The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (431 page)

Il Duce’s instincts were sound, but he no longer had the power to inspire his people to heroic resistance, or to convince Berlin that Sicily was the
next target. As he was prone to wild pronouncements, and evidencing the onset of either failing nerves or senility, his opinion was ignored in Berlin.

A
New York Times
headline that week read: I
NDIA
S
TAFF
H
ERE
: W
AVELL’S
P
RESENCE
S
EEN AS
H
INT OF
E
ARLY
A
CTION
A
GAINST
J
APANESE
. The
Times
of London ran a similar story, prompting Clementine to write to her husband, “I’m worried at the importance given by the Press… to the presence of Wavell… in your party. I’m so afraid the Americans will think that a Pacific slant is to be given to the next phase of the war….
Surely
the liberation
must
come first.” She had perfectly captured Brooke’s fear, and Churchill’s, and England’s.
¹⁶⁵

To a degree, Wavell’s presence at the conference was about taking the war to Japan, but not by way of Burma, where the weak British winter push toward Akyab had been mauled by the troops of Major General Masakazu Kawabe. Churchill and Brooke had decided on their way to Washington to tell Roosevelt that Operation Anakim, the planned invasion of southern Burma, was off the table until 1944. The manpower and resources simply did not exist. Still, two strategies for taking the fight to Japan by way of China were debated in Washington, and Burma played a role in each. Joe Stilwell favored an overland strategy from India, through northern Burma and into China. Yet MacArthur was siphoning off the American troops that had been allotted to Stilwell, and Stilwell’s Chinese troops showed no fight. Claire Chennault, who sought to configure his Fourteenth Air Force on Chinese soil as soon as possible, championed an aerial strategy conducted against Japan from bases in China. Wavell saw the obvious flaw in Chennault’s plan: China had no gasoline refineries and no means of fueling bomber groups or fighter squadrons. In fact, Allied DC-4 transports flying over the eastern Himalayas—“the Hump”—to deliver fuel and ammunition to China had to make room in their cargo bays for the gasoline needed for the return trip to India. The lack of available troops (especially American troops), tanks, and trucks argued against Stilwell, who concluded that his theater of war was neglected because “Churchill has Roosevelt in his pocket…. The Limeys are not interested in the war in the Pacific, and with the president hypnotized they are sitting pretty.” Stilwell, fluent in Mandarin Chinese, respected the Chinese people but thought Chiang corrupt and inept. Although Churchill thought little of Stilwell’s plan, he was in complete agreement with Vinegar Joe’s assessment of Chiang. Neither Stilwell nor Chennault could put forth any plan to help Chiang that could be seriously considered until Burma was retaken, and for this endeavor there was no
plan, only a name. When it came to capturing Burma, Churchill told Brooke, “You might as well eat a porcupine one quill at a time.”
¹⁶⁶

Churchill soon shifted his animal analogy from porcupine to shark: “Going into the jungles to fight the Japanese is like going into the water to fight a shark.” Instead, he believed the Allies should “set a trap or capture him on a hook.” The best place to set such a trap, he concluded, was the northern tip of Sumatra, from where the Royal Navy could harass Japanese supply lines between Tokyo and Singapore. This strategy soon exercised a hold over him, much the same as had Jupiter, the invasion of northern Norway.
¹⁶⁷

Contrary to the
New York Times
headline, Wavell’s presence in Washington had more to do with India than with taking the fight to Japan. Churchill thought it time to shuffle the entire command structure in India and Burma, by way of appointing a new viceroy and new commander for Indian military affairs, and creating the position of supreme commander, Southeast Asia. The latter position would not be going to Wavell, about whose aggressiveness Churchill still voiced doubts. No, he had his eye on Wavell for viceroy of India. Eden had politely refused the offer for fear it would end his career; traditionally the viceroy was made a lord, and lords were traditionally denied the premiership. Churchill’s choice of Wavell as viceroy, therefore, would signal to Roosevelt that HMG thought that the situation in India demanded a strong military hand rather than a deft political touch.

