Alamein and Alliance Planning
As these dramatic events were unfolding in South Asia, General Marshall and Harry Hopkins arrived in Britain to attempt to persuade Churchill that the invasion of mainland Europe should take place as soon as possible. The British chiefs of staff, however, were adamant that 1942 was too soon, and that a premature attempt would court disaster. Furthermore, General Sir Alan Brooke was successful in convincing Churchill of the potential for the Mediterranean theatre to deliver victory. The two Allies agreed, in principle, on joint war strategy, the Americans agreeing that the time was not yet right for a cross-Channel invasion of Europe and agreeing to a joint invasion of North Africa. Churchill felt the need to ensure that Roosevelt was thoroughly happy with all of this, recognizing that the American president was the most important man in the world in terms of delivering Allied victory. In June 1942, therefore, Churchill was again on the other side of the Atlantic enjoying the president’s hospitality. The two leaders were together when Churchill received one of the greatest shocks of the war—news of the fall of Tobruk on June 21 and the surrender of a large imperial garrison. Churchill felt embarrassed, disoriented, and in despair (“defeat is one thing; disgrace is another”). It was then that Roosevelt made his famous offer of help and immediately undertook to provide what Churchill asked for—three hundred tanks and one hundred guns sent to Egypt without delay. At moments like these, Churchill’s extraordinary strength and mental and physical resilience came into their own. Lord Moran, who was with him in Washington, described his “buoyant temperament” as a “tremendous asset.” After the news about Tobruk hit him, in Moran’s words, he “refused to take the count; he got up a little dazed, but full of fight. . . . There is never any danger of him folding up in dirty weather. My heart goes out to him. I do like a full-sized man. With our military prestige at zero, he dominated the discussions.”90
Back at home, the fall of Tobruk generated the most intense criticism that Churchill’s government had to withstand during the war. Everywhere, it seemed, apart from in “sideshow” campaigns, British land forces seemed unable to hold the enemy, let alone beat him. Aneurin Bevan’s cruel jibe—that the prime minister “wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle”—hurt Churchill.91 Given this catalogue of reverses, it was no surprise that, when General Auchinleck won a defensive victory in the desert (“first” Alamein), Churchill wanted to head off to Cairo, only prevented from doing so by pressure from his Cabinet colleagues. A vote of “no confidence” in the House was defeated by 475 to 25. “Good for you,” telegraphed Roosevelt.
In terms of grand strategy, divergent British and American imperatives were emerging. The British chiefs of staff insisted that there could be no D-Day-style assault on Hitler’s Europe in 1942, and it was Churchill’s hope that there could be some joint concentration in the Mediterranean region. Out of all of this came Roosevelt’s approval for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in North Africa. The fact was that, despite British hopes for a cross-Channel invasion in 1943, the American buildup of troops and landing craft was too slow to permit this. In July, Churchill was allowed to go to Cairo, where, after a flight in a Liberator, he met his great friend and supporter General Smuts and inspected the 8th Army. Out of this visit came his decision to replace General Auchinleck with General Sir Harold Alexander as commander in chief Middle East, and to replace Major General Neil Ritchie as commander of the 8th Army. The choice to replace him was Lieutenant General William “Strafer” Gott, but his aircraft was destroyed as he flew into Cairo on the same route that Churchill had flown the day before, and the choice devolved upon Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery. On August 9, Churchill told Clementine that he had been “so busy at anxious work since I arrived nearly a week ago. . . . It was absolutely necessary that I should come here. This splendid army, about double as strong as the enemy, is baffled and bewildered by its defeats.” On August 19, Churchill was in high spirits. Lord Moran wrote that “I heard the PM singing in his bath this morning,” delighted because he was “about to be driven, jolted, across the desert from the British Embassy in Cairo, in blinding heat, to visit Montgomery in the field.”92 After a day with the men of the 8th Army, “the PM was full of all he had seen. He talked late into the night, while his little audience, reveling in this new experience, marvelled at the man—his boyish enthusiasm, his consuming vitality, his terrific vocaulary.”93 During his stay, Churchill also decided to split the enormous Middle East Command, in telegram consultation with the Cabinet, and this astute decision gave birth to the Persia and Iraq Command.
