Churchill 1940-1945

by Walter Reid

15

  The End of Wavell. Auchinleck

  In North Africa during the early summer of 1941 Wavell appeared to an increasingly frustrated Prime Minister to be doing very little and saying nothing about what he was doing. Eventually, under pressure and earlier than he or Dill would have wished, Wavell began BATTLEAXE on 15 June. Material assistance including 238 tanks and 43 fighters had arrived in Egypt in the TIGER convoy on 12 May, and were probably not fully operational. TIGER had been rushed through the Mediterranean at Churchill’s insistence following Rommel’s advance, and now he wanted the weapons used without delay, ignoring the need to modify them for desert warfare and to train troops on how to use them.

  The Prime Minister recalled Foch’s resolution in 1918, and tried to put heart into his own generals with a lengthy Directive of 28 May. He sought to imbue them with his own determination. He referred to a potential loss of Egypt and the Middle East as

  a disaster of the first magnitude to Great Britain, second only to successful invasion and final conquest … It is to be impressed on all ranks, especially the highest, that the life and honour of Great Britain depends upon the successful defence of Egypt. It is not to be expected that the British forces of the land, sea and air in the Mediterranean would wish to survive so vast and shameful defeat as would be entailed by our expulsion from Egypt, having regard to the difficulties of the enemy and his comparatively small numbers …

  All plans for evacuation of Egypt or for closing or destroying the Suez Canal are to be called in and kept under the strict personal control of headquarters. No whisper of such plans is to be allowed. No surrenders by officers or men will be considered tolerable unless at least 50 per cent casualties are sustained by the unit or force in question. According to Napoleon’s maxim, ‘when a man is caught alone or unarmed, a surrender may be made’. But Generals and Staff Officers surprised by the enemy are to use their pistols in self-defence. The honour of a wounded man is safe …

  One can feel the sense of frustration. He was convinced that the Germans were fighting with more courage and skill and under better generalship than the British. He believed that the higher levels of command were of poor quality as a result of the losses of the Great War, and permeated by a mood of caution and defeatism. He was requiring no one do to more than he himself would have done. But the reaction of the Director of Military Operations was to take the time and trouble to draft a Note on the Directive, criticising it petulantly and complaining about interference in military etiquette. Of Paragraph 4 of the Directive, for example, which started, ‘The Army of the Nile is to fight with no thought of retreat or withdrawal’, he felt it worth saying, ‘The first sentence is all right as a directive to the troops. But it is not all right as a directive to the Commander-in-Chief.’ No wonder the Prime Minister lost his temper with his military advisers.1

  Wavell was pressed to move too soon and he gave in to the pressure. His communication skills failed again. He managed to combine the worst of two worlds: he fought before he should have done without appearing to have the will to fight. His troops lacked training for desert warfare and his resources were inadequate. Rommel said that Wavell had planned BATTLEAXE well and was distinguished from other British Army Commanders by his preparedness to deploy his forces without concern for the moves that his opponent might make. But he cannot be relieved of responsibility for the failure of BATTLEAXE. Ultimately it was his decision whether or not he was ready to launch the operation. And if it had not been for Churchill, the Chiefs of Staff would have diverted much of such material as he had to the Far East, for Malaya and Singapore. At any rate, it was clear that Wavell’s days were at an end.

  Dill, who had consistently backed Wavell, and urged Churchill to do the same, finally tended to the view that he had not been badly treated by London. In an important letter, which tried to explain what Middle East commanders stubbornly failed to understand, he wrote to Wavell’s successor:

  From Whitehall, great pressure was applied to Wavell to induce him to act rapidly … the fact is that the Commander in the Field will always be subject to great and often undue pressure from his Government. Wellington suffered from it: Haig suffered from it: Wavell suffered from it. Nothing will stop it. In fact, pressure from those who alone see the picture as a whole and carry the main responsibility may be necessary. It was, I think, right to press Wavell against his will to send a force to Baghdad, but in other directions he was, I feel, over-pressed.

