Churchill's Secret War

by Denniston, Robin

  On 28 January Churchill, in Cairo, was at loggerheads with the FO, Eden and Cunningham over the fate of the French fleet, but mentally preparing for Turkey. The next day was spent in planning for his visit and considering:

  . . . how best we can help the Turks. During the meeting a long paper dictated by the P.M. arrived bit by bit, hot from the typewriter, for the Commanders-in-Chief to check. It proved to be a statement of the position for the Turks, from which the Prime Minister proposed to speak when he met President I·nönü.75

  On 19 January 1943 Churchill queried Eden about ‘the leaky conditions’ at the Ankara embassy, suggesting they reflected badly on Hugessen. Eden agreed cautiously.76 As a communicator Hugessen was obviously first class. His intelligence and conscientiousness were never in doubt. But doubts were surfacing again. Further references to the ‘leaky conditions’ at the embassy occasionally appear, though when the ‘Cicero’ leaks became dangerous they appeared not at the embassy but in the ambassador’s private residence, or possibly the chancery building. His eccentricities, such as his habit of practising on Soviet ambassador Vinogradov’s Bechstein through the hot summer afternoons when others were either working or sleeping, would have been remarked on, but hardly called for censure. Possibly he found it difficult to delegate or share credit, a not uncommon phenomenon among those who know they are abler and more intelligent than most of their colleagues, as Hugessen certainly did and was. For instance, when his fifty-nine paragraph annual report on 1942 was only briefly acknowledged by the Southern Department, his colleagues, who were assumed to have ‘helped the compilation’, were officially thanked; it was some time later he pointed out that the report was in fact 100 per cent his own work.77 In it Hugessen mentioned the Bulgarian threat to use its ancient ties with Russia to achieve frontier rectification in Thrace at the expense of Turkey. The Turks, according to Sterndale-Bennett, ‘believed the Balkans [i.e. Bulgaria] should be occupied by the Allies before the Russians got there’. This was reported back by Hugessen. Eden knew the ‘Bulgars’ were better equipped, with the latest German weaponry, than the Turks. He also knew ‘from other sources’ [i.e. BJs] that von Papen knew in advance about Adana.78

  So the run-up to Adana concluded. Hugessen and Cadogan represented FO Turkish policy, while Alanbrooke and other high ranking service officers represented the views of the COS. Unfortunately neither viewpoint was heard in the plenary sessions, which were totally dominated by Churchill and I·nönü, so it is difficult to tease out the complex attitude the FO took of Turkish neutrality at this key moment when, having gained the right to play the Turkey hand, it found that hand whisked out of its grasp by the prime minister.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Adana and After

  He had the feeling that the time had come to cash in on the Russian victories, and on the favourable turn of events in the Mediterranean, and to nail Turkey to the mast . . . He felt that a talk between him and the Turkish president would show the world clearly which way the wind was blowing.

  Ian Jacob, December 1942 in JAC B1/16 p. 94 (in Churchill College, Cambridge)

  Preparations

  In the previous chapter the claim was made that by reading Turkish diplomatic intercepts on a careful and regular basis Churchill knew how and when to approach the Turkish leadership directly, what to say, and what not to say to them; in short, how to appeal to their hopes and fears. He now put his ‘Morning Thoughts’ in a document designed to bring the Turks closer to the Allies while allaying their fears of a powerful Soviet Union postwar. All this is clear from the previous chapter. But without the BJs he might never have gone to Turkey and a great opportunity would have been lost. Such a claim cannot, of course, be proved. Against it can be set the fact that the meetings at Adana were so chaotic that inspirational extemporisation was all that was needed. For this Churchill had great talent, which he fully exploited. Though he summoned a large staff of advisers, experts and spectators from Cairo, Ankara and London, including his egregious son Randolph, he spent most of the time talking himself, either at the plenary conference at the start of the proceedings or privately with President I·nönü on political implications. That his BJ reading provided value backup for this improvised programme is not in doubt; that it was responsible for making a success of Adana is more than the section that follows claims.

