Finest Years

by Max Hastings

  Lack of both electricity and camera flashbulbs made it necessary to hold the prime minister’s parting photocall in the embassy garden, much to the dismay of those responsible for his safety. Access was possible only by traversing a short walkway from the drawing room, on which he was visible to the world from Constitution Avenue. Attempts to hustle him behind the safety of the garden wall were frustrated by an onrush of photographers which caused the prime minister to halt on the walkway. To the dismay of the press attaché behind him, ‘a short crack followed by a shower of plaster announced that a bullet had hit the wall two feet above our heads. Summoning all my courage, I…gave the infuriated Prime Minister a sharp shove in the back, precipitating him smartly down the steps into the comparative safety of the garden.’ On 28 December, Churchill flew out of Athens for Naples. He had yearned to linger, and again to meet the Greeks. Macmillan, however, persuaded him that his duty was to return to London and reconcile King George of the Hellenes to the regency. Churchill allowed himself to be buckled into his seatbelt on the Skymaster, acknowledging that ‘Even the most eminent persons are subject to the laws of gravity.’ As the plane taxied, he suddenly ordered it to halt. He insisted on passing down to the ground party an amendment to the British final communiqué. Then he took off for Italy, and home.

  Back in London next afternoon, the prime minister twice met the King of the Hellenes, at 10.30 p.m. and 1.30 a.m. At 4 a.m., George II at last agreed to the regency. Churchill retired to bed after a working and travelling day that had lasted twenty-two hours. General Nikolaus Plastiras became prime minister, though he was obliged to resign soon afterwards, following the leak of a letter revealing that in 1941 he had offered himself to the Nazis as leader of a collaborationist Greek government. On the night of 4 January 1945, the firepower of the British Army and diminished confidence in their own prospects persuaded the communist guerrillas to retire to the countryside. An uneasy armistice was agreed between the factions. Violence in Athens subsided, though it required the deployment of 90,000 British troops to secure the country. Greece remained in a state of civil war between 1946 and 1949, but a non-communist—indeed, bitterly anti-communist—government survived until the Americans relieved the British of responsibility for Greek security.

  Churchill’s visit was significant chiefly because it reconciled him to a course of action which all the other British players had already endorsed. The decisive factor in Greece was Stalin’s abstention. It suited Moscow to acknowledge the principle that whichever ally liberated an occupied country should determine its subsequent governance. The ELAS guerrilla leaders were vastly more impressed by the silence of Colonel Popov, Stalin’s man in Athens, than by the eloquence of Britain’s prime minister. In Greece, Churchill received his sole reward for the Moscow ‘percentages agreement’ which Americans so much disliked. So tormented and riven was Greek society in the wake of the occupation that it is hard to imagine any course of action which might have brought about the peaceful establishment of a democratic government. What emerged was probably the least bad outcome, in which no one could take just pride.

  Churchill’s dramatic venture into personal diplomacy commanded less world attention than it might otherwise have done, because it coincided with the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and Luxembourg. According to a State Department survey, the overriding US media impression of British action remained unfavourable: ‘Anglo-American differences and British military action in Greece during early December received more than twice as much front page space as Churchill’s mission to Athens…Predominant editorial opinion throughout the crisis was never categorically opposed to British leadership in Greece and the Mediterranean, but strongly objected to the possible imposition of an unrepresentative and unpopular government on the Greek people, and to the possible creation of a closed British sphere of interest.’ Drew Pearson’s final column of 1944 unfavourably compared Churchill’s ‘outgrown imperialism’ with more enlightened attitudes elsewhere in the British body politic. Criticism of British shortcomings at home and abroad was now a running theme in the US press. Virginius Dabney wrote in the New York Times on 31 December that opinion in the American South, traditionally friendly to Britain, was turning hostile: ‘The development which has provoked most adverse comment is Winston Churchill’s policy in Greece and Italy. Even in this strongly pro-British region criticism is being heard, not only of Churchill but of the British people.’

