Closing the Ring (22 page)

September had been indeed a fruitful month. Anglo-American inter-Service co-operation by land, sea, and air had reached a new record. The Commander of the German Tenth Army in Italy has since stated that the harmonious co-operation between our army, air, and naval forces under one supreme command was regarded by the Germans with envy. The Italian Fleet was in our hands; their Air Force and Army, though prevented by the Germans from joining us in useful numbers, were no longer ranged against us. The enemy had been defeated in pitched battle and our armies had bitten three hundred miles off Italy’s boot. Behind them lay captured airfields
and ports, ample, when developed, for our needs. Sardinia, so long thrust forward in Staff argument as the alternative to the assault on Italy, fell into our hands for nothing, as a mere bonus, on September 19, and Corsica was taken by French troops a fortnight later. The Italian enterprise, to launch which we had struggled so hard, had been vindicated beyond the hopes even of its most ardent and persistent advocates.

Great credit is due to General Eisenhower for his support of this brief and spirited campaign. Although the execution fell to Alexander, the Supreme Commander had really taken the British view of the strategy, and had been prepared to accept the ultimate responsibility for an enterprise the risks of which had been needlessly sharpened by his own military chiefs in their rigid adherence to the plans for Burma, and by their stern and strict priorities for “Overlord,” which were carried in the secondary ranks to a veritable pedantry. There can be no doubt at all that Italy was the greatest prize open to us at this stage, and that a more generous provision for it could have been made without causing any delay to the main cross-Channel plan of 1944.

¹
The order of battle of the German and Italian divisions on September 8 is set out in Appendix F, Book One.

²
I have in my home the Union Jack, the gift of General Alexander, that was hoisted at Taranto, and was the first Allied flag to be flown in Europe since our expulsion from France.

9
A Spell at Home

The War Issues in Parliament___My Explanations___The Second Front Agitations___Our Attitude to King Victor Emmanuel and Marshal Badoglio___Application of Similar Principles to Germany___Nazi Tyranny and Prussian Militarism, the Target___Warning About the Pilotless Bombardment___Need to Rally the Italian Nation___Death of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood___Sir John Anderson Succeeds Him___Death of Admiral Pound___The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of
1373___
The Azores___Position in the British Coal Mines___The Future of the Miners___The Rebuilding of the House of Commons___Two Necessary Features of an Effective Chamber___My Memorandum upon the Transition from War to Peace___My Plans for the Transition Period___Appointment of Lord Woolton as Minister of Reconstruction.

D
URING THE HOMEWARD VOYAGE
I prepared a speech for Parliament upon my return. I was well aware of the criticism I should have to meet, and that the increasing success of the war would only make the disaffected elements in the House and in the press feel more free to speak their minds.

On September 21, two days after landing, I accordingly made a report to the House of Commons, which occupied no less than two and a half hours. To avoid the Members tailing off for luncheon, I asked for an hour’s adjournment, which was accorded.

*  *  * *  *

The first complaint was that much time had been lost in
making the attack upon Naples by futile negotiations with the Italian Government. To this I could see I had a good answer.

  I have seen it said that forty days of precious time were lost in these negotiations, and that in consequence British and American blood was needlessly shed around Salerno. This criticism is as ill-founded in fact as it is wounding to those who are bereaved. The time of our main attack upon Italy was fixed without the slightest reference to the attitude of the Italian Government, and the actual provisional date of the operation was settled long before any negotiations with them had taken place, and even before the fall of Mussolini. That date depended upon the time necessary to disengage our landing-craft from the beaches of Southern Sicily, across which up to the first week in August the major part of our armies actually engaged there had to be supplied from day to day. These landing-craft had then to be taken back to Africa. Those that had been damaged—and they were many—had to be repaired, and then reloaded with all their ammunition, etc., in the most exact and complex order before there could be any question of carrying out another amphibious operation.

