The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (420 page)

At dinner that night, King, who had sworn off hard liquor for the duration, consumed enough wine to become “nicely lit up,” as recalled by Brooke. Churchill, not realizing King’s condition, tried to rebut the admiral each time King—“with a thick voice and many gesticulations”—advised Roosevelt on how best to dismember the French empire and how to fight the war in general, and in the Pacific in particular. The discussion continued well into the early morning hours, the scene lit by candles after an air-raid alert forced the dousing of the electric lights. It was a remarkable scene, the military and political leaders of the English-speaking world chatting by candlelight high on a Moroccan bluff while great armies bivouacked and battled five hundred miles away across the sands.
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Over the next week, the Combined Chiefs of Staff met fifteen times to work out a strategy for the coming year. Roosevelt and Churchill dined together daily and spent many hours in private meetings, during one of which Churchill reminded Roosevelt that contrary to their gentleman’s agreement of the previous summer on the matter of “Tube Alloys,” the British had in fact been excluded from the atomic bomb program. Harry Hopkins assured Churchill that this situation would be “put right” immediately upon Roosevelt’s return to Washington. Each evening, the Combined Chiefs briefed the two leaders on the day’s discussions, which had not gotten off to a heady start. Brooke called the first few days of discussions “desperate” at one point, concluding, “The USA Joint Planners did not agree with Germany being the primary enemy and were wishing to defeat Japan first!!!” They disagreed, too, on Burma; the Americans wanted a concentrated British and American effort there in order to reopen the Burma Road in support of Chiang, while the British wanted to bide their time until they had the men and matériel to take a solid shot. The air war presented another opportunity for dispute; Churchill conveyed to General Ira Eaker his displeasure over the American Eighth Air Force and its lack of punch, but after spending an hour hearing Eaker out, he withdrew his opposition to daylight raids, in the main because Eaker sold him on the idea of round-the-clock air attacks, Americans by day and the RAF by night. Churchill liked that, later telling a group of American reporters, “There is nothing like a 24-hours service.”
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Eisenhower flew over from Algiers to outline his plan for taking Tunis. He proposed a strike eastward to the sea with Major General Lloyd Fredendall’s II Corps to drive a wedge between Arnim’s and Rommel’s armies.
Brooke destroyed the idea, pointing out its most obvious defect: with Montgomery and the Eighth Army still five hundred miles to the east, a thrust by II Corps would result in its being trapped
between
Arnim and Rommel. The most likely result would be the defeat in detail of Fredendall’s force in the south and Anderson’s forces in the north. The idea went nowhere, and Eisenhower flew back to Algiers. Yet with the need to coordinate the British First and Eighth Armies, as well as the French and American forces, it was obvious that a Supreme Commander had to be chosen. It was Eisenhower. He “had neither the tactical nor strategical experience” for such a task, Brooke later wrote, but by “being pushed up into the… rarified atmosphere of a Supreme Commander,” he could attend to “his political problems.” Brooke believed the appointment, while flattering the Americans, would allow British commanders to fight the battles and restore “the necessary drive and co-ordination which has been so seriously lacking.” Eisenhower, with just three stars on his shoulders, was outranked by his trio of British lieutenants—Alexander, Tedder, and Cunningham. Marshall, not impressed with Eisenhower’s results in Tunisia, told Roosevelt that he “would not promote Eisenhower [to four stars] until there was some damn good reason for doing it.” He meant a good military reason. Roosevelt had in mind a good political reason; Eisenhower’s promotion would tell the American people that they were taking charge of the war. Two weeks later, Roosevelt submitted Eisenhower’s name to the U.S. Senate, and Ike got his fourth star on February 11.
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Although Roosevelt remained committed to Marshall’s cross-Channel strategy, he was opportunistic enough to see the merit of Churchill’s Sicily initiative. After five days of debate, the Combined Chiefs of Staff reached the same conclusion. They also agreed on eight overall strategic priorities. Brooke later wrote that Dill was instrumental in forging the agreement; the alternative, Dill had warned Brooke and Marshall, was to allow Roosevelt and Churchill to make the final decisions, and “what a mess they would make of it!” The final agreement codified the need to defeat Germany first, with wresting control of the Atlantic taking top billing. Second, and closely tied to the first, was the need to get all aid possible to Russia. The plan to take Sicily was third, followed by the continued buildup of American forces in Britain, with the goal of running a small-scale version of Roundup on the Cotentin Peninsula that August. This was a sop to Marshall. Fifth, the British agreed on the need to retake southern Burma (Operation Anakim, scheduled for later in the year) in order to open a supply route to Chiang and to draw the Japanese from MacArthur’s flank as he moved northward. This was a sop to Roosevelt and King; Churchill believed China would play no role of any importance in defeating Japan. In any event, the British lacked the requisite forces to retake Burma that year even if they believed it
would result in an earlier defeat of Japan. The sixth term of the agreement called for a study of Axis oil needs and industrial capacity, for purposes of planning the “heaviest possible air offensive” to destroy German industrial capacity (which both Spaatz and Harris believed might end the war in 1943). Next came the need to establish naval and air control over North Africa and the Mediterranean. The final article stipulated that all matters connected with Turkey would be handled by the British. The entire eight-point plan was “a strategic menu they [the Allies] could not digest,” Samuel Eliot Morison later wrote, a case of planners who “had eyes bigger than their stomachs.”
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Churchill was so eager to get Turkey and its forty-five (underarmed) divisions into the war that he notified the War Cabinet that immediately following the conference he intended to first visit Cairo, to consult with Alexander, who would soon be setting off for Tunisia. Then Churchill intended to set off for Turkey and a meeting with President
smet
nönü. The War Cabinet objected; the journey was long and dangerous, and Churchill was needed in London. Churchill replied that he was going anyway, and he instructed Eden to arrange with the Turks for an invitation to be sent to Cairo, where Churchill expected to receive and accept it.

