Finest Years

by Max Hastings

  In December 1942 it seemed to Britain’s service chiefs that it would be impossible to find enough landing craft to support a D-Day in 1943. Pressure on shipping was unrelenting in every theatre. There were never enough troops. British relations with the Australian government were further strained in December, by Canberra’s insistence that 9th Australian Division should return home from North Africa, even though the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia had been lifted. Churchill cabled Curtin, the Australian prime minister, that he did not consider this decision ‘in accordance with the general strategic interests of the United Nations’, but Canberra remained implacable. Curtin’s enthusiasm for leaving his men to fight at British discretion cannot have been enhanced by news that while only 6 per cent of the Allied troops at Alamein were Australian, they suffered 14 per cent of Montgomery’s casualties in the battle.

  And now the two North African campaigns faltered. The Allies were confounded by Hitler’s decision to reinforce the theatre. If this was strategically foolish, it rendered much more difficult the immediate task of the British and US armies. American commanders and troops lacked experience. Though the Allies had numerical superiority in men, tanks and aircraft, the Germans fought with their usual skill and persistence. Alexander was famous for his courtesy and charm in addressing the Americans, but in private he railed at their military incompetence.

  His reservations about Eisenhower’s soldiers were just, but it ill became a British officer to express them. The British contingent in Ike’s forces, designated as First Army, was led by Gen. Sir Kenneth Anderson. Anderson proved yet another in the long line of inadequate British field commanders—‘not much good’, in Brooke’s succinct words of dismissal. Operations in Tunisia dispelled any notion that First Army’s men were entitled to patronise their US counterparts. Eisenhower was more willing than most of his countrymen to hide frustrations about Allied shortcomings, but he wrote in his diary on 5 January 1943: ‘Conversations with the British grow wearisome. They’re difficult to talk to, apparently afraid that someone is trying to tell them what to do and how to do it. Their practice of war is dilatory.’ A few days later, he added: ‘British, as usual, are scared someone will take advantage of them even if we furnish everything.’ In another entry he described the British as ‘stiff-necked’. Richard Crossman of Britain’s Political Warfare Executive thought that ‘Getting on with Americans is frightfully easy, if only one will talk quite frankly and not give the appearance of being too clever, but v few English seem to have achieved it.’ In North Africa, they were less than impressed by Eisenhower. Though Churchill’s scepticism was later modified by necessity and experience, that winter he was sufficiently irritated by the general’s perceived blunders to evade fulfilment of Ike’s request for a signed photograph of himself.

  At the beginning of December, the prime minister sketched a design for 1943 based upon his expectation that Tunisia would be occupied by the year’s end, and North Africa cleared of Axis forces a month later. By Christmas, this timetable was wrecked. Eighth Army’s west-ward advance against Rommel progressed much more slowly than Churchill had hoped in early November. The Russian convoy programme was further dislocated by the need to keep large naval forces in the Mediterranean. The British joint planners, unambitious as ever, favoured making Sardinia the Allies’ next objective. The prime minister dismissed this notion, urging that Sicily was a much worthier target. But he had begun to perceive that a 1943 D-Day in France was implausible.

  Churchill now wanted a conference of the ‘Big Three’, to settle strategy. He loved summits, a coinage he invented, not least because he believed that the force of his own personality could accomplish ends more impressive than his nation’s real strength could deliver, in its fourth year of war. But Stalin declined a proposal to meet in Khartoum, saying that he could not leave Moscow. Roosevelt was often less enthusiastic than Churchill about personal encounters. Just as the prime minister hoped for disproportionate results from these, to the advantage of his own country, so the president knew that the wealth and might of the United States spoke more decisively than any words which he might utter at a faraway conference table. But he liked the idea of visiting the theatre of war, and accepted Churchill’s proposal for a meeting to be held in liberated Casablanca, on the Atlantic coast of North Africa.

