The Moscow Option

by David Downing

Reinforcements were being assiduously sought for Alexander to pass on to his army commanders. There were three possible sources. General Wavell agreed to part with two divisions from India, on the grounds that a Japanese offensive in northern Burma could not take place before the monsoon ended in October and might not take place at all. A further three divisions were to arrive from England; one was already rounding the Cape, the others were to be shipped out in transport originally earmarked for either a cross-Channel or North-west Africa operation. The third source was the United States Army. Roosevelt had already offered three hundred Sherman tanks; now the deployment of American troops in the Middle East was being considered.

  In the Indian Ocean the British were doing their utmost to ensure that all these reinforcements would reach their destination. The port of Diego Suarez in Madagascar had been occupied in May, and through the early summer Somerville’s Eastern Fleet was being reinforced as fast as was possible. The battleships Renown and Duke of York had both arrived in May, a third carrier, Illustrious, was expected in July. The British were not to know that this fleet would never be tested, that a combination of German discouragement and Yamamoto’s strategic preferences would inhibit renewed Japanese naval action in this area.

  But perhaps the most important legacy of Egypt’s fall was the change in Bomber Command policy decreed by the War Cabinet. Bomber Command’s single-minded devotion to the strategic bombing of Germany was proving a luxury that Britain could no longer afford. A chorus of protest had started to grow when Malta succumbed to the Luftwaffe while the British bomber force was busy attacking the German railway system. With Egypt’s fall this chorus grew too loud to ignore, and it was decided to shift some of the strategic bombing force to the Middle East. New airfields in Iraq and Iran were prepared for their arrival.

  All roads in the British Empire now led to the Middle East. And none towards France or North-west Africa. The War Cabinet realised that there could be no Second Front in 1942, nor probably in 1943. This realisation had to be passed on to Britain’s two major allies, both of whom saw the Second Front as the main priority of the moment. Churchill and Brooke would go to Washington to explain matters to their suspicious American counterparts; Cripps and Wavell would travel to Kuybyshev and break the bad news to Stalin.

  Washington DC

  In June 1942 the war had come home to America in a welter of anger and bitterness. Like its Pacific enemy the United States was not a country accustomed to setbacks, let alone defeats as crushing as that suffered at Midway. Now Hawaii was at risk. The whole western seaboard was at risk. The most powerful nation in the world had been humbled by the Japanese.

  In the war councils of the American administration the ‘Germany first’ policy agreed in January was also at risk. The two service chiefs, General Marshall and Admiral King, were as aware as the British that the latter’s Middle Eastern reverses involved the indefinite postponement of a cross-Channel assault on the European mainland. However, they did not deduce from this that US forces should be committed in the Middle East. On the contrary, both men, and particularly King, saw in the postponement of European action a chance to commit more American forces in the Pacific. The American population shared their enthusiasm for a new ‘Japan first’ policy.

  Roosevelt fortunately disagreed. He had committed the United States to assist the British against Germany, and the fall of Egypt made that more necessary, not less so. Naturally the security of American soil - Hawaii and the West Coast - had the highest priority, but that was a matter for the Navy. There would certainly have to be a temporary shift of naval forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but that was all.

  Churchill and Brooke arrived to join in the argument on 19 June, splashing down on the Potomac in the sea-plane which had carried them across the Atlantic. Brooke was brought up to date by Dill before talking to Marshall and King, while Churchill retired to Roosevelt’s country residence at Hyde Park for a tête-a-tête with the President.

  Both the British leaders reiterated the basics of the strategy agreed in earlier meetings. The two powers were to launch a counter-offensive against Germany in the West as soon as their ‘essential interests’ in other areas had been secured. These ‘essential interests’ included the Iraqi-Iranian oilfields, which was now threatened. Until such time as the threat receded ‘Sledgehammer’ was impossible. As Brooke put it: ‘Precious shipping and resources cannot be directed to one end of the Mediterranean when strength was needed to defend the other.’

  His audience was not particularly appreciative. King sat silent, his face a study in obstinacy. He had already decided that American resources should be directed to the Pacific, not to either end of the Mediterranean. Marshall was more generous. He said that he recognised the difficulties of the British position, the immensity of the burden they were bearing. But he asked Brooke and Dill to take into account the strong desire of the American public for action against the Japanese.

