by Max Hastings
The best news in November was of Auchinleck’s long-delayed offensive in the desert, Operation Crusader, which began on November 18. Churchill trumpeted its progress: “For the first time, the Germans are getting a taste of their own bitter medicine.” On the twentieth, before the House of Commons, he described the North African assault in the most dramatic terms: “One thing is certain—that all ranks of the British Empire troops involved are animated by a long-pent-up and ardent desire to engage the enemy … This is the first time that we have met the Germans at least equally well-armed and equipped.” Churchill knew from Ultra that Auchinleck had launched 658 tanks against Rommel’s 168, that the RAF deployed 660 aircraft against 642 of the Luftwaffe’s. Yet, in Crusader’s first days, the British suffered much heavier losses than the Germans. The prime minister continued to cherish hopes for the tangled, messy desert fighting, but there was no sign of a breakthrough. On November 23 Auchinleck sacked Alan Cunningham, commander of the newly christened Eighth Army, and replaced him with his own chief of staff, Neil Ritchie. Rommel had destroyed the career of yet another British general. The Germans were once again fighting harder, faster and more effectively than the British.
It was at this time that Churchill’s patience with his senior soldier, Sir John Dill, chief of the imperial general staff since May 1940, at last expired. Dill’s difficulty was that, like his predecessor, Sir Edmund “Tiny” Ironside, he suffered from a surfeit of realism. This inspired in both men successively a gloom about their own nation’s prospects which grated intolerably upon the prime minister. Dill was exhausted by Churchill’s insistence upon deciding every issue of strategy through trial by combat, testing arguments to destruction at interminable Downing Street meetings. “Winston’s methods were frequently repulsive to him,”409 wrote Alan Brooke. He recoiled from the need to work with the Russians, whom he abhorred. He believed that whenever Hitler chose to reinforce Rommel, the Middle East would be lost, and feared that neglect of Britain’s Far East defences would precipitate disaster if the Japanese attacked. Dill never doubted Churchill’s greatness as national leader. But he considered him wholly unfit to direct strategy.
Churchill, in his turn, had told John Kennedy many months earlier that he found Dill “too much impressed by the enemy’s will.”410 The CIGS was an intelligent man, possessed of famous charm. But, like many other British officers, he lacked steel to bear the highest responsibilities in a war of national survival. On November 16, 1941, Churchill told Dill he must go, designating as his replacement Sir Alan Brooke, C-in-C Home Forces. The change provoked dismay in high places. Dill’s colleagues and friends indulged that fatal British sympathy for agreeable gentlemen, however inadequate to their appointed tasks. He was perceived as a victim of Churchill’s determination to bar dissent from his own conduct of the war. There is no doubt, however, that his removal was right. Never a driving force, he was now a spent one.
His successor proved the outstanding British command appointment of the Second World War. Brooke—like Dill, Montgomery and Alexander—was a Northern Irishman, fifty-eight years old. He had characteristics often identified with Protestant Ulster: toughness, diligence, intolerance, Christian commitment and a brusqueness that sometimes tipped over into ill-temper. His sharp brain was matched by extraordinary strength of purpose. A passionate bird-watcher, Brooke saved his softer side for his feathered friends, his adored second wife, Benita, and their two young children. A misanthrope, he had a low opinion of his fellow men, fellow soldiers and allies, expressed in his wartime diaries with a heavy dressing of exclamation marks. His booming voice and thick-rimmed spectacles intimidated strangers. Intensely active and indeed restless, Brooke was so little seen in the War Office that it was said of him that he knew his way to only two rooms there—his own and the lavatory.
Though the new CIGS was often charmed by the prime minister’s puckish wit, and did not doubt his greatness, he and Churchill never achieved full mutual understanding. Brooke was disgusted by the selfishness of Churchill’s working habits, late hours and strategic flights of fancy. Like Dill and Wavell, he loathed war as much as the prime minister relished it. But he displayed a tenacity and resolve in the face of difficulties and Churchillian follies which Dill lacked. David Margesson, the secretary for war, said that Brooke was sustained by “his ability to shake himself like a dog411 coming out of water after unpleasant interviews with Winston, and … his power of debate (& his rasping voice).” The new CIGS was a harsh and ruthless man. These qualities equipped him to fulfil his role far more effectively than the mild-mannered Dill.
