In the Atlantic, the British inability to read the top-secret German submarine signals continued. In November 721,700 tons of Allied shipping were sunk, the highest figure for any month of the war and a grave worry to those who monitored Britain's supply and food needs. 'You who have so much land,' Churchill telegraphed to Stalin on November 24, 'may find it hard to realise that we can only live and fight in proportion to our sea communications.' On November 30, Churchill's sixty-eighth birthday, the Germans were still masters of the Atlantic; but within two weeks, in a triumph of cryptography, the Enigma key used by the German submarines was at last broken. With occasional gaps and delays, those Germans who directed the submarines to their targets were henceforth to betray their submarines' most secret movements until the end of the war.
German top-secret signals also revealed a massive build-up of German forces in Tunisia; Churchill thus realised that the attempt to capture Tunis would be more long-drawn-out than he had previously thought, and that any exploitation of the capture of Tunis, and the driving of the Germans out of Africa altogether, could delay a cross-Channel landing in 1943. This he did not want to do, nor did he want too great a perfectionism to delay those landings. Reading a report of major changes in designs to landing-craft being considered as a result of the lessons learned at Dieppe, he minuted, 'The maxim "Nothing avails but perfection" may be spelt shorter, "Paralysis".'
Churchill now pressed his advisers to draw up plans for a cross-Channel landing in August or September 1943. All depended upon driving the Germans out of Tunisia by the end of January or early February 1943. Montgomery, confident of being able to defeat Rommel in Libya and advance rapidly westward, made his confidence widely known. 'It might be well,' Churchill told Alexander, 'for you to give a friendly hint from me to General Montgomery about the disadvantages of his making confident statements that he will beat and outwit Rommel before the impending battle has been fought.' The impending battle was at Agheila, west of Tobruk, on the coastal road leading through the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to Tunisia. Would Montgomery not seem 'foolish', Churchill asked, 'if as is possible there is no battle at Agheila and Rommel slips away?' This was indeed what happened: Rommel withdrew from his Agheila positions without serious interference and prepared to defend the Libyan capital.
West of Tunisia, General Eisenhower's forces were worsted in battle on December 12, their subsequent counter-attack being hampered and then brought to a halt by the heavy and continual rain. The battle for Tunisia was going to be a prolonged struggle. Just as Hitler had insisted that his forces trapped at Stalingrad hold out to the end, so now he demanded that Tunisia be held at all cost, in order to continue to tie down huge quantities of Allied shipping in long and wasteful journeys round the Cape. Churchill still hoped that victory in Tunisia would come in time for the cross-Channel assault to be launched in the autumn of 1943. But at a Staff Conference on December 16, the Chiefs of Staff argued that it could not be done; the rate and scale of the American troop build-up in Britain was inadequate for the task. Because of their 'magnificent' railways, the Germans would be able to bring superior forces by rail to confront the Allied troops brought ashore. It would make more sense militarily during 1943 to 'force Italy out of the war and perhaps enter the Balkans'. The defection of Italy in itself would drive Germany to send troops to hold down the Balkans.
Churchill, supported by Eden, pressed for the cross-Channel landing as the priority for 1943. But the Chiefs of Staff were emphatic that the Americans were no longer planning to have enough troops in Britain for the landings to be possible by then. In strictest secrecy, Mountbatten told Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff that despite an agreement to the contrary, 'the Americans were putting the good engines into their own landing-craft and fitting ours with the unsatisfactory type at the same time, many of the landing-craft needed to transport the cross-Channel forces were being diverted by the Americans to the Pacific, which was also absorbing so many naval vessels that even the next Arctic convoy to Russia would lack its American escorts. Churchill's hopes for a 1943 cross-Channel landing had been frustrated by the realities of American policy.
***
On December 17 a powerful declaration was issued simultaneously from London, Washington and Moscow; Churchill personally approved it. The declaration denounced the systematic mass murder of millions of Jews which, the facts having gradually become known, it called 'this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination'. It also warned that those committing these crimes would be hunted down after the war and brought to trial; Churchill himself was emphatic that the murderers should not be allowed to escape justice. He was also vigilant in trying to help Jewish refugees from Nazism; learning that week of the successful rescue of 4,500 Jewish children and 500 accompanying adults from the Balkans, a plan which he himself had earlier approved, he minuted, 'Bravo!'
***
That Christmas, the fourth of the war, Churchill stayed at Chequers with his family. On Christmas Day he learned that Admiral Darlan, the former Vichy Commander-in-Chief who had become High Commissioner in Morocco and Algeria, had been assassinated by a French student in Algiers. 'Darlan's murder,' he later wrote, 'however criminal, relieved the Allies of the embarrassment of working with him, and at the same time left them with all the advantages he had been able to bestow during the vital hours of the Allied landings.' In Darlan's place, Churchill and Roosevelt appointed General Giraud, who had recently escaped from captivity in Germany.
***
In an attempt to devise an agreed Anglo-American strategy for 1943, Churchill decided to meet Roosevelt again, this time in North Africa. Mary Churchill wrote in her diary on 3 January 1943: 'It appears that he might get a coronary thrombosis-& it might be brought on by anything like a long &/or high flight. The question is whether he should be warned or not. Mummie thinks he should not-I agree with her.'
Nine days later Churchill flew to Casablanca with the British Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Planners and Mountbatten. On January 14 this formidable team was joined by Roosevelt and the American Joint Chiefs. Their discussions lasted for eight days, during which several major policy decisions were made, chief of them the priority of the Mediterranean over the cross-Channel assault. In view of the shortage of shipping and escort vessels, it was also decided that, as far as the Mediterranean was concerned, the most realistic amphibious target, once Tunisia were captured, would be Sicily; the troops would not have to be brought across the Atlantic, but could come from North Africa. In order to carry out a cross-Channel assault in 1944, 938,000 American troops would be assembled in Britain by the last day of 1943. But enough would have arrived by mid-1943 to enable a cross-Channel raid to take place 'with the primary object of provoking air battles and causing enemy losses'. If the German loss of morale and resources permitted, a bridgehead would be seized on the Cherbourg Peninsula.
The priority of Hitler's defeat before the defeat of Japan was also re-established. Once Germany had been 'brought to her knees', Churchill assured Roosevelt, Britain would continue to fight Japan with all her resources. In order to resolve any doubts there might be about Britain remaining in the war until the defeat of Japan, Churchill agreed to a public declaration that Britain and the United States would continue the war until they had brought about the 'unconditional surrender' of both Germany and Japan. There would be no armistice, no negotiated peace, no bargaining: only the complete and utter surrender of both armies.
To deceive the Germans that the cross-Channel landings would take place later that same year, and help placate the Russian demand for a second front in 1943, a deception plan was agreed at Casablanca. It had three elements; an American landing on the coast of Brittany, an Anglo-Russian invasion of Norway, and an Anglo-American landing in the Pas-de-Calais area. This latter was to be given extra verisimilitude by British agents and the French Resistance beginning pre-invasion preparations in a manner that would force the Germans to take the threat of a landing seriously; unfortunately, the Germans were not deceived, and four hundred agents were arrested.
On January 23, the last day of the Casablanca Conference, the Eighth Army entered Tripoli. 'Rommel is still flying before them,' Churchill told newspaper correspondents on the following day. He then accompanied Roosevelt to Marrakech, a five-hour drive, to show the President his holiday haunt of 1936. That evening the two men watched the glow of the sunset on the snow-capped Atlas mountains; 'the most lovely spot in the world', Churchill murmured as they gazed on it. On the following morning Roosevelt left Marrakech. Churchill remained for one more day, telegraphing to Clementine when Roosevelt had gone, 'Am going to paint a little this afternoon.' A view of the Atlas mountains, it was the only picture Churchill painted during the war.
From Marrakech, Churchill flew eastward to Cairo, where, on January 27, after talks with Colonel Keble, the head of Special Operations Executive in the Middle East, and with his own former research assistant Bill Deakin, who was also with SOE Cairo, he decided to send a British mission to the Communist partisan leader in Yugoslavia, Josip Broz, known to his followers as Tito. Deakin volunteered to be parachuted in first, with one other officer, Captain William Stuart, and two wireless-operators.
