Finest Years

by Max Hastings

  Churchill seldom showed much concern for his own security, but raised an eyebrow when his car was almost engulfed by crowds as the convoy approached the British Legation in the Persian capital. Roosevelt had accepted lodgings in the Russian compound next door, and chose to meet Stalin for the first time alone. The opening session of the summit took place on the afternoon of 28 November, in the Soviet embassy under Roosevelt’s chairmanship. It bears emphasis that, for every participant with a scintilla of imagination, these gatherings were awesome occasions. Even Brooke, tired and cynical, found it ‘quite enthralling’ to behold the ‘Big Three’ for the first time assembled together around a table. Those present knew that they were sharing in the making of history. Most strove to speak and act in a fashion worthy of the moment.

  Churchill began by asserting his firm commitment to an advance to the Pisa–Rimini line in Italy; to a landing in southern France; and to Overlord, provided his preconditions about maximum German strength in the invasion area were met. ‘It will be our stern duty,’ he said, in a trumpet blast notably discordant with his haverings about the operation, ‘to hurl across the Channel against the Germans every sinew of our strength.’ Stalin enquired smoothly:‘Who will command Overlord?’ This was a brilliant shaft. He said that he could not regard any operation entirely seriously until a leader had been named to direct it. Though Eden found Stalin’s personality ‘creepy’ and chilling, like all the Western delegates the Foreign Secretary recognised a master of diplomacy: ‘Of course the man was ruthless and of course knew his purpose. He never wasted a word. He never stormed, he was seldom even irritated. Hooded, calm, never raising his voice, he avoided the repeated negatives of Molotov which were so exasperating to listen to. By more subtle methods he got what he wanted without having seemed so obdurate.’

  Roosevelt assured the Russian leader that a commander for Overlord would be appointed within days. Stalin – ‘Ursus Major’, as Churchill christened ‘the Great Bear’ – was satisfied. He even professed enthusiasm for the Italian campaign, despite his dismay that German divisions were still being transferred from the west to fight in Russia. Churchill praised the efforts of Tito’s communist partisans in Yugoslavia, which he assumed would please Stalin, and declared his eagerness to provide them with greater assistance. The Russian leader said that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated, which gratified the Americans.

  Early each morning of the summit, NKVD officers – who included Beria’s son Sergo – presented Stalin with transcripts of conversations intercepted by microphones planted in the American residence. The Soviet leader expressed amazement at the freedom with which the Westerners talked among themselves, when they must realise that they were being overheard. Latterly, indeed, he began to wonder whether they were really so naïve that they did not guess: ‘Do you think they know that we are listening?’ He was gratified to find Roosevelt speaking well of him. Once, noting the president’s assertion that there was ‘no way to fool Uncle Joe’, he grinned into his moustache and muttered: ‘The old rascal is lying.’ He was less amused by transcribed exchanges in which Churchill repeated to the president his reservations about Overlord. Young Beria was rewarded with a Swiss watch for the efficiency of his eavesdropping.

  The most notorious episode at the conference arose from Stalin’s brutal jest about shooting 50,000 German officers once the war was won, followed by Roosevelt’s rejoinder that 49,000 would suffice. Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, rose to say that he cordially agreed with Stalin’s proposal, and was sure that the US would endorse it likewise. This caused Churchill to storm from the room in disgust. The Russians soothed the prime minister, but it was a grisly moment. When Stalin made his sally, Churchill knew him to be responsible for the cold-blooded massacre of at least 10,000 Polish officers – the true figure was almost 30,000 – as well as countless of his own people. Moreover, the US president’s willingness to join in the joke suggested a heartlessness which was real enough, and which shocked the British leader. Finally, Elliott Roosevelt’s intervention was intolerable. It was a curiosity of the war that great men saw fit to take their children on missions of state. Randolph Churchill’s presence in North Africa, and everywhere else, was an embarrassment. Jan Smuts and Harry Hopkins both brought their sons to Cairo for Sextant. But none matched the crassness of the president’s offspring. Churchill knew that, to sustain the Anglo–American relationship, he must endure almost anything which Roosevelt chose to say or do. But that moment in Tehran was hard for him. Marshall said of Stalin at the conference: ‘He was turning his hose on Churchill all the time, and Mr Roosevelt, in a sense, was helping him. He [FDR] used to take a little delight in embarrassing Churchill.’