  You may be quite sure that I will back your military opinion in local problems, but here the pressure often comes from very broad political considerations; these are sometimes so powerful as to make it necessary to take risks, which, from a purely military point of view, may be seen as inadvisable. The main point is that you should make it quite clear what risks are involved if a course of action is forced upon you which, from a military point of view, is undesirable. You may even find it necessary, in the extreme case, to dissociate yourself from the consequences.2

  Wavell never behaved as if he understood this, and his successor was only a little better. He took his dismissal well. The signal arrived while he was shaving, and it was read out to him. He said, ‘I think the Prime Minister is quite right: this theatre wants a new eye and a new hand’, and he went on shaving.3

  Was Wavell’s dismissal merited? On the one hand he had built up a viable command from nothing in the course of two years, had conquered the whole of Italian East Africa, seized Cyrenaica and taken 400,000 prisoners. On the other hand, his victories were generally against poor opponents, and he went on to lose Cyrenaica, Greece and Crete. While he had a splendid three months at the beginning of 1941, little went right for him thereafter. The reason that he was dismissed, and should indeed have been dismissed, was simply that his conduct, and his concept of how a professional soldier should behave towards the politicians, was not in tune with the realities of a total war fought by a government elected by universal suffrage in a modern democracy. Beyond that, like many soldiers in the Second World War, he deluded himself by imagining that matters of strategy, and even of grand tactics, were too complicated for civilians, and quite failed to understand that civilians might handle them as well as, or sometimes even better than, the soldiers.

  In the aftermath of his dismissal, Churchill came to realise something of Wavell’s heavy burdens: ‘It was only after the disasters had occurred in Cyrenaica, in Crete, and in the Desert that I realised how over-loaded and under-sustained General Wavell’s organisation was. Wavell tried his best; but the handling machine at his disposal was too weak to enable him to cope with the vast mass of business which four or five simultaneous campaigns imposed on him.’4 Oliver Lyttelton and General Haining were now appointed to stiffen the administrative machinery in the Middle East, the former with political responsibilities and the latter to look after rearward administration and supply. The fact that the Prime Minister made these comments and these appointments after the dismissal simply point up Wavell’s woeful failure to communicate properly with London.

  Dill warned Churchill that Wavell might say that he was being blamed for the government’s mistakes. It seemed best, then, to swap Wavell with his successor, Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief in India, and not to allow him home leave. The swap was made against the wishes of Amery, the Secretary of State for India and Burma, who wanted to keep Auchinleck, rather than the ‘failed’ Wavell. Dill was also against the swap. When it went ahead he warned Auchinleck that Churchill would want results and want them quickly.

  The Auk was a slightly unlikely choice as Wavell’s replacement. Churchill had come across him during the Norwegian campaign and had not liked his caution. Auchinleck recalled meeting Churchill in the War Office at the start of the campaign, when he was greeted unenthusiastically: ‘I thought you were on your way General!’ Churchill had been impressed at the time of Basra by his readiness to move troops from his command to the Middle East, but Auchinleck’s experience was of India and the Indian Army. He did not know many senior British
officers well. As a result he made some appointments that proved unwise, such as that of Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham as Commander of the Eighth Army. Cunningham had almost no experience with tanks and had difficulty in adapting to the scale of the operations he had to deal with. Cunningham was obliged to learn entirely new skills in a period of just two months. He could not operate a radio-telephone, much less command rapidly moving armoured warfare. His health suffered under the strain.

  Churchill had pressed strongly for Wilson rather than Cunningham, but Auchinleck flatly refused. In The Second World War, Churchill recorded his regret that his advice, ‘subsequently repeated’ was not taken.5

  Such examples of his wishes rebutted are a salutary reminder that Churchill was far from an all-powerful warlord. He said to Eden in July 1941, ‘Remember that on my breast are the medals of the Dardanelles, Antwerp, Dakar and Greece’. He never overruled the Chiefs of Staff on any major issue. He remembered Fisher’s resignation in 1915 too well.