  The prime minister arrived in the Liberator Commando on 12 January 1943. His identification for security purposes as ‘Air Commodore Frankland’ seemed absurd, from the moment he landed at Casablanca to be greeted by a glittering array of brass. Ismay muttered: ‘Any fool can see that is an air commodore disguised as the Prime Minister.’ The ‘air commodore’ was then driven to his appointed residence, the Villa Mirador, inside the closely guarded perimeter where the conference was to be held. He cabled Attlee: ‘Conditions most agreeable. I wish I could say the same of the problems.’

  The American service chiefs flew from Washington to Bathurst in West Africa, where the chief of the army was persuaded to disembark in a beekeeper’s hood, to ward off mosquitoes. This was abandoned when Marshall found the welcoming party clad only in shorts. The Americans flew on to Casablanca with a lavish inventory of tents, cooking equipment and trinkets suitable for Arabs, lest they should be forced down in the desert, together with snowshoes and cold-weather clothing for a possible onward trip to Moscow. The British had their own embarrassments. They felt humiliated by their makeshift air transports, which obliged exalted passengers to disembark dirty and dishevelled from the bomb bays. Roosevelt reached Casablanca on the 14th, and was installed in a villa close to that of the prime minister. Churchill greeted him exuberantly. The two great men talked while their chiefs of staff embarked upon the bruising process of seeking an agreement which the president and prime minister could then be invited to endorse.

  The Casablanca conference was the most important Anglo-American strategic meeting of the war, because it established the framework for most of the big things which were done thereafter. It represented the high point of British wartime influence, because it took place at a time when projected operations still depended on preponderantly British forces. Its deliberations were warmed by victories in Africa, and knowledge of looming Russian triumph at Stalingrad. At Alamein, in some degree the British Army had retrieved its fallen reputation. Churchill answered a question from correspondents about Eighth Army’s pursuit of Rommel: ‘I can give you this assurance—everywhere that Mary went the lamb is sure to go.’ British staffwork for the conference was superb, aided by the presence offshore of a purpose-equipped command ship.

  However powerful were the reservations of British service chiefs about their prime minister’s strategic wisdom, an intimate working relationship ensured that they knew exactly what he wanted. By contrast, even after thirteen months of war the US president was ‘still something of an enigma to his American advisers’, in the words of Marshall’s biographer: ‘Roosevelt imposed no unified plan.’ His military chiefs ‘still had twinges of doubt about Roosevelt’s lack of administrative order, his failure to keep the Chiefs of Staff informed of private high-level discussions, and his tendency to ignore War Department advice in favour of suggestions from officials of other departments’. Marshall knew from the outset that he would lose his battle for a 1943 cross-Channel attack. In advance of the summit Roosevelt had displayed his customary opacity. However, he threw out enough hints to show that he, like the British, favoured the capture of Sicily. Admiral Ernest King, for the US Navy, was overwhelmingly preoccupied with the Pacific campaign. Quite uncharacteristically, the chief of the army was blustering in suggesting that an early invasion of France remained plausible.

  In the combined chiefs’ conference room at the Anfa Hotel, Alan Brooke echoed Churchill’s recent protests to Roosevelt about the scale of the American Pacific build-up, which, said the British CIGS, threatened the agreed principle of ‘Germany first’. The British thus wrongfooted Marshall by pressing him to justify the weight of resources committed to the Japanese war, t
o the detriment of Europe. This was a telling counter against American arguments that the British were prevaricating. Brooke then argued—implausibly in the eyes of history, and even in the context of January 1943—that a massive combined bomber offensive against Germany, together with home-grown resistance among the peoples of occupied Europe, might relegate an invasion of France to a mere mopping-up operation. The Americans pressed the British for early offensive action in Burma, to assist the cause of China. This was perceived as a vital priority in Washington, a negligible one in London.

