Finest Years (29 page)

On 20 October Churchill told the Defence Committee he ‘did not believe that the Japanese would go to war with the United States and ourselves'. After many months in which he had wilfully exaggerated
the prospect of America entering the war, the chances of such a development were now greater than he avowed. It may be that, following so many disappointments, he did not dare to hope too much. The terrible, nagging fear persisted that Tokyo might launch a strike only against British possessions, without provoking the US to fight. The views of the British and American governments were distorted by logic. Both now possessed strong intelligence evidence of an impending Japanese assault. Yet it remained hard to believe that the Tokyo regime would start a war with the United States that it could not rationally hope to win.

The dispatch of a naval battle squadron to the Far East, supposedly to deter Japanese aggression, was the prime minister's personal decision, and reflected his anachronistic faith in capital ships. Likewise, the squadron's commander, Admiral Tom Phillips—ironically one of Churchill's severest critics in the Admiralty—was his own choice, and a poor one, because Phillips's entire war experience had been spent in shore-based staff appointments. Churchill likened the prospective impact of British battleships in the Far East to that achieved by the presence of Hitler's
Tirpitz
in Arctic waters, ‘a threat in being'. Just as the Americans absurdly overrated the deterrent power of deploying a mere thirty-six USAAF B-17 bombers in the Philippines, so the prime minister failed to grasp the fact that, with or without Admiral Phillips's squadron, British forces in the Far East were woefully deficient in strength and leadership.

The Director of Naval Operations, Captain Ralph Edwards, wrote in his diary when the battleship commitment was made: ‘
Another Prayer
from the prime minister, who wishes us to form a squadron of “fast, powerful modern ships—only the best to be used” in the Indian Ocean. This, he avers, will have a paralysing effect on the Japanese—why it should, the Lord alone knows…This, mind you, at the same time as he wishes to form a force at Malta, reinforce the Mediterranean, help Russia and be ready to meet a break-out by the
Tirpitz
. The amount of unnecessary work which that man throws on the Naval Staff would, if removed, get us all a month's leave…If only the honourable gentleman were to confine himself to statesmanship and
politics and leave naval strategy to those properly concerned, the chances of winning the war would be greatly enhanced. He is without doubt one of history's worst strategists.' Churchill wrote to Roosevelt, reporting the dispatch of
Prince of Wales
,
Repulse
and the carrier
Indomitable
: ‘
There is nothing like
having something that can catch and kill anything.' This was a bizarre assertion, after two years of war had demonstrated both the vulnerability of capital ships and the shortcomings of the Fleet Air Arm.

In almost all respects, during the Second World War the Royal Navy showed itself the finest of Britain's three fighting services, just as the US Navy was the best of America's. Axis submarines and air attack inflicted heavy losses, but British seamen displayed consistent high courage and professionalism. The navy's institutional culture proved more impressive than that of the army, perhaps also of the RAF. The Battle of the Atlantic was less dramatic and glamorous than the Battle of Britain, but preservation of the convoy routes was an equally decisive achievement. The sea service's chronic weaknesses, however, were air support and anti-aircraft defence. From beginning to end of the war, the Fleet Air Arm's performance lagged far behind that of the US Navy's air squadrons, partly because of inadequate aircraft, partly because the British did not handle them so well, and partly because there were never enough carriers. Churchill served the navy's interests poorly by failing to insist that the RAF divert more long-range aircraft to maritime support operations, and especially to the Atlantic convoys.

As autumn turned to winter there seemed little cause for optimism at sea, in the air or on land. Wise old Field Marshal Smuts cabled Churchill from South Africa in considerable dismay on 4 November: ‘I am struck by the growth of the impression here and elsewhere that the war is going to end in stalemate and thus fatally for us.' Many Americans perceived the British sitting idle behind their Channel moat, waiting for the United States to ride to their rescue. Averell Harriman wrote a personal letter to Churchill from Washington: ‘
People are wondering
why you don't do something offensively. In my opinion it is important that more should be said
about what you are doing.' The diplomat urged energetic media promotion of the RAF's bomber offensive, and of the Royal Navy's convoys to Russia.

Smuts, meanwhile, believed that Russia was being beaten, and that the US was still determined to avoid belligerence. This view was widely shared in London. Britain's army vice-chief of staff remained fearful of a German invasion of Britain, and baffled about how his own side might win the war: ‘
Whatever may happen
on the Russian front, it is only by successful invasion of these islands that Hitler can definitely win the war…I wish we had so clear an idea of how we could win. At present we cling rather vaguely to a combination of dissatisfied populations, lowering of morale amongst Germans and German troops, blockade and somewhat inaccurate bombing at night…America…seems further removed now from coming into the war than she was last April.'