  Churchill described Auchinleck as ‘a lively fish’, in contrast to Wavell, ‘a tired one’. Or, in a changed metaphor, ‘it might be said that we had ridden the willing horse to a standstill’. Wavell did not look tired to Auchinleck: ‘Wavell showed no signs of tiredness at all. He was always the same. I think he was first class; in spite of his silences, he made a tremendous impact on his troops. I have a very great admiration for him … but he was given impossible tasks.’6

  From the start things did not go well with Auchinleck. He incurred criticism for sending quality troops to Cyprus, in defiance of Churchill’s arguments. Very soon after his appointment on 21 June 1941, his caution started to disappoint the Prime Minister. He stubbornly refused to have recourse to common-sense diplomacy. He ended an exchange of signals with the blunt statement that ‘I must repeat that to launch an offensive with the inadequate means at present at our disposal is not, in my opinion, a justifiable operation of war’. He knew that the Prime Minister thought himself pretty knowledgeable about operations of war, and he could easily have been more tactful, but like Wavell he stuck to the principle that it was for him, the soldier, and not Churchill, the civilian, to run a military campaign. That could no longer be the case.

  Churchill contemplated sacking Auchinleck even before the month of July was out.7 But he could not go through the generals quite as fast as that. So Auchinleck was summoned to London where he convinced the Chiefs of Staff, if not Churchill, that the forthcoming offensive, CRUSADER, should be delayed until November.

  There is much testy correspondence on both sides regarding the speed of tank turnaround and availability of aircrew, but on the whole Auchinleck tended to be irritated in silence by Churchill’s interventions. He ignored advice from Ismay to write ‘long personal chatty letters occasionally. I know normally you would recoil in your modesty from doing so’. Dill, too, tried to make Auchinleck understand that he had a diplomatic function as well as a military one, and that he must take Churchill with him. But the Auk, like his predecessor, failed to understand the nature of total war. When, for instance, Churchill wrote to ask why a particular division had been sent to Cyprus, he haughtily replied, ‘If you wish I can send you detailed reasons which actuated me and which appeared to me incontestable. I hope you will leave me complete discretion concerning dispositions of this kind.’ One understands his irritation, but this was no way to address an embattled Prime Minister whose responsibilities were infinitely greater than his. He saw the conduct of the war as a matter for military men in which his political masters should intervene only to give the broadest of directions. Although he and Wavell were aware of Enigma, they were necessarily supplied only with the information that was directly relevant to what they were doing. They did not allow that they were unaware of a larger picture, on the basis of which many of the government’s instructions were based.

  Paradoxically, much of the Ultra decrypts emanating at this time from North Africa consisted of complaints from Rommel about inadequate resources, both in terms of materiel and personnel. Churchill and the War Cabinet believed what Rommel was saying; German High Command did not, and they were right. Rommel was simply complaining to his government, as commanders tend to do.

  Auchinleck’s appraisal of his own forces was more accurate. He could see that his troops were exhausted and their morale low. His guns could not destroy the German panzer tanks, to which his own tanks were hugely inferior. He was horrified by the decadence of the idle staff setup in Cairo. Egypt was not at war, and the extravagance and luxury of life in Cairo is well described in many novels of the period.8 The changes he attempted to impose on his officers made him unpopular. His austerity and the desire to share the privations of his men may have made him popular with the rank and file, but was not appreciated by some officers: ‘Any fool can be uncomfortable.’ Even his decision to leave his wife behind in India so that he could devote himself wholeheartedly to his responsibilities was misunderstood, and alas contributed to the marital break-up which caused him so much pain.

  In summary, what happened next in the desert was that Auchinleck began his offensive, CRUSADER, on 18 November 1941. Just as Churchill pushed Auchinleck, Auchinleck in turn pushed the army commander, Cunningham, to move earlier than he wanted. Cunning-ham’s nerve had broken by 23 November, and he invited Auchinleck forward for consultation. The Auk found that Cunningham had lost the confidence of his subordinate commanders, and on 26 November replaced him with Major-General Neil Ritchie. But it was Auchinleck’s own intervention in CRUSADER that turned the course of the battle. He sensed – it was a brilliant, intuitive conclusion – that Rommel had run out of steam and that instead of breaking off the offensive, as Cunningham had wanted, it was worth risking continuation.

