Commander in Chief

by Nigel Hamilton

  The Future of the World at Stake

  HALF AN HOUR after the Combined Chiefs departed the White House, the President dined upstairs with Mackenzie King, Churchill, and Crown Princess Martha of Norway.

  In deference to Princess Martha, the three leaders put aside any discussion of military strategy, and after the meal the President arranged for a Sherlock Holmes film to be shown as light relief. Churchill then “begged off” and went to bed, as did Princess Martha, leaving the President to talk quietly with his Canadian guest.

  Gingerly, Mackenzie King sought to find out the President’s intentions, in terms of Allied military strategy. “Tonight when I was talking alone with the President and asking how he and Churchill had got on, he said he thought an agreement was practically in final shape by now; that he, himself, would probably want to recast it a little more in the way of bringing up to the beginning some matters that were near the end.”

  The British had said they couldn’t carry out the Anakim offensive to which they’d committed themselves at Casablanca, and there had been initial, heated discussion of this; the primary decision, however, was the Second Front in 1944. The President wanted to ensure the British commitment was not only firm but set down in ink, on paper, and in official accords—which Admiral Leahy, the Combined Chiefs chairman, had assured him would be drawn up formally by the weekend. As the President explained to Mackenzie King, it was vital to tie down and chain the wily British to a solid commitment, not simply rely on the understanding he thought they had come to at Casablanca. “He wanted to emphasize the building up of the forces in Britain so as to be certain of an attack from the North in the spring of 1944. He said he felt that this was the top feature of it all. He did not use that expression but that was the inference. It meant the determining blow in the spring of next year.”

  Listening to this, King was somewhat perplexed. Given what Churchill had said openly at the Capitol, in King’s hearing, it seemed the President and the British prime minister, though sleeping under the same roof, were poles apart. Mackenzie King therefore relayed to the President what Churchill had said at the Capitol—including the Prime Minister’s remarks about a Versailles-type conference in London.

  President Roosevelt “put his hands to his face and shook his head, a bit as much as to say he wished that part had been left well alone,” King recorded the President’s pained reaction. “He then said to me that he did not know that there would be any peace conference,” given its connotation with Versailles 1919. “As far as he was concerned, there would be total surrender” of Germany and Japan. And certainly nothing “in the nature of a Versailles conference,” which Congress would have to ratify.1

  Hearing of Churchill’s behavior at the Capitol, the President had reason to be anxious, however. He liked Winston, in fact he felt enormous affection, bordering on love, for him at times. But he had cause never to quite trust him—and for that reason he preferred to see Stalin alone, without the Prime Minister. Who knew if Churchill would start hedging over the Second Front, if they met à trois?

  It was going to be difficult enough to explain to Stalin that the Western Allies were not going to launch a Second Front before spring 1944. If Churchill, in a tripartite meeting, were to begin talking in front of Stalin of dumping the invasion of France and concentrating Allied efforts instead in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, the Soviets—preparing at that very moment for the onslaught of fifty-nine concentrated German divisions aimed toward Kursk—would rightfully be incensed: vitiating any hope of the Third Reich being defeated any time soon, or of Russian assistance in the war against Japan, or of arriving at a common postwar security agreement. The notion of a United Nations assembly, with a security council of the Four Policemen acting in concert, would thus be out the window.

  The President’s postwar vision still filled King with awe—as did King’s possible role in it. According to the President, the United Nations organization would have a “supreme council representing all the United Nations,” and would need at its head “someone who would fill the position of moderator—someone who would keep his eye on the different countries to see that they were complying with the agreements made in connection with the peace, for example, limitation of armaments, not rebuilding, munitions, etc—not be allowed to build airplanes or any of the paraphernalia of war. It would be the Moderator’s duty possibly to warn in advance and, if necessary, to have the council meet to take such action as necessary”—a person who would “have the confidence of all the nations.”2 And, having abjured any idea he himself might take that role, after the presidency, Roosevelt intimated he thought Mackenzie King, at the end of the war, would make an excellent such secretary general.

  King was understandably flattered—but in the meantime, like Roosevelt, he remained perplexed by the contradictions in Churchill’s character. At the Pacific War Council, Winston had flatly denied in front of the Chinese representative that he’d ever made a formal undertaking to mount Operation Anakim, a British offensive from Indian territory to help China—even though Dr. T. V. Soong had documentary evidence of the commitment.

  Like Mackenzie King, the President had shaken his head over such unnecessary falsehoods—“The President said that the trouble with Winston is that he cannot get over thinking of the Chinese as so many pigtails.”3 Similarly, over India, Churchill was as stubborn and indifferent to world opinion as he could get away with—having instructed the viceroy of India to make sure the American minister in Delhi not be permitted to interfere in any way with Mahatma Gandhi’s 1943 hunger strike—and cabling Lord Halifax to tell all Americans in Washington that the British government “will not in any circumstances alter the course it is pursuing about Gandhi,” even if this resulted in Gandhi’s death.4 He’d insisted, moreover, on speaking in public of “British forces” rather than “British Commonwealth forces”5—which was much resented in Canada, and would be even more resented once Canadian forces went into combat in Sicily. Churchill was, in short, a law unto himself—and yet the repository of such underlying humanity, understanding of history, and noble sentiment that it was impossible not to admire him.