I suppose it is realised that these matters have to be arranged in the most extraordinary detail. Every landing-vessel or combat ship is packed in the exact order in which the troops landing from it will require the supplies when they land, so far as can be foreseen. Every lorry indeed is packed with precisely the articles which each unit will require when that lorry comes. Some of the lorries swim out to the ships and swim back. They are all packed exactly in series, with the things which have priority at the top and so on, so that nothing is left to chance that can be helped. Only in this way can these extraordinary operations be carried out in the face of the vast modern fire-power which a few men can bring to bear. The condition and preparation of the landing-craft were the sole but decisive limiting factors. It had nothing to do with “wasting time over the negotiations,” nothing to do with the Foreign Office holding back the generals while they worried about this clause or that clause and so forth. There was never one moment’s pause in the process of carrying out the military operations, and everything else had to fit in with that main-line traffic.

When I hear people talking in an airy way of throwing modern armies ashore here and there as if they were bales of goods to be
dumped on a beach and forgotten, I really marvel at the lack of knowledge which still prevails of the conditions of modern war.

.…. ….

I must say, if I may make a momentary digression, that this class of criticism which I read in the newspapers when I arrived on Sunday morning reminds me of the simple tale about the sailor who jumped into a dock, I think it was at Plymouth, to rescue a small boy from drowning. About a week later this sailor was accosted by a woman, who asked, “Are you the man who picked my son out of the dock the other night?” The sailor replied modestly, “That is true, ma’am.” “Ah,” said the woman, “you are the man I am looking for. Where is his cap?”

*  *  * *  *

The second complaint was about the Second Front, for which the Communist elements and some others were steadily pressing.

I now tried to speak to the German High Command as well as the House of Commons, and at the same time to mislead the first and instruct the second.

  I call this front we have opened, first in Africa, next in Sicily, and now in Italy, the Third Front. The Second Front, which already exists potentially and which is rapidly gathering weight, has not yet been engaged, but it is here, holding forces on its line. No one can tell—and certainly I am not going to hint—the moment when it will be engaged. But the Second Front exists, and is a main preoccupation already of the enemy. It has not yet opened or been thrown into play, but the time will come. At the right time this front will be thrown open, and the mass invasion from the West, in combination with the invasion from the South, will begin.

It is quite impossible for those who do not know the facts and figures of the American assembly in Britain, or of our own powerful expeditionary armies now preparing here, who do not know the dispositions of the enemy on the various fronts, who cannot measure his reserves and resources and his power to transfer large forces from one front to another over the vast railway system of Europe, who do not know the state and dimensions of our Fleet
and landing-craft of all kinds … to pronounce a useful opinion upon this operation.

[Here one of our two Communist Members interjected: “Does that apply to Marshal Stalin?”]

We should not in a matter of this kind take advice from British Communists, because we know that they stood aside and cared nothing for our fortunes in our time of mortal peril. Any advice that we take will be from friends and Allies who are all joined together in the common cause of winning the victory. The House may be absolutely certain that His Majesty’s present Government will never be swayed or overborne by any uninstructed agitation, however natural, or any pressure, however well-meant, in matters of this kind. We shall not be forced or cajoled into undertaking vast operations of war against our better judgment in order to gain political unanimity or a cheer from any quarter. The bloodiest portion—make no mistake about it—of this war for Great Britain and the United States lies ahead of us. Neither the House nor the Government will shrink from that ordeal. We shall not grudge any sacrifice for the common cause.

*  *  * *  *

The most difficult issue was the decision President Roosevelt and I had taken, of which I was, as the reader has seen, a strong partisan, to deal with the King and Marshal Badoglio and recognise and treat them as co-belligerents. The same passions were aroused on this occasion in the same kind of people as on the Admiral Darlan affair the year before. I felt however on even stronger ground in this case.

  We may pause for a moment to survey and appraise the act of the Italian Government, endorsed and acclaimed as it was by the Italian nation. Herr Hitler has left us in no doubt that he considers the conduct of Italy treacherous and base in the extreme—and he is a good judge in such matters. Others may hold that the act of treachery and ingratitude took place when the Fascist Confederacy—headed by Mussolini—used its arbitrary power to strike for material gain at falling France and so became the enemy of the British Empire, which had for so many years cherished the cause of Italian liberty. There was the crime. Though it cannot be undone, and though nations which allow their rights and liberties to
be subverted by tyrants must suffer heavy penalties for those tyrants’ crimes, yet I cannot view the Italian action at this juncture as other than natural and human. May it prove to be the first of a series of acts of self-redemption.

