The Mantle of Command

by Nigel Hamilton

  11. Cable C-62, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 438.

  12. Sir Ian Jacob, unpublished autobiography.

  13. Ian W. Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (New York: Norton, 2012), 255.

  14. The Personal Representative of the President in India to the Secretary of State, FRUS 1942, vol. 1, 627.

  15. The Acting Secretary of State to the Officer in Charge at New Delhi, Personal for President’s personal representative, FRUS 1942, vol. 1, 627–28.

  16. Venkataramani and Shrivastava, Quit India, 108–9.

  17. Alan Brooke, War Diaries 1939–1945, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 245.

  18. Telegram C-65, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 443.

  19. The most succinct account of the viceroy’s obstructionism, the secretary of state for India’s change of mind, and Churchill’s sheer perfidy (including Churchill’s insincerity in claiming Britain would withdraw from overall control of the Raj) is to be found in Moore, Endgames of Empire, 94–105.

  20. Venkataramani and Shrivastava, Quit India, 117.

  21. Moore, Endgames of Empire, 96–97.

  22. Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948), vol. 2, 1484. See also Venkataramani and Shrivastava, Quit India, 44.

  23. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 185–96. David Reynolds, in his dissection of Churchill’s Second World War memoirs, called Churchill’s account of the episode “breathtakingly disingenuous”: David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (New York: Random House, 2005), 337.

  24. Sir Ian Jacob, unpublished autobiography.

  25. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life, 148.

  26. Cable R-132, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 445.

  27. The Personal Representative of the President in India to the Secretary of State, FRUS 1942, vol. 1, 631.

  28. Venkataramani and Shrivastava, Quit India, 141. On April 1, 1942, Halifax predicted that the Cripps mission would fail. When Welles asked Halifax what he thought would happen, in that case, the ambassador had said, “Nothing”—an example of fatal British complacency in view of the riots and deaths that followed: Memorandum of Conversation by the Acting Secretary of State, FRUS 1942, vol. 1, 623.

  29. Warren Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War (New York: Morrow, 1997), 140; Warren Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 134. See also Venkataramani and Shrivastava, Quit India, 142.

  30. Letter of July 26, 1941, Papers of Lord Halifax, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Yorkshire, England.

  31. Ibid., Letter of May 25, 1942.

  32. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 446.

  33. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate, 219.

  34. Cable R-132, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 446.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid., 446–47.

  37. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 512.

  38. Entry of April 22, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  39. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 512.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Cable C-68, draft A, not sent, April 12, 1942, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 447.

  42. Stanley Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 308–9.

  43. Cable C-68, draft A, not sent, April 12, 1942, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 447.

  44. Ibid., 447–48.

  45. Entry of April 22, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  46. Personal Representative of the President in India to the Acting Secretary of State. For the President and Acting Secretary Welles, FRUS 1942, vol. 1, 635–37.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Cable C-68, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 448.

  49. Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 249.

  50. Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945 (New York: Harper, 2009), 152.

  14. The Worst Case of Jitters

  1. Entry of Wednesday, April 15, 1942, 308, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  2. Entry of April 1, 1942, McCrea Diary, Papers of Captain John McCrea, Box 2, Library of Congress.

  3. Entry of Wednesday, April 15, 1942, 309, King Diary.

  4. Ibid., 310.

  5. Ibid., 310(b).

  6. Ibid., 310(e) and (f).

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., 309.

  9. Churchill himself recounted the “disconcerting” episode in his memoirs: Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 617. See also Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (New York: Random House, 2003), 161.

  10. Entry of Wednesday, April 15, 1942, 309, King Diary.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid., 310.

  13. Ibid., Memorandum of conversation Mr. King had with President Roosevelt, White House, Washington, DC, 311–12.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid., entry of April 16, 1942, 317.

