Churchill's Secret War

by Denniston, Robin

  Before that, however, Attlee and Eden both tried to stop him, for different, and in Eden’s case complex, reasons. Eden resented Churchill’s forays into British foreign policy making, which robbed him of the chance of an appearance on the world stage while marginalising his own attempts to conduct an active anti-Axis foreign policy. But Churchill was in his persuasive child mode and cajoled them by saying, ‘if the Turks were afraid to come I should not feel at all rebuffed’. For a while his cabinet colleagues withstood his charm offensive and Churchill:

  . . . got quite upset . . . as I lay on my luxurious bed in the Villa Taylor [at Casablanca] looking at the Atlas mountains over which I longed to leap in the ‘Commando’ aeroplane, which awaited me so patient and contented on the airfield.46

  In Turkey there were internal as well as external pressures on the leadership. John Sterndale-Bennett reported in FO diplomatic cipher on Saraçoğlu’s account of Turkey’s economic conditions, and evidence of rising anti-Semitism there. The iniquitous wealth tax penalising foreigners and traders was introduced. The FO monitored the effects of the tax, which included forced labour for some evaders, and ancient foes – rich, vulnerable, non-Muslim, mainly Greek, particularly Greek orthodox churchmen – as the chief victims.47 The cost of keeping a million men in training and under arms was growing prohibitive. Saraçoğlu rightly said they had ceased to be producers and had become consumers, by leaving their farms and joining the army. Oliver Harvey, by now Eden’s private secretary, noted that:

  [Churchill], Eden told me, is wildly in favour of roping Turkey in and of entering Europe from her end. He even mentioned this to Maisky yesterday . . . I told AE on thinking it over, whatever the military merits, to bring Turkey in would involve enormous political troubles. It would arouse the worst suspicions of Soviet Russia and it would be doubtful if she and Turkey could be prevented from fighting each other. Russia is always suspicious of Turkey and would think we intended by this means to counteract her influence in the Balkans. On the other hand, the Greeks would be upset because they would fear for their islands. The Turks would prove grasping Allies.48

  Though Eden replied that ‘though Greece must certainly get her islands [the Dodecanese] this time it was the PM’s idea to give the Turks nothing at all’. But Harvey was right. He was losing the battle for Eden’s soul.49

  The next day, 17 November, the Portuguese ambassador in Ankara reported that the ruling classes there ‘greatly fear a German defeat, Soviet predominance, and the Bolshevisation of Europe’. But the Japanese ambassador in Rome took a cooler view: ‘Turkey’s attitude is open to criticism . . . it is not thought that she, fearful as she is of the power of the USSR, will depart from her neutrality straightaway.’50 Iberian diplomats regularly, if not religiously, shuddered about the coming Bolshevisation of Europe if Russia managed to defeat Germany in the east. They did not realise that Stalin had already abandoned the aims of the Comintern and would settle for national communist parties faithful to Moscow in power from then until the day of his death.

  The tide of war had decisively turned, and on 18 November Churchill wrote at length to the COS about Turkey:

  A supreme and prolonged effort must be made to bring Turkey into the war in the Spring . . . Turkey must be won if proper measures are taken. Turkey is an Ally . . . She has a great desire to be well armed. Her army is in good order, except for the specialised modern weapons in which the Bulgarians have been given so great an advantage by the Germans.51

  Recent allied successes in Egypt, Cyrenaica and, above all, Soviet army triumphs in the Caucasus, had rendered pointless Turkey’s successful dodging of her obligations hitherto. It was now possible ‘to build up a powerful British land and air force to assist the Turks’, who:

  . . . all through the winter from now on must be equipped from Egypt and from the United States with tanks, AT [anti-tank] and AA [anti-aircraft] guns, and active construction of airfields must be undertaken . . . Experts must be provided to assist the Turks in learning to use and maintain this material.