On January 30 Churchill flew from Cairo, along the coast of Palestine and Syria, to the southern Turkish town of Adana. It was a four-hour flight; at Adana a train was waiting which took him some six miles to a spot where, on a siding, waiting in his own train, was the Turkish President, Ismet Inönü. The two trains were then joined together. During the first day's discussion, held in Inönü's train, Churchill tried to persuade the Turks to accept British and American aid if Turkey were attacked by Germany. Inönü made no commitment, stressing that Turkey was 'at present neutral'.
That night Churchill slept in his train. Only when the 'circumstances were favourable', he told Inönü on the following morning, would it be in Turkey's interest 'to play her part'. It was agreed that British Staff Officers would go to the Turkish capital 'forthwith', to make plans with the Turkish General Staff 'for the movement and subsequent maintenance of British forces into Turkey in the event of Turkey being drawn into the war'. From Adana, Churchill flew to Cyprus, a half-hour flight. There he spent the night, and on the following morning spoke to the officers and men of the 4th Hussars, of which he was Colonel-in-Chief. 'Winston was grand,' their Commanding Officer wrote to his wife. 'He radiated confidence and made a most stirring speech to the troops.' That afternoon Churchill flew back to Cairo, where he learned that the German Army surrounded at Stalingrad had surrendered; 45,000 soldiers were taken prisoner. 'This is indeed a wonderful achievement,' he telegraphed to Stalin.
That evening Churchill dined at the British Embassy in Cairo. Randolph was also present. 'Father and son snapped at each other across me, which was very disconcerting,' Sir Alexander Cadogan noted. 'However, we got Winston on to the Omdurman campaign, on which he held forth, at the dinner table, till 11.30.' On the following morning Churchill flew from Cairo westward to Tripoli, a flight of nearly six hours, across 1,400 miles of desert so recently held by the Germans. There he told the men of the Eighth Army: 'When history is written and all the facts are known, your feats will gleam and glow and will be a source of song and story long after we who are gathered here have passed away.'
That night Churchill slept in one of the three Army trucks which Montgomery had converted into caravans. Then, on February 4, he was driven into Tripoli itself. Tears ran down his cheeks as he took the march-past of the 51st Highland Division and other Allied units, 40,000 men in all. His Military Secretary, Colonel Jacob, commented, 'The bitter moment in the White House when Tobruk fell was swallowed up in the joy of the morning in Tripoli.' During a picnic lunch laid on by Montgomery, the puffs of anti-aircraft shells were seen in the sky as a German reconnaissance aircraft was spotted and driven off. In the afternoon Churchill inspected the 8,000 men of the New Zealand Division, telling them: 'The good cause will not be trampled down. Justice and freedom will reign among men.' That afternoon he watched the final repairs being made to Tripoli harbour, before dining with Montgomery, and then sleeping in the bomber that was to fly him to Algiers in the early hours of February 5.
After a five-hour flight Churchill reached Algiers at nine in the morning, then spent the day discussing the problems of the new French administration there, insisting that the Vichy laws against the Algerian Jews, laws which were still in force, be repealed. At midnight he boarded his Liberator bomber to return to England. But magneto failure made it impossible to start the engines. After sitting for two and a half hours on the airfield, he returned in the middle of the night to Algiers, where he spent the whole of February 6. During the morning he saw the two former senior Vichy officials who were now administering Algiers. 'I told them that if they marched with us, we would not concern ourselves with past differences,' he later recalled.
That afternoon Churchill played bezique with Randolph, before returning to the airfield. One of the two Liberators taking the participants back from the Casablanca Conference had crashed, and two of the British participants had been killed. As he sat in his Liberator waiting for take-off, Churchill told Jacob: 'It would be a pity to have to go out in the middle of such an interesting drama without seeing the end. But it wouldn't be a bad moment to leave. It is a straight run in now, and even the Cabinet could manage it!'
***
After an eight-and-a-half-hour flight Churchill reached Lyneham in Wiltshire. It was almost midnight; going on by train to London, which he reached at one o'clock in the morning, he found thirteen of his Cabinet Ministers at the station to greet him. He had been away for nearly four weeks. 'Please let me get into the train before you come out,' Clementine Churchill had written. 'I like to kiss my Bull-finch privately & not be photographed doing it!' From London he and Clementine were driven to Chequers where, that same evening, he gave the War Cabinet an account of his travels. Four days later, on February 11, he told the House of Commons that the 'dominating aim' of Anglo-American policy was 'to make the enemy burn and bleed in every way that is physically and reasonably possible, in the same way as he is being made to burn and bleed along the vast Russian front from the White Sea to the Black Sea'.
That was the policy; but it irked Churchill that there was to be a three-month gap between the capture of Tunisia and the invasion of Sicily, a gap that Eisenhower sought to widen by a further month. 'I think it is an awful thing,' Churchill telegraphed to Hopkins on February 13, 'that in April, May and June, not a single American or British soldier will be killing a single German or Italian soldier, while the Russians are chasing 185 divisions around.'
Since his return from North Africa on February 7, Churchill had not been feeling well. On February 16 it was announced that he had pneumonia. He remained in bed in No. 10 Annexe for a week, in fever and discomfort. 'It was miserable having him ill and knowing how he hated it,' Elizabeth Layton wrote to her parents. 'He was so sweet, too, any time one had to go in; seemed quite pleased to see one.' A telegram from Montgomery cheered him up; the Eighth Army had driven the Germans from Ben Gardane, inside the Tunisian frontier, and overrun the airfields at Medenine. He also learned that Tripoli harbour, after a scandalous delay in rehabilitating the port, was now fully working: he at once sent a message to the soldiers working in the docks, 'Tell them they are unloading history.'
In western Tunisia, Eisenhower's troops had again been mauled by the Germans, and 170 tanks lost, setting back by at least a month the possible capture of Tunis, and threatening to delay the date of the invasion of Sicily. From his sickbed, on February 19, Churchill suggested that Britain might try to capture Sicily without the Americans, if Montgomery could take Tunis alone. On February 20 Rommel's forces drove the Americans from the Kasserine Pass. When Mary saw her father on the following day she noted: 'I was shocked when I saw him. He looked so old & tired-lying back in bed.'
Churchill was too ill on February 20 to see any official papers. But two days later, with his temperature at 102, he did dictate a seven-page letter to the King, in answer to the King's worries about Anglo-American co-operation in Tunisia. He did not feel 'seriously disturbed', Churchill wrote, though he pointed out to the King that during the battle of the Kasserine Pass he had seen a German top-secret signal, decrypted at Bletchley, in which the Germans had ordered a renewed attack 'on account', as the signal had phrased it, 'of the low fighting value of the enemy'. Churchill had confidence, however, in the Americans, telling the King that they were men 'who will not hesitate to learn from defeat, and who will improve themselves by suffering until all their martial qualities have come to the front.'
The Americans regained control of the Kasserine Pass on February 24. By March 3 Churchill was well enough to go to Chequers, where he worked through his mass of telegrams with General Ismay-whom he knew affectionately as 'Pug'. The nurse who accompanied him, Doris Miles, later recalled: 'I was very struck by his immense vigour and enthusiasm, his determination to get over his illness as quickly as possible. He told me that he ate and drank too much (roast beef for breakfast) and took no exercise at all, but was much fitter than "old so-and-so who is two years younger than me". He loved watching films, particularly newsreels, and was delighted if he featured in them: "Look Pug, there we are!" He was very kind to me-interested to know that my husband was a Surgeon Lieutenant in a destroyer on the Russian convoys.'
