Masters and Commanders

by Andrew Roberts

  Churchill also promised Marshall ‘that nothing would be left undone on the part of the British Government and people which could contribute to the success of the great enterprise on which they were about to embark’. Perhaps the very extravagance of Churchill’s remarks, especially as no dates were given and as there was no indication of whether he was referring to Sledgehammer, Bolero or Roundup, ought to have given Marshall pause for thought. What he could not fail to spot, however, were the implications that British support for Continental attacks entirely depended upon America protecting British positions in the Indian Ocean and Middle East.40

  Unsurprisingly, Marshall telegraphed Stimson soon afterwards to say that he’d been successful on all fronts. Yet in his memoirs Churchill stated that he only ever saw Sledgehammer as a feint, always preferring operations in North Africa and Norway. ‘I had to work by influence and diplomacy in order to secure agreed and harmonious action with our cherished Ally,’ he wrote, ‘without whose help nothing but ruin faced the world. I did not therefore open any of these alternatives at our meeting on the 14th.’41 Crucially, therefore, and in order to secure Bolero, Churchill hid his deep reservations about Sledgehammer and entirely failed to mention his preference for both Ajax and Gymnast, the attacks on northern Norway and North Africa. Marshall had indeed been misled, by Churchill if not by Brooke, and he understandably came to resent it.

  Ismay was adamant in his own memoirs that:

  Everyone at the meeting was enthusiastic about the prospect of the despatch of a mighty American army to Europe, and of the English-speaking peoples ‘marching ahead together in a noble brotherhood of arms’ as Churchill put it…Everyone seemed to agree with the American proposals in their entirety. No doubts were expressed; no discordant note struck. It is easy to be wise after the event, but perhaps it would have obviated future misunderstandings if the British had expressed their views more frankly…I think we should have come clean, much cleaner than we did, and said: ‘We are frankly horrified because of what we have been through in our lifetime…We are not going to go into this until it is a cast-iron certainty.’42

  With a classic penchant for understatement, Ismay concluded: ‘This misunderstanding was destined to have unfortunate results.’ In the controversy over whether the British deliberately misled the Americans during the Modicum Mission, Ismay, who was writing in 1960–during Churchill’s lifetime–confined himself to suggesting that they might have done so unintentionally.

  The most ‘unfortunate result’ was that Marshall became convinced later on that Churchill and Brooke had indeed broken faith with him, and suspected that their opposition to Sledgehammer and an early Roundup in fact extended to any Roundup operation at all. Moran recalled his puzzlement over the way that Churchill had ‘agreed with Marshall, almost, as it were, without a fight. It was not like him.’ His explanation–and since he was not present at any of the meetings this was mere speculation–was that Churchill ‘may have decided that the time has not yet come to take the field as an out-and-out opponent of a Second Front in Europe. Anyway, 1943 seems a long way off, and a good deal may happen in the meanwhile.’ Moran added that Churchill told him it was no time for an argument with Roosevelt, who might be driven by domestic public opinion to concentrate on the Far East instead.

  In two private interviews with Chester Wilmot in March and April 1948, Ian Jacob also went a good way towards admitting that the British had deliberately misled the Americans six years earlier. After explaining that Marshall wanted to use all American shipping possible so that a cross-Channel attack could be launched in 1942, he said:

  We were convinced that it could not but we were reluctant to say so too strongly lest Marshall should pack up his divisions and take them to the Pacific…Consequently at the last meeting when the PM was most enthusiastic about the importance of crossing the Channel as soon as possible, Marshall went home thinking that an attack could be launched that year. The basic difference centred on the question of when it would be possible. Marshall thought this year, we thought not before 1943, if then.43

  Something significant seems to have taken place between the pessimistic morning Chiefs of Staff meeting on 14 April, when objections were raised about air cover, landing craft and so on, and the wildly over-optimistic Defence Committee meeting at 10 o’clock that evening, at which the Chiefs were also present. Had the Prime Minister persuaded Brooke that Britain would be far better defended in the event of a German victory in Russia should there be seven or eight American divisions in the United Kingdom to help her? Brooke was under personal as well as professional pressure on 14 April; between the Chiefs of Staff meeting and another meeting with Lyttelton he had to dash back to his flat where his wife was suffering from an ear infection–mastoids–that his son had earlier only narrowly escaped. The operations to counter it were complicated and painful in those days, and Brooke admitted he found it all ‘Most distressing’ and ‘a source of deep anxiety’.44

  Brooke’s diary entry for that evening stated that there had been ‘A momentous meeting at which we accepted their proposals for offensive action in Europe in 1942 perhaps and in 1943 for certain. They have not begun to realize all the implications of this plan and all the difficulties that lie ahead of us! The fear I have is that they should concentrate on this offensive at the expense of all else! We have therefore been pressing on them the importance of providing American assistance in the Indian Ocean and Middle East.’ This was a fairly accurate summation of the double-act that he and Churchill had put on for Marshall’s and Hopkins’ benefit, right down to repeating Churchill’s own adjective ‘momentous’. His reference to 1943 operations ‘for certain’ shows that he did not himself feel he was misleading the Americans, because he also believed–or at least hoped–that an attack might be possible by then. There was no reason why Brooke should lie to his diary: in April 1942 he felt himself committed to Roundup some time in 1943.

  Sir Michael Howard believes that, as he puts it, the American plan ‘did not conflict in any essentials’ with such ideas as Churchill and Brooke had entertained, and that the ‘evidence suggests that both Mr Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff were, in April 1942, entirely sincere in their acceptance of the Bolero–Roundup plan as expounded by General Marshall, and were determined to put it into effect. There was certainly not, at that time, any alternative and conflicting “Mediterranean strategy”.’ Although careful studies were conducted in London into the practicability of Operation Sledgehammer, ‘about Roundup no doubts were expressed at all’.45

  This was true, but after the war Brooke noted that with the situation prevailing in April 1942, ‘it was not possible to take Marshall’s “castles in the air” too seriously! It must be remembered that we were at that time literally hanging on by our eye-lids!’ With Australia and India under threat from the Japanese, a temporary loss of control in the Indian Ocean, Germany threatening Iranian and Iraqi oil supplies, Auchinleck hard-pressed in the Western Desert, and the battle of the Atlantic hanging in the balance, ‘We were desperately short of shipping and could stage no large scale operations without additional shipping. This shipping could only be obtained by opening the Mediterranean and saving a million tons of shipping through the elimination of the Cape route. To clear the Mediterranean, North Africa must be cleared first.’46 Of course Brooke had not made this case at the Defence Committee meeting, mentioning neither North Africa nor the Mediterranean, let alone the idea that Marshall was building ‘castles in the air’.

  That same night, Marshall telegraphed McNarney to report that, although the British Chiefs of Staff had expressed some reservations, he believed there was ‘complete agreement as to 1943’. On the following afternoon, Wednesday 15 April, Marshall visited Brooke’s room at the War Office in Whitehall for two hours to hear about British military dispositions. ‘He is, I should think, a good general at raising armies and providing the necessary links between the military and political worlds,’ recorded Brooke. ‘But his strategical ability does not
impress me at all!! In fact in many respects he is a very dangerous man whilst being a very charming one!’ Marshall led Brooke to believe that because Admiral King was ‘proving more and more of a drain on his military resources, continually calling for land forces to capture and hold bases’ in the Pacific, while simultaneously the Commander of the south-West Pacific Area, General Douglas MacArthur, now based in Australia, was also demanding forces to develop an offensive from there, his advocacy of Roundup was intended to ‘counter these moves’. Nor was this a bluff; only three weeks later Marshall talked Roosevelt out of sending more men to MacArthur, since it would detract from the cross-Channel project.47

  Brooke believed that protection of personnel and resources for Germany First was the real reason that, in his words, ‘Marshall has started the European offensive plan and is going 100% all out on it!’ He considered that Marshall was making ‘a clever move which fits in well with present political opinion and the desire to help Russia’, one which was ‘also popular with all military men who are fretting for an offensive policy. But, and this is a very large “but”, his plan does not go beyond just landing on the far coast!! Whether we are to play baccarat or chemin de fer at Le Touquet, or possibly bathe at Paris Plage is not stipulated! I asked him this afternoon–do we go east, south or west after landing? He had not begun to think of it!!’48 Paris-Plage was a popular part of the seaside resort of Le Touquet, but Brooke presumably did not in fact ask whether the expedition would move west after landing, because that would take it back into the English Channel. Yet as the official US Army history admits: ‘Only the most hurried and superficial investigation of the complex logistic problems involved had been made before the London Conference, and the Conference contributed very little to an understanding of them or to argument about them. Everything remained to be done.’49

  Brooke’s contemporaneous sarcasm was not really softened when he made extensive notes on his diaries years afterwards, in which he stated that his conversation with Marshall that afternoon had been ‘an eye-opener! I discovered that he had not studied any of the strategic implications.’ Of course this was unfair, as Marshall had been doing little else over the previous fortnight, and the discussions on 15 April centred on the difficulty of the landing compared with what happened afterwards. Brooke believed that ‘our real troubles would start after the landing. We should be operating with forces initially weaker than the enemy and in addition his rate of reinforcement would be at least twice as fast as ours. In addition his formations were fully trained and endured [inured] to war whilst ours were raw and inexperienced.’50

  In May 1957, Samuel Eliot Morison vigorously defended Marshall against Brooke’s criticisms, some of which had been published earlier that year in Brooke’s memoirs Turn of the Tide as ghosted and edited by the historian Sir Arthur Bryant. Several of Brooke’s harsh diary entries about Marshall had been quoted in the book, and in a tart rejoinder during a lecture series in Oxford, Morison said that ‘General Marshall has adopted a policy of dignified silence about these war controversies, so I cannot quote him; but I am confident that his strategic ideas did not stop at the water-edge; that he had a very definite concept of land strategy, namely the double envelopment of the Ruhr, which was actually carried out in 1945 against the strong objections of Field Marshals Brooke and Montgomery.’51 While it is actually unlikely that Marshall had planned anything like that far ahead in 1942, it was right to defend Marshall from Brooke’s repeated and unfair strictures about his strategic abilities.

  Brooke’s exasperation about Marshall in his diaries–‘almost impossible to get him to grasp the true concepts of a strategic situation’, for example–needs to be put in the overall context of his blistering rudeness about almost everyone else, very often over their supposed lack of strategic understanding. Churchill was described as ‘temperamental like a film star’ and ‘peevish like a spoilt child’ with ‘no long term strategic vision…He can never grasp a whole plan’; Lord Gort’s ‘brain has lately been compared to that of a glorified boy scout’ who ‘just fails to be able to see the big picture’; Eisenhower ‘literally knew nothing of the requirements of a commander in action’ and had ‘a very very limited brain from a strategic point of view’; Eden was ‘dangerous–rather obstinate, featherheaded–and with no strategic sense’; Alexander had ‘many fine qualities but no very great strategic vision…It was very doubtful whether he was fit to command his Army’; Mountbatten was ‘quite irresponsible, suffers from the most desperate illogical brain, always producing red herrings’.52

  A definite pattern thus emerges, of people who might have charm and even some organizing ability, but are not gifted enough to grasp Brooke’s overall strategy. Over and again identical criticisms appear in Brooke’s journals. Almost the only senior wartime figures to emerge unscathed were Douglas MacArthur, the South African premier Jan Christian Smuts, and Stalin. Yet it simply cannot be the case that no one on the Allied side but Brooke had any grasp of strategy. Far from being strategic amateurs, as Brooke constantly implied about the American Joint Chiefs, Marshall had been a senior Planning officer on General Pershing’s staff, Stark had been flag secretary to Admiral Sims in 1917–18, King had been assistant chief of staff to Admiral Mayo, Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet in the Great War, and Eisenhower had been chief of staff to the XXII Corps and after that of Walter Krueger’s Third Army, hugely successful in the famous 1941 Louisiana manoeuvres. Just because these men disagreed with Brooke, it did not follow that they were all dunderheads over strategy.

  ‘Those who did not know Marshall were apt to think of him as a cold man,’ wrote his biographer, ‘but compared with the hard, distant, lofty Field Marshal Brooke, he was a ball of fire.’53 After the publication of Turn of the Tide, Pogue asked Marshall for his comment on what the British official historian John Ehrman had written of Brooke:

  Possessing a clear and acute mind, great professional integrity, and–a useful attribute on occasions–a strong but controlled temper, his views always commanded the respect of the army, of his naval and air colleagues, and, even when the two men differed, of the prime minister. Insofar as the Chiefs of Staff designed British strategy, that strategy bore his impress.

  If Pogue was trying to draw Marshall into criticizing Brooke, he failed, as the gentlemanly general merely answered: ‘Of the Chiefs of Staff, I thought Portal was probably the most brilliant, but I had a great respect for Brooke and I think the characterization regarding him is quite correct.’ On another occasion Marshall told Pogue that ‘Brooke was cold, but did not give the impression he disliked him. Portal had the best mind of the lot and was thus the most difficult to deal with in the sense of putting anything over.’ He also recalled being ‘Affectionately fond of Pound.’ Others leapt to Marshall’s defence by criticizing Brooke in 1957, but Marshall did not stoop to it, writing to thank him for his signed copy ‘and for your gracious inscription, the sentiments of which I deeply appreciate’.54

  On 16 April 1942 Brooke attended an important Chiefs of Staff meeting to discuss Bolero, Sledgehammer and Roundup. ‘The plans are fraught with the gravest dangers,’ he confided to his diary. ‘Public opinion is shouting for the formation of a new western front to assist the Russians. But they have no conception of the difficulties and dangers entailed!’ One of the advantages of having a CIGS from the nearest British equivalent to the Junker class was that he despised public opinion, and felt it almost a point of honour not to bend to it. All the political campaigns, newspaper editorials and demonstrations in Trafalgar Square in favour of the Second Front meant absolutely nothing to him, except insofar as they might affect politicians’ judgement, despite the suspension of general elections for the duration of the war. ‘The prospects of success are small and dependent on a mass of unknowns,’ he opined about an early Second Front, ‘whilst the chances of disaster are great and dependent on a mass of well established military facts.’55 Foremost among these, as we have seen, was the proven ability of the German Army, of
which he had a healthy–although many Americans thought too robust–respect.

  The next morning, on 17 April, after a short Chiefs of Staff meeting, Brooke went over to Downing Street to bid Marshall farewell. ‘He was very charming as usual and hoped I would be able to return his visit,’ he wrote afterwards. They had been in each other’s company–sizing each other up, as Brooke put it–for nine days. Hopkins and Marshall left London later that day, stopping the night in Londonderry. Before they got back, however, Churchill cabled Roosevelt, stating baldly: ‘We wholeheartedly agree with your conception of concentration against the main enemy, and we cordially accept your plan with one broad qualification,’ that it was ‘essential that we should prevent a junction of the Germans and Japanese’. This could have been a qualification so broad that it might have wrecked Roundup, since the hinge between the Middle East and the Indian Ocean was as large as it was vulnerable, covering several countries. Nonetheless, Churchill sought to reassure Roosevelt by adding that ‘Marshall felt confident that we could together provide what was necessary for the Indian Ocean and other theatres, and yet go right ahead with your main project.’56

  The Prime Minister then made a reference to Sledgehammer that, considering his and Brooke’s severe private reservations, was at best a red herring, at worst deliberately misleading. After saying of Roundup, ‘The campaign of 1943 is straightforward, and we are starting joint plans and preparations at once,’ Churchill wrote:

  We may, however, feel compelled to act this year. Your plan visualised this, but put mid-September as the earliest date. Things may easily come to a head before then. Marshall explained that you had been reluctant to press for an enterprise that was fraught with such grave risks and dire consequences until you could make a substantial air contribution; but he left us in no doubt that if it were found necessary to act earlier, you, Mr President, would earnestly wish to throw in every available scrap of human and material resources. We are proceeding with plans and arrangements on that basis. Broadly speaking, our agreed programme is a crescendo of activity on the Continent.57