  At Hyde Park Roosevelt, who had probably done more for the American public than any President since Lincoln, listened diplomatically to Churchill and confirmed his personal commitment to the ‘Germany first’ policy. He hoped Churchill would share his view that the retention of Hawaii and the safeguarding of the US-Australia sea-route were also ‘essential interests’ of the Allied powers. He admitted to the British Prime Minister that he was under considerable pressure from his service chiefs to commit greater American forces in the Pacific. He would have to give them something, and that something would have to be naval forces, including the two US carriers currently in the Atlantic. He realised that this would place a strain on the Atlantic lifeline, but there were no alternatives.

  Churchill concurred gratefully. He said that Illustrious, now en route to the Indian Ocean, could be recalled to the Atlantic to fill the gap. But what could the Americans offer the Middle East? An armoured division? Planes? Roosevelt admitted that he did not know what was available. They would have to ask Marshall the following day.

  Next morning the two leaders returned to Washington by train. There they found that Marshall had been largely won over by a combination of Brooke’s persuasiveness and the knowledge that, for the moment, there was no way the US could commit most of its resources in a Japanese-held Pacific. Admiral King, though unrepentant, had admitted defeat. The British had got their way, and the rest of their visit was spent in sightseeing and hammering out the details of the US commitment in the Middle East. Several squadrons of US bombers would be flown out to Iran, and at least one of the armoured divisions previously earmarked for North-west Africa would be shipped to Basra as soon as possible. Churchill and Brooke left Washington on 27 June feeling more optimistic than they had eight days before.

  Kuybyshev

  The British party had arrived at Kuybyshev on 17 June. It was warmly welcomed, Molotov leading the soldiers and diplomats to a convenient hangar for a caviar and vodka lunch. This was the high-point of the visit.

  That evening Cripps saw Stalin. The Soviet leader reluctantly conceded that there could be no Second Front that year, but then offended Cripps by accusing the Royal Navy of cowardice in stopping the Arctic convoys. He appeared ‘unruffled’ by the new German offensive, but refused to give any details of the Red Army’s strength. He doubted whether the Germans would reach the Volga. He was also afraid that the American failure in the Pacific might encourage the Japanese to attack the Soviet Union. It was all rather vague and, as far as Cripps was concerned, most unsatisfactory.

  Wavell was receiving no more joy from Shaposhnikov. When asked whether he was confident that the Red Army would hold the Caucasus, the Soviet Chief of Staff could only reply that he ‘did not think’ the Germans would succeed in breaching the mountain barrier. Wavell found this ‘did not think’ profoundly disturbing, but could elicit no more detailed information. The Russians expressed interest in Tedder’s offer of British air support in the defence of the Baku area but were reluctant to reach any hard-and-fast agreements. Time would tell, they repeated over a
nd over again.

  Many Russian shrugs and glasses of vodka later the British departed for home. They were little the wiser for their visit. The Soviet Union was still in the war, its leaders seemed confident. But who could tell? Wavell told Alexander that ‘we shall only know for certain how strong the Red Army is in the Caucasus when we spot the first panzer column crossing the Persian border.’

  Baghdad/Rafah

  General Alexander arrived in Baghdad to take over the Middle East Command on 14 June. He had already played a large part in organising two relatively successful retreats, to Dunkirk and the Chindwin. It was hoped that he would not be organising a third, from Iraq.

  Auchinleck had chosen Baghdad as the new Middle East Command HQ before his dismissal, and Alexander confirmed the choice. From the City of the Arabian Nights he expected to oversee both the maintenance of internal security in the British-occupied Middle East and the shifting of war material from the disembarkation port of Basra to the fighting fronts. Baghdad was of course a long way from the prospective front in Palestine, but Alexander was not a man who liked to interfere in the day-to-day running of the armies under his overall command. It was his job, as he and his commanders saw it, to funnel through the men, planes, motor transport and supplies to where they were needed most.