  Churchill himself did not go into details when compiling Volume 4 and 5 of his Second World War history,1 preferring to select such documents as his ‘Morning Thoughts’ and his other communications with Eden, and the COS make his case for him, the case being that Adana was an important step towards beating the Germans. Other attendees, including Hugessen, Ismay, Cadogan and Alanbrooke left first-hand accounts. Hugessen’s 1943 jottings and Brig Ian Jacob’s journal, both in Churchill College, Cambridge, are the only circumstantial accounts still unpublished. It must be remembered that Jacob had access neither to Ultra nor Dedip. Also, since Adana was a short conference with maximum security but also maximum propinquity, both of the high with the low and the Turkish team with the British, handling Most Secret Source material in the train outside Adana would have endangered its security; so no contemporaneous Turkish intercepts were available to the British party.

  On 28 January Churchill had written to Eden from Casablanca: ‘We play the hand in Turkey . . . Is not this the opportunity and the moment for me to get into direct touch with the Turks?’ Two days later he joked about Adana, to Eden: ‘You can imagine how much I wish I were going to be with you tomorrow on the Bench [in the House of Commons] but duty calls.’2 In making his pitch for a direct conference with the Turkish leadership on Turkish soil, he drafted a cable for Roosevelt to send to I·nönü, ‘if approved by my colleagues’:

  To President I·nönü: ‘Churchill, who has been conferring with me, is going shortly to Cairo. He will in all probability wish to confer with you and with your Prime Minister at some convenient secret place. In case Prime Minister Churchill does seek a conference I earnestly hope you or your Prime Minister will find it possible to meet him.’ ROOSEVELT.

  The ensuing argument about whether to go, where to go and who should go, so historians of diplomacy agree, seriously weakened Eden’s standing as foreign secretary.3 Turkey was an important part of Eden’s portfolio, and it was not only the fear of a Turkish rebuff but a simple dislike of Churchill hogging the limelight that made Eden so nervy.4 A ‘clear the line HUSH’ telegram from Attlee and Eden to Churchill on 25 January had strongly opposed Ankara as the venue of choice.5 It was ‘full of German agents . . . there would be serious risks . . . Remember the Papen incident’. Adana, on the Mediterranean seaboard and many hours’ train time from Ankara (then in deep snow), was preferred.6 Churchill renewed his arguments a day later, despite the rebuff he received from the War Cabinet. Having consulted Roosevelt he got somewhat ambiguous backing for his venture which he used to overcome cabinet objections. On 24 January he had cabled I·nönü suggesting ‘a secret rendezvous’. He then blandly wrote to the War Cabinet: ‘I am most grateful to you for allowing my7 [sic] to try my plan, and even more triumphantly to the C.I.G.S. that the war cabinet were in entire accord with him and that ‘the United Kingdom plays the hand in Turkey . . .’ He even got Stalin to ‘not deny the rumours that you have gone to Moscow’. Rarely has such a poor hand been played with such bravura.’8 Churchill’s account of the Adana Conference9 starts with a lengthy quotation from his ‘wooing letter containing an offer of platonic marriage both from me and the President’ which was handed to I·nönü.10 I·nönü had replied to the earlier invitation that he would prefer to meet Churchill, openly or secretly, in Ankara and could not leave Turkey for constitutional reasons. Churchill was delighted when he accepted, according to Jacob. He kept saying:

  ‘This is big stuff.’ He read and re-read the telegrams and was obviously not unhappy at the thought of how right he had been and how wrong the Cabinet and their advisers [the FO] had proved.11

  The British party assembled in flying kit over civil
ian clothes on Landing Ground 224. It consisted of Gens Alexander, Wilson and Air Marshal Lindsell; AM Drummond, Air Cdre Dundas; Peter Loxley, ‘Mr Kinna’ and Jacob himself.12 The generals occupied the flightdeck, Jacob had the bomb bay.13 The PM travelled from Casablanca in another plane with his son Randolph, his doctor Sir Charles Wilson, his security guard, ‘Tommy’ Thompson, two police officers and Sir Alexander Cadogan.14 The airport was close to the town of Adana in the centre of an alluvial plain between the Taurus mountains and the north-east coast of the Mediterranean. At this time of year the fields were all waterlogged, if not submerged.

