Churchill (15 page)

There were, however, many points on which Britain, under Churchill’s leadership, was in a position to influence and even determine events. Where did he succeed, and where did he fail? When was he right and when wrong? He got the Americans to agree to a joint landing in Africa (Operation Torch), which succeeded and led to the surrender of all Axis forces there, as already noted. This was Churchill’s doing and led him in turn to the successful invasions of Sicily and Italy, and the Italian decision to make peace and join the Allies. Compare this, though, with Churchill’s decision to “roll up Italy,” as he put it. He put his old Harrovian friend Field Marshal Alexander, the general he liked most, in charge. But Italy was defended inch by inch by the Germans under Field Marshal Kesselring, the ablest Nazi general of all, and it proved a long and costly campaign. Probably the resources could have been better used elsewhere. Then there was the massive bomber assault of Germany. This was very much Churchill’s campaign, and speaking as one who lived through the war in England, I can testify that it was the most popular of all Churchill’s initiations. It was one reason his popularity remained high even when things were going badly wrong in other parts of the war, for virtually every day BBC radio was able to announce heavy raids on Germany the previous night. The British public rejoiced at these raids, the heavier the better. Churchill never repudiated the bombing campaign, even after the war, whilst it was heavily criticized on both strategic and humanitarian grounds. But he did not dwell on it either, or stress his personal responsibility for initiating and continuing it. The head of Bomber Command, Air Marshal “Bomber” Harris, was made the hero (or villain) of the assault.

In fact, on February 14, 1942, Harris was directed by the war cabinet that his primary object was the destruction of the morale of German civilians. Churchill wrote this order. The first big raid in accordance with it was on Lübeck on March 28, 1942, the city “burning like kindling,” according to the official report. The first thousand-bomber British raid followed on May 30. Churchill was enthusiastic, for at this date the news was bad and bombing was all he had to show. Altogether, bombing used up 7 percent of Britain’s total manpower and maybe as much as a quarter of the country’s total war production. It killed six hundred thousand German civilians and reduced but could not prevent the expansion of German war production into the second half of 1944. By the end of 1944 bombing was effectively putting the German war economy out of action, but at that point Nazi survival was being decided on the ground anyway. The nearest Harris and Churchill (helped by U.S. air power) came to a strategic victory was on Hamburg, by far the best-protected German city, from July 24 to August 3, 1943. They used the “window” foil device, which confused German radar. On the night of July 27-28, the RAF created temperatures of 800 to 1,000 degrees centigrade over the city, producing colossal firestorm winds. Transport systems of all kinds were destroyed, as were 214,350 homes out of 414,500, and 4,301 out of 9,592 factories. Eight square miles of the city were burned out entirely, and in one night alone up to 37.65 percent of the total population then living in the city were killed. Albert Speer, the war production minister, told Hitler that if another six cities were similarly attacked he could not keep production going. But Britain did not have the resources to repeat raids on this scale in quick succession. The losses in bombers and aircrews were heavy because of Hitler’s concentration of fighter squadrons and air defenses to defend his cities. On the other hand, without the British bombing these assets would otherwise have gone to the eastern front. As a result the Germans lost the air war there: by mid-1943, their air superiority had disappeared, and this was a key factor in their losing the ground war, too. These facts tend to be forgotten by those who assert that it was Russia which really defeated Nazi Germany. Without Churchill’s bombing campaign, the eastern front would have become a stalemate.

In attacking Germany, Churchill was never held back by humanitarian motives. The destruction of Dresden on the night of February 13-14, 1945, when between 25,000 and 40,000 men, women, and children were killed, was authorized by him personally. The origin of this atrocity was the desire of Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta in January to prove to Stalin that they were doing their best to help the Russian effort on the eastern front. The Russians had particularly asked for Dresden, a communications center, to be wiped out. When Harris queried the order, it was confirmed direct from Yalta by Churchill and Air Chief Marshal Portal. Would Churchill have used the atomic bomb against Germany, had it been available in time? Undoubtedly. The British nuclear weapons project had begun seriously in March 1940, before he took over supreme command. But he accelerated it in June, when the Military Application of Uranium Detonation Committee (or Maud, as it was called, whimsically, after a Kentish governess) was joined by the French team, which brought with them the world’s entire stock of heavy water, 185 kilograms in twenty-six canisters. In the autumn of 1940 Churchill sent a team to Washington headed by Sir Henry Tizard and Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s two leading military scientists, taking with them all Britain’s nuclear secrets in a celebrated “black box.” At that time Britain was ahead of any other nation in the quest for a nuclear bomb, and moving faster. Churchill was asked to authorize production plans for a separation plant by December 1940. In July 1941 he got the Maud Report, “Use of Uranium for a Bomb,” which told him the weapon could be ready by 1943. When America joined the war, Churchill decided that the risk of Nazi raids against a British A-plant was such that it was safer, with the scientific work now complete, for the industrial and engineering work to be done in America. In fact it proved much more difficult, lengthy, and costly than Maud had anticipated. So the first A-bombs were essentially American. If an all-British bomb had been made in time, Churchill would have commanded its use against Germany.

