The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (374 page)

Time
magazine had just days before Hitler smashed into Russia noted under the headline of U
NMURDEROUS
W
AR
, the “most extraordinary thing about World War Two is not its speed, not its extent, not its tactical scope—but its relative unmurderousness.” This proved a colossal mischaracterization when, within four weeks, more soldiers and civilians perished by fire and steel in Russia than had been killed by any manner of weapons in all the previous twenty-two months of war in all of the European, Mediterranean, and African theaters. And it was only the beginning.
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Stalin needed British and American help to make up his losses in matériel. Given that during the first seven weeks after the German invasion, only five American bombers were delivered to Russia, his prospects appeared bleak. Yet American bombers did not hold the key to Stalin’s survival. Millions of Soviet foot soldiers, armed and clothed and fed by America and Britain, and backed up by thousands of tanks, held the key. Stalin understood attrition. His war would be fought hand to hand and street by street for as long as Soviet soldiers stood. If they could buy enough time, Churchill and Stalin had between them the makings of a lethal one-two punch. Churchill would one day possess enough airpower—supplied by American industrial muscle—to destroy German cities and every person within. “We will make Germany a desert,” he had told Colville, “yes, a desert.” Stalin, meanwhile, had the manpower to kill German soldiers indefinitely, if, that is, he and Churchill could buy enough time. America seemed to be edging closer to the conflict, yet Churchill had warned Harry Hopkins early in the year that in spite of re-armament plans, America was
at least eighteen months—more likely two years—away from full production. That would put America in fighting trim by mid-1942 at the earliest, a half year too late were Hitler to finish off Stalin by Christmas 1941.
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O
n July 20 a dinner was held at Chequers in honor of Harry Hopkins, who had arrived a few days earlier by way of a B-17 bomber. Hopkins brought smoked hams, cigars, and pledges of support from his boss, but carried no invitation for the meeting with Roosevelt that Churchill so craved. That alone would have been enough to put the P.M. in a funk, yet as frustrated as he was with Roosevelt’s inertia regarding a face-to-face meeting, he knew he could voice no such thoughts in front of Harry. He could, however, safely rail at the usual subjects—Mussolini and Hitler—and the need for revenge, and he did just that. He and Hopkins sat up chatting until almost 3:00
A.M.
on the twenty-first, Churchill as usual doing most of the talking. Colville recalled, “When Winston started on what he was going to do to the Nazi leaders after the war—and the Nazi cities during it—Hopkins said that he—Winston—only read the bits of the Bible that suited him and they were drawn from the Old Testament.”
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On July 24, Churchill received the invitation he had sought for so long. “Harry Hopkins came into the garden of Downing Street and we sat together in the sunshine. Presently he said that the president would like very much to have a meeting with me in some lonely bay or other.” Hopkins telephoned the president. Churchill was so enthused that when he got on the line, he mentioned “a certain rendezvous” before realizing that the line was not secure. He was mortified, Colville wrote. Mortified, but elated.
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The time and place of the meeting—code-named Riviera—were agreed upon: sometime around August 9 or 10, at Argentia, Newfoundland, a small fishing village on Placentia Bay. By August 5 newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, having noted the disappearance of both Churchill and Roosevelt from their capitals, concluded a secret meeting was about to take place, somewhere in the northwest Atlantic. The United Press called it a “sea tryst.” Although Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s staffs maintained absolute secrecy, the boys of the press knew better, or thought they did. American reporters believed they saw their president on the deck of
Potomac
on the fifth when the presidential yacht steamed through Buzzards Bay, under the Boston & Maine railroad trestle, and north through the Cape Cod Canal. But the man wrapped in a shawl and waving from his deck chair was a Secret Service agent. Before dawn that morning, off
Nantucket, Roosevelt had transferred from
Potomac
to the cruiser
Augusta,
which was now pounding north through the Bay of Maine.
