Churchill's Secret War

by Madhusree Mukerjee

  EVEN AS THE War Cabinet debated the Bengal famine that November, representatives of forty-four nations were meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to hammer out the details of what would become the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). India was represented by its agent-general in the United States, Sir Girija Bajpai, and by a gatecrasher named Jagjit J. Singh, a “6-foot, handsome Sikh from Kashmir,” according to Time magazine. Singh was an entrepreneur and head of an immigrant association, the India League of America; he had earlier sent a report on the Bengal famine to Eleanor Roosevelt, who had passed it on to her husband. “This is a matter which the new UNRRA can properly take up,” the president had responded.

  But a key U.S. representative to the UNRRA, the diplomat Dean Acheson, stated that India was not eligible for aid. Singh protested that surely the starving in Bengal qualified, given that the organization’s charter promised “relief of victims of war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations.” The British representative, Colonel John J. Llewellin, announced, however, that India was not a victim of war, and its case was not taken up for discussion.

  The leftist commentator I. F. Stone approved Singh’s effort to give the issue of famine an airing. “I have found general agreement among officials dealing with shipping that it is nonsense to talk of a shipping shortage in connection with food for India,” Stone wrote. “With some 50,000,000 tons available, much of it inadequately utilized, a few hundred thousand tons of shipping could easily be allocated to ease the famine.” The problem, Stone felt, was politics: “Shipments made under pressure from public opinion would imply embarrassing admissions in British domestic policies, revive hopes of American interference in India.”42

  It was an issue on which Americans of both political parties could come together. Karl Mundt, a Republican congressman from South Dakota, met Singh and became infused with passion for his cause. Speaking in December before the House of Representatives, Mundt accused the UNRRA of harboring a “malevolent bias” against a patient ally. How did it make sense to feed former enemies and starve a friend? he asked. His appeal fell on deaf ears, so the congressman coached Singh on the tactics of lobbying on Capitol Hill. After a vigorous battle, in February 1944 the two managed to win over enough Democrats to insert an amendment to the UNRRA bill extending benefits to “any area important to the military operations of the United Nations which is stricken by famine or disease.”43

  All that effort was in vain. The War Cabinet did not permit the Government of India to apply for aid—a necessary formality before it could be sent. British authorities did, however, donate $30 million of the colony’s wartime earnings to the UNRRA, making India the sixth-largest contributor to the fund.44

  AN UNRRA ALLOTMENT of grain to India would have brought to the fore a discomfiting question: who would ferry it to Bengal? As Amery noted, the UNRRA itself was “not in a position to provide any shipping.” Had any grain been sanctioned, the ships would have had to come either from the United States or from the British Empire.45

  The War Cabinet did not intend to request further shipping from the Americans. Nor would it slow the buildup of its stockpiles by releasing ships or grain. Throughout that autumn, the United Kingdom’s civilian stocks of food and raw materials continued to swell, so that by the end of 1943 they would stand at 18.5 million tons, the highest total ever. The United Kingdom imported that year 4 million tons of wheat grain and flour, 1.4 million tons of sugar, 1.6 million tons of meat, 409,000 heads of live cattle, 325,000 tons of fish, 131,000 tons of rice, 206,000 tons of tea, 172,000 tons of cocoa, and 1.1 million gallons of wine for its 47.7 million people—a population 14 million fewer than that of Bengal. Sugar and oilseeds overflowed warehouses and had to be stored outdoors in England under tarpaulins. American and Canadian grain traders complained that excessive British demand was distorting the market and worried that, after the war, the United Kingdom would use its vast stocks to manipulate world prices.46

