Finest Years (74 page)

In the last weeks of the European war, Churchill undertook two more battlefield joyrides. Much to his own satisfaction, he relieved himself in the Siegfried Line on 3 March, with an aside to photographers: ‘This is one of the operations connected with this great war which must not be reproduced graphically.' He performed the same ceremony in the Rhine three weeks later, on a visit to watch Montgomery's great river crossing with Alan Brooke. As he gazed down upon the vast panorama from a chair set out for him on Xanten hilltop, he said: ‘I should have liked to have deployed my men in red coats on the plain down there and ordered them to charge.' Then he added, not without satisfaction: ‘But now my armies are too vast.' At the sound of aircraft, he sprang to his feet: ‘They're coming! They're coming!' He watched fascinated as the great airborne armada passed overhead, thousands of multi-coloured parachutes blossoming forth above the German bank. He was hurried unwillingly to the rear by the generals when desultory German shells began to fall. Brooke wrote: ‘
It was a relief
to get Winston home safely…I honestly believe that he would really have liked to be killed on the front at this moment of success. He had often told me that the way to die is to pass out fighting when your blood is up and you feel nothing.'

At a lunch at Chequers a few days later, Churchill told his cousin Anita Leslie how much he had enjoyed his outing: ‘
I'm an old man
and I work hard. Why shouldn't I have a little fun? At least, I thought it was fun but one has to hate seeing brave men die.' Leslie was driving an ambulance for the Free French. ‘With childish longing in his voice Winston asked what the French thought of him. “They do like me? They are fond of me?” Give them my love.' If these were the words of a sentimental old man, his flagging interest in daily
business reflected the condition of an exhausted one. ‘
The PM is now becoming
an administrative bottleneck,' wrote Colville.

There was a last spasm of frustration about his inability to influence military operations. When he learned that Eisenhower had signalled to Stalin that the Anglo-American armies would make no attempt to close upon Berlin, he expressed strong displeasure that such a communication should have been made without reference to the British or US governments. As Russian behaviour rapidly worsened, he urged that the Anglo-American armies should advance as far eastwards as possible and stay there, heedless of agreed occupation zones, until Moscow showed some willingness to keep its side of the Yalta bargain. Meanwhile, Russian paranoia intensified, that the West would make its own peace deal with the Germans. Zhukov visited the Kremlin on 29 March. Stalin walked to his desk, leafed through some papers, picked one out and handed it to his marshal. ‘Read this,' he said. It was a report based upon information from ‘foreign sympathisers' who claimed that representatives of the Western Allies were conducting secret talks with emissaries of Hitler about a separate peace. Berlin's overtures had been rejected, said the letter, but it remained possible that the German army would open its western front to give the Allies passage to Berlin. ‘
What do you think
?' asked Stalin, continuing without waiting for Zhukov's answer: ‘I do not believe Roosevelt will violate the Yalta agreement. But as for Churchill—that man is capable of anything.'

The Americans indeed showed no interest in diplomatic brinkmanship with the Kremlin. Though Roosevelt was persuaded to send a last challenging missive to Stalin about Poland, Washington would precipitate no confrontation. When Himmler sought to parley with the Western Allies, Churchill reported the fact to Stalin, who had dispatched a stream of angry and indeed insulting cables to London and Washington about US negotiations in Switzerland with SS General Karl Wulff concerning a German surrender in Italy. Now the Russian leader sent a notably emollient message to Churchill: ‘Knowing you, I had no doubt that you would act just in this way.' The prime minister found the cable waiting in Downing Street on
returning from dinner with the French ambassador on the night of 25 April. It prompted a spasm of maudlin goodwill towards Stalin. Jock Colville noted in dismay that Churchill, not entirely sober, sat for ninety minutes in the Annexe, talking enthusiastically to Brendan Bracken about the cable, and then spent a further ninety minutes doing the same before the young private secretary: ‘
His vanity was astonishing
and I am glad U[ncle] J[oe] does not know what effect a few kind words, after so many harsh ones, might well have on our policy towards Russia…No work was done and I felt both irritated and slightly disgusted by this exhibition of susceptibility to flattery. It was nearly 5am when I got to bed.' Three days later, Churchill cabled Stalin, offering a further olive branch: ‘
I have been much disturbed
at the misunderstanding that has grown up between us on the Crimea agreement about Poland.' There was no misunderstanding, of course. Stalin was bent upon asserting Soviet hegemony over Poland, and that was an end of the matter.

Back in December 1941, when Eden cabled Churchill from Moscow urging the necessity for acceptance of Russia's demands for recognition of its pre-
Barbarossa
frontiers, the prime minister replied: ‘When you say that “nothing we and the US can do or say will affect the situation at the end of the war”, you are making a very large assumption about the conditions which will then prevail. No one can foresee how the balance of power will lie, or where the winning armies will stand. It seems probable however that the US and the British Empire, far from being exhausted, will be the most powerful armed and economic bloc the world has ever seen, and that the Soviet Union will need our aid for reconstruction far more than we shall need theirs.' By 1945, the frustration of such hopes was plain. The Soviets were vastly stronger, the British much weaker, than Churchill had anticipated. The US commitment to perceived common Anglo-American interests, in Europe or anywhere else, was more tenuous than it had ever been.

