by Max Hastings
They warned in an annexe that Moscow could probably call upon the aid of local communists in France, Belgium and Holland to conduct an extensive campaign of sabotage against Western lines of communications. The word ‘hazardous’ is used eight times in the planning document to describe the proposed Anglo-American operations. Annexe IV addressed likely German attitudes to an invitation to participate in hostilities between Russia and the West: ‘The German General Staff and Officer Corps are likely to decide that their interests will be best served by siding with the Western Allies, although the extent to which they will be able to produce effective and active co-operation will probably be limited at first by the war-weariness of the German Army and of the civil population.’ It was dryly suggested that German veterans who had fought on the eastern front might be reluctant to repeat the experience. However, addressing the issue of morale among Allied soldiers invited to fight the Russians, the planners displayed astonishing optimism. They claimed that their men might be expected to fight with little diminution of the spirit they had displayed against the Germans—this, though Alexander in Italy had already annoyed the prime minister by reporting that his troops were reluctant to engage Tito’s communists.
The chiefs of staff were never under any delusions about the military, never mind political, impracticability of launching an offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland. The CIGS wrote on 24 May: ‘The idea is of course fantastic and the chances of success quite impossible. There is no doubt that from now onwards Russia is allpowerful in Europe.’ On the 31st, the chiefs ‘again discussed the “unthinkable war” against Russia…and became more convinced than ever than it is “unthinkable”!’ The debate cannot have failed to rouse, in the minds of those privy to the secret, echoes of 1918-19, when Churchill insisted upon committing to Russia a British military expedition designed to reverse the verdict of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
Passing the planners’ report to the prime minister on 8 June, Ismay wrote: ‘In the attached report on Operation “UNTHINKABLE”, the Chiefs of Staff have set out the bare facts, which they can elaborate in discussion with you, if you so desire. They felt that the less was put on paper on this subject the better.’ The chiefs themselves appended a comment to the report: ‘Our view is…that once hostilities began, it would be beyond our power to win a quick but limited success and we should be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds. These odds, moreover, would become fanciful if the Americans grew weary and indifferent and began to be drawn away by the magnet of the Pacific war.’
Churchill responded on 10 June:
If the Americans withdraw to their zone and move the bulk of their forces back to the United States and to the Pacific, the Russians have the power to advance to the North Sea and the Atlantic. Pray have a study made of how then we could defend our Island, assuming that France and the Low Countries were powerless to resist the Russian advance to the sea. What naval forces should we need and where would they be based? What would be the strength of the Army required, and how should it be disposed? How much Air Force would be needed and where would the main airfields be located?…By retaining the codeword ‘UNTHINKABLE’, the Staffs will realize that this remains a precautionary study of what, I hope, is still a purely hypothetical contingency.
In the original draft of this note, Churchill’s final words were ‘a highly improbable event’. He altered these in his familiar red ink, to make implementation of Unthinkable seem remoter still.
On 11 July, the chiefs’ joint planning committee responded to the prime minister’s enquiries about the implications of a possible Soviet advance to the Channel following demobilisation of Eisenhower’s armies. Russian naval strength, they concluded, was too limited to render an early amphibious invasion of Britain likely. They ruled out a Soviet airborne assault. It seemed more likely, they suggested, that Moscow would resort to intensive rocket bombardment, on a scale more destructive than that of the German V1s and V2s. To provide effective defence against a long-term Russian threat, they estimated that 230 squadrons of fighters, 100 of tactical bombers and 200 of heavy bombers would be necessary.