The Italian people have already suffered terribly. Their manhood has been cast away in Africa and Russia, their soldiers have been deserted in the field—their wealth has been squandered, their empire has been irretrievably lost. Now their own beautiful homeland must become a battlefield for German rearguards. Even more suffering lies ahead. They are to be pillaged and terrorised in Hitler’s fury and revenge. Nevertheless, as the armies of the British Empire and the United States march forward in Italy, the Italian people will be rescued from their state of servitude and degradation, and be enabled in due course to regain their rightful place among the free democracies of the modern world.

*  *  * *  *

I cannot touch upon this matter of Italy without exposing myself to the question, which I shall be most properly asked, “Would you apply this line of argument to the German people?” I say, “The case is different.” Twice within our lifetime, and three times counting that of our fathers, they have plunged the world into their wars of expansion and aggression. They combine in the most deadly manner the qualities of the warrior and the slave. They do not value freedom themselves, and the spectacle of it in others is hateful to them. Whenever they become strong, they seek their prey, and they will follow with an iron discipline anyone who will lead them to it. The core of Germany is Prussia. There is the source of the recurring pestilence. But we do not war with races as such. We war against tyranny, and we seek to preserve ourselves from destruction. I am convinced that the British, American, and Russian peoples, who have suffered measureless waste, peril, and bloodshed twice in a quarter of a century through the Teutonic urge for domination, will this time take steps to put it beyond the power of Prussia or of all Germany to come at them again with pent-up vengeance and long-nurtured plans. Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism are the two main elements in German life which must be absolutely destroyed. They must be rooted out if Europe and the world are to be spared a third and still more frightful conflict.

The controversies about whether Burke was right or wrong when he said, “I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people,” seem to me to be sterile and academic. Here are two obvious and practical targets for us to fire at—Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism. Let us aim every gun, and let us set every man who will march in motion against them. We must not add needlessly to the weight of our task or the burden that our soldiers bear. Satellite states, suborned or overawed, may perhaps, if they can help to shorten the war, be allowed to work their passage home. But the twin roots of all our evils, Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism, must be extirpated. Until this is achieved, there are no sacrifices that we will not make and no lengths in violence to which we will not go. I will add this: Having, at the end of my life, acquired some influence on affairs, I wish to make it clear that I would not needlessly prolong this war for a single day; and my hope is that if and when British people are called by victory to share in the august responsibilities of shaping the future, we shall show the same poise and temper as we did in the hour of our mortal peril.

*  *  * *  *

I had thought it right in the course of my speech to give at this time a serious and precise warning about the attack which was impending upon us by pilotless aircraft or rockets. It is always prudent to be on record publicly as having given warning long before the event. This is more particularly true when its scale and gravity cannot be measured.

  We must not in any circumstances allow these favourable tendencies to weaken our efforts or lead us to suppose that our dangers are past or that the war is coming to an end. On the contrary, we must expect that the terrible foe we are smiting so heavily will make frenzied efforts to retaliate. The speeches of the German leaders, from Hitler downward, contain mysterious allusions to new methods and new weapons which will presently be tried against us. It would of course be natural for the enemy to spread such rumours in order to encourage his own people, but there is probably more in it than that. For example, we now have experience of a new type of aerial bomb which the enemy has begun to use in attacks on our shipping, when at close quarters with the coast. This bomb, which may be described as a sort of rocket-assisted glider, is released from a considerable height, and is then apparently guided towards its target by the parent aircraft. It may be that the Germans are developing other weapons on novel lines with which they may hope to do us damage, and to compensate to some extent for the injury which they are daily receiving from us. I can only assure the House that unceasing vigilance and the most intense study of which we are capable are given to the possibilities.