  Why was such a stockpile necessary? The U-boat threat had fallen away, the tide of war had turned, and a plethora of ships were available. Hitler still could, and would, launch air strikes on the United Kingdom, but the Blitz had shown that almost three-quarters of the supplies directly affected by bombing could be recovered. Air attacks threatened lives, not food supply. That fall, ships were being diverted to bring equipment for Operation Overlord, the invasion of northern France that would be launched from British soil—so it made sense to keep some extra stores at hand. But the quantities being held were far too large to be explained by the prospect of that attack alone. The War Cabinet’s preoccupation with domestic stocks was in fact motivated by the economic shocks that would follow the fall of Germany. In October 1943, Churchill had informed the public that the government was preparing for the end of the war. The first of the “urgent needs” of the postwar period was to plan for smooth demobilization, and the second was the “provision of food for our island on a scale better than the war-time rations.”47

  Historian R. J. Hammond has noted that the Ministry of Food’s estimates of minimum required stocks increased in tandem with actual stocks. For instance, whereas it had stated 850,000 tons of wheat as the minimum working stock in 1943, the ministry set the figure at a million tons in 1945 and represented this as a reduction from a supposed wartime minimum of 1.2 million tons. The stated minimum for oilseeds similarly swelled. “What purported to be an insurance against a breakdown of distribution was in reality something that could hardly be avowed within the Ministry of Food, and certainly not at the Combined Food Board,” where Americans were all too eager to dissect British stock levels—“namely an attempt to protect the future level of United Kingdom consumption,” Hammond wrote.48

  In November 1943, Viceroy Wavell circulated a memorandum that explained to the provinces’ governors why no aid could be expected for Bengal. “The Ministry of Food expect a world shortage of cereals, and although the shipping position has improved very greatly the Ministry of War Transport has to consider not merely the tonnage available but its operation as part of the general strategic plan. Thus, though foodgrains may be immediately available in Australia or North America the Ministry of Food may be reluctant to release them, and the Ministry of War Transport may be unable to deliver them to India except by diverting ships and changing loading programmes on a scale sufficient to be most embarrassing.”49

  In other words, the harvests of Australia and Canada were being regarded as part of the United Kingdom’s strategic stockpile and were being conserved for postwar use—as had been recommended during the War Cabinet meeting of January 5, 1943. “Shipping [difficulty] cuts both ways,” the minister of production had declared at the time. “It means [that] we are piling up stocks overseas.” An undated S branch memo noted that Colonel Llewellin, who succeeded Lord Woolton as the minister of food near the end of 1943, was demanding a minimum stock of 12 million tons of wheat (presumably in the British Empire as a whole). That amount would be easy to achieve, given that “at the end of 1943/44 harvest year, stocks will amount to about 29,000,000 tons, assuming no relief shipments” to liberated areas. Still, the memo continued, it was somewhat excessive to regard “100% of the volume of trade to the ‘Free World’” as a necessary minimum stock, given that 7 million tons would be ample. 50

  The extraordinary quantity of wheat stocks that the Ministry of Food regarded as essential militated against even a few hundred thousand tons being expended on famine relief in Bengal. Another reason for the paucity of aid, as Wavell had explained it, was the risk of loss of face. The diversion of a large amount of tonnage to India would possibly have been “most embarrassing” because it would have proved to Americans what they had suspected all along: the British had extracted a lot more shipping than they really needed.

  WHEN THE U.S. president and the prime minister met that November in Cairo, much of the talk was about the demands of the postwar world. The Americans wanted to treat colonies, such as those of France, as �
��trustees” of what would be a newly organized United Nations. For the time being the colonies would remain under imperial control, but would be coached toward independence; and inspectors would visit from time to time to gauge their living conditions and political progress. Churchill refused outright to subject the British Empire to such an order.