  The question, then, remained: Would Churchill stand by what he’d told the President and Combined Chiefs of Staff earlier that evening in the Oval Office—or by what he’d told members of Congress that afternoon at the Capitol?

  The matter was not academic; the future of the world was literally at stake—and Prime Minister Mackenzie King now watched Churchill’s double game with growing concern.

  When addressing the Pacific War Council the next day, May 20, at noon, Churchill refrained from discussing strategy in Europe in front of the President. Late in the afternoon, however, the Prime Minister addressed a special meeting of the chiefs of staff of Britain and Canada and representatives of other parts of the British Empire, held in the White House dining room, which the President had kindly made available to him.

  Lord Halifax, who attended this “imperial” meeting, dismissed it in his diary. Churchill’s “long speech of fifty minutes about the war” had been “very well done but with nothing very fresh in it except two or three things that could have been said in five minutes. I never saw anybody who loves the sound of words, and his own words more.”6 General Brooke, exhausted by the Combined Chiefs of Staff meetings (involving yet another “off the record” battle), dozed off, but Mackenzie King listened very, very carefully.

  “After a moment’s pause,” King recorded that night, Churchill “started in saying he would sharpen and heighten somewhat the points he had made in his address before Congress.” This the British prime minister proceeded to do, “following pretty much the sequence” King had heard on the Hill. In this there was “little else that was new.” “The most interesting part,” King noted that night, however, “was the account he gave as to why it would be advisable to proceed against Europe from Africa as a base.” It was, Churchill stated, “advisable to get ahold of a few islands in the Mediterranean, use them as stepping-
stones toward Europe. The great effort should be made to get Italy out of the war.”

  Few could argue with this—or with Churchill’s magnanimity. Unconditional surrender was an agreed Allied policy, but one should not be “too particular about the terms on which peace could be made with Italy,” Churchill suggested. “Her people had never had their hearts in the war. He was not anxious to see their country destroyed. If he could get the Italian fleet, that would be an immense gain. He would then have more ships to be employed against the Japanese . . .” With regard to the Second Front, whether in 1943 or 1944, he was strangely reticent, however—and King remained uncertain whether Churchill had really changed his view that it “would be slaughter.”

  Given the loss of so many Canadian lives in the Dieppe assault the previous August, Mackenzie King was understandably sensitive to this, having noted it was “pretty strong language and indicated a feeling that Dieppe had been a real sacrifice, perhaps an unnecessary one.” At any rate, the “picture he presented was of the beaches being long and in stratas; in some places, water deeper than others. Very difficult to land troops. He was determined not to have men sacrificed anymore than could be helped.”7

  Whatever the U.S. and British chiefs might agree upon, then, it was still questionable whether Churchill was really willing to commit British and Canadian troops to a Second Front.8 In fact he “spoke emphatically about not being in too great a hurry to invade Europe even from the South,” Mackenzie King noted. “He said opinion was divided as to the best way to win against Germany. Some thought bombing would be sufficient. There was no harm, however, in trying other methods, as well, while trying to do the best they could with bombing.”9

  If bombing was Churchill’s only plan to defeat Germany, it did not sound very convincing to King. Moreover, it was certainly not how the President and the Combined Chiefs of Staff, in their long and trying meetings, were approaching the question of how to vanquish the Third Reich and move on to defeat Japan. Churchill seemed unabashed, though. He was not, as King recognized, a strategist in the true sense of the word, but an opportunist—opposed down to his entrails to “giving commitments versus tactics,” as King noted.10 And with that the Commonwealth meeting had ended.

  Mackenzie King was to spend the night aboard his train, since he would be returning to Canada, via New York, on May 21. Harry Hopkins had asked King to see the President before leaving the White House, however, and this the Canadian did after midday, on the twenty-first, in the Oval Office. Despite the heat the President “looked very fresh and cool. Was seated on his swing chair. I sat to his left looking out of the window toward the garden. A lovely feeling. An ideal office with a little court opening out of the room.” The President seemed confident the Allies now had an agreed plan for winning the war—and one he could put to Stalin, confiding again to King his invitation to meet the Russian dictator in the Bering Strait.

  What might be Churchill’s reaction at being deliberately excluded, the President then asked King, given Churchill’s erratic position over a Second Front? To encourage the President, King assured him that Winston—who had, after all, had his own private meeting with Stalin the previous summer—would get over it. Besides, the main thing was not the Prime Minister’s pride or dependability, but the President’s hugely important global goal—moral, military, and political—that promised to shape the postwar world.

  On that note the two leaders parted company—though King wanted also to say goodbye to Churchill. He therefore walked from the Oval Office through to the White House mansion and up to Churchill’s guestroom, just after 1:00 p.m. There he found the Prime Minister still in his underwear, dressed “in his white linen under-garments; little shirt without sleeves and little shorts to his knees, otherwise feet quite bare excepting for a pair of slippers. He really was quite a picture but looked like a boy—cheeks quite pink and very fresh.”11

  King said he wanted “to be perfectly clear in my own mind what is to be done,” in terms of military strategy—strategy that involved tens of thousands of Canadian lives—lest there be any misunderstanding.