On his third day at Chequers, Churchill wrote to a friend: 'I am much better but am staying in the country for a few days. Of course, I work wherever I am and however I am. That is what does me good.' In a broadcast from Chequers on March 21, his first broadcast in more than a year, Churchill set out his plan for post-war Britain, echoing his own previous goals of 1908 and 1924, and drawing, as he had done in 1908, on the ideas of William Beveridge; it was a report by Beveridge that now served as the blueprint for the new scheme. In his broadcast Churchill spoke of the need to establish a National Health Service on 'broad and solid foundations', to provide national compulsory insurance 'from cradle to grave', and to ensure far wider educational opportunities and 'fair competition' so extended that Britain would draw its leaders 'from every type of school and wearing every kind of tie'. Tradition would still play its part, 'but broader systems must now rule'. State enterprise and free enterprise should 'pull the national wagon side by side'.
As Churchill spoke, a slip of paper was put in front of him. 'I have just received a message from General Montgomery,' he told his listeners, 'that the Eighth Army are on the move and that he is satisfied with their progress. Let us wish them God speed in their struggle, and let us bend all our efforts to the war, and to the ever more vigorous prosecution of our supreme task.' The battle continued for more than a week. The Italian-German forces, now commanded by an Italian, General Messe, defeated Montgomery's frontal attack on their Mareth Line defences, forcing him to adopt an alternative plan, a wide outflanking move. On March 27, as evidence grew that this was succeeding, Churchill telegraphed to Montgomery, 'We have every confidence you will pull it off.'
On the following day Montgomery telegraphed that the enemy resistance was disintegrating. 'Bravo!' Churchill replied. 'I was sure of it. Now the question is the cop.' But the enemy withdrawal was well-conducted, Montgomery was excessively cautious, and the number of prisoners taken was small.
The German and Italian forces were not to give up easily their hold on the Tunisian shore. 'Hitler with his usual obstinacy is sending the Hermann Goering Division and the 999th German Division into Tunisia, chiefly by air transport in which at least a hundred large machines are employed,' Churchill told Stalin in explanation of the delay in driving the Germans and Italians from North Africa. His knowledge of Hitler's moves was still accurate and precise, as a result of his daily scrutiny of the hundreds of decrypted top-secret German signals.
The amount of time and work involved in following these details and exploiting each piece of information was enormous. In the last week of March, after his first dictation to a new secretary, Marian Holmes, Churchill told her: 'You know you must never be frightened of me when I snap. I'm not snapping at you but thinking of the work.' This was said, Miss Holmes wrote in her diary, 'with a cherubic smile'. As he recovered from his pneumonia, Churchill was in reflective mood, telling the editor of The Times, Robin Barrington-Ward, who found him 'pink, fresh in colour, hardly a wrinkle, voice firm, all his usual animation and emphasis': 'I shall come out of the war an old man. I shall be seventy. I have nothing more to ask.' Churchill's thoughts were on the future of a Europe dominated by Russia. 'I have wooed Joe Stalin as a man might woo a maid,' he said. He would favour a post-war confederation of the smaller States of Europe, 'I do not want to be left alone in Europe with the bear.'
On April 6 Montgomery attacked again, driving his adversary from the Wadi Akarit. By the evening of April 7 he had taken six thousand prisoners. That evening Churchill learned that United States troops moving forward from western Tunisia had 'joined hands' with the Eighth Army. All was now set to drive the German and Italian forces into the Tunisian 'tip'. But on the following day he was told that Eisenhower did not wish to follow up a Tunisian success by invading Sicily, because of the presence of two German divisions on the island, in addition to the six Italian divisions that had been expected. All Eisenhower had done was to endorse an assessment made three months earlier by the British Joint Planning Committee and already rejected by Alexander and those who were planning the invasion. But Churchill was outraged: 'I trust the Chiefs of Staff will not accept these pusillanimous and defeatist doctrines from whomever they come,' he minuted. The adoption of such an attitude by the Allied commanders 'would make us the laughing stock of the world'. Eisenhower should be asked 'what happens' if two German divisions 'meet him at any of the other places he may propose'.
Churchill added, 'This is an example of the fatuity of Planning Staffs playing upon each other's fears, each Service presenting its difficulties at the maximum, and Americans and Englishmen vying with each other, in the total absence of one directing mind and commanding willpower.' The Russians had been told that the next Arctic convoys would have to be cancelled because the escort ships were needed for the invasion of Sicily. Now Eisenhower was baulking at Sicily because there would be two German divisions in addition to six Italian. 'What Stalin would think of this when he has 185 German divisions on his front, I cannot imagine.'
The British Chiefs of Staff shared Churchill's sense of anger, as did the United States Joint Chiefs. The landings would go ahead, even with two German divisions to be fought in addition to the Italians. A sense of victory was in the air: on April 11 Churchill told Stalin that Montgomery had now taken 25,000 prisoners in Tunisia, and that the massive bombing of German factories was proceeding without respite. What he did not tell him was that the Chiefs of Staff had decided that the landing-craft needed for Sicily were those also needed for the limited cross-Channel landing. To ensure a successful landing on Sicily, even the limited cross-Channel plans for 1943 had to be given up. Churchill was hopeful, however, that success in Tunisia and Sicily would be such as to show 'substantial results' thereafter.
'The battle in Tunisia is begun,' Churchill telegraphed to Stalin on April 20. 'It is intended to carry matters to a conclusion, if possible by continuous pressure.' But ten days later he learned from Alexander that the battle had been temporarily called off, in view of the strong German artillery concentrations in the coastal sector, and 'the desperate nature of the enemy's resistance'. There were those in Washington who wanted the Pacific, not Sicily, to be the Allied priority that summer, so much so that they were no longer transferring landing-craft essential for Sicily from the Far East.
To prevent the abandonment of Sicily, Churchill decided that he must speak to Roosevelt personally. 'I am conscious of serious divergences beneath the surface,' he telegraphed to Hopkins on May 2, 'which, if not adjusted, will lead to grave difficulties and feeble action in the summer and autumn. These difficulties we must forestall.' Two days later he left London by train for the Clyde, boarding the Queen Mary on the following afternoon for his third transatlantic voyage of the war. During the second day out, he learned from Alexander that the battle in Tunisia had been renewed. He was also told that a German submarine, its route revealed to the British by its own top-secret orders, was likely to cross their course about fifteen miles ahead. He at once gave orders for a machine-gun to be put in the lifeboat he would be using should the ship be sunk. Averell Harriman, who was with him, noted Churchill's words: 'I won't be captured. The finest way to die is in the excitement of fighting the enemy. (Then, after a moment's thought) It might not be so nice if one were in the water and they tried to pick me up.'
The submarine made no appearance. All thought of it was eclipsed on the evening of May 7, when a series of signals reaching the Queen Mary told of the capture of Tunis, entered by the British First Army; and then of Bizerta, entered by the Americans. On the following day Alexander reported the capture of 20,000 prisoners. 'Overjoyed at your splendid news,' Churchill replied. 'History will admire your handling of these great armies.' Two days later a further 30,000 prisoners had been counted, including nine German Generals. Churchill at once gave orders for the church bells to be rung again.
All North Africa was now in Allied hands, after three years of changing fortunes and bitter war. As the Queen Mary reached American waters, Alexander told Churchill in triumph that the number of German and Italian prisoners was likely to exceed 100,000: 'No one has got away, except a mere handful by air.' By the end of the month, it was known that more than 240,000 prisoners had been taken.
That night, Churchill slept in the White House where, starting the following morning, he and Roosevelt worked out their war plans. Despite Eisenhower's hesitations, they agreed that the invasion of Sicily would have immediate priority, followed by the invasion of Italy. If Italy collapsed by August, further operations could take place either in the Balkans or in southern Europe. In November, all Allied resources would be switched to the cross-Channel landing, which would take place 'on the largest scale' by May 1944.
Leaving the Combined Chiefs of Staff to tackle the details, Roosevelt took Churchill to Shangri-La, his mountain retreat in Maryland, now known as Camp David. Returning to Washington on May 14, Churchill pressed for a British landing against the Japanese in Sumatra. He was supported by Wavell, whose responsibility it would be. Roosevelt wanted the attack to be on China, through northern Burma, but Wavell warned that Burma was 'the most malarial country in the world'. Churchill agreed with Wavell, telling Roosevelt that he was 'not prepared to undertake something foolish purely in order to placate the Chinese'. To Churchill's chagrin, no decision was reached. Learning that there had been serious delays in building up Britain's air bases in Assam, from which any assault must come, he telegraphed to Attlee: 'I am disquieted about the way in which our affairs in this theatre have been conducted. The opportunity should be taken of gripping the whole situation and injecting new vim into all proceedings.'