  The British did not receive this bombardment in silence. On 30 December, after a surge of American comment which added allegations of ‘slacking’ to other charges against America’s ally, the Economist delivered a counterblast:

  What makes the American criticisms so intolerable is not merely that they are unjust, but that they come from a source which has done so little to earn the right to postures of superiority. To be told by anyone that the British people are slacking in their war effort would be insufferable enough to a people struggling through their sixth winter of black-out and rations and coldness—but when the criticism comes from a nation that was practising Cash-and-Carry during the Battle of Britain, whose consumption has risen during the war years, which is still without a national service act—then it is not to be borne.

  There is still a great deal of wishful thinking in Britain, even in the highest quarters, to the effect that good behaviour on our part will procure some great prize, such as an Anglo-American alliance…It is as well to be brutally frank: there is no more possibility of any of these things than of an American petition to rejoin the British Empire…What, then, is the conclusion for British policy towards America? Clearly it is not that any quarrels should be picked…But let an end be put to the policy of appeasement which, at Mr Churchill’s personal bidding, has been followed, with all the humiliations and abasements it has brought in its train.

  Following the Economist’s outburst, the State Department recorded ‘an orgy of recrimination between the American and British presses’. The Washington embassy reported to London the following week on US attitudes: ‘The general reaction is that although the British attack was not unprovoked and the British cannot have been expected to take the flood of criticism poured by the United States press and radio lying down, yet the British are surely much too touchy and the tone of their retort is much too harsh.’ Though a 14 January Life magazine editorial described the Economist’s criticisms as wellmerited, many American publications remained hostile. OWI and State Department surveys in the early months of 1945 found that Americans consistently rated the British more blameworthy than the Russians for the difficulties of the Grand Alliance.

  The State Department study noted: ‘Despite recent press comment sympathetic to the British, a confidential opinion poll indicates that dissatisfaction with the British has increased among the public at large. The tabulation shows that mass opinion, dissatisfied with the way in which Russia, Britain and the United States are cooperating, blames chiefly Britain…The “nationalist” press, even in comment praising Field-Marshal Montgomery and the British people, continued to charge that the “British and Russians are playing power politics against each other in the middle of this war, while we, at least at this moment, do most of the fighting”.’

  Churchill found little to celebrate in what he called the ‘new, disgusting year’ of 1945. Russian intransigence was familiar, but overbearing American behaviour filled a bitter cup. Tempers were sorely frayed, in government and among the British people. Eden wrote on 12 January: ‘Terrible Cabinet, first on Greece…Whole thing lasted four and a half hours. Really quite intolerable. I was in a pretty bloody temper…for everyone started taking a hand in drafting messages for me.’ Churchill found it much harder to sustain relative inactivity in Downing Street than to undertake initiatives abroad, even if these were ill-rewarded. One morning he told his typist Marion Holmes: ‘You know I cannot give you the excitement of Athens every day.’

  There seemed no limit to the troubles sent to vex him. Montgomery gave an outrageously hubristic press confer
ence following his modest personal contribution to the Bulge battle. This excited new American hostility, and correspondingly exasperated the prime minister. Churchill was obliged to recognise that there was no more chance of restoring King Peter of Yugoslavia to his throne than King Zog of Albania or King Carol of Romania to theirs. Roosevelt agreed to Stalin’s proposal for a February summit at Yalta in the Crimea, causing Churchill to cable: ‘I shall be waiting on the quay. No more let us falter! From Malta to Yalta! Let nobody alter!’ In reality, however, the British complained bitterly about the inconvenient venue. They remained resentful that Roosevelt was unwilling to visit their own country, or to accept Churchill’s alternative suggestion of a meeting in Iceland. The prime minister sent congratulations to Stalin on the Russian Vistula offensive, all the more fulsome because of his anxiety for Soviet goodwill in Greece and Poland. Brooke expressed relief that Churchill seemed finally reconciled to the fact that there could be no Adriatic amphibious landing, nor a drive on Vienna. Churchill brusquely dismissed De Gaulle’s demand that he should attend the Yalta conference in the name of his country. ‘France cannot masquerade as a Great Power for the purposes of war,’ he told Eden.

