Masters and Commanders

by Andrew Roberts

  The next day a fit-looking Eisenhower visited Churchill’s Map Room in the Annexe to discuss what would happen when the Anglo-American forces met the Soviet armies. Legally the Western Allies were on firm ground in occupying as much as they could reach before the Germans surrendered, as the zones already agreed at Yalta only came into operation then, but, as Cunningham recorded, ‘Ike naturally does not wish to be faced with a situation in which some Russian general says on meeting that he proposes to advance to the limit of the Russian zone,’ especially since Allied troops had already overrun much of the western part of the zone allotted to the Russians.51 Churchill wanted to have a tactical zone fixed by the commanders in the field while operations were still in progress and only move into the Occupation zones later on. It was a recipe for friction with the Red Army, which the Americans considered completely unnecessary, given that they would have to relinquish the territory sooner or later anyhow.

  Truman, who in all military matters understandably tended to defer to Marshall, followed the Joint Chiefs’ line that it was best to adhere to the Yalta zoning arrangements whatever the legal or political circumstances. Brooke wanted Prague to be liberated by the Western Allies for the ‘remarkable political advantages’ that would accrue, but Marshall merely passed this information on to Eisenhower with the comment: ‘Personally, and aside from all logistics, tactical, or strategic implications, I would be loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.’52 In those places in the eastern zone where the Germans were still holding out it seemed common sense to let the Russians rather than the Western Allies fight them. Eisenhower replied, ‘I shall not attempt any move I deem militarily unwise merely to gain a political prize unless I receive specific orders from the Combined Chiefs of Staff.’ Eisenhower halted his troops at the Czech frontier, and when the Russians asked him to proceed no further he agreed, although reconnaissance elements of Patton’s Third Army reached the vicinity of Prague, the furthest eastward progress of any Western army.

  The Russians marked Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday on 20 April by reaching the outskirts of Berlin, and three days later the Allies finally got to the Po, on the same day that there was a junction between American and Russian forces at Torgau. There were still opportunities for minor spats between the British and Americans, and one ‘royal row’ between Admirals King and Somerville over bases for the British Pacific Fleet, in which Somerville turned down the offer of Brunei as ridiculously far from Japan. Yet these were as nothing compared to those of earlier years.

  On the day that Adolf Hitler committed suicide, Monday 30 April 1945, Brooke came back from an unimpressive day’s fishing on the Dee to hear Churchill discuss ‘the foreign situation’ at the 6 p.m. War Cabinet, at which ‘He made a remark that though the Powers were at the end of their tether as regards fighting, they were ending the war in no friendly spirit. There was a tendency to quarrel.’ Cunningham thought this ‘Quite true. The French are very difficult and the Russians very suspicious and so difficult.’53

  On Friday 4 May, the news came through that Montgomery had taken the unconditional surrender, at the hands of Admiral von Friedeburg and General Kinzel, of all German forces in Holland, north Germany, Schleswig Holstein and Denmark. That evening Churchill invited the Chiefs of Staff to No. 10 to celebrate, and, according to Ismay’s account to Joan Astley that night, the Prime Minister had even ‘with his own hands put out a tray of glasses and a drink’. When the Chiefs arrived, Churchill was on the telephone telling the King about his conversations with Montgomery and Eisenhower. Brooke recorded that the Prime Minister was ‘evidently seriously affected by the fact that the war was to all intents and purposes over as far as Germany was concerned’. Churchill had tears in his eyes as he toasted each of the Chiefs in turn, and thanked them ‘for all we had done in the war, and all the endless work we had put in “from El Alamein to where we are now”’.54 That was the moment when Brooke, their chairman, ought to have reciprocated on behalf of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and said at least a few words about Churchill’s superb leadership during the struggle. ‘It was a sad example of human imperceptiveness,’ thought Astley, that none of the Chiefs thought to salute Churchill in a toast. Ismay was too modest in the presence of his seniors to do it himself. ‘It is possible they were shy,’ she concluded, ‘it is certain that they were British, it is probable that they reacted as a committee, a body without a heart, and that each waited for the other to take the initiative. Whatever the reason it was an opportunity missed that the Grand Old Man, who had been the architect of the victory they were marking, did not receive a tribute from his three closest military advisers.’55