Addressing Congress on May 19, Churchill warned that any 'discord or lassitude' among the Allies would give Germany and Japan the power 'to confront us with new and hideous facts'. His warning continued: 'We have surmounted many serious dangers, but there is one grave danger which will go along with us to the end; that danger is the undue prolongation of the war. No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split, that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must now reside.' Clementine was among those who listened to the broadcast of Churchill's speech in England. 'It warmed me to hear your voice so strong, resonant & resolute,' she wrote.
Churchill had now to deal with a matter of the utmost sensitivity. On May 15 he had received a disturbing telegram from Sir John Anderson, the Minister responsible for all matters connected with research into the atom bomb, who was working closely on this with Professor Lindemann, now ennobled as Lord Cherwell, that four months earlier the Americans had stopped the exchange of information on the bomb. Yet this exchange had been agreed by Churchill and Roosevelt at Hyde Park in June 1942. 'That we should each work separately would be a sombre decision,' Churchill had warned Hopkins at the beginning of April, but still the Americans had refused to exchange information. Churchill had therefore decided to go ahead with an independent British atom bomb. It would require a vast diversion of resources and perhaps even a prolongation of the war; but if Britain wished to have such a bomb, she would have to manufacture it herself. What made this decision possible was that the principal components not available in Britain, uranium and heavy water, could be bought from Canada.
It now appeared, however, from Anderson's telegram, that the Canadian Government, without informing Britain, had agreed to sell the United States the entire output of Canada's uranium mines for the next two years, as well as all Canada's production of heavy water. Britain could no longer even contemplate making her own bomb. Churchill would have to raise the issue with Roosevelt and accept whatever conditions the Americans might offer. On the last day of the Washington talks Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that Britain and the United States would work together to manufacture the atom bomb. Exchange of information, suspended earlier in the year, would be resumed, and, Churchill told Anderson, the enterprise would henceforth 'be considered a joint one, to which both countries would contribute their best endeavours'. It was assumed, Churchill added, 'that this weapon may well be developed in time for the present war'.
The Washington discussions ended on May 25. The one point which worried Churchill was an American preference to strike at Sardinia after Sicily, and before the invasion of Italy. Churchill saw this as a time-consuming diversion of forces from the main aim. He therefore decided to fly to North Africa, to raise the issue with Eisenhower and the other senior American officers on whom the carrying out of these assaults would fall. On May 27 he went by flying boat first to Newfoundland, then to Gibraltar, an airborne journey of seventeen hours. On the Gibraltar leg the flying boat was struck by lightning, causing the pilot some anxiety, but, as Churchill later wrote, 'there were no consequences, which after all are what is important in air journeys'. On May 28 he flew from Gibraltar to Algiers in a specially converted Lancaster bomber. 'Very comfortable,' Brooke wrote in his diary, 'with a special cabin for PM, dining rooms, berths for four besides PM, and lavatory.' It was only a three-hour flight. At dinner that evening in Algiers, Brooke noted that Churchill used all his skills 'trying to impress on Eisenhower what is to be gained in knocking Italy out of the war'. On the following day Eisenhower agreed that if Sicily proved 'an easy proposition' then the next move should be against the Italian mainland.
On June 1 Churchill flew from Algiers to a military aerodrome in the desert, where he attended the briefing of an American squadron that was about to bomb Pantelleria Island, half-way between the Tunisian tip and Sicily. After watching the bombers set off on their mission, he flew on to Tunis, where, in the Roman amphitheatre at Carthage, he addressed a vast number of troops. Flying back to Algiers on the following day in the Lancaster, he took charge of the controls for a while, 'and gave us something of a swaying passage for a bit,' Brooke wrote in his diary.
In Algiers, Churchill learned that the two rivals for leadership of the French forces beyond Vichy control, Generals Giraud and de Gaulle, had agreed to become joint presidents of the newly established French Committee of National Liberation. 'The bride and bridegroom have at last physically embraced,' Churchill telegraphed to Roosevelt on June 4. 'I am entertaining the new Committee at lunch today, but I will not attempt to mar the domestic bliss by any intrusions of my own.'
That afternoon Churchill flew back to Gibraltar in his bomber. Because the weather was bad, he decided not to continue from Gibraltar to England, as originally intended, by flying boat, but to continue in the bomber. That same day, another flying boat, using a similar flight path from Lisbon to Plymouth, was shot down and all its passengers killed; among the dead was the actor Leslie Howard.
Churchill was back in London on the morning of June 5. 'We have been rather anxious about you since they got Leslie Howard,' his daughter Diana wrote in welcoming him back. After giving the War Cabinet an account of his journey, he went that afternoon to Chequers, where he prepared a statement for the Commons which he delivered on June 8. Of the relations between the British and American policy-makers he said: 'All sorts of divergences, all sorts of differences of outlook and all sorts of awkward little jars necessarily occur as we roll ponderously forward together along the rough and broken road of war. But none of these makes the slightest difference to our ever-growing concert and unity. There are none of them that cannot be settled face to face by heart to heart talks and patient argument.'
On June 11 Eisenhower's forces captured Pantelleria. A week earlier, while in Algiers, Churchill had said that there were only three thousand Italians on the island and had offered Eisenhower five centimes for every Italian captured over three thousand. As there were in fact 9,500 Italians, Churchill had to pay up sixty-five francs. On June 13 two more small Italian islands, Lampedusa and Linosa, surrendered. The way was open for the invasion of Sicily. Meanwhile, the bombing of Germany continued, with growing intensity. On June 20, during a raid on the industrial city of Wuppertal, more than three thousand citizens were killed in the firestorm created by the raid. A week later, at Chequers, after watching a film of the bombing of German towns, Churchill suddenly sat bolt upright and said to his neighbour, 'Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?'
Two days later Churchill was presented with photographic and Intelligence evidence which made it clear that the Germans were developing a new weapon, a rocket which could hurl a bomb from a launch-site on the coast of France to London; the evidence had been brought to him by his son-in-law Duncan Sandys, who, having been badly injured in the Norwegian campaign, had been made responsible for the search for, and discovery of, secret weapons. 'Arrived at conclusion that a definite threat exists,' Brooke noted in his diary, 'and that we should bomb Peenemunde experimental station at earliest possible date.'
***
On July 3 the Allies began intensive bombing raids on the airfields of Sicily, as a prelude to invasion. 'You know my hope,' Churchill telegraphed to Alexander four days later, 'that you will put your right paw on the mainland as soon as possible. Rome is the bull's-eye.' Throughout July 9 he was at Chequers, awaiting news of the Sicily landings; Admiral Ramsay was again in charge of the naval operation. Clementine was feeling tired that evening and asked her daughter-in-law Pamela to stay up with Churchill in her place.
The landings were expected to begin in the early hours of July 10, 'so we settled down,' Pamela later recalled, 'to play bezique which he loved, and then one of the Private Secretaries came in to say that the winds had got up and they had delayed the landings, they did not know for how long. So we played bezique through the night and every now and again he would put down the cards and he would say, "So many brave young men going to their death tonight. It is a grave responsibility". He was so preoccupied that night with whether it would be a success or a failure, and I'm sure that he related it to Gallipoli and the Dardanelles and was wondering if another fiasco could happen, but then we would go on playing bezique and he'd talk about other things, but he would always then set down the cards and talk about the young people and the sacrifices that they were being asked to make.'
Pamela added: 'It was a very very tense and torturous night for him and he would keep going back to the little operations rooms and he would check out some things and then he would come back again.' When the news of the landings finally came through at four o'clock in the morning, 'he wanted to go straight off to the war room and consult as to how they were going, how many aircraft were being lost and so on. Once the landings had happened he wanted the details'. The first detail Churchill learned was that the port of Syracuse was under Allied control. 'It is a tremendous feat,' he telegraphed at once to Eisenhower, 'to leap on shore with nearly 200,000 men.'
