49 Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, p. 415; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 187.
50 Eisenhower and Ismay cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 180–1.
51 Ibid, pp. 187–9. Lieutenant–General William Anderson, personal assistant to one of the two Canadian Generals in charge of the Dieppe troops, remembered: ‘The British were fighting all over the world. The Canadian army had done bugger-all. We were still just training and training. The pressure was on that we had to get into action!’ Anderson cited in Whitaker & Whitaker, Dieppe, p. 97.
52 Whitaker & Whitaker, Dieppe, pp. 134–5.
53 Villa, Unauthorized Action, pp. 13, 30.
54 DM speaking to BBC Television, 1972. Cited in ibid, p. 41.
55 See accounts of Captain Denis Whitaker, Corporal John Williamson, Major Jim Green, Lieutenant Dan Doheny, Private Ron Beal and others, Whitaker & Whitaker, Dieppe, pp. 242–71; Villa, Unauthorized Action, pp. 14–15, 24.
56 Whitaker & Whitaker, Dieppe, p. xii.
57 Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 162–4.
58 Whitaker & Whitaker, Dieppe, pp. 15–16.
59 Ibid, p. 201.
60 Ibid, p. 7.
61 In the event, the Germans had another warning, too. Part of a flotilla carrying commando raiders ran into a German naval convoy at 3.45a.m., an hour and a half before the frontal assault began – meaning the coastal ports were all alerted to the Allied fleet’s presence in good time. Ibid, p. 235. See also TNA: DEFE 2/546, Appendix IV. Cited in ibid, p. 154.
62 Admiral Baillie-Grohman, on reading the post-action report, commented on 14 September 1942 that it should have been titled ‘Lessons Learned By Captain Hughes-Hallett’, and noted that almost everything in there could have been learned by reading Admiralty background pamphlets on Combined Operations. Villa, Unauthorized Action, p. 200.
63 Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 335.
64 Chiefs of Staff Committee, 1 April 1942. Cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 233–4.
65 CRA cited in ibid, p. 235.
66 Sherwood, Roosevelt & Hopkins, p. 511; Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 389; Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 243. Roosevelt told his son Elliott during the Casablanca conference in January 1943 that what he favoured was that ‘India should be made a commonwealth at once. After a certain number of years – five, perhaps, or ten – she should be able to choose whether she wants to remain in the Empire or have complete independence.’ Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1946), pp. 74–5.
67 Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 336. Other senior figures in Congress, including Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, urged acceptance of the Cripps plan. Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 14; Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, p. 7.
68 Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 26–7.
69 Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 234.
70 Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937–1946 (Macmillan, London, 2000), pp. 341–2, 379–84.
71 Cabinet Committee, 20 December 1944 and 16 January 1945, cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 642.
72 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 394.
8. A NEW THEATRE
1 Cited in Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 454.
2 Linlithgow to WSC, 31 August 1942. CP: CHAR 20/79B, ff 103–4.
3 Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 460–4. JN himself guessed the death toll at 10,000. See also French, Liberty or Death, pp. 158–9.
4 Recollection of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, in Symonds, In the Margins of Independence, p. 14.
5 Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 82.
6 Ibid, p. 112.
7 Linlithgow to Leopold Amery, 31 August 1942. CP: CHAR 20/79B, ff 105–6.
8 Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 427–8.
9 MKG to Linlithgow, 31 December 1942. TNA: CAB 123/170.
10 Linlithgow cited in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 395.
11 MKG to Linlithgow, 29 January 1943. TNA: CAB 123/170.
12 Linlithgow to MKG, 5 February 1943. TNA: CAB 123/170.
13 MKG to Linlithgow, 7 February 1943. TNA: CAB 123/170.
14 Linlithgow to Leopold Amery, 8 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 664; see also TNA: CAB 123/170.
15 Linlithgow to Leopold Amery, 6 January 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3.
16 Linlithgow to Leopold Amery, 12 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 618.
17 WSC to Linlithgow, 11 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 532.
18 Linlithgow to WSC, 15 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 531.
19 Leopold Amery to Anthony Eden, 19 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, ff 496–7.
20 Linlithgow to William Phillips, 19 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, ff 498–9. See also Phillips, Ventures in Diplomacy, pp. 231–3.
