The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (437 page)

At Quebec, in the days that followed, Churchill and the British chiefs managed to extract four qualifications from the Americans: Overlord would take place only if the invasion forces did not face more than twelve mobile German divisions, including three on the beaches; and only if the Germans could not build up their forces by fifteen divisions within two months. As well, Germany’s airpower had to be reduced before the invasion could take place; and artificial harbors had to be operational in order to reinforce and supply the initial force. The British saw these conditions as sound planning, especially as the plan for Overlord called for only three seaborne and two parachute divisions to land on the first day. The Americans saw them as loopholes through which Churchill and the British would try to escape their obligations. Still, Marshall and the Americans signed off, for in spite of the conditions, the Americans had demanded and been granted one of their own: if needed, seven divisions that were now in North Africa and Sicily would be siphoned away for Overlord. Brooke opposed this, telling Marshall that “by giving full priority to the cross-Channel preparation you might well cripple the Italian theater and thus render it unable to contain German forces necessary to render the cross-Channel operation possible.” Brooke’s logic was sound, but Marshall and the Americans carried the day. In fact, they added a new dimension to the French strategy by proposing an invasion by two divisions on the Mediterranean French coast in support of Overlord. The operation—named Anvil—was intended to draw German troops away from Normandy. Not addressed for the time being was the question of where those two divisions would come from. It soon became clear to Churchill that they would come from the Italian campaign.
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Churchill later wrote that his decision to endorse an American commander for Overlord was based on his agreement with Roosevelt’s argument that the Americans were likely to put more men on the beaches than the British were; therefore the command should go to an American. Yet
Churchill and the British chiefs also presumed that Eisenhower would replace Marshall, and that Alexander in turn would replace Eisenhower in the Mediterranean. Churchill’s logic (and motive) in accepting second billing for Overlord was consistent with his multifaceted strategy. He considered Overlord to be but one of several ventures, critical, to be sure, but not necessarily destined to be more significant than any other. In fact, the success of Overlord, as Churchill saw it, would depend upon the success of all the other operations. Handing over command of Overlord to the Americans placated Washington and opened the way for the British to command most, perhaps all, of Churchill’s hoped-for ventures—in the Aegean, the Balkans, Burma, Sumatra, the Middle East, northern Norway, and, most important, Italy, where the Allies had more men in combat than would be going ashore in the early days of Overlord. And, as the Americans already suspected, if the agreed-upon conditions for undertaking the invasion of France were not met, there would be no invasion, leaving the Americans with the command of a nonentity, while Churchill held the rest of the marbles.
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But Churchill did not yet grasp that the supreme commander of Overlord would necessarily become de facto supreme commander of all Anglo-American forces in Europe, with veto power over secondary operations and authority to move men and machines throughout the theater in support of Overlord. Churchill thought only in terms of putting men ashore in France, and of holding that position before advancing with caution while other killing strokes were made in Norway, Italy, and the Balkans, and by the Russians in the east and the RAF and American Eighth Air Force over Berlin. Yet, if his Mulberry harbors performed as planned and the port of Cherbourg was captured, tens upon thousands of men and hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies would land in Normandy in the weeks following the invasion. The commander of such a magnificent force—armies within army groups—could only supplant all others. George Marshall understood this. The command of a lifetime within his grasp, he and his wife began quietly sending furniture from their Maryland post to the family home in Leesburg, Virginia, in anticipation of their move to London.
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By handing the command over to Marshall, Churchill denied Brooke his dream of a decisive role in the destruction of Hitler’s armies (as well as his escape from Churchill’s direct influence). On August 15, the CIGS scribbled in his diary: “Winston gave in, in spite of having previously offered me the job!” Churchill explained his reasoning while he and Brooke stood on a terrace of the Citadel high above the Saint Lawrence, and then asked Brooke how he felt about the decision. “Disappointed” was about all Brooke could muster. Years later he wrote, “Not for one moment did he [Churchill] realize what this meant to me. He offered no sympathy, no
regrets at having had to change his mind.” It took several months for Brooke to recover from this “crashing blow,” in part because he suspected Churchill had traded command of Overlord for the appointment of Mountbatten as supreme commander in Southeast Asia. In this, Brooke was partially correct, but Churchill’s horse trading with Roosevelt in regard to Asia was more political than military. Roosevelt got on famously with Mountbatten; the American press adored the man. By sending Mountbatten to take charge, Churchill could claim the British were doing their part against Tokyo.
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E
ach night at Quebec, Brooke found a new way to tell his diary what he thought of that day’s discussions: “long,” “trying,” “poisonous,” especially as pertained to the Japanese war, and especially as pertained to Churchill’s approach to the Pacific theater, which Brooke described as “chasing hares.” Where Churchill wanted to nibble at the edges of the Japanese empire, Nimitz and MacArthur wanted to drive from the South Pacific straight to Tokyo, with MacArthur on the left taking aim at the Philippines, and Nimitz on the right island-hopping northward. The Americans therefore demanded more from the British in Burma in support of Chiang, who they believed would prove his worth by holding down Japanese armies in China while the main thrust came from the South Pacific. China, for the Americans, had a vital supporting role in the whole show. But Churchill, Gil Winant reported to Washington, “was quite willing to see China collapse.” The Americans suspected the British were fighting in Burma, not for China but for the restoration of British imperial holdings. This, the Americans could not be a party to; the greater the American presence in Southeast Asia, the greater the risk that Roosevelt would be accused of aiding and abetting British imperialism.