On July 16, as the battle in Sicily entered its sixth day, Churchill decided he must once more discuss with Roosevelt the immediate next stage, invasion of the Italian mainland at the most northerly point of the coast possible. 'I must say the PM doesn't let the grass grow under his feet', was Oliver Harvey's comment in his diary on July 16. 'He is anxious to pin the Americans down before their well-known dislike of European operations except cross-Channel get the better of them again, and they pull out their landing-craft and send off their ships to the Pacific.'
Churchill now made plans for his fourth transatlantic crossing of the war. His aim was to persuade the Americans to follow up the imminent conquest of Sicily by the invasion of Italy at least as far as Rome, and then to assist the Yugoslav, Greek and Albanian partisans in the liberation of the Balkans, by air support, arms, and coastal landings by small Commando units. The Germans already had fifteen divisions tied down in the Balkans: well-orchestrated partisan war would draw in many more. On the evening of July 24, at Chequers, he discussed the war with Guy Gibson and his wife Eve; he was about to send the air ace on a goodwill mission to Canada and the United States. 'We were shown a film, captured from the Germans,' Eve Gibson later wrote, 'depicting the atrocities inflicted on the Jews and the inhabitants of occupied countries. It was quite ghastly and the Prime Minister was very, very moved. He told me that it was shown to every American serviceman in this country.'
While Churchill was watching a film on the following evening a message was brought in: Mussolini had resigned. King Victor Emmanuel had taken over command of the Italian Armed Forces, with Marshal Badoglio as Prime Minister. The Fascist Party was dissolved and the Fascist Grand Council, its instrument of government, abolished. 'Now that Mussolini has gone,' Churchill telegraphed to Roosevelt on July 26, 'I should deal with any non-Fascist Italian government which can deliver the goods.' Those 'goods' were the entry of Allied forces into Italy, and their right, as Roosevelt told Churchill that same day, to use 'all Italian territory and transportation' against the Germans.
Armistice negotiations with Italy began at once. There was great excitement in Britain at the end of Mussolini as a war-leader. But Churchill warned the Commons on July 27 that Britain's 'prime and capital foe is not Italy but Germany'. He was nevertheless in confident mood; in the Atlantic, as a result of Bletchley's final mastery of German top-secret submarine communications, thirty-five German submarines had been sunk in July, making a total of eighty-five sunk in the ninety-one days since May 1.
At midnight on August 4, the twenty-ninth anniversary of Britain's declaration of war in 1914, Churchill left London by night train for Scotland, with Clementine, Mary, and three hundred other British participants, for the Quebec Conference. On the afternoon of August 5 they left the Clyde on board the Queen Mary. During the five-day voyage Churchill himself marked on the map in his travelling map room the daily advances in Sicily. Captain Pim, who was in charge of the Map Room, later recalled the Prime Minister coming in one day after breakfast 'in his multi-coloured dressing-gown saying, "Put your finger on Aderno and Paterno"-both towns in Sicily which we had just heard had been captured from the enemy.' Aderno was only fifty miles from the Strait of Messina.
On August 9 Churchill reached the Canadian port of Halifax, where he boarded the train for Quebec. Crowds met the train at every station; rumours that an 'important personage' would be on board were rife. Some said it was the Pope, others that it was Stalin. On reaching Quebec, Churchill found a telegram from Stalin, congratulating him on the continuing victories in Sicily. In return Churchill sent Stalin 'a small stereoscopic machine' together with photographic slides of the damage done by British bombs to German cities. 'They give one a more vivid impression than anything that can be gained from photographs,' Churchill told him. In a bombing raid on Hamburg two weeks earlier, the amazing total of 42,000 Germans had been killed, and a third of the city's residential buildings destroyed.
From Quebec, Churchill went by train to Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park. There, it was agreed that Mountbatten, whom Churchill had earlier described as 'young, enthusiastic and triphibious', should become Supreme Commander in South-East Asia. 'There is no doubt,' Churchill telegraphed to the War Cabinet, 'of the need of a young and vigorous mind in this lethargic and stagnant Indian scene.' It was also agreed, with regard to the atom bomb, that Britain and the United States 'will never use this agency against each other'. After two nights at Hyde Park, Churchill returned by train to Quebec.
It was while he was at Quebec on August 17 that Churchill received a telegram from Alexander announcing that 'the last German soldier was flung out of Sicily and the whole island is now in our hands'. Its conquest had taken thirty-eight days. That night 571 British heavy bombers struck at the German rocket research-station at Peenemunde on the Baltic, setting back production of the new rocket bomb by many months. The Quebec Conference ended two days later, its conclusions having been worked out over five days by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, in accordance with Churchill's general design, and with Roosevelt's approval. The 'primary' Anglo-American effort in 1944 would be the cross-Channel landing. Its aim would be not only to land in northern France but from there 'to strike at the heart of Germany and destroy her military forces'. Any conflict of priorities between operations in the Mediterranean and the Channel would be resolved in favour of the Channel. In deference to considerable pressure from the American Chiefs of Staff, there would also be a landing in the South of France, as a diversion to help the cross-Channel landings; the American Chiefs of Staff felt most strongly that such a landing would force the Germans to draw troops away from the Channel.
To enable supplies to be accumulated for the cross-Channel landing, although the advance in Italy would include the capture of Rome, as Churchill wished, it would go no farther north than the Pisa-Ancona line; it would not seek to drive on to the top of the Adriatic, or into southern Austria. Operations in the Balkans would be limited to sending air and sea supplies to the partisans, and the use of 'minor Commando forces'.
On August 20 Churchill and Roosevelt went for the day to a log-cabin retreat on the Grand Lac d'Epaule. There they fished, and discussed the relative merits of Sumatra and Burma as the next British objective in the Far East, Roosevelt demonstrating at lunch his preference for Burma by use of wine glasses and salt cellars. Returning to Quebec Roosevelt explained his idea for a post-war international security organisation, to be set up between victory and the signature of the peace treaties. When his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, rose at midnight to go to bed, Churchill was scandalised. When Hull protested that it was late, Churchill replied, 'Why, man, we are at war!'
At their meeting on August 23 Roosevelt and Churchill agreed with the Combined Chiefs of Staff that plans should be made to defeat Japan within twelve months of the collapse of Germany, but not before. The primacy of the war in Europe was secure. Churchill was worried that the cross-Channel force would not be strong enough to hold its position once it was ashore. General Marshall agreed that the initial assault, which during their discussions in May had been planned for three divisions, would now have four and a half.
The Quebec Conference ended on August 24. Two days later Eden found Churchill looking unwell, and 'a bad colour'. Churchill was still worried that there would be too long a delay between the victory in Sicily a week earlier and the landings on the Italian mainland, as negotiations with the Italians dragged on. There was also a personal worry. Hearing that Eden, Brooke, Portal and Mountbatten were to fly back to England together by flying boat, he told Eden: 'I don't know what I should do if I lost you all. I'd have to cut my throat. It isn't just love, though there is much of that in it, but you are my war machine. Brookie, Portal, you and Dickie, I simply couldn't replace you.'
That day Churchill left Quebec for a holiday at La Cabane de Montmorency, a fishing-camp high in the Laurentian Mountains which had been put at his disposal by a Canadian industrialist, Colonel Frank Clarke. 'When night fell,' Churchill's doctor noted, 'Winston came out on the wooden pier, gazing up at the Aurora Borealis. This quiet life is doing him good, but he feels he is playing truant.' On the following day he fished at the lakeside with Mary. He also worked while at La Cabane on a broadcast he was to make to the Canadian people. Various members of the British delegation, who were at other lakeside cabins, motored over for lunch and dinner. On August 29 one of them noted in his diary: 'Winston in terrific form, singing Dan Leno songs and other favourites of the Halls of forty years ago, together with the latest Noël Coward.' Two days later Churchill returned to Quebec, where he made his broadcast: 'Here at the gateway of Canada, in mighty lands which have never known the totalitarian tyrannies of Hitler and Mussolini, the spirit of freedom has found a safe and abiding home.'