  On Tuesday 8 May 1945–Victory in Europe Day–Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, summed up the 11 a.m. meeting of the British Chiefs of Staff Committee with the words: ‘No important business.’56 This must rank alongside ‘Rien,’ Louis XVI’s famous diary entry for the day the Bastille fell. Others were less prosaic on that historic day; Marshall wrote to Churchill to say: ‘I can bear personal witness to the grandeur of your leadership since the meeting in Newfoundland in 1941. I can never forget…the breadth of your vision…in effecting our combined plans.’ Churchill replied: ‘Under your guiding hand the mighty…formations which have swept across France and Germany were brought into being and perfected in an amazingly short space of time.’

  On that momentous day in world history, vast, cheering crowds packed the streets of London, New York, Moscow, Paris and countless other Allied towns and cities in wild, all-night celebrations after five-and-a-half years of blood, toil, tears and sweat. In Washington, Secretary of War Stimson called Marshall into his office, where the leaders of the US General Staff had already gathered. Placing the general in the centre of the room he uttered a lengthy paean to ‘the finest soldier I have ever known’. In MacArthur’s recollection, Marshall ‘responded with about two sentences and the thing was over’.57 Meanwhile in London, Sir Charles Portal had a cup of tea at the Air Ministry, Sir Andrew Cunningham ‘dined quietly at the flat’ with his wife and son, while Sir Alan Brooke went ‘back to the War Office to finish off work’.58 They were busy men, and they still had a war to win.

  Conclusion

  The Riddles of the War

  There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!

  Winston Churchill to Sir Alan Brooke, 1 April 19451

  Harry Hopkins, speaking to Churchill’s doctor Charles Moran at the Quadrant Conference in Quebec in August 1943, said that the Prime Minister had ‘thrown in his hand’ over the Second Front: ‘Winston is no longer against Marshall’s plan for landing on the coast of France.’ Moran attributed Hopkins’ evident bitterness over the long delays in the cross-Channel landings to the suspicion that Churchill’s opposition to them had prolonged the war. ‘Is Hopkins right?’ he asked his diary. ‘That must remain the riddle of the war.’2 There are of course plenty of other riddles of the Second World War besides the ideal timing for D-Day, many of which, as I hope this book has shown, can be solved by viewing Anglo-American grand strategy through the invaluable prism of the interaction between the Masters and Commanders.

  In considering the roles of Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Brooke, it is important to remember that the decisions of Hitler and Stalin far more profoundly influenced the outcome than those of any Briton or American. After all, four out of every five Germans killed in combat between 1939 and 1945 died on the Eastern Front. Yet by sustaining Russia with massive amounts of aid, drawing off German strength from the Eastern Front by action in Africa, the Mediterranean and France, devastating German industry and cities through aerial bombardment, effectively protecting the USSR from Japan, and finally invading Germany itself from the west, the Western Allies also made an important contribution to victory.

  When it comes to deciding which of the four American and British leaders influenced strategy the most, probably too much has been made of the Ro
osevelt–Churchill relationship. ‘Each was personally fascinated not so much by the other’, wrote Sir Isaiah Berlin, ‘as by the idea of the other, and infected him by his own peculiar brand of high spirits.’3 Yet historians too have been fascinated, and perhaps infected, by the idea of this friendship as being the ultimate lynchpin of the Western Alliance. In fact the realities of Realpolitik, often in the persons of Marshall and Brooke, constantly intruded on the relationship. When their countries’ interests required Roosevelt and Churchill to be friends, they genuinely became so; when they needed to clash, they no less genuinely did that too. Yet unity of action was too great a prize to be jeopardized by lack of charm, especially from two of the most naturally engaging politicians of their era. (Roosevelt could be snappish about Churchill behind his back, and in December 1947, after being told that the late President had said of him that he had had one hundred ideas a day during the war, of which only four were good, the ex-premier told Moran: ‘It is impertinent of Roosevelt to say this. It comes badly from a man who hadn’t any ideas at all.’)4