  British politicians and generals had thus far found little to enjoy about the Second World War. But many of those at Casablanca—with the exception of Brooke, who seldom relished anything about the conflict—found the conference congenial. Harold Macmillan described ‘a general atmosphere of extraordinary goodwill’. The weather was still cool, but flowers bloomed everywhere amid the palm trees and bougainvillea. Notice boards gave details of meeting venues and timings, then, ‘when we got out of school at five o clock, you would see field marshals and admirals going down to the beach to play with the pebbles and make sand castles…The whole spirit of the camp was dominated by the knowledge that two men were there who rarely appeared in public, but whose presence behind the scenes was always felt…It was rather like a meeting of the later period of the Roman empire…There was a curious mixture of holiday and business in these extraordinarily oriental and fascinating surroundings…The whole affair was a mixture between a cruise, a summer school and a conference.’

  Churchill, in the sunniest of moods in this sunny clime, wrote to Clementine on 15 January about the chiefs of staff’s deliberations: ‘At present they are working on what is called “off the record”, and very rightly approaching the problems in an easy and non-committal fashion on both sides.’ This reflected a wildly benign view. While courtesies were maintained, especially at social encounters, the first two days of conference sessions were tense and strained. Marshall asserted repeatedly that if the British were as serious as they professed about helping the Russians, they could only do this by executing Roundup, a landing in Europe in 1943. The British emphasised their support in principle for Roundup, but insisted that resources were lacking to undertake such a commitment.

  There was a punishing schedule for Symbol, as the conference was codenamed. The combined chiefs of staff held thirty-one meetings in eleven days. Each one involved gruelling exchanges between the principals, seeking to address a vast range of strategic and logistical issues. At later conferences in Quebec and elsewhere some closed sessions took place, without the usual congregation of staff officers in attendance, to allow a degree of frankness and indeed rudeness between the principals in breaking deadlocks. Ian Jacob was always conscious of American reservations about Brooke: ‘I think CIGS’s extremely definite views, ultra-swift speech and, at times, impatience, made them keep wondering whether he was not putting something over on them.’

  Moran wrote of Brooke ‘throwing down his facts in the path of understanding with a brusque gesture. In his opinion it was just common sense; he had thought it all out. Not for a moment did it occur to him that there might be another point of view.’ At Casablanca Admiral King’s temper, and passionate anglophobia, periodically broke out. During one meeting he asserted that American public opinion would never stand for certain courses. Brooke shrugged: ‘Then you will have to educate them.’ King, nettled, responded: ‘I thank you [to remember that] the Americans are as well educated as the British.’

  Churchill and Roosevelt attended only the conference plenary sessions, which took place in the evenings at the president’s villa. Churchill wrote to Attlee about Roosevelt: ‘He is in great form and we have never been so close.’ Harold Macmillan observed that the prime minister handled the plenary meetings ‘with consummate skill’. Away from the big table, ‘his curious regime of spending the greater part of the day in bed and all the night up made it a little trying for his staff. I have never seen him in better form. He ate and drank enormously all the time, settled huge problems, played bagatelle and bezique by the hour, and generally enjoyed himself.’ Churchill was dismayed that the British chiefs intended that a descent on Sicily should take place in September. This, he said, was much too late. If he did not accept the feasibility of a 1943 landing in France, he nonetheless wanted an alternative major Allied initiative by summer.

  De Gaulle arrived, sulking, to meet Giraud. Churchill marvelled at his intransigence: ‘The PM stood in the hall watching the Frenchman stalking down the garden path with his head in the air,’ wrote his doctor, Charles Wilson. ‘Winston turned to us with a whimsical smile: “His country has given up fighting, he himself is a refugee, and if we turn him down he’s finished. Well, just look at him!” he repeated. “He might be Stalin, with 200 divisions behind his words. I was pretty rough with him. I made it quite plain that if he could not be more helpful we were done with it…He hardly seemed interested. My advances and my threats met with no response.”’ Tears came to Churchill’s eyes as he said: ‘England’s grievous offence in de Gaulle’s eyes is that she has helped France. He cannot bear to think that she needed help. He will not relax his vigilance in guarding her honour for a single instant.’

