Finest Years (47 page)

‘In war,' he said
, ‘it is not always possible to have everything go exactly as one likes. In working with allies it sometimes happens that they develop opinions of their own…I cannot feel that de Gaulle is France, still less that Darlan and Vichy are France. France is something greater, more complex, more formidable than any of the sectional manifestations…The House must not be left to believe that General de Gaulle is an unfaltering friend of Britain. On the contrary, I think he is one of those good Frenchmen who have a traditional antagonism ingrained in French hearts by centuries of war against the English…I could not recommend you to base all your hopes and confidence upon him.'

He went on to explain that General Henri Giraud, whom the Americans thought a more suitable national leader than De Gaulle, had been smuggled out of France by the Allies with the explicit intention that he should assume authority in North Africa. This purpose was confounded only when Giraud was rebuffed by senior French officers on the spot. Averell Harriman wrote: ‘
I have always deemed it
tragic that the British picked De Gaulle and even more tragic that we picked Giraud.' On 10 December MPs, perhaps impressed by how fully Churchill confided in them, were placated by his arguments. In private, the British government redoubled its efforts to get Darlan removed from office. The Americans rejected London's proposal—an implausible one—that Harold Macmillan, British resident minister in the Mediterranean, should assume temporary authority in Algiers. Anglo-American relations were still steeped in acrimony on this issue when it was unexpectedly resolved. On 24 December a young French royalist burst into Darlan's office at the Summer Palace and shot him dead.

Responsibility for the assassination remains one of the last significant mysteries of the Second World War. The immediate perpetrator, one Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, was hurried before a firing squad two days later. Oliver Harvey, Eden's private secretary, expressed most undiplomatic dismay about the execution: ‘
It shows how wrong
you get if once you compromise with evil. You find yourself shooting a good man for doing what you should have done yourself.' It was a relief to almost everyone else, however, that de la Chapelle was extinguished without revealing details of his plot. That a plot there was, is certain. A priest granted de la Chapelle absolution for his action before he walked into the Summer Palace, and modern conspiracy theorists have not failed to notice that Brigadier Menzies, chief of SIS, was in Algiers on Christmas Eve.
The historian David Reynolds
believes that the British were implicated. The most likely explanation, however, is that the killer was incited by a Free French group. Though there is no evidence of De Gaulle's personal complicity, the ruthless behaviour of his London organisation between 1940 and 1944 makes this credible.

If Darlan's murder was ugly, it lifted a heavy shadow from Anglo-American relations. General Giraud was installed in Darlan's place. After tortured negotiations between Churchill, Eden and De Gaulle in London, the two Frenchmen achieved a grudging and distant accommodation. Macmillan's attitude reflected that of many British politicians and diplomats: ‘
One comes away
, as always after conversations with De Gaulle, wondering whether he is a demagogue or a madman, but convinced that he is a more powerful character than any other Frenchman with whom one has yet been in contact.' This widely shared view caused most British politicians and diplomats to conclude that De Gaulle must continue to be supported. Churchill kicked against such realism, demanding with extravagant verbosity that the general should be dumped. At the last, however, he sulkily acquiesced. De Gaulle remained recognised by London, though not by Washington, as principal representative of France in exile.

On 29 November 1942, Churchill minuted the chiefs of staff: ‘I
certainly think that we should make all plans to attack the French coast either in the Channel or in the Bay of Biscay, and that 12 July 1943 should be fixed as the target date.' Throughout this period he pressed Roosevelt repeatedly to expedite the US build-up in Europe so that the invasion of France could take place in 1943. Astonishingly, or even perversely, given his almost unflagging enthusiasm for attacking the supposed ‘soft underbelly' of the Axis, on 1 December Churchill wrote to Brooke: ‘It may be that we should close down the Mediterranean activities by the end of June with a view to
Round-Up
in August.' The US chiefs of staff were wholly justified in their belief that their British counterparts were unwilling to execute a 1943 cross-Channel attack. But they did an injustice to Churchill in supposing that he too had at this stage closed his mind. In the course of the next year, he vacillated repeatedly.

