seven cipherers for official telegrams and secret traffic. Arriving on December 22, he was accompanied on the War Cabinet’s insistence by the physician Sir Charles Wilson (about to be created Lord Moran in the 1942 New Year’s honors list).
Roosevelt paid Churchill the signal honor of waiting on the tarmac for his arrival by air in Washington. Close and cordial relations were established during an intimate stay at the White House. Over an extended period, the Arcadia Conference enabled the two nations’ military staffs to work closely together. But bad news piled up during Churchill’s visit. Hong Kong fell on Christmas Day; Churchill had hoped it would hold out for much longer. Despite the bitter pain of such blows, he was able to remain focused on the bigger strategic picture. “We must expect to suffer heavily in this war against Japan, and it is no use the critics saying, ‘why were we not prepared?’ when everything we had was already fully engaged. The entry of the United States into the war is worth all the losses sustained in the East many times over. Still these losses are painful to endure and will be very hard to repair.”74 This assessment, sent to Clementine, was spot-on. All of the Western imperial powers in the East—America, Britain, France, and Holland—were caught hideously unprepared by the Japanese onslaught; all sustained losses that dealt irreparable damage to their standing and sped the end of empire. But Churchill was aware of the fundamental fact that American power meant that the Allies could not lose the war. Lord Moran noted his mastery of detail, writing on January 14 that Churchill was “drunk with the figures of US production estimates. I think Winston, more than anyone here, visualizes in detail what this program means to the actual conduct of the war.”75 Churchill also understood, ahead of everyone else, that the emerging Anglo-American alliance was the only way to preserve British power in the world.
On Boxing Day, Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress, sharing his vision of the two great English-speaking powers standing shoulder to shoulder and observing that “if my father had been American, and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.” He reviewed the world war to date, dwelling on the combined might of America, the British Empire, Russia, and China when compared with that of Japan, in the light of which “it becomes still more difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence or even sanity. What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”76
Roosevelt was impressed with the war plans the British had brought with them, including the scheme for an invasion of Northwest Africa, eventually to come to life as Operation Torch (which was to see an Anglo-American force of over 100,000 men land in Vichy-controlled Algeria and Morocco). Churchill accepted Roosevelt’s proposal for a united command in the South West Pacific, and the Americans admired the thoroughness of British preparation and planning, many feeling that it had a decisive influence at the conference. The Americans agreed to a general statement confirming that, despite the Japanese war, “Europe first” was to be the policy. The aim was to take the offensive against Germany in 1943 and begin the liberation of the continent. While in America, Churchill suffered a minor heart attack after reporting severe chest pains. Still, on December 30, he moved to Ottawa, where he addressed the Canadian Parliament and made his famous “Some chicken! Some neck!” gag after recounting that a French general had said that Brit
ain would “have her neck wrung like a chicken” within three weeks of the fall of France. Returning to America, a tired-looking prime minister was persuaded to take a brief rest in Florida.
