The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (443 page)

O
n October 3 Harriman departed Washington for his new assignment as American ambassador to the Kremlin. He stopped in London for a few days, but only to take his leave. Roosevelt had been pressing him to take the job for months. Since March the Russians had ignored the current ambassador, Admiral William H. Standley, after Standley disagreed publicly with Stalin’s declaration that the Red Army alone was bearing the full brunt of the war. Standley, whose remarks had not been cleared by Hull, urged
Izvestia
to publish full and honest accountings of Lend-Lease aid,
including 85,000 trucks, 6,100 aircraft, and 8,600 tanks shipped to Russia. The Russian press soon made mention of Lend-Lease, but within weeks came the Katyn incident, the abandonment of Roundup, and the Anglo-American exclusion of Russia from the Italian negotiations. The Moscow post needed new blood; with reluctance Harriman took it. It meant good-bye to London and to Churchill, whose company Harriman thoroughly enjoyed, and to Pamela, whose bed he enjoyed (the lovers’ hiatus lasted almost three decades, until 1971, when Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward became the third Mrs. Harriman). Soon after Harriman left for Moscow, Ed Murrow and his wife, Janet, began frequenting Pamela’s salon where, not yet twenty-four, she led England’s best and the brightest in discussions that parsed the political mysteries of their age. She spoke French fluently, had dazzling blue eyes, a fabulous figure, and met Henry James’s ideal of the English beauty: a complexion “as bright as a sunbeam after rain.” She exerted a strong gravitational pull on men, including Murrow. Soon, Murrow and Pamela were conducting their own private salon. Murrow’s boss at CBS, William S. Paley, who also fell under Pamela’s spell, later called her the greatest courtesan of the twentieth century. It was meant as a compliment. Whatever Churchill knew of all this he kept to himself, for he cared deeply for Pamela, who, by delivering to Winston a fair-haired blue-eyed grandson, could do no wrong in his estimation.
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Harriman, accompanied by his daughter Kathleen, arrived in Moscow on the eighteenth. His first duty was to open up the ambassador’s residence, Spaso House, to Eden, Molotov, and Hull, who were about to convene the first meeting of the Allied foreign ministers. The talks were intended as a prelude to the first meeting of the Big Three the following month in Tehran, although Stalin still held out for Moscow because, as Molotov explained to Eden, the marshal was “indispensable” to the Red Army’s fight. Roosevelt, fearing Tehran would find him so far afield that he’d be unable to meet his constitutional obligations to remain in contact with his government, requested that they meet in Ankara or Basra, but Stalin held firm. Eden, at first skeptical of Molotov’s assessment, soon witnessed Stalin in action and concluded that Molotov was not exaggerating. Stalin was in regular contact with his generals on the front lines, and was deeply involved with the planning of an operation in Crimea. Where Roosevelt happily delegated military strategy to his lieutenants and Churchill unhappily did likewise, Stalin was a hands-on commander in chief. Urged by Eden, he finally committed to go as far as Tehran, but no farther. Stalin was not in a giving mood. He wanted guarantees on the second front, and he demanded the Arctic convoys be resumed.
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In the spring the Admiralty had proposed, and Churchill accepted, a cessation of Arctic convoys, infuriating Stalin in the process. Now in the
autumn, with
Tirpitz
crippled weeks earlier by an audacious attack by three British mini-submarines, and the U-boats having all but disappeared from the Arctic routes, Churchill pushed a reluctant Admiralty to send four large convoys to Murmansk, one per month until February. Presuming that Stalin would welcome the news, Churchill sent a message along to Moscow. Stalin, in a blunt response, claimed Britain had “an obligation” to send the four convoys and virtually demanded they make the run to Murmansk immediately. The Foreign Office found the telegram “outrageous.” Churchill refused even to respond, handing it back to the new Soviet ambassador, Feodor Gousev. But to Eden, in Moscow, Churchill cabled that he thought the Soviet “machine,” not Stalin, was behind the tone of the cable, in part because it took twelve days to prepare. “The Soviet machine is quite convinced it can get everything by bullying, and I am sure it is a matter of some importance to show that this is not necessarily always true.” Stalin shrugged off Churchill’s refusal, telling Eden, “I understand Mr. Churchill does not want to correspond with me. Well, let it be so.” Then Stalin came at Eden over the only matter that really mattered: the second front. It was exactly as Eden had predicted at Quebec. Unless Stalin got his assurances, and until he believed that the Anglo-Americans were fighting the same war on the same Continent, he was content to let the West stew over the two questions that would not go away: Would the Red Army stop at its borders after expelling the Germans, and would Moscow seek a separate peace with Hitler?