Marshall and his colleagues also underrated the professional skill and judgement of Brooke and his team. American practice was founded upon an expectation that means could always be found to fulfil chosen national objectives. Thus, Roosevelt's chiefs of staff decided upon a purpose, then addressed the practical problems of fulfilling it. The British chiefs, by contrast, forever struggling against straitened resources, declined to endorse any course of action unless they could see how it was to be executed. Such caution irked Churchill as much as the Americans: ‘
I do not want any of your
own longterm projects,' he often expostulated to Brooke, shaking his fist in the CIGS's face. ‘All they do is cripple initiative.'

In December 1942 it seemed to Britain's service chiefs that it would be impossible to find enough landing craft to support a D-Day in 1943. Pressure on shipping was unrelenting in every theatre. There were never enough troops. British relations with the Australian government were further strained in December, by Canberra's insistence that 9th Australian Division should return home from North Africa, even though the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia had been lifted. Churchill cabled Curtin, the Australian prime minister, that he did not consider this decision ‘in accordance with the general strategic interests of the United
Nations', but Canberra remained implacable. Curtin's enthusiasm for leaving his men to fight at British discretion cannot have been enhanced by news that while only 6 per cent of the Allied troops at Alamein were Australian, they suffered 14 per cent of Montgomery's casualties in the battle.

And now the two North African campaigns faltered. The Allies were confounded by Hitler's decision to reinforce the theatre. If this was strategically foolish, it rendered much more difficult the immediate task of the British and US armies. American commanders and troops lacked experience. Though the Allies had numerical superiority in men, tanks and aircraft, the Germans fought with their usual skill and persistence. Alexander was famous for his courtesy and charm in addressing the Americans, but in private he railed at their military incompetence.

His reservations about Eisenhower's soldiers were just, but it ill became a British officer to express them. The British contingent in Ike's forces, designated as First Army, was led by Gen. Sir Kenneth Anderson. Anderson proved yet another in the long line of inadequate British field commanders—‘
not much good
', in Brooke's succinct words of dismissal. Operations in Tunisia dispelled any notion that First Army's men were entitled to patronise their US counterparts. Eisenhower was more willing than most of his countrymen to hide frustrations about Allied shortcomings, but he wrote in his diary on 5 January 1943: ‘
Conversations with the British
grow wearisome. They're difficult to talk to, apparently afraid that someone is trying to tell them what to do and how to do it. Their practice of war is dilatory.' A few days later, he added: ‘British, as usual, are scared someone will take advantage of them even if we furnish everything.' In another entry he described the British as ‘stiff-necked'. Richard Crossman of Britain's Political Warfare Executive thought that ‘
Getting on with Americans
is frightfully easy, if only one will talk quite frankly and not give the appearance of being too clever, but v few English seem to have achieved it.' In North Africa, they were less than impressed by Eisenhower. Though Churchill's scepticism was later modified by necessity and experience, that winter he was sufficiently irritated by the
general's perceived blunders to evade fulfilment of Ike's request for a signed photograph of himself.

At the beginning of December, the prime minister sketched a design for 1943 based upon his expectation that Tunisia would be occupied by the year's end, and North Africa cleared of Axis forces a month later. By Christmas, this timetable was wrecked. Eighth Army's west-ward advance against Rommel progressed much more slowly than Churchill had hoped in early November. The Russian convoy programme was further dislocated by the need to keep large naval forces in the Mediterranean. The British joint planners, unambitious as ever, favoured making Sardinia the Allies' next objective. The prime minister dismissed this notion, urging that Sicily was a much worthier target. But he had begun to perceive that a 1943 D-Day in France was implausible.

Churchill now wanted a conference of the ‘Big Three', to settle strategy. He loved summits, a coinage he invented, not least because he believed that the force of his own personality could accomplish ends more impressive than his nation's real strength could deliver, in its fourth year of war. But Stalin declined a proposal to meet in Khartoum, saying that he could not leave Moscow. Roosevelt was often less enthusiastic than Churchill about personal encounters. Just as the prime minister hoped for disproportionate results from these, to the advantage of his own country, so the president knew that the wealth and might of the United States spoke more decisively than any words which he might utter at a faraway conference table. But he liked the idea of visiting the theatre of war, and accepted Churchill's proposal for a meeting to be held in liberated Casablanca, on the Atlantic coast of North Africa.