From Quebec, Churchill went by train to Washington. There, on September 1, he learned that the Italian Government had agreed to the Allied terms of surrender. Meanwhile, German troops were pouring into Italy from the north. 'The Italian landing is the biggest risk we have yet run,' Churchill telegraphed to the War Cabinet on September 2, 'though I am fully in favour of running it.' Two days later, on the fourth anniversary of the British declaration of war on Germany, British and Canadian forces crossed the Strait of Messina and landed on the Italian mainland. Churchill immediately focused on the final stage of the war, telegraphing that day to Eden and Attlee that he wished to have a Tripartite Conference to address the question: 'If we win, what are we to do with Germany? Is it to be divided, and if so how?' He would invite Stalin and Roosevelt to London or Edinburgh, or both.
The future of Russian power was henceforth to exercise much of Churchill's thought. 'I think it inevitable,' he telegraphed to Field Marshal Smuts on September 5, 'that Russia will be the greatest land power in the world after this war will have rid her of the two military powers, Germany and Japan, who in our lifetime have inflicted upon her such heavy defeats. I hope, however, that the "fraternal association" of the British Commonwealth and the United States, together with sea and air power, may put us on good terms and in a friendly balance with Russia at least for the period of rebuilding. Further than that I cannot see with mortal eye, and I am not as yet fully informed about the celestial telescopes.'
On the evening of September 5 Churchill went by night train from Washington to Boston, to receive an honorary degree at Harvard. Having made his acceptance speech at noon on September 6, he returned at once by train to Washington, reaching the capital on the following morning. During the journey back, noted Cadogan in his diary, 'Winston enjoyed himself hugely, making the V-sign from the train window at all the engine drivers on the line and at all the passers-by. He quite unnecessarily rushes out on to the rear platform of the car, in a flowered silk dressing gown, to attract and chat with anyone he can find on the platform at stopping places.'
On September 8, in Washington, Churchill learned of the formal surrender of the Italian armed forces to the Allies. That night German troops began to occupy Rome. On the following morning Allied troops landed at Salerno. But Eisenhower's plan to land an airborne division near Rome had to be cancelled: 'We have reason to believe,' Alexander explained in a telegram to Churchill, 'the Germans are in occupation of airfields.' Churchill spent the afternoon of September 9 with Roosevelt: both were agreed that if the Anglo-American forces were quickly successful in Italy, then considerable aid in munitions and supplies should go to the partisan forces in the Balkans. Churchill spoke of the 75,000 and more men of the Polish Army, 'burning to engage the enemy', who might be put ashore on the Dalmatian Coast of Yugoslavia. Certainly the setting up of garrisons in the Balkans 'with a few of our mobile columns' might be of value. Roosevelt agreed, telling Churchill that in the Balkans 'we should be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself'.
When Churchill went back to Hyde Park to spend the day with Roosevelt on September 11, it was the news of a setback at Salerno that chiefly concerned them. 'The Prime Minister was most upset,' Ismay later recalled. 'It reminded him of the Suvla Bay landing in the Gallipoli campaign, when the troops got ashore successfully but failed to move inland for two or three days, thus giving the enemy time to concentrate against them.' There was another recollection of Suvla Bay that also troubled Churchill. The battle there was lost, he telegraphed to Alexander, because Sir Ian Hamilton had been advised by his Chief Staff Officer 'to remain at a remote central point where he would know everything. Had he been on the spot he could have saved the show. At this distance and with time lags I cannot pretend to judge, but I feel it my duty to set before you this experience of mine from the past.' By the time he received Churchill's telegram, Alexander was already on his way to the Salerno beach-head. 'I am sure you will be glad to know that I have already anticipated your wise advice,' he replied.
September 12 was the Churchills' wedding anniversary; at dinner that night Roosevelt proposed their health and then drove them to the station, where they took the train to Halifax, a journey of more than thirty-seven hours. As they were on their way, German parachutists seized Mussolini from a mountain refuge in the Apennines and took him to see Hitler, who then agreed to set him up as head of a Fascist Government in northern Italy.
Churchill reached Halifax on September 14. Boarding the battleship Renown, he was, recalled Mary, 'in relaxed and genial form'. That evening in the Admiral's cabin he called for a box of matches and demonstrated the disposition of Kitchener's forces at the battle of Omdurman in 1898. When he noted that he had been under fire on his twenty-first birthday, Mary, whose twenty-first birthday it was the next day, pointed out excitedly that she had beaten her father by just over a year; the anti-aircraft battery in which she served had been in action several times against German bombers over London a year earlier; 'no doubt quite ineffectively', she later commented.
Five days after leaving Halifax, Renown reached the Clyde. During the voyage Dudley Pound's health, already poor, had deteriorated; on the train journey to London he gave Churchill his letter of resignation. At Euston Station Churchill was greeted, Captain Pim later recalled, by all his Cabinet colleagues 'and cheering crowds, and was obviously in the best of form'. Also at Euston was an ambulance, which took Pound to the Royal Masonic Hospital.
Three days after reaching London, Churchill answered allegations in the House of Commons that the delay in invading Italy had been due to the prolonged negotiations with Mussolini's successors. The 'sole limiting factor', he explained, had been the preparation of the landing-craft needed, and he went on to tell the House, 'When I hear people talking in an airy way of throwing modern armies ashore here and there as if they were bales of goods to be dumped on a beach and forgotten, I really marvel at the lack of knowledge that still prevails of conditions of modern war.'
There was another worry on Churchill's mind that autumn, the possibility, he explained to John Anderson, 'that the rocket or long-range cannon bombarding will begin at the turn of the year'. London would then again become a target. As for 10 Downing Street itself, 'the building is so old and frail that a near miss by a heavy bomb might bring it all down with a run.' Despite these worries Churchill knew that the power of the Allies was at last in the ascendant; on September 25, Soviet forces entered Smolensk, one of the cities of western Russia which had been overrun by the Germans in the autumn of 1941. Four days later the German battleship Tirpitz was disabled by British midget submarines which attacked her at her Norwegian anchorage, enabling the Arctic convoys to be renewed. On October 1 British troops entered Naples. With almost no fighting, Corsica and Sardinia were occupied by the Allies. But in the Atlantic, German submarines, equipped with a new type of acoustic torpedo, were proving a danger once more to the convoy-escort vessels, even though, knowing their locations through Enigma, the escorts were able to track them down.
On October 7, alert to the possibility of rapid developments in the Mediterranean, Churchill proposed to the Chiefs of Staff, including Pound's newly appointed successor Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who in 1915 had served at the Dardanelles, that an operation should be launched to capture the Island of Rhodes, in the Aegean Sea. On the previous day the Joint Planning Committee had submitted a plan for such an attack, dependent upon British forces giving up the much smaller, nearby island of Kos. Churchill welcomed the Rhodes plan, and at once ordered his plane to be made ready; he would fly to Tunis to see Eisenhower, and obtain the troops needed. Nor had he given up hope for holding Kos. Cadogan noted in his diary that night: 'He is excited about Kos and wants to lead an expedition into Rhodes!'
Brooke was angered by Churchill's enthusiasm. 'I can control him no more,' he wrote in his diary. 'He has worked himself into a frenzy of excitement about the Rhodes attack, has magnified its importance so that he can no longer see anything else and has set himself on capturing this one island even at the expense of endangering his relations with the President and the Americans and the future of the Italian campaign. He refused to listen to any arguments or to see any dangers.' That night Churchill's dictation was to Marian Holmes, who wrote in her diary: 'The PM said he had had a bad day, a very bad day. In a rather confiding way he said, "The difficulty is not in winning the war; it is in persuading people to let you win it-persuading fools." He seemed distressed and said he felt "almost like chucking it in". He had been trying to persuade the Americans to invade Rhodes.'
