Churchill's Secret War

by Madhusree Mukerjee

  Whereas Bose was exaggerating the chances of success of such a rebellion, historian Milan Hauner has argued that the Nazis could have significantly disrupted the British war effort by providing prompt and substantial assistance to anti-colonials in India, Iraq, and elsewhere. It was not to be. The German government granted Bose a beautiful house in Berlin and permitted him to violate the Reich’s race laws by living with, and later marrying, an Austrian woman with whom he had fallen passionately in love while exiled from India in the mid-1930s. (Reuniting with her was no doubt a motive for his desperate escape.) The Nazis also permitted Bose to recruit thousands of Indian soldiers captured in northern Africa for a liberation army that he dreamed would march into its homeland via the Afghan border. But although the Italians and the Japanese urged a joint declaration in favor of Indian independence, Hitler refused to go along. He feared that any open threat to the Raj would strengthen the British resolve to fight on against the Germans.19

  Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Hitler still fancied he could reach an accommodation with the United Kingdom. The previous summer, in July 1940, the führer had announced to horrified generals his determination to eventually attack the Soviet Union. He nursed a fond hope that when Russia had been crushed and Britain stood alone, it would accept the position of Germany’s junior partner in world domination. “During the whole of my political activity I have always expounded the idea of a close friendship and collaboration between Germany and England,” Hitler had declared in April 1939. Surely, he said, the British could understand that just as the Raj gave meaning to their lives, the vision of a thousand-year Reich gave purpose to Germans. Hitler had made several peace offers to Britain, at one point putting forth “an assurance to the British Empire of German assistance regardless of where such assistance should be necessary.”20

  But the United Kingdom had rejected Hitler’s overtures. Instead it had sent troops to defend France and, in the summer of 1940, had dispatched bombers over Germany, some of which had dropped their pay-loads on residential areas. On September 4, 1940, Hitler announced that his patience had run out: he would force the United Kingdom into submission. Starting three days later, some 200 bombers at a time, escorted by hundreds of fighters, attacked London and other towns almost every night for two months straight.21

  CHURCHILL VISITED A shelter at Bristol in April 1941, where an old lady who had lost everything to the bombs saw him and cheered, waving the handkerchief with which she had been wiping her eyes. The prime minister choked up and remained sunk in thought on the train home. When he broke his reverie, it was to announce that he would ensure that Britons got all the nutrition necessary “to protect them from the strain and stresses that they may be subjected to in this period of great emergency.” Although a “Grow More Food” program had boosted domestic production of wheat, potatoes, and other staples, vast quantities of provisions would nevertheless have to be acquired abroad and transported to the British Isles.22

  If the United Kingdom had an Achilles’ heel, it was the stomach. Two-thirds of the island nation’s food was imported, which made its very sustenance vulnerable to disruptions in shipping. During World War I, German U-boats in the Atlantic had threatened the delivery of imported wheat and provoked panic hoarding, causing temporary shortages. After that war, civil servants had formalized plans for feeding Britain in wartime. In a crisis, the government immediately would have to demonstrate that it was on top of the situation—or else people would build personal stockpiles, depriving others. The cost of living, in particular the prices of bread and potatoes, should be tightly regulated so that no one went short of calories; and the more nutritious foods should be rationed to ensure adequate proteins and minerals. In 1936, a government committee had recommended that the United Kingdom build a stockpile of at least three months’ usage of food and animal feed in order to guard against wartime disruptions of supply. By the time World War II broke out, the entire machinery for feeding the country was in place.23

  To watch over the care and feeding of Britons, Winston Churchill recruited a trusted old friend, the physicist Frederick Alexander Lindemann. Known as the Prof to admirers (because of his academic credentials and his brilliance) and as Baron Berlin to detractors (thanks to his German accent and aristocratic tastes), Lindemann was responsible for the government’s scientific decisions. He also headed a Statistics Division, or S branch, with whose help he scrutinized the performance of the regular ministries and prioritized the logistical machinery of warfare. Lindemann attended meetings of the War Cabinet, accompanied the prime minister on conferences abroad, and sent him an average of one missive a day. He saw Churchill almost daily for the duration of the war and wielded more influence than any other civilian adviser.24