21 Smuts to WSC, 25 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 518.
22 WSC to Smuts, 26 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3.
23 WSC to Linlithgow, 27 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 525.
24 Linlithgow to WSC, 27 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, ff 522–3.
25 WSC to Smuts, 26 February 1943. TNA: PREM 4/49/3, f 516.
26 Nayyar, Kasturba, p. 65.
27 Ibid, p. 53.
28 Ibid, p. 67; Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 422.
29 Morton, The Women in Gandhi’s Life, p. 275; Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 422.
30 Nayyar, Kasturba, pp. 70–1.
31 Morton, The Women in Gandhi’s Life, pp. 277–8.
32 Major Desmond Morton cited in Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 63.
33 Brooke cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 197–8.
34 John Grigg, ‘The Pride and the Glory’, Observer, 2 September 1979; Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 198, 207–8. Captain Thomas Hussey, who chaired a Mulberry investigation committee, credited DM with the eventual solution of sinking ships to create a breakwater.
35 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 208.
36 DM cited in Anon, Mountbatten, p. 143; Dennis Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 3. Woman, 6 October 1951.
37 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 150. On one occasion at the White House, Roosevelt and DM had stayed up until 1.30 a.m., so absorbed had they been in their conversation.
38 Montgomery cited in Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 71.
39 Brooke cited in Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, p. 416.
40 Cunningham cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 222; Read & Fisher, The Proudest Day, p. 415.
41 DM to EA, August 1943. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 224. He was permitted the stripe, but not the full honours: opposition from the Chiefs of Staff, and from the Admiralty in particular, kept his ranks acting and unconfirmed.
42 DM to EA, 21 August 1943. Cited in ibid, p. 224–5; see also Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 323.
43 Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 242.
44 Bradford, King George VI, pp. 483–4.
45 DM’s diary, 11 September 1944, cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 251.
46 Anonymous member of DM’s staff, cited in Hough, Edwina, p. 220.
47 Cannadine, The Pleasures of the Past, p. 62.
48 Ziegler, Mountbatten, pp. 260–7.
49 It is not clear whether Bose and the German woman in question, Emilie Schenkl, were married. They had a daughter, Anita, in 1942. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, pp. 446–7.
50 Getz, Subhas Chandra Bose, pp. 72–3.
51 Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch!, pp. 783–4.
52 Browning cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 270.
53 Stilwell’s diary, January–August 1944, cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 337, 453; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 247.
54 Anon, Mountbatten, pp. 152, 155.
55 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 474.
56 N.G. Goray to DM, 10 March 1978. MP: MB1/K148A.
57 Holman, ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Story’, part 3.
58 EA to Bryan Hunter, 16 October 1951. MP: MB1/R231
59 DM to EA, 7 May 1945. Cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 306.
> 60 Lady Pamela Hicks in ‘Mountbatten’, Secret History, Channel 4 television.
61 DM to EA, 22 August 1944, cited in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 305.
62 EA to DM, 30 August 1944, cited in ibid, p. 306.
63 Driberg, Ruling Passions, p. 223.
64 DM in SEAC diary, May 1945; WSC minute, 20 May 1945, both cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 611.
65 Driberg, Ruling Passions, p. 215.
66 EA cited in Masson, Edwina, p. 146.
67 Reminiscences of Major Grafton. MP: MB1/R679.
68 Paul Crook cited in Hough, Edwina, p. 176.
69 Cited in Hoey, Mountbatten, p. 76.
70 Driberg, Ruling Passions, p. 218.
71 Ibid, pp. 225–6.
72 DM’s SEAC diary, 15 June 1945, cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 590–1.
73 Driberg, Ruling Passions, p. 216; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 321. DM became convinced in later life that it had been a mistake on his own part to hand Burma over to Aung San too quickly.
74 DM cited in Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, p. 76.
75 Driberg, Ruling Passions, p. 226.
9. NOW OR NEVER
1 Told to the author by Nayantara Sahgal, 8 April 2006. See also Healey, The Time of My Life, p. 259.
2 Cited in The Times, 20 September 1945, p. 4.
3 Keynes in Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937–1946 (Macmillan, London, 2000), p. 403. For expenditure on empire (£2 billion from 1942–44), see French, Liberty or Death, pp. 196–7.
