The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (338 page)

Quite so, but the lack of knowledge coming out of Cairo resulted from Churchill’s direct orders to Eden, cabled on the twenty-sixth. Churchill, it seems, in writing those pages of his memoirs indulged in what Mark Twain called “stretchers.” Then again, he often said that history would be kind to him, because he would write it. In fact, while Eden was in Cairo with Wavell’s plan in hand, Churchill, with his political obligations to Greece foremost in mind but lacking the requisite military intelligence to make a fully informed decision, committed critical resources to Greece and Crete. He ordered three squadrons of Blenheim bombers sent to Greece and two battalions of troops to Crete, to be followed by four thousand more as soon as possible in order to free a Greek division on Crete for battle at home against the Italians. Telegrams flew back and forth between London and Cairo. Eden expressed his concerns, as well as those of Wavell,
Cunningham, and Longmore. Cunningham fretted that the lack of anti-submarine protection in Souda Bay made it a dangerous place for his ships to linger. Churchill believed the proper role of warships was to seek out danger. Longmore, for his part, feared that without anti-aircraft protection or revetments, his Blenheims would be exposed while parked on airfields in Greece and Crete. Wavell sought more reinforcements for Egypt (and his planned desert offensive, which Churchill did not yet know of). Ambassador to Egypt Sir Miles Lampson cabled Eden that a diversion of forces to Greece was “completely crazy,” a choice of words that brought a rebuke from Churchill. On November 3, Churchill replied to Eden: “Greece, resisting vigorously with reasonable aid from Egypt and England, might check invaders…. Trust you will grasp the situation firmly, abandoning negative and passive policies and seizing opportunity which has come into our hands. ‘Safety first’ is the road to ruin in war, even if you had the safety, which you have not. Send me your proposals earliest, or say you have.” It was then that Eden told his diary, “It seems that Greece is now to dominate the scene. Strategic folly.”
³⁶³

Eden, back in London, finally told Churchill of Wavell’s plan over dinner of oysters and champagne at the Annexe on November 8. It was an aggressive and quite possibly brilliant plan. In late September, Graziani’s Tenth Army, after conducting its virtually unopposed one-week march east out of Libya, stopped at Sidi Barrani. Unmolested by the British, Graziani was unsure of what to do next. Wavell expected him to attempt to press on 75 miles to the vital railhead at Mersa Matruh, and from there the final 145 miles to Alexandria (this was why Wavell balked at sending forces to Crete and Greece). Instead, the Italians set up a line of seven fortified camps that stretched south and slightly southwest for fifty miles from the Mediterranean coast to the great Saharan escarpment. In their camps, Italian officers lived in such comfort that their tactical field guide might as well have been written by Michelin. Orderlies laid out handwoven linen tablecloths and fine porcelain, silk sheets for the officers’ nocturnal ease, and cologne to refresh parched skin. Enlisted men were well supplied with canned tomatoes and pasta packaged in cheery blue boxes. Content, they took their ease in their seven forts. Had they reconnoitered the entire line, they would have divined a fifteen-mile-wide gap between their two southernmost camps. They had not. Wavell had. He and General Sir Henry Maitland “Jumbo” Wilson (he was quite a large fellow), Wavell’s commander in chief of Egyptian forces, believed that they could insert their troops and tanks unseen between the camps and attack from the rear. Churchill later wrote that he was “delighted” and “purred like six cats” upon hearing the particulars of the plan, code-named Compass. It was due to kick off in early December.
³⁶⁴

O
n the night of November 2, but for tethered barrage balloons overhead and searchlight beams stabbing into the blackness, the skies over London were empty. No German bombers came. It was the first quiet night since September 7. Since July 10, 1,300 German aircraft and 2,400 pilots and airmen had been lost over Britain—one highly trained airman lost for every six British civilians killed. These were unacceptable losses for Hitler, not only because the Luftwaffe had not beaten Britain, but because each plane lost over England meant one fewer experienced pilot and crew available for the final, deciding battle he foresaw, a battle not in the west, above London, but in the east. He had made his decision to attack Russia in July; now, on November 4, he told Lieutenant General Halder, “Everything must be done so we are ready for the final showdown.” Some in the high command presumed this would be a lunge through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus (the straits) and thence through neutral Turkey to Vichy-controlled Syria, then east to the Iraqi oil fields, or south to the great prize—the Suez, there to join hands with Mussolini, if only he would attack the outnumbered British at his front. Success would eliminate Britain from the Mediterranean and slice the British Empire into isolated halves. It was the strategy demanded if crushing England was Hitler’s intent. But he told Halder, “We can only go to the Straits when Russia is defeated.”
³⁶⁵

On the same day as Hitler looked east, Churchill’s gaze was fixed westward, on the Atlantic sea-lanes, where the British merchant fleet had lost its five-hundredth ship since the start of the war, bringing shipping losses to more than two million tons, more than 10 percent of the prewar fleet. In November, for the first time in the war, fewer than one million tons of food reached Britain; the Home Office had determined the nation needed to import at least 1.2 million tons of foodstuffs per month to survive. Victory against the Heinkels over London would count for nothing if Britain were starved into submission by the U-boats. Churchill had three months earlier declared in a memo to his military chiefs that the Royal Navy could not win the war, but it could still lose it. Airpower, he had written, could win the war. His two top priorities were to bomb Germany, as heavily and often as possible, while simultaneously securing his sea-lanes. He wanted more bombers dropping more bombs more often on Germany: “The discharge of bombs on Germany is pitifully small,” he wrote to Portal and Sinclair. He pulled no punches with Portal: “The first offensive object of the Royal Air Force is the delivery of bombs overseas, and particularly on
Germany…. It is deplorable that so few Bombers are available even on good nights.” Yet, realities forced Churchill to attach more importance to the Northwest Approaches than to raining revenge upon Berlin. The supply situation was so critical, he told the Defence Committee, that “the use of naval and air bases in Eire would greatly simplify our problems, but it would be unwise to coerce Ireland until the situation was mortal.” Irish neutrality, if Britain’s situation became “mortal,” wouldn’t be worth a half-pence.
³⁶⁶