Brooke proved a superb planner and organiser. He gained nothing like the public celebrity of Montgomery and Alexander. The CIGS and prime minister could not be described as brothers in arms. But they forged a partnership in the direction of British strategy which, however stormy, served their nation wonderfully well. Churchill, so often accused of surrounding himself with acolytes and yes-men, deserves the utmost credit for appointing and retaining as CIGS an officer who, when their views differed, fought him to the last gasp. The ascent of Brooke, on the eve of another critical turning point in the war, was a great day for British arms.
…
In the first days of December, a flood of intelligence revealed Japanese forces redeploying in Southeast Asia. The suspense was very great, as the British waited for Tokyo to reveal its objectives. To the end, there was apprehension that a Nipponese whirlwind might bypass the United States and its possessions. On Sunday, December 7, Churchill learned that Roosevelt proposed to announce in three days’ time that he would regard an attack on British or Dutch possessions in the Far East as an attack on America. That day at lunch, U.S. ambassador “Gil” Winant was among the guests at Chequers. Churchill asserted vigorously that if the Japanese attacked the United States, Britain would declare war on Japan. Winant said he understood that, for the prime minister had declared it publicly. Then Churchill demanded: “If they declare war on us412, will you declare war on them?” Winant responded: “I can’t answer that, Prime Minister. Only the Congress has the right to declare war under the United States constitution.” Churchill lapsed into silence. That terrible apprehension persisted, of facing the Japanese alone. Then he said, with his utmost charm: “We’re late, you know. You get washed and we will go into lunch together.”
Harriman, a fellow guest at dinner that night, found Churchill “tired and depressed413. He didn’t have much to say throughout dinner and was immersed in his thoughts, with his head in his hands part of the time.” Then they heard the radio news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and looked incredulously at one another. Churchill jumped up and started for the door, saying, “We shall declare war on Japan.” Within a few minutes, he and Winant were speaking by phone to Roosevelt. Soon afterwards the Admiralty called, reporting Japanese attacks on Malaya.
Churchill could not claim that his long campaign of seduction was responsible for U.S. entry into the war. This had followed only upon Japanese aggression. America’s policy of deterrence in the east, fortified by sanctions, had instead provoked Tokyo to fight. Though the “day of infamy” resolved many dilemmas and uncertainties, it is unlikely that Roosevelt viewed Pearl Harbor with the same enthusiasm as the prime minister. Events had produced an outcome which the president, left to himself, would not have willed or accomplished for many months—if ever. What is certain is that Churchill had sown seeds of a fertility such as only he could have nurtured, for a harvest which he now gathered. He possessed a stature and commanded an affection among the American people incomparably greater than any respect won by the faltering performance of Britain’s war machine. In the years ahead, his personality would enable him to exercise an influence upon American policies which, for all its limitations, no other British leader could have aspired to.
When Britain’s Tokyo ambassador, Sir Robert Craigie, later submitted a valedictory dispatch, he was sharply censured by the prime minister for describing Japan’s assault in the east as “a disaster for
Britain.” On the contrary, said Churchill, it was “a blessing … Greater good fortune has never happened to the British Empire.” That night of December 7, 1941, Churchill wrote in a draft of his memoirs: “Saturated and satiated with emotion414 and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful. One hopes that eternal sleep will be like that.”
EIGHT
A Glimpse of Arcadia
DE GAULLE SAID after Pearl Harbor: “Well then, this war is over415. Of course, there are more operations, battles and struggles ahead; but … the outcome is no longer in doubt. In this industrial war, nothing can resist the power of American industry. From now on, the British will do nothing without Roosevelt’s agreement.” The U.S. president told Churchill: “Today all of us are in the same boat with you and the people of the Empire, and it is a ship which will not and cannot be sunk.” Unlike Churchillian assertions earlier in the war, born of blind faith, Roosevelt’s words were rooted in realities of power.