  Roosevelt controlled his Administration just as completely as Churchill had ascendancy over the War Cabinet on matters strategic. Brooke won all the important debates within the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, whose members subsequently kept their disagreements entirely to themselves to protect their corporate strength. It is true that Marshall did not chair the American Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and had Admiral Ernest J. King as a constant irritant, but he was able to get his way there on all the major strategic issues. For all their domination over their own power bases and hinterlands, however, the Masters and Commanders as individuals never dominated each other. Their decisions were produced through hard-fought interaction using logical debate and compromise, over many months of constant and unimaginable stress that would have shattered lesser men. Above all, it must be emphasized that Churchill never once used his position as prime minister and minister of defence to overrule the Chiefs of Staff Committee, at least while Brooke sat on it.

  Although Brooke must take immense credit for steering Churchill off his favoured but flawed operations such as Jupiter (northern Norway) and Culverin (northern Sumatra), it was a post-war fiction of Brooke’s that he had not fully supported the Dodecanese and Ljubljana Gap schemes, at least at some stages of the policy-making process. It is clear from the records that he had, and his subsequent attempts to rewrite history are just as culpable as Churchill’s.

  For all the criticisms of Churchill in these pages, the obvious fact emerges that he was a genius, and the madcap schemes he occasionally came up with were merely the tiny portion of inevitable detritus that floated in the wash of his greatness. Had Britain been a dictatorship they would have been put into operation–as Hitler’s were–but because she was a democracy they were blocked and eventually buried, usually by Sir Alan Brooke. For all the frustrations it caused him, Churchill preferred the democratic way of making war, and showed he had learnt the lessons of Gallipoli. The lack of a collegiate Chiefs of Staff system was one of the major reasons Germany lost the Second World War.

  It might have surprised readers quite how often grand strategy was made as a result of last-minute compromises between Marshall and Brooke, just before they were due to present their final reports to Roosevelt and Churchill on the seven occasions they met together. When Dill was alive, these were facilitated by him; after his death in November 1944 it is noticeable how rows were not headed off, most spectacularly at the Cricket Conference at Malta. If it is true that Dill went somewhat native in Washington, it was nonetheless to his country’s benefit.

  Marshall did not envy the President’s role in decision-making. ‘It must be remembered the military responsibility in operations is very, very large, and it has with it a terrible measure of casualties,’ he told Pogue. ‘I know I was very careful to send Mr Roosevelt every few days a statement of our casualties, and it was done in a very effective way, graphically and…in colors, so it would be clear to him when he had only a moment or two to consider.’ Marshall, quite as much as Brooke and everyone else on both Staffs, well understood that the statistics of killed, wounded and captured represented individual stories of tragedy, ‘because you get hardened to these things and you have to be very careful to keep them always in the forefront of your mind’. These pressures simply did not exercise the Axis decision-makers; indeed by the end of the war Hitler privately stated that the German people had not in fact suffered enough.

  The comparative capacities of democracies versus autocracies to wage war has been vigorously debated since the days of Thucydides, and the experience of the Second World War certainly contradicts the conclusions that Thucydides himself drew from the Peloponnesian War. Because Nazi Germany was an autocracy, Hitler was able to impose a grand strategy on his generals that a few at the beginning, but many by the middle and almost all by the end, thought suicidal. Subservient subordinates such as Jodl and Keitel failed to ask searching questions, and few other German generals had the access or the courage to criticize their Führer’s plans to his face, on the rare occasions that they were given the opportunity to be apprised of them beforehand. Flawed strategies, such as the ‘no withdrawal’ policies in Tunisia, Russia and Italy, were therefore not subjected to the kind of unsparing analysis that would undoubtedly have halted their adoption in a democracy. By complete contrast, the strategies of the Western Allies had to be exhaustively argued through the Planning Staff, General Staff, Chiefs of Staff and then Combined Chiefs of Staff levels, before they were even capable of being placed before the politicians, where they were debated in microscopic detail all over again. As we have seen, the British and American Chiefs of Staff spoke their minds without fear or favour, in a way that Hitler’s lieutenants could not. Even Stalin, as the war progressed, gave more and more autonomy to the members of the Stavka (High Command) in Moscow, as well as to commanders in the field.