The Unthinkable file was closed a few days later, when another cable arrived from Truman. He rejected the arguments for renouncing or even delaying Allied withdrawal to the occupation zones agreed at Yalta. Washington had decided there was no case. The prime minister was obliged to recognise that there was not the slightest possibility that the Americans would lead an attempt to drive the Russians from Poland by force, nor even threaten Moscow that they might do so. It was also unimaginable that Churchill’s own government and fellow countrymen would have supported such action. In June 1945 his perception of the Soviet Union was light years apart from that of his nation. Most British people were much less impressed by the perils facing Poland than by the wartime achievement of their Russian comrades-in-arms, whom they had learned to regard with enthusiasm. Churchill was hereafter obliged to undertake a dramatic reversal of view. If the Western Allies could not liberate Poland, then a new attempt must be made to persuade Stalin to compromise about its future. Turning aside from his brief dalliance with Unthinkable, the prime minister committed himself to renewed diplomatic efforts, to exploit his supposed relationship with Stalin in pursuit of Polish interests.
It was fortunate for Churchill’s reputation that his speculation about confronting Russia in arms was not revealed in detail for another half-century. In the years following the end of the war, it became progressively apparent to the chiefs of staff, and to the Western world, that it was necessary for the Western Allies to adopt the strongest possible defensive measures against further Soviet aggression in Europe. On 30 August 1946, Field Marshal ‘Jumbo’ Maitland-Wilson reported from Washington that the US chiefs of staff had become sufficiently fearful of possible conflict with the Russians to favour commencing military planning for such a contingency. In London, the Unthinkable file was taken out and dusted down. Military preparations for a conflict with the Soviet Union became a staple of the Cold War, though at no time was it ever deemed politically acceptable or militarily practicable to attempt to free Eastern Europe by force of arms. In May and June 1945, Churchill’s warrior instincts were still astonishingly powerful. But the society in which he lived had only just sufficient ardour to finish the Japanese war. There was none whatsoever for engaging new enemies, whatever the principled merits of the cause.
Labour leader Clement Attlee at first favoured sustaining the coalition government and delaying a general election until the defeat of Japan. His party, however, was minded otherwise. On 23 May the coalition was dissolved, after five years and thirteen days of office. There was an emotional farewell gathering of ministers at Downing Street. Then Churchill set about forming a new ministry, without Labour and Liberal members. An election was called for 6 July, which almost every pundit anticipated that the Tories would win. The nation’s gratitude to Winston Churchill, it was assumed, outweighed its alienation from the Conservative Party and its prewar failure.
Yet for those who sought straws in the wind about the mood of the British people, there were many to be found. On 3 July 1940, American General Raymond Lee had lunched in London with an unnamed Tory MP who asserted his conviction that even if Britain won the war, Labour would govern afterwards. By 1945, roosting time had come for many old chickens. Anthony Eden, widely perceived as the brightest star of his Tory generation, disliked his own party even more than did Churchill. He wrote during a visit to Greece about his sense of remoteness from British soldiers he met, and his doubts about how to reach them on the hustings: ‘It would be the highest honour to serve and lead such men. But how is one to do it through party politics? Most of these men have none, as I believe that I have none. And how is this General Election to express any of this, for they could not be farther from the men of Munich in their most extreme form, for whom I have to ask the electors to vote. It is hell. Curiously enough W[inston] doesn’t seem to feel any of this and is full of the lust for electoral
battle, and apparently content to work with men afterwards, with many, probably most, of whom he doesn’t agree. No doubt he is confident that he can dominate them, but I feel a responsibility to ask the electorate to vote for them.’
British soldier Edward Stebbing had written back in November 1940: ‘There are…many who think that this war will only be worth fighting if there is a new order of things to follow.’ Everything that had happened since strengthened this belief in the minds of many British people. In December 1944 the Wall Street Journal displayed notable prescience, identifying popular anger in Britain towards Churchill’s Greek policy with a deeper rejection of old Tory imperialism: ‘It is clear that the Churchill government will last out the war in Europe, but the chances of its return to office when the election after victory is held are more doubtful. It is not very likely that Mr Lloyd George’s [1919] “khaki election” [victory] will be repeated.’