  He repeated, ‘A ceaseless flow of weapons and equipment must go to Turkey.’ He also wrote to Stalin: ‘A new Allied effort to get Turkey in’ would ‘help Russia by opening the shipping routes on the Black Sea and bomb the Romanian oilfields at Ploesti.’ Stalin agreed.52

  Elsewhere threats to Spanish as well as Turkish neutrality were being expressed: ‘The Axis will take Gibraltar or invade Turkey.’53 In London these two possibilities were expressed by the Turkish ambassador: ‘Turkey would resist with arms . . . Turkey believes the neutrals coming into the war depends at present more on the wishes and plans of the belligerents than on our respective governments.’54 The Turkish stance on entering the war was further commented on by Yamaji, the Japanese ambassador in Sofia. Kurihara in Ankara reported that the Turkish administration knew ‘territorial aggrandisement was more a burden than a benefit’ and would not be tempted to enter the war by offers of this sort by either side. Turkey would ‘be an ally of no one’.55 But von Papen was reported as saying the Germans would not be rash enough to invade either Turkey or Spain. In Ankara the Japanese ambassador Kurihara reported no change in Turkey’s attitude. ‘The Allies would occupy Turkish airfields without warning; bomb the Balkan oilfields while Germany was concentrating on the Eastern Front.’ He also reported a plot to oust I·nönü from the Turkish presidency and install a pro-Allied administration. The I·nönü government, he added, ‘reckoned that if Turkey comes into the war the Axis will without delay carry out an advance from Bulgaria and Greece, and gain control of Western Turkey’.56

  What became of this coup attempt is not known and I·nönü himself never displayed any worry about his own position as virtual dictator of a country which he had defended and helped establish with his charismatic leader, Atatürk. On 1 December he was re-elected President. Hitler was among the first to congratulate him. At the FO Clutton doubted whether he deserved a similar message from King George VI, but eventually that too was despatched.57 The next day Kurihara commented on Turkey’s traditional self-esteem. Saraçoğlu had told Germany that Turkey was Britain’s ally but now it was no one’s ally. ‘Turkey relies on herself.’58 Oshima reported from Berlin that Germany saw no need to invade Turkey. This was confirmed to British decrypt readers by Yamaji in Sofia reporting on 11 December about Bulgarian preparations to defend herself should she be attacked from Turkey. ‘It was not wise for Germany to seek out new enemies.’59

  Despite all this Churchill had been persisting in his shotgun wedding approach to Turkey, by telling Stalin on 24 November that the Allies ‘needed a new effort to have Turkey enter the war on our side’.60 The prime minister considered that ‘an Anglo-Soviet guarantee of territorial integrity should be offered Turkey, and much equipment. A large Allied army assembling in Syria could help Turkey if the Axis attacked her, and your operations in the Caucasus or north of it may also exercise a great influence.’ The consequences would include more effective bombing of the Romanian oilfields.

  Surprisingly in these evident half-truths, blandishments and hopes as yet unfulfilled, Stalin acquiesced. On 28 November he had replied that everything possible should be done to get Turkey in. ‘This would be of great importance in order to accelerate the defeat of Hitler and his accomplices.’61 There seem more politics than conviction in this exchange of views on Turkey and anyway the Soviets had too much else to worry about. By 20 December Kurihara reported from Ankara that:

  [German circles] here are considering a passage through Turkey by force but I understand that as a result of the most thorough investigations they have reached the conclusion that, owing to topographical conditions in Anatolia, inadequacy of communications and various other difficulties which they foresee, a move southward from the Caucasus would actually be a short cut [to Egypt] and an easier route.

  Germany considered the western Allies had no intention of laying hands on Turkey for the time being:

  But it is impossible to ignore the infiltration of US/UK influenc
e into the Turkish army, the construction of airfields and roads with the guidance and collaboration of British and American engineer officers already present all the appearance of preparation for joint operations.

  Another BJ of the same date from Oshima shows Ribbentrop assuring him that ‘this was not the time to go out of one’s way to turn Turkey into an enemy’.62

  John Sterndale-Bennett, formerly of the Southern Department and now in Ankara, wrote to Sargent on 18 December, giving his appreciation of Turkish public opinion towards what all felt to be the coming war. In the Kayseri area an aircraft factory manager told his informant that ‘undoubtedly Turkey would be in the war by May 1943’, and that this belief was general. ‘Turkey would settle affairs with Bulgaria in the Spring, but reckoned there was no danger of an invasion of Thrace by Germany.’ ‘Coming into the war’ was the main topic of mess talk. Aggressive gestures towards the inveterate enemy Bulgaria were soon to be superseded by more defensive and more fearful thoughts – about the newly successful bearlike neighbour to the north-east – the Soviet Union.63