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To placate Stalin, Churchill instructed Eden to reassure the marshal that three British divisions had been pulled from the Mediterranean for deployment in Overlord, in accordance with the Quebec agreement. Yet he also informed Eden (but not Stalin) that he objected to this depletion of his forces and that he was gathering four more divisions to “repair the loss.” “This is what happens when battles are governed by lawyers’ agreements, and persisted in without regard to the ever-changing fortunes of war.” It fell to Eden to convince Stalin that Overlord had the full support of the prime minister, when in fact, that very week, Churchill told the Chiefs of Staff he wished to delay Overlord if doing so meant that the battle in Italy (and the Balkans, if he only could get there) would be “nourished and fought until it is won.” “We will do our very best for Overlord,” he told Eden, but “it is of no use planning defeat in the field in order to give temporary political satisfaction.” Three days later, he told Eden, as he had Smuts and the King, “There is of course no question of abandoning Overlord, which will remain our principal operation for 1944.” Yet delay amounted to abandonment. Overlord might safely be pushed back to June, or even early July 1944, but any further delay would take it into the spring of 1945. That, Stalin could not abide.
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The Anglo-American commitment to Overlord gave Stalin leverage. He used it to effect on Eden and Hull. Eden came to Moscow with hopes of parsing Stalin’s intentions as to Russia’s postwar borders, but he was hobbled by the refusal of the London Poles and their new leader, Stanisław Mikołajczyk (who had not been invited to Moscow), to allow him to even discuss the matter. Eden acceded to their wishes, yet it was clear that Stalin, too, saw no need to discuss anything. He had already made up his mind. As divulged by
Izvestia,
he intended to preserve his territorial gains of 1939 and to exercise great influence in the “security belt” of the Balkans.
Izvestia
claimed that when the second front was launched, and only then, “will it be easier to decide all other necessary questions.” For five hundred years, Western Europe had maintained a cordon sanitaire of small client states as a buffer between itself and the Russians, who Europeans considered an Asiatic race. Stalin intended to turn the tables; the new cordon, under his control, would serve as a buffer against the West, especially Germany. Indeed, a few weeks later Czechoslovak president Eduard Beneš, justifiably wary of France and England, signed a twenty-year treaty of mutual assistance with Stalin.
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Together, Hull and Eden might have brought some political will to bear on the question of borders, but to Eden’s amazement, Hull dismissed the boundary questions as “a Pandora’s box of infinite trouble” and refused to discuss the matter. Harriman offered Eden his full support if he pressed the issue with Stalin, but Eden, respecting the decision of Mikołajczyk, chose not to. Hull proceeded to spend his political capital—all of it—by demanding that Stalin acknowledge China as the fourth power in the nebulous four-power postwar league under discussion. Stalin was only too happy to oblige. He was not at war with Japan. If by signing a four-party declaration of solidarity in fighting “respective enemies” and pledging to participate in a postwar international peacekeeping body he could make the boundary issues disappear, he’d sign, and did. Hull was quite pleased that Stalin had not even raised the question of frontiers, but, Harriman later wrote, Hull failed to grasp the essential truth: Stalin considered the issue settled. The Moscow Accord, though celebrated in Washington and London, was symbolic at best. Stalin might as well have signed it with disappearing ink. But the table had been set for Tehran. An agenda had been worked out for the Big Three to work through. Roosevelt had gained acceptance of his nascent international organization, or at least gained Stalin’s willingness to talk about it. Stalin had gained a pledge by the Anglo-Americans to open the second front in the spring of 1944. England and Churchill had gained nothing, and the Polish question had simply been postponed.
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B
y early November both the Italian campaign and the air campaign over Germany were flagging. This was not news Churchill wanted to deliver to Stalin in a few weeks’ time. In mid-October, Ultra decrypts had revealed Hitler’s decision to strengthen and hold his positions in Italy rather than stage a gradual, fighting retreat. Hitler ordered Kesselring’s strength increased from sixteen to twenty-three divisions. That bit of intelligence guaranteed that Eisenhower would not fight in both the Aegean and Italy. News mid-month that Erwin Rommel had been sent to Yugoslavia to command German forces there only reinforced Eisenhower’s decision to avoid Rhodes and the Balkans. He considered the mission in Italy fulfilled by the capture of Naples and the Foggia airfields, and the establishment of the 120-mile line that ran from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Aegean. Eisenhower and Marshall had always seen a secondary and diversionary role for Italian operations—more Germans sent to Italy meant fewer Germans to oppose Overlord. Hitler’s decision to reinforce Kesselring, Eisenhower later wrote, “was a great advantage to the Allies elsewhere.” He believed that although the Italian campaign was “a distinctly subsidiary operation… the results it attained in the actual defeat of Germany were momentous, almost incalculable.” Churchill, too, endorsed the idea of drawing Germans away from France and into Italy, telling Roosevelt so in a telegram on October 26: “The fact that the enemy have diverted such powerful forces to this theater vindicates our strategy.” Yet Churchill, seeking to fight far more than a holding action, also told Roosevelt, “At all costs we must win Rome and the airfields north of it.” Roosevelt, committed only to Overlord, did not reply. Eisenhower did not have a strategy (or orders) to get to Rome, and the Fifth Army lacked the means. Since taking Naples on October 1, the left flank of the Fifth Army had managed to slog northward about thirty miles; it had maintained its mile-a-day pace for almost two months.