  Cadogan recorded the distress of the British delegation that Roosevelt seemed willing to endorse almost everything Stalin proposed. When the future boundaries of Poland were discussed, Averell Harriman was dismayed by his president’s visible indifference. Roosevelt wanted only enough to satisfy Polish-American voters, which was not much. Soviet eavesdroppers reported to Stalin Churchill’s private warnings to Roosevelt about Moscow’s preparations to install a communist government in Poland. According to Sergo Beria, Roosevelt replied that since Churchill was attempting to do the same thing by installing an anti-communist regime, he had no cause for complaint.

  The American leader was much more interested in promoting Soviet support for the future United Nations organisation, an easy ball for the Russians to play. They indulged Roosevelt by ready acquiescence, though even Stalin expressed scepticism about the president’s vision of China joining Russia, Britain and the US to police the post-war world. Harriman perceived the danger of flaunting before the Russians Roosevelt’s carelessness about East European borders. The relentless advance of Stalin’s armies would have rendered it difficult for the West to stem Soviet imperialism. Churchill was by now reconciled to shifting Poland’s frontiers westwards, compensating the Poles with German territory for their eastern lands to be ceded to Russia. That proposal represented ruthlessness enough. But the US president’s behaviour went further, making plain that Stalin could expect little opposition to his designs in Poland or elsewhere.

  Roosevelt, bent upon creating a future in which the Great Powers acted in concert, seemed heedless of reality: that Stalin cared nothing for consensus, and was interested only in licence for pursuing his own unilateral purposes. Among the American team, Charles Bohlen and George Kennan of the State Department shared Harriman’s misgivings about Roosevelt’s belief that he shared a world vision with Stalin. The prime minister’s fears for the future began to coalesce. ‘That the President should deal with Churchill and Stalin as if they were people of equal standing in American eyes shocked Churchill profoundly,’ wrote Ian Jacob.

  Yet most of Roosevelt’s delegation left the summit basking in a glow of satisfaction created by the formal commitment to Overlord, so long desired by both the US and Soviet Union. The persistent evasiveness of the British on this issue irked even the most anglophile Americans. The Tehran experience afterwards yielded one of Churchill’s great sallies. The meeting, he said, caused him to realise how small Britain was: ‘There I sat with the great Russian bear on one side of me, with paws outstretched, and on the other side the great American buffalo, and between the two sat the poor little English donkey who was the only one…who knew the right way home.’

  Stalin was highly satisfied with the Tehran talks, at which he perceived himself as getting all that he wanted. He thought the US president a truth-teller, as Churchill was not, and told the Stavka on his return to Moscow: ‘Roosevelt has given a firm commitment to launch large-scale operations in France in 1944. I think he will keep his word. But if he does not, we shall be strong enough to finish off Hitler’s Germany on our own.’

  Eden thought the 1943 meetings with the Russians the most satisfactory, or least unsatisfactory, of the war, before the steep deterioration of relations during 1944, when Soviet expansionism bec
ame explicit. But the British delegation at Tehran deplored the manner in which the Big Three’s discussions roamed erratically across a wilderness of issues, bringing none to a decisive conclusion save that even Churchill would thereafter have found it difficult to escape the Overlord commitment. Cunningham and Portal declared the conference a waste of time. The British were especially dismayed that no attempt was made to oblige the Russians to recognise the legitimacy of the Polish exile government in London, in return for Anglo-American acceptance of Poland’s altered borders.

  After Tehran, Churchill cannot have failed to understand, in his own heart at least, how little Roosevelt cared for Britain, its interests or stature. Not for a moment did the prime minister relax his efforts to woo and cajole the president. But it became progressively harder for him to address the United States than Russia. With Stalin, Churchill continued to seek bargains, but his expectations were pitched low. The American relationship, however, was fundamental to every operation of war, to feeding the British people, to all prospect of sustaining the Empire in the post-war world. It seems extraordinary that some historians have characterised the relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill as a friendship. To be sure, the prime minister embraced the president in speech and correspondence as ‘my friend’. In no aspect of his life and conduct as Britain’s leader did he display more iron self-control than in his wartime dealings with the Americans. ‘Every morning when I wake,’ he once said, ‘my first thought is how I can please President Roosevelt.’ But much of what FDR served up to Churchill between 1943 and 1945 was gall and wormwood.