  The villages we saw were extremely squalid. The houses were built of mud, the general practice being for the family to live in an upper storey reached by ladder, and built over the shed which is the home of the cattle, goats and poultry. The roads are atrocious, and the whole country is obviously primitive in the extreme.15

  At the airport the two British parties met the embassy contingent, which outlined the manoeuvre to install Churchill on Turkish soil. He was to be taken to a nearby level crossing ‘where he would be whisked on board’ his special carriage which would pause for the purpose. The co-ordination of planes, cars and trains was complicated and extemporising was needed, particularly when Hugessen arrived with his team. ‘However, all was well and at 12.50 p.m. cordial greetings were taking place, after Churchill had inspected the Hurricane aircraft supplied by the RAF to the Turkish air force and drank with the Turkish officials on the aerodrome.’16

  The PM’s party were to arrive in time for lunch on Saturday 30 January and stay for twenty-four hours. An advance party under Gp Capt Hudleston (an Air Staff officer) would set off earlier. From Ankara Ambassador Hugessen would be accompanied by his military and air attachés (Maj-Gen Arnold and AVM George). They were to accompany the Turkish party and bring interpreters. ‘Our communications would be by our own W/T set to Cairo and thence to London.’ Sir Alexander Cadogan and Peter Loxley of the FO arrived from England. The whole operation was shrouded in secrecy. In Ankara Hugessen pretended to be off on a shooting expedition, despite deep snow, and waved his guns at local journalists to prove it. He left Ankara for the eight-hour journey to Adana using a small station outside the capital. Unfortunately the president’s party organisers had the same idea, and a small army of Turkish labourers, busily brushing away the snow to permit the presidential car to get through, witnessed the ambassador’s arrival. The next day, according to Numan Menemencioğlu, everyone knew that Churchill was coming to talk Turkey.17

  On 31 January the day of the Adana Conference and the day Stalingrad fell to the Russians, the Southern Department read many Turkey-relevant BJs. The effect of Allied victory in North Africa dominated the BJs of this period, during which Hugessen’s pressure on Menemencioğlu to come off the fence, on instructions from the Southern Department, took a new turn.18 The Turkish foreign minister made only debating points in response, as Clutton’s draft to Hugessen, approved by Sargent, noted. The head of the Southern Department from 1941 till 1945, Douglas Howard, noted that:

  . . . [our] veiled threat to keep them out of the Peace Conference amounts to nothing . . . The Turks are conceited enough to think they are indispensable to us. And I am not sure they are not right.

  Cadogan and Eden both signed off this memorandum, indicating their view that this should become policy. Hugessen in Ankara told the FO: ‘The Turks above all want to conserve their strength against Russia.’ A reply drafted in the Southern Department contained the suggestion that the British might occupy the Dodecanese, but this was struck out by Eden who no doubt thought the FO was exceeding its brief. Steinhardt, the politically ambitious American ambassador in Ankara, was thought to be overactive, though he had recently assured Hugessen that it was his rule (as instructed by the president through a junior embassy official in Ankara) to follow Hugessen’s lead on Turkish neutrality; but ‘He cannot keep still or quiet’ and Hugessen’s wish to keep his American colleague in the picture over this new Turkish development received a cautionary note from Cadogan.