The Mayhews were an upper-middle-class Norfolk family, of whom in 1945 one younger scion, Christopher, was standing as a Labour candidate in the county against a Tory who was a former member of the notorious right-wing movement The Link. Mayhew’s uncle, Bertram Howarth, secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote in a family newsletter: ‘[I am] in the throes of a mental political upheaval. I believe I have voted Conservative all my life, but unless something epoch-making happens between now and the General Election, I can’t do it again.’ His wife Ellie, district commandant of the local Women’s Voluntary Service, felt likewise: ‘Personally I cannot vote for our sitting [Tory] member; he is stupid, elderly and reactionary…He was the sole MP to vote against the Beveridge Report. So I shall have to be a Liberal.’ When Churchill spoke optimistically about his election prospects to General Bill Slim, home on leave from Burma, Slim responded with characteristic bluntness: ‘Well, Prime Minister, I know one thing. My Army won’t be voting for you.’
A tide of sentiment was sweeping British people of all classes, driven by preoccupation with building a new future rather than cherishing pride in the past. Churchill himself said back in 1941, of the state-school boys who occupied most of the RAF’s cockpits: ‘They have saved this country; they have the right to rule it.’ Labour’s Aneurin Bevan told one of his many election audiences: ‘We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, now we are the builders.’ Churchill was applauded everywhere he went during his June 1945 election tours, and public admiration for him was very real. But with the wisdom sometimes displayed by democracies, few people allowed this to influence their votes. Churchill’s election broadcasts were harshly combative. He deployed against the threat of socialism all the impassioned verbiage which he had mobilised for so long against the nation’s enemies. But even many supporters thought these tirades ill-judged, and there were moments when he himself seemed to recognise this.
Clementine wrote to her daughter Mary on 20 June: ‘Papa broadcasts tonight. He is very low, poor Darling. He thinks he has lost his “touch” and he grieves about it.’ Londoner Jennifer McIntosh wrote to her sister in California on 4 July: ‘One of the most extraordinary things has been the terrific slump in the Churchill prestige…I wish you could have heard his election broadcasts—they were deplorable, the last one pitifully cheap.’ Likewise, more surprisingly, Oliver Harvey at the Foreign Office perceived Churchill as conducting ‘a jingo election which is terrifying in its inappropriateness’. Churchill was much more a social conservative than he was a political Conservative. He lacked real sympathy for or interest in the party which he nominally led at the hustings. He anticipated that the election outcome would represent a vote of confidence in his own war leadership, rather than a verdict on the Tories’ fitness to rule. But the war was almost ended.
While the rival candidates campaigned, most of the complexities of occupying Germany and sustaining the struggle against Japan were addressed without interventions from the prime minister. Addicted to tidings from battlefields, he often stumped into the secretaries’ room at Downing Street to demand: ‘Any news come in?’ Told, perhaps for the sixth time in a day, that there was none, he said irritably: ‘I won’t have it…I must have more regular reports. It’s your business to keep me informed.’ Yet opportunities were now few to order the movements of armies, fleets or air forces. He directed Alexander to act vigorously to expel Tito’s partisans from Trieste and north-east Italy, to which they laid claim. When the C-in-C warned that British troops were much less enthusiastic about fighting Yugoslavs than Germans, Churchill dismissed his fears—and ordered a display of force. Faced with this, the Yugoslavs withdrew behind the Izonzo river. The prime minister again used British troops to force the French to withdraw from Syria, which was handed over to an indigenous Arab government. France occupied an area of northwest Italy to which it laid claim. Here too Churchill acted ruthlessly and successfully, insisting upon removal of De Gaulle’s forces.
In South-East Asia, Slim’s Fourteenth Army was mopping up the last of the Japanese in Burma, and preparing for an amphibious assault on Malaya, scheduled for September. Captain Pim diligently moved the relevant pins and arrows on the walls of the Map Room at Downing Street, but the prime minister’s heart was never deeply engaged. He remained preoccupied with the fate of Europe, and with urging upon the new US president the need to adopt firm policies towards the Russians.