From Cairo, Churchill flew to Tehran, before flying on to Moscow to meet Stalin. “I am not looking forward to this part of my mission,” he told Clementine, “because I bear so little in my hand, and sympathize so much with those to whom I go.” The purpose of his visit was to break the bad news to the Russian leader concerning the Anglo-American decision not to launch a second front in Western Europe that year, showing once again his stamina, appetite for travel, moral courage, and faith in his own brand of face-to-face diplomacy. It was, Churchill said, “like carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole.”94
The Russian leader found it impossible to understand that landing the British Army in France and opening the “second front” was not a realistic prospect. Stalin, as expected, was furious and submitted a complaint on paper. This angered Churchill, who also replied on paper, leading to a strained atmosphere when the two attended an official dinner at the Kremlin on August 14. Stalin also accused the Royal Navy of running away during the battle for Convoy PQ 17. As Churchill reported to Lord Moran, “Stalin says we’ve broken our word about a Second Front” and was “most uncomplimentary about our army. . . . Stalin didn’t want to talk to me. I closed the proceedings down. I had had enough. The food was filthy. I ought not to have come.”95 All of this was reported to Moran at a quarter to four in the morning, the physician noting how despondent Churchill was after this meeting, though that he still felt he could work with Stalin if only he could break down the language barrier.
But a second meeting went far better, and Stalin was impressed with the news of Operation Torch (to illustrate which, Churchill drew a picture of a crocodile and used it to show how he intended to attack its soft underbelly as well as its hard snout). Churchill later used a globe to demonstrate the advantages of clearing the Mediterranean. Averell Harriman “listened mesmerized” as Churchill answered Stalin in “the most brilliant of utterances.”96 Churchill earned Stalin’s respect and withstood his sometimes insulting harangues, and there were some late-night toast-drinking sessions, one of which saw Stalin tuck into a suckling pig at one thirty in the morning, after having offered Churchill the head. The British party were all asleep in armchairs when at half past three the delighted prime minister burst in. During the visit, Churchill also met General Anders, commander of the Polish forces forming under British command in Iran. Returning from Moscow via Egypt, Churchill stayed in General Montgomery’s caravan and, sporting a vast sombrero, bathed in the ocean. Singing in his bath at the prospect of visiting the troops, Churchill was in high spirits. By the time he reached London, he had traveled ten thousand miles in the space of a month, a tremendous feat that demonstrated his mental and physical robustness. General MacArthur, America’s Pacific supremo, said, “My first act would be to award the Victoria Cross to Winston Churchill. No one of those who wear it deserves it more than he. A flight of 10,000 miles through hostile and foreign skies may be the duty of young pilots, but for a Statesman burdened with the world’s cares, it is an act of inspiring gallantry and valour.”97
In October 1942, Montgomery’s 8th Army recorded a major victory in the Western Desert at the Battle of Alamein, which secured the region for the Allies. With the Russians successfully stemming the German thrust toward the Caucasus, British interests in the Middle East were now safe. The church bells rang out across the empire to mark this turning point. Churchill had believed that only a victory in the
field could extend his time in office, and now it had come. There soon followed, in November, the joint Anglo-American landings in Northwest Africa intended to extinguish all enemy activity in North Africa and secure the entire Mediterranean for the Allies (completed in May 1943). Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed to the invasion in early September. “Hurrah,” telegraphed Roosevelt. “Okay full blast,” replied Churchill.98 Churchill’s next major overseas venture was a meeting with Roosevelt in January 1943, which it was hoped in vain Stalin might attend. The conference took place in Casablanca, where both British and American forces met in arms. Lord Moran recalls how elated the prime minister was at the prospect of the trip, “full of zest.”99 “When he gets away from his red boxes and leaves London, he puts his cares behind him.”100 The journey out, however, gave Moran occasion to worry about Churchill’s well-being. There were two mattresses in the stern of the bomber, one for Churchill, the other for his physician. Concerned that the improvised heating might ignite the mattresses, they endured the cold.