  In the Train

  The whole party came aboard the train at the designated level crossing and settled down for lunch (eating and drinking took up a great deal of the time). Hugessen, who had brought the embassy party from Ankara through thick snow by train, told the party that the Germans knew all about the meeting and von Papen had rung the foreign ministry to ask ‘whether this meant that the Turks had come down on our side of the fence’.19 Jacob described the Turkish leadership as:

  . . . rather nondescript people, obviously very delighted with the whole affair, and having none of the pomposity of Ministers in some countries . . . They put on no airs, and the whole arrival was more like a family welcoming a relation than an official reception.20

  The bigwigs had a special saloon for their lunch where Churchill met I·nönü, both with their ministers and Churchill with Hugessen. ‘Gradually more and more people squeezed in, including Marshal Chakmak [sic].’21 Churchill conducted the preliminaries in his franglais. He and I·nönü decided on a formal meeting of the two delegations (one political, one military) forthwith, but continued their tête-a-tête before joining the political session.22 Churchill produced the paper he had been working on in Cairo and held forth for over an hour – having dispensed with the services of Paul Falla, the British Embassy junior official listed as secretary and seconded to act as interpreter. Falla had not been properly briefed or given a sight of Churchill’s document; and when he translated Churchill’s ‘miles’ into ‘kilometres’ for the benefit of his French-speaking Turkish hosts, Churchill waved him away on the quite wrong assumption that he was not following the exact words – instructions so close (as we have seen) to his heart.23

  Most of the British were fluent French speakers, and the Turks might have got down to business more quickly had Falla been allowed to proceed. Jacob wrote:

  The result was completely intelligible to all the English present . . . but the Turks could only have formed a very hazy idea of what the whole thing was about . . . Peculiar though it all was, I do not think anyone felt like laughing. They couldn’t help admiring his determination and self-possession. The Turks were much too polite to express any surprise or amusement.24

  Hugessen later wrote: ‘Practically all the talking [in French] was between the PM and Ismet [I·nönü] . . . The PM played all the right cards at the right time.’25 Later Peter Loxley, Knox Helm, Paul Falla and Mrs Sterndale-Bennett translated Churchill’s document into real French for the Turks.

  I·nönü then proposed the conference should separate off into the political study of the circumstances in which Turkey might become involved in a war and a military question of how to prepare for that situation. He and Churchill and their advisers should attend the first group, Alanbrooke and Marshal Fevkik Chakmak, the Turkish military supremo, the second. Meanwhile Hugessen’s diplomatic message revealing German knowledge of Churchill’s whereabouts was not seriously regarded.26

  Churchill’s whole demeanour bowled over his Turkish hosts, who found it quite easy, nevertheless, to resist his blandishments. And I·nönü charmed Churchill who later wrote: ‘I find him a very agreeable man and made friends [with him] at once.’27 There were not two but three items on the agenda: encouraging Turkey off the fence with carrots in the form of modern war equipment, and sticks in the form of the need to come to terms with the imminent possibility of a major Russian success in the Caucasus or at Stalingrad; possible joint operations in the eastern Mediterranean involving the capture of the Dodecanese and the recapture of Crete; and bombing raids by British or American aircraft from Turkish bases on Romanian oilfields.

  The Turks were worried about the outcome of Russian successes to their north and less about the Bolshevisation of Europe which so panicked the Iberians, more about Russia’s likely demands for the rectification of the Straits settlement at Montreux in 1936, as a prelude to a more aggressive stance in the eastern Mediterranean. The military men discussed the mat
ériel the British could supply the Turks, whose ‘oriental behaviour showed in the keenness with which they entered into this aspect of the business, which was the only thing they were really interested in . . . They asked no questions about the progress of the war’ nor what had been decided at Casablanca. They agreed to the meeting because of their fear of Russia’s intentions postwar, and the state of Europe following a German collapse.

  They wanted to be sure of our support if Russia turns nasty. They were a bit apprehensive that the P.M. would come with proposals for their immediate entry into the war. When they found he had no intention of trying to push them along, they heaved a sigh of relief and entered whole-heartedly into the fun.28

  Alanbrooke pressed his opposite number with what the Turks could do, since Lindsell had been having a hard time establishing meaningful dialogue in Ankara. He and his staff could now:

  . . . really get down to the Turkish problem which they had never been able to do before. The Turks have always tried to exclude foreign influence, remembering as they do the domineering attitudes of the Germans in the last war.29