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Churchill entrained for Scapa Flow on August 3 in the company of Hopkins (just “returned dead-beat from Russia”), Harriman, Cadogan from the Foreign Office, and a bevy of private secretaries (but no female typists, for it was thought the journey too arduous for women). The Prof was on board; elevated to a barony, he had taken the title of Lord Cherwell of Oxford—a two-fingered poke in the eyes of his enemies among Oxford dons—as the River Cherwell runs through Oxford on its way to join the Thames. Inspector Thompson was making the trip, toting his trusty Colt. Churchill left his valet behind; the Old Man’s wardrobe and laundry duties—which were prodigious—fell to the gumshoe. The military was duly represented: Dill, Dudley Pound, and sundry colonels and group captains from the Defence Ministry, including Lieutenant Colonel Ian Jacob, who accompanied Churchill on most of his wartime journeys. It was a retinue, Colville recorded, that “Cardinal Wolsey might have envied.” Lunch on board the train consisted of sirloin steak followed by fresh raspberry and currant tart. Churchill took his with champagne. Jacob recalled Cherwell calculating on his slide rule (at Churchill’s request) the amount of champagne the Old Man had consumed in his lifetime, given that he claimed, “I have drunk fine Champagne with every dinner for the past twenty-years.” Cherwell’s answer—slightly less champagne than the volume of the railroad car—was a source of mild disappointment for Churchill. He was in fine fettle.
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Late on the afternoon of August 4, the entourage departed Scapa Flow aboard
Prince of Wales,
its scars inflicted by
Bismarck
erased by new bulkheads and a fresh layer of gray paint. Captain Leach—the object of Churchill’s wrath after the
Bismarck
chase—was in command. The ship ran fast, blacked out, and in complete radio silence. Were Churchill to need any medical attention while on board he would have to see the ship’s doctor. Clementine had pleaded with him to take along his physician, Dr. Wilson, but Winston declined, averse as he was to the possibility that the American president might catch sight of a stethoscope following the British prime minister around. Brendan Bracken, newly named head of the Ministry of Information, had suggested Churchill take along cameramen and ministry scribes to record the important, though largely symbolic meeting. Churchill heartily embraced that idea. This being a sea journey, and his every move being filmed, he chose a naval theme from his ample wardrobe, including a dark blue Royal Navy sea coat—the mess dress of the Royal Yacht Squadron—nicely set off by a seaman’s cap. Thus attired, he chugged up and down ladders and along the lower decks of
Prince of Wales
(rising seas having rendered the quarterdeck unsafe), looking like a
busy little tugboat captain. After dinner on the fifth, the party viewed
Pimpernel Smith,
with Leslie Howard, before turning in around midnight. The seas grew heavier and the great ship heaved. Churchill, finding the voyage a respite from the confines of London, retired to his cabin near the bridge with a C. S. Forester novel,
Captain Hornblower R.N.
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As the ship lurched westward, Churchill brooded over his prospects in the Western Desert, where his tanks had taken a beating at the hands of Rommel. He dictated a memo to the Chiefs of Staff admonishing them to “find a way to restore artillery to its prime importance upon the battlefield, from which it has been ousted by heavily armoured tanks.” The father of the tank was harboring doubts about his offspring, yet he should have known after the lessons of France and the Western Desert that the skillful deployment of massed tanks counted for far more than the thickness of their skin. Sheer volumes of tanks, supported by fighter aircraft, could overrun almost any position. The agenda for the coming meeting included tanks, thousands more tanks, made in America. But how many would go to Britain, to be deployed by Churchill where he saw fit, and how many to Russia, where they were most needed?