On the following morning Churchill received a telegram from Roosevelt, declining absolutely to agree to an operation against Rhodes; there could be no 'diversion of forces or equipment' that might affect either the advance in Italy to the north of Rome, or the cross-Channel assault, codenamed 'Overlord', now planned for May 1944. Churchill replied that the landing-craft to be used in the Rhodes attack would be able to move back to Britain 'nearly six months' before they would be needed for the cross-Channel assault. But Roosevelt refused to change his mind.
That afternoon Churchill drove to Chequers. On his way he stopped at the Royal Masonic Hospital where, at the request of the King, he handed Dudley Pound the insignia of the Order of Merit. Pound, the victim of two recent strokes, was unable to speak, but recognised Churchill and grasped his hand. Thirteen days later, on Trafalgar Day, he died.
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The Russian Government was pressing Britain to recognise the June 1941 frontiers of the Soviet Union, with the Baltic States and eastern Poland as a part of Russia. Churchill did not disagree, telling Eden on October 6, 'I think we should do everything in our power to persuade the Poles to agree with the Russians about their Eastern Frontier' in return for Poland being given German territory in East Prussia and Silesia as compensation. This was to be the starting point of the conference of the Three Powers, now planned to take place in Teheran. The matter on which Stalin most sought reassurance was the date and scale of the cross-Channel landing.
In early October, however, more than a month before the Teheran Conference was to take place, Churchill had second thoughts about the date of the cross-Channel landings. The decrypting of a top-secret German signal showed that Hitler, hitherto apparently willing to withdraw his forces in Italy northward, not facing a major battle, now insisted that the line be held south of Rome. Italy was to be fought for with the same determination as Tunisia; nothing was to be given up without the toughest fight. It was therefore clear that the more effort the Allies put into the campaign in Italy, the more German divisions would be sent against them, and the more German divisions they would be able to contain and defeat. Even the Russian front would gain from this diversion of German forces deep into Italy.
There were already eleven Allied divisions in Italy, fighting twenty-five German divisions. A further twenty-two Allied divisions were being assembled in Britain for the cross-Channel landing. Churchill felt that these twenty-two would not be enough for northern Europe but that, if moved to Italy, they could force the Germans into larger commitments and greater losses. For this reason, on October 19 he told the Chiefs of Staff that he feared that by a landing in north-west Europe 'we might be giving the enemy the opportunity to concentrate, by reason of his excellent roads and rail communications, an overwhelming force against us and to inflict on us a military disaster greater than that of Dunkirk. Such a disaster would result in the resuscitation of Hitler and the Nazi regime.'
The Chiefs of Staff agreed that as an alternative to 'Overlord' Britain should reinforce the Italian theatre 'to the full'. By focusing the next phase of military operations in the Mediterranean, she could also 'enter the Balkans', and hold the position in the Aegean Islands, where only Leros was now in British hands. Based both in Britain and now in bases in southern Italy, the Anglo-American bomber force would intensify the air attacks on Germany.
To Eden, who was in Moscow, Churchill explained the new plans on October 20, writing of 'the dangers of our being committed to a lawyer's bargain for "Overlord" in May for the sake of which we may have to ruin the Italian and Balkan possibilities', while at the same time having 'insufficient forces' in northern France 'to maintain ourselves after the thirtieth or fortieth day'. Although Eden replied that the Russians would accept no cancellation or even postponement of 'Overlord', Churchill persevered in his advocacy of the Mediterranean plan. On October 22 he pointed out to Roosevelt that even two British divisions in Sicily, which could have joined the battle in Italy, were about to be transferred to Britain as part of the 'Overlord' build-up and would not be in action for more than six months. To General Marshall he telegraphed on October 24: 'I feel in my marrow the withdrawal of our 50th and 51st Divisions, our best, from the edge of the Battle of Rome in the interests of distant "Overlord". We are carrying out our contract, but I pray God it does not cost us dear.'
These two British divisions were not the only ones being withdrawn on American insistence; two more were about to go, as well as four American divisions, the best in the Italian war zone. On October 26 Churchill wrote to Eden that the battle in Italy must be 'nourished and fought until it is won then would be the time for the cross-Channel landing. It should be made clear to Stalin that the assurances given about carrying out 'Overlord' in May could well be 'modified by the exigencies of battle in Italy'. Bitterly Churchill commented, 'This is what happens when battles are governed by lawyers' agreements made in all good faith months before, and persisted in without regard to the ever-changing fortunes of war.' Britain would do its 'very best' for 'Overlord', but, he added, 'it is no use planning for defeat in the field in order to give temporary political satisfaction'.
The British Chiefs of Staff agreed with Churchill, and urged the American Joint Chiefs to give Italy the priority until at least the capture of Rome. British and American landing-craft, which could have been used for an amphibious landing on the Italian coast near Rome, were about to leave the Mediterranean for Britain as part of the 'Overlord' preparations. On October 27 Churchill told the War Cabinet he would resign if his request for 'nourishing the battle' in Italy were refused. Brooke also was emphatic that sufficient forces must be sent to Italy to secure success there.
In order to calm Stalin, Churchill telegraphed to Eden on October 29 to stress that 'Overlord' would not be abandoned, but that the retention of landing-craft in the Mediterranean 'in order not to lose the battle of Rome may cause a slight delay, perhaps till July'. Eisenhower now intervened in Churchill's support to say that if the landing-craft were withdrawn from Italy as planned, his advance on Rome would be delayed until January or even February 1944. When Churchill asked Roosevelt to take this view into account, the American Joint Chiefs agreed that the landing-craft due to leave Italy in mid-December could remain there for one more month. But after that they would have to be transferred. 'Overlord' must not be delayed beyond its agreed May date. The 50th and 51st Divisions were to go back to Britain at once, as were two other British and four American divisions; considerably reducing the Allied strength in Italy.
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Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that they must thrash these matters out face to face, before meeting Stalin. On November 11, troubled by a heavy cold and sore throat, and feeling ill as a result of inoculations for cholera and typhoid, Churchill left London by train for Plymouth, where he again boarded the battleship Renown, which had brought him across the Atlantic less than two months earlier. Up to that moment, Captain Pim calculated during their first day at sea, Churchill had travelled a total of 111,000 miles by sea and air since September 1939, spending 792 hours at sea and 339 hours in the air. Reaching Gibraltar, Churchill had a long talk on board ship with the Conservative MP, Harold Macmillan, now Minister-Resident in North-West Africa, to whom he expressed his concern that the Mediterranean position both in Italy and in the Aegean Sea had not been exploited 'with vigour and flexibility'. Macmillan wrote in his diary, 'It is of course infuriating for Winston, who has felt that all through the war he is fighting like a man with his hands tied behind his back, and yet no one but he, and that with extraordinary patience and skill, could have enticed the Americans into the European war at all.'
On November 16 Renown reached Algiers. Again Churchill did not disembark, but had long talks with various senior officers who came on board. When someone remarked that the Chiefs of Staff system was a good one, he commented: 'Not at all. It leads to weak and faltering decisions-or rather indecisions. Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together-what do you get? The sum total of their fears!'
Reaching Malta on November 17, Churchill felt so unwell that he spent most of his two days there in bed. While at Malta, he learned that the Germans had seized the Dodecanese island of Leros, taking five thousand British soldiers prisoner; it was Germany's 'first success since Alamein', he commented. His efforts to have a weightier Allied initiative and more substantial forces in the Dodecanese had been rejected earlier by the Americans. 'Like you,' he told the British commander in the Eastern Mediterranean, General Sir Maitland Wilson, 'I feel this is a serious loss and reverse, and, like you, I have been fighting with my hands tied behind my back.' From Clementine came a letter of sympathy and encouragement: 'Never forget that when History looks back, your vision & your piercing energy, coupled with your patience & your magnanimity, will all be part of your greatness. So don't allow yourself to be made angry-I often think of your saying that the only worse thing than Allies is not having Allies!'
On November 21 Renown reached Alexandria. Churchill flew at once to Cairo where, on the following day, he greeted Roosevelt at the airport. The Cairo Conference opened on November 23. Discovering that Roosevelt had never seen the Sphinx or the Pyramids, Churchill drove there with Sarah to make sure that the President would be able to get to them without walking, and then went back to drive there with Roosevelt. 'It was a lovely drive,' Sarah wrote to her mother, 'and the President was charming-simple and enthusiastic. I think he enjoyed himself-I think he enjoyed the trouble Papa took.'
