Finest Years (30 page)

Though the new CIGS was often charmed by the prime minister's puckish wit, and never doubted 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 dog 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 the 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 South-East 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 USA and its possessions. On Sunday, 7 December, 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, US 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 us
, will you declare war on them?' Winant replied: ‘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 in to lunch together.'

Harriman, a fellow guest at dinner that night, found Churchill ‘
tired and depressed
. 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 each other. 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 US 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, might 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 anything 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 7 December 1941, Churchill wrote in a draft of his memoirs: ‘
saturated and satiated
with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful. One hopes that eternal sleep will be like that.'

De Gaulle said after Pearl Harbor: ‘
Well then, this war is over
. 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 US 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 11 December: ‘
We simply can't be beaten
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 bombed, 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 make 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 US belligerence would check the flow of supplies to Britain and Russia. It was left to the prime minister to open his arms in 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 9 December, and two days later: ‘We are pressing pursuit vigorously.' The Russians were still holding Moscow, Leningrad and the Baku oilfields. Churchill told the House of Commons on 8 December: ‘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 10 December 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 11 December Germany and Italy removed a vital
lingering doubt by declaring war on the USA. 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 must 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 material 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 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 7 January 1942. 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 lastminute 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 13 December 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, his shorthand-taker, 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 north Borneo on 17 December, on Hong Kong island next day. Churchill minuted the chiefs of staff on the 15th, 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 US 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 US 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 a 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, the French Channel or Atlantic coasts, 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 21 December he wrote a long letter to Clementine: ‘
I do not know when
or how I shall come back. 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 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.

The heavy seas imposed delays which caused
Duke of York
's passage to seem to its passengers interminable. Churchill fulminated at the waste of time, but was obliged to concede that he could not subdue the elements. A five-day crossing stretched to nine, then ten. The chiefs of staff delivered their comments upon Churchill's long strategic memoranda, which were discussed at a series of meetings under his chairmanship. They opposed a firm commitment to opening the major ‘Second Front' in Europe in 1943. Germany, they said, must first be weakened by intensified and protracted bombing. They urged acknowledgement of the fact that ‘the Japanese will be able to run wild in the Western Pacific' until Germany and Italy were disposed of. Churchill, who was undergoing one of his periodic bouts of scepticism about bombing, resisted any declaration of excessive faith in its potential. He warned against expecting the Americans to take as insouciant a view of Japanese Pacific advances as the chiefs proposed. He said it was essential to promote an offensive vision, rather than merely to advocate counter-measures against Axis thrusts. All this was very wise.

On 22 December
Duke of York
at last stood into Hampton Roads. The British party landed, and Churchill and his immediate staff boarded a plane for the short flight to Washington. Through its windows they peered down through gathering darkness, fascinated by the bright lights of the American capital after the gloom of blackedout London. There to meet the prime minister at the airport was Franklin Roosevelt, whose guest he became for the next three weeks. If this was a tense time for the British delegation, it was also an intensely happy one for Churchill. Who could deny his deserving of it, after all he had endured during the previous eighteen months? That first Anglo–American summit was codenamed
Arcadia
, paradise of ancient Greek shepherds. To the prime minister Washington indeed seemed paradisiacal. Installed in the White House, he enthused
to Clementine: ‘
All is very good indeed
; and my plans go through. The Americans are magnificent in their breadth of view.'

From his first meeting with Roosevelt he emphasised the danger that Hitler might seize Morocco, and thus the urgent need that Allied forces should pre-empt him. Less convincingly, he cited the French battleships
Jean-Bart
and
Richelieu
, sheltering in North Africa, as ‘a real prize'. He was galled when Dill suggested that shipping shortages might make it impossible to convey an American army across the Atlantic in 1942, and swept this argument aside. The two national leaders and their chiefs of staff discussed, then dismissed, arguments for creating a war council on which all the Allies and British dominions would be represented. It was agreed that while the dominions should be consulted, policy must be made between the Big Three. This latter outcome was inevitable, but sowed the seeds of future unhappiness around the Empire, and especially in Australia.

While in Washington, Churchill learned of the crippling of the battleships
Valiant
and
Queen Elizabeth
by Italian human torpedoes in Alexandria harbour, together with the loss of two cruisers at sea. He was furious to hear that his deputy prime minister had informed the Australians and Canadians of the drastic weakening of the Mediterranean fleet. ‘I greatly regret that this vital secret should be spread about the world in this fashion,' he cabled Attlee. ‘We do not give our most secret information to the Dominions.'