Perhaps his greatest contribution to the successful outcome of the war, at this stage, was his insistence on the right timing for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwest Europe. This was necessary for the defeat of Germany, and Churchill made sure it worked and was achieved with minimum loss of life for so immense and hazardous an operation. He argued that an opposed air-sea landing against formidable defenses manned by large, prepared German forces was perhaps the most difficult military undertaking of all. With the costly failure of Gallipoli always in his mind, he insisted that D-day should not take place until overwhelming strength was established and there was a near certitude of success. The Russians had asked for the second front to be opened in 1942. The Americans were willing to risk it in 1943. The “dress rehearsal” at Dieppe in 1942, where Allied losses were unexpectedly high, had shown what hazards lay ahead. Churchill’s conditions could not be met until the early summer of 1944. Even so, Overlord might have failed or proved extremely costly had not a highly successful deception plan persuading the Germans that the Normandy landings were a feint and that the real invasion was planned for the Pas de Calais area—another idea of Churchill’s—prevented a massive German counterattack in the early stages. Thanks to Churchill, and his memories of the Dardanelles, Overlord was a dramatic success. He wished to be present on the first day to enjoy his triumph. It was the last major occasion on which his desire to participate in military action manifested itself. All those concerned in the operation were horrified. Indeed, the desire was foolish in the extreme, a grotesque exhibition of the childish side of his nature. But he persisted, despite unanimous opposition from the service chiefs, the cabinet, his own staff, and the White House. In the end it was only the opposition of King George VI, who said that if his prime minister risked his life he must do so himself, which scotched the plan.

The delay occasioned by Churchill’s ensuring the invasion succeeded necessarily meant the Western forces were behind the Russians in pushing into the heart of the Nazi empire. This had grave political consequences. Churchill sought to mitigate them by demanding a full-speed drive to Berlin by the Anglo-American forces. This was supported by Montgomery, the army group commander, who was sure it was possible and would end the war in autumn 1944, with the West in Berlin first. But Eisenhower, the supreme commander, thought it was risky and insisted on a “broad front” advance, which meant that the war continued into the spring of 1945, and that the Russians got to Berlin first—and Prague, Budapest, Vienna, too. In his last weeks of life, FDR, despite Churchill’s pleas, did nothing to encourage Eisenhower to press on rapidly. Montgomery wrote sadly: “The Americans could not understand that it was of little avail to win the war strategically if we lost it politically.” That was exactly Churchill’s view.

But if he was unable to stop Stalin from turning much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans into Soviet satellites, he did snatch one brand from the burning—Greece. He used British troops, against much well-meaning advice, to intervene decisively in the civil war raging there between Communist guerrillas and forces loyal to the Crown. The politics were complex and made it difficult to decide whom to back among the contending loyalist leaders. Eventually Churchill decided in favor of the republican, anti-Communist general Nikolaos Plastiras. He joked, “The evidence shows we must back Plaster-arse. Let us hope his feet are not of clay.” “Tommy” Lascelles, King George VI’s secretary, remarked, “I would rather have said that than written Gray’s
Elegy
.”

Churchill also saved Persia by negotiating a highly satisfactory deal with the Russians, which enabled the British eventually to reduce their influence to a minimum. He kept a tight grip on the Persian Gulf and its oil fields. Of course, by saving Greece, he also enabled Turkey to stay beyond the reach of the triumphant Soviet forces. What is more, by picking a first-class general and backing him with adequate forces, Churchill also made a major contribution to victory in the Far East. Field Marshal William Slim was, next to Montgomery, the ablest of the British generals produced by the war. His Fourteenth Army was often called “the Forgotten Army,” in contrast to Montgomery’s famous Eighth Army. But it was not forgotten by Churchill. With his encouragement and support it conducted a hard and skillful campaign in Burma, ending in complete victory, which did a great deal to restore British prestige so cruelly damaged by the Singapore disaster. Indeed within four years Britain was able to get back Singapore, Malaya, and Hong Kong. Of course the restoration of Britain’s power in the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East could not be permanent. But for most of a generation, and in some cases longer, Britain was able to enjoy the economic advantages brought by her investments in Gulf oil, Malay rubber and tin, and the mercantile wealth of Hong Kong. For this, Churchill’s energy, foresight, and ability to seize on the essentials deserve much of the credit.