  The conference continued its work in Teheran, where the Soviets joined in. At a tête-à-tête with Stalin, Roosevelt cautioned that it was “unwise” to bring up India in the general discussions, and Stalin agreed that this was a “sore spot with the British.” Sometime in the future, the president continued, he would like to discuss India at length: it would, he said, probably require Soviet-style “reform from the bottom.” Stalin opined that the colony was complicated by culture and caste, but that reform from the bottom meant revolution. The Bengal famine was reaching its climax even as the world leaders met, but it appears not to have been mentioned—which is odd, given that the economics of India were discussed at some length.51

  The U.S. military had conquered a number of Pacific islands and was determined to establish a chain of bases there. Because the islands themselves would be under international control, the president saw no contradiction in establishing such bases under the aegis of the trusteeship scheme; Stalin agreed that footholds near the Axis powers would be useful. Suspecting that the two Allied leaders sought some of the empire’s possessions for these bases, Churchill angrily retorted that the British “intended to hold on to what they had” and “nothing would be taken away from England without a war.” This extraordinary threat must have been directed at the president, who was displaying the most inclination to do away with old-fashioned colonies.52

  Sometime during the conference, Stalin baited Churchill, accusing him of cowardice because of his foot-dragging on the invasion of northern France. “What happened?” he teased. “Is it advancing age? How many divisions have you got in contact with the enemy? What is happening to all those two million men you have got in India?” At one vodka-soaked banquet, Churchill was needled by Stalin so mercilessly that he stomped out in a fury.53

  ON DECEMBER 16, at a meeting of the War Cabinet that Churchill did not attend because of illness, Leathers mentioned that Canada was “pressing very hard to allow at any rate one shipload of Canadian wheat to go to India.” News of the offer had leaked in both the Indian and the Canadian media, and “the political now perhaps outweighed the shipping aspects,” said Leathers. To Amery’s relief, the War Cabinet acquiesced to a proposal to load a Canadian ship with wheat for India.54

  In late July, the Government of India had requested a half-million tons of wheat to be delivered by the end of 1943. That amount was the minimum necessary for maintaining the army and the most essential war workers until the next harvest. Apart from the psychological impact of imports on hoarders (who would take substantial grain imports as a signal of falling prices and thus release grain to the market, thereby causing prices to fall in reality), the needs of rural India had not figured into this calculation. In response, the War Cabinet had authorized 130,000 tons of barley, which was of little help, and 80,000 tons of wheat, the first shipments of which reached India in November. The paucity of relief meant that for the rest of that year the soldiers and war workers in India continued to consume grain that might otherwise have been used to relieve the suffering of the people. The famine came to an end in late December, when the survivors harvested their own rice crop. According to Chitto Samonto, some in Kalikakundu died of diarrhea because they ate the creamy rice seeds long before they had had a chance to ripen.55

  WINSTON CHURCHILL’S TRUE love was war, and it took precedence over such dreary matters as colonial economics. The chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, had a full-time job restraining him from headlong pursuit of whatever glittering military prize had caught his eye. “It is a wonderful character—the most marvellous qualities and superhuman genius mixed with an astonishing lack of vision at times, and an impetuosity which if not guided must inevitably bring him into trouble again and again,” Brooke mused in his diary. “Perhaps the most remarkable failing of his is that he can never see a whole strategical problem at once. His gaze always settles on some definite part of the canvas and the rest of the picture is lost. . . . This failing is accentuated by the fact that often he does not want to see the whole picture, especially if this wider vision should in any way interfere with the operation he may have temporarily set his heart on.”56

  Churchill overflowed with ideas for operations and hated the lull that preceded a major undertaking. In the autumn of 1943, soldiers and supplies were being gathered for Operation Overlord, and precious little was left over for supposedly quick and easy side ventures that could turn into quagmires. Yet one day the prime minister would be pushing for an attack on the Balkans, a few days later on Sumatra or Norway, and in another week he would be back at the Balkans again. “He is in a very dangerous condition, most unbalanced, and God knows how we shall finish this war if this goes on,” Brooke wrote in October.57