Churchill went home via Bermuda in a flying boat, which he was allowed to pilot for much of the way. In the House of Commons, he spoke at length about the tragic loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, the decision to supply Russia, and the formation of a combined Anglo-American Chiefs of Staff Committee. This was a singularly important achievement of his visit to Washington (and an impressive example of wartime alliance integration). He also spoke of the first fruition of this Anglo-American arrangement, the new unified command for the South West Pacific that the Americans had been keen on, the ill-fated American-British–Dutch-Australian Command. Losses in the Far East had depressed Britain, as had mounting losses in the Atlantic following an intelligence shutout of U-boat signals. Harold Nicolson, referring to growing discontent about the course of the war, feared “a slump in public opinion which will deprive Winston of his legend.”77 But a vote of confidence on January 29 was won by a thumping 464 votes to 1. In his speech during this debate, Churchill said, “Could you have any higher expression of democracy than that? Very few other countries have institutions strong enough to sustain such a thing while they are fighting for their lives.”78 He continued:
There never has been a moment, there never could have been a moment, when Great Britain or the British Empire, single-handed, could fight Germany and Italy, could wage the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of the Middle East—and at the same time stand thoroughly prepared in Burma, the Malay Peninsula, and generally in the Far East against the impact of a vast military Empire like Japan.79
Nicolson noted that during this two-hour speech, “One can actually feel the wind of opposition dropping sentence by sentence.”80 Following the censure debate, while preparing for bed on the evening of January29, Churchill turned to his physician Lord Moran and said, “—is a silly bastard. There are about half a dozen of them; they make a noise out of all proportion to their importance.”81
Churchill was able to quell parliamentary frustration about the disastrous events in the east, though the national mood was not improved by the apparent failure of British sea power when the German ships Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen, and Scharnhorst sped through the English Channel and escaped the clutches of the Royal Navy and the RAF (though Enigma decrypts revealed that all had been badly damaged). Even worse was the stunning blow landed on February 15, when the “impregnable” fortress of Singapore surrendered to the Japanese, ending a campaign in which 130,000 British and imperial servicemen died or went into Japanese captivity. Yet even with this latest evidence, this latest measure, of the unpreparedness of the Allies to face the might of the dictators, Churchill remained confident of ultimate victory. He told the Commons on the day Singapore fell: “Tonight the Japanese are triumphant. They shout their exultation round the world. We suffer. We are taken aback. We are hard pressed. But I am sure even in this dark hour that ‘criminal madness’ will be the verdict which history will pronounce upon the authors of Japanese aggression.”82
Despite his brave words, and the accurateness of his prophecy, Moran noted how the fall of Singapore “stupefied” the prime minister. He fretted about the quality of British arms and the shame of defeat, though in part Singapore’s ultimate strategic goal had been to ensure American involvement in a war against Japan. There was a suggestion that Sir Stafford Cripps might replace him; there was criticism in the press, from the likes of Frank Owen and H. G. Wells, who wrote that “a boy scout is better equipped. He has served his purpose and it is high time he retired upon his laurels before we forget the debt we owe him.” Churchill brooded on Singapore for a long time. Months later, Moran wrote, Churchill stopped drying himself after a bath and gloomily surveyed the floor—“I cannot get over Singapore,” he said sadly. But Churchill refused to yield. As he told the Commons ten days after the calamity, “However tempting it might be to some, when much trouble lies ahead, to step aside adroitly and put someone else up to take the blows, I do not intend to take that cowardly course but, on the contrary, to stand to my post and persevere in accordance with my duty as I see it.”83 But though, as Churchill said, it seemed as if the fall of Singapore was “everyone’s fault,” the problem, and the great challenge facing the Allies, was that, as he told Roosevelt, “Democracy has to prove that it can provide a granite foundation for war against tyranny.”84
In a measure designed to bolster confidence, Churchill again reorganized his government. Beaverbrook became minister of war production (despite Clementine’s advice to remove him from office altogether), replaced soon by Lyttelton when ill health supervened. Sir Stafford Cripps became Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons and entered the War Cabinet, where he ranked behind only Churchill and Clement Attlee (who became deputy prime minister), effectively bringing into the inner circle a potential rival for the premiership. Churchill was desperate for a victory and harried his commanders. Lord Moran, who had frequent contact with Churchill, recorded a day in February 1942 when Churchill was “in an explosive mood.” He had learned that Auchinleck would not be ready to take the offensive until June. “That bloody man does not seem to care about the fate of Malta,” the prime minister raged.85 (When, in August, the island was finally relieved, Moran wrote that “the PM’s relief is a joyful sight.”)86