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He therefore decided en route that he needed Beaverbrook at the meeting. The Beaver, asthmatic and claustrophobic, hated the freezing confines of bombers as much as he loathed being stuffed belowdecks on a ship. Still, he made his way to Newfoundland by airplane, arriving after a twelve-hour journey. The plane following, which carried Arthur Purvis, head of the British Supply Council, crashed into a hill shortly after takeoff, killing Purvis and his entire staff. The loss of Purvis (who had overseen British munitions purchases from America during the Great War) was “grievous,” Churchill later wrote. When the news broke, Beaverbrook “made no comment. It was wartime.” Beaverbrook, exhausted and not as well liked by the Americans as Purvis, would have to bear the burden of resupply alone, a burden made heavier by Churchill’s long shopping list, the pages of which he separated with a little red leather strip on which were engraved the words “Ask, and it shall be given. Seek and ye shall find.” Inspector Thompson, catching sight of the strip, remarked that the words were a good omen. Churchill agreed: “Yes, Thompson, I hope it is a good omen, for I have much to ask for.”
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His sought far more than supplies. He planned to ask Roosevelt to take the necessary diplomatic steps—and military, if need be—to garrison U.S. troops, aircraft, and ships in the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. To do so would violate Portuguese sovereignty, but Churchill could no longer afford to abide by diplomatic niceties. And, given Britain’s weak position in Asia, he intended to ask Roosevelt to issue an extraordinary warning to Japan: Cease immediately all further territorial expansion or the United
States would go to war. Churchill’s motive was transparent. Any explosion in Asia that brought the Americans in against Japan could only strengthen Britain’s precarious position in the Far East. He considered the present about as fine a time as any to force Japan’s hand. To guarantee that neither Roosevelt nor the State Department diluted the intended message, he set about drafting the threat himself.
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On August 6, Roosevelt and Churchill sped toward their rendezvous, their actual whereabouts still unknown to the press. That day the editors of one of America’s most widely read newspapers, the
Brooklyn Eagle,
concluded, for no other reason than “the inability of American and British officials to deny” the rumors, that a meeting was indeed about to take place. Two nights later, Churchill took in
That Hamilton Woman,
which crudely plumbed the parallel between Britain’s struggles with Napoleon and Hitler. It starred Laurence Olivier as Nelson, grimacing behind his blind eye, and Vivian Leigh (Olivier’s wife of one year). Miss Leigh’s “dramatic progress,” a U.S. critic mused, “has left her only a gender’s distance from Mickey Rooney.” The film, a romantic hash Churchill much enjoyed (he penned a congratulatory note to the producer, Alexander Korda), treated of Nelson’s affair with Emma Hamilton, wife of the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. The movie gave Churchill all of his victories that year; five times he viewed the movie, and five times Nelson emerged victorious. Churchill, Cadogan recalled, was “moved to tears” at the film’s climax, when the mortally wounded Admiral Nelson is told the battle is won. When the lights went up, Churchill addressed some of the ship’s crew who lingered in the wardroom: “Gentlemen, I thought this film would interest you, showing great events similar to those in which you have been taking part.” Cadogan retired for the evening, leaving Churchill and Hopkins at backgammon. Churchill’s luck was running strong; he took the American for the equivalent of almost two hundred dollars.
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Harry’s boss, from whom Churchill sought billions, was known to display more talent as a horse trader than a gambler. Roosevelt was at that hour riding at anchor off Argentia, which as a result of the destroyers-for-territory deal had been transformed in just months from Crown property into one of the U.S. Navy’s largest bases. Roosevelt had taken title in fair trade.

As
Prince of Wales
dropped anchor in Placentia Bay at dawn on August 9, Inspector Thompson offered to Churchill that the impending meeting with Roosevelt would surely make history. “Yes,” replied Churchill, “and more so if I get what I want from him.” Then he made ready to board a launch for the short trip across the water to
Augusta,
where Roosevelt waited. Bracken’s insistence on filming the occasion paid off. Footage of the ensuing meeting, released weeks later, had the effect of erasing from
the public consciousness the sort of suspicions such secret assignations often engender. Had the sound not failed on the movie camera at the moment of truth, Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s greetings to each other would have been recorded for posterity.
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