  At the First Washington (Arcadia) Conference, Churchill, Roosevelt and Marshall simply overruled the objections of the crucially absent Brooke over the vital issues of unity of command and the Combined Chiefs of Staff system. At London (Modicum) in April 1942, Churchill and Brooke–to very different degrees–misled Marshall about the likelihood of an early attack in France. At the Second Washington (Argonaut) Conference in June 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt conspired behind Brooke’s and Marshall’s backs for a 1942 invasion of North Africa. At London in July 1942, Marshall failed to persuade Churchill and Brooke of the merits of an early cross-Channel assault, because the Britons knew from Hopkins that Roosevelt privately wanted an attack on the northern coast of Africa. At Casablanca (Symbol) in January 1943, Marshall rightly suspected that Roosevelt was on Churchill’s and Brooke’s side, and so accepted the Sicily operation faute de mieux. At the Third Washington (Trident) Conference, Churchill wrongly thought Brooke and Marshall were conspiring against him, when in fact they were just fighting each other openly, while Roosevelt supported Marshall and won a definite date–1 May 1944–for the cross-Channel assault.

  At Algiers in May 1943, Marshall simply blocked Churchill and Brooke over the invasion of mainland Italy, because he knew he now had the support of Roosevelt. The result was that tens of thousands of Germans escaped Sicily unnecessarily. At the First Quebec (Quadrant) Conference, Roosevelt and Churchill dashed Brooke’s hopes of commanding Overlord, seemingly at the time in favour of Marshall. Over the northern Norway, Sumatran, Andaman, Dodecanese and several other operations, Brooke blocked Churchill’s schemes, usually with–but sometimes without–the support of Roosevelt and Marshall. The First Cairo (Sextant) Conference saw another mutual blocking operation, as a result of which Stalin was the only true victor at Teheran (Eureka), while at the Second Cairo Conference Brooke and Roosevelt dashed Marshall’s plans for invading the Andaman Islands and Roosevelt told Churchill that Eisenhower rather than Marshall would command Overlord. On the invasion of the south of France, Marshall and Roosevelt argued hard with Brooke and Churchill, but finally over
ruled them. The same happened with the remit for Eisenhower’s supreme command. As for the hare-brained plan to capture Vienna via the Ljubljana Gap, Brooke swiftly changed his mind and joined Roosevelt and Marshall in opposing Churchill.

  At the Malta (Cricket) Conference in February 1945, Marshall simply employed force majeure to silence Brooke over Montgomery’s criticisms of Eisenhower’s broad-front strategy, while Roosevelt as good as ignored Churchill. By Yalta the grand strategy of the European denouement was already decided; Marshall approved it and Brooke made the best of it, while Churchill and Roosevelt could find no arguments against the stark fact of a vast Red Army sprawling over Poland and East Prussia, its vanguard only 40 miles from Berlin.

  Although the complicated minuet between the Masters and Commanders stopped with the death of Roosevelt, it had in effect ended at Malta on 1 February 1945, when Marshall had laid down his law with aggression, and Brooke could do nothing about it. Britain was in dire financial straits, and the United States was contributing far more on the ground in Europe in terms of men and matériel than the British Commonwealth. Brooke was therefore reduced to expostulating–and occasionally ranting–to his diary, but he could no longer significantly affect the course of the campaign. Once ashore in northern France after June 1944, the Americans could enjoy the dominance over strategy to which their provision of roughly two-thirds of the troops entitled them. Perhaps if the atomic bombs had not worked, and the United States had needed to call on Britain more in the war against Japan, the dynamic between Marshall and Brooke might have shifted again, but by then Roosevelt was dead, Churchill had lost office, and the two soldiers were both exhausted.