  The prime minister said to Marion Holmes: ‘You wouldn’t like my job—so many different things come up which have to be settled in two or three minutes.’ At a time when many of his own ministers were wearying of Churchill, Holmes paid a tribute which reflected the passionate affection and loyalty he retained among his personal staff: ‘In all his moods—totally absorbed in the serious matter of the moment, agonized over some piece of wartime bad news, suffused with compassion, sentimental and in tears, truculent, bitingly sarcastic, mischievous or hilariously funny—he was splendidly entertaining, humane and lovable.’ While ministers and commanders complained with increasing impatience about the prime minister’s failing concentration and outbursts of irrationality, he remained a unique repository of wisdom. Consider, for instance, his words to Eden, who had been pressing him about arrangements for post-war Germany:

  It is a mistake to try to write out on some little pieces of papers what the vast emotions of an outraged and quivering world will be either immediately after the struggle is over or when the inevitable cold fit follows the hot. These awe-inspiring tides of feeling dominate most people’s minds…Guidance in these mundane matters is granted to us only step by step, or at the utmost a step or two ahead. There is therefore wisdom in reserving one’s decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.

  Likewise, on 18 January he delivered to the House of Commons a report on the war situation which some thought as glittering a display of oratory as he had produced since 1940. In a two-hour speech, he said of Greece:

  The House must not suppose that, in these foreign lands, matters are settled as they would be here in England. Even here it is hard enough to keep a Coalition together, even between men who, although divided by party, have a supreme object and so much else in common. But imagine what the difficulties are in countries racked by civil war, past or impending, and where clusters of petty parties have each their own set of appetites, misdeeds and revenges. If I had driven the wife of the Deputy Prime Minister out to die in the snow, if the Minister of Labour had kept the Foreign Secretary in exile for a great many years, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had shot at and wounded the Secretary of State for War…if we, who sit here together, had back-bitten and double-crossed each other while pretending to work together, and had all put our own group or party first and the country nowhere, and had all set ideologies, slogans or labels in front of comprehension, comradeship and duty, we should certainly, to put it at the mildest, have come to a General Election much sooner than is now likely. When men have wished very much to kill each other, and have feared very much that they will be killed quite soon, it is not possible for them next day to work together as friends with colleagues against whom they have nursed such intentions or from whom they have derived such fears.

  Churchill said to Colville in those days, speaking of the South African prime minister, ‘Smuts and I are like two old love-birds moulting together on a perch, but still able to peck.’ He ‘pecked’ to incomparable effect. After his difficult passages with MPs about Greece in December, he had now restored his position. Yet he told one considerable untruth to the Commons on 18 January, denying that events in the Mediterranean were in any way influenced by rival notions about ‘spheres of influences’. In reality, in his gratitude for Stalin’s forbearance on Greece, he was desperate to be seen to keep his own side of the Moscow bargain. He was exasperated to hear that British diplomats in Romania had been protesting about Soviet actions there, and wrote angrily to Eden: ‘Why are we making a fuss about the Russian deportations in Roumania of Saxons and others? It is understood that the Russians were to work their will in this sphere. Anyhow, we cannot prevent them.’ He told Colville on 23 January: ‘Make no mistake, all the Balkans, except Greece, are going to be bolshevized; and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. There is nothing I can do for poor Poland either.’