Churchill favored Auchinleck for commander in chief, India. He liked Air Vice Marshal Sholto Douglas, formerly of Fighter Command, now RAF chief in the Middle East, for the head of the new Southeast Asia Command, or SEAC. Churchill thought the appointment was inspired, in part because Douglas, as an airman, would better appreciate the logistics of supplying Chiang’s forces by air. The Americans objected to Douglas. He was as vocal a critic of America as Stilwell was of Britain, and his transparent ambition, as well as his part in the downfall of the hero of the Battle of Britain, Hugh Dowding (who had been kicked upstairs to Washington), were well known on the Potomac. For their part, the Americans began to refer to SEAC as See England Acquire Colonies, so firm was their belief that Churchill wanted to regain his lost Asian domains and had no intention of helping Chiang.
¹⁶⁸

D
uring the two weeks of Trident, Roosevelt gave Churchill what he sought on the atomic bomb project: full cooperation and a promise to share the finished product, which Roosevelt thought might be ready for use in the
current war, which he believed might last into 1946 or even 1947. Churchill informed the War Cabinet that a formal agreement would follow. The president also finally acted on Harriman’s March suggestion and directed the War Shipping Administration to transfer more ships to the British flag—fifteen to twenty hulls per month. Yet Roosevelt had been singing that tune for months; this latest promise, too, would go unfulfilled. Admiral King and MacArthur needed those hulls. The shadow of King and his Pacific strategy darkened every meeting, from the British standpoint. “The swing toward the Pacific is stronger than ever,” Brooke complained to his diary, “and before long they will be urging that we defeat Japan first!”
¹⁶⁹

Brooke believed the Americans felt they had been “led down the garden path” by Torch and Husky, “and now they are not going to be led astray again.” France and only France formed the core of George Marshall’s strategic plan. Yet there existed one simple and sublime way to satisfy Marshall as well as avoid a full American tilt toward the Pacific, and that was for the British to wait until the Americans insisted upon a date for the invasion of France, which they did, and then agree to it, which the British chiefs did. In doing so, Churchill and Brooke gave Roosevelt and Marshall what they had all along demanded. Acceding to the cross-Channel strategy ensured that the president’s and Marshall’s attention would be focused at least as much on the European front as on the Pacific. The date agreed upon was May 1, 1944. But whether this was to be the small-scale landing, Sledgehammer, or the larger investment, Roundup, was not decided. So much confusion attached to just what exactly these code names meant that at the State Department and around Eisenhower’s headquarters, the newly proposed operation was referred to as Roundhammer. Whatever they chose to call it, it meant that yet another pledge made at Casablanca, and the most important to Stalin—to put men somewhere into France by August 1943—would go begging for another year.
¹⁷⁰

Churchill did, however, have in mind a supreme commander for the invasion, Alan Brooke. That a British general should assume command seemed self-evidently correct to Churchill. After all, Britain had far more men, planes, tanks (albeit many were American built), and ships within the European and North African theaters than did the Americans. As well, at the time of Eisenhower’s appointment as commander of Torch, there had been an implied understanding (as Churchill saw it) between himself and Roosevelt that a Briton would command the invasion of France. A committee had been set up to plan that invasion (soon code-named Overlord), headed by an Englishman, Lieutenant General Frederick E. Morgan, whose title was COSSAC—Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (designate). Morgan shared with Marshall the belief in a straight-line approach to Germany. He took his assignment seriously and was in no
way inclined to put on a show of championing the merits of Overlord simply to placate (or deceive) the Americans.

Churchill and Brooke, too, were believers in Overlord, but only if the operation was undertaken when Germany was on the ropes, put there by the Red Army in the east, the RAF in the west, and Allied armies in Italy and the Balkans (if Churchill had his way). Although they believed it self-evidently true that to go into France prematurely invited calamity, they had agreed to the May 1, 1944, date without proposing the invasion be conditional upon certain objectives having first been met. This lapse in communication invited trouble with Marshall and Roosevelt, which duly arrived in coming months. Meanwhile, from Churchill’s perspective, if these conditions were met by the agreed-upon invasion date of May 1, 1944, Brooke should command Overlord. One of Brooke’s friends, upon return from Algiers, reported to him that Eisenhower had been quite firm in his belief that only two men were qualified to lead the invasion: George Marshall and Sir Alan Brooke. Brooke was therefore thrilled when, two weeks after Trident, Churchill told him of his likely promotion to supreme commander. The CIGS felt the appointment would be “the perfect climax to all my struggles to guide the strategy of the war” in order to make such an invasion of France possible. Sworn to secrecy by Churchill, Brooke did not tell even his wife.
¹⁷¹