  The previous year, Brooke had turned down the Middle East command so that he could stay in London and prevent the prime minister from precipitating another Gallipoli. Churchill may also have had that disaster in mind when he had appointed Brooke the chief of staff. That is, he may have been aware that he needed containment while recognizing that, of all his generals, Brooke alone had the personality for that task. “When I thump the table and push my face towards him what does he do? Thumps the table harder and glares back at me,” Churchill had said admiringly. After tremendous and exhausting battles to which he brought the full force of his conviction, lungs, vocabulary, and lachrymal glands, Churchill would eventually back down and accept Brooke’s judgment—only to return to the fray the next day.58

  When it came to civilian advisers, however, the prime minister had picked too many cronies, whose sycophantic counsel on the Indian famine he would rely on rather heavily. “All I want is compliance with my wishes after a reasonable amount of discussion,” the prime minister said of the War Cabinet, and he was only half joking. Lord Woolton, Lord Leathers, and Sir Percy James Grigg owed their positions to him and deferred to him. Lord Beaverbrook, who served on the War Cabinet in a variety of positions, was an old friend and ally. Brendan Bracken, the minister of information, once circulated rumors that Churchill was his father, so enamored was he of the older man. (Bracken would personally present to Churchill preview copies of ministers’ speeches due for broadcast by the BBC. One minister was shifted from his post because he intended to say that members of Parliament did much that was asked of them, but refused to shout “Heil Churchill!”) As for Cherwell and the S branch, their allegiance was unabashedly to Churchill alone.59 “Churchill on top of the wave has in him the stuff of which tyrants are made,” Beaverbrook had once warned. Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, similarly noted: “when the sun shines his arrogance, intolerance and cocksureness assume alarming proportions.” Ever the bumptious schoolboy, the prime minister may also have relished thumbing his nose at Leopold Amery, his lifelong rival and critic. Churchill “is instinctively inclined to disagree with anything I say,” the secretary of state for India had observed two years earlier. Despite never having been to India as an adult, Amery was a far more knowledgeable and legitimate adviser on the colony than was Cherwell. Yet Amery was also long-winded and incapable of expressing himself dramatically; he had little hope of seducing the prime minister with the kind of catchy epithet Churchill relished and respected. The Prof, in contrast, knew exactly which buttons to push.60

  The problem was that whereas Brooke served as a restraint, Cherwell acted as a goad. Lord Moran commented that the Prof ’s placid appearance deceived many who met him casually. Once they got into conversation with him, “men learnt with a start of surprise that the most violent views were hidden and disguised by the level tones of the Prof.’s voice.” In a 1960 lecture at Harvard on Cherwell’s wartime influence, physicist and writer C. P. Snow would say
of Churchill’s chief adviser: “He was formidable, he was savage.” Snow complained that Cherwell’s advocacy of area bombing of German civilian houses had prevailed over the objections of other physicists. The Prof’s close relationship with Churchill had given him “more direct power than any scientist in history,” Snow argued, and power so unchecked was harmful.61

  Churchill did question Cherwell’s judgment on one occasion (when the scientist dismissed evidence that the Germans were developing a rocket capable of damaging London). Yet the Prof never wavered in his personal devotion to the prime minister. The only other individuals of whom Cherwell was heard to speak admiringly were Albert Einstein and Lord Birkenhead, his biographer’s father. Cherwell believed that a small circle of the intelligent and the aristocratic should run the world. “Those who succeed in getting what everyone wants must be the ablest,” he asserted. The Prof regarded the masses as “very stupid,” considered Australians to be inferior to Britons, advocated “harshness” toward homosexuals, and thought criminals should be treated cruelly because “the amount of pleasure derived by other people from the knowledge that a malefactor is being punished far exceeds in sum total the amount of pain inflicted on a malefactor by his punishment.”62

  Inferior as the British working class was in Cherwell’s view, he nonetheless ranked it far above the black and brown subjects in the colonies. A measure of his racism can be found in his assertion that “20 percent of white people and 80 percent of coloured were immune” to mustard gas. The figures are clearly incorrect, because biology admits of no such chasm between the races, but they are in keeping with early-twentieth-century notions of eugenics.63