  To this, Churchill responded by saying “there will be no invasion of Europe this year from Britain. I tell you that”—but the Mediterranean was another matter. There, Canadian troops would shortly take part in the invasion of Sicily in July, to gain battle experience. Canadians would, in fact, “be in the forefront of the battle.”12 Moreover, instead of returning direct to London, Churchill himself was going “to Africa from here”—a “dead secret.”13

  What of Allied war strategy beyond Sicily, though?

  Delicately, King “did say that I thought there was a certain possibility of divergence of view” between the senior Canadian forces’ commander and “some of the plans he, Churchill, had in mind; also between some of the plans that our own chiefs of staff or the British chiefs might have.” The Canadian War Cabinet was prepared to go along with what would “best serve” the need to win the war—but only a strategy that was feasible “in the opinion of the military advisers who had charge of the strategy of the war.”14 In other words, the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

  Churchill, somewhat surprised, reassured King there was no divergence—indeed that King was at liberty to speak with General Brooke, the CIGS, before returning to Canada, if he was in any way unsure or confused.

  Still the Canadian prime minister remained skeptical, however. He had another talk with the Canadian minister of national defense that afternoon—who said he had it direct from Brigadier Jacob, Churchill’s military assistant, that the strategy agreed by the Combined Chiefs of Staff would now stand. “In the light of this,” King noted, “I thought it was just as well not to attempt to see Sir Allen [sic] Brooke. It might have looked to the Defense Ministers that I was distrustful of them”—and of Churchill.15

  That he had every right to be, however, would only become clear after Mackenzie King’s departure.

  32

  The President Loses Patience

  EVEN GENERAL BROOKE was disbelieving.

  The President had spent the weekend at Shangri-la, while Winston Churchill moved for a few days to more comfortable quarters at the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Once the two leaders returned to the White House, however, the Combined Chiefs of Staff were asked to come to the Oval Office—and on the afternoon of Monday, May 24, they did: there to present the final terms of the Trident agreement. When they sat down before the President and Prime Minister, however, it was to find Neptune flatly refusing to accept the agreement they had reached.

  Brooke had known his prime minister to be an occasionally maddening individual—obstinate, brilliant, sometimes tender, sometimes rude, and with a predilection for chasing red herrings. But to behave like a spoiled adolescent in front of the President of the United States of America—a president who was not only directing a global war but was furnishing the materials and fighting men to win it—seemed to Brooke the height of folly.

  As Brooke understood it, the Combined Chiefs had been summoned to be thanked. Instead, Brooke found, “the PM entirely repudiated the paper we had passed, agreed to, and been congratulated on at our last meeting!!” as he recorded with exasperation that night. “He wished to alter all the Mediterranean decisions! He had no idea of the difficulties we had been through,” the Ulsterman exploded in the privacy of his diary, “and just crashed in ‘where angels fear to tread.’ As a result he created [a] situation of suspicion in the American Chiefs that we had been [going] behind their backs, and had made matters far more difficult for us in the future!”1

  Brooke was riven by shame and embarrassment. “There are times when he drives me to desperation! Now we are threatened by a redraft by him and more difficulties tomorrow!”2

  General Marshall was equally furious. Admiral King boiled. Admiral Leahy, as chairman of the Combined Chiefs, was simply outraged. “From four-thirty to seven p.m. the British and American Chiefs of Staff presented to the President and the Prime Minister their report of agreem
ents reached during the present conference,” he noted in his own diary that night. “The Prime Minister refused to accept the Mediterranean agreement.”

  The Combined Chiefs’ report had made no commitment by the Allies to invade mainland Italy, but instead only to “plan such operations in exploitation of Husky as are best calculated to eliminate Italy from the war, and to contain”—either by threat or by operations—“the maximum number of German divisions” while the cross-Channel invasion of northern France was readied for launching on May 1, 1944.

  Mr. Churchill, Leahy noted in exasperation, had other ideas. He “spent an hour advocating an invasion of Italy with a possible extension to Yugoslavia and Greece.”3

  Leahy was as incredulous as Brooke. An “extension” of operations to Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Aegean that risked making a May 1944 cross-Channel Second Front impossible? Churchill was undeterred, however—and adamant.

  Since Churchill was not only British prime minister but quasi–commander in chief of all British Commonwealth forces, this was a major stumbling block. “Final decision was by his request postponed until tomorrow,” Leahy recorded.

  As Brooke feared, this made the U.S. team almost apoplectic. Oh, perfidious Albion! “The Prime Minister’s attitude is an exact agreement with the permanent British policy of controlling the Mediterranean Sea, regardless of what may be the result of the war,” Leahy noted in disgust in his diary. “It has been consistently opposed by the American Chiefs of Staff,” he added, “because of the probability that American troops will be used in the Mediterranean Area”—“at the expense of direct action against Germany.” It was a Churchillian demand “which in our opinion [will] prolong the war.”4 If, that was, it did not lose it.

  In shock and no little confusion, the British and American chiefs were ushered out of the White House and into their cars.