  17. Ibid., 323.

  18. Ibid., 318.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid., 325.

  21. Ibid., 315.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid., 319.

  24. Cable C-69, Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 1, 454.

  25. Ibid., 452–53.

  26. Entry of April 16, 1942, 235, King Diary.

  27. Ibid, 326.

  28. Cable R-134, Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 1, 455.

  29. Entry of April 16, 1942, 326, King Diary.

  30. Ibid.

  15. Doolittle’s Raid

  1. James H. Doolittle, with Carroll V. Glines, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 265–66.

  2. Entry of April 18, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  3. “Notes written by VADM John L. McCrea, USN (Ret.), Naval Aide to President Roosevelt from 16 Jan. 1942 to 3 Feb. 1943,” Papers of John L. McCrea, Library of Congress.

  4. Werner Gruhl, Imperial Japan’s World War Two, 1931–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2007), 79.

  5. Ian W. Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (New York: Norton, 2012), 296.

  6. Entry of April 18, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  7. Toll, Pacific Crucible, 299.

  8. Ibid., 272.

  16. The Battle of Midway

  1. Geoffrey C. Ward, ed. Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), diary entry of May 12, 1942, 159.

  2. Ibid., 158.

  3. Ibid., entry of May 10, 1942, 158.

  4. Ibid., entry of June 1, 1942, 164.

  5. Commander George Elsey, interview with the author, September 10, 2011.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Entry of April 12, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  8. Ian W. Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (New York: Norton, 2012), 370.

  9. Cable C-86 of May 7–8, 1942, Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, Alliance Emerging, October 1933–November 1942 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 483.

  10. Entry of April 12, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  11. Eric Larrabee, Commander-in-Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hi
s Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 360–67; Toll, Pacific Crucible, 387.

  12. Entry of May 26, 1942, in Ward, Closest Companion, 159.

  13. William D. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 1942–1945 (New Brunwick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 54.

  14. Entry of May 26, 1942, in Ward, Closest Companion, 1159.

  15. On April 8, 1942, General Wainwright had wired that exhaustion and malnutrition in his beleaguered forces would, after almost four months of combat, make it impossible to break out of Bataan, with no hope of relief or evacuation. There was great concern in Washington lest the Japanese, who had refused to sign the Geneva Agreements on conduct in war, would massacre the U.S.-Filipino troops, if they did surrender. Roosevelt delegated the decision to General Wainwright—who was all for fighting to the last man standing. Not even he could control events, however, when General King, commanding the U.S. and Filipino troops on the Bataan mainland, fatefully decided his starving, exhausted soldiers could no longer fight, and commenced surrender negotiations, without Wainwright’s authority. “Apparently the decision of bitter-end fighting with a possible massacre had been taken out of our hands,” Secretary Stimson noted the next morning, when he went in person to Pennsylvania Avenue to tell the President, “who was still asleep. I got in about nine o’clock when he had just awakened and told him the news.” The number of troops surrendering totaled 36,853, as of last count taken, two days before, Stimson recorded. At the press conference that the President asked him to give, “I took occasion to point out that there were Navy troops there that had behaved very well; also the fine behavior of the Filipino scouts and the fighting together with the Philippine Army and ourselves in a common cause, as well as a pledge that we would come back and drive the invaders out eventually”: entry of April 9, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  16. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 169.

  17. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1970), 226.

  18. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 57.

  19. Ibid.

  20. E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 90–91.

  21. Toll, Pacific Crucible, 409.

  22. Potter, Nimitz, 107.

  23. Larrabee, Commander-in-Chief, 394. The Grumman F6F Hellcat, six months later, provided the answer.

  24. Toll, Pacific Crucible, 447.

  25. Ibid., 446.

  26. Ibid., 462.

  27. Ibid., 455.

  28. Ibid., 478.

  29. Ibid., 462.

  30. Frank Knox, Memo for the President, enclosing letter to the Attorney-General, June 9, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  31. James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 170.

  17. Churchill’s Second Coming

  1. Entry of June 11, 1942, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Cable C-101, June 13, 1942, in Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, Alliance Emerging, October 1933–November 1942 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 510.

  9. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 303.

  10. Ibid., 307.

  11. Entry of June 17, 1942, Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Entry of Thursday, June 18, 1942, “Secret Diary” of Lord Halifax, Papers of Lord Halifax, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Yorkshire, England.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Entry of June 13, 1942, in Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed., Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 265.

  18. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute to Lord Linlithgow, June 13, 1942, in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7, Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 123.

  19. Entry of June 19, 1942, Halifax Diary.

  20. Entry of June 19, 1942, Stimson Diary.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid., entry of June 20, 1942.

  23. Ibid., entry of June 21, 1942.

  24. Ibid., entry of June 20, 1942.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid., 3.

  30. “Safe” and Confidential Files, undated, but probably June 13, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Diary entry of June 20, 1942, in William D. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 1942–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 68.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Hugh L’Etang, Fit to Lead? (London: Heinemann Medical, 1980).

  35. Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day, Pare Lorentz Center, FDR Library. www .fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday.

  36. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 338–39.

  37. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 67.

  38. Letter to the President, June 19, 1942, para 81, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.

  39. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate, 342.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid., 343.

  42. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 68.

  43. Ibid.

  18. The Fall of Tobruk

  1. Entry of June 20, 1942, “Secret Diary” of Lord Halifax, Papers of Lord Halifax, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Yorkshire, England.

  2. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7, Road to Victory, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 123.

  3. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 589–90.

  4. Entry of June 22, 1942, Breckinridge Long, The War Diary of Breckenridge Long: Selections from the Years 1939–1944, ed. Frank L. Israel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 274.

  5. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 344.

  6. Entry of June 20, 1942, Halifax Diary.

  7. Entry of June 21, 1942, Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M., 1938–1945, ed. David Dilks (London: Cassell, 1971), 458.

  8. Ibid.

  9. W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 144.

  10. Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York: Viking, 1960), 254.

  11. Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 269.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Charles Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 37–38.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Entry of 22.6.1942, Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1995), Teil II, Band 4, 569–70. Quotes from this source have been translated by the author.

  17. Ibid., 571.

  18. Ibid., entry of 23.6.1942, 575.

  19. Ibid., entry of 21.6.1942, 565.

  20. Ibid., entry of 23.6.1942, 575, 581, and 589.

  21. Ibid., 582 and 581.

  22. Ibid., 577.

  23. Ibid., entry of 21.6.1942, 563.

  24. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: Norton, 2000), 515–17.

  25. Entry of 24.5.1942, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, Teil 2, Band 4, 357.
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  26. Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, 516–17.

  27. Entry of 24.5.1942, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, Teil 2, Band 4, 356.

  28. Ibid., 357.

  29. Ibid., entry of 24.6.1942, 605.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid., entry of 24.5.1942, 362.

  32. Ibid., 363.

  33. Ibid., 361–64.

  34. Ibid., 359.

  35. Ibid., 354.

  36. Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, 255.

  37. Entry of 25.6.1942, Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, Teil II, Band 4, 614.

  19. No Second Dunquerque

  1. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 2, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 337.

  2. Entry of June 23, 1942, Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Mackenzie King Papers, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON.

  3. Ibid., entry of June 25, 1942.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Entry of Saturday, June 13, 1942, “Secret Diary” of Lord Halifax, Papers of Lord Halifax, Hickleton Papers, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Yorkshire, England.

  9. Entry of June 25, 1942, King Diary.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid., entry of April 16, 1942.

  14. Meeting of Pacific War Council at Washington, D.C., Wednesday, April 15, 1942, Mackenzie King Papers.

  15. Entry of June 25, 1942, King Diary.

  20. Avoiding Utter Catastrophe

  1. Entry of 4.7.1942, Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels [The diaries of Joseph Goebbels], ed. Elke Fröhlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1995), Teil II, Band 5, 53. Quotes from this source have been translated by the author.