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As October went out, Mark Clark’s army straddled Highways 6 and 7, about twelve miles south of the town of Cassino and the routes north to Rome. At Cassino, Highway 6 turned north through the Liri Valley. And there, Monte Cassino, a Benedictine monastery called the abbey of abbeys by Benedictines, sat atop the mountain. Its oldest parts dated from the sixth century, when Benedict of Nursia and twelve disciples set to work building their refuge. Clark had to take the monastery in order to get on the road to Rome. But before he could take Cassino, he had to take other
hills and towns along Highway 6—Monte Camino, Monte Lungo, Monte Sammucro, and the villages of San Pietro Infine and San Vittore. Although Clark had almost 250,000 men under his command, by late October, ferocious German resistance, freezing rains, and mud had stopped his army. On November 11, Clark called a two-week halt.
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The air war over Germany brought its own disappointments. Operation Pointblank, the June decision to target German aircraft factories, was proving more costly than anyone, especially the Americans, had foreseen. American casualties were kept low as long as their B-17s flew missions protected by their P47C Thunderbolt fighters, which when fitted with a reserve fuel tank had an operational radius of five hundred miles, to beyond the Ruhr Valley and back. But when the Thunderbolts peeled away for home, the B-17s suffered horrific losses. During the second week of October, 148 went down with their ten-man crews, including 60 of 291 sent to destroy the ball-bearing factory at Schweinfurt. Pointblank was proving deadly and ineffectual. Bomber Harris continued his night raids against German cities. But his losses also mounted. The efficacy of massed attacks against German cities was in doubt. Churchill, knowing that Stalin approved of the raids, encouraged Harris to pursue his strategy. It was the only help Britain could give Stalin. Harris sent his air fleets to Kassel, where three thousand died and fires burned for a week; four thousand died in Würzburg; six thousand in Darmstadt; nine thousand in Weser; twelve thousand in Magdeburg. In November, Harris threw his bombers at Berlin, which the RAF visited sixteen times between November and March. The aircrews paid dearly. It was a price Churchill accepted because throughout 1943, the RAF, alone among Anglo-American forces, had inflicted pain on the German heartland. Anglo-American soldiers and sailors were fighting, but not well enough or near enough to Germany to satisfy Stalin, with whom Churchill had an appointment in Tehran.
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O
n November 12, Churchill and his usual troupe departed Plymouth aboard HMS
Renown,
final destination Alexandria, with ports of call at Gibraltar, Algiers, and Malta. Sarah accompanied her father as his ADC, and Gil Winant came along, since the agenda in Tehran would treat of both political and military issues. Winant therefore would find himself for several weeks in close proximity to Sarah, and the romantic affections they shared would have to remain unrequited in public. If Churchill learned of the affair, he never mentioned it. After calling on Gibraltar,
Renown
made for Algiers, where during his short layover Churchill did not see fit to meet
with de Gaulle, who was in residence. De Gaulle was outraged, doubly so because Churchill
had
thought to invite General Joseph Georges for a chat. De Gaulle considered Georges, unfairly, to be one of the architects of France’s defeat in 1940. Duff Cooper, who had just been named minister to the French Committee of National Liberation, later wrote that de Gaulle, “ever on the lookout for an insult,” had found one in Churchill’s breach of etiquette.
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Renown
made Malta late in the afternoon of the seventeenth. It is fitting that Churchill spent the next two nights on the little island that had taken such a long and savage beating at the hands of the Luftwaffe, for the next day, the RAF conducted its largest raid yet over Germany. Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, and Berlin came in for it. Two weeks earlier Bomber Harris had briefed Churchill on cumulative RAF and Luftwaffe bomb damage to German and British cities. Whereas Coventry had lost 5 percent of the city center to German bombs, Hamburg had been 75 percent destroyed. As had Malta; its houses, quays, and roads—all constructed of brittle Maltese limestone—had for the most part been blasted back into the fossil particulates whence they came. But the fact that Churchill could take his rest on the island meant that the Maltese had come through the worst of it.
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