  The year 1942 was the one which might have seen Turkey enticed by Churchill out of the arms of Germany. Increasing Allied success on all fronts should have pointed the way. Yet curiously the Turks derived little comfort from the battering Germany was getting in the Caucasus and the Ukraine, while the eclipse of Italy in the Mediterranean signalled not just the departure of one menace but the arrival of another one – Britain. Germany, with one shrewd diplomatic move, paralysed Turkey’s wish to join the eventual winner for another two years of war by pointing out that allowing Britain landing rights for her combat aircraft on Turkish soil would be construed in Berlin as an act of war that would bring immediate retribution on Istanbul. Eden’s view of Turkey had deteriorated still further: ‘The Turks seem to be playing pretty double even for them . . . Is it not time that we were a bit rough?’ But Churchill had more precise plans for Turkey in his mind.

  The winter of 1942/43 was a milder one than 1941/42 with more diplomatic activity. The build-up to Churchill’s stay on Turkish soil produced a flood of diplomatic decrypts which dominate DIR through much of 1943. Differences again emerged between London and GHQ Cairo, who wanted to handle supplying Turkey and all Turkey-related military matters themselves, despite the PM’s ruling that Turco-British relations, being political, were the responsibility of the FO. In London Churchill was at odds with both Eden and Attlee over the wisdom of his inspirational trip to Turkey, while in Washington the State Department sought to minimise the extent to which Britain should be the sole player of the Turkish hand, and distinguished political from military handling. They accepted the military arguments but were concerned about the political risks of Churchill’s Turkey policy and had no interest in his eastern Mediterranean plans. William Strang, a senior FO official then in Washington pleaded ignorance of British assertiveness, though he conceded that recent conferences reflected that view, and had to beat a hasty retreat as the Southern Department grabbed the whole hand again, deploying the somewhat broadbrush division of responsibilities established by Roosevelt and Churchill recently at the Washington Conference with a quasi-legal authority which was at least open to challenge.

  The Road to Adana

  The reasons for the FO’s possessiveness about Turkey lie at the heart of this book. For many years, under the aegis of Sargent, it had pursued interventionist policies in the Balkans, and Turkey was for Britain the key to the Balkans, so playing the Turkey hand was seen merely as a continuation of existing policy. But there was more to it than this. All through the 1930s friendship with Turkey, as has been shown, had been the cornerstone of FO policy in the eastern Mediterranean. But by 1939, despite Loraine’s personal friendship with Atatürk, this policy had only generated the Mutual Assistance Pact and some fairly glutinous expressions of mutual esteem. It was never put to the test until 1942–43. When it emerged it was a failure. But the FO mandarins would not admit defeat and hand over to the military because that would have meant a serious loss of face and one of its main wartime areas of responsibility. They sought Churchill’s support for continuing to handle Turkey and he gave it, albeit reluctantly, since Eden failed to follow through on his Turkish initiatives. The alternative for Churchill would have been even worse because he would have had even less direct access via GHQ Middle East, which wanted Turkey to be part of Macmillan’s bailiwick. Playing office politics in wartime is a dangerous pursuit, where the people on the spot are the ones who win. And the spot, unquestionably, was London, while the person was Churchill.

  Since the Southern Department had unlimited access to Turkish intercepts secretly provided to GCCS via its Istanbul office, it was always up to date on what the leadership in Ankara was thinking. Intelligent study of these, as we have seen, gave the department accurate information on the chief characters involved, their intentions, their prejudices, their trustworthiness, their hopes and fears. Since Turkey was run by oligarchs with only formal reference to the National Assembly, what the department knew on a daily basis was far more valuable than anything GHQ ME might glean from reports on British attachés in Ankara and neighbouring capitals. The intercepts were circulated widely within the department, and reports and minutes on them from quite junior officials would end up as British policy, signed off by the Secretary of State himself.