Each side was driven by conflicting political strategies, with the result that the strictly military objectives they shared were often made orphans to politics. Wingate’s six thousand raiders, Stilwell’s Chinese troops in India, and the Fourteenth Army, under General Billy Slim, found themselves the forgotten men in a forgotten theater. Mountbatten’s presence would signal a change; Churchill could claim he sent his best man, his “triphibian” warrior, to take up the reins. To placate the Americans, Stilwell would go in as Mountbatten’s deputy. Stilwell, caught in the middle and denied a real opportunity to kill his hated Japs, reacted with his usual fury. In a symbolic thumb in the eye to the British, he refused to stand and sing when “God Save the King” was played. After a plea from Marshall, he
agreed to stand for the ceremony, but he would not sing. As for his new supreme commander, Stilwell considered Mountbatten to be a “limey mountebank” and “as dumb as that thick-headed cousin of his, the King.” Such sentiments lent credence to a saying Churchill liked to toss out over drinks: “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.”
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The same could be said of Brooke’s difficulties in fighting a war in harness with Churchill. The meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff were contentious, but progress was made. Then, just as Brooke appeared to reach an understanding with the Americans on the need for a general plan for the war against Japan, Churchill insisted again on capturing northern Sumatra, and letting events elsewhere play out on their own. Brooke exploded to his diary, “He [Churchill] refused to accept that any general plan was necessary, recommended a purely opportunistic policy…. I feel cooked and unable to face another day of conferences.” Pug Ismay, Churchill’s liaison with Brooke, found himself caught in the middle of this clash of supremely different personalities. Churchill, well aware of Brooke’s disdain of his strategic talents, once dispatched Ismay to ask Brooke why he so hated the prime minister. Ismay returned with Brooke’s reply; he in fact loved the prime minister but could not serve him well without disputing that which he disagreed with. Churchill listened, bowed his head, and whispered, “Dear Brookie.”
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On August 17, Alexander cabled Churchill the news that the last Germans had been flung out of Sicily. The campaign was over; it had lasted just thirty-eight days. But the victory was incomplete: Kesselring’s 60,000 men had escaped to Italy. That day, the new Italian government scrambled to meet surrender terms laid down by Eisenhower. The problem, ironic as Churchill saw it, was that the Italian negotiator in Lisbon, General Giuseppe Castellano, wanted to learn from Eisenhower’s lieutenant, Bedell (“Beetle”) Smith, how best Italy could take the field against the Germans, whom Castellano, a Sicilian, hated. But Smith replied that he could only discuss unconditional surrender. With the invasion of the toe and heel of Italy now scheduled to take place in two weeks, Churchill worried that a quisling government might take power in Rome, or that the Germans would occupy Rome and take direct control. He wanted Eisenhower to convey to the Italians that if, when the Allies landed, they encountered Italian troops fighting Germans, Italy would be welcomed as a co-belligerent in the war against Hitler. But Castellano wanted assurances; the Italian
forze amate
stood no chance in a fight with the Wehrmacht. And Eisenhower could not deliver any such guarantee until the Italians surrendered, unconditionally. Eisenhower also sought reassurance from Castellano that Mussolini would not reappear in the guise of savior. When asked by Smith
where Mussolini was being kept, Castellano replied, “Hitler would like to know, too.” In fact, Hitler soon learned that Il Duce was being held at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a mountaintop ski resort in Abruzzo, and put plans into place for the very resurrection Churchill feared.
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In late June, an RAF reconnaissance flight over Peenemünde, on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, had photographed a rocket that the Germans had failed to camouflage. With that, Duncan Sandys and Churchill finally knew what manner of vehicle Hitler was building on the Baltic coast, though they lacked any knowledge of weight, speed, propellant, and explosive capacity. On the night of August 17, more than five hundred British heavy bombers hit Peenemünde. The RAF sought to destroy not only the laboratories and test facilities but also the housing where engineers and technicians and thousands of slave laborers lived. Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer, had approved the transfer of slave laborers, mostly Poles and Russians, to work at the site after the director of the rocket program, a boyish-looking thirty-one-year-old aeronautics engineer and rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun, argued that if the supply of workers could not be maintained, neither could the rocket program (code-named A-4). The RAF raid killed one scientist and several hundred slave laborers. Speer and von Braun soon scattered A-4 research and production facilities throughout Germany, including far under the Hartz mountains. Engineering tests on the A-4 continued at Peenemünde, and on a simpler flying bomb, essentially a small pilotless jet aircraft. This weapon was code-named
Flakzielgert 76
(Anti-Aircraft Target Device 76) to throw British intelligence off the scent. Once the engineering bugs were worked out, they were to be produced at the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben, near Hamburg. Hitler was so enthused about his new weapons, and so impressed with young von Braun, that he ordered Speer to find a way to make the young scientist a full professor. Meanwhile, at Peenemünde, the Germans did not clear away the rubble from the RAF raid, presuming that RAF reconnaissance flights would conclude from the damage that Peenemünde had been abandoned. The British did exactly that, and did not return for nine months. By then von Braun’s rockets were almost ready for deployment.
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