  From Tehran, while Roosevelt went home to Washington, Churchill flew to Cairo. He was tired and indeed ill, yet meetings and dinners crowded in upon each other. He rebuked Mountbatten by signal for demanding the services of 33,700 fighting soldiers to address 5,000 Japanese in the Arakan – ‘The Americans have been taking their islands on the basis of two-and-a-half to one. That your Generals should ask for six-and-a-half to one has produced a very bad impression.’ He dined at the embassy on 10 December with a party which included Smuts, Eden, Cadogan and Randolph Churchill, then took off at 1 a.m. for Tunisia. His York landed at the wrong airfield, where Brooke saw him ‘sitting on his suitcase in a very cold morning wind, looking like nothing on earth. We were there about an hour before we moved on and he was chilled through by then.’

  After another brief flight they landed again, this time in the right place, and he was driven to Maison Blanche, Eisenhower’s villa near Carthage. On 11 December he slept all day, then dined with Ike, Brooke, Tedder and others. He went to bed in pain from his throat. At 4 a.m. Brooke was awakened by a plaintive voice crying out, ‘Hulloo, Hulloo, Hulloo.’ The CIGS switched on a torch and demanded crossly: ‘Who the hell is that?’ His beam fell upon the prime minister in his dragon dressing gown, a brown bandage around his head, complaining of a headache and searching for his doctor. Next day Churchill had a temperature, and Moran telegraphed for nurses and a pathologist. He was diagnosed with pneumonia.

  Over the following days, though he continued to see visitors and dispatch a stream of signals, he lay in bed, knowing that he was very ill. ‘If I die,’ he told his daughter Sarah, ‘don’t worry – the war is won.’ On 15 December he suffered a heart attack. Sarah read Pride and Prejudice aloud to him. News of Churchill’s illness unleashed a surge of sentiment and sympathy among his people. A British soldier in North Africa wrote in his diary: ‘We all hope and pray that he will recover. It would be a great thing if Mr Churchill will live to see the victorious end to his great fight against the Nazis.’ On the afternoon of the 17th, Clementine Churchill arrived, escorted by Jock Colville, who had been recalled from the RAF to the Downing Street secretariat. The new M & B antibiotics were doing their work. While the prime minister remained weak, and suffered a further slight heart attack, he no longer seemed in peril of death. On the 19th Clementine wrote to her daughter Mary: ‘Papa much better today. Has consented not to smoke and to drink only weak whisky and soda.’

  He was now fuming about the ‘scandalous…stagnation’ of the Italian campaign, and especially about the failure to use available landing craft to launch an amphibious assault behind the German front. He urged Roosevelt to give swift consideration to British proposals for new command arrangements in the Mediterranean, now that Dwight Eisenhower had been named to direct Overlord. Roosevelt would almost certainly have given this role to Marshall, had the British been willing to agree that the chief of the army should become super-commander-in-chief of all operations against the Germans, in the Mediterranean as well as in north-west Europe. But Churchill and Brooke were determined to preserve at least one key C-in-C’s appointment for a British officer. The president was unwilling to spare Marshall from Washington merely to command Overlord. On those terms he preferred to keep the chief of the army at home, as overall director of the US war effort.

  The British chiefs of staff wanted Maitland-Wilson to succeed Eisenhower as Mediterranean supremo, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder to become Ike’s deputy for Overlord. Churchill favoured Alexander for British commander on D-Day – as also did Eisenhower. The war cabinet demurred, urging Montgomery in deference to public opinion as well as military desirability. Surprisingly, Churchill acceded to their view. This was certainly the right appointment, for Montgomery was a much superior general. But it was unusual for Churchill to allow himself to be balked by ministers on a matter of such importance. Most likely, willingness to allow Alexander to remain in Italy reflected the importance he attached to operations there. He believed, mistakenly, that ‘Alex’ could provide the impetus which he perceived as lacking. Macmillan strongly urged Alexander’s appointment, noting that Maitland-Wilson had been Middle East C-in-C for a year, yet in Cairo had done nothing to galvanise the slothful British war machine in Egypt. The Americans finally acceded to British wishes for Alexander to take over in the Mediterranean, precisely because they attached much less importance to Italy than to Overlord.