  The maintenance of internal security was now clearly a military matter of some importance. It was also beset with growing difficulties. In the aftermath of Egypt’s fall the Middle East seemed to many like a dynamite dump with any number of fast-burning fuses. In Jerusalem, Haifa, Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran and other major cities the whispers of Arab and Persian rebellion were gathering themselves into a roar. Swastikas appeared on walls, thinly-disguised pro-Axis reports appeared in even the previously loyal newspapers. The reliability of the British-trained Arab units was no longer taken for granted. To the British the celebrated Fifth Column seemed truly ubiquitous.

  They clamped the lid down tighter than before. Conscious of their vulnerability the British security forces resorted to measures which they described, in true national style, as ‘stern but fair’. To the Arabs they seemed merely harsh, and a further reminder of their subordinate status. They did not share the British view of the war as a crusade; they knew little of the plight of Europe’s Jews, only that several hundred thousand of them had appropriated land in Palestine. To the Arabs the British were fighting for the right to maintain their global empire, and there was nothing noble in that. But they were not yet ready for rebellion. They waited, as their counterparts in Egypt had waited, for the Germans to engage their well-armed occupiers, before making too overt a move of their own.

  The British stepped up the propaganda war. Much was made of the escalating chaos in Egypt, and of the imperial designs of the Italians, whom the British knew were anathema to the Arabs. The latter were not initially impressed; it would be several weeks before the same news reached the Fertile Crescent through a more reliable source - their own people. In those days of June and July it was British repression and Arab caution that kept the area behind the fighting fronts relatively quiescent.

  Alexander’s other major task was the supplying of his armies. In losing Suez the British had lost half their port capacity, and now only Basra (which could handle 5000 tons a day) and Aqaba (250 tons) could be used for supplying the armies east of the Canal. The latter, moreover, was well within range of the new Luftwaffe bases in the Suez Canal Zone.

  So all depended on the 5000 tons coming into Basra. Not all of it was destined for the British; over ten per cent was loaded on to the Trans-Iranian railway for shipment into Russia. Nor could the other ninety per cent be brought to Baghdad, since the single-track Baghdad-Basra railway could only carry 3900 tons a day. One of Alexander’s first decisions on taking over the Middle East Command was to order a crash-doubling of the tracks. But this would take an estimated three months.

  The problem worsened at Baghdad. The road to Haifa could only handle 1200 tons, enough for five divisions. The railway to Aleppo could take slightly more, but it unfortunately ran through Turkish territory and could not be relied upon. In Palestine there were enough supplies stored to maintain seven divisions for ninety days. The conclusion to be drawn from all these figures was that Eighth Army, in the prevailing situation, could only maintain seven divisions in Palestine for six months. Unless something was done in the meantime demand would exceed supply after that period. Alexander set out to see that something was done.

  General Bernard Montgomery had arrived in the Middle East on the same plane as Alexander. The two men had known each other for a long time, and as very different people often do, got on very well together. As a military ‘team’ they worked well; Montgomery’s problems had always been with superiors (he had trouble recognising them as such), and Alexander was content to keep well in the background.

  In June 1942 he gave Montgomery, with Churchill and Brooke’s backing, only one firm directive. He was not to indulge his well-known penchant for heroics. There was to be no ‘we stay here, dead or alive’ defence of Palestine. It was Iraq and Iran which were vital to Britain, and it was Montgomery’s job to see that Alexander had time to prepare their defence. A dead Eighth Army would benefit no one but Rommel.

  Churchill, as usual, had also been more specific. ‘My ideas for the defence of Palestine and Syria,’ he telegrammed Eighth Army’s new commander, ‘are roughly not lines but a series of localities capable of all-round defence blocking the defiles and approaches.’ Brooke was less free with advice. Montgomery knew Palestine well - he had served there twice before, in 1930-1 and 1938-9 - and Brooke thought he could be trusted to work out his own defensive strategy. He was confident that Montgomery, as long as he restrained his enthusiasm, would demonstrate the same energetic drive in slowing Rommel’s advance as he had shown in evacuating 3rd Division from Belgium two years before.