  On most matters Lindemann’s and Churchill’s opinions converged; and when they did not, the scientist worked ceaselessly to change his friend’s mind. “He spoke sotto voce, but with complete self-assurance, as though stating facts that must be obvious to every schoolboy,” related Roy Harrod, an S branch employee who later became one of Britain’s premier economists. All those who disagreed with his views Lindemann dismissed as “perfect fools.” To create the ten lines of text for the prime minister’s benefit that summarized weeks of S branch research, he wielded the final scalpel, taking out “redundant words, unnecessary sentences, inessential parts of the argument and many qualifications,” according to Donald MacDougall, Lindemann’s right-hand man at the S branch. “At first this last type of shortening worried me—and my colleagues—quite a bit,” MacDougall confessed in a memoir. Soon, however, the S branch staff realized that the Prof was merely anticipating the prime minister’s wishes. “The normal machinery of government churned up certain proposals, which finally came to the Prime Minister; it was our duty to counter-brief him on what we knew to be the lines of his own thinking,” wrote Harrod. In other words, the mission of the S branch was to provide rationales for whichever course the prime minister, as interpreted by the Prof, wished to follow.25

  Other department heads were at first furious that the Prof had access to their figures and used these to criticize their performances and overrule their decisions even as they were prohibited from seeing the S branch’s calculations and so could not defend themselves. But soon they “began to realize that, like it or not, the Prof. was the man whom Churchill trusted most, and that not all their refutations, aspersions, innuendos or attempts at exposure would shift Churchill from his undeviating loyalty to the Prof. by one hair’s breadth,” wrote Harrod. So it was that the Prof would pronounce judgment on the best use of shipping space, the profligacy of the army, the inadequacy of British supplies, the optimal size of the mustard gas stockpile, the necessity of bombing German houses—and, when the time came, the pointlessness of sending famine relief to Bengal.26

  THEIRS WAS AN unlikely friendship. Churchill was a self-described “Beefeater” who relished multicourse meals washed down with whisky, whereas Lindemann was a vegetarian, teetotaler, and nonsmoker who lived on salads, egg whites, olive oil, and a specific variety of cheese. Churchill cared, if fitfully, about the troubles of the poor, but Lindemann made no secret of his contempt for social and intellectual inferiors and, according to an acquaintance, “looked upon poverty as a fault.” His accent tended to arouse suspicion in wartime Britain. Yet the mutual loyalty of the two friends was total. “Love me, love my dog, and if you don’t love my dog you damn well can’t love me,” muttered a furious Churchill in 1941, after a member of the House of Commons had raised questions about the Prof ’s influence.27

  Lindemann’s father was a wealthy entrepreneur of German origin who lived in the United Kingdom. Frederick was sent to Germany for gymnasium, and at the University of Berlin he studied physics with a pioneer of thermodynamics. He eventually landed a professorship at Oxford and, when World War I broke out, joined an aircraft factory. He learned to fly and, by repeatedly putting an aircraft into a downward spiral while memorizing measurements such as airspeed,
he formalized recommendations for bringing an aircraft out of a fatal spin. This feat of nerves and skill would save the lives of many pilots, and it endeared Lindemann to Churchill when they met in August 1921 at the residence of a duke.28

  Lindemann boasted a count for an uncle and possessed a chauffeured Rolls Royce, which eased his passage into the aristocratic circles he cherished. (A joke at Oxford ran thus: Why is Professor Lindemann like a Channel steamer? Because he runs from peer to peer.) The physicist impressed the highborn with ridiculous ease, such as when he suggested to a duchess that they sit diagonally on a couch because it would “make an improvement of 41.42%” in space. Churchill declared that the Prof had “a beautiful brain” and came to seek his assistance with practically everything that needed research.29