While the Combined Chiefs of Staff clawed their way toward a consensus on strategy, the president and Churchill shadowboxed over postwar politics. As he had with Eden, Roosevelt outlined to Churchill his vision of postwar Europe, including a diminished France and an utterly destroyed Germany. This was the postwar Germany envisioned by Prof Lindemann and the American secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., an old Roosevelt friend and fellow gentleman farmer above the Hudson River. Morgenthau, a dour fellow whom Roosevelt called Mr. Morgue, did not hate Germans, but he hated evil, and he especially hated Nazis. His Treasury Department would help determine the fate of Germany, for Lend-Lease was a program with immense foreign policy implications, but at its core it was a banking construct, controlled by the Treasury Department. Treasury, therefore, not State, would take the lead in determining how best to make Germany pay—literally and figuratively—for its transgressions. Morgenthau intended to extract a crushingly heavy price. Such were Morgenthau’s sentiments. More significantly, Roosevelt shared them.

Churchill sought something else. During Trident he proposed to Roosevelt a plan for postwar security that consisted of a world council and three regional councils, Asian, North and South American, and European,
within which blocs and federated associations would form bulwarks against aggression. The greatest bloc of all would take the form of a “fraternal association” between America and Britain, including a continuation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. It was all very similar to the ideas he unveiled in his March broadcast, and that Eden conveyed to Roosevelt and Hull during his visit to Washington. Churchill also proposed a “Danubian federation,” with Vienna the seat of government, a democratic federation of states, including Bavaria, that would fill the void left by the disappearance of the old Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This new state, in loose alliance with Great Britain (ideally, in partnership with America) and a rejuvenated France, could defend itself against incursions by other powers, including a reinvigorated Germany and the Soviet Union, should Stalin manifest postwar expansionist proclivities. If Stalin proved true to his word and adhered to the twenty-year friendship treaty, France would assume its old role of containing Germany in the west while the Soviets contained it in the east. Germany (demilitarized), however, would emerge as a contributing partner to the economic rejuvenation of Europe. Even Stalin would need German steel after the war. Eden’s policy, taking shape at the Foreign Office, was based on three goals: to contain Germany, to resurrect France, and to be prepared to contain the Soviets. “These arrangements,” Eden wrote in a memorandum, “will be indispensable for our security whether or not the United States collaborate in the maintenance of peace on this side of the Atlantic.” To American ears, all of this had the ring of “spheres of influence” and “alliances,” both military and economic, the very structures that had led not only to the current war but to every European conflict since the early Middle Ages.
¹⁷²

Where Roosevelt and the State Department saw the greatest threat to postwar Anglo-American relations in Churchill’s old order, Churchill increasingly saw it in Stalin’s new order. How far west Stalin’s influence spread in Europe would initially be determined by where the Soviet and Anglo-American armies met at the end of the war. That was why postwar Anglo-French solidarity meant so much to London despite de Gaulle and his inability to get along with anyone. It meant little to Washington. Roosevelt believed he did not need Frenchmen (especially de Gaulle) to win the war, but Churchill needed a resurgent France to win the peace in Europe. As much as he disliked de Gaulle, he understood that the people of occupied France saw de Gaulle as their savior. Reports circulating in London claimed 80 percent of Frenchmen considered Charles de Gaulle their “symbol of resistance.” Roosevelt in turn, and based on Robert Murphy’s facile reports from Africa, considered such sentiments nothing more than Gaullist propaganda. He made his thoughts on the subject sneeringly clear in a memorandum he prepared for Churchill during Trident: “He [de Gaulle]
may be an honest fellow but he has the Messianic complex.” The people of France were behind the Free French movement, Roosevelt believed, but not behind de Gaulle, whose “conduct continues to be more and more aggravated.” It was clear to Roosevelt that “when we get into France itself we will have to regard it as a military occupation.” He proposed to dump de Gaulle and his French National Committee and oversee the formation of “an entirely new French Committee and subject its membership to the approval of you and me.” Churchill later recalled that “not a day went by” in Washington without Roosevelt expressing his “stern” feelings about de Gaulle.
¹⁷³