On 18 May the Churchills entertained to lunch at Downing Street the Russian ambassador, Feodor Gusev. When Clementine and other guests left the table, the prime minister unburdened himself to the Soviet emissary. It seems worth rehearsing at length Gusev’s account of the meeting, both as evidence of Churchill’s sentiments, and of the manner in which these were reported to Moscow. The prime minister began by describing the importance he attached to a new summit meeting at which ‘either we shall achieve an agreement on future cooperation between our three nations, or the Anglo-American community will become united in opposition to the Soviet Union. It is difficult to anticipate the possible consequences of this second scenario.’ Gusev wrote:
Here Churchill raised his voice, saying ‘We are full of grievances.’ I asked him what he had in mind. Irritably and in heightened tones, he began to catalogue the issues: 1) Trieste. Tito has ‘sneaked up to Trieste and wants to seize it.’ Churchill laid his hands on the table and showed how Tito was sneaking up to Trieste. We will not allow’—Churchill roared,—‘the resolution of territorial disputes by seizure…We and the Americans are united in our resolution that all territorial issues should be resolved through a peace conference.’ I remarked that as far as I knew Tito did not intend to resolve any territorial issues. Churchill ignored me and continued: ‘Armies are confronting each other. Grave trouble can break out at any time unless goodwill is displayed.’ 2) Prague. Churchill declared that we did not allow British representatives into Prague. ‘Our accredited ambassador has been prevented from entering Czechoslovakia,’ he said. I remarked that only the previous day Czech government representatives had travelled from London to Prague on a British aircraft. Churchill continued: ‘You wish to claim exclusive rights for yourselves in every capital occupied by your troops. The British government cannot understand such a Soviet attitude and cannot justify it to the British people, mindful that we are under mutual obligations to display friendship and cooperation…We, the British, are a proud nation and cannot allow anyone to treat us in this way.’
‘Churchill would not listen to my comment on this and continued: 3) Vienna. “You do not allow us to enter Vienna. The war is over, but our representatives cannot inspect quarters for our soldiers.” ’ Gusev launched into an exposition of the Soviet position which the prime minister cut short: ‘Why will you not allow our representatives to enter Vienna? Now the war is over, what possible consideration can justify the refusal of the Soviet government to admit our representatives to Vienna?’ There were more brusque exchanges about the Soviet establishment of a puppet regime in Austria, then Churchill turned to the German capital: ‘You do not allow us into Berlin.
You want to make Berlin your exclusive zone.’
I declared that Churchill’s statement was groundless as we have an agreement on occupation zones and control of greater Berlin. Churchill again repeated that he is willing to allow any number of Soviet representatives to go anywhere. Churchill moved on to Poland and spoke with even greater anger. Things were going from bad to worse where the Polish issue was concerned, he said. He saw no hope of a satisfactory resolution of it: ‘We have endorsed Polish delegates, and you have imprisoned them. Parliament and the public are deeply concerned’…Churchill thinks that forthcoming debates in Parliament will demonstrate the great indignation of the British nation, and he will find himself at a loss about how to satisfy public opinion. Churchill then vaguely hinted that a satisfactory outcome of the Polish issue might lead to a resolution of the issue of the Baltic States.
Churchill did not want to hear my comments and moved on to characterize the gravity of the general situation. ‘Your front stretches from Lubeck to Trieste. You allow no one to enter the capitals which you control. The situation in Trieste is alarming. Polish affairs have reached a dead end. The general climate is at boiling point.’ I told Churchill that he was familiar with the Soviet government’s position—that it makes no claims on territory or on the European capitals. Our front does not stretch as far as Trieste. Marshal Tito’s troops may be there, but we are not responsible for Marshal Tito. He and the Yugoslav people have won themselves a place of honour among the United Nations by their struggle.