  Churchill’s access to the intercepts through Desmond Morton, and strengthened when he became prime minister and when the supply of DIR grew to a daily file, encouraged him to insist that the Southern Department should be responsible for Allied policy towards Turkey but that he, in this respect, was the department. This goes some way to explain his determination to fly to Turkey in January 1943. Reading Turkey-related BJs in the run-up period with something of the same care Churchill himself did enables the historian to study the subsequent months of negotiation with a new interest. And it was Churchill’s refusal of gists and summaries, and insistence on the actual words in DIR that is the key to this new explanation of HMG’s policy towards Turkey in the war. It was for this reason that in January 1943 he sought to explain to Menzies and the head of Hut 3 at Bletchley Park just why ‘documents [decrypts] needed to be authentic. The whole force is destroyed in the paraphrase . . . As I have told you before you greatly weaken the value of your information by paraphrasing.’ ‘C’ passed this to Gp Capt Eric Jones, in charge of Hut 3 at BP, who commented pacifically: ‘It is generally felt that few men rival the Minister of Defence in this mastery of language . . . few of our recipients [of Ultra] would detect points raised by him . . .’ But ‘matters of major strategic importance are sent ipsissima verba [in the actual words].’64

  Turkey seemed to be coming out of its shell. On 5 January the Portuguese ambassador in Bucharest reported to Lisbon ‘that the Turkish ambassador drew me aside and said Turkey might join the Allies in attacking the Balkans from the Black Sea’.65 Two days later Clutton minuted that ‘the Turks are slowly coming out of their shell . . . The best means of drawing the Turks into the open is to make a combined plan of their fear of Russia and their inveterate hatred of Bulgaria in the hope of thereby embroiling Turkey and Bulgaria.’66 But Oshima reported that ‘Bulgaria was terribly frightened of Turkey . . . Turkey wanted Germany to retain her position as a great power . . . There would be no change in Turkey’s attitude.’67 On 9 January Cadogan noted that Eden was ‘in his usual weekend flat spin about Turkey, but was convinced by Snatch’s [Hugessen’s] reports that it might be a disaster to get Turkey into the war’. He convinced Eden of this.68 On 15 January Sargent commented that Hugessen had not produced a detailed report on Turkey’s readiness for combat prepared by the military attachés in Ankara. He left it behind on a routine visit to Whitehall, where officials read it with interest and some surprise. It may have confirmed some in their view that his competence was not entirely sound.69 Indeed, all through this period Hugessen seems to have been at odds with the FO and had to put up with some coldness from Whitehall, for reasons which are not clear. As
has been shown, Dr Hugh Dalton observed that the FO had reservations about him. During an earlier tour of duty in Nanking he upset the Chinese authorities by driving through a war zone without asking permission. His views on recruitment to the diplomatic service did not reflect the slowly awakening wish of parliament to open up the service to non-Etonian, non-Wykehamist, non-Oxbridge entrants.

  On 16 January Clutton drafted a situation report on Turkey. On 18 January the British Joint Planning Staff issued their policy document on Turkey. Turkey would not come into the war unless she could hold Thrace without Allied assistance and immediate air defence would be forthcoming. Turkey’s value to the Allies was as an offensive base for air rather than for land operations. The invasion of the Dodecanese was being studied by GHQ ME: three divisions and 123 air squadrons would be needed. ‘We should exploit Turkish fears that Turkey will lose allied support which is conditional on her entry into the war without delay.’ Turkey would be used ‘as a base to bomb Ploesti, to close the Dardanelles to the Axis, and to force increased dispersal of German troops by using Turkey as a threat to the Balkans, and to deny chrome to Germany’.70

  On 21 January the German air attaché in Sofia told the Japanese minister there that Germany would require twenty divisions to attack Turkey, and therefore had no intention of doing so.71 On 25 January, six days before the main Stalingrad pocket surrendered to the Russians, the Turkish ambassador in Washington reported: ‘If it be true that the buffer states of central Europe have begun to try federation with Russia, this fact is of immense importance [to Turkey].’72 The next day the foreign minister in Ankara reported to his colleague in Washington that ‘the Bulgarians fear the Turkish army may one day attack them. The present Bulgarian regime relies entirely on King Boris. If Russia forces landings at Varna, Bulgaria will go over to the Soviet. A coup d’état in Sofia awaits only a German defeat.’ It would be partly communist-inspired and partly a matter of Slav brotherhood and ‘partly in reliance on Russia to escape punishment at the hands of England’. The same day, ‘travellers to Budapest report fear that Turkey may enter the war on the allied side’.73 Two days later Menemencioğlu reported on continuing Turkish neutrality, despite the weakness of Greece, and carried on playing chess with Vinogradov.74 Hugessen told Sterndale-Bennett that the Turkish oligarchs ‘thought the Balkans should be occupied by the Allies before the Russians got there’.