In the cold light of day, the prime minister understood this. On 4 May he wrote to Eden, then in San Francisco for the inaugural meeting of the United Nations, about the evolving situation in Eastern Europe as he saw it:

I fear terrible things
have happened during the Russian advance through Germany to the Elbe. The proposed withdrawal of the United States Army to the occupational lines which were arranged…would mean a tide of Russian domination sweeping forward 120 miles on a front of 200 or 400 miles. This would be an event which, if it occurred, would be one of the most melancholy in history. After it was over and the territory occupied by the Russians, Poland would be completely engulfed and buried deep in Russian-occupied lands…The Russian frontier would run from the North Cape in Norway…across the Baltic to a point just east of Lubeck…half-way across [Austria] to the Izonzo river behind which Tito and Russia will claim everything to the east. Thus the territories under Russian control would include the Baltic Provinces, all of Germany to the occupational line, all Czechoslovakia, a large part of Austria, the whole of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, until Greece in her present tottering condition is reached…This constitutes an event in the history of Europe to which there has been no parallel…All these matters can only be settled before the United States Armies in Europe are weakened…It is to this early and speedy showdown and settlement with Russia that we must now turn our hopes. Meanwhile I am against weakening our claim against Russia on behalf of Poland in any way.

The Allies now found themselves in a bewildering and uncharted new world: Roosevelt was gone. Following the vast shock of his death on 12 April, Churchill briefly entertained the notion of flying to Washington for the funeral. Finally, he decided that he was needed in London, an outcome that was also probably influenced by personal disinclination. The prime minister's enthusiasm for the president had waned dramatically. There had been so many slights. Some were relatively trivial, such as a March decision by Washington to halt meat exports to Britain. Some were more serious, such as the imposition of draconian curbs on post-war British civil aviation in accordance with the terms of Lend-Lease. Above all, of course, there was American unilateralism on Eastern European issues. Roosevelt's
greatness was not in doubt, least of all in the mind of Churchill. But it had been deployed in the service of the USA, and only incidentally and reluctantly in the interests of the British Empire or even of Europe. ‘
We have moved a long way
,' wrote Moran in February, ‘since Winston, speaking of Roosevelt, said to me in the garden at Marrakesh “I love that man.” '

Now, Churchill had to deal with the wholly unknown figure of Harry Truman. In the first weeks of the new president's tenure, though his inexperience was manifest, there were welcome indications that he was ready to deal much more toughly with the Russians than had Roosevelt in his last months. But no more than his predecessor was the newcomer at the White House willing to risk an armed clash with the Soviet Union for the sake of Poland, or indeed any other European nation. At this stage, Washington believed, there was no virtue in empty posturing, when the Red Army stood on the Elbe. Nor did Churchill's combativeness towards Moscow find much resonance among his own people. For four years the British had embraced the Russians as heroes and comrades-in-arms, ignorant of the absence of reciprocal enthusiasm. Beyond a few score men and women at the summit of the British war machine, little was known of Soviet perfidy and savagery. No more in Britain than in the US was there any stomach for a Churchillian crusade against a new enemy.

VE-Day was proclaimed on 8 May 1945. On the afternoon of the 7th, the chiefs of staff gathered at Downing Street for a moment of celebration. Churchill himself set out a tray and glasses, then toasted Brooke, Portal and Cunningham as ‘the architects of victory'. Ismay wrote in his memoirs: ‘
I hoped that they would
raise their glasses to the chief who had been the master-planner; but perhaps they were too moved to trust their voices.' This was disingenuous. Brooke and Cunningham, if not Portal, nursed complex emotions towards the prime minister. Others, including Ismay and the Downing Street staff, forgave rough handling amid their love and admiration for Churchill. The field marshal and the admiral found this more difficult. Brooke wrote on 7 May: ‘
I can't feel thrilled
, my main
sensation is one of infinite mental weariness! A sort of brain lethargy which refuses to register highlights, and remains on an even dull flat tone.' Next day he added, with some bitterness: ‘
There is no doubt
that the public has never understood what the Chiefs of Staff have been doing in the running of this war. On the whole the PM has never enlightened them much, and has never once in all his speeches referred to the Chiefs of Staff…
Without him England
was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster again and again. And with it all no recognition hardly at all for those who help him except the occasional crumb intended to prevent the dog straying too far from the table.'

Brooke was envious of the greater power and fame enjoyed by Marshall, his American counterpart. A man of notable vanity, which suffused his diaries, he overrated his own talents, and was ungenerous in his estimate of Churchill's. But a significant part of his achievement as CIGS—and it was a remarkable achievement—lay in his willingness to fight Churchill day or night when he believed him wrong. If Brooke was a cautious soldier, who might not have prospered as a field commander, he had provided a superb foil for the prime minister, preserving him from many misfortunes. His contribution to Britain's war effort had been substantial. Like the hedgehog, he had understood one big thing: that the Allies must not prematurely engage the full weight of the Wehrmacht. He was unable, however, to accept that the price of serving a towering historical figure was to be obscured by his shadow.

Clementine was visiting Russia on behalf of the Red Cross on VE-Day, much to the sorrow of both Churchills. At 3 p.m. the prime minister broadcast to the British people: ‘Yesterday morning at 2.41 a.m. at Headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Grand Admiral Doenitz, the designated head of the German State, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Force, and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command…The German war is therefore at an end.' He recalled Britain's lonely struggle, and the gradual accession of great allies:
‘Finally almost the whole world was combined against the evil-doers, who are now prostrate before us. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued…We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad. Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King.' His secretaries and staff lined the garden of Downing Street to clap him to his car. He grinned back: ‘Thank you so much, thank you so much.' Then he drove to the House of Commons, to repeat to MPs the speech which he had made to the nation.

A few grumblers muttered that they would have liked to hear from him some expression of gratitude to the Deity, and it is interesting to speculate whether Churchill offered any private expression of indebtedness to a higher power at that afternoon's Commons Service of Thanksgiving at St Margaret's, Westminster. Jock Colville believed that the events of the war, especially the Battle of Britain, moved Churchill a considerable distance from defiant atheism towards faith. The prime minister once remarked to the private secretary that he could not help wondering whether the government above might be a constitutional monarchy, ‘
in which case there was
always a possibility that the Almighty might have occasion to send for him'.