Yet there is evidence that Churchill's personal view was shifting towards an expectation of US belligerence. He asserted to Lord Camrose at the Other Club on 14 November that he was confident the Americans would soon be in the war.
Camrose was sufficiently
impressed to write to his son, repeating the prime minister's words.
On the 19th
, Churchill told guests during a lunch at Downing Street that he expected to land the second of four possible ‘prizes'. The first would be US entry into the war without involving Japan; the second would be America's accession as an ally, matched by that of Japan as an enemy; the third would be that neither country entered the war; the fourth, that Japan became an enemy, while the United States remained neutral. Yet to others privy to secret intelligence of Japanese motions, the prime minister's hopes seemed ill-founded.

Churchill strove to provide cause for Americans to modify their impression of British passivity. Briefing Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten on his new role as ‘chief adviser' to Combined Operations, soon translated into overall command, the prime minister said: ‘Your whole attention is to be concentrated on the offensive.' This was another of the periods when he enthused about a possible descent on Norway, heedless of the intractable reality that
its coastline was beyond British fighter range. Eden expressed dismay about this plan to his private secretary: ‘
A.E. is much perplexed
—he feels as I do so many of W.'s gorgeous schemes have ended in failure…a false step—a faulty short-cut—would set us back years.'

In Churchill's fevered search for aggressive commanders he cast a jaundiced eye upon many incumbents. He harboured a persistent animus towards General Sir Ronald Adam, Adjutant-General and one of the army's ablest staff officers, partly because Adam created the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, a perceived socialist propaganda instrument. Churchill talked of sacking Tedder, commander of the Desert Air Force, who would soon be recognised as one of the ablest airmen of the war. Sir Wilfred Freeman, vice-chief of air staff, called on the chronically disaffected Hankey to ask what Portal, his boss, should do if Churchill insisted on Tedder's removal. Hankey offered his usual answer: resign. Freeman asserted that in such an event he himself would quit also: ‘
He said he had no use
for Churchill at all.'

The prime minister often felt oppressed by the perceived pettiness and petulance of Parliament. In the House on 11 November 1941 he faced a barrage of questions and supplementaries: first about alleged Italian atrocities in Montenegro, then about the government's apparent unwillingness to allow the RAF to bomb Rome. When he answered evasively, Sir Thomas Moore, Member for Ayr, demanded: ‘Does my right hon. friend really think it wise to provide a hide-out for this rat Mussolini?' Churchill responded: ‘I think it would be as well to have confidence in the decisions of the Government, whose sole desire is to inflict the maximum of injury upon the enemy.' Another MP drew attention to shortages of equipment, described in Lord Gort's recently published dispatch on the 1940 campaign in France. Churchill brusquely rejected calls for an inquiry. He might have suggested that such matters came under the heading of archaeology, rather than conduct of the war.

Another Member demanded information about the precise composition of the prime minister's party at the Placentia Bay meeting, and asked ‘whether in view of the fact that we are fighting for our existence, he will consider removing from Government service
all persons of German education and of German origin'. Churchill invited the questioner to be explicit. This the MP declined to do, but the House readily comprehended the enquiry as an attack upon Lord Cherwell. Other MPs then raised questions in which Cherwell was named. ‘The Prof' was widely perceived as a pernicious influence upon the prime minister. MPs who did not dare to attack Churchill himself instead vented their frustrations upon his associates. The prime minister defended Cherwell. But he bitterly resented being obliged to do so.

At the same question time, an MP urged that greyhound racing should be banned on working days, to deter absenteeism from factories and pits. Others called for a review and modification of Regulation 18B, under which aliens were detained without trial. These exchanges occupied twelve columns of Hansard, and caused Churchill to return to Downing Street in dudgeon. Who could blame him? How pettifogging seemed the issues raised by MPs, how small-minded the pinpricks of their criticisms, alongside the great issues with which he wrestled daily. If self-pity about the intrusions of democracy is in some measure common to all prime ministers in war or peace, such carping became infinitely irksome to the leader of a nation struggling for survival against overwhelming odds.

The best news in November was of Auchinleck's long-delayed offensive in the desert, Operation
Crusader
, which began on 18 November. Churchill trumpeted its progress: ‘For the first time, the Germans are getting a taste of their own bitter medicine.' On the 20th, 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.' The prime minister 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. Churchill continued to cherish hopes of the tangled, messy desert fighting,
but there was no sign of a breakthrough. On 23 November 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 ‘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 on 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,' wrote Alan Brooke. Dill recoiled from the need to work with the Russians, whom he abhorred, 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'. The CIGS was an intelligent man, possessed of much charm. But, like many other British officers, he lacked steel to bear the highest responsibilities in a war of national survival. On 16 November 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. This was partly because, as a man, Dill was widely liked. Colleagues and friends indulged that fatal British sympathy for agreeable gentlemen, however inadequate to their appointed tasks. Dill 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. He was 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. 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 thickrimmed 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.