All of this he contemplated on November 4, the eve of the American presidential election. Colville predicted a close contest. Churchill predicted a big win for FDR. His hunch proved correct. Roosevelt dispatched his Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie, with almost 55 percent of the popular vote and by a margin of 449–82 in the electoral college. Churchill cabled his congratulations: “I did not think it right for me as a foreigner to express my opinion upon American politics while the Election was on, but now I feel you will not mind my saying that I prayed for your success and that I am truly thankful for it.” He predicted a “protracted and broadening war,” a struggle “that will be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe…. The people of the United States have once again cast these great burdens upon you, I must avow my sure faith that the lights by which we steer will bring us all safely to anchor.”
³⁶⁷

Roosevelt did not reply. Perhaps Churchill’s choice of “we” and “us” was presumptuous; perhaps by not replying Roosevelt sought to remind Churchill of his status as supplicant. Maybe he simply forgot. Almost three weeks later Churchill asked Lord Lothian to “find out most discreetly whether President received my personal telegram congratulating him on re-election.” Those weeks spent waiting for a signal—any signal—from America brought a mixed bag of news, the most welcome of which arrived on November 12, when Churchill learned that British naval fliers had overnight smashed a good part of the Italian fleet at Taranto.
³⁶⁸

The raid on Taranto, like a sucker punch, was so unexpected, so awesome in execution and results, that a reprisal in kind was out of the question. The British had done the impossible: they had torpedoed an enemy fleet in the shallowest of waters. Moreover, it was the first attack in history by carrier-based aircraft on capital ships. A Cockney newsboy captured the essence of the raid as only a street urchin can:
“Eyetalian fleet done in. No more macaroni.”
Taranto, tucked into the heel of Italy, was an ideal port from which to sally forth into the central Mediterranean if, in fact, an admiral’s inclination was to sally forth to fight. But Admiral Dominico Cavagnari, Italian naval chief of staff, was not so inclined; he preferred to preserve his fleet rather than fight with it. Thus, six battleships and two cruisers were among the Italian ships riding at anchor at Taranto on the
night of November 11. Limited British success against Mussolini’s submarines and destroyers notwithstanding, up to that night the central Mediterranean belonged to the Italians.
³⁶⁹

By the morning of November 12, the sea from Gibraltar to Alexandria was once again a British lake. The Royal Navy Air Arm had carried the day with just twenty-one Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers—steel-ribbed, canvas-skin biplanes that could summon a top speed of only 138 miles an hour. The planes were virtually obsolete but could still inflict damage if the enemy was asleep, and the Italians had been sound asleep. The Swordfish had lifted off from Britain’s newest aircraft carrier, HMS
Illustrious,
at a distance of about 170 miles. They came into the anchorage low, just twenty feet above the water, in two squads, their paths marked by flares dropped from the lead planes. When the Swordfish departed, three of Italy’s six battleships had settled into the mud, knocked out of commission for six months. Two cruisers were hit. It was a severe blow, and for Churchill, the best news of the autumn. “We’ve got some sugar for the birds this time,” he quipped while on his way to the House, where he announced, “I felt it my duty to bring this glorious episode to the immediate notice of the House.” The result of the raid, “while it affects decisively the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean, also carries with it reactions upon the naval situation in every quarter of the globe.” Strictly speaking, he was correct. The lessons learned, or not learned, at Taranto would in just over a year affect the balance of naval power worldwide. Takeshi Naito, Japan’s assistant naval attaché to Berlin, thought the raid so significant he flew to Taranto to assess the damage.
³⁷⁰

A
mbassador Joseph Kennedy tendered his resignation on November 6; Neville Chamberlain died on November 9, the war having overtaken and smashed the dreams of both. Kennedy was by then in the United States, infuriating Roosevelt with his public diatribes against England, against the wisdom of U.S. intervention, and even against Eleanor Roosevelt. During a weekend visit by Kennedy to Hyde Park, Roosevelt listened for several uncomfortable moments as Kennedy ranted about the injustices he had been subjected to by Washington bureaucrats. When Kennedy finished, Roosevelt asked him to step from the room for a moment. He called Eleanor in and told her: “I never want to see that son of a bitch again as long as I live.” Churchill, in his memoirs, does not accord Kennedy’s departure a single word.
³⁷¹

Chamberlain’s departure was another matter. His bowel cancer had
been diagnosed just four months earlier. He remained in the cabinet until early October, when he took to his bed after an excruciating and unsuccessful surgery. He died with sure knowledge that Great Britain, brought to this juncture in large part by himself and his government, might yet win under Churchill’s defiant leadership. Churchill, with the permission of King George, had been diligent to the end in sending Chamberlain the latest intelligence reports, a generous gesture and astute, for there simply was no longer any political currency to be gained from pummeling the appeasers. Generosity, or the perception thereof, paid better dividends. Besides, the seismic crunch of every German bomb emphatically rebutted the politics of the old gang. By bringing Chamberlain and Lord Halifax into the cabinet, Churchill signaled an end to the recriminations, if not the divisions. He knew, as Lincoln had known during his great national crisis, that it is far preferable to have naysayers on the payroll—where the need to maintain the appearance of national unity precludes any naysaying—than off, and free to make mischief.