  On 22 December the British chiefs of staff signalled from London that they supported Churchill’s proposal for a new amphibious assault in Italy. Initial planning assumed that there was only enough shipping to move a single division, while both Churchill and the chiefs wanted to land two. On Christmas Day, Eisenhower, Maitland-Wilson, Alexander, Tedder and Cunningham converged by air upon Carthage from all over the Mediterranean to discuss plans for Operation Shingle, a descent on Anzio, just south of Rome, provisionally scheduled for 20 January. The meeting endorsed a two-division initial assault, subject to the proviso that it should not threaten the May date for Overlord.

  On 27 December Churchill flew to Marrakesh for a prolonged spell of recuperation. ‘I propose to stay here in the sunshine,’ he wrote to Roosevelt, ‘till I am quite strong again.’ On his second day at the Villa Taylor, to his surprise and delight he learned that the president had approved Shingle, subject only to renewed emphasis upon the sanctity of the French invasion date. This, however, was now to be put back a month, until June, at the insistence of Eisenhower and Montgomery. Having studied the D-Day plan for the first time, they were convinced that additional preparation, as well as a reinforced initial landing, were essential. The new date would fall in the first week of June. Churchill was hostile to the use of the word ‘invasion’ in the context of D-Day: ‘Our object is the liberation of Europe from German tyranny…we “enter” the oppressed countries rather than “invade”them and…the word “invasion”must be reserved for the time when we cross the German frontier. There is no need for us to make a present to Hitler of the idea that he is the defender of a Europe we are seeking to invade.’ This was, of course, one semantic dispute which he lost.

  On 4 January 1944 he wrote to Eden: ‘I am getting stronger every day…All my thoughts are on “Shingle”, which as you may well imagine I am watching intensely.’ His convalescence in Marrakesh ended on 14 January. He flew to Gibraltar, where Maitland-Wilson and Cunningham gave him a final briefing on the Anzio plan. Then
he boarded the battleship King George V to sail home. On the night of 17 January he landed at Plymouth, where he joined the royal train which had been sent to fetch him. Next morning, after an absence from England of nine weeks, he reached Downing Street. He cabled Roosevelt: ‘Am all right except for being rather shaky on my pins.’ Arriving at Buckingham Palace for lunch with the king, a private secretary asked if he would like the lift. ‘Lift?’ demanded the indignant prime minister. He ran up the stairs two at a time, then turned and thumbed his nose at the courtier.

  The House of Commons knew nothing of his return until MPs looked up in astonishment in the middle of Questions, leapt to their feet and began shouting, applauding and waving order papers. Harold Nicolson described how cheer after cheer greeted him, ‘while Winston, very pink, rather shy, beaming with mischief, crept along the front bench and flung himself into his accustomed seat. He was flushed with pleasure and emotion, and hardly had he sat down when two large tears began to trickle down his cheeks. He mopped clumsily at himself with a huge white handkerchief. A few minutes later he got up to answer questions. Most men would have been unable, on such an occasion, not to throw a flash of drama into their replies. But Winston answered them as if he were the young Under-Secretary, putting on his glasses, turning over his papers, responding tactfully to supplementaries, and taking the whole thing as conscientiously as could be. I should like to say that he seemed completely restored to health. But he looked pale when the first flush of pleasure had subsided, and his voice was not quite as vigorous as it had been.’ Churchill retained his extraordinary ability to hold the attention of the House through long, discursive assessments of the war. After one such, he suddenly leaned across to the opposition and demanded casually: ‘That all right?’ MPs grinned back affectionately. His mastery of the Commons, wrote Nicolson, derived from ‘the combination of great flights of oratory with sudden swoops into the intimate and conversational’.