  Lindemann had been to India once. In 1929, he visited an Indian mountain resort to serve on a panel on forestry. He was repelled by blacks, but he took along his English valet and did not have to be touched by native hands. On the strength of this two-month tour, he would aid Churchill with the colony’s affairs for the next two decades. In 1931, Churchill asked him to study the constitution the British government was devising for India, to “show up its weak points,” and to ferret out the background and funding of the Indian National Congress.30

  Apart from a distaste of dark-skinned foreigners and working-class Britons (the latter being insufferably “stupid”), Lindemann had a horror of ugly faces. These “set up a violent prejudice, which only the most supreme intellectual merits could counterweigh.” He also possessed an ingrained anti-Semitism, which his reverence for genius could similarly overcome. Nonetheless, Lindemann’s links with the Continent made him one of the first outsiders to comprehend the reality of life under Hitler, and in the 1930s he rescued a number of Jewish scientists from Nazi persecution by offering them positions at Oxford. And when Churchill began to warn about the terrific pace of German rearmament, it was the Prof who analyzed the figures that bolstered his arguments.31

  By 1942, Lindemann had the title of paymaster-general and had also achieved a peerage; he was now known as Lord Cherwell. His reputation was such that lines of verse inspired by The Pirates of Penzance were passed around ministerial offices:32 My secretariat scrutinizes memoranda topical,

  Elucidating fallacies in detail microscopical;

  I plumb the depths of strategy, I analyze ballistics;

  Reform the whole of industry, or fabricate statistics;

  My acumen’s infallible, my logic irrefutable,

  My slightest proposition axiomatic, indisputable;

  And so in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,

  I am the very model of a good Paymaster-General.

  Lord Cherwell repaid his friend’s patronage by adopting his causes as his own—and nowhere was this synergy more evident than in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral. One of the prime minister’s abiding concerns was that the British people should get enough meat. “Have you done justice to rabbit production?” he asked in one of numerous memos on the topic. Another time he inquired if a ship returning from the Middle East might swing by Argentina to pick up some beef. The Prof did not touch flesh, but when it came to feeding Britain he became “an extreme anti-vegetarian.” No one “fought harder to keep up the war-time ration of good red meat for the British people,” attested MacDougall.33

  Chocolates and candy were also close to Churchill’s boyish heart, and the Prof brought his persuasive powers to bear against their rationing. He waxed eloquent about the significance of tea to the overworked charwoman, so that when the food ministry eventually rationed tea (which came from India), it ensured that everyone could get her favorite blend. Lord Cherwell did not smoke, but he argued that tobacco rationing would impose undue hardship on those who did. Nor did he touch alcohol, except when dining with Churchill, who insisted. Yet the Prof strove to ensure that the working class was kept in adequate supplies of beer, which he believed it downed in the prodigious quantities of ten pints a night per man and five per woman. (A pint is a little less than half a liter.)34

  Nutritionists at the Ministry of Food had nursed a quiet hope that the war would allow the government to improve the eating habits and opportunities of the populace. That dream came true. Milk became free for the poorest mothers and children. The ministry maintained large stocks of wheat and flour, which it released as required to keep down the price of bread. And in the spring of 1941, copious quantities of high-protein foods such as cheese and egg powder began to arrive from the United States under the Lend Lease program, which allowed resources to be shared among friendly nations on easy terms. Despite the casualties of war, by 1942 such vital statistics as life expectancy were recording their best levels ever.35

  There were two problems. First, meat arrived on refrigerated ships that could serve instead as troop carriers; keeping Britain in an ample supply of meat meant that tens of thousands of troops could not reach the front. Wheat, sugar, and farm-animal feed similarly competed with steel that could be turned into tanks and weaponry. To his astonishment, Harrod was repeatedly asked to figure out how resources might be shifted from soldiers to civilians. “It may be noted that the great words with which Churchill called upon the nation, ‘blood and toil and tears and sweat’ did not include the word ‘austerity,’” Harrod pointed out. “He was against it.” The prime minister derided suggestions for austerity as “self-strafing proposals” while the Prof referred to them as the Death of a Thousand Cuts. Everyone in the S branch took for granted that “victory would go to the nation in which civilian morale was the better sustained,” according to Harrod, and putting tasty food on the table was half the battle won.36