The prime minister arrived in the Liberator
Commando
on 12 January 1943. His identification for security purposes as ‘Air Commodore Frankland' seemed absurd, from the moment he landed at Casablanca to be greeted by a glittering array of brass. Ismay muttered: ‘Any fool can see that is an air commodore disguised as the Prime Minister.' The ‘air commodore' was then driven to his appointed
residence, the Villa Mirador, inside the closely guarded perimeter where the conference was to be held. He cabled Attlee: ‘Conditions most agreeable. I wish I could say the same of the problems.'

The American service chiefs flew from Washington to Bathurst in West Africa, where the chief of the army was persuaded to disembark in a beekeeper's hood, to ward off mosquitoes. This was abandoned when Marshall found the welcoming party clad only in shorts. The Americans flew on to Casablanca with a lavish inventory of tents, cooking equipment and trinkets suitable for Arabs, lest they should be forced down in the desert, together with snowshoes and cold-weather clothing for a possible onward trip to Moscow. The British had their own embarrassments. They felt humiliated by their makeshift air transports, which obliged exalted passengers to disembark dirty and dishevelled from the bomb bays. Roosevelt reached Casablanca on the 14th, and was installed in a villa close to that of the prime minister. Churchill greeted him exuberantly. The two great men talked while their chiefs of staff embarked upon the bruising process of seeking an agreement which the president and prime minister could then be invited to endorse.

The Casablanca conference was the most important Anglo-American strategic meeting of the war, because it established the framework for most of the big things which were done thereafter. It represented the high point of British wartime influence, because it took place at a time when projected operations still depended on preponderantly British forces. Its deliberations were warmed by victories in Africa, and knowledge of looming Russian triumph at Stalingrad. At Alamein, in some degree the British Army had retrieved its fallen reputation. Churchill answered a question from correspondents about Eighth Army's pursuit of Rommel: ‘I can give you this assurance—everywhere that Mary went the lamb is sure to go.' British staffwork for the conference was superb, aided by the presence offshore of a purpose-equipped command ship.

However powerful were the reservations of British service chiefs about their prime minister's strategic wisdom, an intimate working relationship ensured that they knew exactly what he wanted.
By contrast, even after thirteen months of war the US president was ‘
still something of an enigma
to his American advisers', in the words of Marshall's biographer: ‘Roosevelt imposed no unified plan.' His military chiefs ‘still had twinges of doubt about Roosevelt's lack of administrative order, his failure to keep the Chiefs of Staff informed of private high-level discussions, and his tendency to ignore War Department advice in favour of suggestions from officials of other departments'. Marshall knew from the outset that he would lose his battle for a 1943 cross-Channel attack. In advance of the summit Roosevelt had displayed his customary opacity. However, he threw out enough hints to show that he, like the British, favoured the capture of Sicily. Admiral Ernest King, for the US Navy, was overwhelmingly preoccupied with the Pacific campaign. Quite uncharacteristically, the chief of the army was blustering in suggesting that an early invasion of France remained plausible.

In the combined chiefs' conference room at the Anfa Hotel, Alan Brooke echoed Churchill's recent protests to Roosevelt about the scale of the American Pacific build-up, which, said the British CIGS, threatened the agreed principle of ‘Germany first'. The British thus wrongfooted Marshall by pressing him to justify the weight of resources committed to the Japanese war, to the detriment of Europe. This was a telling counter against American arguments that the British were prevaricating. Brooke then argued—implausibly in the eyes of history, and even in the context of January 1943—that a massive combined bomber offensive against Germany, together with home-grown resistance among the peoples of occupied Europe, might relegate an invasion of France to a mere mopping-up operation. The Americans pressed the British for early offensive action in Burma, to assist the cause of China. This was perceived as a vital priority in Washington, a negligible one in London.