Close colleagues and family noticed that Churchill’s understandable fatigue was affecting his performance, and that the business of government lacked firm direction. The Allied war effort seemed becalmed, if not actually going backwards. “When I reflect how I have longed and prayed for the entry of the United States into the war,” Churchill telegraphed Roosevelt on March 5, “I find it difficult to realize how gravely our British affairs have deteriorated since December 7.”87 Military reverses continued. Rangoon fell to the Japanese (March 1942), and the mass retreat of British imperial arms and hundreds of thousands of civilians from Burma into India began. Pressure from within Labour ranks and, even more unwelcome, from America led to the Cripps mission to India, an attempt to persuade the Indian National Congress to get behind the war and desist from using it as an opportunity to push for Britain to “quit India” immediately. The offer was simple—constitutional reform leading to full independence after the war in return for support now. Churchill was not too distraught when this offer was rejected. Importantly, it was a gesture to the nationalists that was noted in Washington, as Churchill had intended. Churchill deeply resented American interference in Indian affairs, though while he could make his views known in no uncertain terms, he had of course to take account of American opinion and the fact that American military resources in the China-Burma-India theatre were of growing importance. Roosevelt’s telegram on India infuriated Churchill and led to a string of cusswords lasting for two hours. India was one of the very few issues on which Churchill was prepared to risk his alliance and friendship with Roosevelt. The failure of the Cripps mission meant that the British could take a firm stand against civil disobedience and lock up the opponents while attempting to get on with the war and defending India from a Japanese invasion that in the spring of 1942 looked an entirely plausible prospect. In Washington the following year, Roosevelt mischievously invited a vocal campaigner for Indian independence, Mrs. Ogden-Reed, to lunch.
Mrs. Ogden-Reed: “What are you going to do about those wretched Indians?”
Churchill: “Before we proceed further, let us get one thing clear. Are we talking about the brown Indians in India, who have multiplied alarmingly under the benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking of the Red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?”88 Mrs. Ogden-Reed was rendered speechless, Roosevelt convulsed with laughter.
All of the advances toward consultation and shared government in India since the First World War were threatened by this reversion to old-style imperialism. The cost of this imperial intransigence, and
the suppression needed to quell the civil disobedience that was to come, would be great. It might not have been this way, and India might have enjoyed an easier wartime career, with less reliance placed upon it as a military stronghold, if it had not been for the imperial defeats in Malaya and Burma. In February 1942, Chiang Kai-shek also stuck his oar into British-Indian affairs while visiting the subcontinent. Churchill’s reaction to this intervention, from a leader whose importance he considered to be grossly inflated beyond his own or his country’s significance by virtue of American foreign policy alone, can only be imagined.
On April 2, 1942, Churchill signaled Cripps to spell out the fact that this was the final offer. A late American flourish saw Roosevelt’s personal representative, Colonel Louis Johnson, arrive in Delhi. His meetings with Cripps and Nehru, however, led to exasperation in London, and Roosevelt was obliged to limit Johnson to his initial role as assessor of India’s need for American war materials. Harry Hopkins in London had to extricate Johnson and the president’s name from a potentially embarrassing situation, and Churchill was able to signal Cripps (one imagines with some relish) to say that Johnson had in fact no presidential backing beyond the munitions issue.
The Cripps mission failed in part because of INC immobility and, it is claimed by some, because of Churchill’s conservatism regarding India (and his fear of splitting the Conservative Party). Fundamentally, neither he nor Viceroy Lord Linlithgow would accept the fact that the end of the war would bring the end of the Raj. As Wavell, Linlithgow’s replacement as viceroy in 1943, recorded in his diary, “The Cabinet is not honest in its expressed desire to make progress in India.” Casting Churchill and his viceroy as the villains, however, may well attribute more influence to them than is their due. The Indian nationalists refused to cooperate; as a result, stern action was required so that their activities did not derail India’s war effort during the critical phase of the Japanese assault on Britain’s Asian empire. It was not long in coming, and in August 1942, Churchill told Lord Moran that “we have clapped Gandhi into prison.”89 The point to grasp is that this moment in 1942—before the Allies had won any significant offensive victories—was the most dangerous the British Empire faced during the war, and Churchill was determined to ensure that nothing jeopardized the chances of resisting the Japanese onslaught.
Churchill Page 32