  The second issue was Britain’s incipient pennilessness. The United Kingdom’s industries having been redirected toward supplying the war, the nation had had to cut down on exports. So the considerable imports of food and industrial raw materials, as well as the war effort in the Middle East and North Africa, were being paid for with borrowed money. The debts would become due after the war. And unlike past economic crises, when India had bailed Britain out, this time the colony was becoming, after the United States, the primary creditor. “India is piling up sterling credit so fast that, having bought back all her Government and railway indebtedness she may want to buy out every British interest in India,” a colleague warned Amery in January 1942. Provisioning the war would enable India to pay off its debts to the United Kingdom, reducing its usefulness as a colony and enhancing its prospects for independence. While the war raged, however, the economic stress induced by such contributions would build inexorably to the point of precipitating famine.37

  IN APRIL 1940, the United Kingdom had agreed to share the costs that India would incur for the war. The colony would pay for expenditures that could be construed as “purely Indian liabilities by reason of their having been undertaken by India in her own interests”—which would come to mean all costs incurred within its borders and to its east. The United Kingdom would pay for soldiers and supplies used elsewhere (except for the cost of one division, which accrued to India). But as long as the war lasted the Government of India would pay the United Kingdom’s share, which would be counted as sterling credits to be remitted from London after the war was over.38

  The agreement secured the enthusiastic cooperation of native industrialists and contractors. In the meantime, however, the Government of India needed cash to pay for its purchases. Taxes and bonds failed to raise enough, so the presses went to work and printed paper money. World War I had demonstrated that India, as a major source of war materials, was vulnerable to inflation. Cash supply had more than doubled and, flowing to war industries, had induced a kind of internal export—from the villages where food was grown to the factory towns and cantonments where it was consumed—and led to severe scarcities in rural areas. During World War II, however, defense expenditure in India would balloon by seventeen times and the money supply by between six and seven times.39

  The Indian Army was hiring
up to 50,000 soldiers each month. Most of the new recruits suffered from anemia, and even those hailing from the more prosperous northwest gained five to ten pounds after four months of eating a standard army ration. The most highly trained and best-equipped divisions were shipped westward. Under General Archibald Wavell they led the way to early victories against Italian forces in Egypt and Eritrea, while under the direction of General Claude Auchinlek, commander-in-chief in India, they took control of oilfields in Iraq and Iran. The bulk of the grain these soldiers ate continued to derive from India.40

  In 1941 Bengal had a poor harvest and several districts witnessed hunger marches. The authorities dismissed these as having been organized by “designing persons” to create political unrest and strove to ensure that no rumors of shortages leaked out. A British soldier wrote in his diary about an army wife who was stationed with her husband in India. She had told friends in Ceylon that she was pregnant but soon discovered that she was not. Hoping to forestall the gossip, she sent off a telegram—“No bun in the oven”—and got a call from irate censors demanding to know “why she was spreading alarm and despondency in that there was plenty of food in India!”41

  Through his newsletter, Harijan, Gandhi warned Indians on January 19, 1942, that scarcities would worsen as the war continued. “There are no imports from outside, either of foodstuff or cloth,” he observed. He advised peasants to grow banana, beetroot, yam, and pumpkin, which “can take the place of bread in time of need.” And the finance member of the viceroy’s executive council, Sir Jeremy Raisman, informed the War Cabinet in August 1942 that inflationary financing had led to the possibility that Indians would lose all faith in the currency. If farmers chose to store their grain instead of selling it for the suspect cash, that “might give rise to famines and riots.”42