At the Conference itself, Churchill continued to urge the Italian campaign as the first priority, without taking any more forces away from it, until the capture of Rome in January; then taking Rhodes, the principal Dodecanese island, in February; sending supplies to the Yugoslav partisans; and, finally, putting the main effort into the cross-Channel landing, postponed from May to July. Eisenhower supported Churchill's plan to make Italy the first priority, but he wanted to go farther north than Rome; indeed, Eisenhower told the Conference that in his view Italy was 'the correct place in which to deploy our main forces and the objective should be the valley of the Po. In no other area could we so well threaten the whole German structure including France, the Balkans and the Reich itself. Here also our air power would be closer to vital objectives in Germany.'
Eisenhower even wanted 'Overlord' postponed, stressing, as the minutes of the meeting of November 26 noted, 'the vital importance of continuing the maximum possible operations in an established theatre, since much time was invariably lost when the scene of action was changed, necessitating, as it did, the arduous task of building up a new base.' No decision was reached, save only to try to resolve it after Churchill and Roosevelt had seen Stalin. On November 27 they flew in separate planes to Teheran, a five-and-a-half hour flight. Churchill was too tired to dine that night, as he had hoped, with Stalin and Roosevelt. And on the following morning he learned that, an hour before the first formal meeting of the conference, Stalin had seen Roosevelt alone. At this meeting Roosevelt distanced himself from Churchill's, and Eisenhower's, view of the primacy of the Italian campaign. Instead, he 'made it clear', Hopkins told Churchill's doctor, 'that he was anxious to relieve the pressure on the Russian front by invading France'.
The first meeting of the Big Three took place on the afternoon of November 28, Churchill telling the three delegations that they represented probably the 'greatest concentration of worldly power that had ever been seen in the history of mankind'. During their discussion that day, Roosevelt spoke of a possible Allied advance through Italy to the northern Adriatic and Istria, and from there north-east to the Danube. Subsequent mythology was to ascribe this idea to Churchill; but Churchill now suggested that the South of France landing should be considered as the next move after victory in Italy, and that it should take place at the same time as the cross-Channel landing. Stalin favoured this: he did not relish Roosevelt's idea of an Anglo-American army on the Danube.
That evening Roosevelt, the host at a dinner for Churchill and Stalin, felt unwell and went to bed early. His two guests then discussed the future of Germany. Churchill said he would 'forbid all aviation, civil and military', but added that he was not against the 'toilers' in Germany, to which Stalin replied that the Russians shot any working-class prisoners-of-war who, when asked why they fought, said they were only obeying orders. Turning to the question of the Polish border, Churchill suggested that 'Poland might move westward, like soldiers taking two steps left close'. Russia would acquire the eastern third of Poland, and Poland would move westward into Germany. 'If Poland trod on some German toes,' Churchill said, 'that could not be helped, but there must be a strong Poland. This instrument was needed in the orchestra of Europe.' Churchill then took three matches and demonstrated what he had in mind; the Polish eastern frontier moving westward to the old Curzon Line, and the Polish western frontier moving westward to the River Oder. Stalin was pleased.
At the next full session of the conference, Stalin spoke strongly against any postponement of the cross-Channel landing beyond May. On the following day Churchill's advisers told him that the only suitable moon periods at that time were the five days after May 8, and the five days after June 10. At a private meeting with Stalin on the morning of November 30, Churchill explained once more his reasons for wanting to persevere in Italy. The removal of the four British divisions from Italy for 'Overlord' had left the troops still in Italy 'somewhat disheartened' and 'we had not been able to take full advantage of Italy's collapse'. But he went on to point out that the removal of those troops 'also proved the earnestness of our preparations for "Overlord"'. At the full session of the conference that afternoon, it was agreed that the May date for 'Overlord' should stand. The Italian campaign had become a side-show, albeit one in which German divisions would be forced to engage in continual battle.
That night Churchill was host at the third dinner of the conference. As it was his sixty-ninth birthday there were toasts from start to finish. In one of them Churchill raised his glass and said, 'I drink to the Proletarian masses', whereupon Stalin raised his glass, 'I drink to the Conservative Party.' Churchill told Stalin, 'England is getting pinker,' to which Stalin replied, 'It is a sign of good health.'
On the following day the conference discussed Russia's post-war frontier and Poland's acquisition of German territory as compensation. Churchill was prepared, he said, to tell the Poles 'that the plan was a good one and the best they were likely to get, and that His Majesty's Government would not argue against the Soviet Government at the peace table'. He was 'not going to break his heart', Churchill said with some emphasis, 'about the cession of parts of Germany to Poland', or about the cession of the city of Lvov, which Stalin claimed, to Russia. Poland would have to accept the Curzon Line, first proposed by Britain in 1920, thereby excluding the eastern third of the country which Poland had acquired in 1921 after defeating the Russian Bolshevik forces. The Poles, Churchill added, 'would be wise to take our advice; they were getting a country 300 miles square', and he was 'not prepared to make a great squawk about Lvov'. Poland could also get part of East Prussia. Whether they would agree to these gains and losses was doubtful; the minutes recorded Churchill's words: 'We should never get the Poles to say they were satisfied. Nothing would satisfy the Poles.' But he would put it to them that they should accept.
As to Germany, all were agreed that she should be broken up into a number of smaller States; Churchill stressed the need for the 'isolation' of Prussia. He also proposed making the States of southern Germany part of a Danubian Confederation centred around Bavaria, Austria and Hungary; 'a broad, peaceful, cow-like confederation', he described it.
By the end of the Teheran Conference Stalin got the Anglo-American cross-Channel landing and the Soviet Union's western frontier exactly as he wished. On December 2 Churchill flew back to Cairo, where he tried to persuade the Turkish President, Ismet Inönü, to enter the war. Once Turkey joined the Allies, Churchill believed that Bulgaria, Roumania and Hungary, each hitherto loyal to Germany, 'might fall into our hands', and the next Big Three conference 'might be held in Budapest!' But Inönü resisted all blandishments; Turkey, like Argentina, was not to enter the war until just before the final defeat of Germany.
On December 9 Churchill was again feeling unwell. 'He was looking very tired,' Brooke noted in his diary, 'and said he felt very flat, tired, and with pains across his loins.' He was so tired that after his bath he did not have the energy to dry himself, but lay on the bed wrapped in his towel. But each day he held several meetings with experts and advisers, discussing aid to the partisans in Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania, and the possibility of regaining control of the Dodecanese. Among those who dined with him was Julian Amery, who had been working behind German lines in Albania. After dinner on December 10, Amery wrote to his father, reporting Churchill's reply to a question about his future travel plans, 'I am the victim of caprice, and travel on the wings of fancy.'
An hour later Churchill was off again, by air to Tunisia, an eight-and-a-half-hour flight, which ended at the wrong airport. 'They took him out of the plane,' Brooke later recalled, 'and he sat on his suit-case in a very cold morning wind, looking like nothing on earth. We were there about an hour before we moved on, and he was chilled through by then.' The correct destination was an airfield forty miles away, near Carthage, where Eisenhower was waiting. Churchill had intended to fly on from there to Italy, to visit British troops. But he was worn out. 'I am afraid I shall have to stay with you longer than I had planned,' he told Eisenhower. 'I am completely at the end of my tether and I cannot go on to the front until I have recovered my strength.'
Churchill remained in bed throughout December 11. On the following morning his temperature was 101. A pathologist was flown from Cairo and a portable X-ray machine from Tunis; Churchill had pneumonia. He remained in bed, but continued to see visitors and to dictate telegrams to his shorthand writer Patrick Kinna. The doctors protested about the volume of work being done, Kinna later recalled, 'but to no avail'.
On the night of December 14 Churchill's heart began to show signs of strain. Lord Moran feared that he was going to die. Churchill himself was philosophical, telling Sarah, 'If I die, don't worry-the war is won.'
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