I awoke to discover the PM on his knees, trying to keep out the draught by putting a blanket against the side of the plane. He was shivering: we were flying at 7,000 feet in an unheated bomber in mid-winter. . . . The PM is at a disadvantage in this kind of travel, since he never wears anything at night but a silk vest. On his hands and knees, he cut a quaint figure with his big, bare, white bottom.101
Harold Macmillan, the Cabinet’s resident minister appointed to Eisenhower’s headquarters, described Churchill, during this visit, drinking, with the atmosphere “a mixture between a cruise, a summer school and a conference.” “He ate and drank enormously all the time, settled huge problems, played bagatelle and bezique by the hour, and generally enjoyed himself.”102 At the conference, Churchill and his staff advocated their preference for the Mediterranean strategy aimed at knocking Italy out of the war early and wooing Turkey to the Allied side, and Roosevelt agreed that once the Axis forces had been cleared out of Tunis and completely ejected from the African continent, an invasion of Sicily would come next. Despite justifiable pride in their achievements in Africa, it can’t have escaped the attention of many people that although (as Churchill put it to Congress) “one continent at least has been cleansed and purged forever from Fascist or Nazi tyranny,”103 the fact was that it was not the continent in which Axis strength lay still in undefeated abundance.
The question now on everyone’s minds was how to go about getting onto the core continent, Europe, and once there how to set about defeating an enemy of unparalleled strength and ruthlessness. With victory assured in what Churchill called the “Third Front—the great flanking movement into North Africa,” all thoughts came to focus upon the long-awaited second front.104 Though until recently Churchill had supported the idea of a cross-Channel assault on Fortress Europe in 1943, the chiefs of staff had gone a long way to convincing him that this was not at all ideal, and Roosevelt in turn was persuaded to delay D-Day until 1944. Churchill was not prepared precipitately to sacrifice an estimated 100,000 men on an assault on Europe just to relieve pressure on Russia. Persuading the American president required another Churchill journey to confer with Roosevelt, heralding a new year—1943—that was to be dominated by international conferences for the peripatetic British prime minister. What General Ismay dubbed “conference year” brought trips to Casablanca, Washington, Quebec, Moscow, Cairo, and Tehran.
Churchill’s first summit of the year entailed another joint meeting between the American and British chiefs of staff. As he wrote on January 24, 1943:
We have now covered the whole vast war scene and have reached a complete agreement both between the two countries and between the military and political authorities. This entailed not only the plans but the distribution of material between 5 and 6 different theatres of war all over the world and the timing and emphasis of all that should be done. It is in every respect as I wished & proposed.105
Churchill was also very much aware of events on the Russian front, where, in his words, “The astounding victories . . . are changing the whole aspect of the war.”106
During the course of this North African sojourn, Churchill took Roosevelt for a day trip to Marrakech; “You cannot come all this way to North Africa without seeing Marrakech . . . I must be with you when you see the sun set on the Atlas Mountains.” It was “the most lovely spot in the whole world.”107 Here something like a family party, complete with songfests, ensued. After Roosevelt departed for America, Churchill remained for a time, corresponding with the War Cabinet, and painted his only known canvas of the war, a view of the city and its twelfth-century Katoubia Mosque set against the backdrop of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains. This he subsequently gave to Roosevelt as a memento. From Casablanca, bursting with plans for the Mediterranean theatre, Churchill flew to Cairo, where he decided that a mission would be sent to Tito in Yugoslavia, and also visited Turkey, a yearned-for ally. He spent a night in the British colony of Cyprus, where he visited the regiment of his distant junior officer days, the 4th Hussars (of which he was colonel in chief). It was then back to Cairo and a trek all along the Maghreb coastline visiting troops and headquarters. Arriving back in London after nearly a month away, he was greeted on the platform at Paddington Station by thirteen of his ministers. He was shortly afterward diagnosed with pneumonia and required a full month’s convalescence.