C
hurchill and Roosevelt had one final piece of business to conduct. It centered on Generals Giraud and de Gaulle. Churchill had included in his birthday eve broadcast the battle cry “France will rise again!” Whether de Gaulle would rise with it was the question. Roosevelt’s feelings on the subject were well known to Churchill, to wit, the Frenchman was an obdurate obstacle to the advancement of American policy, which held no promise of any meaningful war role (or postwar role for that matter) for France and the French Empire, de Gaulle or no de Gaulle. Roosevelt had for months artfully avoided any official recognition of de Gaulle by arguing that the sovereignty of France rested solely with its people.

But the French, prisoners of Germany, could make no such choice. In contrast to Sikorski and Beneš, who were leaders of governments in exile, de Gaulle was only the leader of certain military units in exile. Churchill had tolerated and supported de Gaulle in that role for thirty months, but on December 10, in secret session, he told the House, “We must not be led to believe that General de Gaulle is an unfaltering friend of Britain.” Quite the contrary, de Gaulle possessed the “traditional antagonism engrained in French hearts” toward the English, and had left “a trail of Anglophobia behind him” wherever he went. Churchill’s strategy was clear: by sketching
de Gaulle in dark shades, he prepared the House for his removal from the political scene were the Americans to demand it. The scathing attack on de Gaulle was symptomatic of Churchill’s evolving relationship with Roosevelt and the subtle lessening of Britain’s influence over inter-alliance political affairs. Once Darlan was removed from the picture, Roosevelt’s man in North Africa, Robert Murphy, lost no time in propping Giraud up as the civil and military leader there. De Gaulle knew the Americans foresaw no role for him, Eden later wrote, and “began to suspect that the British and United States governments were going to make an agreement with Giraud over his head.” Eden rode to the Frenchman’s rescue when he drew from de Gaulle a promise to meet with Giraud, but Giraud refused on the flimsy pretext that Darlan’s assassination created “an unfavorable atmosphere” for such a meeting. The strain imposed by the totality of the political situation in North Africa—Darlan, Giraud, Mark Clark, and Murphy, and their sundry intrigues—led Eden to later observe, “I was not alone in feeling the physical and mental burden. As the months passed we were all to show it, even the Prime Minister.”
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De Gaulle proved himself the most tiresome Frenchman of the lot. Roosevelt and Churchill had brought Giraud around; he agreed to meet de Gaulle in Casablanca in order to work out a civil and military partnership. But de Gaulle refused, telling Eden that he would agree to meet Giraud alone, perhaps in Chad, but not in Casablanca, where such a meeting could only amplify the subordinated stature of the French. Gallic honor was at stake. Eden tried a different tack; the president, he told de Gaulle, would like to meet with him in Casablanca. De Gaulle again refused, telling Eden that if Roosevelt wanted to meet, they could do so in America. Eden reported de Gaulle’s recalcitrance to Churchill, who responded with a warning that de Gaulle’s failure to appear would result in his forfeiting any chance of assuming
any
role in Algiers, even the subordinate role envisioned by the Americans. The message was, show up or HMG will be done with you. Roosevelt, who had prevailed upon Giraud to come to terms with de Gaulle, cabled Eden: “I have got the bridegroom, where is the bride?”
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After a weeklong sulk, de Gaulle finally agreed to go, arriving in Morocco on January 22. That night, he met with Churchill. “I was pretty rough with him,” Churchill told Lord Moran after the meeting, as the two watched de Gaulle make his way down the hill from the residence. Yet, Churchill added, “France without an army is not France. De Gaulle is the spirit of that army… the last survivor of a warrior race.” Moran asked Churchill if he had heard Roosevelt’s quip that de Gaulle fancied himself a descendant of Joan of Arc. Churchill had and “was not amused.” De Gaulle was defiant and arrogant, Churchill told the doctor, but he offered that, with tears now in his eyes, “England’s grievous offense in de Gaulle’s
eyes is that she has helped France. He cannot bear that she needed help.” The tears appear to be plausibly Churchillian, yet so do the sentiments he expressed in a letter to Clementine two days later, when he wrote that de Gaulle brought “comic relief” to the conference. “He thinks he is Clemenceau (having dropped Joan of Arc for the time being).” Of French leaders, including de Gaulle, Churchill told Clemmie, “They hate each other far more than they do the Germans” and they “care more for power and place than for the liberation of their country.”
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