Harold Nicolson wrote on December 11: “We simply can’t be beaten416 with America in. But how strange it is that this great event should be recorded and welcomed here without any jubilation. We should have gone mad with joy if it had happened a year ago … Not an American flag flying in the whole of London. How odd we are!” Part of the explanation was given by London charity worker Vere Hodgson. Like many of her compatriots, she felt that Pearl Harbor served the Americans right: “Though I do not wish anyone to be bombed417, a little wholesome shaking-up is good for people who contemplate the sufferings of others with equanimity … Poor dear people in those islands of bliss, sunshine and fruit drinks. They must have had an unpleasant Sunday afternoon … I should think Colonel Lindbergh has retired to a room with dark blinds—not to be heard of for many a long day.”
A Home Intelligence report said: “While the public are prepared to make418 any sacrifices necessary to help Russia … they have no such disposition towards America … America is ‘too damned wealthy’… Americans are too mercenary-minded, and … the hardship and suffering of war ‘will do them a lot of good.’” Few British people felt minded to thank the Americans for belatedly entering the war not from choice or principle, but because they were obliged to. Some were fearful that U.S. belligerence would check the flow of supplies to Britain and Russia. It was left to the prime minister to open his arms to a transatlantic embrace, which many of his compatriots were foolish enough to grudge.
In the days following Pearl Harbor, from everywhere save Malaya the war news reaching Churchill briefly brightened. The Royal Navy was faring better in its struggle with Hitler’s U-boats. Auchinleck continued to signal optimistically about the progress of Crusader in the desert. “Consider tide turned,” he reported from Cairo on December 9, and two days later: “We are pressing pursuit vigorously.” The Russians were still holding Moscow, Leningrad and the Baku oil fields. Churchill told the House of Commons on December 8: “We have at least four-fifths of the population of the globe upon our side. We are responsible for their safety and for their future. In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.”
On December 10 came ghastly tidings, of the destruction of Prince of Wales and Repulse by Japanese air attack off Malaya. Churchill was stunned. Their deployment reflected his personal decision, their loss an indictment of his misplaced faith in “castles of steel” amid oceans now dominated by air and submarine power. It is often claimed that the fate of the two capital ships was sealed by the absence of the carrier Indomitable, prevented by accidental damage from joining the battle squadron. Given the shortcomings of the Fleet Air Arm and its fighters, it seems more plausible that if Indomitable had been at sea off Malaya, as intended by Churchill and the Admiralty, it would have been lost with Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Yet even this blow was endurable, in the context of American belligerency. On December 11, Germany and Italy removed a vital lingering doubt, by declaring war on the United States. The next day Churchill cabled to Eden, who was en route to Moscow: “The accession of the United States makes amends for all, and with time and patience will give certain victory.” There were short-term hazards. Washington would cut overseas weapons shipments, to meet the needs of its own armed forces. Ten RAF squadrons en route to Persia to support Stalin’s southern front would have to be diverted to the Far East. But these were mere inconveniences alongside the glittering prospect opened by American might.
The prime minister’s first priority was to meet Roosevelt and his military chiefs face to face, to cement the alliance created by events, though never ratified by formal treaty. Henceforward, Anglo-American dealings would be influenced by formal agreements on matériel issues, above all Lend-Lease, but governed chiefly by personal understandings, or lack of them, between the leaders of the two nations and their Chiefs of Staff. When Churchill proposed himself for an immediate descent on Washington, the president demurred. On security grounds, he suggested a rendezvous in Bermuda, which he said that he could not himself attend before January 7. In reality, Roosevelt was hesitant about making space at the White House for the overpowering personality of Britain’s prime minister and the torrent of rhetoric with which he would assuredly favour the American people. Nonetheless, in the face of Churchill’s chafing, the president agreed that he should come to Washington before Christmas.