By spring 1943, Churchill felt the need, yet again, for talks with Roosevelt, convinced as he was that the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) should be the next big operation, given the growing signs of an end to the fighting in North Africa. Again he set off for America and the Trident Conference, a voyage accomplished aboard the Queen Mary, serving as a troop transport and on this occasion loaded with thousands of German prisoners. Roosevelt met him off the train in Washington and took him to Camp David. During his visit, Churchill was invited to address Congress for a second time, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff were able once again to engage in person. There was broad agreement at this conference, though the signs of future Anglo-American strategic (and technological) divergence were present. While the American chiefs of staff wanted the earliest possible attack across the Channel, a telegram was sent to Stalin informing him of the news that there would, in 1943 as in 1942, still be no second front. Churchill and the British chiefs of staff had got their way in the face of significant American reluctance. It was agreed that D-Day would come by May 1, 1944. Secretly, Churchill and Roosevelt also agreed to work jointly on the atom bomb. Addressing Congress on May 19, Churchill said that “by singleness of purpose, by steadfastness of conduct, by tenacity and endurance such as we have so far displayed—by these and only these—can we discharge our duty to the future of the world and to the destiny of man.”108 His return journey involved flights to Newfoundland, Gibraltar, and Algiers aboard a flying boat (which was at one point struck by lightning), Churchill quartered in what he termed “the bridal suite.” In North Africa, he touted his Mediterranean plans to the local Anglo-American commanders, attempted to smooth relations between the Free French and Vichy French leaders, and bathed in the sea off the Algerian coast. On June 5, he arrived back in London after a month away. The campaign in Africa had finally been brought to a successful conclusion, and his admired general, Alexander, had signaled on May 13 that “the Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores.”109
Churchill has been variously praised and blamed for preferring a Mediterranean or Balkan strategy to an early cross-Channel attack, though Sir Michael Howard captures Churchill’s motivation when he writes that “it was the spirit of the chase, and not any dedication to ‘peripheral strategy’—much less any calculation of postwar political advantage—which led the British now to urge impatiently that their recent victories in North Africa should be exploited to the full.” Barrie Pitt agrees, arguing that Churchill was not advocating “pinprick war” or an “indirect” approach and that his impatience for operations in the Mediterrane
an and Italy was “more an indication of keenness to grapple with the enemy where they were to hand” and to give immediate help to Russia. Churchill was determined that the armies assembled in the Mediterranean and North Africa should not become redundant—and Fascist Italy provided an obvious target against which they might be thrown, forcing the Germans to transfer resources from the Eastern Front and from the defense of the Atlantic Wall in the west. Operations in the Mediterranean also offered the chance for Allied sea power to be brought to bear against an enemy possessing a formidable and entrenched army. Churchill was also influenced by a British strategic mindset that valued the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean above most other regions in the world (whereas the Americans knew little of it). It was the “swing door” of the British Empire, its essential fuel dump, and the meeting place of so many rival interests. Viewing the war as a whole, it was little surprise that this region tended to dwarf the affairs of Asia and the Far East in Churchill’s mind, reflecting his realization that it was the one overseas region without which Britain could not survive. Clement Attlee captured this well, writing that the “policy of exploiting our success in Africa and of stroking what he [Churchill] called the soft under-belly of the Axis power was sound. It was entirely in line with the strategic lessons of our past. We had succeeded by exploiting British sea-power.”110 As for Russia, again disappointed by the postponement of a cross-Channel invasion, Churchill told Stalin, “It would be no help to Russia if we threw away a hundred thousand men in a disastrous cross-Channel attack. . . . I cannot see how a great British defeat and slaughter would aid the Soviet Armies.”111 As he then told Britain’s ambassador in Moscow, “You should adopt a robust attitude to any further complaints. They themselves destroyed the second front in 1939 and 1940 and stood by watching with complete indifference what looked like our total obliteration as a nation. We have made no reproaches, and did our best to help them when they were attacked.”112 On June 26, he said as much directly to Stalin.
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