As the war drew to a close in the early months of 1945, Churchill visibly held back his efforts. His aggressiveness declined. He enjoyed his brief and successful intervention in Greece. But destruction now sickened him. He sent a memo to Harris to slacken off the attack on German cities as opposed to strategic targets, “otherwise,” as he put it, “what will lie between the white snows of Russia and white cliffs of Dover? ” Much of his imaginative energy was spent in trying to get the sick Roosevelt to do the sensible thing. “No lover,” he said, “ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.” The death of FDR, however painful to Churchill, came as a relief, especially as Harry S. Truman, brisk, decisive, much better informed on strategy, proved infinitely easier to deal with. When Churchill was tired, he talked, often off the point. He refused to read his papers. Colville noted on April 26: “The PM’s box is in a ghastly state. He does little work and talks far too long, as he did . . . before his Greek adventures refreshed him.” The businesslike and monosyllabic Clement Attlee, his deputy premier, sent him a sharp memo of complaint. Churchill is credited with many jokes about the Labour Party leader. “Yes, he is a modest man. But then he has so much to be modest about.” “An empty taxi drew up outside the House of Commons, and Mr. Attlee got out.” Sometimes they were mean and savage: “Attler, Hitlee.” One of Attlee’s staff used to whistle, a habit Churchill could not bear. His antipathy to whistling is curiously apt, for Hitler was an expert and enthusiastic whistler: he could do the entire score of
The Merry Widow,
his favorite operetta. It seems expert whistling by music lovers was a feature of pre-1914 Vienna: Gustav Mahler and Ludwig Wittgenstein were whistler maestros.

Tired as he was, Churchill treated the surrender of Germany with suitable rhetoric and champagne popping. He drank a bottle of his prize 1928 vintage Pol Roger. He was relieved by Hitler’s suicide. He had not relished the prospective task of hanging him. As Beaverbrook said, “He is never vindictive.” His saying had always been—it is one of his best obiter dicta—“In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity. In peace, goodwill.” Magnanimity came naturally to this generous, jovial old man (he was seventy at the end of the war). Lord Longford, the British minister for postwar Germany, showed notable compassion for the German people. Churchill came up to him at a Buckingham Palace garden party and said, slowly, “I am glad that there is one mind suffering for the miseries of the Germans.”

Churchill wanted to carry on the coalition until Japan surrendered. But the Labour Party refused. So he formed a Tory government, had Parliament (which was now ten years old) dissolved, and reluctantly began an election campaign. He hit hard, or rather fairly hard, for him. The prevailing wisdom was that he hit too hard, and that his anti-Labour speeches, inspired, it was said, by Lord Beaverbrook, did the Tory cause terrible harm. Nothing could be further from the truth. No one took much notice of opinion polls in those days. In fact Gallup had been predicting a Labour victory for some time by the huge margin of 10 percent: a landslide. Churchill had a good case. After all, if his advice had been taken in the 1930s, the war might have been avoided altogether. By contrast, Labour had opposed rearming Britain right up to the declaration of war. Attlee himself had told the Commons on December 21, 1933, “We are unalterably opposed to anything in the nature of rearmament.” Churchill was right to remind voters of these things. There was nothing personal in his criticism. Before the Labour ministers left his government, he gave a party for them and offered a toast. With tears running down his cheeks, he said, “The light of history will shine on all your helmets.” The evidence shows that Churchill’s speeches reduced the Labour lead to 8.5 percent by polling day. There was a delay between polling and the announcement of the results to allow the voters of the overseas forces to be counted. Few, it is thought, voted against Churchill. The vote was against the Tory Party, or rather against the upper classes, the officer class who spoke in clipped accents, wore cavalry breeches, and drank port after dinner. The result was due to be announced on July 26. The night before, Churchill recorded, he was awoken by a presentiment of disaster: “a sharp stab of almost physical pain.” The next day came the news: Labour had won nearly 400 seats, the Conservatives were reduced to 210 seats, and Churchill was out. As he put it: