by Max Hastings
If Churchill must expect to endure the slings and arrows of critics ignorant of British military weakness, it was harsh that he also faced a barrage from one man who should have known better. Beaverbrook had resigned from the government allegedly on grounds of exhaustion. The shrewd civil servant Archie Rowlands believed, however, that the press lord perceived Churchill’s administration failing, and wished to distance himself from its fate. Since Beaverbrook’s visit to Moscow, this arch-capitalist had become obsessively committed to Stalin’s cause, and to British aid for Russia. His newspapers campaigned stridently for the Second Front, intensifying the pressure on Churchill.
Visiting New York as a semi-official emissary of the British government, Beaverbrook addressed an audience of American newspaper and magazine publishers on 23 April. He told them: ‘Communism under Stalin has won the applause and admiration of all the western nations.’ He asserted that there was no persecution of religion in the USSR, and that ‘the church doors are open’. He urged: ‘Strike out to help Russia! Strike out violently! Strike even recklessly!’ Here was rhetoric that went far beyond the courtesies necessary to placate Stalin and encourage his people, and that flaunted Beaverbrook’s irresponsibility. Yet when Churchill telephoned next day from London, instead of delivering the stinging rebuke which was merited, he sought to appease the erratic press baron by offering him stewardship of all Britain’s missions in Washington. Happily this proposal was rejected, but it reflected Churchill’s perception of his own political beleaguerment.
Beaverbrook preened himself before Halifax about the huge fan mail he claimed to be receiving. His egomania fed extravagant ambition. The ambassador recorded in his diary that Beaverbrook told him: ‘I might be the best man to run the war. It wants a ruthless, unscrupulous, harsh man, and I believe I could do it.’ It is possible that, at a time when there was widespread clamour for the ministry of defence to be divorced from the premiership, Beaverbrook saw himself in the former role. Yet he demonstrated notable naïveté about strategic realities, given that he was privy to so much secret information about British weakness. When challenged about the difficulties of providing air cover for an early landing in France, Beaverbrook asserted that this could be provided by Beaufighters. Any man who supposed that twin-engined aircraft could contest air superiority with German Bf109s showed himself unfit to participate in strategic decision-making. Monstrously, Beaverbrook threatened that his newspapers would campaign for recognition of Stalin’s claims in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. Yet Churchill never lost faith in his friend, nor expelled him from his circle, as Clementine so often urged him to do. The prime minister’s loyalty to ‘the Beaver’ was as ill-deserved as it proved unrewarding.
Molotov, Stalin’s foreign minister, arrived in Britain for talks on 21 May 1942. Following his first encounter with the prime minister he reported to Moscow: ‘Concerning the second front, Churchill made a brief statement during the morning session, stating that the British and American governments are in principle committed to mounting such an operation in Europe, with maximum available resources, at the earliest possible date, and are making energetic preparations for this.’ After subsequent meetings, however, at which the British made much of the practical difficulties of staging an invasion of the Continent, he told Moscow that it would be rash to expect early action. Molotov was a grey bureaucrat so slavishly loyal to Stalin that during the thirties purges he signed an arrest order for his own wife. By such means he, almost alone among prominent old Bolsheviks, had escaped the executioners and clung to office. It must have strained to the limits Churchill’s obedience to political imperatives to entertain such a man at Downing Street and Chequers, which the Russian remembered chiefly, and contemptuously, for its lack of showers.
If further evidence was needed of Beaverbrook’s mischief-making, Molotov reported on 27 May, following two encounters with the press lord: ‘He advised me to push the British government [for an invasion], and assured me that Roosevelt is a proponent of the second front.’ Beyond Russian secretiveness, Churchill was also obliged to contend with Moscow’s susceptibility to fantasies. Stalin appeared sincerely to believe that Japanese aircraft were being flown by German pilots, and that the British had for some unfathomable reason provided Japan with 1,500 combat aircraft.
Molotov’s main business in London was to negotiate a treaty of alliance. He was dismayed by British refusal to meet the demands which Russia had been making ever since entering the war, for recognition of its hegemony not only over the Baltic states, but also over eastern Poland. Stalin, however, was less concerned. He cabled Molotov on the 24th, telling him to accept the vaguely worded draft about post-war security offered by Eden: ‘We do not consider this a meaningless statement, we regard it as an important document. It does not contain that paragraph [proposed in a Russian draft] on border security, but probably this is not so bad as it leaves our hands free. We will resolve the issue of frontiers, or rather, of security guarantees for our frontiers…by force.’ Much more serious, in Russian eyes, was the perceived inadequacy of British arms shipments. Stalin emphasised the need for fighters and tanks, especially Valentines, which had proved best suited, or least unsuited, to Russian conditions. The British, however, remained evasive about further reinforcement of their convoys to Archangel. Joan Beaumont, one of the most convincing chroniclers of wartime Western aid to Russia, has written: ‘It is the irony of the commitment to the Soviet Union that while…consensus on its necessity grew in the first half of 1942, so also did the obstacles in the way of putting this into effect.’
Grandiose American promises of aid—initially eight million tons for 1942-43, half of this food—foundered on the Allies’ inability to ship anything like such quantities. By the end of June 1943 less than three million tons had been delivered of a pledged 4.4 million. Joan Beaumont again:‘Considerable though these achievements and sacrifices were, they seemed poor in contrast to the promises which had been made…At the time when the Russian need was greatest, the assistance from the West…was at its most uncertain.’ There was special Soviet bitterness about British refusal of repeated requests for Spitfires. The most strident of Russia’s propagandists, Ilya Ehrenburg, denounced to his millions of Soviet readers the fact that the Allies were ‘sending very few aircraft, and not the best they have either’. The Russians claimed to be insulted on discovering that some Hurricanes they received were reconditioned rather than new. Given the poor quality of planes and tanks provided, Moscow began to focus its demands upon trucks and food.
Molotov flew on from London to Washington, where the White House butler reported to Roosevelt that Russia’s foreign minister had arrived with a pistol in his suitcase. The president observed that they must simply hope it was not intended for use on him. Following a meeting at the White House on 30 May, Molotov displayed in his report to Moscow a frustration at Roosevelt’s evasive bonhomie that would have struck a chord with the British. Dinner, the Russian complained, ‘was followed by a lengthy but meaningless conversation…I said that it would be desirable to engage at least 40 German divisions at the Western front in the summer and autumn of this year. Roosevelt and Marshall responded that they very much wanted to achieve this, but faced immediate shipping difficulties in moving forces to France.’ The Russian pleaded that if there was no Second Front in 1942, Germany would be much stronger in 1943. ‘They offered no definite information.’ However, the president said that ‘preparations for the second front are under way…he, Roosevelt is trying to persuade the American generals to take the risk and land 6 to 10 divisions in France. It is possible that it will mean another Dunkirk and the loss of 100,000-120,000 men, but the sacrifices have to be made to provide help in 1942 and shatter German morale.’
Stalin cabled again on 3 June, first rebuking Molotov for the brevity of his reports. The Soviet leader said that he did not want to be told mere essentials. He needed trivial details as well, to provide a sense of mood. ‘Finally, we think it absolutely necessary that both [
British and American] communiqués contain paragraphs about establishing the second front in Europe, and state that full agreement had been reached on this issue. We also think it necessary that both communiqués should include specifics on deliveries of material from Britain and the USA to the Soviet Union.’
Here were the same imperatives pressing Stalin as had weighed upon Churchill in 1940-41. First, and as the Russian leader acknowledged in his cables to Molotov, it was vital to persuade Hitler that there was a real threat of an Allied invasion of France, to deter him from transferring further divisions to the eastern front. Second, morale was as important to the peoples of the Soviet Union as to those of the democracies. Every gleam of hope was precious. Stalin nursed no real expectation that Anglo-American armies would land on the Continent in 1942. But, just as Churchill in 1941 promoted in Britain much more ambitious expectations of American belligerence than the facts merited, so Stalin wished to trumpet to the Russian people Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s assurances that a Second Front was coming, even though he himself did not believe them. If the British and Americans later breached such assurances, this would provide useful evidence of capitalist perfidy. For embattled Russia in the summer of 1942, ‘later’ seemed scarcely to matter.
Back in London on 9 June, Molotov met Churchill once more, before the signing of a treaty of alliance. If the Russian’s purpose was to promote discord between London and Washington, he was by no means unsuccessful. The prime minister was much disturbed when Molotov told him of Roosevelt’s aspirations for the post-war world, including international trusteeship for the Dutch and French empires in Asia, and enforced disarmament of all save the Great Powers. Then the foreign minister outlined his exchanges at the White House about the Second Front:
I mentioned among other things that Roosevelt agreed with the point of view that I had set forth, i.e., that it could prove harder to establish a second front in 1943 than in 1942 due to possible grave problems on our front. Finally, I mentioned that the president attached such great importance to the creation of a second front in 1942 that he was prepared to gamble, to endure another Dunkirk and lose 100,000 or 120,000 men…I stressed however that I thought the number of divisions which Roosevelt proposed to commit insufficient, i.e., six to ten.
Here Churchill interrupted me in great agitation, declaring that he would never agree to another Dunkirk and a fruitless sacrifice of 100,000 men, no matter who recommended such a notion. When I replied that I was only conveying Roosevelt’s view, Churchill responded: ‘I shall tell him my view on this issue myself.’
Oliver Harvey recorded the same conversation: ‘Roosevelt had calmly told Molotov he would be prepared to contemplate a sacrifice of 120,000 men if necessary—our men. PM said he would not hear of it.’
Molotov said years later: ‘We had to squeeze everything we could get out of [the Allies]. I have no doubt that Stalin did not believe [that a Second Front would happen]. But one had to demand it! One had to demand it for the sake of our own people. Because people were waiting, weren’t they, to see whether help [from the Allies] would come. That sheet of paper [the Anglo-Soviet agreement] was of great political significance to us. It cheered people up, and that meant a lot then.’