As the prime minister prepared to sail, there was a flurry of last-minute business. He cabled Eden that while it might be desirable for Russia to declare war on Japan, Stalin should not be pressed too hard on this issue, “considering how little we have been able to contribute” to the Soviet war effort. The foreign secretary was told, however, that on no account should he appear willing to satisfy Moscow’s demands for recognition of the frontiers which the Russians had established for themselves by agreement with Hitler, absorbing eastern Poland and the Baltic states. Not only would such action be unprincipled, it would discomfit the Americans, who were at that time even more hostile than the British to Stalin’s territorial ambitions. Meanwhile, Attlee was urged not to implement a threatened cut in the British people’s rations: “We are all in it together and [the Americans] are eating better meals than we are.” Reducing supplies would savour of panic, said the prime minister. From Gourock, on the Clyde, on the morning of December 13, he telephoned Ismay to urge that “everything that was fit for battle” should be dispatched to the Far East. Then, with his eighty-strong party which included Beaverbrook and the Chiefs of Staff—Dill still representing the army while Brooke took over at the War Office—he boarded the great battleship Duke of York, sister of the lost Prince of Wales.
The passage was awful. Day after day, Duke of York ploughed through mountainous seas which caused her to pitch and roll. Max Beaverbrook, who had been invited partly to provide companionship for “the old man” and partly because he was alleged to be popular with Americans, wheezed that he was being borne across the Atlantic in “a submarine masquerading as a battleship.” Churchill, almost alone among the passengers, was untroubled by seasickness. Patrick Kinna, while taking dictation, found his own misery worsened by the cigar smoke that choked the prime minister’s cabin high in the superstructure. A stream of bad news reached the party at sea: the Japanese landed in northern Borneo on December 17, on Hong Kong island the next day. Churchill minuted the Chiefs of Staff on the fifteenth, urging the vital importance of ensuring that Singapore was held: “Nothing compares in importance with the fortress.” Heedless of the pitching of the storm-tossed warship, he dictated a succession of long memoranda, setting out his views on the way ahead.
Supplies for Russia from both Britain and the United States must be sustained, he said, for only thus “shall we hold our influence over Stalin and be able to weave the mighty Russian effort into the general texture of the war.” He proposed that American troops should be sent to Northern Ireland, to provide an additional deterrent against German landings. By
1943, he said, Britain would be “more strongly prepared against invasion than ever before.” The possibility of a German descent on Britain continued to feature in his calculations. If Russia was knocked out, as still seemed likely, the Nazis could again turn west. Hitler must recognise the urgency of completing the conquest of Europe before America became fully mobilised. Churchill suggested that U.S. bombers should deploy in Britain, to join the growing air offensive against Germany. He expected Singapore to be defended for at least six months.
He interrupted his dictation to tell Kinna to make some sailors stop whistling outside his cabin. This was a distraction and vulgarity which he could not abide—he once said that an aversion to whistling was the only trait he shared with Hitler. Kinna duly retired, but was too nervous of his likely reception to address the offending seamen, who lapsed into silence spontaneously. Oblivious of the towering seas outside, the pitching of the huge ship, Churchill resumed composition of his tour d’horizon. He wanted the Americans to land in French North Africa in 1942. The following year, he anticipated launching attacks against some permutation of Sicily, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France’s Channel or Atlantic coasts or possibly the Balkans. In his memoranda, he made some wild assertions, for instance anticipating that, when the time came to invade the Continent, “the uprising of the local populations for whom weapons must be brought will supply the corpus of the liberating offensive.” But he also looked with imaginative foresight to the creation of improvised aircraft carriers, which would indeed play a key role later in the war, and urged a carrier-borne air assault on Japan.
On December 21, he wrote a long letter to Clementine: “I do not know when or how I shall come back419. I shall certainly stay long enough to do all that has to be done, having come all this way at so much trouble and expense.” He told her that he had no patience with those who denounced Britain’s unreadiness in the Far East: “It is no good critics saying ‘Why were we not prepared?’ when everything we had was already fully engaged.” In this, he was surely justified. Those like Dill, who had favoured reinforcing Malaya at the expense of the Middle East, were mistaken. It would have been absurd to dispatch desperately needed aircraft, tanks and troops to meet a putative threat in the Far East, at the likely cost of losing Egypt to an enemy already at its gates. It is hard to imagine any redeployment of available British resources in the autumn of 1941 which would have prevented disaster. So far-reaching were British weaknesses of leadership, training, tactics, air support and will in Malaya and Burma that the Japanese were all but certain to prevail.