  Auchinleck’s action was critical and his assessment of what CRUSADER could do was both bold and accurate. He needed a strong nerve; fortunately he had that. Rommel performed an audacious counter-stroke, not as expected against the head of the British force, but in a swing round it, to attack the units in rear that communicated with Egypt. What General Norrie called ‘the Matruh Stakes’ began, as units scampered back to adapt to the new shape of the battle. There was flap everywhere except around the Auk himself. He was convinced that Rommel was making a desperate last effort, with few tanks and no supplies. As Cunningham left to enter hospital, suffering from severe strain, the war correspondent Eve Curie, coming across the Auk by chance, was struck by his quiet and assured demeanour.9

  At the end of the year CRUSADER was over. It was a success to the extent that the Germans had again abandoned Cyrenaica. There were some setbacks, but all the same the Afrika Korps had retreated and lost all the territory gained by Rommel, apart from two garrisons. The siege of Tobruk was ended. By the last day of 1941 the British frontline returned to El Agheila, where it had been in February. But British casualties were higher than those of the Axis forces, and there was an unacceptably high loss of tanks. Morale had been very greatly damaged and would take much time to recover. Eighth Army was seriously weakened.

  Auchinleck’s troops did not have a chance to settle in to their new positions. He seriously misread the situation after Pearl Harbor and withdrew experienced formations to serve in Syria, Palestine and the Delta. He overestimated Axis losses and in two cables of 12 January 1942 told Churchill that the enemy were numerically weak, tired and disorganised.10 In reality, Rommel had shortened his lines of communication and received important supplies of new panzers, armoured cars and aircraft. He was ready to renew his offensive and did so just nine days after Auchinleck’s two cables. When Rommel began his second offensive on 21 January 1942 he was able to push the inexperienced British 1st Armoured Division back across Cyrenaica, seizing Agedaba and Benghazi on the way. He did all this despite the fact that Churchill broke his golden rule and allowed Auchinleck full texts of relevant Ultra material.11

  The first Benghazi Handicap had been under O’Connor in April 1941; now the second Benghazi Handicap opened and Benghazi soon fell. B
rooke was increasingly critical of Auchinleck, while Dill, possibly unfairly, blamed the Director of Military Intelligence, Shearer. Shearer was sacked and Auchinleck replaced him with Freddie de Guingand – only a lieutenant colonel and with no intelligence experience. The front settled down on a line between Gazala and Bir Hakeim, while both sides prepared for an offensive.

  16

  The End of Another Desert General

  Churchill was appalled to find that his second desert general was doing no better than his first. On 26 February 1942 the PM cabled, with menacing courtesy, ‘I have not troubled you much in these difficult days, but I must now ask you what are your intentions. According to our figures you have substantial superiority in the air, in armour, and in other forces over the enemy … pray let me hear from you’. Auchinleck’s reply ran to seven pages, but it failed to reassure an increasingly angry Prime Minister. His long, negative response crossed with a message from the Chiefs of Staff telling him to recapture air bases without delay in order to allow a convoy to get through to Malta, which was under great pressure.

  Churchill was increasingly infuriated by the lack of action. An unsent telegram said ‘Soldiers were meant to fight’. The Auk was reminded that a larger picture was visible in London and told by the Chiefs that he must either attack or face ‘the loss of Malta and the precarious defensive’. Auchinleck’s reply of 4 March was far from diplomatic: ‘I find it hard to believe in view of your telegram of 17 February that [the message] COS 241 had your approval as it seems to fail so signally either to appreciate facts as presented from here or to realise that we are fully aware of the situation as regards Malta in particular or the Middle East in general. We are here trying to face realities and to present to you the situation as it appears to us, not as you would like it to be’.1

  The exchange went on for some time in this way, and it was clear that there were substantial discrepancies between the number of tanks which London and the Middle East respectively regarded as being on Auchinleck’s strength. In the circumstances, Churchill asked him to come home to discuss the whole situation and in particular to resolve the question of the tank numbers. Auchinleck not only declined, but did so very abruptly. On 9 March Brooke pressed him again to return and Auchinleck again refused, suggesting that Brooke came out to see him. There were now good reasons for sacking him for insubordination, and Churchill was very tempted to do so. Cripps was sent out to see him and Ismay attempted to broker a reconciliation. He took the time to write a long, kind and understanding letter: