Masters and Commanders

by Andrew Roberts

  At 7.40 p.m. on Friday 9 June Brooke and Cunningham went to Euston Station to meet the train bringing the American Joint Chiefs of Staff from Holyhead. If swift strategic decisions needed to be taken–including an evacuation from Normandy, though no one mentioned that–the Combined Chiefs would be able to go into continuous session. ‘Marshal [sic] as charming as ever and King as saturnine,’ recorded Cunningham. ‘I can’t bring myself to like that man.’16 It is interesting that even that late in the war and after a long stay in Washington sitting on the Combined Chiefs of Staff with him, Cunningham could not spell Marshall’s name correctly, although he also spelt words such as ‘Bethnell Green’, ‘cardenal’, ‘gardiner’ or ‘gardner’ and so on. The use of the word ‘saturnine’, meaning ‘gloomy’, was a good one for King, however.

  The next day the Combined Chiefs met to discuss Normandy and Italy, before Marshall went to Chequers in the evening and Cunningham went home to the country for supper with Admiral Ramsay, where he opened a bottle of Turkish wine ‘to celebrate the invasion’, a curious way of doing it. At their Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting on Sunday 11 June, Marshall called for an early Anvil and ‘advancing as much as possible the target date of amphibious operations in the Mediterranean’.17

  Handy recalled discussing Anvil with Marshall and concluding: ‘We were a damn sight better strategists than we ever had any idea we were.’18 But were they? Donnelly considered the operation ‘a big success’ because the freeing of Marseilles gave Eisenhower another big harbour to help support the operations on the Western Front. Yet it was really Antwerp that they needed, rather than a port 480 miles south of Paris. In 1958, Brooke said of Marshall and Anvil: ‘I was in disagreement with him because I was rather frightened that if you took many forces from Italy it took some time from the moment you removed them from Italy to the moment they attacked in France…and what we should have gained on the swings we should lose on the roundabouts…It was a matter of balancing the time of it.’19

  Ian Jacob used a different argument in his discussions with Chester Wilmot in the spring of 1948, suggesting that the Americans:

  could never appreciate the importance of threats. Our idea was always to use our sea power so as to threaten and to bluff…If you did not show your hand you forced Hitler to protect himself against all possible threats and thus you gained much wider dispersion of his forces. The Americans’ only idea of winning was by fighting. They never realized that strategy is successful or not in proportion to the amount of actual fighting which it involves. The less fighting, the more successful the strategy. This was an idea the Americans could never comprehend; they always wanted bigger and better battles.20

  This–the strategy of Sun Tzu–might have been a sophisticated enough argument up to 6 June 1944, but from that date victory over Nazism certainly was a question of fighting bigger and better battles, and troops in France and Germany were of far more use than those going up the Apennines at slow speed and great cost.

  Cunningham recorded that, at a Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting on Anvil at the American HQ at Stanwell Place in Staines, Surrey, on 11 June, Marshall ‘drew a vision before our eyes of an airborne landing of five divisions in connection with a seaborne operation to seize a good port’, probably either Marseilles or Toulon. They also considered the three alternatives for Alexander’s army once it had broken through the Gothic Line, namely an amphibious operation in the Loire area or the Bay of Biscay, one in the south of France preferably in the Sète area, or one in the north-eastern Adriatic in conjunction with an advance from the Pisa–Rimini Line. Cunningham wrote after a 6.30 p.m. Cabinet the next day that Churchill, ‘looking a bit exuberant from his trip to the beachhead, was a bit childish at times’.

  ‘From the time the Normandy landing was achieved,’ argued Liddell Hart, Brooke and Churchill ‘ceased to have any important influence on the course of the war. Both strategically and politically, American influence became overwhelmingly predominant, and dictated the Allies’ course…[Churchill] had in effect become, as he earlier proclaimed himself, merely the American president’s “lieutenant”.’21 Liddell Hart put it in his typically provocative way, and Churchill’s self-designation as Roosevelt’s lieutenant had only been used at Torch because he had felt that the Vichy French would resist Britons more than Americans. Nonetheless it was true that in all the great strategic controversies of the rest of the war–and there were many hard-fought ones still to come–it is hard to spot any that the British won. The preponderance of American over Commonwealth troops has already been noted, and once the Americans were ashore they no longer needed to defer to the British in the way they had when they required the United Kingdom as their launch-pad.

  At a dinner for the King and the American Chiefs of Staff at Downing Street on 14 June, Churchill and Brooke had a long argument about the amount of equipment and supplies an invading army needed in its wake, with ‘Winston maintaining in his rhetorical fashion that the progress of any army could only be delayed by the importation of dental chairs and units of the YMCA’. Brooke stubbornly argued that ‘no army could fight, let alone progress, unless it had adequate supplies of ammunition.’ Marshall and the others listened politely until 2 a.m., while Smuts and Attlee, sitting on either side of Sir Alan Lascelles, ‘slept unashamedly’.22

  On the evening of 17 June, Marshall and Arnold arrived in Naples, flying over the Salerno and Anzio beaches at a height of 300 feet on their way there. Marshall visited his stepson’s grave the next day, and wrote to tell Margaret that ‘Allen’s plot is on the main pathway through the cemetery, a short distance beyond the flagpole.’ He spoke to the men in Allen’s unit who were with him when he was killed, before going on to Mark Clark’s Fifth Army HQ.

  By doleful coincidence, Brooke was also brought face to face with the personal cost of war that same day when a V-1 flying-bomb hit the roof of the Guards’ Chapel on Birdcage Walk during the Waterloo Day morning service. Several of Brooke’s friends and colleagues were among the 122 people who perished, including his great friend Ivan Cobbold, with whom he had been fishing on the River Dee six weeks earlier.23 Brooke described how the ‘ghastly blow’ was made even worse for him by one of those macabre coincidences of wartime; his military assistant came in to tell him about the tragedy at the precise moment that he was opening a lunch invitation from the dead man.

  Churchill had spent months trying to organize the first conference since Cairo, but as there were no crucial strategic issues or matériel shortages disrupting Allied planning, Roosevelt had kept putting it off. He actively did not want to meet Churchill during the Anvil dispute, and feared that any meeting might make Stalin suspicious. With the Allies victorious everywhere except China, and both British and American intelligence services predicting victory by Christmas, another meeting to plot the European endgame could not long be delayed; however, the Americans kept avoiding the issue.

  Violent storms between 19 and 24 June swept away the American Mulberry harbour at Arromanches, and came just at the same time that Hitler reinforced Kesselring in Italy, thus stalling the Allied advance towards the Gothic Line. Eisenhower pressed Marshall harder than ever for a large-scale Anvil that would bring more Allied troops ashore in southern France and, it was hoped, divert more Germans away from Normandy, where Cherbourg and Caen had yet to fall. ‘Wandering off overland via Trieste to Ljubljana repeat Ljubljana’, wrote Eisenhower, ‘is to indulge in conjecture to an unwarranted degree at the present time.’24 It is hard to know whether the repetition of Ljubljana was intended as emphasis of its strategic absurdity or to lessen the chances of mistransmission of an unusual word, or possibly both.

  Mountbatten’s chief of staff Lieutenant-General Henry Pownall–yet another diarist–alluded to ‘a considerable breeze’ (that is, row) between Brooke and Marshall on 19 June over General Stilwell, a friend of Marshall whom Brooke despised.25 Yet these were minor disagreements compared to the one over Operation Anvil that was to burst into flames the next day. On Tuesday 20
June Admiral King, without consulting the Admiralty, the Combined Chiefs or either of the Supreme Commanders Eisenhower and Maitland Wilson, ordered three battleships, two cruisers and no fewer than twenty-six destroyers to leave the Overlord flotilla in the Channel and sail to the Mediterranean as part of the Anvil invasion force, even though there was no invasion date yet set. Churchill immediately telegraphed Roosevelt to say he was ‘much concerned’ about this completely unilateral action; indeed so exercised was he that Cunningham recorded that ‘we had to curb him a bit’.26 Eisenhower countermanded King’s order, so the naval force was able to stay put until Cherbourg had fallen a week later.

  At a 10.30 p.m. British Staff Conference on 21 June with Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and the three Chiefs present there was ‘a rambling discussion about the merits of advancing right up through Italy to the Italian Alps as opposed to landing a few divisions in the South of France’, during which Cunningham could ‘see the advantage of landing the French divisions in their own country and letting them rouse France’. Eden considered that ‘Brookie appeared to be making pretty heavy weather of differences that cannot arise for many moves ahead, if ever.’ He also believed that ‘the failure to have minds meet’ over Anvil was in large part down to Dill’s absence.27 Recovering from a serious bout of illness in Washington, the field marshal wasn’t present to oil the wheels between Americans and British, although by that stage Cunningham believed that Dill had completely ‘gone native’ in America.

  On 23 June Eisenhower–based at his headquarters in Bushy Park in the London suburbs–again demanded a strong Anvil, while the British were doubting the necessity of having one at all. ‘France is the decisive theatre,’ he told the Combined Chiefs of Staff, saying that they ‘took this decision long ago. In my view the resources of Great Britain and the United States will not allow us to maintain two major theatres in the European War, each with decisive missions.’ At the time, though, Brooke was unable to see that the Italian campaign had largely achieved its purpose and was now no longer central to victory. Because he knew, through Ultra decrypts, that Hitler wished to defend the rest of the Italian peninsula, Brooke hoped that Alexander would continue to engage large German forces there. It was simply a strategy for attrition by then, however, whereas opportunities for outright victory were now opening up in France.28

  The withdrawal of Alexander’s French mountain divisions from Italy for Anvil caused Brooke and Churchill immense consternation. On 26 June Maitland Wilson said this must start within forty-eight hours in order to meet Anvil’s target date of 15 August. At a Chiefs of Staff meeting at 11 o’clock that morning, the War Office Planners backed Anvil, but Brooke and Portal wanted to cancel it altogether and carry on fighting in northern Italy instead. ‘I find the arguments so evenly balanced that I have difficulty making up my mind,’ wavered Cunningham, ‘so allowed myself to be guided by the other two whose arguments are sound enough if a little specious in certain directions.’29

  After meeting Churchill that evening, a telegram to Marshall–who had got back to America via Italy on 21 June–was drafted in which the Chiefs of Staff ‘took a firm line turning down Anvil and pressing for the completion of the North Italian campaign’. Cunningham felt that the British ‘are in the position of the man in possession: the campaign is going on.’30 Although ‘the man in possession’ is said to have nine-tenths of the law, Cunningham was wrong if he thought that possession of the Anvil divisions might be worth nine-tenths of grand strategy against a hardened opponent like Marshall.

  The British telegram to Marshall should have been worded far better than the bald statement that, in considering the 15 August date, ‘The withdrawal now of forces from Italy to achieve this target date is unacceptable to the British Chiefs of Staff’ because it ‘would hamstring General Alexander so that any further activity would be very modest. The adequacy of air resources for both Italy and Anvil is gravely doubted.’ It was as terse as Brooke’s speaking voice, but by that stage of the war such a tone was beginning to be counter-productive. For, as Marshall showed the next day, two could use the word ‘unacceptable’.

  ‘The British proposal to abandon Anvil and commit everything to Italy is unacceptable,’ Marshall cabled Eisenhower on 27 June, adding: ‘It is deplorable that the British and US disagree when time is pressing. The British statements concerning Italy are not sound or in keeping with the early end of the war…There is no reason for discussing further except to delay a decision which must be made.’ The Joint Chiefs of Staff official reply to the Chiefs of Staff was almost identical. Marshall meanwhile asked Handy to prepare a brief memorandum for Roosevelt of the key documents so far, ‘taking care to include the urgent arguments put forward by Eisenhower for the support of Overlord’. Marshall wanted the President fully informed, and under no illusion about the necessity for Anvil in helping Eisenhower.

  Anvil had been agreed to by Brooke and Churchill in Teheran and Cairo. Eisenhower wanted it as soon as possible. The Italian campaign was slowing down in central Italy. The Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean had said that if Anvil was to proceed–which he did not want it to–then the troops must be withdrawn within hours. The crisis moment had therefore come, and on 28 June Roosevelt came down firmly on Marshall’s side, telling Churchill:

  I really believe we should consolidate our operations and not scatter them. It seems to me that nothing could be worse at this time than a deadlock in the Combined Staff as to future course of action. You and I must prevent this and I think we should support the views of the Supreme Allied Commander. He is definitely for Anvil and wants action in the field by August 30th and preferably earlier. It is vital that we decide at once with our long agreed policy to make Overlord the decisive action.31

  Roosevelt’s evocation of Eisenhower meant that he and Marshall could present themselves as supporting the views of the commander in the field. How Churchill must have regretted unilaterally offering Roosevelt the decision as to who should be supreme Allied commander, getting so little in return.

  Churchill was deeply influenced by the fact that the Mediterranean theatre was principally British, with a British supreme commander in Maitland Wilson, a commander-in-chief Allied Forces Italy in Alexander, British corps commanders, many British divisions, and heavy Royal Navy participation, although of course Mark Clark’s US Fifth Army, the USAAF at Foggia and several other important American units also served there. Churchill now feared that this primary British theatre would be severely weakened by the American-dominated Anvil, and later wrote that this was ‘The first important divergence on high strategy between ourselves and our American friends’, implying that everything else had been merely a matter of timing.32 This was a convenient post-war fiction, but Anvil certainly saw a major clash.

  Before returning to his duties at the Allied Forces HQ in the Palace of Caserta, north of Naples, Harold Macmillan saw Churchill on the evening of 28 June after Roosevelt’s reply had arrived. ‘It was not only a brusque but even an offensive refusal to accept the British plan,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘It so enraged the P.M. that he thought of replying to the President in very strong terms.’ After consideration, however, it was decided that the British Chiefs should reply formally to Marshall, saying that they could not change the advice that they were giving the War Cabinet, ‘to whom they had the duty of giving the best professional opinion which they could form’.33

  Macmillan records Churchill as ‘still exceedingly anxious’ to cross the Pisa–Rimini Line, seize the Po Valley and open the possibility of an advance on Trieste in the spring. Yet such was the preponderance of American troops in the European campaign that, as Macmillan recognized,

  we should have to give in if Eisenhower and Marshall insisted upon ‘Anvil’. We can fight up to a point, we can leave on record for history to judge the reasoned statement of our views, and the historian will also see that the Americans have never answered any argument, never attempted to discuss or debate the points, but have merely given a flat negative an
d a slightly Shylock-like insistence upon what they conceive to be their bargain.

  These embittered views were shared by, and possibly inspired by, the Prime Minister.

  ‘The deadlock between our Chiefs of Staff raises most serious issues,’ Churchill replied to Roosevelt. ‘Our first wish is to help General Eisenhower in the most speedy and effective manner. But we do not think this necessarily involves the complete ruin of all our great affairs in the Mediterranean and we take it hard that this should be demanded of us…I think the tone of the American Chiefs of Staff is arbitrary, and I certainly see no prospect of agreement on the present lines. What is to happen then?’ In fact the ‘arbitrary’ tone had begun when Brooke had drafted the telegram about what was ‘unacceptable’.

  To try to persuade Roosevelt, Churchill attached a twelve-page cable setting out the advantages of a Balkan strategy against the long distances that any landing in Toulon would have to go before it could engage significant German forces. He ended: ‘Let us not wreck one great campaign for the sake of winning another. Both can be won.’ Brooke was ‘weak as a cat’ from influenza at the time, and the prospect of his being brought from his sickbed elicited the request from Marshall that ‘on no account should we worry the Field Marshal’. The US Army Chief’s own view was that as far as the clash over Anvil was concerned, ‘there is a big part played by the Prime Minister in the present affair’, although this was immediately and categorically–and untruthfully–denied by Hollis from the War Cabinet Office.