4 CRA to King George VI, 8 March 1947. RA: PS/GVI/C 337/07.
5 WSC cited in M.S. Venkataramani, Bengal Famine of 1943: The American Response. (Vikas Publishing House, Delhi, 1973), p. 8.
6 Ibid, p. 4.
7 Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal (1944), p. 10; Sen, Poverty and Famines, pp. 65, 75–8.
8 Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal (1944), pp. 1–2.
9 K.S. Fitch, A Medical History of the Bengal Famine, 1943–44 (Government of India Press, Calcutta, 1947), pp. 6–28.
10 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, pp. 203–4.
11 Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal (1944), p. 104.
12 Among the guilty men were the Muslim League politicians Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Khwaja Nazimuddin, the latter then Premier of Bengal. Their involvement did little damage to their careers and both would serve as Prime Ministers of Pakistan in the 1950s.
13 Wavell, Viceroy’s Journal, 5 July 1944, p. 78.
14 The India Secretary, Leo Amery, wrote to WSC: ‘… once it becomes known that no supplies are coming from outside the machinery of the Governments [sic] of India will be quite uncapable [sic] of preventing food going underground everywhere and famine conditions spreading with disastrous rapidity all over India. The result may well be fatal for the whole prosecution of the war, and that not only from the point of view of India as a base for further operations. I don’t think you have any idea of how deeply public feeling in this country has already been stirred against the Government over the Bengal Famine, or what damage it has done to us in American eyes. It is the worst blow we have had to our name as an Empire in our lifetime. We simply cannot afford a repetition of it and on an even larger scale. Nothing after that would avail to keep India in the Empire.’ Leo Amery to WSC, 17 February 1944. LAP: AMEL 2/2/4, file 1/4.
15 Hamid, Disastrous Twilight, pp. 23–6; Report on the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, AP: MS Attlee dep. 32, ff 285–9.
16 Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 62, 80.
17 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 182.
18 Malaya Tribune, 19 March 1946.
19 F.V. Duckworth, Report on Visit of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Malaya, 18–26 March 1946. TNA: CO 717/149/8.
20 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 182; Hough, Edwina, p. 180; Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 327; Seton, Panditji, p. 120.
21 L.F. Pendred, Director of Intelligence for SACSEA, report on Nehru’s visit to Malaya. TNA: CO 717/149/8.
22 Ibid.
23 Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, p. 30.
24 Private collection of the Mountbatten Family.
25 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, pp. 6, 8. Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of Time‘s publisher Henry Luce, was a close friend of JN’s.
26 Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, p. 114; Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch!, p. 824.
27 See Khilnani, The Idea of India, pp. 161–3; Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 50–1. In February 1947, Harold Macmillan visited MAJ in Karachi, and asked him why he had accepted the plan. MAJ replied that he had only done so under pressure and that it had been a great personal risk. ‘But after all, you cannot argue for ever. We argued for weeks and months. Whether there can be a united India is a matter of argument or opinion. Finally I agreed to test it in practice.’ MAJ cited in report of Harold Macmillan, 17 February 1947. CP: CHUR 2/43A. In 1997, the former MP Woodrow Wyatt, who had been on the Cabinet Mission, claimed that he had persuaded MAJ to accept the plan as ‘the first step on the road’ to Pakistan. Woodrow Wyatt, ‘Even His Fasts Were a Fraud’, Spectator, 9 August 1997, p. 15.
28 Sir Francis Fearon Turnbull, Diary, 19 May 1946. CP: MISC 51.
29 Lord Wavell cited in French, Liberty or Death, p. 245.
30 Sir Francis Fearon Turnbull, Diary, 24 May 1946. CP: MISC 51.
31 Eugénie Wavell to EA, 24 July 1946. MP: MB1/Q128.
32 Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 52–5.
33 MAJ cited in Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself, p. 283. See also Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 216.
34 Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch!, p. 811.
35 Stephens, Pakistan, p. 105; Judd, The Lion and the Tiger, p. 177; Hutheesing, We Nehrus, pp. 186–7; French, Liberty or Death, p. 252.