  If the British were enjoying themselves at Casablanca, most of the Americans were not. Ian Jacob wrote disdainfully: ‘Being naturally extremely gullible, the Americans calmly repeat any hare-brained report they hear.’ John Kennedy wrote of their senior officers: ‘We feel that the Americans have great drive and bigger ideas than ours, but that they are weak in staff work and in some of their strategic conceptions. The Americans are extremely difficult to know. Under their hearty and friendly manner one feels there is suspicion and contempt in varying degrees according to personality.’ This was so. A biographer of Eisenhower has written: ‘Many American officers found their British opposite numbers to be insufferable not only in their arrogance but in their timidity about striking the enemy.’ One of Ike’s divisional commanders, Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward, wrote in disgust that Americans in North Africa found themselves reduced to the status of ‘a pointer pup…If someone with a red mustache, a swagger stick and a British accent speaks to us, we lie down on the ground and wiggle.’

  Harriman was dismayed by the eagerness of the US chiefs of staff, when in exclusively American company, to badmouth the British. In their hearts, he thought, Marshall and his colleagues recognised the intractability of mounting a cross-Channel attack in 1943 as surely as did the prime minister and Brooke. But, in Jacob’s words, ‘They viewed the Mediterranean as a kind of dark hole, which one entered into at one’s peril. If large forces were committed…the door would suddenly and firmly be shut behind one.’ They still seemed obsessed, in the eyes of the British chiefs, with fears that the Germans might intervene in North Africa through Spain. They deplored the sensation that the British, and explicitly Churchill, were exerting greater influence upon their president’s decisions than themselves.

  The strategic deadlock was broken, in the end, by a combination of harsh realities and skilful diplomacy, in which Dill played a key role. In January 1943, the Americans had 150,000 troops in the Mediterranean theatre. The British in the region fielded three times as many soldiers, four times as many warships and almost as many aircraft as the US. Once the North African campaign was wound up, the forces immediately available for follow-up operations would comprise four French divisions, nine American—and twenty-seven British. Churchill’s own soldiers, sailors and airmen continued to predominate in the conflict with Germany, albeit employing an increasing proportion of US tanks and equipment. Until this balance of forces shifted dramatically in 1944, British wishes were almost bound to prevail. When Brooke grew close to despair at one point in discussions, on 18 January, during a lunchtime break Dill first told him that agreement was closer than he supposed. Then he warned that if this could not be achieved between the chiefs, Churchill and Roosevelt must be invited to arbitrate, which neither British nor American commanders wanted:
‘You know what a mess they would make of it!’

  That same afternoon, the major differences were resolved. The British formally endorsed American commitments for the Pacific, and promised to launch an offensive in Burma after the monsoon. The two nations committed themselves to a massive air programme against Germany, the Combined Bomber Offensive, to create conditions for a successful invasion of France in 1944. They agreed to invade Sicily in the summer of 1943, and left further follow-up operations against Italy to be decided in the course of events. A face-saving sop was agreed about a cross-Channel attack: if resources and landing craft proved available, there should be a major operation to seize a bridgehead in France in August 1943. It is unlikely that anyone present anticipated fulfilment of this condition, but lip-service continued to be paid to it for months ahead, not least in cables to Stalin. Churchill and Roosevelt added a few token points of their own for the combined chiefs’ formal endorsement. They reasserted the importance of convoys to Russia and aid to China; the CCS were urged to try for a Sicilian landing as early as June; the need was emphasised to hasten concentration of forces in Britain for an invasion of France.

  Roosevelt thanked Dill for his role in brokering an Anglo-American deal. The British officer responded: ‘My object is to serve my country and to serve yours. I hope and I believe that our interests are identical and in every problem that arises I try to look at it not as a British or an American problem, but as an Anglo-American problem.’ Yet Dill, customarily much more temperate than Brooke in his judgements on all things American, later wrote to the CIGS about the president: ‘The better I get to know that man the more selfish and superficial I think him…of course, it is my job to make the most and the best of him.’