  In Palestine Eighth Army was slowly recovering from its traumatic flight. The better part of five divisions had successfully escaped across the Suez Canal, but all the base workshops had had to be left behind, suitably wrecked, in Egypt. The Red Sea had not parted for their transportation. Now, in late June, the South Africans were still manning the east bank of the Canal to prevent the Germans from making too easy a crossing, while the survivors of 1st and 2nd Armoured Divisions (with only ninety-five tanks between them), 50th Division and the New Zealand Division were organising themselves in north-east Sinai. The RAF had extricated itself with less difficulty, and was now filling up the ninety available airfields in Palestine, Cyprus and Syria. But the airforce too had lost most of its repair facilities, and the nearest available were at Habbaniyah in Iraq. Morale, generally speaking, was abysmal.

  The saviour was on his way. After talking with Alexander and his newly-inherited staff in Baghdad, Montgomery travelled west across the desert towards Palestine. On 19 June he arrived in Jerusalem, and on the following day motored down to Eighth Army HQ at Rafah. He quickly made an impression on both his corps and divisional commanders and the dispirited troops. The men who had ‘lost Egypt’, and were glumly preparing to lose Palestine and whatever lay behind it, were made acutely aware that their new commander had no intention of losing anything. ‘Rommel will not, repeat not, go through this Army,’ Montgomery told them. ‘He is almost at the end of his tether, and we’re going to be there when he reaches it.’ Three days after Montgomery’s arrival, as if on cue, the first fifty of 120 new tanks arrived from Basra. The new commander of Eighth Army left no one in any doubt that he was personally responsible for this welcome shipment.

  There is no doubt that Eighth Army, as a collective entity, responded favourably to the little man’s bravado. Not that there was much time to think about such things. Suddenly lying around in the sun had given way to intensive training and construction work. Montgomery had decided that the six divisions at his disposal - 44th Division was due to arrive from Basra in mid-July - would try to hold, for as long as possible, the strong positions at Jiradi-Rafah and Umm Katef o
n the two main entry routes into Palestine. Rommel would have difficulty getting round either of these positions since they were flanked by either sea, high ground or soft sand. And he would have ‘a real fight on his hands’ to get through them.

  Brooke agreed, but was concerned about the possibility of a German seaborne invasion in the rear of this line. Montgomery correctly discounted this. He had seen for himself in England the problems involved in mounting such operations, and in any case the RAF and the small naval force which operated under its protective cover in the eastern Mediterranean would soon put a stop to any such nonsense. As if to conclude the argument he cabled Brooke: ‘Rommel is a land animal; all Germans are land animals.’

  Still, even Montgomery had to admit that these land animals might break through his lines, and other defensive positions were being prepared south of the Jerusalem-Jaffa railway for Eighth Army to fall back to. Further back still, along the Litani river and the Golan Heights to the north and in the mountains behind the Jordan river to the east, more construction work was underway. Alexander was not so confident as Montgomery that Eighth Army would stop Rommel short of the Iraqi border.

  One thing was certain. If Rommel did take Palestine the British were determined that he should derive as many headaches from this troublesome land as they had. In the previous two years the British authorities had been inundated with offers of help from the various Zionist organisations. Each had been spurned on the grounds that the military advantage to be gained would not compensate for the political cost to Britain’s post-war plans. But by the summer of 1942 post-war plans were becoming a luxury. The Arabs had demonstrated their deplorable and total lack of loyalty to His Majesty; the Jews, whatever they thought of Britain - which wasn’t much - were obviously not about to collaborate with the Germans. A tacit truce had already been agreed between Menachem Begin, the new leader of the Irgun Zvi Leumi terrorist organisation, and the British Commissioner. Fifteen hundred youths from the kibbutzim were already receiving instruction in guerrilla warfare from the British Army. On 23 June British representatives met with leaders of the Jewish Yishuv, notably David Ben-Gurion, Golda Myerson and Moshe Sharrett, to expand the area of military co-operation. The 24,000 Jewish police in Palestine were to be given more and better arms, and regular units were to be formed for both counter-Arab and counter-German action. The Jewish leaders were also promised, in the strictest confidence of course, that their sharing in the struggle would reap a postwar reward. There would be no further restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine. Presumably in this case the British Government was less interested in securing the loyalty of the Jews - they would have fought willingly in any case - than in paying back the Arabs for their lack of this precious quality.