The Anglo-Soviet Treaty signed on 26 May merely committed ‘the High Contracting Parties…to afford one another military and other assistance and support of all kinds’. But in Moscow after Molotov’s return from London, Pravda reported: ‘The Day is at hand when the Second Front will open.’ On 19 June the newspaper described a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, whose members were told that the accords reached between the Soviet Union, Britain and the US reflected the fact ‘that complete agreement had been achieved about the urgency of opening of the second front in Europe in 1942’. This announcement, said the paper, was received with protracted applause, as was a subsequent statement that ‘these agreements are of the highest importance for the nations of the Soviet Union, since the opening of the second front in Europe will create insurmountable difficulties for Hitler’s armies on our front’. All this was untrue, and well understood to be so by Stalin and Molotov. But among so many other deceits, what was one more, deemed so necessary to the spirit of the Russian people? And in this case the Russians were entirely entitled to declare that the Americans, and in lesser degree the British, were making promises in bad faith.
Molotov, in old age, asserted that he found Churchill ‘smarter’ than Roosevelt: ‘I knew them all, these capitalists, but Churchill was the strongest and cleverest…As for Roosevelt, he believed in dollars. Not that he believed in nothing else, but he thought that they were so rich and we so poor, and that we would become so weakened that we would come to the Americans and beg. This was their mistake…They woke up when they’d lost half of Europe. And here of course Churchill found himself in a very foolish predicament. In my opinion, Churchill was the most intelligent of them, as an imperialist. He knew that if we, the Russians, defeated Germany, then England would start losing its feathers. He realised this. As for Roosevelt, he thought: [Russia] is a poor country with no industry, no grain, they are going to come and beg. There is no other way out for them. And we saw all this completely differently. The entire nation had been prepared for the sacrifices, for struggle.’ This was, of course, a characteristic Soviet post-facto exposition of what took place in 1942-43. But Molotov seems right to have perceived in the Americans’ behaviour a fundamental condescension, of the same kind that underlay their attitude towards Britain. It was rooted in a belief that when the conflict ended, US power would be unchallengeable by either ally.
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower wrote to his old friend George Patton on 20 July 1942: ‘This war is still young.’ For Americans, this was true. But the British, after almost three years of privation, defeat, intermittent bombardment and enforced inaction, saw matters very differently. Washington was seeking to browbeat Churchill into sacrificing a British army, with token American participation, as a gesture of support for the Soviet Union. Marshall’s cardinal mistake was failure to perceive that the scale of a battle in France was beyond the power of the Allies to determine. The Allies might seek to conduct a minor operation, but the Germans could mass forces to convert this into a major disaster.
There was never the smallest possibility that the prime minister and his generals would accede to the US proposal. ‘I do not think there is much doing on the French coast this year,’ the prime minister minuted the chiefs of staff on 1 June. Britain in mid-1942 had fifteen divisions in the Middle East, ten in India and thirty at home, few of the latter ready for war. None of the fifteen first-line infantry divisions in Home Forces was fully equipped, while nine ‘lower establishment’ divisions were in worse case. Two-thirds of weapons and equipment emerging from factories were being shipped directly overseas, where they were needed ‘at the sharp end’, while Home Forces continued to queue for resources.
That spring Churchill pressed two proposals upon his chiefs of staff against their wishes. He prevailed on one, though not the other. He overruled Brooke’s judgement that the seizure of Vichy-held Madagascar was unnecessary. Troops landed on the island in May, quickly capturing the main port, then fighting a six-month campaign against dogged Vichy resistance before the entire island was subdued in November. This was a wise precautionary move. If the Japanese, at the floodtide of their conquests, had fulfilled their ambitions to take Madagascar, British communications with India and the Middle East would have been critically threatened. The other Churchillian proposal, however, for a landing in north Norway, was defeated by all-service objections. It should have been within the powers of the British Army in 1942 to seize and hold a Norwegian perimeter, thus frustrating further attacks on convoys to Russia by the Luftwaffe and German navy. But given the proven shortcomings of the army and Fleet Air Arm, Brooke was probably right to quash the plan. Such an operation would have fatally compromised Churchill’s North African ambitions, which promised larger gains for lesser hazards.
The British and Amer
ican publics were, however, ignorant of the weakness of the Western Allies’ armed forces in comparison to those of their enemies. For most of 1942 they debated the Second Front with a fervour that exasperated the prime minister and his commanders. Churchill was disgusted by a Time magazine article which described Britain as ‘oft-burned, defensive-minded’, and wrote to Brendan Bracken: ‘This vicious rag should have no special facilities here.’ The British embassy in Washington reported to London: ‘Advocacy of a second front has increased largely as a result of the Russian reverses. An influential section of editorial opinion…has been insisting that the danger of such an operation now is more than outweighed by the greater danger likely to arise if it is delayed.’ The British were constantly provoked by manifestations of American ignorance about operational difficulties. A US officer at dinner in London one night demanded of a British general why more fighters could not be flown to Malta, to protect Mediterranean convoys. The visitor was oblivious of the fact, irritably explained by his host, that Malta was far beyond the range of Spitfires or Hurricanes flying from Gibraltar.