36 Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself, p. 283.
37 Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 187.
38 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 476; Hutheesing, We Nehrus, p. 189.
39 MKG cited in Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 469–70.
40 Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot, pp. 149–50. MKG had previously caused controversy by receiving daily massages from young women and bathing with them. He claimed to keep his eyes closed during the latter. Kumar, Brahmacharya, p. 6.
41 Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and his Apostles, pp. 201, 203. MKG’s relationship with Manu Gandhi was protracted and intense, with a tone that it is difficult for those less spiritually perfect than MKG to hear as anything but romantic. It has been discussed at length in Kumar, Brahmacharya, pp. 315–62.
42 Bose, My Days with Gandhi, pp. 95–104.
43 Ibid, p. 169.
44 MKG cited in Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, p. 404.
45 WSC cited in Gilbert, Never Despair, p. 233.
46 Monckton to WSC, 18 May 1946. CP: CHUR 2/42A ff 59–60.
47 WSC to Clementine Churchill, 1 February 1945, cited in Gilbert, Road to Victory, p. 1166.
48 MAJ did, however, lobby WSC against proposals put forward by Liberal leader Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru for a united India, on the grounds that it would disappoint Muslims ‘with most disastrous consequences, especially in regard to the war effort’. MAJ to WSC, repeated in WSC to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 4 March 1942. CP: CHAR 20/71A.
49 The Treason Act 1351, which is still in force, says among other things that treason occurs ‘if a man do levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King’s enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere, and thereof be probably attainted of open deed by the people of their condition’.
50 During this period, WSC was also corresponding with the Untouchable leader, B.R. Ambedkar – apparently looking to throw in the Conservative Party’s lot with any indigenous Indian organization that could help stall plans for independence. There is an extensive selection of this correspondence in CP: CHUR 2/42, and CHUR 2/42B. WSC received Ambedkar at Chartwell at the end of October 1946. CP: CHUR 2/42B/266. MAJ followed WSC’s lead: in November and December 1
946, headlines in Dawn announced that ‘Qaed-e-Asam and Muslim League Have Always Befriended the Downtrodden’ and articles proclaimed proudly that ‘The Muslim League stands for the rights of all weak [i.e. oppressed] communities! In reaching an agreement with the Government or any other power, we will make every sacrifice necessary to obtain … every right for the Muslims, the Adivasis and the Untouchables!’ See Pandey, Remembering Partition, p. 28.
51 WSC to MAJ, 3 August 1946. CP: CHUR 2/42B, ff 252–3.
52 The Muslim League’s Liaquat Ali Khan, and the Sikh leader Baldev Singh, also came to London.
53 King George VI to CRA, 8 December 1946. Cited in Bradford, George VI, pp. 521–2.
54 Sir Eric Miéville to DM, 11 April 1947. ToP, vol X, p. 198.
55 CP: CHUR 2/42B/350.
56 QP: IOR Pos 10762. Also CP: CHUR 2/42B/374. MAJ also corresponded with Sir John Simon, who informed him that Lords Salisbury, Cranborne, Altrincham, Croft, Cherwell and Rankeillour would be interested in his cause. QP, as above.
57 M. Eleanor Herrington, ‘American Reaction to Recent Political Events in India’, Asiatic Review, vol xliv, no 158 (April 1948), pp. 178–9.
58 JN had met Robeson in London in 1938, six years after the latter’s supposed affair with EA. Marie Seton, Paul Robeson (Dennis Dobson, London, 1958), p. 115. JN’s sister Nan Pandit was also close friends with the Robesons. Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, pp. 254–5.
59 Sahgal, Prison and Chocolate Cake, p. 131.
60 Johnson to Roosevelt and Hull, 11 April 1942, cited in Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 17.
61 Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, p. 227.
62 Cited in Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 37; see also pp. 47–8.
63 CRA to Bevin, 25 March 1946. TNA: FO 800/470, f 30.
64 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 52.
65 French, Liberty or Death, p. 254.
66 Leopold Amery, Diaries, 21 November 1946. LAP: AMEL 7/40.
67 MAJ to CRA and WSC 6 July 1946. QP: IOR Pos 10762.
68 CRA cited in Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, p. 208.
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