  If Churchill often displayed greatness on great matters, his ministers and commanders were increasingly sensitive to ‘the old man’s’ limitations. His rambling dissertations at cabinets, often about papers which he had not troubled to read, exasperated colleagues. So too did his willingness to invite and accept ill-informed opinions across the table from Brendan Bracken and Beaverbrook, in preference to the considered views of cabinet committees. Clement Attlee wrote him a note of protest about his behaviour, which fired the prime minister’s wrath, but which his own staff and Clementine agreed to be both courageous and just. Attlee had typed the note with his own fumbling fingers, to ensure that no other eye saw it. Yet Churchill vented his spleen by reading it aloud down the telephone to Beaverbrook. Private secretary John Martin said: ‘That is the part of the prime minister which I do not like.’ Jock Colville agreed. The prime minister was eventually persuaded to reconsider his first thought, of an angry riposte to Attlee. He responded temperately. Then he said: ‘Let us think no more of Hitlee or of Attler: let us go and see a film.’ If he was sometimes roused to stand high upon his dignity, he seldom retained the posture for long. If he sometimes behaved unworthily, he had earned the right to be readily forgiven.

  * * *

  * Meaning the Allies.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Yalta

  Almost every day of the war that he was not travelling, Churchill visited his map room. Captain Richard Pim RN, the lanky Welshman who presided there, was a key figure in the Downing Street entourage, often accompanying the prime minister on his journeys to maintain the flow of battlefield news he craved. Churchill still intervened constantly in matters of detail concerning the armed forces. Britain’s falling troop strength was a preoccupation. He deplored the dissolution of some units to fill the depleted ranks of others. There were wearisome wrangles about the respective manpower claims of the army, RAF and coal mines. Churchill was anxious that soldiers dispatched to the Far East at the end of the German war should receive additional pay. He followed with the keenest interest the commitment of Germany’s new advanced U-boats to the Atlantic, British progress towards producing jet fighters to match those of Hitler, and efforts to counter the V2 rocket bombardment which continued to inflict distress on southern England.

  But these were all minor matters, by comparison with the great strategy decisions of earlier years. The Allied armies were advancing across Europe with little opportunity for the prime minister to influence their courses. He hailed successes, chafed in familiar fashion at setbacks and delays, but knew that power resided at Eisenhower’s headquarters and in Washington. Oliver Harvey wrote, somewhat patronisingly: ‘As the purely military problems simplify themselves, the old boy’s tireless energy leads to ever closer attention to foreign affairs.’ Almost all Churchill’s thoughts were now fixed upon the post-war settlement of Europe, which might be critically influenced by the Yalta s
ummit. ‘I have great hopes of this conference,’ he told the House of Commons, ‘because it comes at a moment when a good many moulds can be set out to receive a great deal of molten metal.’ Nonetheless, he complained to Harry Hopkins, who was in London, that if the Allies had spent ten years researching a possible rendezvous, they could not have devised a less convenient one than the Crimea. It was farcical that a desperately sick US president should be obliged to travel 6,000 miles to suit the whims of Soviet doctors who had allegedly told Stalin not to venture abroad. As for the prime minister himself, on 29 January he arrived at Malta, Anglo-American staging point for Yalta, with a temperature of 102°.

  The combined chiefs of staff held an unpleasant preliminary meeting, its atmosphere poisoned by personality clashes entwined with the north-west Europe campaign. Montgomery’s boorish behaviour towards Eisenhower sustained friction. Brooke was distressed to find that Marshall refused even to enter into argument with the British about strategy. America’s course was set, for a measured advance to the Elbe. Franklin Roosevelt arrived aboard the cruiser Quincy on 2 February. If Churchill was feverish, the British were shocked to perceive in the leader of the United States the wreck of a man. It was a grim prospect to set off for a summit with an American president unfit for important business. After the delegations’ first dinner together at Malta, Eden fumed about lack of serious discussion: ‘Impossible even to get near basics. I spoke pretty sharply to Harry [Hopkins] about it…pointing out that we were going into a decisive conference and had so far neither agreed about what we would discuss nor how to handle matters with a Bear who would certainly know his mind.’ Human sympathy for Roosevelt was eclipsed by dismay about the implications of his incapacity to defend the interests of the West.